Sunday, January 7, 2018

"Requiem for the Burning God"

by Shane Jiraiya Cummings
originally published Cthulhu's Dark Cults, Chaosium, 2010

Max Calder, a British mercenary and man of action, is hired bya company called NWI to help guard/secure a mining camp in the Andes.  Calder becomes suspicious and investigates the mines, where he and some of his fellow mercs find enslaved indians shoveling pools of apparently sentient black slime into barrels.  A lot of (frankly confusing) action ensues, which involves the other mercs being captured or killed and Calder slugging/shooting/stabbing it out with Lehmann, the cult leader, and then taking off in a bi-plane and shooting down an NWI plane before being shot down himself by an NWI zeppelin(!)

Calder, having survived explosion, shooting, stabbing, beating and now being shot down in a bi-plane and crashing into the ocean, swims off and boards the NWI ship that the planes and zeppelin have been accompanying.  He finds the remaining cultists busy dancing and singing (too busy to pay much attention to him) and sacrificing the last of his fellow remaining mercs to the black slime.  Calder mans the ships guns and shoots down the zeppelin, then jumps into the sea as the zeppelin crashes into the ship, soon catching a handily-ejected lifeboat and floating away to safety.

Wow - this one's a wild ride.  I can't say there's much meat on it, but there's plenty of gripping and well-written action.


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