Behind him, the writhing cloud of Ka-tua-la-hu was almost at the bridge itself, and its pale slimy tentacles were lashing out at the foam-wracked shores of the lake. The whole grotesque god was trumpeting now, trumpeting in evil and hungry delight, with a noise that sounded like dozens of tortured whales. Across on the other side of the bridge, Harry saw three National Guardsmen running as a tentacle lashed toward them. It caught them all, and dragged them shrieking into the boiling lake.

“We’ve just got to get out of here!” shouted Harry. “That thing’s going to kill us all!”

“But we can’t!” Neil insisted. “What about the children? What about all the people who are going to die?”

“I’m not a goddamned martyr!” Harry yelled back. “I’m a goddamned mystic!”

Already, policemen and soldiers were running past them and scrambling up the loose dirt and rocks of the hillside. A cold, foul wind was blowing—a wind that stank of silvery fish skins and fetid flesh. Out of the mass of serpents, another tentacle flailed toward the shore, and a policeman was crushed and pulled into the water.

There was a high-pitched screaming sound, and suddenly five Air Force jets, all flying in tight formation, came streaking northward along the length of the lake. They passed the cloudy bulk of Ka-tua-la-hu, and Harry saw the hot scarlet-blue flames from their tail pipes as they used reheat to climb and bank and circle away.

Ka-tua-la-hu screeched and groaned, and another roiling mass of tentacles appeared from the upper clouds.

Harry and Neil could hear what was happening over the abandoned transmitter. The National Guard had pulled back a half-mile, and their colonel was trying to direct the air strike from Dyer Creek.

“Air strike to ground. What do you want us to sap?”

“The bridge there. The Pope Creek bridge. You see where that kind of gray fog stuff is?”

“We’re coming back for another run there. We don’t see the bridge too clearly.”

“Where that gray fog stuff is. That stuff with all the tentacles like a damned octopus.”

“An octopus? What is this? We don’t see any octopus.”

Harry and Neil could hear the jets rumbling behind the hills. Then they flashed into sight again, still flying tightly together, and made a curving pass over the bridge and off into the clouds to the south. They were followed by a sharp sonic bang.

“We see the bridge and the cloud mass. You want the bridge knocked out?”

“That’s right. Knock out the bridge, and see what you get when you fire a few rockets into that fog.”

“Okay, ground. We’re coming in for a trial run, then we’ll get at it.”

Again, the whistle of the jets came nearer. But as they appeared over the hills, there was an abrupt garbling of sound over the transmitter, and a chilling, screaming noise.