by Madyson Rush
“He inhaled sand,” she spoke aloud. “A lot of sand.”
David looked up, confused. “He was buried alive?”
She fingered the tissue and held up some of the crimson particles into the light. “Red sand. There’s nothing like it in this part of the world.”
They stared at each other blankly.
Realizing the microscope light had warmed enough to view the intestine cross section, Thatcher left the body and twisted the focus knob. Thousands of miniscule luminescent bacteria danced around the air bubbles and hemorrhagic tissue. She looked up from the eyepiece, shaken.
“P. Luminescens?” David asked, standing up.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. But whatever it is, it’s still alive.”
Chapter 32
WEDNESDAY 4:03 a.m.
St. John the Baptist’s Cathedral
Bathwick, England
Ian sat hidden in a corner of the monastery library translating two columns of Aramaic text. Painstaking hours had been spent deciphering the fragment the Rabbi insisted was meant for him. But something was wrong. Dusty glossaries of ancient languages sat on the desk close at hand. His rudimentary understanding of the Chaldean language had helped him recognize many of the ancient terms: the Sons of Light, the Forces of Darkness, the Day of Disaster. He shook out his bleeding palm in frustration. It was the familiarity of these terms that disappointed him. So far, the Beb’ne Hoshekh was nothing more than a copy of a Dead Sea Scroll called The War Rule. Word for word, it matched the well-known published document Brenton and his associates found in a Qumran excavation decades earlier. There was nothing clandestine about these phrases. Nothing worth dying over. It was a duplicate of the same tactical treatise that existed in museums throughout the world.
For the Master, [the Rule of] the War: On that day the congregation of the gods and the congregation of men shall engage one another in great carnage. The Sons of Light and the Forces of Darkness shall fight together with the roar of a great multitude and the shout of gods and men; a day of disaster. It is a time of distress fo[r all] redeemed by God. On the day of their battle, they shall g[o forth for] carnage.
In three lots the Sons of Light shall stand firm so as to strike a blow at wickedness, and in three the army of Belial shall strengthen themselves so as to force the retreat of the forces of Light.
[And when the] banners of the infantry cause their hearts to melt, God will strengthen the he[arts of the Sons of Light].
“And in the final lot, [Belial and al]l the angels of his dominion, and all the men of his forces, [shall be destroyed forever]…
The bracketed words of his translation marked areas of uncertainty. Places where the fragment was torn or the words too faded. Biblical scholars assumed the War Rule ended with Belial’s demise in the Final Battle. They knowledgably closed the passage with Belial “…shall be destroyed forever,” a conclusion that matched all other texts detailing Armageddon. However, the War Rule fragment had no ending. The original parchment was torn, just like this vellum, purposefully or not, and the completed prophecies of the Final Battle were lost.
Ian tossed down his pencil. There were no clues here. Nothing to help solve his father’s murder. It had been a complete waste of time. His body was bruised, his joints ached, and his wound was still bleeding.
There were only a few hours left until sunrise. The cathedral would soon be alive with activity. Monday morning brought with it Low Mass, the celebration of the Eucharist. The meeting was his responsibility, but his brain felt like the oatmeal mush he could smell cooking in the kitchen. Frustration gave way to fatigue. He lowered his head to the table. His eyes were dry, his eyelids like heavy curtains. He let them close.
Chapter 33
WEDNESDAY 6:03 a.m.
Cambridge University
Cambridge, England
David sat on the steps outside Cambridge’s Zoological Laboratory building. His numb backside had melded with the cold cement, but he preferred the hard ground to sitting by the autopsy taking place in the building’s basement. He stared down at the stone sidewalk, his tired eyes making discombobulated shapes and figures out of the patchwork concrete slabs, a design of mismatched squares soon to be trodden by hundreds of students.
Dammit.
Students…
He’d completely forgotten about his students. They would probably wait outside his classroom in Aberdeen for fifteen minutes before heading home with wide smiles on their faces. Except for Scott, who would camp outside David’s office, worried and anxious.
Behind him, the door opened and shut. Thatcher took a seat on the step and looked out over the street with a heavy sigh. “Whatever infected your father’s tissue is preventing decomposition.”
“His hand was glowing the night I identified his body,” he insisted. For some reason, he felt like he had to prove everything to her.
“I believe you.” She took in a deep breath. “But I’d believe just about anything by now.”
“God came by right before you came out,” David said soberly. “He was carrying a tennis racquet and wanted to know if you were game.”
Thatcher cleared her throat. “I did, however, find something that connects Brenton to Maeshowe,” she said.
He sat up. “What’s that?”
“Acoustic trauma.”
David blinked, dumbfounded. “Like the people at Stenness?”
She nodded. “The level of subsonic noise his body sustained was lethal.”
He shook his head, trying to digest the information. “So if there hadn’t been the whole bullet-through-the-heart thing?”
“Or the being-buried-alive thing,” she said with a yawn. “Yeah, the acoustic trauma would’ve killed him.”
“Damn.”
“I know.”
They stared out at the street for a while. The moisture from their breath was vaporous in the cold morning air.
“What do you want me to do with his body?” she asked.
“I guess it’s too late to donate it to science?” He was in a weird mood—probably from the lack of sleep. Thatcher didn’t look much better herself, her muddy suit, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail with unruly strands in her face. Neither of them was capable of making important decisions.
“We can probably store him here for the time being,” she offered. “There’s a morgue in the basement. I put him there already.”
After a brief silence, David felt her studying his face. He shifted uncomfortably, allowing the blood to return to his legs.
“I’m sorry about your father.” She bit her lip as if holding back a question.
David looked up the street. “We weren’t close.”
“Still, I’m sorry.”
Birds began to fly around campus, bobbing and weaving through the tree tops. A few cars passed along the road, and the intersection lights nearby stopped flashing red and adjusted for the morning traffic. Soon the city would be crawling with caffeinated teachers and students.
Thatcher pulled her legs up to her chest. “I’ve got three days, and all we have is a two-week-old, non-decomposing corpse with sand-filled lungs, a bullet hole through his heart, lethal acoustic-damaged tissue, and a glow-in-the-dark tattoo.”
David was surprised she had used the term ‘we’. He didn’t know what to say. He’d been a complete waste of her time. They both knew it.
She sighed. “Sod it all.”
He brightened with an epiphany. “We’ve got more than that.”
She looked at him curiously.
“Brenton took all the credit for his research, but he never worked alone.”
“The Polaroid from his office…” she realized aloud.
Chapter 34
WEDNESDAY 7:43 a.m.
St. John the Baptist’s Cathedral
Bathwick, England
Morning sunlight poked through the library window. Ian stirred awake, forgetting for a moment where he was and what had transpired earlier that morning. It slowly came ba
ck to him as he rubbed a cramp from his neck and wiped drool off his cheek.
The Rabbi.
The Beb’ne Hoshekh.
Some of his saliva had fallen onto the fragment. He tried to brush it off with his sleeve, but it soaked deeper into the parchment instead. The wet permeated through to the back, so he lifted the fragment over his head to blow it dry. Sun illuminated the vellum, lighting it from behind, and tiny lines of print suddenly appeared underneath the Aramaic words. He lowered the fragment out of the sunlight and the marks vanished.
Holding it into the light again, he laughed as the tiny symbols returned. There was hidden lettering, written sideways across the page in faint red ink. It was invisible beneath the surface text unless wetted and held into the light.
Brenton must have made the same discovery.
Ian spat on another corner of fragment and held it into the light. There were at least two dozen microscopic letters in the damp portion of the vellum. He could barely make out the fine nuances of the sweeping Hebrew block of each character. Underneath the vertical and black Aramaic text were hundreds of lines of red script. He laughed again, quickly covering his mouth to avoid drawing any attention.
It was brilliant!
Dipping the vellum into the glass of water beside him on the table, he wetted a larger portion of the page. The red ink began to bleed. He quickly dried the fragment with his sleeve. Too much moisture ruined the hidden message. Deciphering was going to be a tedious process, one drop of liquid, quarter-inch by quarter-inch.
The clock tower outside began to chime. He only had fifteen minutes until mass.
Jumping up from the table, he gathered together his notepapers, careful not to damage the fragment. Excitement bubbled up in his stomach. By some miracle, he had done it. He found the second breadcrumb on his father’s trail. For the first time since Brenton’s death, Ian felt good. Persistence would pay off. The dead would not stay silent.
Ian couldn’t read Hebrew, but he knew a man who could.
Chapter 35
WEDNESDAY 8:05 a.m.
Archeology Department
Cambridge, England
“You threw everything away?” The veins along David’s neck started to pop out. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since I cleaned out his office!”
The plump secretary of Cambridge’s Department of Archeology chewed her gum with rapid, spitfire bites. She hid behind giant blonde ringlets, black horn-rimmed glasses, and the stacks of paper cluttering her desk. “Dr. Hyden had ample time to collect his things,” she said. Her voice was whiny and anxious. Thatcher wanted to pity her and slap her at the same time.
“I rang him nearly every day for a week and left four messages on his answering mach—”
“He’s dead!” David’s voice echoed along the corridor.
Thatcher touched his arm to calm him.
The secretary’s lower lip curled down into her double chin, and she looked as though she was about to cry. “If you needed to keep something from his office, why did you put it in the disposal bags?”
David shook his head in disbelief. “I didn’t know we’d need it.”
The secretary shrank in her chair. Her dopey, mascara-laden eyes slanted and then flapped behind her glasses.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Mead,” Thatcher tried. “Dr. Hyden just lost his father. He’s upset. We’d just like to know what happened to Brenton’s rubbish after it left his office. Where has it gone?”
“They disposed of it this morning,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Who are ‘they’?” Thatcher asked.
Ms. Mead’s face puckered. “The janitorial service. Campus Collections.”
“Where’d they take it?” David demanded.
“To the skips along the back alleyway.” The secretary signaled to a back exit across the hall. “Until the trucks take it away.”
“When does that happen?” Thatcher asked.
“Sometime this morning.”
David met Thatcher’s eyes. He ran to the door.
Ms. Mead jumped out of her seat. Her miniskirt barely covered her gigantic pear-shaped backside. “Wait, sir! You can’t go through there. It’s an emergency exit.” She turned to Thatcher, pleading for help. “He’s not allowed in the alley. Some of those bins are for medical waste. I’ll be sacked if they know you two are messing about.”
Thatcher pulled her NATO badge from her jacket. “I’m a doctor. We’ll be careful, you have my word.”
The secretary glanced at her credentials. Her face blanched. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not to let anyone back there.”
“We’ll be alright,” Thatcher insisted. She followed David outside and down a cement ramp that led into the narrow alley.
Ms. Mead staggered behind them in her heels.
Three large disposal bins abutted the back of the biology building. David flipped open one of the skips. The lid slammed against the back of the container.
“Sir!” the secretary pleaded from the doorway. She slumped dramatically against the door frame. “I’m going to get sacked.”
David unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and folded up his sleeves. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, come in after me.” He winked at Thatcher and disappeared over the top.
Thatcher bit her lip, watching the secretary bounce from heel to heel. All this for some Polaroid photograph? It seemed silly, but no one in the department even knew until recently that Brenton had an office on campus, let alone who he fraternized with over the years. Just like David had insisted, Brenton never credited anybody else in his published material. They had no other leads.
“This will only take a minute, Ms. Mead.” She gave the secretary an apologetic smile as the canister rocked from side to side. “Good Lord, David.”
“Sure a lot of crap in here!” he called out.
After a few minutes, he reappeared over the top, empty-handed.
Thatcher nodded to a neighboring bin. “Give that one a go?”
David rolled up his sleeves even further and climbed over.
“Are you positive they put the bags here, Ms. Mead?” Thatcher asked. She saw the tail of the woman’s skirt as the woman ran back inside. Thatcher’s stomach knotted. “David, you might want to speed things up a bit.”
David’s head bobbed along the top of the bin as he tore open each plastic sack. Unsuccessful, he jumped out of the bin and into the last dumpster.
“It must be that one,” Thatcher encouraged. She could hear him tearing open plastic bags.
“Got it!” He held up a handful of burnt papers. “Wait,” he hesitated, shuffling through them. “It’s not it. Some student burned his love letters.”
He kicked the bag into the corner and jumped out empty handed.
She pulled a candy wrapper out of his hair. “They’ve got to be somewhere.”
He swatted her away. “You think?”
“There are collection sites all over campus.”
David glared at her, unenthusiastic about swimming in garbage all day. He wiped sweat from his forehead and nodded across the alley at another dumpster. “She said something about a biological hazard?”
A medical waste unit was attached to the back of the adjacent building. The size of a train car, the bin was connected to the building with a specialized disposal chute and covered with toxic waste warnings.
“Yes, she did.” Thatcher knew exactly what he was thinking.
David wiggled his eyebrows. “This’ll be fun.”
She stepped back as he forced open the lid. “Be careful,” she said, reading the BIOHAZARD and TOXIC WASTE warning signs. “There might be needles.”
He lowered his body slowly into the bin and threw a plastic-wrapped, partially dissected frog carcass at her feet. “Biology 101,” he announced.
The rotting creatures stank of formaldehyde. “Thanks.” She frowned.
David peeked over the top. “I need your help in here.”
Thatcher hesitated. With a sigh, she grabbed
hold of the bin and lifted her leg over the top. She dropped into the heap of dissected amphibians. “This is revolting.”
“Dig in.” He sifted through the layers of trash.
Ms. Mead burst from the office door and limped down the ramp. One of her high-heels had broken. She held it by the leather strap and waved her hands wildly in the air. “Those two!” She pointed as a short line of campus security guards funneled out the door behind her.
Thatcher located a black plastic bag. “David!”
They strained to pull the bag out from under the frogs.
A man bellowed at them from below.
Ignoring him, they tore open the sack. A cloud of ash wafted up from the plastic. David sifted madly through charred paperwork with both hands, and by some miracle pulled out Brenton’s Polaroid.
A young campus police officer peered over the top of the bin, holding a canister of mace awkwardly in one hand. “Out of the bin!”
David shoved the Polaroid into his coat pocket. Thatcher nodded at him exhausted.
They shared a brief smile.
Chapter 36
WEDNESDAY 11:20 a.m.
Cambridge University, England
“What the hell were you thinking?” Chief Inspector Lang’s yell echoed along the halls of the Cambridge University Security Office. “Trespassing on private property? Reckless endangerment? You better hope I can talk the University out of pressing charges.”
David endured the verbal blows without debate. Leaning back in his chair, he noticed Ms. Mead down the corridor just outside the building. She sat alone at the back of an ambulance receiving treatment. The poor lady had a panic attack.