Adira turned to Matt. “The Book, the Al Azif, is in your head. But the answers have not been made apparent to you…yet. Charles Drummond wanted that Book for a reason – even if it was just to make sure we didn’t have it. I want to know why.”

“I don’t have the copy I made.” Matt held out his hands.

“The copy is in your head. But what you wrote down was incomplete – you are missing many of the symbols, I remember you telling us. We need the original.” Her eyes became flint hard. “And for that, I want to talk to Charles Drummond – one on one.”

*

General Decker, Fort Benning’s Commanding General James McAllister, Major Abrams, and Sergeant Major Don Mancino shared a coffee as various teams ran some tactical response scenarios.

McAllister nodded his thanks as Decker topped up his coffee. He sipped and then looked at his officer. “No one saw this coming.”

Decker shrugged. “Yes they did. Unfortunately, we didn’t know they did, as they’ve been dead for over a thousand years.” He exhaled. “They way I see it; we’ve got an immediate threat to the population in these goddamn creatures rising up and attacking our people. They’re hard to kill, and there are more of them by the hour. But the worst of it is, we have the greater threat in this giant…being rising to the surface of our planet. We need to break our problems down.” Decker looked to Abrams. “Major, your job is the Shoggoths – get down to the containment cell and pull that freak apart and find out what makes it tick. I want to know how we can kill or at least hurt it. Also, keep on that Kearns guy’s back – he’s the only one who’s looked at the Book, and I think there’s more we can learn from him yet.”

McAllister nodded at Don Mancino. “Don will send a team after Drummond, and this traitor, Captain Tania Kovitz – if they’re in, on, or under our country, we’ll find em.” He looked up the screen; it showed the faint image of Cthulhu underneath Mammoth Park. “That thing reminds me of some sort of giant infection under the skin. You know what we do in the field if we get a growing infection in a wound.” His eyebrows went up.

Decker nodded slowly. “We cauterize.”

“It’s a big infection, so we’ll need a big instrument.” McAllister’s face became grim. “You thinking Castle Bravo?”

Decker smiled. “Way ahead of you, Jim: we’re upgrading a B83 as we speak. It’s our best nuclear earth penetrator – big-end-of-town bunker buster. Normally, we can punch out about one point two megatons – not enough. We’re scaling it up for a twenty-megaton strike. It’ll be about a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan. When this thing detonates, it will form a fireball almost five miles across, and scour a crater five hundred feet deep.”