Move Under Ground | Page 7

they had, all drifting
out to sea or caught up in jaws of stone and muddy sand. I stood out on
the jetty and watched a few of the carcasses, fat from tv dinners and
Organization Man jobs, float out into the drink. I sat and watched them

for a long time while the sun rose behind me and painted the Pacific,
red, then gold, then deepest blue. I ate an apple from my rucksack and
glanced around, to see if anyone had left behind a purse or a wallet,
some identification. I wasn't ready to make like a vulture and pick at
these poor souls quite yet.
Hard to notice at first, but the tide was heavier than I expected. Waves
pushed up over the rocks, claiming the bodies on the shore. I had to
retreat from the jetty and hustle back up the cliff. The waters rose
higher than I'd ever seen them, and I looked out to the horizon to see
why.
The island was huge, or close, or somehow in a warp of space like a
mirage. Miles out to sea but right up against my face in the same
instant, I could see the hideous swirls and cut runes on well-worn
granite ruins and the whole line of the shore at once. Craggly harbors
lined not with boats, but with slick lobster-squid. Thick slabs of stone
atop strata of crushed bone, the bedchamber of an Elder God. No gulls
circled its beaches, no trees lived there or even stood defiant in petrified
death. Even the crumbled doorways had been built for something other
than Earthmen. Between me and it, there was only a short boat ride's
worth of sea and a trail of white bodies, drifting towards their new dead
home.
R'lyeh is risen.
Chapter Two
There was no hideous dreamland between me and the highway
anymore, no industrial cacti, nor gearshift branches ratcheting towards
me with pincer fingers. Just trees and the bush, still dark after dawn
with the stain of hysterical suited mayflies. I put R'lyeh behind me and
didn't look back to see if it was still there offshore because, for one, I
was afraid that whatever swept up those townspeople would beguile me,
and I'd find myself running for the rocks before I even knew what I was
doing, and two, because I didn't have to see the shattered island to
know that it is risen. I could taste it, like a punch to the face.

I chose the biggest whale of a truck I could find from among the
abandoned and spent thirty minutes siphoning more gas from the
surrounding vehicles so I could bull out of there with a full tank. The
City, yes, San Francisco, I had to get back there and to do that, I
rammed through a few dozen idled cars. It was fun, really, and nearly
brought a smile to my grim face. Steel against steel, the low roar of my
stolen engine (damn, this truck was King Rex in low gear; we put a
Packard on its side with a casual nudge), playing the clutch and stick
like bop. I didn't look back at the automotive wreckage I left behind
either. Let the cops find it, let them go looking for the drivers and find
those forlorn bodies in the drink. Let them find the island, closer than
Communist Cuba, and call out the Army or the H-bomb or Sea Hunt
and gut the Elder God, if they could. I had to find Neal.
I stopped frequently, more frequently than usual. At a rest stop, I
fingered the local yokel newspaper. Nothing but wire reports and
gardening tips, plus classified ads full of desperate novenas. The shift
of the world's axis hadn't reached here yet. The wind was still high, the
waitress still slouched and slow and her coffee even slower, the few
truckers at the counter still bleary-eyed. Nobody laughed. I asked
Millie (she had a horrible plastic tag to that effect, maybe she was
really a wisecracker and made up the name to sound authentic) to turn
on the radio but she said it blew its tube just before dawn. "It sparked
up, and then started smoking. I thought it was Cholly burning the toast
at first," she said. Then she launched into some monologue about
having to call long distance just to order a vacuum tube because Cholly
didn't want to buy a new radio set even though it would be cheaper
thanks to some insult that passed between Johnson and Cholly back in
'53; it was the sort of thing I'd normally fall in love with but I just
wasn't in the mood. Greasy eggs and bacon for me. I broke the yolk
with my fork because it resembled an inhuman eye