The Creation: Axis Mundi (The Creation Series Book 1)

by The Behrg

  “So do we have a plan?” Sir William asked.

  “Storm the gates?” Kenny said.

  “Try not to get arrested again?” Grey added.

  Faye frowned at him. “We stick together; that’s the plan. And whatever happens, do not stop filming.”

  They entered the dirt path between the two fence posts, Faye making sure Grey and Kenny both got shots of the log fence. Kenny recorded the group walking while Grey’s camera roamed over the large yard. Malcolm carried a microphone attached to a long pole he had assembled from one of their bags, a boom mic, they called it.

  Along the perimeter of the fence were bundles of stripped tree trunks. Strapped together, they were easily wider and taller than a house. They were bound with thick metal wire then stacked atop each other in pile after pile. Thousands of trees lying inert. Helpless.

  “Most milling companies claim to plant a tree for every one they cut down,” Faye said, facing the camera. She raised her voice to be heard over the chaos around them, despite Malcolm’s mic hanging overhead.

  Donavon moved in next to her, his jaw set as he looked off in the distance.

  Faye continued. “From the sheer amount of deforestation taking place around the world we know those numbers are an impossibility. According to the FDFAO, approximately five thousand acres of forests are disappearing every hour, victims to the kind of butchery you see before you. And for every thousand trees that are torn down for consumption, a single sapling will be planted. Considering the average maturation for a tree to yield enough lumber for harvesting is between twenty to forty years, we’re looking at a cycle that is unsustainable, cannibalizing itself within the next two decades.”

  “Unless something changes,” Donavon said, giving the camera his best soap opera stare.

  As they walked, Faye pointed across the lot to where the finished timber was stored beneath aluminum canopies. Each covered canopy stretched further in length than a football field.

  “Most mills such as the one here in Venezuela convert their logs into lumber for easier transport. Over half of the world’s timber and almost three-fourths of the world’s paper goods are consumed by just a fifth of the world’s population: The United States, Europe and Japan.”

  Faye and her team moved off the road as several heavy duty trucks rolled past and out the gates. Wood chips and sawdust flew into the air with their passing. Faye rubbed at her eyes, trying to remove the microscopic slivers.

  Some of the trucks dragged open inverted trailers meant to transport logs. Others carried smaller yet more dangerous vehicles, the ones with twisting arms and angular saws, mechanical centipedes that were always hungry and never satisfied.

  Grey shouted, “It’s too loud – let’s just pick up the shots and we’ll overdub voice work.”

  “Probably better to have Donavon saying this anyway,” she said.

  Grey nodded in agreement.

  Large cranes bowed overhead with the load of logs, transporting them to where their dissection would begin. Sawdust spit from a giant tower connected to one of a series of buildings. A dump truck below whisked the pulp to an incinerator manned by several Venezuelans, all wearing heat masks. The two rising plumes of smoke they had spotted the previous day were being vented out of two shafts.

  Other workers moved about, ignoring Faye and her companions. Forklifts trucking past, men – and even women – all wearing heavy gloves, plastic goggles and earplugs. She was surprised there were no hardhats.

  “Where to?” Donavon bellowed.

  Faye barely heard him over the sheer level of noise, the sounds of industry at war with the peacefulness of the jungle beyond the fences.

  “Is there an office?” she yelled, looking about.

  Sir William shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s Venezuela, darling.”

  It was answer enough, she supposed.

  “Then we go inside. The conveyor lines!”

  They moved toward the main industrial building. Roll-up gates wide enough for tractors revealed a labyrinth of machinery inside. A few workers watched as they passed, not a single one coming to investigate their reason for being there.

  Well if you don’t come to us, we will certainly go to you, she thought. Donavon clamped his hand on her shoulder and she knew, that in this moment, they were about to make history.

  Verse XXIII.

  Footfalls echoed in the Freezer, the sounds of someone being chased. At the end of the long row of hospital beds and occupants, a haggard Dr. Morley appeared. He bent down, hands resting on knees. Even from this distance Dugan could see the heavy rise and fall of his chest, his heart working overtime.

  Oso quickly appeared, passing Morley without pause. Another man and woman were a few steps behind him, both in lab coats.

  None of Dugan’s men had ever set foot in the Freezer before, content to play their part and nothing more. They all knew what happened down here to some extent. Rumors of this place were alive everywhere in the Facility, a security issue Blake was not only aware of, but encouraged. Hushed whispers and dark secrets spreading from ear to ear created an environment of fear and exaggeration, the perfect combination to keep employees in check. In most facilities those rumors would grow to overshadow any of the actual work being done. Here, Blake wondered if they even came close.

  The young native sitting in the bed began to convulse. The IV lines and tubes running from his body carried those tremors up to the machines they were attached to, metal racks and equipment rattling around him. His chanting never ceased.

  “Te’lakum Shyan’do’hal Inktomi Ma’falak.”

  “He keeps repeating part of it,” Dugan said as Oso arrived.

  Oso brought out his notepad, grabbing the felt marker from his ear. Dugan stood over his shoulder, reading as he wrote.

  end beginning

  Oso slashed through the words hurriedly.

  beginning ends

  He paused as if unsure how to interpret what he was hearing, then turned to a new page.

  destroy the world

  He crossed out the first word and replaced it.

  create

  is the same

  He circled both the word he had crossed out and the new word written next to it. Destroy and Create.

  Oso flipped to a new page.

  darkness comes

  death becomes

  life

  Oso’s face suddenly went pale. He tore at a new sheet.

  stop him now

  “Who? The Shaman?”

  the child

  stop him

  NOW!!!

  Dugan had never seen Oso use punctuation in his sentences. Ever. He looked from the native beside him to the one on the bed, this child in the throes of some power beyond himself.

  “Get me a tranquilizer,” Dugan yelled.

  Of the two scientists who had joined them during Oso’s writing, a middle-aged woman moved quickly to the long metal cabinet at Dugan’s command. She threw open a drawer and began searching through it.

  “What’s he saying?” the other scientist asked, a man with curly hair Dugan hadn’t met before.

  “The end is coming,” Dugan answered.

  “Not very original,” Morley said, having just arrived. His breaths were labored, sweat running down his face.

  Dugan noticed Oso writing again and glanced down at the notepad. No new message; Oso was underlining the word “NOW” repeatedly.

  Frantically.

  His marker wearing through the page and beginning to scribble on the blank one beneath.

  “The tranq,” Dugan shouted.

  “Here!” The woman held a capped syringe high. Instruments on the metal tray next to her began to rattle, though it wasn’t attached to the child, or the bed.

  Morley stepped forward, almost falling. He braced himself against the bed’s rail then immediately pushed back, abhorred at having come that close to the ranting native.

  The woman scientist’s eyes roamed the room, a look of abject horror on her face
. Every bed on the aisle was now shaking, the noise like being trapped in some elaborate pinball machine. The native child’s eyes had risen into his head, the soft white of his sclera interlaced with red weepy veins.

  “Just another tremor,” Dugan said. “Hold on! We ride it out.”

  Dugan heard the Shaman’s name again from the child’s lips just before Oso held a fresh page before him, a haunted look in his eyes.

  too late

  The jolt that hit was like a bomb exploding from beneath them, a geyser of rock and concrete displacing everything within its path. Bodies flew – equipment tumbling, beds colliding, from the pressure of some unseen force. A god swatting at a fly.

  Verse XXIV.

  Faye stood atop a motionless conveyor belt, the husks of tree trunks no longer moving toward the fifteen ton machine at the end of the line. The wicked blades and discs, jawing outward like crooked fangs from a gaping mouth, had finally fallen idle.

  As they should be, Faye thought.

  She waved the red banner above her head, its tail trailing, aware of both cameras pointed toward her. Below, the intern marched with Donavon and Sir William as well as a few workers who had surprisingly abandoned stations to pick up signs. Bright signs that would contrast beautifully with the dull metal of the machinery around them.

  STAND – UNITED

  STAND – FOR OUR MOTHER

  STAND – FOR OUR CHILDREN

  STAND – FOR OUR FUTURE

  In thirty two milling operations throughout the US, Canada, Asia, and South America, protests just like this would be video-recorded and broadcast over the internet and news stations across the world. It was a massive undertaking, the coordinated effort of a small army and more years than Faye wanted to admit, but Regener-Nation’s voice in a dozen countries would spread to the entire world.

  With a little luck that voice would be heard for generations.

  Grey tracked his camera between the rusted scaffolding supporting the weight of tracks and bins filled with slats of lumber. The sheer amount of machinery and moving parts, conveyor lines whisking trees through the automated process of dissimilation, was incredible. The workers standing before them were more for quality assurance and maintenance than anything, a human hand not even needed to turn a tree into a sheet of plywood.

  “We’re here, today, because our earth can’t wait for tomorrow,” Donavon said as Grey brought the camera forward, microphone hanging just overhead. “We’re here, today, because we want there to be a tomorrow!”

  He was good; Faye couldn’t keep the smile from her face. Frantz would see – despite what they’d had to go through, this would be worth it in the end. Even if she didn’t get what she had really come for. Though she was far from ready to give up on her other agenda.

  Three men approached from the back of the building, their confident strides at odds with the shuffled walk and confused faces of the gathered laborers. Faye recognized them immediately, despite their lack of formal apparel.

  These were “the suits.” The ones in charge.

  She was surprised it had taken them this long. Two of them looked local, though well off; Venezuelans who had bartered the rape of their countryside for a small pot of gold. The third was probably American. Whatever his title might be, he would be the one they needed on camera. You had to put a face to evil in order to rally people against it, and his was a face people could hate.

  Faye leapt from the conveyor belt to the ground as the men pressed through the small crowd before them. Kenny came around behind her in a wide shot. Now was her time to shine.

  “Donny Hughes,” the tall executive said as he approached. “It’s an honor to have you here on our yard!”

  The executive’s face was freshly shaved, grey hair sharp and cut short. His eyes were small, like they had been pressed too far into his head, the arch of his eyebrows jutting out disproportionately. In a tucked-in white polo shirt and khaki pants he stood with perfect posture, one arm outstretched.

  Donavon seemed taken aback that he had been recognized so quickly, but Faye knew they probably had cameras trained on them from the moment they had entered the yard.

  “We were hoping you could join us for a conversation somewhere a little cooler. We have an air conditioned office a few miles from here – believe me, it’s a novelty down here.” The man held a soft friendly smile on his face that never rose to his eyes.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Faye said, moving to stand next to Donavon.

  “Miss Moanna, please, we’d love to address any concerns you might have; in fact bring the cameras with you. We have nothing to hide.”

  Kenny let his camera fall from his face. “How does he know …?”

  “Oh, I know everything about you, Kenneth Moore, and your little group. Grey Peters, Malcolm Wu. You even recruited the town drunk into your retinue I see.”

  “I’m not drunk,” Sir William said, his words only slightly slurred.

  The man continued, “What is painfully obvious is that you know nothing about us. How, for instance, we are in full compliance with the APPCDLA, the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in Legal Amazon. How every truck that enters or leaves our plant does so with numbered plates. How this tiny village’s economy has been reinvigorated by our presence. Did you know we employ over forty percent of the town’s population?”

  Donavon deferred to Faye, taking a step back and glancing around. This was not going to plan.

  “Who you should be targeting are the dozens of illegal operators set up just miles around us, those heating wood and falsifying papers. We are as horrified at such groups as you are. Illegal logging is a bane we have donated millions of dollars towards thwarting, though not with the results we all would want. We are more than willing to help in any way we can.”

  “Those are nice words,” Faye said, “and I’m sure rehearsing them helps you sleep better at night but your conscience is far from guiltless. We’re here to put an end to the abuse.”

  To Faye’s surprise, the man before her smiled. “You and your kind are all the same. Decrying pollution while taking commercial jets to your next conference; bewailing the decadence of this generation while purchasing your latest iPhone; screaming the world is ending, the sky is falling, without ever lifting a hand to hold it in place.

  “Well, I have news for you. The world is not ending. But the seven billion people who make up the habitants of this planet have needs which are not going away. We are part of a sustainable logging operation that sees to those needs.”

  “There’s nothing sustainable about what you people do,” Faye said.

  “There’s a saying,” the man began, “if a tree-hugger yells in the woods and no one’s around to hear, is it any different than when they’re in front of a crowd?”

  “I thought it was, ‘does it still make a sound?’” Donavon said.

  “Exactly.”

  Faye felt her face flush. “You’re wrong – people are listening. They want change, they just don’t know where to start.”

  The man took a step back, sniffing loudly as if dismissing them. “Señor Madrid, call the policia. These people are trespassing on private property. Maybe another night in a cell will do them some good.”

  “How did you know –”

  Faye extended one hand, cutting Malcolm off and hoping to calm the others. “We stand united,” she said, “not as a few people making a stand but as nations, decrying the desecration that you and others like you have subjected –”

  “Forget the police,” the man said. “Call in the watchdogs. God knows Dugan owes us a favor.”

  The world stood still, Faye barely able to take in a breath. “Who did you say?”

  The man looked down at her derisively. “I wouldn’t wait around to find out.”

  “You said Dugan. James Dugan?”

  The man’s eyes widened just a fraction. “What are you really here for?”

  Before Faye could answer, an audible rumble rose in volume a
round them. The sound of an avalanche.

  The legs of scaffolding and metal racks began to vibrate, shaking violently, sawdust spilling from grates in the tracks above. A forklift rattled nearby, lines appearing in the dirt beneath where its shifting tracks were visible.

  Faye heard one of the workers shout “terramoto” as the crowd began to disperse, fleeing toward exits in a panicked rush. Others took cover beneath machinery and scaffolding. Though they had a few moments warning, no one was prepared for the quake that hit.

  The ground shot forward, Faye’s feet flying out from beneath her, her chin cracking against the hard earth. The taste of blood swarmed her mouth. Groans from machinery and equipment swaying were overshadowed by screams.

  Nearby an overhead track rattled loose, heavy tree trunks careening to its edge. A cable snapped with a deep wiry twang and the thousand pound trunks slammed into railings on their way down. Rather than stopping their fall, rails shrieked beneath the bending of metal, debris showering outward.

  One worker caught a metal shaft through the throat, his body trampled by those around him, and then the first of the logs hit the ground. Indecipherable shouts as hands were raised to ward off a tidal wave of lumber, and then the bodies simply were no more, flattened as easily as a swarm of beetles beneath stampeding hooves.

  As the logs continued to amass, they rolled over each other, tipping and overturning heavy equipment. Like a line of falling dominos, one triggering the next, the destruction spread.

  A metal tower swayed then collapsed, a leg dropping out from beneath it. A man screamed, coming down with it. A landing platform smothered the suits, burying them in a cloud of dust and rubble. An arm protruded from the cracked and broken platform as the swirling dust settled, the only evidence that three men had stood there just moments ago.

  Faye cried out in shock as she was lifted again from the ground, a ragdoll callously kicked by an uncaring child. She slammed into a metal rail, the breath knocked from her body. Flames erupted to her left, the heat washing against her.