make him popular with the remaining clusters of humanity.

Not unless his plan worked.

The cult of Glynn Beckman had caught Stipe’s attention for a couple of reasons. First, most of its members were wealthy inbred loons too scabrous even for the Ayn Rand followers to tolerate, but like Rand’s thugs, smug in their superiority, so much so that they tended to leave a lot of things unlocked — like for instance the walk- in safe in Beckman’s study where the cult’s finances and papers were kept — and available, like the valuable art-works decorating Beckman’s walls. That appealed to Stipe so much he joined the cult before they’d finished buttering him up. Actually, they didn’t know him as Stipe, but as Kellogg, the current and insanely wealthy scion of the cereal empire of the same name.

The cult was far more cautious and guarded about a book that Beckman claimed to have translated. He claimed that his was the only accurate translation anywhere. “All other followers of the mad Alhazred made mistakes. That’s why everyone from Whately to Akeley — who refused to act, the fool! — ultimately failed to open the gate. Yog-Sothoth is indeed the gate, but it’s only the first of six!”

It all had something to do with seals.

“Like at the circus?” Detwiler had asked.

Stipe had replied, “No, I don’t think so.”

All he expected Detwiler to do was pretend to be a rich refrigerator magnate and a total believer in Beckman’s lunacy. “A couple nights in the house, we wait till everybody’s asleep, load up all we can carry, and get out of there. By the time they notice we haven’t shown up for mimosas, we’re like in New Hampshire.”

It sounded ridiculously simple, which was probably why Detwiler thought it couldn’t possibly work. But once he was inside the house and, dressed in a rented tuxedo, was given a tour of the place, he had to admit it looked as simple as it sounded. The artwork wasn’t wired. The safe was left ajar. And when he mentioned this to Beckman, the answer astounded him. “After we open the gate, my friend, there’ll be no need for alarms, security, protection.” As Beckman explained, he puffed on a cigar the size of the Hindenberg. “We shall rule the world!”

Yep, Detwiler agreed, nuts. There was no time to waste. The group was preparing for a big ritual the following night. Detwiler worked out the scenario: the two of them would pretend to get drunk while celebrating and pass out downstairs, allowing all others to go to bed. Then they would clean the place out. He determined the fastest route through the house while carrying priceless Miros and Picassos. He’d already gotten the code number that opened the front gate of the estate — the one security element Beckman did rely upon (and which Stipe had missed). All they had to do was join in the group’s little event.

Of course things hadn’t exactly followed the script. The ceremony with the weird stone seal, which Beckman split in two, had ripped open reality, a horrible, lightning-charged rending that Detwiler still couldn’t believe he’d witnessed. From some other foul and pestilent dimension, Cthulhu slithered into this one. Unfortunately, he proved to be about the size of Godzilla, far larger than Beckman’s house. The whole place came down, beams and ceilings caving in, circuits bursting into flame. Cultists were crushed left and right, including Beckman himself.

Detwiler hightailed it into the study as the building collapsed around him. He threw open the door of the walk-in safe, at which point something clocked him. Stipe later claimed it was a plumbing fixture from the second floor, just as he claimed that Detwiler had survived only because Stipe had dragged him into the walk-in safe. That had shielded them both. But Detwiler had awakened alone. True to form, Stipe had snatched half the cash from the safe and taken off.

Cash, of course, had already become a useless commodity. Cthulhu and the rest of his loathsome, wet, leathery entourage leveled Maine in an afternoon, and then settled in for a long stay, laying siege to the whole East Coast. The next week was like a bad B- monster movie, with various militaries throwing everything at them. Some of the lesser creatures were destroyed, but Cthulhu seemed only to devour the energy flung his way. Even the nuclear option failed, although nobody would be living in Baltimore again before 2400 A.D.

Like cockroaches that had lurked in the woodwork, a network of cults uncannily like Beckman’s had emerged across the world, pledging their allegiance to the god. According to stories that he heard later, only some of them survived the contact. “Some people never learn,” Detwiler mused. Granted, the ones who did survive had it better than most everyone else. The arrangement reminded him of trustees in Otisville.

Detwiler lived quite some time in the Beckman house safe. It provided protection against the weather, and the location remained undisturbed. Nobody wanted to come near.

From the remains of the house — notably the basement pantry — he managed to retrieve assorted canned goods and jellies. A plethora of jellies. It seemed that Mrs. Beckman had enjoyed canning jalapeno jelly for all occasions. In Detwiler’s case, “all occasions” meant just that.

He scrounged boxes of crackers, but really missed not having some cream cheese. Somebody, probably Cthulhu, had stepped directly on the refrigerator.

The next weeks, he pulled up various parts of the house, occasionally finding someone’s remains, including Beckman’s. The cigar case and lighter from the suit jacket were about all that survived intact. Finally he came upon the broken seal and other objects from the ceremony.

When the food was about to run out, Detwiler gathered up the remaining supplies and recovered items in a large leather laptop satchel and over a period of months worked his way down the coast and back to the Bronx, or what it had become.

The creatures had taken over. They had marshaled the survivors of Beckman’s inter-dimensional holocaust into an army of slaves to build monuments to the great Cthulhu, with cultists as their overseers. Already the landscape was starting to look like a representation of ancient Egypt, if the Egyptians had ingested a lot of magic mushrooms before constructing their pyramids. He learned to avoid the barrel-shaped guardians with eyes on tentacles and huge bat wings, and subsisted mostly on canned goods while trying to ascertain what use somebody with his skills was in a world turned so upside down.

He came upon people hiding out in underground garages and former basements and shooting each other over who got to sleep on a dirty piece of cardboard. How good it was to see that we’d all settled our differences in the face of a common enemy.

The general opinion was that over a billion people had perished in the first week alone. Nobody knew what was true. It was merely the prevailing rumor. The future for Detwiler narrowed to encompass how to get food, how to survive the night without being shot, and how to stay warm as the weather turned cool. The last thing he expected ever again was to encounter Stipe.

One afternoon as he was creeping through some rubble, Detwiler came to an oddly fashioned tunnel. It wasn’t a sewer tunnel or a subway. It was something that looked freshly carved and weirdly organic, glowing with an eerie rippling phosphorescence, as if the walls within were pulsating, a kind of living formation that produced patterns as he passed by — at least it seemed organic until he came to a wall of immense, roughly rectangular stones. Those appeared to be the foundation for something aboveground. Detwiler suspected that he’d blundered beneath one of the weird temples. He turned to leave, only to find his way blocked by a Twinkie.

As such creations went, this was the granddaddy of Hostess desserts, a slithering brown, granular lump the size of a Clydesdale that only moved when necessary — and very quietly at that. He was trapped, but instead of crushing him or absorbing him or whatever else he expected it to do, the thing let him sidle past, and then herded him back out of the tunnel and up to the surface, where three more joined it, offering him only one course to take. They drove him across a roughly hewn stalagmitic plaza toward one of the many ugly, off-kilter temples. Well, he thought, he’d had a good run, come about as far as anyone could hope in this twisted world. That’s when he heard someone call his name, looked up, and found Stipe striding across the knurled landscape. Stipe, wearing a black suit and white shirt, looking for all the world like a beaming Jehovah’s Witness come to lay on him a copy of The Watchtower; the Twinkie wranglers parted to let Stipe through.

Stipe slapped him on the shoulder, took him by the arm. “Man, I almost didn’t recognize you with the beard. Good to see you. I was sure you’d do okay.”

“Yeah, I was real safe in that safe.”

“Safe in the safe, ha!” Stipe laughed, wiped at his eyes. “That’s a good one. Here, come with me.”

Detwiler eyed the clustered Twinkies.

Stipe insisted, “No, really, it’s okay. They know you’re one of us.”

“Us?”

“You know what I mean. You’re a Beckman.”

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