The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Which means?”

  “The human race will become extinct in my life time.”

  Sam pointed to the now dead woman next to him. “That woman told me you knew exactly what was inside the book of Nostradamus. She said I’m on the wrong side and I need to protect the future. What did she mean?”

  Zara avoided his gaze, turning instead to watch Tom run down the steep sand dune toward them. “I don’t know. I promise I have no idea.”

  “That’s crap!” Sam grabbed her by her shoulder to stop her from walking away from him. “She was quite explicit. She said to you, do you want to tell him, or shall I?”

  “She was mistaken. I’ve barely had time to flick through the damned book. It’s full of riddles that will take years to fully decipher, if anyone ever does!”

  Sam said, “But you paused. You stopped. I saw your face. You were torn.”

  She swore and looked away. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.” Sam looked at her. Her hazel-green eyes were intense with passion and intelligence, but there was something else there, too. Something he hadn’t seen before – was she ashamed? “For what possible reason would Nostradamus have traveled all the way into the Saharan desert simply to bury and hide his most prized possession – the book which had given him all his power?”

  “Do you know how Nostradamus predicted the future?” she asked.

  “I always guessed he just made it up, got lucky, and became the King’s best friend.”

  “No. He was a true Seer.”

  “Really? As a scientist, you can’t possibly expect me to believe this.”

  She ignored his complaint. “The way he did it wasn’t magical. It was pure science. You see he could follow the outcome of each significant incident, which would lead to another and another, until the final outcome for an event would occur. Meaning at the end of several hundred events, he could predict the outcome of a certain event today.”

  “The butterfly effect?”

  “No. It’s not quite as simple as the movies like to make it out to be.”

  “You think the movies failed to do adequate research into the science of predicting the future?”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “The way it works is like this. Picture yourself driving along a straight, long, flat road in the desert with nothing around to hit. There’s a series of forks in the road but you keep the steering wheel pointed dead ahead. Now imagine a motorcycle or a smaller car bumps into you. You might be forced to drift off the road, but so long as you remain driving, you can simply steer it back on course.”

  “You’re saying the future is pre-ordained and no matter what little bumps go along the way, the future will re-direct itself.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then what are we doing trying to change it?”

  “Because if you’re driving that car down the long, straight road and a truck collides with you – the car will become permanently destroyed. Creating with it a brand new path. You see, make a big enough challenge to the future, and it won’t like it, but it might just be persuaded to change.”

  “What event?”

  “He didn’t say. Simply the ending of the world.”

  “How?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Okay, so why didn’t he just change things in his time to create the change needed. Why go walking through the desert?”

  “Because the future’s already pre-ordained. Destined by some higher divinity. He didn’t believe in the butterfly effect – he tried it multiple times. He could change small things, but the things which really mattered, simply fought back until the destiny of man returned to its original path. He looked, trust me he looked. But all lines lead to the same catastrophic event, which lead to the demise of humanity.”

  Sam said, “Fuck with the future and it fucks with you?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “Nothing quite so sinister. Simply that new events will occur and those will eventually trigger the same outcome.”

  “Well that’s just great. So, now we know that the future’s been ordained, and there’s nothing we can do to affect it – what’s the point of living?”

  “Exactly.”

  “When is this catastrophe supposed to occur?”

  “Now.”

  “Now when?”

  “This year, to be exact.”

  “So, if he knew we were all going to simply vanish… why go to the trouble of burying his stupid book?”

  “Because out of the billions of lines of futures that he investigated, just one provided him with an unclear future.”

  “He can’t see everything?”

  “Everything except the outcome of one event. All he knew was that if that one event occurred, everything afterwards became foggy.”

  “As in, the world ended?”

  “No, as though a new line had been created with no known future.”

  “It was a long shot, but he took it.”

  “What was the image of the event that changed everything?”

  “Me.”

  “You?”

  “I found his book.”

  Sam studied her eyes. They were magnificent and at the same time truly deceptive. A true interrogator from the dangerous years of the Second World War couldn’t have broken her mind. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry. You’re just going to have to trust me on this. If Nostradamus went to all this trouble, and dramatically shortened his own life, so that he could change the future – you must have faith that I’m working on the right side of this event.”

  “I find it hard to believe anyone is on the right side of this.”

  Tom stepped in between the two of them. “What’s going on?”

  “Nice shooting,” Zara said.

  “Thanks, Tom. Nice shot.” Sam smiled.

  Tom asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Zara was just explaining why she has to keep the biggest secret in the world from us to protect the future.”

  Tom nodded, without any sign of understanding. His eyes were focused on a plume of sand converging in the distance. “They’re close. I suggest we finish this discussion hidden deep inside the well.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Zara watched Sam and Tom strip their robes and boots. Beneath they wore a thin, silvery undergarment that looked like a three-quarter-length wetsuit and shimmered as they moved. They looked like something out of a bad science fiction movie from the seventies, but she guessed the DARPA funded, thermal suits, were there for their function, not their looks.

  She removed her own loose fitting robes, headdress and sandals. She placed them in a plastic bag. It would be impossible to climb or swim while wearing them. Underneath, she wore a cotton turquoise tank-top and matching boyshort underwear. She tied her long dark hair in a bun. Two years traipsing through the desert on expedition had left her lithe and athletic. At the same time, her Persian and French blood had made her naturally exotic.

  Tom, she noted, had dutifully turned around. While, Sam, on the other hand grinned and then quickly turned around.

  She said, “Don’t even think about saying anything, Sam.”

  Sam ignored her. Instead, he broke the remaining two glow sticks. The chemicals inside swirled and mixed, sending out a green phosphorescence. He handed one to her.

  Sam said, “We have two glow sticks. I’ll carry one and you carry the other. You follow my light, and Tom will follow yours. We don’t need to go too far. Follow my light and you’ll get through the tunnel safely. Got it?”

  “Sure.”

  Zara watched as Sam climbed down the well. He’d previously described in painstaking detail exactly how to climb down using her hands and feet to provide opposing forces between the stone walls of the well. She watched as the four camels disappeared over the sand dune to the south. If they were lucky, their pursuers would assume they ha
d killed the four riders, stolen their camels and were riding south. If their pursuers didn’t take the bait, they would have to pray like hell that Sam’s hidden smuggler’s cave was every bit as good as he said it was.

  Zara edged her way into the narrow well. There was nothing difficult about it. Nothing new, either. Her father used to send her down similar wells when she was a kid to fetch water. Not that she was going to let Sam Reilly know it. She climbed down quickly with Tom following several feet above her. She watched Sam drop into the water and then followed him in. There wasn’t much room on the water’s surface with her and Sam preparing to dive. Perched several feet above Tom rested with both his legs forward and his back against the stone wall as though he was waiting for lunch.

  Sam looked at her. “You know the plan?”

  Zara kicked her legs and kept her head above water. “I’ve got it.”

  “Give me about ten seconds after I dive and then follow me down.”

  She nodded. “I said, I’ve got it.”

  Zara watched the soft, lime green turn to a dark green like seaweed, as Sam disappeared deep below. She felt herself involuntarily wanting to hyperventilate as she saw how deep the well went. Not because she was afraid she couldn’t make it. Despite growing up in the Sahara, she actually quite enjoyed swimming and was reasonably good at it. Whenever her father stayed somewhere long enough with a waterhole she would often dive down and see how far she could travel underwater, pretending she was searching for sunken treasure. Swimming she could do, but confined spaces scared the hell out of her – but there was no way she was going to be telling Mr. Reilly that.

  Zara took two more deep breaths in and out. She looked up and saw Tom looking like he was hanging around on school camp.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” he said.

  Zara nodded and then dipped head first into the water. She opened her eyes. The cold water stung at them and her entire world looked like a tunnel filled with a hazy green glow. She swam downwards and covered her own glow stick. Her eyes began to adjust to the water and she was able to distinguish the light at the bottom of the well from her own.

  Sam looked up at her. She could now see him clearly in the light. He didn’t look that far away. Zara kicked her feet and swam downward, but it seemed to be taking a long time to reach the bottom. She opened her jaw and tried to equalize the pressure in her ears, which was building up and making her head feel like it was going to implode.

  She watched as Sam moved a giant stone, which teetered at the bottom of the well and then disappeared inside a secret opening. A moment later the stone returned to its original position, but between the stone and the sand was Sam’s glow stick. She reached the secret passage and immediately moved the stone as Sam had explained to her earlier.

  The opening wasn’t very big, and she wondered how Sam had slid through so quickly. She felt her heart race as she slid inside. It felt small and she instantly felt a panic attack coming on. The sort she used to have as a child after she’d become stuck inside a mine shaft she and her father were exploring. She had never forgotten the feeling. The walls felt like they had moved and were closing in on her. Squishing all sides of body until she could no longer expand her chest enough to breath.

  Suddenly her chest felt tight and she wanted to breathe. She couldn’t move forward and there was no point trying to go back. She had to make it through. Ordinarily, she would have forced herself to breathe slowly and calm herself.

  But I can’t breathe, can I?

  I’m more than forty feet beneath water and a hundred and sixty feet underground!

  Rationally, she knew she had to make it through the tunnel to escape. There were no other choices. A rational person would make it through. If Sam Reilly could do it, so could she. Heck, if Tom Bower, the giant of a man, was going to get through after her, she must be able to make it. Even so, the walls simply closed in on her.

  She started to fight them by wriggling her torso and pulling and scratching the walls with her hands. It wasn’t helping. All it did was make the walls close in. She was certain she’d wedged her chest between the two walls and could now feel the entire weight of all forty feet of water above her, crushing her lungs.

  But the pain was too much. She wanted to open her mouth and scream!

  Instead, she felt something push on her feet from behind her. She slid further forward and her right hand struck something. Another human being’s hand. It gripped hers and she squeezed it back, hard. A moment later, the hand pulled her through until the tunnel opened to a large submerged void.

  The sudden relief was quickly squashed as the glowing light shined off the surface of the cavern. It was large and sloped in a generally upward direction, but there was no sign of air. Logic suggested that if she had dived forty or fifty feet downward, she must ascend that much again to find the surface again.

  It was her worst nightmare. She’d survived her momentary feeling of claustrophobic sheer terror, only to discover herself trapped in an underwater subterranean water shelf. Before she could truly take in her new environment, she felt someone pull her hands and throw her forward through the shallow tunnel.

  Her head finally broke the surface. She gasped. Her hands and legs felt numb. The world was dark. She’d dropped her glow stick in the struggle to reach the surface. She breathed deeply. The cold air soothed her. She’d entered a massive subterranean void. There was no natural sound, but her rapid breathing echoed throughout the cavern.

  Where am I?

  “Are you there, Sam?”

  She heard the echo of her own voice, but no other response.

  There’s no way I made it and Sam didn’t?

  “Tom? You around?”

  Again, there was no response.

  Zara considered the possibilities. There was a high chance that she was the only one to make it through. Perhaps Sam had passed out in the process of trying to rescue her? Or possibly he’d gone back to help pull Tom through the secret passage? Either way, she’d been on the surface long enough to allow her breathing to settle into a normal pace. And that meant Sam and Tom had both been underwater for a long time.

  Too long to survive?

  Her nightmare never seemed to end. The thought of being stuck in the dark void, with no light and no chance of retracing her route out again told her rational mind there was only one outcome for her – she would die here.

  Zara waited a couple minutes and then shouted for anyone who could hear her. She waited another thirty seconds and tried again. Somehow, her words sounded even more distant and crippling as they were the only ones to return.

  She forced herself to take in a slow deep breath before exhaling even slower in an attempt to settle her mind. One thing was certain, no one could survive five or more minutes beneath the water without SCUBA equipment. Which meant only one thing. She was all alone, in a dark world – a sarcophagus of her own making.

  Sam had said at the center of the lake a small island existed.

  Once there, she might at least climb out of the water and get dry. Even if Sam and Tom never returned, she could rest, collect her thoughts and plan for the future.

  She swam into the darkness. Slow, careful and quiet strokes. If she didn’t make much noise, it stood to reason, that she would hear if anyone came for her. After about five minutes her hand struck something, hard. It was like a stone wall. She ran her hand along it and then reached the top. The surface was flat.

  Zara carefully pulled herself out of the water and onto the subterranean island. She laid down, closed her eyes and relaxed. It was the first success she’d had since entering the well. Nostradamus had told her she was going to have a difficult time escaping, but she would survive. Right now, she had no idea how she was going to make that prediction come true.

  But she was still alive! She grinned and relaxed. Rest first and then work out how I’m going to live long enough to find the Nostradamus Equation.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Sam took in a deep breath as
he surfaced. It wasn’t quite a gasp, but the distance seemed further in the dark. The place seemed smaller. There was no way of knowing for sure without light, but he knew it was. The way a termite instinctively knew the precise amount of wood to eat so that a house doesn’t lose its structure and collapse, Sam knew the air pocket he’d come up inside was smaller than one before it.

  In the process of helping Zara reach the surface he’d dropped his glow stick and had swum back toward the secret tunnel to make sure Tom could find his way. Tom had grabbed his leg and then followed his movement toward the surface.

  Next to him, he heard Tom surface and take a casual breath, as though he’d been out for a morning dive at the beach.

  “You okay, Tom?” he asked.

  “I’m all good. How’s Zara doing after getting stuck?”

  “I have no idea. She’s not here.”

  “Christ!” Tom said, “You let her drown?”

  “I don’t think so. I took her to the surface. I know her head broached the surface. I even heard her take in a deep breath. She seemed all right. I didn’t wait to see though. It was dark, I’d dropped the glow stick and was worried about you.”

  “Zara!” Tom yelled. “Are you here?”

  The echo ricocheted quickly as though they were in a small cavern. Almost no delay between the sound going out and returning again. There was no response other than Tom’s voice and the two of them didn’t wait for one. Instead the two of them swam around the room in opposite directions.

  “We’re in a large dome,” Sam said. “If you keep your left hand on the wall, and I keep my right one on the wall we’ll meet somewhere back in the middle.”

  “Got it!” Tom said.

  Sam quickly swam around the dark room, cursing his mistake of losing the glow stick. He should have carried the only remaining one, but he didn’t want to carelessly use it when it was the only spare light they’d have down there. His right hand dragged along the smooth wall.