Outside the rain pelted down, fiercely lashing across the deserted streets of Tullamarine.

*        *        *

Inside the blind, shambling Nyarlathotep — the Haunter of the Darkness, the black Messenger of Karneter, the Howler in the Night, the blind, faceless Crawling Chaos — slowly-stalked Randolph Carter across the dream plains of unknown Kadath.   In the distance the fearful banshee cry of lumbering, faceless Night Gaunts broke the eerie silence and through the swirling voids of timeless, dimensionless apace elephantine shapes winged grotesquely overhead.   Approaching the Gate of Deeper Slumbers, clutching the silver key in his right hand, Randolph Carter could see the sprawling shape of the dark, insectile Dimensional Shambler closing in on him, could hear its buzzing voice shrilling over and over again into the blackness of the night, ‘I am Nyarlathotep!’

*        *        *

Outside the streets were deserted.   Vehicles stood abandoned near the kerb.   The façades of houses looked like brick or wood faces brooding for the owners who had deserted them, or who lay dead within.

Inside the orange tram Damian York slammed the science fiction magazine shut with a cry of, “Bullshit!   Utter bullshit!   Life isn’t like that!   Bombs!   War!   Death!   That’s where real terror comes from, not from mythical Lovecraftean demons!”

Leaning back in the seat he sighed heavily and repeated, “Bombs, war, death!”   He remembered back to the day the first announcement had been made.

*      *      *

Swathed in a silver-white lead-lined suit, Damian had been carefully manipulating long-handled tongs, lifting metre length bars of uranium metal from a conveyor belt to a nearly full lead-lined container, when the announcement came over the intercom: “The Prime Minister has just confirmed that in the advent of war breaking out between the Commonwealth of Independent States and the United States, the Tullamarine Nuclear Processing Plant will be converted to produce nuclear warheads for the USA.”

*      *      *

It had been a little over a month later that Damian had been approached by his life-long friend and immediate supervisor, David Ward, a small, balding man, whose stupid grin and monstrous potbelly belied an I.Q. of nearly two hundred.