2013: Beyond Armageddon

by Robert Ryan

  BOOK FIVE

  The Reckoning

  If therefore thou shalt not watch,

  I will come on thee as a thief,

  and thou shalt not know

  what hour I will come upon thee.

  Revelation 3:3

  CHAPTER 66

  Underneath the Dead Sea. December 18

  Zeke stood at the threshold of the final downward section of tunnel.

  Alone. Except for those two obscene gargoyles lurking in the tunnel walls. And whatever lay beyond them.

  He was anxious to get under way, but first he needed to get out of his wetsuit and rinse the oily Dead Sea chemical crust off his body. Then he’d rest. The long dive and walk from the boat to here had depleted his energy, and he wanted to be fresh before starting a trek of unknown distance and difficulty.

  A team of divers had neatly arranged his stockpile of supplies at the base of the tunnel wall, leaving him only one item to bring: the duffel bag with the weapons. Zeke had refused to let it out of his sight.

  Four cases of liter-sized bottled water were stacked against the wall. He stripped and used several to rinse himself off. After toweling dry he dressed in a lightweight hiking outfit, leaving off the shoes. He spread an ultralight down sleeping bag onto the flattest section of stone floor he could find, placed a flashlight close at hand, lay on his back, and closed his eyes.

  As he dozed off, vague feelings crept in from the edges of a dreamlike fog. Gradually the feelings became more specific. Lost in the twilight of a haunted dreamworld, he sensed evil creatures sneaking about in the shadows, stalking him. He heard unseen things, skittering stealthily across the floor. Darkness began closing in all around, like some bizarre medieval vise slowly being tightened, cutting off his air…

  He sprang into a sitting position, wide awake and gasping for breath. It had felt like he was being smothered. He clicked on the flashlight and scanned his surroundings, listening.

  He neither saw nor heard anything unusual and told himself to get a grip. In this godforsaken tomb, a brain full of imaginary horrors was the last thing he needed against the very real horrors he might have to face.

  But he had to sleep sometime. And no one could control their dreams…

  Enough of that. “Get in the game,” he chided himself.

  He attacked the packing process to distance himself from the whole episode. He rolled up the sleeping bag, then meticulously began to load the backpack.

  The main compartment was subdivided into two sections. Zeke used these for the sharpened crucifixes and holy water “grenades.” In addition to the modified crucifixes, he had brought a dozen more in their original state, to use in any way that might prove helpful. He’d done the same with the holy water, bringing a dozen of the original small bottles. All of these he put into another compartment.

  A two-way radio had been left for him. He tried it. Nothing. He tried it again. As predicted, the radio waves apparently couldn’t make it through the combination of the earth’s crust and extremely dense water. A cell phone wasn’t even an option.

  He was completely on his own, which was fine with him. Fussing with the radio would only slow him down, and he wanted to get wherever he was going as quickly as possible. Even if it worked, the radio was virtually useless anyway. This far down, any trouble would be over before anyone could reach him. He put the unit back on the floor and inspected the rest of his supplies.

  He plucked a small waterproof bag from the pile. Opening it, he smiled sadly at Anthony Unger’s final contribution, something he’d procured long ago from his connection at the Vatican.

  It was a small personal carrying case, dark blue with gold trim. Inside, inserted into a bed of royal red velvet, a glass case ornately edged in gold held three communion wafers, a small cruet of wine, and a miniature chalice—the makings of three days of Holy Communion. Calling upon the spirit of John the Baptist, Unger had given Zeke dispensation to administer the Sacrament to himself. For the believer, they were the Body and Blood of Christ.

  Zeke chose to believe. This entire mission was based on belief in Divine Providence, that God would come to his aid when the showdown came. He had managed to silence all but the faintest whisper of doubt that help would come, wondering only what form that help would take.

  Would it come through the relics, or through Zeke himself, or directly from on high?

  Not that it mattered. All he could do was have faith and press onward.

  He put the case into another small zipper compartment on the pack.

  He pulled a digital pedometer/timer from the pile of supplies and lightly fastened the Velcro strap around his ankle. He needed to know how far the trip down was and how long it took, in case he needed to pace himself on the trip back.

  He packed four replacement batteries for his headlamp, and one other item he had insisted on bringing: an extremely sophisticated high-definition video camera. Knowing he might be shooting on the fly under extremely adverse conditions, he’d gotten the smallest camera available that could shoot in very low light. It fit easily into the palm of his hand, had a powerful zoom lens and mike, and a thirty-hour recording capacity at the highest resolution.

  “I know it might seem ludicrous,” he’d told the Hell Squad, “but if I find Satan, I want whatever proof I can get. We’ve been going on hearsay for too long. We’re living in an age where videos from cell phones have started revolutions. If I can get some good footage, maybe I can start another one. The final one.”

  He finished by packing a special meal Leah had prepared, a small can of Sterno, and a four-day subsistence supply of food and water.

  He attached the sleeping bag to the pack and slid his arms through the shoulder straps, adjusting the assembly into the most comfortable position before taking a last look around.

  He was as ready as he would ever be.

  He aimed his headlamp straight ahead.

  Out of all earthly view, and beyond the reach of any human assistance, he headed down.

  CHAPTER 67

  Into the bowels of the Earth

  Zeke stopped when he came to the skulls embedded in the tunnel walls. He had an idea.

  He went to the one on his left. A foot above him, the eerie sentinel hovered and stared its dead stare. Zeke tilted his head up to get more light on it. Shadows created by the movement slid around behind the eye sockets and mouth, as though the skull had suddenly come to life.

  For a second he almost expected to hear it scream.

  Abruptly pointing his light at the floor, he shut the unnerving image out of his mind. He pulled one of the unmodified crucifixes from the pack and inspected the wall immediately surrounding the skull, looking for a place to affix the sacred relic.

  His original thought had been to line the tunnel walls with crucifixes, but it had just occurred to him that it would be better to place one directly beside each skull he came across. If there was an evil power down here, these things had to be focal points.

  He’d noticed that, although the tunnel was mostly solid rock, here and there in the furrows and crevices were areas of soft, moist earth. When one happened to be near a skull, he could simply press the crucifix into the yielding ground. If not, he would just leave the crucifix under the skull at the base of the wall.

  The death’s-head above him was completely surrounded by stone. He wondered how the skull had been gotten into the solid rock in the first place, then quickly dismissed the question as—for now—unanswerable.

  He considered pushing the crucifix into the face of the skull itself, but the archaeologist in him said no. As obscene as these things were, they were still artifacts—prize finds to be studied and analyzed. Still wanting to place it as close as possible, he held it against the tunnel wall immediately beside the skull’s cheekbone, to see if there was a way to secure it.

  The crucifix started to hiss. Smoke shot up from its edges. The acrid smell of burning rock assaulted his nostrils. Startled, he jerked it back.

  The soft s
ilver had been burning its way into the solid rock. It had left an indentation about an eighth of an inch deep.

  Zeke tilted his head toward Heaven, then shone his light on the undamaged crucifix in his hand. If you believe…

  He placed the crucifix into the recess it had cut into the eons-old stone and exerted pressure. Again came the hissing and smoke as it sank deeper. Molten rock ran like filthy tears down the face of the wall.

  In seconds it was done. Zeke removed his fingertips and the crucifix was in place, its front plane flush with that of the rock that now held it fast.

  The relic was unscathed. He looked at the rotting skull.

  He didn’t think there was anything different about it…

  Caught up in the moment, he immediately grabbed another crucifix and went to the skull on the opposite wall.

  The exact same thing happened there.

  Clearly he was in the presence of powers beyond understanding, so he wasted no time trying to. He took a couple short video shots of the skulls, then strode purposefully down the tunnel. Like a throat in the earth, it swallowed him deeper and deeper into its hungry blackness. With his head thrust defiantly forward, beginning to believe in himself now, Ezekiel Sloan marched on. Desire to reach the end of this strange journey urged him to go faster, but the unsure footing forced him to go slowly, and looking for skulls slowed him down even more. He burned to finally have answers to his questions, to find proof that he was right in dragging himself and everyone else through this. Resisting the urge to run, his search for skulls quickly became cursory at best—for two reasons.

  The first was simple common sense: searching every inch of these walls would take forever, and he only had provisions for four days. The second had nothing to do with common sense, yet was much the more powerful of the two.

  Zeke realized that, the deeper he descended into this unnerving darkness, the less he knew about looming horrors the better. Increasingly aiming his light more straight ahead, knowing that each step might bring him to a precipice, he made his way steadily downward. He’d go a little farther, then stop to eat and rest.

  Before, in the watery section of the tunnel, a cord had been his lifeline. Down here, it was a ten-foot beam of light. That thin thread of illumination was all he had to get him through darkness he continually thought of as truly Stygian. If his light failed, he’d be blind. He reached around and felt the reassuring bulk of the four replacement batteries inside the backpack. Each was good for about twenty hours. He’d been using this one for three.

  Time ceased to have any meaning. He’d lost all sense of the world above, all thoughts of anything on the surface. He occupied his mind by thinking of words to describe this sunless, lifeless part of the planet.

  “A world of eternal night,” he said, never slowing.

  “Nightworld,” he said a few steps later.

  “Deadworld,” he said a few steps after that, then fell silent again.

  Gnawing hunger got too strong to ignore. Time for a pit stop. The aptness of the term in this setting did not escape him. He slid the pack off his shoulders, stretching and flexing his muscles, moaning in pleasure at having the weight off his back.

  He unzipped one of the small compartments. Before he fixed his meal there was something else he needed to do, while his stomach was still empty.

  He removed the case containing the elements of the Eucharist. Using the backpack as a makeshift altar, Zeke performed the barest rudiments of the ritual. He held the wafer aloft and made the sign of the cross in the air.

  “Thou art the Body of Christ,” he said, placing the wafer on his tongue. Filling the miniature chalice with wine, he repeated the motions he’d made with the Host.

  “Thou art the Blood of Christ.” He drank, then used a small blessed towel to wipe the chalice dry before placing it back into the case.

  He leaned against the tunnel wall and closed his eyes, believing that the Body and Blood of Christ were now in him. He surrendered to the vision of a glow spreading inside him, washing away fears and hatreds, the last vestiges of doubt still hiding in the depths of his soul.

  In the purity of that spiritual light, all at once Zeke understood. He’d had to overcome a deep bitterness to believe in the existence of God, but in his quest to find the root of all evil, he had stubbornly resisted final acceptance of the liberating epiphany that now coursed through him.

  All the hells he had gone through, all the evils on Earth, were one and the same.

  Drugs that ravaged societies, alcoholism, prostitution, slavery, greed, religious wars, the endless stream of Hitlers, hate, envy, racism, terrorism—all of man’s inhumanity to man—it all tied together. It was all one massive mushroom cloud of evil, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, created by the ultimate evildoer for only one purpose:

  To destroy the soul.

  And that’s what this holy war, this jihad, this Armageddon, was over:

  Souls.

  Whoever controlled those souls controlled the fate of the world.

  This endless and seemingly hopeless struggle for decency to prevail over depravity had led to the central question that had plagued the human race from the beginning:

  Why was there evil?

  The answer settled over Zeke, bringing with it a surprising peace.

  There was a Satan.

  But there was a God, too, and they were locked in the ultimate battle of good versus evil. A battle whose outcome had not yet been decided.

  CHAPTER 68

  In a renewed spirit of serenity and optimism, Zeke got up to fix the special meal Leah had prepared and wrapped like a TV dinner. Zeke slit the plastic and used the small can of Sterno to the meal.

  Weeks ago, he’d decided on exactly this dinner if the moment came: sliced turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. This was a ceremonial feast, Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one.

  Using the backpack as a table and the rolled-up sleeping bag as a chair, he ate very slowly, savoring each bite. Had some unseen observer been watching, his inscrutable expression might have been the resignation of a condemned man, prolonging his last supper, or the serene confidence of someone contemplating a far better afterlife.

  After the meal he unrolled the sleeping bag and lay down on top of it. He removed his headlamp and fell into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

  He awoke refreshed and eager to continue. After adjusting the pack and headlamp into their most comfortable positions, he stared into the tunnel, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light. In a few seconds he saw a clear path for the length of its ten-foot range.

  Like a miniature Cyclops on the trail of some elusive prey, he headed down.

  A few minutes later he came to two more skulls. Although the previous encounter had prepared him, they were still unsettling.

  These were less decayed. Fresher. Clearly visible bits of skin clung to their intact skulls. He pulled two crucifixes from his pack, jammed one into his waistband, and went to the first face. The relic burned its way into the solid stone as before. This time, though, Zeke thought he heard something else mingled with those sounds.

  A low moan, coming from the direction of the thing’s mouth.

  Slivers of ice scattered in all directions across his back and neck, like bystanders fleeing the spraying bullets of a madman.

  He quickly went to the other wall to repeat the grim ritual. This time the sound was unmistakable.

  A moan of abysmal torment came from the mouth of the disembodied skull.

  He thought of getting the camcorder but decided against it. He needed to get moving. With the horrific wail still echoing in his ears, he continued down the tunnel. At first he was driven by the desire to put distance between himself and that sound. As he progressed, however, and the sound died out, he became so absorbed in finding out where this clearly accursed shaft led that he forgot about skulls or anything else. His will intensified with every step, until it bordered on a kind of monomania that allowed for no othe
r thought but to get where he was going.

  At last bodily needs took over. He was thirsty, he had to urinate, he needed to take off his pack and rest for a few minutes. Time for another pit stop.

  After relieving himself he sat on his pack to rest, flexing and rubbing his back and shoulder muscles. He unfastened the pedometer/timer to look at his progress: 8.9 miles in a little under three hours. Factoring in the earlier pit stop it sounded like a long way and a decent pace, but it gave him no sense of accomplishment, since he had no idea how much farther he had to go. He merely registered the information and quickly forgot about it.

  He fidgeted. He was too caught up in his progress to sit still. Less than five minutes after he stopped he was underway again.

  Periodically he scanned the passing walls, heartened to see nothing that shouldn’t be there. When he’d gone what seemed like a long way, he stopped again to look at the pedometer: 13.1 miles.

  He walked on.

  Ten more minutes evaporated into nothingness. He actually began to get a little bored. He shifted the aim of his light from the floor ahead to the wall on the right. He stopped instantly.

  He wasn’t bored anymore.

  A head was lodged in the wall. He aimed his light at the opposite wall. With the inevitability of a waiting guillotine, its gruesome twin hung there.

  He stood rooted to his spot, each horror seeming to loom in midair. These were very different from the previous ones.

  Their faces were still completely intact. If decomposition had started, he couldn’t tell it. They might have been dead for only a matter of days. Or hours.

  Were they appearing more frequently? It seemed like these were a shorter distance from the second pair than the second was from the first…

  He thought about devising a way to measure it, then dismissed the idea. He could easily overlook some, which would render any measurements meaningless. There was only one thing that mattered: keep going. He couldn’t let extraneous details bog down momentum it had taken weeks to build.