by Terry James
Robbins pulled the goggles from his nose, the chuckle coming from his now metamorphosing mouth transitioning into a growl.
The others gasped at the transformation. Although they knew the beastly creature couldn’t detect their presence, they instinctively backed away from the monstrous being.
The thing Robbins had become was surprised when Lori and Morgan shrieked. Both women pushed the others aside, their eyes affixed upon the little boys, whose bodies looked larger than life in the clear, viscous liquid in which they floated –magnified by the convex sphere in which they were encased.
Susie held Lori, while Kristi and Cassie held Morgan, keeping them from rushing closer to the scene before them. The room shook violently, causing them to scramble to restore secure footing.
“Lori! Morgan!”
Mark’s shout caused his wife and daughter to pull from the grips of their friends and hurry to him. Both were sobbing uncontrollably while they clung to him.
“Oh, Mark! They are our grandchildren!”
Lori’s words caused the being within Robbins to cackle with guttural laughter. April Warmath, still wearing the goggles, glared at the scene of the three in each others’ arms.
“How very sweet,” she said in a tone that dripped with sarcasm.
Another shock, more severe than the previous, jostled all within the small enclosure.
“Let’s get out of here,” David Prouse said, grabbing Cassie’s arm.
When Mark and the women turned to exit through the split in the wall, the big men in black uniforms stood between them and the opening.
They raised weapons toward Mark, but lurched forward, their mouths twisted in death throes, when several .40 rounds from Nigel Saxton’s pistol tore into their backs.
The monstrous thing within Robbins shrieked blasphemous curses, Robbins’ body lunging for Mark and the women. David Prouse dove into the indwelt body, knocking it to the floor with a tackling technique once learned at the University of Texas.
April Warmath pulled the black-lensed goggles from her face, her countenance changing into a grotesque mask of hatred.
The thing inhabiting her caused the body to grab Susie by the throat from behind. Kristi Flannigan, with the help of Cassie, pulled the arm from Susie and held onto the possessed woman, who screamed, unable to determine why she couldn’t get free to attack.
Clark burst through the breech in the wall, diving toward the woman who had brought him to the complex in a drugged state.
“Grab those wires!” he shouted, hanging on to the spasming woman’s body.
David grabbed several thin wires, causing sparks to flash when he ripped them from beneath the control console. He tied April Warmath’s arms and feet with the wires while the others made their exits.
All but one. Susie looked through the split in the wall toward the sphere, the white-haired children staring at Lori Lansing, who stood looking into the little boys’ beautiful, wide, crystal-blue eyes above the perfect little mouths that seemed to be trying to say something to her.
She sobbed, tears streaming down her cheeks, while Susie, then joined by Mark, led her out of the chamber that began again to quake in violence greater than before.
The black ops chief braced against the wall with the palm of his left hand while punching the communications controls on the board. He shouted to be heard above the roaring caused by the violent shaking.
“The BORGs! Are they released?! Are they released?!”
Response was muffled and broken in delivery. He heard the man’s voice from somewhere within the laboratory reply, “Yes, sir, they…”
Jenkins swore at the board’s speakers, then calmed. “I want those people found, Clemmens. Got that?!”
There was no further response.
Jenkins slammed his fist against the wall and exited the room, again having to catch himself by grabbing the door facing when the floor convulsed.
Lori wiped the tears from her eyes, forcing her thoughts from the babies –her grandchildren—left in the lab from which they’d hurried. She lifted her head, making herself remember that her God was in control at all times –in all things.
She held Mark while the two of them trotted behind Nigel Saxton and Clark. They traveled just ahead of Susie and Morgan, who were followed by the other girls and David Prouse.
Jeddy moved ahead of the group, apparently unfazed by the quaking. The corridor floor and walls now rolled and shook while the group moved to find exit from the strange laboratory. The lights along the hallway’s ceiling flickered and went out.
Nigel handed Clark a flashlight, one of several attached to his belt. The group slowed only for a moment, then followed the rottweiler, who had stopped to look back, then hurried forward when the flashlight lit the pathway.
“How do we know the way out? Cassie wondered aloud from behind Morgan.
“Jeddy. He knows the way, believe me. Looking for a place to relieve himself is all-important,” Morgan said, her words breaking the tension of the moment.
They moved through several hallways before Nigel and Clark saw the dog standing just ahead. The rottweiler bristled, growling, poised for attack.
They heard other guttural noises, then a loud shriek. Clark and the Brit had heard it before, as had Morgan.
“The Yeti!” Nigel’s announcement froze each in place.
The flashlight beam framed two of the gigantic creatures just ahead, the monstrous beings standing almost to the ceiling.
“Jeddy! No!” The rottweiler ignored the men’s command. The canine crouched, his muscles swelling in preparation for launching against the foul beasts just ahead.
David, Kristi and Cassie whirled to look behind them, when they heard grunting, shuffling noises.
Cassie shrieked, as did Kristi, when the flashlight David pointed into the darkness of the hallway revealed one of the hairy giants. The thing’s ruby-colored eyes flashed their hatred for the humans while the light caused the orbs to glow from the hideous, leathery face that looked demonically human.
Each of the nine instinctively moved closer to each other. The two creatures ahead began to shuffle forward, scowling through their gnashing, foaming mouths, while they watched the rottweiler. The beast prepared for attack from the hallway in the opposite corridor’s direction.
Nigel struggled to get the flashlight from the belt. It wouldn’t come loose. Morgan saw the Brit’s problem and unleashed the snag.
“Thanks,” he said in the fleeting, circumstance-pressurized moment, their eyes meeting, each understanding the nuance of humor in Nigel’s understated word of gratitude.
Nigel switched Ezekiel’s flashlight to the on position. The beam struck the wall to the group’s right. The barrier split.
“Guess that’s where we should go,” the Brit shouted, choosing the opening, rather than to battle the beasts that threatened.
An ear-shattering shriek, followed by a yelp of pain, caused the other flashlights in the group to focus into the hall from the opening.
Jeddy lay in a stretched position, his dark body twitching in convulsions just in front of the opening.
“Take the light!” Nigel shouted, handing Zeke’s light to Clark.
The Brit dove through the opening and moved to the unconscious dog. Nigel grunted in pain when a huge hand grasped his shoulder just above his right bicep. The beast’s nails pierced the man’s shirt, the pressure exerted by the powerful grip nearly pulling the shoulder out of its socket.
Clark put the beam directly on the thing that held Nigel a meter off the corridor’s walking surface. The Brit crashed to the floor when the beast that had him in its grip shrieked and exploded into a million points of sun-like brilliance.
Nigel, although in agony, gathered the rottweiler and dragged him, with the help of David and Mark, into the room.
One of the two beasts reached a massive, hair-covered arm through the split just as the wall started to come together.
Clark put the beam on the arm, and it, like the c
reature before, exploded in light, and was gone.
Jenkins’ frantic eyes met those of the black-uniformed guards near the tunnel tram car.
He had failed. He knew that the things knew that he had failed to stop the intruders from coming into their laboratory. He had failed to stop the mere mortals from interfering with the Imperatives they wanted to accomplish. The Nephals…
Jenkins said nothing to the guards, before leaping aboard the tram. He inserted a metal card into a slot on the control panels in front of him. The action caused the vehicle to begin moving forward on the high monorail that disappeared in the distance, toward the inner-mountain complex.
Morgan cried, her tears falling on Jeddy, who breathed in short bursts of air. His eyes were open, the pupils at full dilation.
Lori and Mark hovered over her and the dog, her father reaching to examine the canine, checking for bleeding.
“He doesn’t seem to be bleeding, does he, Dad?” Clark asked, standing over his family.
“Don’t think so,” Mark said, his thoughts on his daughter, who sobbed over her canine son.
The room shook hard, causing all to grasp for something to brace themselves. The tremor continued.
Nigel, still in pain from the encounter with the creature, had to pick himself up from the room’s floor, and then moved beside Mark.
“Okay,” the Brit said, looking at Morgan, who turned from looking at Jeddy to letting her tear-filled gaze meet Saxton’s eyes.
“Let’s give Zeke’s flashlight one more test,” he said.
The girl cocked her head, not comprehending his words.
While the Brit turned on Ezekiel’s flashlight, the others gathered. Kristi knelt just behind Morgan and her mother. She put her hands on them.
Saxton put the powerful beam on the rottweiler’s head, then ran the light along the dog’s muscular body.
Jeddy lurched, instantly trying to regain his feet, which he found difficult with the humans all gathered around, and the floor around them trembling.
“Astonishing!” the Brit said, looking hard at the instrument. “Absolutely amazing…”
The room, illuminated only by a few small colored lights on yet another of the control boards throughout the laboratory setting, began a violent quaking unlike any of the previous. The very space about them grew white with light that obliterated all ability to see anyone or anything surrounding them. A loud, hissing noise sounded continuously, while the air about them seemed to be sucked in vacuuming action from around their heads.
The hissing sound grew louder, the sucking of the air more powerful. Then it turned to droning, the light dissipating and becoming a lifting, whitish-yellow sphere of huge dimension.
The light, getting brighter above them, grew smaller while they all, sitting or reclining, looking into what was the ceiling, watched the light lift. The sphere lifted…lifting into and beyond the ceiling…into the air.
It wasn’t the ceiling of the room! The light moved upward, ever upward. It pulsed and turned, the noise of its hum lessening in volume, growing ever more faint in the sky.
The disk grew bright as earth’s sun. It shrank in the next instant into a distinctive saucer shape, then streaked upward and out of sight.
Each of them examined their surroundings. They sat or lay on the vegetation of the forest floor. The room they had been in, the gigantic oval laboratory…it disintegrated around them, while melting upward through the trees that now surrounded them, leaving them to try to make sense of what had happened.
The chrome-like monorail ahead hurried toward Jenkins while he sat in the tram car that sped toward the inner-mountain complex. The many angst-ridden thoughts sped even faster through his mind.
The project, the most vital of the imperatives was, thwarted. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do it. He had done all they asked of him. The failure to deal with the disruption was the fault of their realm –not his.
But, they had forewarned him. They would abide no failure. The fault –from their perspective—was his. He had failed them.
Sweat dripped from his pallid face, even though the tunnel had lost its heat. He didn’t feel the cold that had manifested itself through his own white puffs of exhalation within the past seconds while he rode the rail toward his destiny –whatever that would be.
Chapter 26
“There they are!”
Randall Prouse shouted to be heard above the chopper’s powerful engines.
Nigel Saxton’s satellite phone call had procured for them a large helicopter, his government’s MI-7 chief convincing an American Army general to send the bird. The chip within Saxton gave the pilot the location, the GPS soon bringing Christopher Banyon, Randall Prouse, and three of the Army’s crew over the valley beyond Xavier Pass.
“Looks like they’re glad to see us,” Prouse said, looking down at the waving group through the huge window.
“Thank God,” Christopher put in, searching the group for his wife, seeing Susie standing, smiling up at him.
“What did I miss?”
David’s grandfather sat beside him while the bird whisked them over the pass toward its landing pad miles away.
“Quite an experience,” David said, shaking his head, while holding Cassie Lincoln’s left hand.
“Yeah, well, you’ll have to fill me in on the good stuff,” Randy said, grumpiness in his tone.
Mark held Lori close, in the seats across from the archaeologist. She shivered with the emotion she had tried to overcome the past hours while awaiting the helicopter.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” her husband said, hugging her tightly to himself. “God will help us with this.”
Morgan sat beside Kristi, who knew the same thing that so affected her mother, affected Morgan, even if to a lesser degree. Clark reached across Kristi to squeeze his sister’s hand and wrist.
“You okay, Sis?” he said, seeing the sadness on the pretty face, even though the tears had run dry.
She glanced at him and shook her head without saying anything.
Jeddy sat by his mistress’ feet, leaning his big body into her while she scratched the top of his head.
Nigel Saxton sat beside Morgan, talking into the satellite communicator that had brought them rescue.
“Yes, sir. I’ll be on the plane to London at first light,” he said. “Shouldn’t say more for now. Unbelievable, I assure…”
He listened while a superior spoke from London headquarters, before speaking again.
“Yes, sir. It involves some of the things we thought –but not precisely as we envisioned,” Saxton said, signed off, and put the phone in his pocket.
He turned to Morgan. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Thank you for what you did for Peanut,” she said, ignoring his question, while glancing down at the rottweiler, who sat straighter to receive his mistress’ full attention.
“Least I could do for him. He got me through all of this…”
“That flashlight. Do you really think it has some…special capabilities?” Morgan asked. “Kristi and Cassie say you’ve done some amazing things with it.”
“I must say, I have no explanation for it,” the Brit said, reaching to his belt for the instrument. But it wasn’t there on its hook. He looked around; it was nowhere in sight.
He unbuckled his lap belt, then half-stood, turned, and searched the area.
“It’s gone! It’s vanished,” he said, continuing the search.
Somehow, he knew, then. They all knew. They stopped searching, and he sat, clasping the seatbelt.
“Served its purpose, I suppose,” Nigel said, a sigh of disappointment in his voice.
“Some old man gave it to you, Cassie told me,” Morgan said.
“Yes. An old prospector out near Xavier Pass. Jeddy found me half-alive and brought the old gent to me.”
Nigel’s eyes lit up with remembrance. He reached into his backpack beneath the seat.
“Yes. I have a photo of old Zeke…Ezekiel was his name.
Let’s see what I have.” He manipulated the digital camera until he came to the shot he wanted to bring up. “Yes. Here he is with Jeddy.”
He held the camera, so Morgan could see the photograph. Her complexion paled to white, her expression one of being dumbfounded.
“Kristi,” she said almost in a whisper, not taking her eyes from the photograph of the old man and the rottweiler.
Kristi Flannigan leaned to see the picture. “My God! It’s him! It’s the old guy… the old prophet with the placard!” Kristi said.
Epilogue
Jerusalem, December 26, 2004
Randall Prouse walked with David and his new bride near the rubble being loaded at the base of Mount Moriah. Large dump trucks moved in one after another, while machinery dug and scooped the ancient earth.
“That’s where I was allowed to dig in the 1970s,” the archaeologist said, pointing to a specific area still untouched by the machinery.
Cassie grasped her husband’s grandfather’s left arm, laying her face against his shoulder and hugging him.
“Thanks, Grandpa, for bringing me along,” she said.
“Well, you are David’s wife. Of course, I would bring you along,” Randall said, returning her affection with a quick kiss on the top of her head.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, looking up, admiring the old man, who again studied the despised digging going on at the bottom of the Temple Mount.
“I mean, thanks for introducing me to the Savior. Thanks for taking time to tell me about the Lord, then teaching me so much.”
David walked to them from an observation point nearer the excavation.
“This looks to me as if it could cause the whole end of the mount to collapse, Grandpa,” David said, turning then to again look at the digging.
“Well, if it happens, and the Mosque crumbles, we know who will get the blame,” Randall said. “I kind of believe that’s what some of the Islamic fanatics want, as a matter of fact. Collapse the Dome of the Rock and blame the Jews.”
