by Cervo, RD
Dover watching from above, exclaims, she has turned into a fucking pillar of salt.
CHAPTER 12
6,000 BC
On the outskirts of Zoar
Dusk
FAR IN THE DISTANCE, the fires from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah glow like dual setting suns. Where there once were cities there are now colossal craters filled with magma. Exhausted and aching, Lot decides to take refuge in a natural cave formation with his two daughters. They are at the foothills of sprawling rock ranges running through the wasteland. Huddled in the darkness, Lot says to his two daughters, “We will rest here tonight, my feet are bleeding. Tomorrow we will continue to Zoar.”
The oldest daughter starts sobbing. During their exodus, she had been too afraid to speak after feeling the flashes of heat on her shoulder blades and shockwaves rippling through her core. She now asks, “Why did mother turn back?”
Besieged with anguish, Lot says, “I forbid you to talk about your mother ever again.”
“Why?” the girl cries.
Lot growls, “Do not question me. Now, go hold your sister and go to sleep.”
“Please answer me.”
“No,” Lot barks. “If I were not so weary I would beat you for your disobedience.” He quickly turns to hide the tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Father, please talk to me.”
“Wicked child, your persistence is like arrows shot into my heart.” Wheezing, Lot raises up. He shuffles away from his daughters. There are many passages in the rock walls. Impulsively, he chooses one. He escapes into blackness, bringing with him the amphora of wine. After a short time, he finally slumps to the hard ground. Lot utters to himself, “Maybe I should flee further into the belly of earth. Maybe I should drink and never awaken.”
“Father, where did you go?” wails the youngest daughter.
“Let him be,” the older daughter says with a sigh. She then comes up behind her little sister and hugs her. The two girls lower themselves down and cry together. Outside, the rising full moon casts a stark cool light across the desert. A few moonbeams penetrate the opening of the cave. In the illumination, the two sisters discover that their tattered robes and exposed skin are coated with a fine layer of salt.
The night carries on. They finally slumber, spooning one another on the floor of the cave. There is silence except for the occasional distant drip of water. It echoes from some deep subterranean cavern.
Suddenly, the eldest daughter feels a strange aching between her legs. It wakes her. She finds her right hand already underneath her robes. Her crotch is moist. The tip of her middle finger touches the sensitive bud of flesh in the folds of her labia and she gasps. A rippling wave of ecstasy makes her shudder.
“Why do you stir?” asks the younger sister as she breaks from her sleep.
Breathing heavy, the eldest daughter sits up. She says, “My womb is calling to me.”
“Will we ever be mothers?” inquires the younger sister, “Who will find us husbands? Our mother is gone.”
“I do not know. It seems that so many died from the fire from heaven. There may be no more males left alive.”
The younger daughter starts to cry, “I always wanted to have a baby.”
“Me too, my little sister. I do not want to be barren.”
“Will father lay with us and give us children?”
“I don’t know, he may. He has caressed me many times when he is drunk.”
“If you have a son what will you call him?”
The eldest daughter ponders for a moment then says, “I will call my son, Moab.”
CHAPTER 13
Neve Zohar, Israel
Inside the military quarantine hut
Present time
GULLA CONTINUES TO POSSESS PECK’S CORPSE. Through the dead man’s eyes, it glares at the three agents with sadistic delight. Gulla says, “Well, is everybody back from the time-machine joy ride? Everybody like the inflight movie? Intense! Seeing some of that stuff can easily cause post-traumatic-stress disorder. But, I don’t want you gentlemen to worry. I promise, none of you will have a future plagued by flashbacks and depression. It is safe to say that none of you have a future. In a little bit, I am going to start killing every living soul in a two-mile radius. It’s going to hurt especially bad for you three amigos. I will make sure of that. Prepare yourself for some really bad ouchies.”
Dover and the Israeli agents are still sitting at the table. All three men are drenched with sweat. They appear pale and nauseous.
“Check your watches, fellas,” Gulla says while grinning. “You will see that only two seconds have passed since your astral-projection class field trip. Time does not fly. Maybe you weren’t having fun.”
Swallowing hard and trying to catch his breath, Dover shakes his head to snap out of his hypnotic state. He then observes the older Israeli agent slumped over in the folding chair next to him. Friedman appears to be on the verge of collapsing.
Gulla scolds the older Israeli agent, “Hey, tough guy, don’t you dare faint on me. I want you to be wide awake and aware of your death.”
Reaching out, Litwin puts his hand on Friedman’s shoulder and pleads, “Hold on, brother.”
Gulla turns its attention to the younger Israeli agent and says with a smirk, “By the way, I noticed that you got a chubby in your trousers when you were witnessing all those young, hot, male, nude Sumerians running around and wrestling each other. You have something you want to share? Anything hidden in the closet?”
“Fuck you!” Litwin curses.
“Oh, what a feisty bitch you are,” Gulla replies, “not sexually liberated? What do you think of Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and getting pregnant with his seed? Those two vixens had to work hard to perform that special trick to get their old man aroused after he guzzled down that whole amphora of wine. M.O.A.B. to make Moab. Ain’t that a fun Sunday school story? Hey, Davey, what is incest?” Gulla breaks off with wicked laughter.
Litwin is perplexed and says, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Gulla snickers, “Sorry, the Davey reference is a Lutheran thing.”
Regaining a bit of strength, Friedman barks in Yiddish, “Meshugge!”
“Do you think I’m crazy?” Gulla exclaims, “maybe a little grandiose?” Gulla pauses and coughs up a lunger of mucus and Dead Sea water. Gulla then says, “The salt content of my sputum keeps burning the lining my throat and esophagus as I pontificate. Lithium is a type of salt used for the treatment of Bipolar Disorder. Think I need some medication? Do I remind you of the Energizer Bunny? I keep going and going. I have been manic since the dawn of time. I am never coming down from this high.”
Suddenly, Dover speaks up, sounding cold and direct, “Will you ever stop being destructive?”
The demonic smile on Peck’s face drops into a sour puss. There is a tense moment of silence. Then Gulla berates, “Oh, how dare you judge me, self-righteous little man? Do you think you are the salt of the earth? Mr. good guy, trying to save the world? Sodium thiopental is one of the drugs used in lethal injections? It too is a derivative from salt. Didn’t you help in the capture and subsequent execution of one of those notorious wacky Jihadists? He finally got the death penalty and was put to sleep like a bad puppy. Aren’t you also guilty of being destructive, Mr. CIA agent? How many people have you killed directly or indirectly? Everything can be destructive. Too much sodium chloride on your greasy French fries can cause hypertension, the silent killer. Being submerged in my salt water prison, all those years, has made me hate salt. I know I hate you! See how we are all interconnected? So, nice. And to answer your, question, no, I will never stop being destructive. Why should I? The show must go on. Peace is one giant yawn.”
Dover stares back, with defiance and asks, “Who were the ones that scattered your atoms and destroyed the cities? When will they stop you again?”
“Oh, you snotty-assed little prick,” Gulla snarls, “you are trying to insult me? Just know that they a
re not aware yet of my escape and no angels are going to save your ass. You’re fucked. Might as well prepare to die.”
Standing nearby, are the four Israeli soldiers. Telepathically, Gulla infiltrates their minds in the next nanosecond. Three stand at a trance-like attention as the fourth, draws his Glock model 17 from his holster and methodically starts shooting his comrades each between the eyes. After the third hits the floor, the fourth soldier points his pistol at his own right ear and pulls the trigger. His head jerks as the 9mm hardball zips through his brain and exists out the left side of his skull with a red mist. The sound of the popping gun shots instantly alerts many of the other personnel. Gulla does a sweeping scan of the entire operational area and discovers seventy-eight targets.
Pin-pointing every individual’s brain stems, a telegenic surge of energy is released that causes ballooning aneurysms that instantly burst.
Dover and the two Israeli agents are spared. There are both near and distant sounds of people and things dropping and crashing to the ground. All seventy-eight people were just wiped out. Next comes an odd sudden stillness which lasts a minute. It is then broken by a static voice coming through on a field mic. It is an off-site commander, inquiring about the abrupt loss of communications.
Peck’s animated zombie corpse stomps up close to the plastic partition in the quarantine unit and glares at the three agents with a pumpkin grin. Gulla says, “Now don’t you feel silly, thinking this little wall of plastic was your protection. Everybody’s dead! How is that for a show of power? That was no rabbit trick. That was some fucking awesome, rock-and-roll-coo-chi-coo, bad-ass, take no prisoners, display of who’s the fuckin’ boss.”
All three men continue to stay in their seats, unsure how to resist. The sudden heightened fear paralyzes their ability to move. Dover is armed with a Sig P229. The other two have Jericho PLs. None dare to draw their weapons. They stare back at their executioner with silent dread.
Gulla says, “Well, gentlemen, I allowed you to travel back in time. Let’s have you now experience the future as related to your personal pathology. Nobody gets out of this realm alive. Every human being has some life- limiting physiological factor. Who shall we start with first? Oh, but of course, we must respect our elders.”
Friedman bites down on his jaw and tries not to tremble as he endures Gulla’s boring stare through the eyes of the drowned dead man. Like being forced to undergo a MRI, the older Israeli agent is telepathically scanned. In seconds, Gulla detects precancerous cells. There is a cluster in Friedman’s enlarged prostate.
“Pharaoh, let my cancer cells grow,” Gulla jokes, doing a bad impression of Charlton Heston as Moses in Cecil DeMille’s biblical epic, The Ten Commandments.
On cue, there is ultra-fast hyperplasia and Friedman’s prostate instantly swells to the size of a grapefruit. There is the sudden urge to pee like a racehorse. Mega high speed metastasis sends trillions of abnormal cells marauding throughout the man’s body. Giant malignant tumors spontaneously appear in his rectum and colon. Shaking uncontrollably and doubling over, Friedman experiences a freezing ache as he is suddenly inflicted with osteosarcoma in both femurs, and his lower spine. High amounts of calcium flood his blood stream. Leaning back up for a moment, Friedman groans then vomits a splash of sour bile on the table. The other agents watch in horror as black patches of melanoma spread across the man’s face looking like symptoms from a medieval plague. Litwin reaches out to stop his comrade from toppling off his chair but is unsuccessful. Friedman’s brittle left thigh bone fractures as he hits the floor. There is an over- powering stench of diarrhea and blood, as the seat of his pants fills up and shows a spreading dark stain. There are multiple hemorrhages in his gastrointestinal tract. The hypercalcemia is off the charts. Friedman bellows two times in excruciating nightmarish agony. then is followed by whimpering, then soft moaning as he slips into unconsciousness. He dies.
Like subservient teenagers in a detention hall, Dover and Litwin continue to stay in their chairs.
Gulla asks with glee, “Who would like to be next?”
The two men stare back and say nothing. Dover is still. Litwin is trembling. They are again, mute in their doom.
“No volunteers?” Gulla says with a little pout. “Alrighty then, looks like I’ll have to choose.”
Litwin shakes in his seat as Gulla locks in on him for a scan of his genome. It is the ultimate violation. In desperation, Litwin suddenly starts praying out loud and quoting from the book of Psalms.
Gulla appears instantly annoyed and snaps, “Stop that. They may hear you and know that I escaped from under the sea.”
In his terror, Dover thinks to himself, What? If I pray too, will they be alerted? Who do I pray to? God? Angels? Dover has always been an atheist.
Litwin starts praying louder.
“I have said enough,” Gulla barks, “I may have to kill you quick, if you don’t behave.”
“Adonai save us!” Litwin shouts.
“Alright smarty pants,” Gulla growls, “I notice you have the genetic markers for Alzheimer’s Disease. Let’s not wait for those plaques to appear in your eighties, let’s turn your brain into mush right now. Time to dumb things down a bit.”
Sadly, Dover watches Litwin cognitively decline right before his eyes. Litwin stops praying and suddenly looks confused.
Gulla smiles and asks, “What’s your name, little boy?”
“I want to go home,” Litwin says.
“Where is home?” Gulla replies.
“I said, I want to go home,” Litwin shouts.
“Tell me your street address.” Gulla says with a laugh.
Litwin pauses for a moment. He is baffled and frightened. He says, “21 Jaffa Street, Tel Aviv, near, ah, near, ah…”
“You’re confabulating.” Gulla scolds.
“I want to go home.”
“Tell me your street address.” Gulla says with a mockingly kind voice.
“I want to go home! I want to go home!” screams Litwin.
“There is no use in raising your voice, you are never going home. The plaque tendrils are destroying your neurons as we speak. Your hippocampus is turning into useless goo.”
“I WANT TO GO HOME!” cries Litwin, while banging the table with both clenched fists.
Gulla giggles and turns to Dover and says, “We can do this all day. Messing with someone with dementia is a riot.”
Dover peers back at Gulla with hatred and growls, “Knock it the fuck off and leave him alone.”
“Make me,” Gulla drops his malicious smile and looks back in a threatening manner.
Dover grumbles, “You will get MOAB’ed again.”
Gulla says with a hiss, “Well, you won’t be around to see it, Mr. Salt of The Earth, noble piss head. Let’s see what I can do with that big heart of yours.”
Jolting in his chair, Dover feels his body being scanned.
“I see that you have a benign genetic arrhythmia. Prone to clots.” Gulla quips, “Let’s explore this further and make it all a little more exciting, shall we?”
On cue, Dover breaks into a sweat and experiences a radiating pain traveling down his left arm. There is a crushing pressure in the middle of his chest. Dover panics and gasps, “It’s hard to breathe!” He prays in his mind, Whoever, whatever, that is up there, save me!
Peck’s cadaver facial features contort into a mask of rage. Gulla snarls, “I wish I had more time to torture Mr. Salt of The Earth, but I know I have to leave this location. Your pansy ass, last minute attempt at calling for help may have alerted one of my old jailers. Time to die.”
Both the sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes fry as Gulla transmits a surge of lethal telepathic energy directly into the CIA agent’s heart. Dover is struck down with sudden cardiac death and he slumps into his chair. For a fraction of a second, he experiences the tunnel and the white light before the blackness.
There is another moment of eerie silence. It is then broken again by the static squawk of the field m
ic. A sense of mounting concern and alarm could be heard in the voice of the off-site field commander.
“I want to go home!” Litwin croaks.
Gulla looks over at the Israeli agent, who is still sitting in his seat. Litwin is no longer young. Wispy strands of white hair appear on the side of his bald head. A brutal abnormal acceleration of age as turned Litwin into a feeble, demented, centenarian. Muscle wasting and bone degeneration has left him shrunken and wrinkled with onion-skin flesh. His emaciated little skeletal body appears lost in the now oversized military fatigues.
With a fleeting smirk, Gulla says, “I can see you wee-weed your pants, Methuselah.”
“I want to go home! Take me home! I want to go home!” Litwin keeps repeating while drooling. His brown eyes are now milky blue with cataracts. He stops perseverating for a moment as he swallows one of his rotting teeth by mistake. Instantly he has a coughing fit.
Gulla lets Litwin live as a mocking testament to be discovered by the next entourage of Israeli and American authorities. Avoiding wasting another moment, Gulla begins to leave. Having no time to enter and re-animate a new body, Dr. Peck’s corpse continues to be occupied and utilized. Absconding from the quarantine enclosure, Gulla walks out into the main area of the commandeered storage facility. Many of the other deceased personnel are sprawled and crumbled about on the floor. Some are in hazmat suits. There is the fresh stench of relaxed bowels and bladders. Video monitors are blown out and blackened. Memory on all the multiple recording devices used during the operation has all been erased. The destruction of the data simultaneously occurred when Gulla sent out his lethal telepathic attack. On the flat bed of the military truck, the giant monster fish has totally deteriorated into mounds of Dead Sea salt. All physical evidence of the creature has been lost.