by Byron Craft
The Colonel did not conceal his depression well, Doucette observed. He wondered if he was aware that Vice President Steele eventually met his end in Washington D.C.? “Was the maintenance eventually completed, Colonel?” Doucette again questioned.
“Yes and fueled too. Only there is no one left to fly it. The pilots and crew are laying out on the airstrip with the rest of my people.”
Doucette thought the Colonel would break down crying any second. It must have been tough on the Colonel, watching his men die, unable to help. “I am sorry for all the questions, Sir but I believe I have a pilot to fly that thing.”
* * *
Dr. Betty Baker was attempting to arouse Orville Marston aka Horan Marmalado from his morphine slumber when the Satcom call alarm beeped.
“Satcom on the line,” announced Romero. “We’ve got visual too. It’s from the Raven Rock Mountain Complex.”
Colonel Fielding stepped to the largest of the ten monitors and ordered, “Put it on the big screen, Mr. Romero.”
The image of General Patterson appeared. “All rise please, the President of the United States of America will address your staff. The camera panned right, and to everyone’s amazement, Kevin Berry materialized on the screen. “Hello, my fellow Americans.”
“Hey,” whispered Bob Nye leaning in Martin Storch’s direction. “Isn’t that the A/V tech we saw in the White House Situation Room?”
Nye’s breath smelled of vomit. Martin put a hand over his nose and replied, “Bet your sweet ass. He was also very knowledgeable about Lovecraft. Will wonders never cease.”
“How does a nerd like that become President?” still whispering.
“Very simple, first you have to read up on your Cthulhu.”
“Due to some very unusual and unsettling set of circumstances, President Judith Hampton swore me in as Vice President of these United States. Unfortunately, we lost Ms. Hampton yesterday in a freak accident, and that has put me in charge ... of what is left of our great nation. General Patterson and I concur that another strike against Cthulhu is a warranted gamble. It appears that the Old One is now on this planet in its corporeal self, not a projection, rather its physical form. We believe that a nuclear strike against it, this time, will have the desired effect. We will be striking it with one of our F-35s in stealth mode from a very high altitude. It will release a 50-megaton nuclear warhead to detonate above the target and hopefully vaporize it once and for all. The range of an F-35 is limited to nine-hundred miles. We have located one with cruise missile capabilities along with a pilot rated to fly the fighter-bomber at Ramstein Air Base in Miesenbach, Germany. Prep time for the aircraft is eight-and-one-half hours. By then we estimate that the target will be arriving at Geneva, Switzerland a mere Three-hundred-forty-four miles for the high-speed jet. It is with a heavy heart and our total regrets that we will have to detonate the device over what might be a highly populated area. We see no other alternative. God bless America.”
“Can he hear and see us as well,” asked Martin.
The Colonel nodded.
“Wait, ah Mr. President. We have an alternative. Hear us out!”
Kevin Berry looked confused as if he had just been taken off script. He stammered and said, “I ... a, what ...” Then the screen went black.
* * *
Five hundred twenty-eight stories beneath the earth President Kevin Jefferson Berry’s skin crawled. He stared at the improvised cue cards written with felt marker perched on an easel. Next to the “Football” in a Ziploc bag rested the severed hand of Judith Hampton. The key to the nuclear missile codes.
Chapter 15:
Land and Sea
A race against time.
45,100 feet (13,750 m) @ 600 mph (965 km/h)
Air Force Two may be able to land itself and stop itself on full autopilot if necessary, but someone still needed to get it into the air. The airliner roared across the continental United States. Orville Marston/ Horan Marmalado/Orange Marmalade had leveled the 757 off at 45,000 plus feet maintaining an airspeed close to the speed of sound. At this rate, according to the flight management system (FMS), they should reach Geneva, Switzerland in under 7.63 hours. Orville was back in the pilot’s seat, mentally returning to the days when he flew ‘the friendly skies’ but he was nonetheless crazy as a jaybird, a bird that had escaped its cage. A place where they incarcerate insane killers.
Horan transformed into Orville (almost) when Dr. Betty Baker brought him around with smelling salts, black coffee, and Red Bull, then converted (partially) when Sergeant Doucette told him that, “Cthulhu was calling, and his master was heading to Switzerland.” It wasn’t easy to convince “the looney” as Bob Nye wanted to call him but held his tongue afraid of reprisal. It took several satellite viewing minutes on the monitors and GPS tracking to persuade the coming out of Orville that his Lord and Master was no longer in the south. After that, it was relatively easy. Providing all that wanted to board Airforce Two swore allegiance to the Old One and recognized their pilot as the true profit. Orville/Horan/Orange was disappointed that he wasn’t assigned Airforce One for the ultimate godly mission instead of Two. However, he did acquiesce when Doucette lied, telling him that the President’s plane had been destroyed. Doucette, of course, didn’t have a clue where that plane was.
Orville Marston was wearing military camo, a gift from Colonel Fielding. Captain Marston (he insisted on the title while in the air) had been unconscious so long that he had soiled himself several times. Showering, shaving, and in his new attire, he almost looked normal except for an occasional nervous tick and wild-eyed amusement at his flock.
Betty Baker and Francis Doucette kept Orville company on the flight deck. Orville, of course, warranted watching. The 757 was on autopilot, but there was no telling when the nutjob might go off the deep end and endanger everyone on board. They also wanted to make sure that the ‘Captain’ did not leave the pilot’s seat and venture back to where the rest of the passengers resided. Naturally, they kept their true purpose for traveling to Geneva from Marston. Martin Storch, Molly Gibson, Bob Nye along with Romero, who had been allowed to join their quest, occupied The Vice President’s office located behind the plane’s Executive Suite. Betty and Francis did not want Captain Marston within earshot of them while they were formulating their plan. The two did not mind being nursemaids. Dr. Betty Baker was primarily a biologist with very limited knowledge of physics let alone H.P. Lovecraft, and Doucette was clueless when it came to the branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. Both were content to let the people in the know decide their fate. After all, this was probably a suicide mission. They all recognized the probable consequences of the outcome. Time was a short pursuit which meant life was going to be short too; the stimulus behind Francis’ and Betty’s hand holding. Each kept an eye on their crazy Captain. However, most of their time was occupied gazing into each other’s eyes. “Maybe,” cooed Betty, “when they are done with their meeting, they could relieve us, and we could share some private time in the Vice President’s Suite.” She didn’t wait for Doucette’s reply and planted a big one on his lips. Imminent death motivates some couples to procreation; an attempt to leave a legacy behind.
* * *
Martin was glad that the nerdy tech, Romero received permission to tag along. Even though his OCD was a pain in the ass, the kid was as smart as a whip. They were going to need all the help they could get. Colonel Fielding and the other two techs had opted to stay behind in the Globe to monitor their progress. Which of us were going to go down with the ship, he wondered?
Romero had fired up the desk top computer when they relocated to the VP’s conference and dining room. The rest eyeballed the 72-inch flat screen monitor built into the airliner’s wall. “The new LHC (Large Hadron Collider), is one of the most complex machines ever created. The LHC is the world's largest particle accelerator, buried 328 feet (100 meters) under the French and Swiss countryside with a 62.1371-mile (100 km) circumference. CERN
’S reference database is designed to store all data pertaining to the collider, its components, its layout, as a large unified tool. The management of this data and its release is handled in this section,” Romero began pointing to a detailed circular diagram on the screen. He encircled an area marked “Atlas” with the mouse cursor. “From everything I can glean online, this is where we want to be.”
“Atlas is where we start?” asked Molly.
“Most definitely. That is where we fire up this baby. The LHC is not a perfect circle,” he continued. “It is made of eight arcs and eight insertions; Atlas or Octant 1, the starting point,” acknowledging Molly Gibson nodding in her direction. “Followed clockwise by ‘Alice, Cleaning, RF Cavities, Totem, Dump, again Cleaning, then LHCb or Octants 2 through 7. They consist of long arcs and eight straight sections. The arcs contain bending magnets at each end creating transition regions. Thus, generating the high-speed orbiting function of the collider.”
“Then to reach the dark matter would occur at its highest speed?” proposed Molly.
“Precisely.”
“Then if this dark matter is truly the gateway to the fourth dimension how do we open it?” confronted Bob Nye.
“By triggering the accelerator to overload; derailing the particles at their greatest velocity of injection. At the point of return; Atlas.”
“When they come full circle,” Molly intervened.
“And how do you propose to do that!” defied the ‘science guy.’
“A detonation device activated at the precise moment would more than likely do the trick. Of course, this is in theory only.”
“A bomb! Of course, this could get us all killed as well, in theory,” the smartass shot back.
“Where can we get a bomb of sufficient force on such short notice,” Molly queried the ceiling.
Martin had been ogling a narrow counter with a cabinet above at the far end of the conference room. He rose from his seat and opened the cupboard. There were several bottles of expensive liquor inside. He was so glad that Algernon Steele had not been a teetotaler. “There’s a Sergeant on board who can probably handle your bomb-making request.”
* * *
Martin lined up the liquor bottles on top of the conference table. After sorting through several mixers, he produced a glass jar with murky contents. “Ah!” he proclaimed. “Anchovy olives, my favorite.”
“Yuk!” Exclaimed Molly.
“You haven’t lived my dear until you have had a vodka martini with anchovy olives marinating in your glass. Let’s make a toast to our quest. All crusades are foolish until they bring results. Let us bring this one to a close so that death isn’t equally as foolish.”
“You’re the fools,” sneered Bob Nye. “You are planning to blow up the world’s largest particle collider with all of us inside. You have no idea if this scheme of yours will work.”
“Empirical data bolsters the anecdotal.”
“It’s a shot in the dark. Count me out!”
“Maybe you should have stayed behind in the Globe where it is safe and cozy,” Martin taunted. “Then we could all drink to your health.”
“Assholes! Drink to this!” Bob, the science guy, unzipped a carry-on bag, removed the round Smirnoff holiday bottle, and slammed it on the tabletop.
Martin stared its innards, a gloomy green gel supporting an eyeball sloshed within the glass orb.
“Here’s looking at you Martin and all of you sad sons of bitches,” Bob Nye replied gnashing his teeth. “You have no idea what you are up against. Mammoth cousins of this little monster and lord knows what else.” Bob picked up the bottle again and holding it at chest level unscrewed its cap. “You might as well drink this!”
“Bob! No!” Was all Martin had time to say. Whether it was hunger or the opportunity for escape was something that they would all speculate after the horror became a distant memory, because the little shoggoth shot out the neck of the bottle landing smack dab on Bob the Science Guy’s kisser. He screamed with a little girl’s voice. Bob Fell over thumping his back and head against the carpeted deck of the 757. Face up he flopped spasmodically as the ravenous shoggoth ate into his brain.
Martin removed the lid from the jar of anchovy olives and dumped them over the revolting creature. The shoggoth sizzled like a fried egg on a hot skillet; then it was still. The face of Bob Nye was gone only a blood red skull remained.
“What did you just do?” asked Molly a sickening expression on her face.
“Anchovies and olives are salty.” Martin’s dead eye glared up at him from the fallen Bob Nye.
“I’m going to be sick,” exclaimed Romero running from the conference room.
“Dear God, how horrible,” cried Molly. Martin held her close, and they backed away from the mutilated remains.
“I feel terrible,” said Molly turning her head away from the sight.
“Don’t we all,” said Martin.
“No, you don’t understand. Of all the people I worked with at the Office of Science and Technology, he was my least favorite person. Just now, for a brief moment, I was relieved that I didn’t have to work with him anymore. I am ashamed of myself.”
“Don’t be. It’s no secret that I didn’t like the guy either. I felt like saying, ‘good riddance to bad rubbish,’ but deep down I’d never wish physical harm to any man.”
“I need forgiveness for what I was thinking.”
Martin realized that she needed comforting, right then and there, more than anything else. He reached down within himself for the courage to placate her sorrow. Oh, what the hell it can’t hurt, for long, to say it, “ask your God for forgiveness, for guidance,” he proposed with a painful scowl.
“I have prayed for guidance and blush when I get it.”
Chapter 16:
Geneva
46.2044° N, 6.1432° E
Nearing Judgement Day
Captain Marston had set Airforce Two down gently on the runway at Cointrin International Airport. His incarceration stretch away from flying commercial had not impeded his skills.
Sergeant Doucette had little trouble procuring ground transportation for their group. The airport lacked the living. Corpses in varying degrees of decomposition littered the taxiways, boarding facilities, and terminal. Parked next to a VIP lounge was a brand new seven-passenger LR4 Range Rover. A uniformed driver was spread-eagle on the pavement. The SUV’s key fob laid on the center console. Its proximity allowed him to start the vehicle without an ignition key. Doucette was glad that the Swiss drove on the right side of the road.
“Once the F-35 becomes airborne how long will it take to reach Geneva?” asked Molly from the center row of seats.
“At Mach 1.6 which is 1227.63 miles per hour it will take a little more than fifteen minutes,” replied OCD Romero.
“Then we better hustle,” declared Doucette slamming the accelerator pedal to the floor. The 3.0L 340 horsepower supercharged V6 hummed in response as they left the second most populous city in Switzerland.
* * *
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is in the region between the Geneva international airport and the nearby Jura mountains. Most of its mighty underground length is on the French side of the border. In an hour and twenty-six minutes, the searchers faced Espl. des Particules 1, 1217 Meyrin, Switzerland; CERN’s address. They entered the five-story circular office building that normally hosted offices for scientists from all over the world. Numerous experiments had been constructed at CERN through international collaborations. Like the airport, there was not a living soul in the place.
The main site comprised a large computing facility primarily used to store and analyze data from experiments and simulation events. The researchers needed remote access to the facilities, so the lab became a major wide area network hub. CERN was also famous as the birthplace of the World Wide Web.
* * *
Cthulhu never faltered. Sustenance to fuel its trek was easily had. All living things in its path
became fodder. The actual body and mind of the Old One, a cephalopod head bent forward with facial feelers writhing in the afternoon breeze moved on. Its gelatinous companions followed, slaves of its will. The sinister horror dripped green ooze crafting more shoggoths.
* * *
Stephen "Stevie" Diggs zipped up his anti-g suit. "How much longer, fellas?" he asked his single person flight crew and one and only mechanic.
"Not long, Major," replied the overweight technician. Diggs knew him well. He was an out and out drunk but one helluva Aircraft Maintenance Mechanic. The only reason he had not received a dishonorable discharge was that his uncle was a General. Stevie Diggs didn't care because Pete, the mechanic, made a damn good drinking companion. It was the reason; he had been told, why they didn't die from that horrible brain disease when the shit hit the fan. Stevie and Pete had been hitting the local beerhalls hard that evening. The Creepiest part of his orders was that they had to stave off sobriety until at least their mission was completed. Not falling down drunk he was ordered just tipsy enough to protect the old gray cells. “Ya gotta be half snockered to drop an A-bomb,” he told Pete. At least he'd be doing it from 50,000 feet.
* * *
The five of them took the elevator beneath the earth to the collider. The sixth, Captain Orville Marston was left in his duty station; hog-tied by Sergeant Doucette and locked in the VP’s boudoir aboard Airforce Two. Over the past few days, Martin Storch became very respectful of the Staff Sergeant’s contributions to their safety and endeavors. The latest he carried in a brown leather duffel. Doucette had broken into the abandoned Federal Office of Police (FEDPOL) at the airport, the Swiss equivalent of our TSA. Once inside he had seized their cache of ammunition and several hand tools. While descending Doucette sat on the floor of the lift ripping open dozens of shotgun shells and 9mm shell casings with a pair of pliers dumping their contents into galvanized plumbing pipes.
