Before him the screen was becoming cloudy. “What the fuck now?” It filled with dark specks like the battlefield was in a snowstorm. He turned to the room. “Get someone in to clean up this fucking image.”

“It’s not the feed, sir.”

Decker frowned. The image wasn’t getting any clearer, and in fact was becoming more covered over. Looking down from the aerial shot, he saw that the specks began to swirl like a tornado over the site.

“Give me resolution on that new mass.” Immediately, the focus pulled back to about a thousand feet above the blast zone. Decker leaned forward and snorted softly. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

The tornado of specks could now be seen for what they were – birds. The swirling storm of wings and feathers was getting thicker by the second as more and more joined in. At the center of the eye of the feathered tornado, moving almost faster than the eye could follow, were the smallest – sparrows, honeyeaters, and warblers. Then came the starlings, gulls and pipers, and furthest out, moving slower, were the cranes and eagles. There were so many, Decker had to blink to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks. The sky was now becoming so filled, it began to cast shade over the ground.

He nodded to the screen. “Yes, this thing is a threat, not just to mankind, but to all of us and every living thing.”

Beneath the swirling birds the ground finally broke open, and a red gas vented into the air – it was the bow wave of the colossal creature finally emerging from the depths of hell itself.

As if on command the birds started to descend – not fall or mindlessly strike the ground, but instead each turned itself into a missile – arrows of bone, blood and feather that spiked down into the massive center of the emerging eye.

Decker straightened, the scene reminding him of bible class from half a century before. “And on the last day, the smallest of us will rise up and join the fight against the beast.”

Decker shouted over his shoulder. “Cease fire.”

He turned to watch the hurricane of furious animals dive into the creature from below.

Chapter 29

Matt and Adira stood back to back, trying to avoid the rush of the monstrosities that swirled around them. As soon as the shadow of the Unspeakable One had moved to the red gates, the beasts of Cthulhu’s realm started to retreat back to their master – first, one by one, and then in their thousands, they went like dark rivers of shuffling horror. They poured back into the central mass, joining with it, merging and becoming yet more of the dark jellied muscle that was vainly straining to reach our world.

“It seems stuck – not moving any higher. Something is stopping Cthulhu from breaking through.” Matt grinned. “Maybe General Decker was able to halt it.”

“Then, we can do no more.” Adira spun to drag him along the sand until he managed to right himself.