Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear (22 page)

Tyson nodded and said, “We’re going to run out of time, people—just one more thing for Betty and then we’ll get moving forward again: Why does the arrangement of its eyes suggest that it’s four-dimensional?”

“I extrapolated from what we know about depth perception,” Baker said. “One eye allows the owner to see in two dimensions, but no depth. Two eyes gives the owner the ability to perceive three dimensions. Following that logic by analogy, a creature with a third, perpendicular eye should be able to see in four dimensions. And relying on Darwinian logic, it would be a completely unnecessary expense, biological-resource–wise, to develop the means to perceive four dimensions without needing it to actually
function
in four dimensions.”

The room was silent except for a muttered, “Whoa.”

After a moment Nye spoke up. “All right, we have a strong argument in favor of it being a living creature living in at least four dimensions, but which for some reason has entered our three-dimensional space. Who can argue the other side, that this is some kind of naturally occurring energy field?”

One hand went up, hesitantly. It belonged to Li Clarke, a Chinese physicist who did not speak often in meetings … but when she did, everybody listened. And so it was again. Once she had everyone’s attention, she said in her quiet, accented voice, “This is not energy field. This is living thing with enormous brain.
Enormous
brain.”

She had the rapt attention of the greatest collection of scientific minds in the country. They stood absolutely silent, awaiting her explanation.

“The energy that went out in big Event yesterday was like … turning on iPod with earbuds already in and it’s on full volume. It what happen when the anomaly passed into this dimension. Now, as it move, it creates not ‘insanity wave,’ but
psionic
wave. Mind wave.”

Li looked around at the stunned, disbelieving faces. “These wave affect only complex
human
brain. Animals not affected at all, you see. We humans getting telepathic information from anomaly, but our complex and sensitive brain can’t handle.”

“Telepathy? Psionic waves?” Sibbald repeated. “These are not real, Li. No experiment has ever provided a scintilla of evidence—”

“No,
listen!
” she interrupted. “Human brain not have enough electrical power to affect other brain, that why human ESP experiment always fail. This creature has enormous head with enormous brain—it like a huge transmitter and humans are receivers.”

“And what might this transmitter be sending to our brains?”

Li hesitated, clearly measuring her response, but then went for broke: “It saying we can obey it, or we can die. People get this message not in words, but as adrenaline and panic signal.”

Nye cleared his throat and said gently, “And the drunk or insane?”

The Chinese scientist shrugged. “If brain not working at full efficiency or working different than most brain, maybe transmission is unsuccessful. We only know
that
it work, not
how
it work. We maybe should take precaution soon,” she said, and everyone looked at the clock on the wall. They had twenty to thirty minutes at most.

“So we should get
drunk?
” Nye said incredulously. “We don’t keep booze in this office.”

Li Clarke shrugged. “Then maybe we go unconscious? Let the wave pass?”

“Or go insane,” Betty Baker muttered, seeming surprised at her own words. “Not
insane
insane, just a little mad.”

“Is that something one can do in a temporary manner?” Tyson asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it. But unless someone can get us a large amount of alcohol in the next twenty minutes—with the streets filled with wrecks and soon-to-be-running-amok crazies—or figure how to knock all of us out for a set period of time. Remember, anyone left awake in however many minutes would irresistibly be forced to run north or turn savagely violent, and this room doesn’t have a northern exit.”

They all looked at the clock again. Even though the moment of the crest of the “psionic wave” was still at least 15 minutes off, they all could feel a definite urge to move to the north—or, more precisely, to move away from the south—an undeniable anxiety about remaining standing where they were.

“We have to decide,” Tyson said, “How would you even do that, make yourself just
a little
mad?”

“Mercury fumes!” Baker said immediately. “Inhale mercury fumes and your brain goes sideways for a period, several hours at least, enough for us to survive the psionic wave. Inhale too much and it may never work the same way again. Inhale more than that and you’ll die.”

“Mad Hatter’s Disease, the uncontrollable shakes and schizophrenia-like mental disorder,” Sibbald said. “Of course, that was after months or years of exposure. A quick exposure would probably … um, probably
not
give you that?”

Panicked looks around the room. To these people, their brains were everything.

Baker noticed this and nodded in sympathy. “I know, I know. But we
have
mercury in the basement of this building, in the laboratory thermometers. We can bring it to temperature and be inhaling it within five minutes.”

Five of the scientists simply walked out of the room, immediately turning toward the north exit as they entered the hallway. They would be madly running in a few minutes, possibly screaming as they tried to escape what was at the southern end of the world, but this was their choice ahead of putting their brains—which each had worked all his or her life to cultivate—at risk.

That left Norm Tyson, Bob Nye, Betty Baker, Li Clarke, Molly Gibson, Ron Lieb, and—surprisingly—Len Sibbald remaining. The formerly dismissive mathematician noted their expressions and said, “Everything that’s happening right now is impossible. Other dimensions breaking into this one, psionic waves, telepathy, monsters from science fiction invading Earth. Logical thought, even the best science, by definition cannot help us with the impossible. So I vote with you all—we must save ourselves the only way plausible in the time we have left, by inhaling volatile mercury to induce a transient mental confusion.”

“
Hopefully
transient,” Tyson said.

“Just so.”

“This could end all our careers and leave us being average thinker at best,” Li said.

“Indeed,” Sibbald replied, “but it’s better than ripping your own face off.”

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, The White House

Event + 33 hours

President Hampton and her new advisor, Martin Storch, shot so quickly out of the Oval Office that her press secretary could barely keep up enough to repeat again and again that this was a terrible idea, that people were still going crazy and dying out there, that a 10 p.m. ET address was a waste because no one would be watching, that a 10 p.m. national address could raise a panic because everyone was watching, throwing anything and everything he had at the President, who wouldn’t stop walking
so fast
even for a second.

This new advisor, this Storch, and his effete assistant both wobbled a bit as they also tried to keep up as the President strode in a completely straight line through the portico to the Press Room. Finally, he yelled as the Marine guard opened the door for her and Storch, “Madame President, I am your press secretary! You can’t have a press conference without me! I’ll quit!”

“That’s okay—you’re fired anyway!” Hampton called as the doors closed behind her.

In the ten minutes before he started screaming and running into the electrified fence at the south end of the grounds again and again until he was a blackened sack of smoking meat, the former White House Press Secretary used every combination of every synonym for both “crazy” and “bitch” in as many ways as he could think of.

***

The assembled reporters, cameramen, and A/V techs in the briefing room were completely caught off guard by the President herself shooting through the doors without preamble or any warning at all, followed momentarily by Martin Storch and his assistant, Percy. Networks cut away from whatever they were showing as quickly as they could and went live to the press room without any explanation, since they had none.

The room fell silent except for the sound of dozens of shutters, and Hampton immediately stepped to the microphone and began speaking.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, citizens of the United States of America, a wave of terrible violence and panic is sweeping across our nation and the rest of the world. Or I should say ‘waves,’ since I have been told that this will be a repeating cycle as long as Cthulhu remains active and moving on planet Earth.”

No laughs came from the press corps this time. But, even though the President couldn’t hear it, several microphones did pick up a muttered “Holy shit” and a separate, very quiet “What the fuck?”

“We have no defense against the psionic assault from this Old One who ruled the Earth long before the evolution of the earliest land animals, but I would like to introduce my new advisor, the respected writer and world’s greatest expert on H.P. Lovecraft, Martin Storch, to explain how we can at least temporarily stave off some of the effects. Mr. Storch?”

“Thank you, Madam President,” Martin said, his voice noticeably sluggish but his British-accented words still perfectly clear. “Everyone who can see or hear my words, including you in this press room, must go immediately to any source of intoxicant you can find, and ingest as much of it as you can stand.”

The press corps stood as one and roared questions at Martin, but he ignored them and just kept talking. “The effects of Cthulhu’s superior and malign psychic waves upon the human brain can be stayed by the imbibing of alcohol or the taking of psychoactive drugs. Do it now, people of the world, people of America, everyone who wants a chance to
live!
”

One question came from the stunned press corp. “Mr. Storch, are you drunk right now?”

“You bet your arse I am!” he yelled into the microphones. “You all have to
leave here now
and start drinking alcohol, smoking pot,
anything
to save yourselves!”

There might have been a follow-up question, or the President might have retaken the podium, but before anything else could happen, the opposite door of the press room was flung open and Vice President Steele—followed by Marine Captain Berry and two Secret Service agents—stormed into the room.

“Madam President, you are hereby relieved of command under the provisions of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution—”

“
You son of a bitch!
You’re signing your own death warrant and that of the entire—” Hampton shrieked.

“—which calls for a President declared physically or mentally disabled to be removed from office and replaced by the next person in the chain of command, the Vice President! Gentlemen, please take President Hampton to a secure facility where she can be treated—”

“You’re going to
die!
You’re all going to die!
I resign!
” she shouted to the room in general, but in particular at the Secret Service agents coming forward to restrain her. “I resign the Presidency! Get your hands off of me!”

Every member of the press corps stood stunned. Not a scribble was made, not a sound came from any of the usually vociferous gaggle of reporters.

Algernon Steele smirked as he said, “Let her go. She refuses your protection, and she is no longer President. Escort her off the grounds. Let her go, I say.”

The agents didn’t really have to escort her, as she, followed by Martin and Percy, fled from the room.

Steele turned to the shocked faces of the reporters and others present, and said into the pooled network feed cameras “We are in a crisis. There is death and mayhem all around the country and the world. I am initiating a strong military response to this threat, and asking the leaders of the world to join the United States in this effort. We are going to fire nuclear warheads at this anomaly, this
thing
, until it is utterly destroyed. Only then can we start to rebuild. So, as your President, I ask for your support in this unprecedented response to an unprecedented event.”

But all the assembled press and anyone watching the news feed heard was “We are ...” because that’s all the time Steele had to say before every person in the room started screaming and rushed for the northern wall—which is the wall behind the Presidential podium.

Steele and Berry both saw that the three members of the President’s Secret Service detail also had started screaming and clawing at the screen in front of the north wall. The trio of agents assigned to Steele (and who had been ordered by the new President to ingest shots of vodka) were just able to squeeze out of the room before they would have been trapped by the berserking crowd and clawed to death.

White House Situation Room

10 minutes later

President Steele and Captain Berry took a moment to catch their breath after their flight from the Brady room through the corridors of the White House, which was usually thoroughly protected by agents and police but now were filled with mad screams and bloody streaks on the walls, floor, and ceiling.