Read Online Cthulhu Attacks!: Book 1: The Fear by Sean Hoade - Free Book Online Page A

any sign of leaving the room.
    “Sergeant Berry, please have a seat. Arthur, you want to stay after all?”
    As Berry sat next to him, Adamson fixed him with a glare so icy that the sergeant would have soiled his uniform pants if he had been doing anything other than staring straight ahead like a deer in front of the most powerful headlights in the world. “Madam President, I believe that I will be of use in this conversation.”
    “Excellent!” the President said, and then continued to her Science undersecretary, “Please forgive the interruption, Bob. Let’s finish your briefing, and then we can have our brainstorming session.”
    Nye nodded and picked up where he had left off, talking about the frequency of any electromagnetic wave that would disperse in such a pattern. Even though she couldn’t hear it, Hampton knew, she just knew , that half the occupants of the room were thinking something nasty about a President who started out as a high school teacher and “community organizer” and was now showing her faith in hippie techniques like brainstorming. She was the widow of a war hero and senator, but she was still the epitome of touchy-feely to her opponents, as well as to many of her supporters.
    There was nothing funny about 400 million deaths, but there was definitely something amusing about twenty Masters of the Universe sitting at a table and grumbling because they were going to have to think in front of their peers. It was like teaching school all over again.
     
    ***
     
    The brainstorming session resulted in a list on the room’s huge whiteboard. No ideas were rejected out of hand, although scoffing noises could be heard from the Vice President following any suggestion that did not include the words “terrorist attack”:
     
                 Cthulhu
                 Solar activity
                 Mini black hole
                 Radioactive meteor
                 Terrorist attack
                 Muslim terrorist attack
                 Russian terrorist attack
                 Chinese terrorist attack
                 Possibly Chechen terrorist attack
                 Accidental nuclear weapon explosion
                 Intentional nuclear weapon explosion
                 Ozone depletion
                 Alien attack (non-Cthulhu)
                 Spontaneous radiation discharge
                 Mad scientist
                 Superbloop
                 Magic
     
    After a bit of back and forth between several impromptu factions over how “magic” would be defined, the list was whittled down in Phase II of the exercise to just four options, plus two that President Hampton told everyone not to consider, since they were added during a break by Vice President Steele:
                 Intentional or accidental nuclear explosion
                 Terrorist attack
                 Superbloop
                 Cthulhu
                 Russia or China (crossed out by Steele)
                 Russia AND China (emphasis Steele’s)
     
    Since Navy Secretary Admiral Benjamin Harper had dichotomized the “nuclear explosion” concept to the deliberate explosion of a nuclear warhead (which could have been a test which no one had been told about) or the accidental explosion of an unidentified nuke-powered ship or submarine, the President asked the Admiral, “Could a nuclear explosion cause this number of casualties? And these types of casualties? Your frank assessment, please, Ben.”
    The Navy secretary answered truthfully and immediately. “No, Madam President. The Tsar Bomba , a weapon tested only once by the Soviets in 1961, produced the biggest