by Sean Hoade
Who would they contact? S.T. Joshi? He lived in Seattle but traveled all over the world all the time (as did Martin, he realized). No planes were flying and the highways were filled with wreckage and carnage. New York was much closer to Washington than Seattle, anyway, if Joshi even happened to be at home.
Maybe Bob Price? He lived in North Carolina, but his emphasis in his Lovecraft analysis was mostly theological. Unless they were planning to pray to Cthulhu (which might not be a bad idea, Martin thought with a small smirk), Price wouldn’t be the man and he also lived farther from Washington than New York was.
No, Martin decided. He was the expert they needed. There was nothing to know about Cthulhu and the other Old Ones, not to mention the Elder Things and the Outer Gods, that he didn’t know better and more completely than any of his rivals.
He paused. Who sounds insane now?
“Martin.”
“Hmm, what?” he snapped out of his daydream to see Jimmy Morley staring at him.
“I said, What are we going to do now?”
“I’d say get your hands on all the sacramental wine and nonsacramental whiskey you can find and get thee to your diocese. This is a time for pilgrimage, and it doesn’t matter if you have answers or not. Nobody has any answers right now”—except me, he thought and shut that bullshit away immediately—“but you’re the man the people need to ask.”
“Of course, of course,” the archbishop said, and Martin could see the abashed, even ashamed, way he was looking down at his nonclerical clothing. “I have tried to abandon my flock when they most need me.”
“Just change your shirt and put on the big hat and I bet all will be forgiven.”
“You give good counsel, Marty. Thank you.”
He patted Morley on the arm and got out his cell phone. “You take care of your business, and now I’ll take care of mine,” he said, and called to the retreating Morley, “Good thing there’s no God!” The archbishop laughed and waved Martin’s ribbing away, and Martin laughed as he called the White House Communications Office. Surely the President would be permitted to send a chopper to New York to get him. He was, after all, the most likely available—or maybe even surviving—expert on the works of H.P Lovecraft left in the world.
The Office of the Vice President of the United States
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
Event + 25 hours
Vice President Algernon Steele sat in his plush chair in the conference room, his chin resting on his hands, which formed a steeple with their fingers. His staff knew that this was his “deep thinking” state, and they knew not to interrupt him with anything while he was arrayed in such a way.
Besides, some of the aides in the room thought, the Vice President didn’t need to be asked a damned thing after they all watched the President’s implosion at her news conference in the West Wing, not a block away from where they all sat or stood right then. The wall-sized screen had just shown a direct feed of Judith Hampton’s unprecedented mental breakdown—cursing at reporters, on camera! Blaming space aliens for a state-sponsored terrorist attack, for Chrissake!—and Algernon Steele was still staring at the screen even though an aide had cut the feed at Steele’s command.
They all remained where they were and looked to the stone-faced Vice President for instruction or comment or anything at all. No papers were shuffled, no texts were even glanced at, no one moved a muscle except perhaps to catch a glimpse from another staff member saying about the press conference just with his or her eyes: What the fuck was THAT?
Finally, after what seemed an endless two minutes, the Vice President lowered his hands and cleared his throat. Every eye, every ear was completely attuned to what he would have to say, even if it was just “Get out” (which some were hoping for, frankly).
Steele said, still staring at the screen, “Get the Chief Justice on the phone. I have some questions for him. And a suggestion.”
Interstate 95, 15 miles south of New York City
Event + 25 hours
The two most eminent scholars in the world on H.P. Lovecraft, his work, his worldview, and his bestiary of monsters sat in a late-model Chevrolet Impala, having recently attended a small academic conference on Lovecraft in the writer’s hometown of Providence. They had been making good time when the Event slammed their eyes shut and started them screaming along with every other motorist on the road.
Twenty-four hours later, remaining in the driver’s seat was Sunand Tryambak Joshi, author and/or editor of more than 200 books, many of them on H.P. Lovecraft and his Mythos. In the passenger seat was Robert McNair Price, the holder of doctoral degrees in Systematic Theology and New Testament Studies and who had written more about the spiritual implications of Lovecraft’s worldview than most had ever even read. Joshi was unconscious, having passed out from the unbearable pain of two broken femurs. Price was alive and almost uninjured, but he was trapped in the car by the vehicle that had smashed into them during the Event and forced them into the ditch between the northbound and southbound lanes, the impact of which had broken both of his longtime friend’s legs. His mobility held to three or four inches on each side and in front, Price had been unable to find either of their cell phones, even as he could hear each one ringing almost nonstop. He couldn’t move to get out of the back or even through the shattered windshield due to his large size and Joshi’s injuries. By the time of the President’s press conference, the car’s battery was dead. Desperation and dehydration had set in hours earlier.
The interstate was filled with cars like theirs, with dying people like them, as far as Price could see in either direction. Even if he had been able to find his cell, there was no telling where they were exactly, and no way anyone could reach them even if rescue teams made them their first priority. They may have been amused if they knew that Cthulhu, their object of study and analysis for so long, had directly caused their demise … but probably not.
The cars, trucks, and every other vehicle that had been traveling at the moment of the Event on that packed stretch of Interstate 95 pumping drivers out of New York City like an aorta were all motionless now, crashed, many burning, some containing the dying but most containing the dead. Orange Marmalade had walked all night and all day down the shoulder of the interstate, smiling as he looked upon the begging and hysterical people trapped in their cars. They would not be alive for long, not like him. He was going south. He was going to the new Master of Earth, to sit by His side.
He walked by the hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of once-southbound cars, giggling as he took in the carnage and the misery. People were so silly as they died! He felt a special connection to one late-model Impala, with its swarthy gentleman driver and obese but distinguished-looking passenger, the first unconscious and the second hanging on to life by a thread. He felt sad that they were doomed. Orange Marmalade felt that he could have had a conversation with them about the new Master.
Oh, well, he said to himself with a smile, and kept walking.
Several hours later, some twenty-six hours after the Event, for the first time in reality and not just in his own mind, Martin Storch really was the greatest living H.P. Lovecraft scholar on the planet. The President’s team agreed—he was also the only one they could reach—and by the time S.T. Joshi and Robert Price had breathed their last, a helicopter carrying Martin and his assistant, Percy, was landing on the front lawn of the White House.
Nellis AFB
Event + 27 hours
A veritable fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles now swarmed the skies over the anomaly, drones with every conceivable kind of sensor collecting a wealth of data that would take the thirty-airman team assigned to each individual drone hours, if not days, to parse. That future analysis notwithstanding, every UAV reported the same vital piece of information at exactly the same time.
The anomaly—the head of Cthulhu, some new impossible island in the Pacific, whatever it was in reality—had risen farther out of the water now, the “tentacles” swing
ing above the surface from the bulbous “head” that almost every Chair Force member had stopped thinking of with quotation marks around them.
And the head was moving.
And as the anomaly—no, as Cthulhu, no sense in pretending now among the drone operators—moved, the effect was much like the creation of an electrical field when a magnet is moved past a coil of copper wire. But the field created by Cthulhu’s movement wasn’t electric or magnetic. It was a psionic field—an emanation like nothing in human science—and in seconds it enveloped the world, weakly at first but increasing in strength as the Old One increased His speed.
When the exact vector along which Cthulhu traveled was calculated to be toward the center of Antarctica, not toward populated areas, the majors and colonels monitoring their staff’s monitoring of the anomaly breathed a collective sigh of relief.
But after a few moments the psionic wave reached them, and everything went to hell all over again.
Chapter 4: The Madness
Tupolev Tu-95 Long-Range Bomber
Altitude 20,000 feet, near Point Nemo
Event + 30 hours
Flying west into the late-afternoon sun, the long-range reconnaissance aircraft known as “The Bear” thundered over Point Nemo. Because its eight sets of turboprop propellers—the Bear was first built in 1956 and had been in service ever since—spun faster than the speed of sound, sonic booms continually rent the air wherever it flew.
For this mission, however, stealth was not a concern. The Russians were not content to let the United States act unilaterally on behalf of the entire world. But the Cold War superpower knew, because this Event had occurred in the Western Hemisphere, that the US would be first at Ground Zero—Water Zero?—with their drones and their satellites. But President Zhikin also knew the Americans were afraid to send manned aircraft into the area.
Russia may no longer have had the military capabilities of the Americans, but it was not afraid. Russian strength was at the forefront when the order came down for the Bear to bring its cameras—and its bombs—to the precise location of the anomaly, of this Kuh-thoo-loo, the storybook monster the Americans were using as a cover story.
But a cover for what? Russian satellites had detected nothing unusual near Point Nemo, no grouping of ships of any kind, let alone military vessels. Automated long-range radar from Antarctica and other bases had revealed no particular concentration of aircraft until after the Event, when the American UAVs had begun canvassing the area.
Still, the seven crew members operating the Bear were there to carry out orders, not to guess at why they were made or even to know what was going on. Those orders this time were to fly to a specific point in the South Pacific, find what was referred to in their orders only as anomaliya, an “abnormality,” in the water and then empty its entire bomb bay on that anomalous target. In that bay were eight conventionally armed Kh-101 air launch cruise missiles since Russia, even though it was proud to flex its muscles in this crisis, didn’t want to invite the international derision that dropping a nuclear bomb would undoubtedly invite. Besides, the combined eight Kh-101 missiles were more than enough used in concert to vaporize any target the Bear crew chose.
As they approached Point Nemo, it immediately became clear that the glowing, somehow nebulous object (which looked very much like a sea monster’s head, making the crew laugh even as they shuddered) was the anomaliya they had been tasked with bombing shortly before taking off from the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov north of Australia.
Still, the pilot asked for confirmation of what he—as well as the bomber’s many video cameras transmitting footage via satellite link to both the Kuznetsov and Moscow—saw some 30 miles ahead of the Bear. They could launch the self-guided missiles at any point now once they received confirmation.
The auxiliary pilot confirmed it, as did the navigator. A final confirmation came from their cruiser, which had gotten the word from Moscow. This weird and massive thing was in fact what they were being ordered to destroy.
The navigator figured the exact coordinates of the anomaly and called them back to the bombardier crew, who punched in the codes and opened the bomb bay doors. They led a countdown each man on the Bear could hear and use to prepare himself.
“Pyat,” the chief bombardier called into his headset. Five.
“Galochka,” the pilot responded. Check.
“Chetyre.”
“Galochka.”
“Tree.”
“Gal—” the pilot started to say, but the navigator keeping track of the anomaly’s coordinates held up the count.
“Ona dvizhetsya,” the navigator said almost in a whisper. It moves.
At that instant, all seven men on board the Tupolev Tu-95 shrieked like they were on fire. The pilot yanked the wheel as hard as possible to turn the Bear around in evasive action from its course toward the anomaly, from that thing that had suddenly pierced their hearts with terror and the panicked urge need to get away. The pilot didn’t drop the throttle for a second; in fact he throttled up as he threw the giant bomber into a 180-degree turn at top velocity.
UYTI! the pilot’s mind screamed as he put all his weight behind the wheel. UYTI!
GET AWAY!
It was too much. The powerful turboprops that made the Bear invaluable for its speed worked against it now, momentum shearing off the rear of the aircraft just in front of the bomb bay. The bombardier crew and the Bear’s eight unexploded bombs fell away and out of sight as they spiraled toward the ocean three miles below.
Without the weight of half the aircraft but with its wings and fuel tank still attached, the cockpit and the rest of the bomber to the fore of the bomb bay rocketed up and up, the men unconscious from the loss of pressure until the Bear ran out of fuel and dropped them to their deaths as well, in the icy ocean several hundred miles from Point Nemo.
Before they lost consciousness, however, although each man knew he was about to die, all were grateful to merciful God that their last seconds were spent racing farther and farther away from the anomaliya, that unnatural, sanity-shattering abortion rising from the sea.
The crew members of the Tupolev Tu-95 Long-Range Bomber were the first to die from the insanity and panic incurred by exposure to a psionic wave pulsing from a moving Cthulhu. These waves would crest and fall in a chaotic pattern after a few trips around the globe, peaks of intensity eventually reaching almost every spot on Earth. Unlike the spectacular but brief explosion of psionic charge that was the Event, these waves were relentless in their cruel effects.
Louisiana Bayou
Event + 30 hours
The cult leader, chieftain, whatever Howard was to these unfortunately malformed (degenerate) Tulu worshipers, he was not of them, that much was obvious to Kristen Frommer. He spoke the speech of a modern American. His “worship group,” however, was made up of loincloth-wearing primitives who, even though they could say a few words of English through their malformed mouths, seemed to have been dropped into the Louisiana swamps straight from the “fish people” tribe of Papua New Guinea. (Which made sense, she supposed, since they shared the word Tulu. They also seemed much more comfortable chanting the consonant-garbled language—”R’lyehian”—during their unceasing prostrations and praising of the weird octopus-god statue on the altar.
Howard and Kristen had been discussing, arguing even, about the nature of the sacrifice needed for her to join their clan, tribe, cult, for an hour or more.
“You just believe, really believe, that Tulu is a god who has come back to claim Earth as His own,” Howard said, and repeated this sentiment a dozen different ways during their long … negotiation? That’s what it felt like to Kristen, anyway.
She stated her side to Howard, from many different angles, but they all boiled down to “I can’t just believe. I see that it’s had results for you and your … people, but how do I know that has anything to do with your Tulu? Christians and Muslims could be making the same claims about their
God.”
But they weren’t, Kristen knew from the television coverage. Every cleric of any mainstream religion brought onto the news or talk shows explicitly pushed back against the idea that the object of their faith would ever do something like this. Theirs were gods of mercy, they insisted, not gods of terror. Even the Old Testament Yahweh, known for his anger and terrible retribution when things didn’t go his way, was defended by rabbis and Jewish theologians as at least having a method to his (madness) destruction.
“The time to believe is coming very, very soon, Kristen. Soon it will be too late for you, and you are essential to spreading the word about Tulu, how to worship Him, how to be spared as He takes what was His so many millions of years ago.”
“Too late?”
Howard took a deep breath and let it out slowly, the way Kristen did sometimes with especially dense students. “I had to go through this very process myself, years ago. When I met them ten years ago, it was because I was doing researches into medicinal plant life reported in the literature as being common in this area. It was held to have seemingly magical healing properties, but then, so did aspirin back in the day.”
“Are you a medicine man or something? Their witch doctor?”
“Ha!” Howard barked. “I have a medical degree, but at the time I was working for a major pharmaceutical concern, trying to get them new raw material to work with. I was a doctor who didn’t do much healing … back then.”
Kristen nodded, but at what she wasn’t sure.
“Anyway, so I traveled here, following paths just barely visible through the swamp vegetation, and in a cluster just poking out from the green water I found exactly what the earlier explorers had written about, Argemone albiflora Hornem, otherwise known as the bluestem pricklypoppy. I carefully dug out the roots and put the plants in my moisture-regulated sample bag. I looked around for more, but didn’t find any more right away. That was all right, since the sample I had would be enough to start work on analyzing and synthesizing its active ingredients.