Free Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear by Sean Hoade

than the biggest bomb ever exploded. Also, nuclear radiation doesn’t instantly wrap around the surface of the world like this. It’s not any kind of bomb I’ve ever heard of.”
    As the words I’ve ever heard of sank in to the men and women around the table, all eyes turned to Marine Corps Major General Jack Patterson, head of the NSA. The man in charge of The Shadow Factory itself.
    The President said gently but with authority, “Jack? Anything you care to share with us? I believe everyone here is cleared above top secret.”
    Patterson motioned to indicate Sergeant Berry and also the new A/V technician. “Not everyone,” he said.
    Adamson asked the tech and Sergeant Berry to please step out for a moment, along with the staff members who lined the walls in anticipation of their bosses’ needs. They all moved toward the door, but the President held up a hand to Berry before he could get up from his seat and said, “Sergeant, if you would stay, please.”
    “I-I’m not cleared for—”
    “He’s correct, Madam President,” Adamson said. “Enlisted personnel are not cleared for top secret or above.”
    “I see. General Adamson, General Patterson, what is the beginning rank for officers in the Marine Corps?”
    “Second Lieutenant,” they said almost in unison.
    “Thank you, gentlemen. Sergeant Berry, I am giving you a field commission. You are now Second Lieutenant Berry. I’ll take care of the paperwork later, but can we get him his new uniforms and such?” She waited for a nod from the head of the Marines, then turned to Berry again and said, “Have a seat, Lieutenant.”
    When the staff members and enlisted men and women had all filed out, Hampton turned again to the NSA chief. “Well, Jack? Is there anything like this bomb in our arsenal? Or anyone else’s arsenal?”
    With something of a dramatic pause—the NSA was used to collecting information, not disseminating it—General Patterson shook his head and said, “No, Madam President, there is not, neither in ours nor in anyone else’s. But there’s a good reason for that.”
    That perked up everyone’s ears. After a few seconds, the President said, “And that reason is … ?”
    “It’s impossible . Radiation travels in a straight line—in other words, it radiates ,” he said, meeting the eyes of the President and her military chiefs. “I suppose sufficiently strong radiation from some kind of superbomb—something much stronger than anything ever even conceived of—could go through the Earth, but it couldn’t wrap around the planet like an armada of ships traveling the oceans.”
    The President, used to being in control of conversations since her teaching days, could not help herself from saying, “So, it’s impossible . Meaning those millions of people are no longer dead.”
    “I said such a bomb was impossible, Madam President. Obviously it happened, so it’s not only possible—it’s actual.” Patterson looked again at the Joint Chiefs and their leader. “To repeat my answer to the President’s question, gentlemen: Whatever this Event was, it was not crafted or executed by human hands. It was no bomb and no nuclear accident. It is something entirely new to our experience, almost an extinction event, but one about which the National Security Agency has never thought to run simulations or worked out a contingency plan as we have with killer meteors, nuclear war, runaway pandemics. The singularity of this Event makes a zombie apocalypse look like a stone-cold–sober eschatological possibility.”
    The room fell silent once again. Everyone knew that the two most familiar—the two most plausible—the two most actionable, we-can-do-something-about-this—theories had been thoroughly shot down. It was not a bomb, and it was not a nuclear explosion of any kind. The President removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I suggest a short recess, people. My brain is about to boggle right out of my skull.”
     
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    Fifteen