Everything Is Ruined Forever: The Invasion of Lake Peculiar, #4

By Jack Ravenhill

If Gus had his druthers…

 

Gus has shifted his ambitions from local ascendancy to planetary domination. Too bad the Titans want him dead – and they'll destroy the town if that's what it takes to stop him. 

 

That's why Gus has no choice but to highjack the crystal-based superweapons they've been developing so that he can reach out to the mothership and demand that he be made the tenth viceroy of Earth.

 

As usual, things do not go according to plan. Can Sam stand up to Gus to save everyone else in town? Or will he be too Midwest Nice to save the day?

 

Everything Is Ruined Forever is the fourth book in Jack Ravenhill's new series, The Invasion of Lake Peculiar, a quirky take on the bestselling Invasion Universe. If you enjoy Garrison Keillor's Tales from Lake Wobegon, you'll love Lake Peculiar. Pick up your copy today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sterling & Stone
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215967249

Book preview

Chapter One

Journey Devereaux ran through the eerie, empty streets of the town. There was chanting not far away. Dozens of people, maybe more.

She knew she was dreaming, and she knew she should be afraid. But tonight, the fear was missing.

That in itself was concerning.

The streets were so empty, it was like the disaster had already happened. Like the aliens had already arrived. But they hadn’t, of course.

They were on their way. This was known.

Seven people came around the corner, walking in unnatural lockstep. A safety patrol. Even as her trapped mind tried to make her body hide, her dreaming mind smiled at them. They gave a synchronized nod. Their chief saluted her.

Journey ran by them, smiling without intending to.

The chanting grew louder as she got closer. She sped up, urgent but still not frightened. She could not find where her fear had gone.

Her legs carried her at a run to what she knew was coming. After rounding the corner, she skidded to a halt and there, as it had been every night, was the crowd.

Dozens of people, maybe more, sitting in concentric circles. Cross-legged. Swaying.

It felt like coming home. She would have feared how comfortable it felt — if her fear was not missing.

In the center of the crowd stood the three figures, back to back to back, peering out over the masses. They were different now, as they had to be. This, too, was known. A titan, bald and pale and tall, with a neutral little smile. Lottie MacNair, who was also one of the Astrals. And Gus.

She tried to feel a surge of terror, of rage. She could not find them.

The crowd swayed back and forth, chanting contentedly, and Journey tried to cry out. She knew without a doubt that this moment was a matter of life and death, that the Astrals’ doom was upon Lake Peculiar.

Beyond the crowd, beyond the three, rose the fantastical gleaming silhouette of the Sapphire Cathedral, shot through with red and beginning to crack. Between her and the crowd bristled a complex formation of standing stones. A towering pressure of psionic power was building, like nothing she had felt before.

The titan turned toward her. She met his gaze. A long and silent communication passed between them.

Her vision dimmed, darkened. Intense and velvety, palpable blackness. And within it, a thousand tiny points of light.

Journey woke up.

Chapter 2

Sam woke from an uneasy sleep.

Silence haunted the Sapphire Cathedral in the dim light of morning. He was beside the crystal altar, on a crude nest of blankets Gus’s minions had found in the church basement.

Thor remained motionless, his trance state seemingly unchanged, still locked up to his wrists in the altar. Thick veins of red now shot through the blue crystal, like lightning bolts spreading from Thor’s hands or blood vessels spreading from his body into the block of blue stone.

The titan sat cross-legged on the ground on the far side of the stage, a red gem in its forehead. Its pose was incongruous. Sam had never seen a titan sitting that way. Kneeling now and then, like when they’d summoned the crystal to build up the church, but he’d only ever seen their followers sit cross-legged.

He wondered groggily where Gus was. His brain felt empty. It grasped after something it couldn’t quite place, with the nagging sensation of a dream just beyond memory.

Thor? he croaked.

He moved to get up, and found his hands manacled together with a fine figure-eight Moebius strip of red crystal.

Goddammit, Gus, he muttered. He got to his feet more awkwardly than usual, darted an uneasy look at the titan, then knelt by Thor.

Can you hear me? He touched Thor’s neck, trying to remember where to feel for a pulse. The gap in his mind kept tugging at the back of his attention.

Morning, buddy, croaked the titan tonelessly.

Sam jumped, his hands pulling away from Thor like he’d been burned.

Sleep okay?

Not really. Sam eyed the titan warily, trying to figure out what was going on. They didn’t normally speak, and if they did, he was sure that wasn’t how they did it. A beat too late, he added, You?

Please, young Sam, the titan replied, its words grinding out in a bizarre monotone, but with a cadence already growing familiar. I have left behind the mundane needs of your paltry existence. I am become Gus, destroyer of worlds. That dead croak made the pronouncement even more ominous. I mean, you know, not literally, added the titan in a flat growl.

Gus?

Oh. Yeah. I guess I didn’t tell you. I can—

You can see and talk through the titan. Yeah, I get it. Super convenient and creepy. Where are you?

Sam wished he could place what was missing from his mind. There was too much to figure out, and a big nagging distraction was the last thing he needed.

Oh, grated the titan’s gravelly voice, out and about. Hither and yon. You know. Takin’ care of business.

Are the titans still making everyone into acolytes? Are the obelisks doing anything?

Don’t worry your little head about all of that, Sam, my boy.

Sam growled in irritation. Gus had been bad before the phenomenal cosmic powers. Now he would be insufferable. Can you at least take off these handcuffs?

Oh, those aren’t handcuffs. Those are so much more than handcuffs.

Okay?

Tell me that isn’t the most kickass futuristic look you’ve ever seen. Am I right?

Yeah. Totally. But can I get them off?

All in good time. I’ve got a little assignment for you first.

Can you just come in here? This whole ‘talking through the titan’ thing is starting to freak me out a little.

The titan chuckled dryly. It carried about as much emotion as a laugh transmitted by telegraph.

Hardly, my young ward. I am abroad on urgent errands. Now, here’s what I’m going to need you to do.

Sam tugged idly against the cuffs. Yeah?

Go put your hands on Thor’s head and dip into hive view. Poke around until you find the other titan, and see if you can take a peek into his head and see if they’ve got any, like, reinforcements or whatever coming yet.

I— Gus’s request was screwy on so many levels, Sam couldn’t even figure out where to start objecting.

Awesome. Thanks. I’ll expect a full report once I’m back. Keep up the good work, Samuel. We’ll be watching your career with great interest. Long live the Ascendancy. Long live The Gus. Over and out.

Wait! When are you coming back?

But the titan simply peered at him in meditative silence. Sam gave Thor’s still body a long, weighing look. He tried to run a hand through his hair, and the crystal cuffs brought the other hand up with it.

Goddammit, Gus, he muttered.

Chapter 3

It was a dismal gathering that met at the intern house at Fresh Fire later that morning. Journey hadn’t slept much, and when she finally collapsed from sheer exhaustion, it was to be hit with a new and confusing variation of the Dream.

Nestor and Pastor Jonathan and the interns had been up since before dawn, praying and doing whatever they did, and when Journey and the others arrived for an emergency strategy meeting of the Resistance, it was to the tail end of a chaos of fervent Pentecostal nonsense that left her feeling even more wrong-footed.

Now, everyone was more or less settled. Journey had managed to hold onto the crystal pyramid — the corner Sam and Gus had cut off the altar. Now she could see through the rough red face where they’d severed it, just like she could see through the eyes of Gus and his minions. And the pyramid was a hell of a lot easier to carry around.

She situated it on the table to give her a clear view of the room. Three ex-acolytes with diamond scars on their foreheads huddled in the bunks at the edge of the room, under the watchful eye of a matronly Fresh Fire woman named Margot. They remained disoriented and quivering. Certainly unsure where they were. Maybe unsure who they were. But they were out of the hive, and they seemed like they were improving. Slowly.

Probably.

All right. Let’s get this thing going. Journey tried to inject a little energy to mask the hopelessness in her voice. She watched the room, turning her head to sweep the gathering, more for their benefit than her own. She was getting increasingly used to watching whole scenes — including herself, and what was behind her — from the static view of the pyramid.

First, a quick update. As most of you know by now, ever since Gus broke the titans’ altar, it screwed something up so I can see through his eyes and all his minions’, too. I can’t say I like being stuck in that doofus’s head, but it does give us a big advantage on the intel front. I wanted to get you caught up on what’s been going on since he kicked us out.

Gus had figured out a way to get rid of them using the altar’s power. Or Thor’s. It was hard to tell. Either way, he’d sent out some kind of unbearable mental shriek. Like teeth on a chalkboard.

One blast had been enough to get everyone’s attention, and he’d given them five minutes to get out of range. The hive seemed immune, and Gus must have shielded Sam somehow to keep him nearby. But Journey had had no choice but to join the Resistance’s wild scramble to the edges of town. She’d spent a restless night in Thor’s big, empty farmhouse, bouncing between worries and schemes.

Looks like he’s up to a few dozen minions at this point. I’m not sure he really knows what to do with them. But until about eight o’clock last night, he was doing a pretty solid job slowing down the work on those standing stones or whatever the titans are having their people build.

Obelisks, someone offered.

Sure. At a certain point, his people stopped resisting the hive, and that worries me. I don’t know if his powers crapped out on him or if he’s made some kind of alliance with the titans or what. I didn’t see any indication they’d stopped him by force, but I’m sure a lot of whatever’s going on between them is going to be invisible, so take that with a grain of salt.

A murmur of speculation ran through the room, but Journey brought it back with a lift of her voice.

Our top priorities are to get Sam and Thor out of there. Sam’s going to be easier. Thor is still stuck in the altar, and unless we can convince Gus to get him out, we’re going to have to do some pretty new thinking on that one.

Could we, like, sever him somehow? piped one of the interns. Like, if we got him out of the hive, maybe the altar would spit him out.

We have no evidence Thor’s in the hive yet, at least as of yesterday evening when he got Karl out. Karl was the latest hive acolyte to spontaneously lose his gem. Or that severing him would do any good. All the severs we’ve performed have been strictly psionic. This one has an unbreakable block of crystal to deal with. Not to mention Thor had played a critical role in every single sever they’d performed.

In theory, John Mark might be able to do some good, but there was no question it would mean throwing him in the deep end of a very dangerous pool, and there was no real reason to think he’d be able to get Thor out of the altar, anyway.

Maybe if we use Sam’s hatchet? suggested another. I heard that’s how they broke the altar in the first place.

Maybe. Journey fought the urge to shut down every idea as it came up. They’d need creative thinking to solve this, and you didn’t get creative thinking by telling everyone they were wrong. Even if they were. Still, it wouldn’t do any good to ignore the hard facts. Sam did say it didn’t do anything when he tried. He thought it needed Gus’s connection, somehow. But there might be something there. Maybe Gus isn’t the only one who can do it.

Maybe if we pray and anoint them with oil—

Journey cut that one off, creative brainstorming or not.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to do any good in this case.

Nestor and a couple of the others began to object.

She waved them down and kept talking. Instead of speculating on that, I think our best move for starters is to get some information, and that means getting someone into the Sapphire Cathedral.

Can’t you see through their eyes? asked Oliver.

"Yes, for the most part I can. But none of them are inside the church right now. Except the titan, and I still can’t figure out how to make sense of what he’s seeing. Or how he’s seeing, I guess."

The titan’s point of view was, well, alien. It could see, obviously, but Journey had never realized until she saw from its perspective just how deeply her brain interpreted raw visual inputs.

The titan saw the world completely differently. Psionic data seemed to register along with color and brightness, and it seemed to make sense of the world in terms of intent.

She could tell — in a blurry, roundabout sort of way — Thor and Sam were there. But through the titan’s eyes, they looked like parts of the same object, like two feet under a table would to her. The altar appeared as a sizzling complexity she couldn’t begin to make sense of. Everything else was there, but largely undifferentiated. She knew the room contained flowers and pews and probably early morning sunbeams. But through the titan’s eyes, most of the sanctuary’s contents were as distinct yet indistinguishable as pieces of gravel in a pile.

We’ll need someone to take a look around. If it’s safe enough to talk to Sam, so much the better. If not, see what you can see then get out. There doesn’t appear to be any overt danger, exactly, but we can’t depend on that. Whoever goes will have to think on their feet and might end up in a pretty tight spot. I’m honestly not sure whether it’ll work better to try to sneak in unseen or to just walk in like you own the place. The titans have never seemed to care much about keeping people out of there, and it doesn’t look like Gus has posted guards or anything to keep people out. But his pet titan is right there by the altar, and he’s still got the reptar and who knows what else up his sleeve.

She looked around the room slowly, again more for effect than because she needed to.

Any volunteers?

Several interns raised their hands.

Nestor waved them down. I’ll go. It’s not fair to make any of these kids risk it. Sam’s under my care. And somebody’s got to rescue that old coot Thor from whatever he’s got himself mixed up in.

Are you sure?

All I’m ever sure about is Jesus. Nestor grinned a wide, yellow-toothed grin. But that just makes the rest of it an adventure, am I right?

Chapter 4

Sam approached Thor warily, the way he might approach a mouse in a trap. There was something unnerving about the idea of touching his living, breathing body. Somehow Gus’s request — or command, or whatever — had flipped it. It was one thing touching Thor to comfort him or check that he was still alive. But this felt wrong, even exploitative.

Who knew what it would cost Thor if Sam used his brain as a path to spy on the titans? Would it endanger Thor? Push him deeper into the trance? Draw the titans’ attention to him?

That ship, at least, had probably already sailed.

Sam darted a look at the titan. It was hard to tell where it was looking with those solid black eyes, but it seemed to be gazing aimlessly off into