“I think they’re trying to destroy the book’s protection by confronting it with their infinite number and collapsing it on us in the process!” Ezra cried. “We must leave now!”
Aiden’s fingers quickly became numb from their rubbing the book’s frozen cover, but he refused to give up. “Something dramatic should be happening right now, Kim!” he cried.
Kimberley dropped the Kalashnikov she held in her right hand and assisted Aiden when she realized she could move her right arm about. Of course, she knew what the boy meant by ‘something dramatic.’ If he could join hands with Rachel to chase away the Gray Ones near Sankoh’s car, then the three of them should be able to do, at least, something dramatic in the present situation.
Kimberley used to doubt the story.
Now, she badly wanted to believe anything.
The police sergeant pulled harder at the white book’s cover. Harder than she had ever done. And the book’s stiff cover rewarded her persistence by parting a bit.
“It’s opening!” Aiden cried. “We only need to try harder!”
“Where is Ezra?” Kimberley asked.
Rachel turned to see that her uncle had left their spherical protection. “Uncle, no!” she shouted. He stood in the middle of the room, his hands raised high in the air.
“He slipped out just like that?” Aiden asked, putting a finger through the dome’s shiny surface. Perhaps one could easily leave its protection, he thought. Would coming back in be just as easy?
Ezra, also known as Dr. Isaacs in the present dispensation, felt elated outside the white book’s visible protection. “You cannot kill me now!” he shouted at the gray entities swarming past him as if they couldn’t see him. “I am now invincible, you hear? YOU CANNOT KILL ME, YOU HEAR? I AM NO LONGER AFRAID OF YOU!”
“What’re you doing?” Kimberley asked him, having regained her voice. “You will die, you fool!”
“No, I won’t,” the man said, marveling at the sight all around him. “I injected an attenuated strain of the Ebola virus into my cells this morning before your visit. Looks like they won’t attack me because of this. I have defeated them with science at long last, my dear! Now, they’ll leave me alone.”
Kimberley gaped at the Israeli. So, they were right about David’s infection saving his life from the Gray Ones? she thought. Which other ailment could do the same thing?
High above the area on which the massive battle for the book had commenced, the demon leading the Gray Ones focused its attention on the loud-mouthed fool praising himself down below. This weak human being, who could not convince the Bookbearer to part with the book, must be dealt with as quickly as possible.
Screeching horribly, the former angel shimmered in Ezra’s face, intending to turn the man’s will against himself or penetrate his flesh, all to no avail.
Ezra laughed at the grotesque thing before him instead, beating his chest. “I am invincible, you hear!” he shouted at the demon lord.
The fallen angel could only float impassively before him.
Stupefied, the three within the protective dome watched with horror as some of the demons fighting to penetrate the book’s defense peeled off and descended on Doctor Isaacs instead.
“No, please don’t kill him!” Rachel shouted, meaning to go out to help her uncle, but Kimberley held her back.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” Ezra laughed as the unidentifiable shapes swarmed around him innocuously. He seemed to have forgotten about the man with the gun who’d been firing at them moments ago, because all the guns had stopped chattering, and what now remained was the imposing presence of the gray forms floating and twirling about, as well as the damp atmosphere of death these unearthly forces had brought with them.
Looking beyond the dead bodies strewn around the large room and adjoining corridor, the leading Gray One saw that the one man who had dared to struggle with its colleagues still lived.
Carl Bain twisted and turned as horrendous shapes of all sizes darted through his body, suspending him in the air many seconds at a time. It looked like something was keeping him alive, because all his opponents and the people working in the health facility lay dead within and around the center’s buildings. Several howling evil things had appeared from nowhere to rip their bodies apart. Evil entities many now dead had assumed to be Ebola spirits since the virus had killed a lot of people in the treatment center.
Only the Ebola suspects near the steel cabinet, Ebola patients lying in the health facility’s wards, and the man trashing about in the corridor, remained alive. While a magical dome protected the four behind the metallic file cabinet, the Ebola patients in the wards and the man in the corridor still lived for no known reason.
The volume of spirit-like beings zooming through Carl Bain’s body could have destroyed any other person a long time ago, yet the American hitman still lived, shouting in pain as wave after wave of these things smashed into him to visibly emerge from the opposite part of his body.
His would-be killers prepared to attack him en mass by gathering at the door leading to the corridor.
“Where are they going?” Kimberley wondered aloud as most of the Gray Ones surrounding their dome defense and Rachel’s uncle pulled off and wafted towards the corridor in which lay their human headache. “That guy is still alive?” she asked, wide-eyed.
For all their efforts, the book had refused to open a bit more. Even Rachel’s little finger could not slip through the space the time-travelers had achieved between the white book’s front cover and pages. Few demons atop the dome meant a reduced offensive against the white book, yet the unearthly protective force surrounding the mythical volume held over the three inside. Only Rachel’s uncle stood outside this defense, smiling like he now had the upper hand and knew the secret to life as a result of this.
Instinctively, Ezra stepped back and touched the magical hemispherical phenomenon surrounding his friend’s daughter and her acquaintances. His fingers could not penetrate it and he tried again, frowning. When he repeatedly got the same result, he tried to push his palms into the dome to no avail. A kind of magical force field held back his limbs from sliding into the infernal dome. Realizing what this meant, he started looking around fearfully.
“You have locked yourself out,” Kimberley said, reading the man’s thoughts correctly. “You think they will use the man in the corridor as a weapon.”
“What?” Aiden’s eyes were huge.
“Not really,” Ezra denied, his facial expression telling a different story. “Give me the gun; I need to defend myself if it comes to that.”
And Kimberley slid the rifle out of their dome-like protection without a second thought.
“Now, you must find a way to give me the book!” Ezra snapped, surprising even his dead friend’s daughter.
“Uncle, how could you?” she shouted. “How could you lie to us?”
“I have no choice, my dear, if I must survive this,” her uncle said.
“You fool!” Kimberley said coldly. “You think you can get away with this?”
“Do as I say or I’ll kill you,” Ezra ordered, pointing the Kalashnikov at her forehead.
“You forget nothing can pass through the dome,” Aiden reminded the man, peering out from underneath Kimberley’s hand.
Ezra tried to push the gun’s muzzle through the book’s defense and met a brick wall. He moved back and fired at the visible manifestation without warning, jolting Rachel into hugging Kimberley with all her might. The bullets simply ricocheted off the icy cage protecting the book.
“Not a good plan, right?” Alvin quipped.
“Dammit!” Ezra muttered, turning the gun and hitting the dome repeatedly. Nothing happened. “Give me the book, Rachel,” he snapped in frustration. “Give it to me right now!”
“No way,” Kimberley said. “I hope those things get you out there.”
A huge swarm of gray persisted at the door leading to the short passage where Carl Bain struggled for his life. The demons seemed to be waiting
for a signal, something to launch them towards the American lying before them. The ones around this man howled as they went in opposite directions, caressing their victim’s hands while actually pulling him up and apart, arms spread out. Soon, the hitman dangled in the air in-between them, repeatedly registering his agony by screaming whenever the pain he bore became unbearable.
“What are they doing?” Rachel asked, peering out beside Kimberley.
“I don’t know.”
Again, the demon leader shimmered before Carl Bain, its hollow face an empty gloom. It screeched in hellish language and slowly merged with its victim.
“YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!” the American hustler let out, feeling submerged in gruesome pain. The screaming and merging continued for some time, with every physical ounce of the man rejecting the demon’s interference, until the Booklord emerged from behind him and he slumped forward, sweating profusely and breathing hard.
Ezra gulped and moved backward.
“Wondering what you’ll soon face?” Kimberley asked him, smiling wickedly. Aiden had resumed the herculean task of trying to open the book and she joined him alongside Rachel. Their lives could depend on whether they would succeed in doing this in time, she thought.
Now, the Gray Ones hanging at the door swished over to Carl Bain’s suspended body and fused with him. Mouth wide open, he simply shook and gasped as this action took place. His eyes turned grayish and more furrows appeared on his forehead. His muscles toughened and his clothes and personal protective suit tightened around his body. He felt renewed and energized by his will to live with sharper and keener senses tuned to his environment.
“God help me!” Ezra whispered, gaping at this unearthly transformation. The gun in his hand had become uselsss all of a sudden.
The Booklords now emerged from their new tool, having finally engorged him with power no living human being could contain. Carl Bain floated to the ground and picked his rifle as if a superior being controlled him. As if he must obey this superior being.
Subsequently, the demons wafted back to the dome in droves.
“Let me in, please!” Ezra begged those inside the book’s mysteriously defensive entity, his eyes darting about for alternative escape routes.
“You brought this on yourself,” Aiden told him.
“Uncle, run!” Rachel cried when the man now made new in the image of the Booklords headed their way.
Doctor Isaacs dashed out of the room’s other door, firing sporadically at the human demon walking towards him. When he realized that the projectiles he had launched simply went through the monster after him, he threw away the gun and fled into the Ebola center’s compound.
Carl Bain lifted his AK-47 and took aim at the short man running towards a fleet of parked cars near the center’s gate. The sound of a single shot rang out far beyond the compound and its collection of dead bodies.
As Ezra’s body crashed to the ground, the American hitman turned and walked back into the building from which he had emerged, ignoring some scared Sierra Leonean Ebola patients peering out from the windows of their quarantine wards. Since these were infected by the virus, the Booklords had avoided them while destroying every other living thing in the health facility.
“He’s coming back!” Aiden cried, struggling to pull the white book open. Kimberley and Rachel joined him, ignoring the screeching Gray Ones plastering their infernal bodies on the dome every other second.
Carl Bain entered the room and opened fire on the spherical structure protecting the book. He turned the gun and tried to smash the impediment before him using the gun’s butt and powerful swings. Discarding the useless weapon after this, he repeatedly slammed his fists into the icy contraption, ignoring his demonic masters fluttering about him as well as those plastered to the dome.
“We’re safe in here as long as he can’t break it!” Aiden cried, his fingers losing sensation again as he kept up his effort to open the cold book.
“We shouldn’t wait to see if he can, should we?” Kimberley asked him. “I think it’s opening!”
The white book parted some more, revealing more space in between its front cover and frozen pages. Rachel tried to slip in her little finger and shook her head. “I still can’t,” she said, dodging a ghostly arm from outside as the fearsome human figure confronting them landed another fist on the shell protecting them all.
The grayish shapes around the trio kept reaching out into the book’s protection, simmering in flames as they tried to get at the precious scroll. The dome’s human occupants tried to avoid these extended infernal limbs, but when they couldn’t, the searing heat burned into their clothes and painfully scotched their skin, causing them to lose focus for a few precious seconds before the attacking limb freezes and wafts out of the magical cage.
“Yeow!” Kimberley screamed again when a thin hand pushed its way down her right leg and froze off as quickly.
Carl Bain looked around for furniture and found a table with which he attacked the dome once more, shattering the wooden construction atop the dome.
Aiden looked down to avoid a burning hand and discovered something interesting. “Here, try using this,” he told Kimberley, wincing from a fresh burn on his shoulder as he handed the Portwood sergeant a piece of splintered wood.
“Where did you get that?” Kimberley demanded as the megalomaniac outside landed another blow on the stoic dome surrounding them.
“The wooden floor,” Aiden replied. “The magic shield must have broken it up when it appeared around us!”
Nodding, the Portwood sergeant prodded the white book’s cover with the wooden tool Aiden had given her. “It’s working!” she told the others. “Quick, help me push it in!” The book opened a bit more with Aiden’s help. Kimberley used the wooden fragement to prevent the space they’d created in between the pages from collapsing.
Rachel forced her little finger into this space.
“How would she see her name?” Aiden asked Kimberley.
“The names were glowing a while back,” Kimberley returned.
“They’re still glowing,” Rachel said.
“So you just need to move towards a glow,” Kimberley advised.
Carl Bain stopped hitting the dome with his fists, which were now bloodied and painful. He heard a faint crack when he kicked the icy contraption before him with his right foot. He repeated the action and got a satisfying response from the book’s mysterious cage.
Those in the unearthly structure heard this as well and fearfully looked at one another.
“Anytime now, Rachel!” Kimberley hastened the little girl.
“The wood is hindering my movements!” Rachel told her and the sergeant tried to shift the wedge a bit.
Again, Carl Bain landed his left foot on the dome and heard that same sound from the structure. Smiling, he walked over to his gun and picked it up.
Gunfire erupted in the large room, masking the pitiable screeches the horrendous Booklords were making. Some of these ghostly forms started pushing themselves into the once-invincible manifestation protecting the book, while Carl Bain’s Kalashnikov rifle chattered away at its surface. Moments later, this hollow entity shattered into smithereens to reveal an empty space within.
Carl Bain vanished as well.
Chapter 9: Alexandria
“I’VE changed clothes,” Aiden announced, patting himself all over. “That means we must have left Africa, and...”
“No time for that now,” Kimberley interrupted, getting up from a chair and looking around her. She wondered why many people were shouting outside the large hall in which they’d found themselves in. She could hear clashing swords. Was that a large crowd fighting outside? “Are you with the book?” she asked Rachel.
The question jolted Rachel for a second. She looked lost and frightened. “No, I–I’m not.”
“What?” Kimberley cried, the implications of the little girl’s admission sinking in.
“But how?” Aiden asked.
Rachel tu
rned to the wide ceiling-to-roof windows opening up to a balcony that ran round the hall, directing her companions’ gaze to the rooftops of other buildings dotting the area outside. “I’ve been here before,” she said. “Last time around, I found the book in a building across the yard from this place, but I almost got killed outside.”
Kimberley thought the Jewish girl looked more learned for her age. More noble.
“They’re fighting outside,” Aiden said. “I think we’ve left Africa, though.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Kimberley told him, looking around her. “We must have gone to another part of the continent, because I think I’ve seen those wall decorations in a history book before.” She realized she’d been sitting on a throne-like chair and felt her attire for the first time. She wore a free-flowing gown with bracelets decorating her arms and sandals shoeing her feet.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “We’re still in Africa.”
“Okay,” Kimberley said, picking up a sheathed sword with fine decorations on its hilt, which lay beside the chair she previously occupied. Did Rachel have a new accent? Her attention went back to the markings and designs on the walls of the hall surrounding them. “We’re in Egypt. Ancient Egypt.”
“How did you know?” Aiden asked her, looking her over. “Come to think of it, you look like a queen, Kim.”
“And you two look like my relations or something close to that,” Kimberley added. “Come on, the Gray Ones and that mad man should be on their way and we must leave with that book before they show up.”
She made for the huge double doors at the end of the long hall with the others closely behind her. It appeared shut for a reason, which became apparent once the time-travelers reached it.
“They’re fighting behind the door,” Aiden said.
“Intruders must be trying to get in,” Kimberley realized. “The guards must be outside these doors trying to fend them off.”
“What do we do?” Aiden asked her.
“What did you do when you showed up here the first time, Rachel?” Kimberley asked the little girl.
The White Book Page 11