Progeny

by Shawn Hopkins

  “Well excuse me if I’m just a little hesitant to believe you. This—” he pointed to the wall, wagging his head, “—how do you explain this?” And he began backpedalling away from them. “Who are you? What do you want from me?” He brought the submachine gun up, aiming it at them.

  “Chad, it’s okay. Just calm down,” John was saying.

  “Calm down? I was kidnapped! And now here I am in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of… You’re gonna kill me, aren’t you? You’re gonna shoot me and bury me out here…” He flexed his hand around the gun’s handle, his face contorted with confused agony. “Why? Who sent you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Paul stepped forward, his own weapon rising a few inches.

  John stepped between them, holding out his empty hands. “Chad, listen! We’re all in this together! We—”

  “Why don’t you think this is Bermuda?” Hunter interrupted.

  “Because I’ve been to just about every known megalithic site on the planet! It’s kind of my life. So I’m pretty sure that I’d know if there was one on Bermuda!” The gun was rattling in his hands.

  “I don’t understand,” Hunter replied calmly.

  Chadwick pointed at the wall behind him. “These rocks, if anything like the ones from the Cuzco-Machu Picchu region or Tiahuanaco or the Valley Temple at Giza, weigh around one hundred tons each!”

  “It’s just the ruins of an old fort,” Nick shouted, not at all liking the gun being pointed at him.

  Chadwick shook his head. “No. This was not built by the British, Spanish, or Portuguese.”

  “I don’t care who built the stupid wall,” Nick snapped back. “We need to keep moving!”

  But Chadwick was already departing from the group, his aim a little more liberal as he moved closer to the wall. Once he was just twenty yards from it, he began skirting around its side, looking for an entrance into what turned out to be some kind of enclosure. Finding one, he disappeared through it.

  “Chad!” John hollered after him as a gust of wind flattened the grass at his feet.

  “Just leave him,” Paul snarled, making his way out of the rain and back beneath the umbrella the forest offered.

  “It does seem to defy logic,” Chris observed, suddenly in awe of just how big the rocks were and how impossibly they were assembled.

  And then the distinguished crack of a gunshot rebounded throughout the island and shattered the creepy stillness around them, dozens of birds fleeing their perches and flapping desperately into the cloud-covered sky.

  Instantly, the five of them were sprinting as fast as they could around the wall and through the tall entranceway.

  Standing in the middle of the enclosure, a half-completed stone building around him and the MP5 lying at his feet, was Chadwick.

  “What happened?” Hunter shouted as he ran up beside him.

  Chadwick slowly moved his head toward them. “I dropped it,” he explained, his voice weak.

  “Are you okay?” John quickly examined him for any kind of wound.

  But Chadwick’s gaze had already returned to something ahead of him.

  “What is this place?” Chris’ eyes had drifted away from Chadwick and were now taking in the whole of their surroundings.

  There was a sense of awe in Chadwick’s voice when he stated, “It’s like Ollantaytambo.”

  “We don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Nick reminded him.

  The walls surrounding them seemed to make a perfect square, each side a hundred yards long. Within it, and now under their feet, were stone steps that descended into some kind of valley full of monoliths.

  John didn’t like it and said so.

  But Chadwick just descended into the valley, skirting around the stone pillars. Running a hand over the giant stone blocks that were standing twice as tall as himself, he said with astonishment, “It’s just like the Osireion at Abydos.”

  “In Egypt?” Hunter inquired, looking down at him.

  “In The House of a Million Years… The temple of Seti I, dedicated to Osiris. It’s identical to it. It’s unfinished, of course… but a hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, two colonnades dividing it into three naves, and cells in the four corners…” He began whispering to himself, saying over and over again, “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Chris called down, “What doesn’t make sense?”

  And Chadwick finally seemed to snap out of his internal musings. “Why this would be in Bermuda.” He climbed back up the steps. “The experts want you to believe that the Osireion was built by Seti, but that’s just because they can’t comprehend what the evidence really suggests.”

  Nick looked around intolerantly. “We’re looking for Jackson, remember?”

  But John’s interest in the strange site was growing. “And what does the evidence suggest?”

  “That it was built in some distant epoch, maybe even in the time of Zep Tepi.”

  “What is Zep Tepi?” John had never heard of it before. None of them had.

  “First Time. The period all the ancient records and traditions of Egypt claim the gods — Ptah, Ra, Shu, Geb, Orion, Set and Horus — ruled on the earth.”

  “Built by the gods?” Paul asked, amused. “I can see why you lost your job.”

  But Nick was altogether missing the wonder of their surroundings. “It’s a bunch of rocks stacked on top of each other. They’re probably left over from the set of a movie or something.”

  “You’re wrong and, quite frankly, have no clue what you’re talking about,” Chadwick answered. “From the Pacific Islands, to Egypt, to South America and Asia, there are ancient ruins that share striking similarities to this. But no one knows who built them or for what purpose. The only thing they know is that the technology used to build them wasn’t supposed to exist at the time. For instance, the Trilithon in the Roman temple of Jupiter at Baalbek contains the three largest building blocks ever used in a man-made structure. Each one weighs a thousand tons. They sit side-by-side on the fifth level of a cyclopean wall. The six stones they sit on weigh four hundred and fifty tons each — thirty feet long, fourteen feet high, and ten feet deep.” He took a breath. “The so-called experts believe it was built by the Romans, though there’s no record of it being built by anyone, or an explanation as to how the rocks were quarried, transported, or even lifted.”

  If his excitement was the head of the passionate report then fear was its tail, and they were chasing each other in circles, his eyes intermittently revealing an underlying belief that, fascinated or not, all was not right with this place. He continued, “The physical magnitude itself is a mystery, but if this site is like the others… I’m almost positive you’ll find that a precise measuring system was used, perhaps even one based on the megalithic yard. You’d certainly find a stellar orientation and, more than likely, a perfect alignment with the poles. A lot of these sites contain at least that much, the Great Pyramid probably being the best example.”

  “And no one knows how they were built?” Chris inquired, doubtful.

  At which point Nick began singing the Louis Armstrong song. “Nobody knows…”

  “Shut up, Nick,” Hunter said.

  Chadwick resumed, “Anyway, all we really have are the legends of the people who inherited the sites.”

  Chris frowned. “Inherited?”

  “Most archeologists want to believe that since a certain civilization lived among such structures it must have been responsible for constructing them. The Mayan calendar is a good example of a civilization getting the credit for a body of wisdom that’s a lot older than itself — either the Olmecs or a people even before them. In many cases, the records we have of certain civilizations blatantly admit to inheriting their wisdom from much older sources. But such concepts don’t compliment our preconceived notions of evolution and so we ignore them and label them fables.”

  “So what do the legends say?” And, as if in expectation of the answer, Chris tightened his grip on the submachine gun even
before Chadwick opened his mouth.

  “Well, in the case of Baalbek, they say that the city was built by Cain before the Great Flood and named after his son Enoch — which seems to be the same city referred to in Genesis 4:17. They say it was destroyed by the Flood and was later rebuilt by a race of giants.”

  “Giants?” John whispered.

  “Actually, according to most of the legends, it was giants that were responsible for these anomalies. And in cases like El Fuerte, or ‘the place of the giants,’ the architecture is built to such a massive scale — down to chairs, beds, entranceways, and tunnels — that it seems they were specifically designed to accommodate very tall people.”

  Thunder rumbled through the sky.

  Chadwick again wiped off his glasses. “The giant legends go back to the beginning of mankind, appearing in the earliest records we have. Jewish, Greek, Norse, Hindu, Siamese, Indian, Mongol…”

  “And this is the stuff Ronald wanted to talk to you about?” Hunter wondered aloud.

  “This stuff is my forte. It’s how he got me to meet him.”

  Paul began to stray away from the group, his attention captured by something else. “What’s that smell?” He was wiggling his nose.

  “I don’t smell anything.” Hunter watched as Paul turned the corner around some more scattered blocks the size of U-hauls.

  A few seconds later, he reappeared from behind the wall. “I think you should see this.”

  They all joined him while the sound of thunder drum-rolled across the heavens.

  It was resting in the center of a circular pattern that had been manipulated into the grass, its short, round body topped with a flat surface. But rather than resembling the paler limestone rocks that made up the surrounding walls, this particular rock was black.

  Chris stepped closer. “What is it?”

  “An altar.” Chadwick’s unstable voice could hardly be heard above the increasing wind. “But this figure on the ground resembles the Neolithic henges in Britain.”

  “Like Stonehenge?” Chris asked.

  He shook his head. “Britain has as many circles without stones as it does with them. Stonehenge was probably a later development on an already existing circle… They were used by astronomer priests as observatories…” His voice trailed into a whisper, his mind trying to compute for itself what was before him. “The Thornborough Henges reflect the constellation Orion, as does the Pyramid complex at Giza — Orion being the manifestation of Osiris. This circle, if it is like the Neolithic ones in Britain, certainly used megalithic measurements…”

  John stopped him from continuing. “What do you mean by ‘megalithic’ measurements?”

  With great effort, Chadwick lifted his eyes from the huge circle sweeping around their feet. “It’s supposedly the unit of length the builders used, what would be sixteen point three two inches to us. It’s hard to explain. A pendulum clock, a three hundred and sixty-six-day year that was determined by the number of days passing between winter solstices, three point nine three minutes for a star to travel one megalithic degree — there were three hundred and sixty-six megalithic degrees—” He fell silent, realizing how futile it was to go on.

  Just then, Chris felt his feet begin to sink. Looking down, he saw a red liquid bubbling up around the soles of his boots. “What the hell?” He lifted a leg and examined the dark substance stuck to his foot. “It’s blood,” he said, and realized that it wasn’t actually a black stone they had been staring at after all. He took a step backward, something crunching under his heel in the process. Spinning to see what it was, he discovered bones protruding out of the ground, rotting flesh still clinging to them. The soil in which he was beginning to sink was regurgitating its buried victims. He took a few quick strides away from the circle, eager to find firmer ground. “I think we should go,” he said.

  But Nick still wasn’t appreciating the bizarre undertone of their situation. “They’re probably animal bones left over from some weird pagan ritual the local crazies get off on.”

  To which John responded by pointing down at Chris’ footprints, at an exposed human hand that was reaching out of the ground and begging for assistance. “Animals with hands?”

  And then a terrifying sound exploded from somewhere in the forest behind them, moving them all closer to each other. Suddenly, as if his life depended on it, Chadwick took off to retrieve the submachine gun he’d dropped earlier. Hugging it to his chest, he walked up to John and whispered, “I told you there was something wrong with this place.”

  And it was actually Chadwick Aland who then led them away from the site — it having no business being on the Bermuda they knew of.

  ****

  The cedar forest eventually gave way to a sandy clearing scattered sporadically with large clumps of grass. Jagged rocks poked up out of the ground near the clearing’s end before dropping down into the tide below.

  The wind was stronger at this elevation, and Chris found himself chasing after his hat, hoping to get it before it flew off the cliff and went out to sea. Paul was laughing at him.

  Ignoring them, John struggled to keep the map from being torn from his hands as he tried to compare it with their location. And even though there weren’t any streets or buildings to help mark his location, the geography was a near-perfect match, and he showed the others.

  Not exactly ready to accept what the map implied, they chose to ignore it, instead continuing along the outskirts of the forest, each one sure that this all had to be some twisted dream.

  And then came the next mystery.

  A row of damaged and neglected huts stood silently in the shade of more palmetto trees, stretching across a length of deserted beach.

  “Wattle and daub,” Chadwick stated.

  “What?” Hunter whipped rain off his smooth head with a flick of his wrist.

  “It’s the name of the method,” he explained. “You pound wooden posts into the ground every two feet or so, forming a row.” He pointed to the huts, showing him. “Then you weave branches between them, filling the spaces with a mixture of mud, clay, and animal hair. The roof is palmetto-thatched. The settlers in Jamestown used this method.”

  “It’s some kind of preserve?” Nick asked while searching for a tourist sign that would justify such an explanation.

  Chad shook his head. “No way. Hurricanes would have destroyed these a long time ago. Could be an abandoned replica, but—”

  The distinct sound of a weapon being readied made them all turn, its metallic sliding and clicking clearly identifying itself above the palmettos’ rustling leaves and the crashing surf behind them.

  It was Paul. He was aiming his submachine gun into a hut that had collapsed on itself.

  “What is it?” Hunter called to him.

  But Paul just swore under his breath and turned away. “It stinks.”

  Curious as to what could’ve triggered Paul’s aggressive response, they made their way to the hut.

  And there, sitting on the floor, back against a wall but mostly covered by the fallen roof, was a body.

  Hunter entered the hut, trying to ignore the stench of rotting flesh, and began clearing the debris from off the corpse. Once he had the majority of it removed, the body’s full condition became disturbingly clear.

  It was an old man… Dark green flesh covered his bare stomach, and all other exposed skin was brown. His neck and face were swollen with gasses, his eyes sunk back into his skull.

  “In the middle of putrefaction, been dead maybe two weeks.” Hunter’s explanation wasn’t needed by anyone, being ex-Special Forces and an archeologist, they had all seen their fair share of death in one way or another. Hunter leaned over and grabbed the lifeless old man, spinning him around.

  “What’re you doing?” Chadwick asked.

  “He’s wearing Levis.”

  Nick was nervously rubbing his stump, something John noticed he did when stressed. “What did you expect, a thong?”

  Hunter reached into the back pocket of th
e guy’s jeans and pulled out a wallet. He tossed it to Chris.

  “How’d he die?” John asked, peeking into the hut.

  “Probably the roof fell on his head. Broke his neck.”

  Nick nodded. “Probably exploring the island when the storm hit. Came in here to wait it out and…”

  Chris was staring out at the other huts while absentmindedly rubbing the black leather wallet in his hand. “You think so, Nick?”

  “I don’t think so.” Chadwick stepped forward and entered the hut. Kneeling beside the rotting corpse, he began digging his fingers into the wall. “Look.” And he uncovered a pair of feathers protruding from out of the mud and clay mixture. Getting a firm hold of it, he pulled the long arrow back into the hut.

  A few strings of profanity escaped the lips of the ex-SEALs.

  Chadwick ignored them. “That’s strange,” he murmured to himself, his eyes fixated on the crystal arrowhead. “Never seen one of these before.”

  “Come on,” Chris urged, taking a step backward. “Let’s just find Jackson.”

  “We should check the rest of them,” John said.

  But even with an abundance of arrows scattered about, all the other huts proved clear of bodies.

  They left the huts, and the hanging sensation of death that lingered over them, behind.

  Chadwick came up alongside John. “Where are we, John? This can’t be Bermuda. You said so yourself.” He pointed to the backpack, indicating the map that was in it.

  John leaned closer so that only Chadwick could hear him. “But it is Bermuda. There’s too many similarities with the map for it not to be.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He sighed in surrender, not caring by now how it would sound, and related what had disturbed him back on the boat. “The first settler on Bermuda, when given a choice, chose Cooper’s Island as his own instead of St. David’s, because he thought that there was treasure buried on it.” He quickly retrieved the map from his bag and unfolded it. “But the map shows both Cooper’s Island and St. David’s as being the same island… Look,” he pointed to the southern perimeter of the airfield, “all of this up to Swing Bridge is not a natural border. The US enlarged the island when they built the airfield back in 1941. But I’m telling you, the islands we saw earlier were right here.” He pointed to the west part of St. David’s, to the airport. “Right where they used to be…” Then he moved his finger to the southeast of St. David’s and to a road that was labeled, Cooper’s Road. “The channels were filled to expand St. David’s, turning all these islands into one. That’s why Hunter thought the island we saw was too small to be St. David’s.”