The Survivor Ch 2

Ch. 2 The Summoning

As Husam placed the last candle into position and lit it, the downpour outside intensified. He picked up the Necronomicon and began reading the incantation from its pages, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. Pf’altn nghra’mlge Leviathan grnl’im Leviathan dvmofl’u jsx’xt’atbg.”

A small tremor shook the earth. Husams pulse spiked as he felt the universe confirming his actions so he repeated the phrase. A slightly larger tremor followed, and again, and again, and again…

The storm picked up. More rain fell, and it fell harder. The sea thrashed harder but there was the same amount of wind. It was as if the sea boiled. Some locals noticed and couldn’t figure out what was going on. Beneath the surface Leviathans corpse waited to be resurrected.
Rivers flowed in the gutters of Baltimore as the sky wept in protest of the coming evil. Lightning struck all around Baltimore as the city awaited its doom. The rain fell in such torrents that it carried away animals and small children. The streets flooded and panic spread.

Peter was stumbling past people who were falling over sick when the first tremor hit. It was small, barely noticeable, but it was there. Peter stopped dead. Suddenly a slightly bigger tremor hit and Peter started for some kind of cover as wave after wave of progressively stronger quakes hit the building. He almost dropped Charlene when some guy barreled into him and knocked him into the wall. She was in bad shape, she’d already thrown up twice. Most people seemed to be throwing up. And panicking.

He stumbled down the stairs of the viewing platform and under a faux rock arch and set her down, trying to keep her out of the way of foot traffic. As soon as he set her down she threw up the last of dinner. He repositioned her head away from the vomit and cradled her head in his lap. She seemed to do better when he held her.

He needed to get her out but until the earthquakes subsided he didn’t dare move her again. It was ridiculous, his parents agreed to come to Baltimore because there were no earthquakes. He grew up in So Cal, or as he liked to call it, Gods etch-e-sketch, so he knew how to handle earthquakes, but you weren’t supposed to get them on the east coast.

As they waited, things started to come loose. He heard a noise to his right and turned his head just in time to see a display case topple over and crush a man who was on all fours licking at his own vomit, like a dog. A beam came loose from the ceiling and dropped end first on another man’s head, decapitating him instantly. The beam landed on its end and then fell over breaking yet another man’s back. People were dying all over, but no one seemed to care.

Suddenly the quake was over. Peter was terrified because through the screams of pain and agony he could hear another sound that scared him to death: laughter.