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

by The Behrg

  One swipe and the line severed.

  Leech seemed to levitate a fraction of a second in the air, his arm swinging up with his dart gun toward Dugan, then he was lost. His scream floated up to them, slowly dissipating like the fog.

  Verse XII.

  A few patters of raindrops became a torrential downfall, the water torrid, strangling in its ferocity. The fog lifted with it, about the only benefit Dugan and his men could derive from such a storm. What would have ordinarily felt cleansing now felt tainted and sullied. How much of the weather could he trust anymore?

  How much of his own senses?

  He stood at the edge of the newly formed tepui that hadn’t existed twenty-four hours ago and placed his notebook back into the inner pocket of his vest. The notebook that now held one additional name.

  Kendall and Chupa had already taken off in one direction, Cy and Zephyr in the other, following the perimeter of the cliffs. They had to know what they were up against; what the Shaman had done. Dugan was confident they would meet each other at some point. There would be no way down.

  They would reconvene in town rather than the Facility. Dugan wanted to know whether the helicopters that had flown in earlier were still there and intact. It might be their only hope of continuing the hunt.

  If the town was still there, that was.

  “What are you gonna name it?” Rojo asked.

  He sat, leaning heavily against the same kapok tree the rope had been tied to. The rain was just beginning to soak through the shelter of overhead leaves and branches, the Amazon floor base typically not receiving moisture until a good half hour of showers. Dugan smelled the heavy scent of the cigar Rojo was smoking, and though it didn’t cause his throat to tighten, it did create an invisible itch.

  Rojo looked spent. Drops of rain splattered onto his bald head, leaking down the sides of his face and collecting in his beard. The task of holding their combined weight on the line had taken a lot from the big man. “Well, are you?”

  “Name what?” Dugan asked. He sucked on his cigarette.

  “The temple of the gods we’re all standing on,” Rojo said. “You’ll be the first to name one in over a hundred years.”

  Dugan looked back out at the grounds beneath them. The heavy lines of rain falling at an angle blurred the forest below.

  Rojo continued, “That is what we’re saying this Shaman did, right? Create a tepui from thin air? Raise a mountain from a flat plain with an earthquake? Shit, Dugan, I stood there at that ledge watching you three dangle from a line a thousand feet above the ground and I barely believe it myself.”

  “Not a question of whether he did it, it’s a question of why,” Dugan said.

  “Grain of a mustard seed.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The Bible,” Rojo said. “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains. What it says anyway.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I didn’t this morning.”

  Dugan breathed out a heavy plume of smoke. “Ask why, not how. Why would the Shaman do something like this? Either he’s trying to scare us off, which if he’s learned anything about us, would be pointless, or he’s trying to flee.”

  “So you think this is his Great Wall of China? Keeping us trapped up here while they’re down there?”

  “I think he knew we were close and that he’s growing desperate.”

  “I’ve seen desperate men, Dugan. This … well, this feels like someone showing off. A man doing something just to prove he can.”

  Oso stepped out from beneath a tree, holding his notebook out toward Dugan, while shielding it to keep it dry.

  “What’s it say?”

  Dugan ripped off the page from the small spiral bound pad. “He says you’re wrong. Only a god can do this.”

  “What, hold the weight of three dangling mukus over a cliff by his lonesome self? You found me out, Oso. I am a god!”

  Oso scratched out a new note, handing it to Dugan who smiled.

  “He says he didn’t know gods were so ugly.”

  Rojo laughed. “Even the mute’s a comedian. Well, what about it, Oso? You always stayed behind when we ascended these things. Is this the first time you’ve set foot on a tepui? Shouldn’t you be throwing yourself off as a sacrifice for walking on holy ground or something?”

  A flash of metal danced before Oso’s hands, his blade flying out. It struck the ground between Rojo’s legs, inches from flesh. Rojo only laughed harder.

  “If my ex had been as good at conversation as you, we’d still be together,” Rojo said, tearing the knife from the soft dirt and tossing it back to the native.

  Dugan wiped at the rain on his brow, letting the now useless cigarette fall from his lips. “Beard.”

  “What?” Rojo asked.

  “It’s what I’d name the tepui. B-Y-R-D, pronounced beard, after Richard Evelyn Byrd. He was a naval officer, the youngest admiral in the history of the US Navy. A lifelong explorer. The first man to reach both North and South Poles by air. But what’s fascinating about Admiral Byrd, along with his … curiosity, are the rumors that surround his last journey, his expedition to the North Pole.

  “They say he had two journals documenting the event; the first was published by the American Geographical Society and expanded upon in his autobiography. The second … well, that’s where the rumors begin. Supposedly he showed that journal to only three men in his lifetime. In it, he described an encounter he was encouraged to leave out of his official report.”

  “An encounter?” Rojo barked a laugh. “You talking aliens?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe something else entirely. What bothers me isn’t what he found, it’s why he wouldn’t share it. A man like Byrd, searching for greater truths his entire life, finally discovers the unthinkable and then takes it to his grave.”

  “Probably knew everyone would say he caught frostbite in the brain or something.”

  “He wasn’t crazy, he was brilliant; a Freemason, a mind like few in that generation.”

  A crackle of something falling came from a nearby tree, a waterlogged branch or overripe fruit dropping to the mossy floor.

  “Whatever he learned, whatever he saw, he never went on an expedition again. In fact, six months after he returned, he confined himself to his home in upstate Boston, spent the next seventeen years there. Never left his room, let alone the house.”

  “You really think he found something alien out there?”

  Dugan took a moment before answering. “I do. But no more alien than what we’ve discovered here. I think there are truths in this world we can’t comprehend. Revealed in one light they might appear otherworldly, godly even. Yet in another light, as common as projecting moving images onto a screen or making glass out of sand. It all depends on where we’re standing.”

  Rojo laughed quietly to himself. “Tepui Beard. Here I thought you were naming it after this little baby.” He pulled at the long red whiskers hanging from his chin, glistening with the moisture.

  “All depends on where you’re standing,” Dugan said.

  Rojo rose to his feet, stretching his arms and cracking his neck with a quick turn. “Alright, I’m ready. But if the others ask, tell ‘em you named it after me. We could even call it Tepui Red Beard.”

  They started back beneath the cover of dripping trees, the jungle transformed by the wetness. Plant leaves were turned in, water trickling down vines and stalks. Dugan stepped past a pitcher plant, a Heliamphora, attached to a low branch. It was a carnivorous plant that looked like a bloated balloon cucumber, its small opening allowing insects to pass through then get lodged in the water and enzymes at its center. It seemed everything survived by killing something else here in the Amazon.

  Oso tapped Dugan on the elbow, proffering his small notepad. One word was scribbled on it.

  Inktomi

  Dugan glanced back at the native, remembering the word. The child had repeated it in his rantings before the earthquake. And just before he took
his last breath. The native that had escaped had also used it, when they first met. Guayanata.

  Oso pointed back to the pad with his lips. Dugan grabbed it, flipping the page. He read:

  Is what they call you

  The Spider

  “So I have a name. The spider.” Dugan lit a fresh cigarette, oddly excited at his title. You only give a name to an enemy when you know they are a threat.

  “Well the Shaman will have to do more than move a mountain to get out of my web.”

  Verse XIII.

  Marcus Stanton walked swiftly through the halls of the Facility, his assistant, Shannon, by his side. Her tan poly-suede skirt swished back and forth with every one of her steps, forced to match his stride. In heels, no less. Neither of them could talk out here in the open, not of what they had learned, nor of what needed to be done.

  With Dugan out on some fool’s errand, the decisions were now being left to him. Or Dr. Morley and him, though who could trust that crackpot scientist?

  He pulled a small lip balm from the pocket of his sports coat, dousing his lips in an all-natural vanilla bean coating. A few Facility workers nodded hello, others stepping aside to avoid being trampled. Everyone was out of sorts today, the earthquake causing much more than just physical damage.

  No answers had come at the control center; communication with the outside world had somehow been disrupted during the quake. It all felt like some giant conspiracy, leaving him as the fall guy, with no one to warn him or help spread the blame.

  And holy hell, was there a lot of blame to go around.

  They stopped in front of the Gold elevators, Shannon depressing the button. Each stairwell and elevator grouping in the Facility was designated by color.

  Except for the elevator leading down to the Freezer.

  That storage room of decaying native bodies, where Dr. Morley conducted his diabolical research, had become more than a stain that needed scrubbing. Because of the earthquake, too many of the workers now knew of it. People had gone down to help search for survivors, never realizing that once you made it down there it was where you stayed. Or at least that was how it was supposed to be.

  Now that stain had grown into a disease. And it was spreading.

  The elevator doors opened silently. Stanton walked in, Shannon following him and pressing the button for the lower floor. There they would meet with Morley who, with any luck, would be incoherent with painkillers and morphine.

  The doors slid shut.

  Just as the elevator started to descend, Shannon pulled the knob below the buttons, the elevator shuddering to a stop.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  She turned to him and a hunger raced inside. She was stunning; blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, better revealing her delicate neck and full upturned mouth. Her small waist was accentuated by her tight skirt, long slender legs he could have nibbled on for days. Her light blue blouse had no frills but showed just enough cleavage to pull the eyes toward it again and again.

  “Look at my face,” she said.

  “You mean that’s not why you stopped the elevator?”

  “We have a serious problem,” Shannon said, all business. “Forget ITOB or the CDER inspection. If word leaks of what has been going on under your watch? It’ll be the GRSBA.”

  Global Regulatory, Safety & Biometrics Agency. Less of a watchdog, they were more an international taskforce.

  “We have it contained.”

  “Not yet, you don’t.”

  “Everyone here knew what Dr. Morley and his team were doing,” Stanton said.

  “Suspected, yes. But when engineers and IT personnel – even chefs? – were exposed to what happened down there? When they saw hundreds of those … dissected bodies? That shakes your faith a little more than when you just suspect something’s going on.”

  Stanton tilted his head back, staring up at the mirror on the ceiling. God, this would make a good room to make love in. Why haven’t we done that yet?

  “So what do you want me to do, Shannon? I can’t flash an entire facility. Not without orders.”

  “You’re right. You have to do more than that. What do you think Umner Corp is more likely to forgive? A swift executive decision that will protect their long-term assets and viability? Or a delayed reaction due to a fault in communications that could level the entire company?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Your security detail – Dugan still doesn’t know about them?”

  “No, they’ve been offsite.”

  “Maybe it’s time to call them onsite.”

  Shannon reached up and unbuttoned the top of her blouse. She continued slowly, sensually, her garment opening like the petals of a flower to the sun.

  “They put you in charge for a reason,” she said. “You won them over. Just like you did me.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, Stanton forgot all his concerns.

  The Facility.

  The earthquake.

  The dead bodies.

  All sunk beneath the rising waves of ecstasy.

  He rode the wave in an infinite number of universes, the image of their bodies intertwined bouncing between the mirrored surfaces of the elevator for what seemed an eternity.

  On and on and on.

  Once the tide settled, they helped each other reclothe.

  “You’re amazing,” she whispered, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him on the neck.

  He cupped her breast, bending down to kiss her. “We’ll do it, but not until Dugan and his men return. It’s no good if we put down the rabbits but leave the hounds roaming around.”

  “You’re sure that’s the right decision?” she asked.

  He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, watching as a thousand other Marcus Stanton’s nodded alongside him. “Positive.”

  Verse XIV.

  Faye ran her nails across Donavon’s back. His head was bent forward, hanging over the toilet bowl in Sir William’s tiny bathroom, about as clean as one could expect from a bachelor’s pad. The copper stain spiraling around the inside of the bowl was probably permanent. At some point in the night, with the assistance of the concoction of painkillers and “magic juice” Sir William had given him for his wrist, Donavon had woken with a stomach that was more than upset. It was furious.

  Faye had hoped his condition would be a little better upon her and Grey’s return. Apparently it had only gotten worse.

  “I think I’m good,” Donavon said, wiping at his mouth with a rag.

  Faye leaned in and kissed the top of his head. “Sorry you were the one to come down with this.”

  His teeth chattered despite the hot and sticky bathroom. The rain had a way of making the humidity more pungent; rather than cooling the place down it had transformed Sir William’s home into a sauna.

  Donavon clambered to his feet, his left arm raised up in a sling. He turned on the sink, splashing water on his face with one hand. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  Faye reentered the atrium of Sir William’s home, the oddly concaved panels of his domed roof less than concentric. Without the presentation of the stars manifested on those walls at night, Faye wondered how lonely this place would become.

  Kenny sat on a fold out chair, his hands gripped tightly in front of him. Sir William stood near the iron staircase, Grey at a throw’s distance, pacing back and forth. A sheaf of papers spilled outward from a desk in the back of the room, announcing the monkey’s location.

  The sound of Donavon back at the toilet caused Faye to wince. Spree’s head appeared briefly, registering the noise, then he disappeared back behind the desk.

  “So?” Faye asked. “What’s the consensus?”

  Grey avoided looking at her.

  “Like I said before, you’re welcome here as long as you like,” Sir William said. “It’s not often I get visitors and when I do they’re seldom as entertaining as your little group.”

  The sullen expres
sions of both Grey and Kenny weren’t what Faye would have described as entertaining. “Thank you. You don’t know how much that means,” she said.

  Kenny blew out air into his hands. “The pilot’s willing to wait?”

  “He doesn’t have a choice, with the storm,” Faye said. “Look, I want this to be a group decision, not me telling you what we’re going to do. It’s why I wanted to discuss it in the first place.”

  “What happens if we do find this man you’re looking for?” Kenny asked. “Is he dangerous? A terrorist?”

  “He’s a phytopharmacologist. It’s a big word but not scary.” The toilet flushed from the bathroom. Faye continued, “He studies plants, herbs; finds ingredients for drug companies.”

  “And that’s bad?” Kenny asked, picking at a zit on his neck.

  “Spree!” Sir William shouted, just before a carved stone fish fell from a shelf on the wall. The monkey was already in the air, leaping to the next shelf.

  The statue hit the ground and shattered, a piece of coral reef sliding all the way across the room.

  “That damn monkey!” Sir William headed down the metal staircase. “I’ve got to find a broom …”

  Faye was grateful for the distraction; she had to regroup, come at this from a different angle. “Yes, this is dangerous. But so is anything worth doing. Men like the one we’re looking for are paid by the big pharmas, companies with billions of dollars to spend. But when these men are paid for their discoveries? No one asks how they found it.”

  “So what, he’s stealing stuff?” Kenny asked.

  “Does Donny know about him?” Grey said.

  Faye glanced back at the bathroom but Donavon was still predisposed. A good thing; he hated being called Donny.

  “In South Africa there was a small tribe believed to have been descendants of the Khoikhoi discovered by three spelunkers. These caves in South Africa are immense, prehistoric, and apparently this ancestral tribe had been holed up in one of the offshoots for who knows how many centuries. Anyway, one of these cave divers was injured, I think he fell and shattered his femur or pelvis or something, and so his two friends go off searching for something to make a stretcher out of and run into these natives. You can read the whole story in a National Geographic from a few years ago. I can’t remember the details but this medicine man ends up healing their friend in a matter of a week. Broken bones stitched back together and all, and this guy ends up walking out of the cave with his two buddies.