by Greig Beck
“Well?” She demanded again.
He held up a finger. “And maybe not so unique.”
“What?” she craned forward, her mouth hanging in an open smile.
“Your turn.” He waggled his finger. “First, I want to see those dates.”
Megan glanced about, spotted his low table in front of the television, and rushed toward it. Her nose wrinkled at all the beer bottles, empty Doritos bags, and even an empty pizza box.
“Matt?”
He shrugged. “Maid’s day off.”
“You need a wife.” She snorted.
“Sure, but who’d have me?” He grinned.
“Probably someone who likes good-looking Harvard professors with poor hygiene.” She began pushing the debris to the side.
“I’ll be sure to put that in my online dating profile.”
“You have one too?” She looked up, and he was sure she blushed a little. He shrugged.
“Whatever.” Megan drew out a pile of folders from a satchel over one of her shoulders.
“The two strangest things are, one, how accurate the chronology pinpointing is. And two, how close those pinpointed events are to contemporaneous time, that being, right about now.” She raised her eyebrows. “You seeing that television program was pu-uuure serendipity.”
She unfolded a hand-drawn chart. There were rings inside rings, and at its center, was something termed Major Event. There was also a date associated with it that was just three months away.
“Here.” Megan put her finger on the chart. “Each of these rings represents an event of some sort. I can only interpret the numbers, you’re the linguistic expert.”
She held the edges down and then ran a hand over it, before pointing again. “This is where we are today. On the outer ring is where this cycle of events has started. I can pinpoint this to 17 July. The next is 31 July, and then 9 August. So those are the ones that have already happened.”
She looked up. “Any of those dates ring a bell?”
“Nope.” Matt shrugged. “Not off the top of my head, but this is probably a global thing, so think how many natural and man-made events occur every single day: hundreds, thousands.” He had a thought. “Unless they were all so similar that we could pick them up as a pattern.” He shrugged. “We can check later.”
“Okay.” Megan turned to her chart again. “The events identified continue, and then speed up, so at the last few rings, they’re occurring daily. Then we get to the major event. After that … nothing but calm again for …” She straightened. “Hundreds, thousands, millions of years, I can’t tell with the fragment broken off.”
She turned to him, smiling. “So … who made it? Who created the charts and the algorithm, because it looks damn old?”
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.” He waved the question away.
She grabbed his shirt and dragged him closer. “Try me.”
Matt unpicked her fingers and then folded his arms. He looked down at the chart rings. “As always, your work is top-notch. You’ve still got it.” He smiled, but saw his deflection didn’t work. He also recognized the determination in her eyes – she was like a terrier when she wanted something.
He sighed. “I signed a confidential agreement …” He sighed even louder. “… with the military.”
One side of her mouth quirked up. “Well, I won’t tell if you don’t.” She grabbed his arm. “Come on, Kooky, I’m here to help. The more I know, the more I can make some of those intuitive leaps you know I’m famous for.”
She was right, he thought. Who’d know? Even as a kid she was no blabbermouth. She was also right in that she might be able to give even better insights when she knew some background.
“You have to swear to me you’ll keep this confidential, okay?” He raised his chin.
Megan grinned back. “You mean, like you with the military?”
“No, better than that.” He frowned.
“Sure, sure.” She looked skyward for a moment.
“Okay.” Matt gathered his thoughts. “About ten years ago I was sent on an expedition to the Antarctic. We found caves below the ice and, well, to cut a long story short, we found a civilization buried there, miles down.”
“No. Freaking. Way.” She gawped at him for a moment and then grabbed his shirtfront again. “Come here.” She led him to a chair, pushed him back into it, and then sat opposite. Megan leaned forward and stared intently into his face. “Go on.”
“You can’t tell anyone, Megan, promise me?” He pleaded.
“I already said okay. Come on, fess up.” She grinned.
He sighed. “The people who once lived there called the place Aztlan, and themselves Aztlanteans.”
“Aztlan? Aztlanteans?” She grinned. “Are you saying it was Atlantis?”
He looked her in the eye. “No, yes, maybe.”
She nodded slowly. “So cool … if true.”
He didn’t really care if she believed him or not. In fact, he hoped she didn’t. He continued. “They had their own language and writing that predated anything I had seen before anywhere in the world. It was a root language and possibly even the mother tongue that gave rise to everything from Sanskrit, Egyptian, and even to the Olmec pictoglyphs systems.” He looked up. “I’ve since encountered that language several times – from a temple in the Amazon jungle, and also in the Iranian desert where they called it the language of the angels. And now here, from a fragment of stone that was retrieved from a sunken German World War II U-boat off the coast of New Zealand.”
She lifted a finger. “Which just happens to be one of the closest places on Earth to Antarctica.”
“Correct. They were a brilliant and advanced seafaring race, and it seems they had a message for us.” He stared into Megan’s face. “I think they wanted us to know that something is catching up to us, and it’s coming fast.”
Megan’s mouth hung open for a few seconds before it snapped shut. “I fucking love you.” She pointed at his chest. “Take me with you, I know you’re going there, please, please. We need to see that stone tablet, find out what’s going on. We need to be in New Zealand like … yesterday.”
“What?” His brows shot up. “What about your mathematics convention?”
“Oh forget that, this is way more interesting.” She nodded. “So, are you going?”
Matt shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about that. And the bottom line is, I don’t think the stone is of such great importance. The writing on it is. Where it came from is. And importantly, where the other half is. Those are the things we need.”
“We. I like that.” She sat back. “You said it was in a Maori chief’s hut – we can talk to him.”
He shook his head. “Nah, he won’t admit it, but I bet all he knows is it came from the submarine. And in the program they said the German war office had no record of the voyage. Whatever that U-boat was doing down there, where it had been, and what they planned to do with the stone has been kept secret. And now maybe those secrets are lost.”
He smiled at her. “But … I believe they were on that mission at the personal behest of Adolf Hitler, as part of his Übernatürliche Kriegsführung, that is, his supernatural warfare unit. And if Hitler did send that U-boat it’ll be in his secret diary.”
“Hitler had a secret diary?” Megan clutched her chest and pretended to faint. She slowly sat back up and held out her arms, showing him. “Look, I’ve got goose bumps.” A smile spread on her lips. “If old Adolf put the mission in his diary, then it’s simple. We need to see that diary.”
“Yeah, simple.” Matt laughed. “Small problem there: I don’t know who has it, or even where it is.” He flopped back in his chair.
Megan seemed to think for a moment before clapping her hands together. “If the Aztlanteans had an important message for us, then we need to know what it was.” She tapped her chin for a moment before springing forward.
“Okay, here’s what we do: for now, we work with what we’ve got – we see i
f those near-term dates relate to any event that’s happened, or if anything leaps out at us. Then we can put a trace on that elusive diary. Deal?”
“Okay,” he replied, carried away by her enthusiasm.
“First thing we need.” She pointed at his empty beer bottle. “Beer.”
After Matt grabbed them some beers, he and Megan spent the next forty minutes scanning the internet. As they expected, on the dates they searched there were too many events to count. They excluded anything modern like plane, train, or car crashes, as well as terrorism events, and tried to narrow it down to natural things like floods, fires, or earthquakes, meteors, or even the damned inexplicable.
They tried to narrow the field and only search for events of the last month. And that’s when they got their first hits: earthquakes followed by local towns being wiped out.
Matt stopped on one describing a place in Rawalpindi district, north-eastern Pakistan – there was an earthquake followed by an entire town being decimated.
In addition, there was an eyewitness who was locked in a car and said that the people in the town were killed by a plague of giant, horrifying bugs.
Matt read the last sentence out. “… killed by a plague of horrifying bugs … that ate their bones out.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, nice.” Megan blew air through pursed lips. “And here, another one corresponding to one of the stone tablet’s dates, from an outback Australian town. Once again, an earth tremor in a place that didn’t usually have them and then followed by the nearest town being wiped out.”
“Earthquakes, towns decimated, and all corresponding to a pinpointed date of the Aztlan calendar stone.” He turned to her. “Bam.”
“Calendar stone, huh?” She raised an eyebrow. “Seems to be an extinction stone rather than just a diary, if you ask me.”
“With the bugs more like an extinction plague,” Matt said. He went over to his wooden chest and riffled through his notes until he found some printouts he’d made of the stone’s details – he quickly located the carving of the strange insect-looking thing. “Look.” He showed it to her. “Another coincidence?”
“Too many of those happening here.” She took the page and stood, pacing as she examined it. “Something weird is going on. We need to know more, but we don’t even know where to start or even how to start. That Hitler diary might be anywhere in the world by now.” She sat back down heavily. “So what now? We just sit on our ass, and watch and wait for these events to just happen?”
“We couldn’t locate the diary by ourselves, and even if we did there’s no guarantee we could even get close to it.” Matt sat back, thinking.
After a moment, he held up a finger. “But I know someone who can.” He picked up his phone and dialed Jack Hammerson again. After all, the colonel said he wanted to be kept in the loop.
*
“No,” Jack Hammerson replied.
“Jack, this is important, and I know right now I can’t prove there is a direct relationship, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.” He turned to Megan and shrugged.
“Matt, son, I like you …” Hammerson began.
Matt looked heavenward and sighed.
“… but a few earthquakes dotted around the world and a Nostradamus stone hinting it could pinpoint them is way out there. I can pick a few dates anytime, and I bet you could find some sort of weird-ass thing going down on that day somewhere in the world.”
Matt half smiled, knowing Hammerson was probably right. But he had a gut feeling about this. “Jack, there’s something strange going on, and in a few months time it points to something big happening.”
Hammerson remained silent.
I’m losing him, Matt thought. “And just preceding the pinpointed event date, we have minor earthquakes, and then the nearest town gets wiped out. Jack, there’s a witness saying there was a plague of bugs.”
“Very biblical,” Hammerson replied distractedly. “You said you had a witness?”
“Well I don’t, but over in Pakistan they do. Look, Jack, it was also imprinted on the stone. The bug thing, I mean,” Matt said. “This is a warning to us from the Aztlanteans, to everyone.”
“Is it bad actor, or terrorist inspired?” Hammerson asked.
“No, no …” Matt frowned.
“Is it a direct threat to the United States, its interests, or its allies?” Hammerson pressed.
“Undoubtedly. Well, it could be. I think this thing is only just ramping up. We’ve got to get ahead of it, right now. If we leave it be, it might be too late, maybe for the world.”
Matt knew it was hopeless with a man like Hammerson who dealt in facts, not theories, and the more he pressed on the more he sounded ridiculous even to himself. “Look, Jack, we just need –”
“Matt, stop talking.” Hammerson’s deep voice was soft but cut across him. “It certainly looks like you might have a puzzle there. But there are too many pieces missing.” He exhaled. “Let’s agree to put it on a watching brief. You said another one of the dates is coming up. Well, you keep watch, and then, like I said, keep me informed.”
Hammerson rang off and Matt tilted his head back for a moment and sighed. He turned to Megan.
“No go, huh?” She laughed. “You’ve sure gotta lot of pull there, Kooky, I’m impressed.” She put her hands on her hips. “So what now?”
Matt drummed his fingers on his table for a moment and then looked at his watch. “What now? Now it’s dinnertime, and I know this great little place that serves the best chicken quesadilla this side of Tijuana. And best part is, it’s just around the corner. I can get us in no matter how busy they are.”
Megan’s face brightened. “I take it back, cuz, you do have some impressive pull around here after all.”
CHAPTER 10
Blessing, Matagorda County, Texas – 9 August
Margaret watched her two daughters peddle furiously up the wide tree-lined street. There were few cars out any day of the week, but Sundays were especially quiet.
It had been a good church service that morning, and Father Patrick Montgomery was at his best, being both humorous and authoritative with the added advantage of having a fine singing voice. He wasn’t at all like old Father Hennesy who yelled a lot and scared the children witless.
Margaret sighed as the warm sun made the skin on her neck feel tight. She loved living here, always had. Blessing was a lovely town, and it was unfortunate it was shrinking.
Blessing had a total area of just two square miles and at last count there were 861 people residing here; down on last year, and on the year before that as well.
Her family had lived here for generations – ever since the town had its start when the railroad finally extended out into the heart of Texas. The first settlers accepted the name “Blessing” after their first choice of “Thank God” was deemed unsuitable by postal officials.
Imagine that, she had thought when first learning that fact. People asked where you lived, and you could respond: Thank God, Texas. She smiled broadly as she kept an eye on her girls weaving back and forth across the road.
Margaret placed a hand over the back of her neck to shield it from the bite of the heat. They had little here beside God, sunshine, and a little mining work. But it was enough for most people. After all, a simple life is a healthy life.
As she walked slowly down the street she waved at some folk out watering lawns and washing cars. She knew everyone, and everyone knew her. It was one of the benefits of being in a small town; everyone was friends with everyone else, and everybody was there to help.
She squinted in the heat – the air seemed to shimmer around her girls and she wondered about her eyesight as it certainly wasn’t hot enough to create a heat mirage just yet.
Then she saw little Sophia fall to the ground as the entire road jerked one way then the other. There came a sound like distant thunder, but it didn’t come from the sky – it seemed to come from somewhere down deep. Maisie got off her bike to help her little sist
er.
Margaret held her arms out to the sides to keep her balance, as the shaking grew worse. Beside her she heard breaking glass and the thud of falling objects from within some of the houses. People rushed outside looking bewildered and a little frightened.
A large cloud was rising up in the distance, and as it drew nearer she was able to make out things within it – specks, or blobs of blackness now coming down the center of the highway.
Margaret felt as well as heard the deep zumm as the cloud approached and she ran to her daughters to throw her arms around them.
They arrived then in their dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, massing on everything, and seeking out anything living.
A plague from hell coming to torment Blessing, Margaret thought, as the first of them alighted on her back. She gathered her daughters in under her as they shivered and screamed under the wings of her arms.
More things landed on her, then more. The cloud darkened the sky and the deep zumming filled her world. Their tiny legs dug into her flesh and then into her daughters’. Margaret opened her eyes – they looked like huge wasps, but there were too many spidery legs, and what might have been scales glistening on their carapaces.
Many turned their nightmarish faces to her and, instead of the multifaceted or bulb-like insect eyes, they were like those of an animal. Tiny frilled mouths attached to her skin and what felt like needles pierced her flesh. She gritted her teeth as she sensed she was being flooded with acid.
She hugged her girls as they screamed beneath her, agonizingly, as they too had the things on them. Just faintly over the chaos she heard other voices, screaming as well, and Margaret could make out the shapes of people rolling back and forth in the street as though to put out flames. It wasn’t fire they were covered in; they were crusted with thousands of hard, bristling bodies.
She had to clamp her mouth and eyes shut as the hellish bugs found her face. Margaret prayed, Please take us to you quickly, Lord.
