by Terry James
Within about 60 seconds, Nigel estimated, sounds of shuffling disrupted the silence. Even the dog had remained quiet, but now began snarling when he heard the noises, which the human ears soon heard above Jeddy’s low growling. Whoever it was approaching had a fix on the cave and seemed to be moving in for the kill.
“Let’s give them all we have,” Nigel said to Clark, who trained the pistol at arms length into the opening.
The predators hadn’t used light of any sort, yet. Nigel considered whether they had night vision equipment. Probably, he thought.
Jeddy burst from the opening at the moment movement sounded not 15 meters from the cave entrance. Clark and the Brit heard the rottweiler growling. He had taken a position between the advancing force and the cave.
Growling screams of another sort broke in the distance. Both Nigel and Clark had heard the sounds before; it was the creatures!
“Let’s do what we can,” the Brit said. “Let’s not turn on the lights until we are near them.
Both men briefly thought how the pistol fire would most likely be without effect. These things had been hit point-blank but had reacted as if the rounds had not touched them. Still, they had to do something…
Nigel broke to the left just outside the cave; Clark went to the right.
The things, some hunched for attack, others standing and screaming, hideous mouths gaping and closing in rage, were upon them.
Jeddy half-circled in front of the six creatures, one scrambling almost on all fours to get at the dog.
Clark switched on his multi-batteried flashlight, and the horror of the creatures made him and those watching from the cave collectively expel horrified gasps. David made the women get behind him. His would be the final line of defense, but to what purpose? The huge giants would tear any human being apart in one easy rip. And, there were six of them!
Nigel fired rounds into the creatures nearest him. Clark took aim more carefully. His 9 mm spoke less loudly. The result was the same as Saxton’s efforts. No effect!
The monstrosities now had nothing to stop them. While Jeddy had to retreat a meter at a time, he was no match for one, much less all of them, but his instinct was to divert, not to attack, while he leaped forward several feet, then retreated, grabbing the attention of the beast nearest to the cave’s mouth.
Saxton reached for the flashlight attached to his belt. It was the old man’s flashlight. The batteries must be down by now. But he flipped the switch and a burst of light shot from its thick lens. The creature closest to Jeddy turned into unalloyed whiteness, then was no more.
The thing had vanished! The realization suddenly hit the Brit. The light Zeke had given him--something was going on with that flashlight!
He directed the beam to each of the creatures, which erupted into light that made all in the cave shield their eyes. The monsters popped into nothingness as the light directly hit each one.
“Lord be praised,” was all David, standing wide-eyed in front of the girls could think to say. “Thank you, Lord!”
“The choppers are still out there,” Nigel said, “Searching the area for traces of the vanished beasts.”
“What happened?” Clark asked.
“Same as in the mountain,” the Brit said. The light from this flashlight hit them, and they vanished. What on God’s good earth do we have here?” the Brit wondered out loud, looking at Zeke’s flashlight.
He saw the cave at the top of the steep embankment, and he tried to make sense of his circumstance. A gem-like cylinder set against a dark, ominous sky, sparkled just above the ridge that was the roof of the cave. Light seemed to shoot in flashes of lightning from beneath the hovering gem, and evidently penetrated the roof, slicing into the cave itself, because light could be seen within the previous darkness. Light shot from the cave and streamed outward. It was a lighthouse, not a cave, he realized.
He stood now not on a hard, sand-packed surface, but upon a pebbled surface. A dazzling shaft of light was streaming from somewhere; he couldn’t tell. The beam lit the area, and he looked around, as in a slow-motion daze. The Dome of the Rock? The Al-Aqsa Mosque? What was he doing on Moriah?
A monumental storm rolled and tumbled above him, its darkness descending and obscuring his view. These were the clouds of the sort he had seen roll across the plains of northwest Texas and Oklahoma; they were the kind that produced twisters. Twisters in Jerusalem? This was a nightmare, and he must pull away from it; must just blink and open his eyes and be at home in bed.
No, it wasn’t a dream; it was something more. A vision of some sort?
The clouds began to scroll apart, and the sunlight poured through, a big column of light centering somewhere ahead on Moriah’s top. He walked forward. The clouds continued to boil but permitted the light’s wide shaft to illuminate the flat surface where it struck.
The light grew dimmer –or the shaft more translucent—and he saw within the light the figures of two human forms. They were small forms at first. Infants, then toddlers, but figures that began to grow, and soon stood beyond human height.
He stared, squinting to see. The forms were of young men. They stood tall and proud and had looks that exuded their arrogance in ways he just knew were the manifestation of something unspeakably wicked, something unholy.
The young men surveyed their surroundings. He saw it then, the hands of the beings. Blood was dripping from their hands, their fingertips.
Christopher awoke, sitting up in bed, startling Susie, who reached to steady him.
“What’s wrong, Chris?” she asked, seeing his forehead soaked with droplets of sweat. She hurried from the bed to the bathroom, returning in a few seconds with a towel. She mopped his face.
“What’s the matter?” she asked again, seeing his eyes wide in a look of fright.
“Oh, a dream, I guess,” he said, his expression relaxing to one of relief that he was in the hotel bed with his wife in front of him.
“Susie, it was so real. I think it was another vision, or something.”
He eased back onto the pillow. Susie climbed into bed beside him.
“These two young men, I guess they were on top of the Temple Mount. There was a storm, and its aftermath seemed to have planted them there on top of the Mount’s surface. A big shaft of light came from between the storm clouds and just…stood the young men…”
He stopped to remember. No. They weren’t at first men at all.
“These… young men. They were babies when I first saw them… like…floating or something just above the surface. Then, they were small children. Toddlers at first, then a bit older. Then, soon, they stood as full adults.”
When he seemed to lose his train of thought in an amazed afterthought, Susie asked, “What did they do, Chris?”
“I…I don’t know. I didn’t see either of them…do…anything.”
He sat up again, then turned to look into his wife’s eyes. “But, there was blood –a horrendous amount of blood that dripped down their arms, from their fingers, Susie… What does it mean? What, in the name of all that is holy does it mean?”
“Okay,” Nigel Saxton said, smiling to himself about his sleepy headed companions. “We must make haste. We have kilometers to go before sunrise, mates.”
After a cacophony of groans and grunting objections, Clark Lansing joined the Brit and the rottweiler in nudging the other three awake.
“What about the flashlight that old guy gave you, Nigel? Do you really believe that had something to do with what happened when those things came after us?”
Saxton knelt to button up the big backpack.
“All I can say is that we’ve had a number of strange experiences I can’t explain. The light was always integral to each of those experiences. I will keep it at my side at all times.”
Clark packed his own bag while looking up at the Brit from one knee. “That is weird –the old man--there being no sign of that log house. You sure we were at the right spot?”
“Without a doubt,” Saxton said
, standing with the pack, then jumping it onto his back and clipping the straps together at the chest.
“It would be nice if we could find where he’s moved, if it’s nearby. I would like to have some of that breakfast you said he fed you and Jeddy,” David Prouse said.
“Plenty of power bars,” Saxton said with a grim smile. “Want one?”
The Brit offered it, and David took it. Nigel tore open one of the candy bar-sized packages and took a bite.
“Much better for you than all of those eggs, bacon, you know?”
“Yeah, well. I’m not complaining,” David said, strapping his pack on his own large frame.
“What’s the plan?” Cassie Lincoln stood beside David, holding onto his left arm while bending a knee to slip a boot onto her foot with the other hand.
“I want to get a look at the place where Clark last remembers overlooking that valley. Perhaps we can get some sort of a fix on what lies below from that vantage. Also, see if he might remember how to backtrack over the course he and that woman took in the snow vehicle.”
Clark, helping Kristi lace her boots, said, “It’s quite a way from that point overlooking the valley, back to the backside of the complex.”
“Are you sure you remember?” Kristi said in a mischievous tone. “Seems to me you were paying quite a lot of attention to the chick,” she said. “Maybe it wasn’t as far as you thought.”
“Or it was farther,” Cassie chimed in. “Having such a good time, you might have lost track of the miles traveled.”
“Sic’ em, Jeddy!” Clark said, causing the rottweiler to come to him and playfully slap at his mistress’ brother.
Kristi hugged the canine from her sitting position while Clark finished lacing and tying her boots. “That a boy, Peanut. You know who to attack,” she said, giggling, while the rottweiler tried to return the affection by licking at her face.
They left within minutes, each wondering what this day, with its almost totally dark beginning, might bring.
Muted light that changed in hues of amber and red created a sense of helplessness within Mark’s anxiety-accelerated brain. A feeling of something beyond his control, beyond the control of any human being.
Blake Robbins manipulated switches on a slightly inclined monitor board while sitting half-turned toward Mark.
“This is our problem, “Robbins said, looking at the screens beyond the huge viewing glass that separated himself and Mark Lansing from the live video of Lori and Morgan Lansing.
“Your daughter was thought to have the--to simplify-- the genetic programming for creating a profile essential to produce the…hybrid of the highest order.”
Mark, confined in a large chair by wide bands of metal that held his wrists to the chair arms, his ankles to the chair’s supports, could do nothing while Robbins punched a series of buttons. The action lit a third large screen.
“You see here the product of our efforts that have been a project in development for…for many years.”
The manipulation of yet another control caused the screen to project tiny children, naked infants that looked to be no more than two or three months old. They were boys, their eyes bright, light blue, but almost colorless, their hair nearly white.
“They are in a--for lack of better description--fluid that is the product of decades of intricate biological and chemical blending by engineering technologies that are--well, are beyond this world.”
Robbins looked to the captive’s face. Although his rage was at the ignition point, Mark continued to remember his training for missions over North Vietnam. Try to never let them see anger or fear…
“These…males are products of procedures only this laboratory is capable of implementing. To say it most succinctly, these boys are creatures’ superior in every way to any human being that has lived upon Planet Earth.”
Robbins, wearing the dark goggles adorned by all within the cavernous lab-chamber, turned again from looking at the beautiful infants on the screen to see his captive’s expression.
“They were not…born. They were created from biological materials taken from--to put it bluntly--your daughter. And from yours truly.”
Mark felt the gush of anger fill his carotid arteries, flooding his brain with blast furnace-level rage. His and Lori’s little girl used in the vileness that could only be perpetrated by Luciferian minds.
“Now, I said there is a problem. But, you, Mark Lansing, are the one person on this vast planet that can supply what is needed to bring these children to the level of the ultimately evolved human.”
Robbins removed the dark goggles. The eyes shimmered, hellishly black, the lids wide, and nonblinking. With the goggles off, the voice within the throat changed into a guttural, echoing growl. Blake Robbins’ facial features contorted into a grotesque mask of shadowy flesh that looked to be more animal than human.
“You, Mark Lansing, must agree to donate material that is a mixture of flesh and of spirit.” The thing Robbins had become stood from the console chair and walked as it talked. “We long ago prepared your cellular composition for a moment such as this. The laboratory of Taos, and before. The visitations. You and the woman you call Lori…prepared from the foundation. Before the offspring, which you and she so dutifully provided.”
The contorted face that was once Blake Robbins changed while he talked, sometimes into the handsome face that belonged to the human, then to the creature indwelling the human flesh.
Mark sat, his mind reaching a peak of understanding. He and Lori, Christopher and Susie, Randall Prouse, Lori’s mother, Laura…all had discussed these things to one degree or another. The things of Ephesians 6: 12 –of Genesis 6 –of Christ’s prophecies in Luke 17, verses 26 through 29. Jesus’ words: “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be…” But now it was reality. The challenge of the ages stood in front of him, was displayed on the monitor screens before him while he sat, unable to break the bands.
Even if he could, what could he do? Hold steady… wait… bide your time. The thoughts came in rapid succession and somehow calmed him.
“The preparation began long before, with your father, Clark Lansing. With the woman’s father, James Morgan. When they were children. Preparation that now will produce a new paradigm.”
The thing inhabiting Mark’s human captor emitted a soft snicker of pleasure at the revelation.
“We had to get you to the…laboratory, you see. We…arranged…to have the pilots taken away, knowing that you, being a well-proven flyboy, would bring the craft to a safe landing. We simply had our…people…meet you, and convince you, and the wife, of course–cause you and the others to think we were concerned about homeland security. Our reason for detaining you. We needed you both to join us in our venture into siring the ultimate man.”
Mark watched the screen rather than the monstrosity Blake Robbins had become. His wife, his daughter appeared to sleep peacefully. The beautiful babies that were hypnotic to look upon were floating in a fluid of nondescript color, their crystal-blue eyes staring at him through the glass-like enclosure that held them. Were these his and Lori’s grandchildren? No! They were creations of an unspeakable progenitor…
“You and your wife have the vital nutrients within the cerebral cortex of your brains, which we will extract. It is the point where physical and spiritual elements, where body and soul, come into confluence.”
Mark spoke for the first time since being bound in the chair. “Why do you need our daughter? Let her go.”
The hideous face twisted in a grin of amused contempt.
“Why, to assure your complete cooperation, of course,” the one indwelling Blake Robbins said with a seething chuckle.
“You should be very proud, Mark Lansing. You, your wife, daughter and son have been given the privilege of contributing to the gods again coming to earth,” the voice growled. “The quantum leap in the evolutionary process has been long anticipated.”
“You know and I know that evolution is a lie,” Mark said, trying to rema
in calm with his tone.
“Oh? That’s not what the clear majority of your kind believes,” the thing hissed.
“These…children…will have answers for the quantum leap…the taking away.”
“What answers? What taking away?” Mark found seeking more about what the monstrous thing spoke impossible to resist.
“About the prince long ago predicted to come to this earthly realm. About the kingdom that has now come to this planet.”
“There are things you just must accept, Nigel,” Randall Prouse said, holding the cell phone to his right ear and glancing at Christopher, then Susie Banyon.
“You have to admit that these things you have encountered aren’t exactly things that are part of our physical existence. Yet, there they are, right in your face.”
Prouse listened for several seconds to the Brit’s words, then said, “That UFO, flying disk, or whatever you said you saw out in that valley--that’s not a thing that happens within the physical realm. You said it just melted right into the trees. Became translucent, then just vanished, leaving only the forest sticking up out of the valley floor. That’s not exactly something involving the physical sciences, my friend.”
Randall listened, his eyes looking at, but not seeing, the carpet of the hotel room floor. His eyes then went to the Banyons before rolling toward the ceiling.
“Yeah, I do think the flashlight thing is something along the same order –beyond natural, physical science. Let me talk to David, please.”
The archaeologist looked at Susie, then at Christopher.
“Nigel will never understand what I’m trying to say. Do you think Clark would understand?”
“Clark doesn’t know the Lord,” Susie said, resignation in her tone.
“He has the open mind of a journalist, one that isn’t stilted toward totally liberal agendas. He will listen,” Christopher said.
“David. Are you okay?” Randall asked when his grandson was on the Brit’s satellite phone.
