Ancients (event group thriller)

by David L. Golemon

  "Stay together!" he shouted, but he knew they couldn't hear him any longer. Even if they floated through the giant hole in the dome, assuming that they could get past a trillion gallons of water flooding through, the pressure of the surrounding sea would crush them as if they were made of glass. But even that was preferable to being cooked to death.

  "I really thought I would die flying," Ryan said as he and Mendenhall held on to each other as they kicked at the water to stay afloat.

  "What, did you think we would get out of this mess?" Everett shouted back.

  A curious look crossed Ryan's face as he spit out sulfur-tasting water.

  "Well, yeah, I thought I would. Maybe not you and Will here, but I was thinking--"

  "Thanks, buddy," Mendenhall said at his side.

  Suddenly a dull light began filtering up from beneath the water. Everett looked around and then ducked his head below the surface. He saw nothing but darkness and was at a loss as to where the light was coming from. He brought his head back to the surface and looked around. The water was only eight feet below the damaged top of the dome and the rushing water was starting to rip men apart, sending them in every direction. That was when he saw Jack and Sarah. Jack wasn't struggling like the others, just floating in the tossed waters with Sarah held tightly in his arms. Carl reached out and pulled him toward him and the others.

  "Jack ... Jack--"

  Everett stopped when he saw that Collins's face was blank as he held Sarah close to his chest.

  "Sarah?"

  "She's dead," Jack said as he maintained his tight hold on her.

  Instead of talking, Everett pulled both Jack and Sarah closer to him. Then he felt Mendenhall and Ryan helping to support the two. Carl looked into the serene face of Sarah McIntire and felt his own pain and loss return, and for a moment the specter of imminent death didn't seem so unjust. He looked from Sarah to Jack, and then he placed his arms around Will and Ryan as they were thrust under the floodgates of the broken dome.

  An eruption the size of which the world had not seen for thousands of years blew out the recently formed lava mount that had taken the remains of Atlantis up with it. The volcano blowout made the eruption of Mount St. Helen's pale in comparison. Seismographs and Richter scales all around the world went crazy, casting a solid line across the numbers 18.9.

  The explosion that was the final spasm of the Atlantean Wave, which had begun its devastating work over several millennia earlier. It shook the rising waters around the drowning men and they saw bubbling lava rising against the sides of the dome.

  Everett knew that whatever the light was that was being cast in the dark waters around them, it wouldn't matter, because the end for them was only seconds away.

  USS CHEYENNE (SSN 773)

  The boat was shallowing and Burgess knew that if he didn't come to a stop he would rip the bottom out of her.

  "Emergency stop! Sound the collision alarm!"

  Throughout the Cheyenne, a loud squawking was heard as every man and woman reached for something substantial to hold on to. Around them they head as Cheyenne throw her engine into reverse to halt their forward momentum. The crew struggled to hang on, but many were thrown forward off their feet and onto the deck. As they tried to stand, they felt a powerful crunch from below the keel, and then suddenly the submarine rolled violently over onto her starboard beam. The lights blinked and then went out, soon to be replaced by the red-tinted emergency lighting.

  "Captain, we've bottomed, but we're rising to the surface at sixty feet a second!" the first officer called out from sonar. "We're surfacing, Captain!"

  USS IWO JIMA FORTY-TWO MILES WEST OF EPICENTER

  The admiral couldn't believe what he was seeing through his binoculars. As the carrier's bow sank into a giant trough, the upper section of the great dome breached the surface of the Mediterranean. The sun, though partially obscured by the massive storm clouds that had formed, allowed in enough light to reveal the most amazing sight in the history of the planet.

  Atlantis was rising from the sea.

  As all the leaders in the world watched the live feed provided by the American KH-11 satellites, they couldn't believe what they were seeing. The great Crystal Dome had breached the surface of the sea and was rising at a rate that was unfathomable. They saw great statues that had survived the original destruction fifteen thousand years before rise beside the protective dome. The entire broken city was coming up after its long absence from the sunlight to a world that had never believed in its myth and legend.

  Several statues lost their fight with gravity and fell into the churning sea. Large buildings that had remained upright caved in after their long submergence in the Mediterranean, and a giant pyramid next to the dome crumbled as if knocked over by the foot of an angry god.

  Still the rising lava bubble beneath them continued to spread and grow, now encompassing sixteen square miles. The parts of Atlantis that hadn't been protected by the great dome but had once sat close-by rose with the new island. The great pressure of the sea had caved in the sides of the structure and it was now leaking huge torrents of pressurized water two and three hundred feet out from the dome as it continued to rise.

  In Washington, Niles and the president watched with fascination as the great city rose once again, this time into the light of the modern world. From its vantage point high in space, the orbiting KH-11 Blackbird picked out the great center island that had once sat in the middle of the great ringed continent just as a giant pressure wave parted the clouds and allowed bright sunshine to strike the crystal for the first time, making it seem as though a diamond were surfacing in the middle of the Mediterranean.

  Both submarines were caught on the lower edges of the crust. Three hundred feet above the stranded boats the dome rose.

  The Cheyenne and the Gephard were but a mile apart and both found themselves in the middle of a cracked and damaged thoroughfare that had once upon a time been used for chariots and vendors of every sort. Around them, damaged buildings fell.

  Captain Burgess opened the sail hatch and stared skyward at the great city. Atlantis rose above the Cheyenne like a magical kingdom that had suddenly sprung to life and come forth to breathe air for the first time in thousands of years.

  Inside the dome, Everett couldn't believe what was happening. Bright sunlight had filled the interior and the water was slowly going down.

  "Jack! Jack! The damn thing was pushed out of the sea by the eruptions!"

  Collins shook his head as he still held Sarah and then looked up. His instincts came back with a sudden flash.

  "Get the men up through the opening, Captain. Hurry! The water is leaking out of this thing--get them out!" he said as he pulled Sarah's body toward the sunlight coming through the torn opening at the top of the dome.

  Around them the water was calming but still increasing in heat. On the sides of the now-exposed dome, great chunks of ancient seabed and lava rock from the original eruption were peeling away like the scabs off an old wound, and with it they were taking large plates of the thick crystal, and the water was starting to cascade from the interior at a rate that was drawing the water farther and farther from the top.

  Three SEALS reached the breach first and climbed out onto the support frame of the crystal lenses. They immediately and hurriedly started hauling marines out one and two at a time as the water was falling away from them. Luckily, one of the SEALS had managed to hang on to fifty feet of nylon rope and was using that to haul the men out. Eventually Jack tied a rope to Sarah's body and it was lifted free of the water. Then he looked around and nodded for Ryan and Mendenhall to go.

  "Feel that, Jack?" Everett asked.

  "Yeah. Atlantis isn't destined to stay up; she's going back down, the new seabed can't support her weight."

  Below them, large voids in the cooling lava started to explode like miniature nuclear weapons. Each one disintegrated thousands of yards of new land, the very base upon which Atlantis had risen. With a jerking reaction the new sea
floor started to give way, and the City of Legend started to slip back into the sea.

  Everett went up the rope that was now dangling thirty-five feet below the dome top. He hurriedly threw the rope back down for Jack, but instead of tying it around himself he tied it to the body of Major Esterbrook. Jack just couldn't leave the marine's body behind.

  Far above, Everett wanted to scream at Collins, but he understood what he was doing. He was just afraid that if any more bodies floated by, Jack would try to get them, too.

  Finally, the rope was lowered and Jack tied himself off. As he rose he saw another figure struggling in the falling level of the water. He couldn't believe his own eyes. William Tomlinson was fighting against the death that surrounded him as he stared up at Collins as he was pulled up. Jack felt no emotion as he was pulled out of the dome.

  "I hope you can hold your breath, you bastard," he said to no one but himself.

  USS CHEYENNE (SSN 773)

  Burgess was just getting ready to abandon the sail when he got a call from the conn.

  "Captain, we just received a flash message from National Command Authority, direct from the president."

  "Jesus Christ, does he know we have a situation going on here?" he said into the squawk box.

  "Yes, sir, they're watching it live. Sir, we have survivors being monitored from the satellite imagery; they're on the top of the dome."

  "What?"

  "National Command was wondering if we have room for some marines. Gephard is asking to stand by to assist after they get under way."

  Suddenly the Cheyenne rocked as Atlantis started to sink at a faster rate. Giant waterspouts rose into the air as supporting air pockets beneath the newly formed lava bed exploded outward.

  The crust beneath the ancient continent began to heal itself and was shrugging the weight of the city from it, taking it down as the crust collapsed into its new depth and position.

  As the captain watched around him, the sea rushed back into the broken ruins of the city and rocked the submarine again in a violent rolling motion as water began to lift her keel from the rocky shoreline.

  "Stand by to get under way. Headway only; we'll have to wait for the elevator to come to us."

  Giant air bubbles, most the size of Manhattan, rose to the surface of the Mediterranean as the island began its descent to the bottom, almost four miles down. The survivors on the top of the dome were just happy to die outside instead of encased in a dead city at the bottom of the sea.

  Everett knelt by Jack as he held Sarah in his arms. Her head rested on his chest as they slowly began their fall to the roiling ocean below.

  "Hey, look at that!" Ryan yelled out.

  As Everett and Jack turned their heads, four red flares rose into the sky, two from the southeast and two from the west. Then one of the SEALS who had ventured close to the extreme curvature of the dome called back to them.

  "We have two subs down there, and boy do they look great!"

  As huge explosions of sea and steam rose around them, every man, with the exception of Jack rose, to his feet and tried to balance himself on the rocking dome. The sea was getting closer and closer as Atlantis started to fall to the bottom as the lava and seabed beneath gave way hundreds of feet at time.

  "Come on, Jack, time to get up. Let me have Sarah for a while," Everett said as he leaned over.

  "No. I ... I'll take her." Everett looked into Jack's eyes and saw an emptiness there that would haunt him forever. He knew then that Jack had never really cared for anyone as he had for Sarah.

  "You got it, buddy." Everett helped Jack to his feet as water was now rushing at them from the interior of the dome and as it came over the curvature.

  "There she is, Jack. We have to jump and swim for it."

  At that moment, as if the great ghosts of the once-proud civilization had pulled one more magic trick out of their ancient bag of wonders, Atlantis stopped moving. It was as if a giant hand had reached out and held it in place for just enough time for the men to slide off and swim for the submarine that slowly made its way closer until its sonar dome struck the last of the crystal panes above the sea.

  The Cheyenne crewmen were tossing ropes to the swimming men and even the Gephard had taken three from the sea already.

  Collins watched as Sarah's body was placed on a stretcher and taken in through the divers trunk in the sail. Then a horn sounded.

  "All stations, prepare to dive."

  "Come on, Jack, let's go get some coffee and get the hell out of here."

  "Look at that son of a bitch!" Mendenhall shouted.

  As they all turned, several sailors shouted out that there was one more man in the water.

  Jack's eyes widened and the fire that burned in them took the others by surprise as he stared at the flailing arm of William Tomlinson.

  "Is that who I think it is?" Ryan asked as he was being pushed toward the hatch.

  Collins immediately reached down for the rope. Everett tried to stop him, but Jack elbowed him as hard as he could and sent him sprawling.

  "Sorry, swabby, this fish is mine," he said as he tossed Everett one end of the rope.

  Collins dived into the water, narrowly escaping Mendenhall's lastsecond leap to try to stop him.

  Jack swam out toward the dome as it suddenly started sliding beneath the surface; it was as if the gods of Atlantis had just pulled their reprieve of a moment before.

  Captain Burgess appeared on the sail and ordered everyone below.

  "Move it, damit! You think a ship creates suction when it goes down? Just think what this fucking thing is going to do!"

  Everett angrily shook off the hands of the seamen trying to pull him into the hatch, and Mendenhall and Ryan went to his side. They were all watching as Jack caught up to Tomlinson, punched him once in the face to stop his struggling, and then started tying the rope around his waist, just under his arms.

  "Now tie it on to yourself, damn you!" Everett screamed, swearing beneath his breath that he was going to kick Collins's ass as soon as they pulled him up.

  The dome was close to going under when Jack pushed Tomlinson toward the Cheyenne. Then suddenly a great underwater eruption exploded out of the sea, covering Jack, Tomlinson, and the Cheyenne in a waterspout. Everett felt the bow of the sub being pulled down by the incalculable suction of Atlantis as it was pulled under the sea. When Carl looked, he couldn't see Collins or Tomlinson on the roiling surface.

  "Damn you, Jack!" he screamed as he started pulling on the rope. Both Mendenhall and Ryan started pulling, too. Three seamen ran forward and waited for the two men to surface.

  Captain Burgess watched as his sub was beginning to be pulled under. The water was washing around the deck and covering the remaining men outside up to their knees.

  "Captain, we have a strange contact at two hundred feet and rising, coming on slow," the squawk box reported.

  Burgess looked around and saw that the Russian sub Gephard had already submerged. "It must be the Russians, the only smart bastards around here today," he said as he anxiously turned back to the rescue.

  "But, Captain, this contact is over seven hundred feet in length; we believe it to be a submarine."

  "We can't deal with that now!"

  "Captain, the submerged contact has now departed the area at ... Jesus! At over seventy knots!"

  Burgess ignored the obvious mistake from down in the conn and watched the effort below as they continued to be pulled under by the sinking island.

  Everett and the others strained as they wrestled with the deadweight that was being pulled away from them by the sinking island. Finally, with one last tug, Tomlinson surfaced, screaming and spitting water. Blood coursed down from his fractured nose as he was pulled to the sub. As they pulled him up, Everett realized that Collins hadn't tied himself to the rope.

  "Where's the colonel?" Ryan asked in near panic.

  Mendenhall pushed past the sputtering Tomlinson and through the three seamen and had to be restrained by Everett.
>
  "No," was all Will could utter as Everett pulled him away and then tuned him toward the hatch that was now flooding with water.

  "Come on, Will," was all he could say as the younger man held on to him and went through the hatchway without a last look back.

  Ryan did look back. "God, not both of them," he said as he slowly turned away and followed the last of his friends through the diving trunk and pulled the hatch closed and dogged it down tightly. Ryan leaned against the cold steel and placed his head in the crook of his arm until he thought he could control himself.

  The Cheyenne slowly slipped under the rough seas and all that was left on the surface was emptiness.

  The earth had stopped its convulsions and Thor's Hammer would never sound again.

  The Ancients would forever lie quiet in their deep and dark abyss.

  Everett was in the officers' wardroom, staring blankly at the cup of coffee the mess steward had brought in. Will was sitting across from him and Ryan was pacing. The SEAL lieutenant had excused himself, having detecting the closeness of these people, and gone to for check on his men. What was left of them.

  "I ... I ..." Everett started to say something and then couldn't finish.

  The door to the officers' mess opened and the Cheyenne's pharmacist's mate knocked on the frame.

  "Colonel Collins?"

  Everett looked up and saw the man, but he was really looking right through him.

  "He's ... he's not here," Ryan said as he patted Will on the back and stepped up to the door.

  "Well, uh, the lieutenant was asking for him," the young seaman said, looking at the three solemn men.

  "Lieutenant? He just left here to check on his men," Everett said from his chair.

  "Uh, no, sir, the woman officer--she was asking for a Colonel Collins."

  "What in the hell are you talking about?" Everett said as he slowly stood up.