Goon Squad #8

By Jonathan L. Howard

Manchester is an old city with many shadows in its history. Most lie quiet, but now and then, one is stirred from its rest by the actions of foolish men.

Pomona Island is a curiosity -- a backwater of the city left to nature for generations. Development reveals an old secret from which a fool tries to profit, unleashing a horror unseen in seventy years.

Still reeling from the effects of the Exterminating Angel, the last thing the city needs is another killer on the loose. But there's something more personal to the GOON SQUAD about this new terror -- can it really be that the Squad's first ever case has come back to haunt them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan L. Howard
• Release date: Jan 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311808127

Jonathan L. Howard

JONATHAN L. HOWARD is a game designer, scriptwriter, and a veteran of the computer-games industry since the early nineties, with titles such as the Broken Sword series to his credit. He is author of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Johannes Cabal the Detective, and Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute, as well as the YA novels Katya’s World and Katya’s War. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and daughter.

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GOON SQUAD #8: Pomona Island

GOON SQUAD #8

Pomona Island

by

Jonathan L. Howard

Copyright

Goon Squad #8 Pomona Island

by Jonathan L. Howard

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

Copyright © 2016 Jonathan L. Howard

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http://www.jonathanlhoward.com/

GOON SQUAD #8

Pomona Island

Brick dust lay thick upon the resting place. The slow cycle of years brings entropy and decay to everything; the sealed cellar was no exception. In pitch darkness wooden workbenches and steel shelves became grimy and then filthy as the vaulted brickwork roof above them crumbled away decade on decade. No breeze ruffled the dry dust in that carefully hidden place, no rat or mouse disturbed the debris on the concrete floor, no stray glimmer of light from the outside world troubled the perfect darkness of the secret crypt.

Entropy is ever present, but left to its own devices the resting place would go for another century or two before the ceiling would finally give in against the killing years and start to become unsafe. It was a well built cellar, after all, the product of an earlier generation to which the concept of planned obsolescence would neither have occurred nor appealed. It was built to last as long as it could, and so far that was over a hundred and twenty years, more than half that time sealed tight.

Most of the contents were of little value; long obsolescent electrical and chemical components arranged in configurations that might have fascinated scientists in the relevant disciplines but that the equipment had been thoroughly ransacked, useful elements removed, and the remainder hastily destroyed decades before. Much of the cellar's floor space was taken up with two metal sarcophagi, apparent coffins for adherents of a technocratic god. One stood open, the dust of ages covering its padded interior. The other was closed, and hermetically sealed.

In a valley of kings, or a jungle interior, or beneath a mantle of ice the cellar might have gone undiscovered until time finally aged away the strength of the arches in a shower of crumbling brick and the place collapsed, destroying everything within it. The cellar was not in such an unpeopled