Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear (26 page)

“
What?
Martin, it’s a glorious new world out there!” the President shouted, almost cackling at the idea. “Great Cthulhu, all-loving Dagon, the shoggoths who served the Elder Things but then rose to defeat them on Earth. And the Elder Things themselves! So much wisdom! In the next plane they wait to cross over and do things right this time—”

Martin gave a start, looked at Percy, who seemed startled as well, and then looked back to the former President. “I didn’t realize you had read that much Lovecraft!”

Her face lit up as she turned from the gate and returned Martin’s startled expression. “Did he write about these things, too?” she asked, breathless with surprise.

“Of course, Madam Pr—Judy. That’s whose ideas you’re quoting. Dagon, shoggoths, Elder Things, Cthulhu—all H.P. Lovecraft. You must have read them. And perhaps forgotten until now?”

“No, no, Martin, it’s not like that at all. I
know
all of them. I can practically
see
them. Lovecraft was completely attuned to the greater reality—that’s how he could write of such things hundreds of millions of years after they happened and also a hundred years before they were to happen again.”

Martin and Percy were struck speechless. As Percy fished out one of his employer’s flasks out of his jacket pocket, took a swig of the fine brandy inside, and handed it to Martin to do the same, a loud rumbling rose in the early-morning silence.

“But we’ll never get out of here,” Hampton said, defeated. Then a new smile grew upon her face. She raised her hands toward the south. “
Great Cthulhu, I want only to serve you! Ïa! Ïa!”

“President or not, this bird has lost her remaining marbles,” Martin said to Percy in a low voice.

“Great Cthulhu, hear me!
Please send a miracle so I can serve you!
”

“Madam President, look out!” Percy shouted and yanked Hampton away from the gate just in time to keep her from getting flattened by the M1 Abrams Heavy Battle Tank that burst through and shattered the metal under its treads. Spear-like shards of broken iron fence shot forward like mortars, but the projectiles landed near their feet and no one was impaled.

A miracle
, Martin thought.
Fine, it’s a miracle. I give up. Huzzah, Cthulhu. Sorry—GREAT Cthulhu. Ïa Ïa and all that.

The top hatch opened and Staff Sergeant Doucette popped his head out. When he looked to his left and saw
the President
fallen to the ground and two guys in definite non–Secret-Service-issue suits keeping her company, the eyes almost popped out of the head that had just popped out.

“President Hampton?” Doucette said, totally surprised, as if he hadn’t just crashed through the front gates of the President’s residence. He saluted awkwardly but immediately. “We’re here to protect you!”

“I’m not the President anymore,” Hampton said, and stood with the help of her companions. “So put your hand away. All bets are off, soldier. What’s your name?”

“Staff Sergeant Francis Doucette, ma’am!” he shouted, automatically standing at attention as much as the tank hatch would allow.

“We need to get ourselves to the closest TV studio.”

“Isn’t there one in the White House?” Percy asked.

“Not
that
close,” Hampton said.

“
We got a webcam in the tank, Madam Pres—or Madam Ex, um …”

“You can call me Madam President, sergeant. Or Mrs. Hampton. Or Judy.”

Doucette laughed in astonishment. “Yesterday morning I got up like normal. But maybe I never did wake up.” He pinched himself and they all laughed.

Hampton took off her high heels and threw them away. She scrunched her stockinged toes against the damp grass. “Time for business,” she said at their expressions. “Sergeant, is that webcam hooked up to the Internet?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Permission to come aboard, then.”

Doucette barked a laugh but held up a hand to stop her. “We got two other men inside here, ma’am, Sergeant Mitchum and a civilian, Horan Marmalado. He was stuck by the side of the road up in P-A, so we couldn’t just leave him to die—”

“That’s very admirable, Sergeant. But time is short. I need to speak to the people—can we use your webcam for this? Can you get it through the proper channels?”

“It’ll go out live on Periscope and then automatically load onto YouTube, the Army channels and stuff. Then I can tweet the link, I guess. A message from the President—or ex, you know—should go instantly viral on the Web.”

“As long as anyone’s left alive to see it,” Martin Storch said. His buzz would last only so long, and his flask was empty. He swallowed drily, anxiety building. “Sergeant, do you happen to have any alcohol in your, um, vehicle?”

“You bet your ass, we do. Excuse me, ma’am.”

“Quite all right, Sergeant. Help my friends here and please set up the webcam. It’s the time for the most important address of my life.”

Martin put his hand to the bridge of his nose and squeezed. He was
Martin Bloody Storch
, speaker of truth to power, smasher of idols, the man who pulled back the curtain of horseshit to reveal what only
he
could decipher! And here he was, following around the President, or ex, or whatever in blazes she called herself now, like a puppy begging for favor. He needed to say something. He needed to stop with the arse-kissing. The majority of people on the planet were now
dead
. There was nobody left for him to impress. Judith Hampton was insane and Martin Storch was no longer going to praise the emperor’s new clothes.

That was, after Staff Sergeant Doucette handed him an almost-full bottle of Johnnie Walker.

Red label
. Martin almost shuddered.
Any port in a storm, I guess
, he thought, and tucked it away under his suit jacket. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said, and turned to Hampton, “Madam, Percy and I must take our leave. We can no longer—”

“You may go,” Hampton said, “but your Percy has to stay. I need him.”

A flash of jealous anger flared in Martin’s mind, but then he remembered that
he
was the one deciding what he himself would do, and certainly that meant Percy had that freedom as well. “Percy, what will you do? Go with me, or stay behind with this madwoman?”

“Mister Storch!” Percy cried. “In all the years I’ve been with you, sir, I have
never
seen you treat
anyone
with rudeness! Not even the Creationists—not even
Kirk Cameron!
”

Martin stiffened a bit. He had always welcomed Percy’s opinion, but this was not cricket at all. “You will stay, then, Percy?”

Percy loosened a tiny bit and said, “If the President is saying she needs me, then I will stay for her address.”

“Fair enough, old boy,” Martin said in a conciliatory tone. “I would like to stay and wait for you. And I apologize, Judy, for my apparently unprecedented rudeness.”

Percy applied the balm of a smile, Hampton waved the apology away like the insult had already been forgotten, and their wounds healed quickly.

No one thought to ask
why
exactly Judith Hampton needed Percy there.

Doucette reached down into the tank to take the portable webcam from Sergeant Mitchum. “We ready to go?” Doucette said to him, and apparently got the thumbs-up because he then said, “Ex-Madam President, or President ex-Madam … anyway, we’re recording.”

Her hair was a shambles, the lighting was bad, shattered foot-long shards of black iron littered the grounds, and she was standing in a torn navy pantsuit and stocking feet on the lawn of a White House that was no longer hers. But every man there, including Mitchum and Horan Marmalado, watched on the forward tank monitors as Hampton assumed the mantle of the Presidency once more, seeming to grow in stature and gravity as she prepared to speak.

Holy hell
, Martin thought, impressed and amused,
she must have been a monster of a sixth-form schoolteacher. A spitball thrown in her class would send you up the river for the rest of your natural-born life.

President Hampton began her final address to anyone still alive to listen:

My fellow Americans and humans throughout the globe, I have resigned the United States Presidency. This was a decision made in the greatest haste, but I do not regret it in any way. Indeed, while the trust put in me by the American people allowed me to be more influential and beneficial than I ever could have dreamed, any President’s power to move the world forward is constitutionally limited, as the Founding Fathers intended.

However, the entire planet—the entire human race—is now in the greatest crisis in its history. The entity known as Cthulhu has sent out a series of psionic—that is, from its giant brain and mind—waves that at first killed half a billion people around the world. Sooner after His emergence from the Pacific Ocean, Cthulhu began moving toward the planet’s South Pole. This has sent out, and indeed is still sending out, these highly destructive psionic waves.

For those still able to hear my message, you are alive due to differences in your brain chemistry from the majority of humankind. If you are intoxicated or under the influence of drugs at the time a psionic wave passes over you, you will be unaffected. If you have a mental illness due to brain chemistry, you will be unaffected as long as those chemicals maintain that imbalance. But there is only one way to escape the psionic destruction permanently, and that is to put your faith in our new God, in the Old One, Great Cthulhu.

Yahweh and Allah, Buddha and Brahma, the ten prophets of the Sikhs, the animist spirits of the jungle, none of these will protect you. Only Great Cthulhu can protect you, as he has protected me. His herald form, once it reaches the South Pole, will open the gate between His dimension and ours. Those who believe will witness the return of our planet’s true masters: Great Dagon under the sea, the Elder Things and their shoggoth slaves, and of course the glorious Cthulhu.

I know these things first because of the prophecies of the writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and second because once I believed, I could see everything. Once you believe in the power of Great Cthulhu and the other masters, you will see it all, too.

My fellow Americans, my fellow surviving humans, now is the time to place your fate in the hands of those so much more powerful than ourselves. Trust in Cthulhu, make yourself sensitive to the Lord Dagon’s love, and learn from the wisdom of the Elder Things.

[She motions to Percy to come join her in front of the camera. He steps up beside her.]

This man has staved off the psionic waves by injudicious consumption of alcohol. Is that correct, Percy?

[He nods, and Hampton reaches to the ground to pick up a large iron shard from the White House gate.]

People of this great planet, this man does not believe in any of the Old Ones and their complete dominion of what we call “Earth.” Is that also correct, Percy?

[Eyeing the iron spear in the ex-President’s hand, Percy seems to both nod and shake his head simultaneously, which makes him simply look like a doddering drunk.]

To remain in the realm of our new masters, we must perform a sacrifice. Once we believe, we must end the life of a nonbeliever in the name of Great Cthulhu.

[Before Percy can even back up or Martin can stay her hand, Hampton shoves the iron spear directly through Percy’s chest, right through his heart. He falls to the ground immediately, already dead.]

I am the prophet of Cthulhu! Now sing it with me, my children:

Ïa! Ïa! Cthulhu m’glhal! Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh m’glhal!

Praise! Praise! Cthulhu is awake! Cthulhu is free from R’lyeh, alive and awake!

Ïa! Ïa! Cthulhu m’glhal! Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh m’glhal!

YES! CALL TO HIM! ÏA! ÏA! CTHULHU M’GLHAL! PH’NGLUI MGLW’NAFH CTHULHU R’LYEH M’GLHAL!

Show the others the Way! But first, SACRIFICE an unenlightened one! Do it NOW! And may the Old Ones bless America!

Her speech concluded, former President of United States Judith Hampton ran out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, turning south and screaming in religious ecstasy until the men gathered on the White House lawn could no longer hear the sound of her voice.

Martin knelt next to the body of his longtime assistant and friend. He didn’t cry at funerals. He didn’t cry when he had been diagnosed with early-stage throat cancer a few weeks earlier. He didn’t cry on 9/11. But now he sobbed and then cried, his tears dropping onto Percy’s face. A baptism of sorts, he supposed later, but one that made sense in a world without the God he had never believed in, a God he already missed.

“What now?” Doucette, as shocked as the rest of them, asked no one in particular.

“Why did you come here?” Martin said.

“To protect the White House and the President.”

“Then stay here and do that. I’m off to kill Judith Hampton.”

“
Whoa
, Mister Storch, I can’t let you do that. I’m sworn to protect the President, ex-President or whatever you got.” He carefully unholstered his Beretta 9mm sidearm and brought it up out of the hatch, pointing it at Martin very slowly so that the writer would not notice it hadn’t been there the whole time. “So why don’t we calm down for a minute?”