Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

It was the day of the flood that Matthew D. Smith discovered the human world faced a menace, always has faced this menace, and will inevitably lose out to it.

Central Texas had been enduring a three-year drought. The weather was so hot and so dry that even the staunchest global warming deniers had begun to doubt. The Catholics had prayed to Mary, the Protestants to God, the Muslims to Allah, the Wiccans to the Goddess, and the Thelemites had practiced sex-magick for rain. Someone or something had heard the call. Matthew pictured God as an old man in a white robe saying, “Me — damn it! I’ll give these S.O.B’s rain!”

It started with a lightning storm about eight the night before; a heavy rain in less than an hour. Matthew and his wife kept their windows open all night — if you haven’t heard rain in many months, it is a sleep-inducing bliss to hear it. Several times during the night Matthew had awakened from vague and uneasy dreams to the sound of the heavy downpour.

At 5:15 a.m. the emergency phone-calling service of Doublesign Data Systems Inc. informed him — in an automated voice — that the work day would start two hours late. “Great I can sleep late.” Matthew thought. Then at 5:25 a.m., the Austin Independent School District’s automated voice called Kathleen and told her that school would not start until noon. Then at 6:30 a.m. his assistant called him to ask if the message that work was delayed was for real. Finally, at 6:45 a.m. Kathleen’s principal called her to see if she had received the 5:25 a.m. message.

Common sense told Matthew he should allow extra time to drive from his south Austin two-story brick home to the one-story white stucco building in Doublesign. But the sweet sound of rain told him to sleep longer. After all, he had driven the same back-road route for nine years and the roads had never been closed. There had been one snowstorm and two other floods in that near-decade, and he’d had no problems.

Matthew took his old black Chevy pickup out at eight and headed south. He noticed no cars were streaming north of Austin on FM 118. Perhaps it was only an early morning traffic problem. The sky glowed with a lovely gray mother-of-pearl color. Matthew always drove to work in the dark; it seemed almost like a luxury to be driving so late in the day.

About a mile out of Austin, two orange sand-filled traffic barrels were set up with a ROAD CLOSED sign between them. But there was space enough to drive around the barricade. He could see a car a quarter of mile ahead where the road twisted through a grove of live oak. If that guy could make it, he could too. He was dammit, a man — even if his big blond wife sometimes disagreed. Matthew drove his truck very slowly between the barrels, its rear panel very gently brushing one of them.

After he’d rounded the bend, he saw a river, which was a surprising sight because there had never been a river there in nine years. There wasn’t creek there, or even a dry creek bed. There was scarcely a dip in the road. The cream-colored Lexus he had seen seconds before was making a difficult three-point turn to head back to town. Matthew saw he would have to turn around in the same spot, so he waited for the Lexus to navigate its turn, then pulled up slowly to the fast-moving river. It was at least waist high in the oaks, and Matthew could see an angry muddy gap in the pavement where the road had once slopped very slightly; chunks of asphalt were falling off into the foaming white water.

This would be a perfect picture to post on Facebook. Matthew pulled a little off the road. No other cars were coming; apparently others were not as foolhardy as he. He left his pickup and made his way to what was now a crumbling shoreline, slipping in the tall wet grass twice. Matthew planted his feet on an exposed limestone ridge and focused his phone at the exposed red earth bank, thinking how it looked like a wound. He was hoping the cloudy morning sky would provide sufficient light for his picture when he saw a really big bug break out of the crack in the earth. At least a foot in length and half as much in width, the pallid segmented creature looked like a cross between a trilobite and a cockroach. It had seven legs on each side of its thorax, and a pair of crablike pinchers glistening with mucus. The thing had tiny mammal-like eyes with light blue irises. As it pushed through the dirt, Matthew saw it had a few brothers or sisters climbing up on the grass — all heading straight toward him at a fast scurry. He broke into a run, fell, got up, and ran some more. He lost his iPhone in the process. Matthew got his pickup turned around in record time and was going down the empty highway at seventy miles per hour, before he could even begin to order his thoughts.

What the hell were they?

Should he go back and get pictures?

Who should he call?

Damn! He’d lost his phone.

Is there any money to be made from this?

Should he keep his trap shut so that he didn’t look like a nut?

Matthew thought of Gordon, the school teacher on Sesame Street , who never saw any weird phenomena that kids and Muppets saw. So he became the voice of skeptical reason — he was always wrong, of course, but he was supposed to be the smart, credible adult.

Matthew assumed his wife, Kathleen, would be a “Gordon.” She taught high school science and would, no doubt, be all practical and skeptical about the bugs.

Instead, she was thrilled. She tossed back her mane of (dyed) blond hair and demanded they drive out to the site immediately.

“Look, the road is still closed,” she said. “If you wait until morning, it will be open again and the insects will probably be gone. If we go now, this could be our Discovery.”

He definitely heard the big “D.”

He called the office and said the road was washed out so he would not be making it in today. Kathleen still had three hours before her school opened — if they opened at all, which was beginning to look doubtful.

It was a scary drive. Rain had continued to fall, albeit much more gently, and the road was slick. There was no oncoming traffic, apparently no one else was foolish enough to risk the drive. Matthew didn’t pull his car into the red mud of this morning. He figured it would be way too squishy now and the truck would get stuck. Kathleen practically flew out of the car, carrying the giant flashlight she had bought for emergencies. She found one of the creatures almost instantly. “Matt hold the flashlight while I snap some shots.”

The pale-fleshed trilobite (or whatever the fuck it was) didn’t seem to like the light. It began pulling itself toward the scar in the earth.

“Matt — grab it.”

Matthew made a grab, dropping the flashlight. The bug hissed at him, and he jumped back. It had three rows of sharp-looking teeth — translucent and serrated like some sharks’ teeth, but much smaller.

“Okay. Maybe don’t grab. Can you get the flashlight back, sweetie?”

Matthew recovered the flashlight and kept the scurrying bug in the center of the beam. It climbed over a gray-green rock as it headed toward the mud. Matthew swung the beam in long gentle arcs across the area. No other creatures were in evidence.

“Move the light back to that rock.”

Matthew did so, and he observed what Kathleen was about to comment on.

“Something is written on the rock.”

Something was. A rectangular piece of gray plastic — somewhat smaller than a credit card — was embedded in the siltstone. On it, in black letters: XUTHLTAN. Matthew picked up the stone. He tried to knock the plastic tag off, but he could see it was truly and firmly embedded in the rock.

“Hey it’s really stuck in there. I mean it’s part of the rock — like the rock formed around it. Why would a rock have a piece of plastic stuck in it?” asked Matthew.