Of course, Ferrell knew it was more likely that they’d defeat it together, and so far, they were proving that right. They had also been doing a phenomenal acting job. No one suspected their love, and no one knew about their late-night rendezvous. They were just that good.
Wright kissed her gently on the lips. He was done acting. “We need to keep moving,” he said.
She nodded and they were on their way. Before they’d walked ten feet, Ferrell stopped. “What’s wrong?” Wright asked.
“The dog,” Ferrell said. “Where’s Vesuvius?”
She looked and saw Vesuvius twenty feet back, staring at the wall, padding back and forth nervously. His high-pitched whines could be heard even across the distance. For the first time in a very long time, Ferrell felt compassion for a creature other than Wright. She felt ridiculous that it was for a dog, but he’d proven himself to be loyal and a capable warrior; two things she respected.
“You’re worried about the dog?” Wright said. “He’ll catch up when he’s ready.”
“No,” Ferrell said. “I’ll get him.”
She jogged back to the dog, who wagged his tail upon seeing her. It was another secret relationship she had kept on this mission. She and the dog had grown close. She knelt down and looked into his sad eyes. He’d lost his whole family.
She petted his head. “C’mon, boy. We gotta go.”
The dog didn’t respond. He just stared at the wall of stones.
“Look,” Ferrell said, feeling ridiculous for talking to the dog. “There’s a chance they might still be alive. If they are, we’ll find them.”
The dog wasn’t responding.
“Mirabelle?”
Vesuvius looked at her, probing her with his big brown eyes. She had his attention.
“Mirabelle and Merrill,” she said. Vesuvius wagged his tail. Ferrell stood and walked away slowly. “This way, boy. Mira and Merrill.”
Vesuvius gave one last look at the wall and stood. He caught up to Ferrell and stuck to her side, his head just under her hand. He stayed there for the entire mile hike out of the crevasse, all the way through the forest on the other side, and up to the river’s edge where they stopped. Across the river was a tall mountain with a sheer, gray cliff face. Cut into the stone was what looked like a fortress, complete with multiple layers, walls, gates, and towers. At the top was a large, crudely sculpted skull. A human skull. It was the fortress Merrill had told them about.
For a moment Ferrell wished the old man was with them again. He might provide some valuable intel on the place and what they could expect inside. But he wasn’t there, so they were going to have to do things the old-fashioned way. That didn’t bother Ferrell one bit.
“Over the river and through the woods,” Wright said.
Ferrell raised an eyebrow. “Your grandmother had two sets of teeth and twelve fingers?”
Wright smiled. “You should have seen her warts.”
They skirted the river, sticking to the trees and searching for a way to cross the fifty-foot-wide river without being swept away. Vesuvius stayed with them and remained quiet, as though he sensed their need for stealth. Ferrell did her best not to let her hand touch the dog’s head too often, because when it did she would pet him; she would rub his ears and squeeze his neck. She was already more attached than she should be, and she knew the dog wouldn’t survive the next leg of the journey. She didn’t deal with loss very well. She had a tendency to kill things.
Chapter 56
Whitney’s first sensation upon waking was that she was freezing cold. The second was a hammering headache. The floor beneath her was solid stone and did nothing to comfort her aching body as she levered herself up. Her eyes opened to slits and the sudden light stabbed at them, creating pain that reverberated through her head like rippling water in a bucket. She groaned and rubbed her temples.
Sitting up, she could clearly feel the texture of the floor on her flesh. She looked down and gasped. She was naked and wet. She looked around and found her clothes next to her in a heap. As she struggled to put on her clothes, a creeping fear took root. Had she been molested? She quickly probed between her legs with her fingers and felt no blood or pain, so the fear subsided briefly; but she had been stripped and apparently washed.
Maybe the Nephilim had sensitive noses. She didn’t smell like an old onion, though, not anymore. She dressed and scanned her surroundings. The cell was large, perhaps forty feet wide and thirty feet high. Two walls were solid, one had an open glassless window, and the last was a crisscross of metal bars. She was in a jail like any other, but this was a Nephilim-sized jail.
There were two beds attached to opposite walls, a blanket piled on each. At the back of the room was a large hole. The stain around the edge told Whitney what it was used for. She darted her eyes away and noticed a heap at the back corner of the cell. At first it appeared to be a pile of dirty laundry, but she quickly realized it was her father.
She ran to his side and found him naked and shivering, still unconscious. She yanked one of the blankets from the bed, finding it to be amazingly soft, and draped it over her father’s body. He stirred and clasped his head.
“It will pass,” Whitney said.
“Mira, you’re still with me?”
“We’re in a Nephilim jail cell.”
Merrill winced again. “What did he hit us with?”
“Some kind of powder.”
“Feels more like a baseball bat.” Merrill reached up a hand. “Help me up.” He started to stand. Whitney grabbed his hand and saved him from any embarrassment. “What is it?”
Whitney motioned with her eyes for him to look under the blanket. He glanced down through squinted eyes. “Oh.”
Five minutes later, Merrill was dressed and acting much more like himself. “This is amazing,” he said, tracing the contours of the wall with his hand. “The craftsmanship is clearly ancient, but it smacks of so many other cultures! It’s mind boggling!”
Whitney couldn’t have cared less how the jail cell was built. All that mattered was how they were going to get out of it, escape to the coast, and get off this ill-fated continent. “I think we should try to focus on the problems at hand, Dad.”
“Right,” Merrill said, turning away from the wall. “You’re right. Sorry.” He walked to the crisscrossed metal bars. The square openings were big enough for his head to fit through, but not his shoulders. He stuck his head through and looked in both directions.
“It’s just a hallway in either direction,” Whitney said. “Don’t bother looking.”
“Well, maybe my keen eyes will find something you didn’t.”
“Dad, there’s nothing out there to—”
Merrill yanked his head back in, his eyes were wide. He’d seen it. Across the hallway was another cell, but this was stacked ten feet high with human bodies. They appeared to be of several different nationalities. “They . . . the other teams . . .”
“I told you not to look.”
“We’re not prisoners,” Merrill said with a quiver in his voice. “We’re cattle, fresh meat for the slaughter.” He sneered. “Heroes of old . . .! They’re devils just like their fathers.”
Whitney knew that the least helpful thing for her father to do was go on a moral tirade. They needed to escape, or they would end up a Nephilim meal. She was about to calm him down when two voices echoed up the hallway. One was clearly a woman. Her voice held a normal pitch. The other, a deep bass, belonged to a Nephilim.
They were arguing. In English.
“Enki, please. They are different than the others,” the woman pleaded.
“They are human like you, teacher. If I find them to be useless, I will at least find them to be a filling meal.”
“Enki, I can see it in their eyes and among the articles they carried. They would make excellent teachers as well.”
A pause. Then, “The conflict between the sons of men and the Rephiam has begun anew. I cannot suffer their presence.”
“They ca
rried the book.”
“A Bible?”
“Yes, just as I did when you found me. And Enlil said they knew who he was, that the man called him by your first given name.”
Another pause.
“Please, master,” the woman said. “Spare them for now and judge their wisdom for yourself. I believe you will find them of some use.”
“Very well, teacher. But if you are wrong—”
“I know.”
The voices faded. They were moving away. Whitney and Merrill stood still, gripping the cell bars with tense hands. Their eyes met.
“Do you understand what you just heard?” Merrill asked.
Whitney nodded. “We have a friend, and that might be our only way out of here.”
“No,” Merrill blurted. “The names. Enki. Enlil.”
“What about them?”
“They’re Sumerian gods, worshiped by the first human civilization. The Nephilim are immortal. They have no souls, but they live forever. These Nephilim, the ones that escaped the flood, are the original leaders, the ancient gods worshiped by our ancestors as gods. There has been speculation that the Nephilim were the inspiration for several myths and deities—the Titans, the Pantheon, Olympus, Atlantis, Valhalla. All these myths that we have always believed to be conjured up by the human imagination reside in a foundation of fact.”
“You’re saying they’re gods?”
“To the uneducated, they might seem as much. They can’t be killed through any means we know of. They live forever. They’re giants with inhuman powers lent to them by their unholy fathers. In a crude sense, they are gods, having been worshiped throughout history. But they are not God.
“Enki was one of the major Sumerian gods. He was the god of water, fertility, and creation. His sacred fortress was called the Mound of Creation . . .” Merrill paused and a smile spread onto his face. “We could be standing in the very same Mound of Creation right now!”
“Dad, I don’t—”
“Wait,” Merrill said. “There’s more.”
“I don’t see how this is going to help us,” Whitney managed to say.
Merrill looked her in the eyes. “Know thy enemy.”
Whitney pursed her lips. He had a point.
Merrill continued. “After the biblical Adam, recorded in Sumerian history as Allum, their first king, the world had fallen and the sons of God, the rebel angels, were impregnating human women who then gave birth to Nephilim children. Enki was one of the first.” Merrill hopped up and sat on one of the beds. It was so high that his feet dangled two feet above the floor. “Enki was a key figure in the Sumerian flood story. The Sumerians wrote that Enki instructed Ziusudra, long thought to be the Sumerian Noah, on how to construct a ship that would save humanity from the coming flood. But it could have been a second boat. A boat used by the Nephilim to escape the flood. It’s right there in the Bible: ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward.’ The Nephilim built their own boat and escaped to Antarctica, where they’ve been ever since.”
“That’s all very fascinating,” Whitney said. “But it doesn’t help.”
Merrill grinned at her. “Oh, I think it will.”
Chapter 57
In the pitch darkness that enclosed Cruz and al-Aziz, breathing became distinctly difficult. Not from lack of oxygen, but from the thick plume of dust filling the void. Cruz found a bandana, wet it with water from his canteen, and wrapped it around his head, covering his mouth. After catching a breath, he pulled a second rag from his pocket, did the same, and handed it to al-Aziz.
After a minute, they had calmed down and found breathing easier. Cruz noticed that it wasn’t the wet cloth that made the air more breathable; he felt the dust being pulled away. The entrance to the small crevasse had been covered completely, but air was still moving.
Cruz stood and bumped his head on the stone ceiling. The space was about five feet tall and tapered at the top, so for those without cone heads, the actual standing height was closer to four and a half feet. Cruz opted to kneel. He dug through his bag and found two flashlights, his primary and a smaller backup. He clicked on the large light and handed the smaller to al-Aziz.
Al-Aziz was covered in gray dust. He looked like a survivor of a building collapse. His eyes were wide but he wasn’t panicked. Cruz was happy about that. Being trapped in a cave with a loco Arab was not his idea of a good time. Of course, being trapped in a cave with a sane terrorist didn’t rank much higher.
“The air,” al-Aziz said, holding out his hand. “It moves.”
“I know,” Cruz said. “Try to find the source.”
The two men set about the task quickly. Cruz searched with his flashlight, which cast a bright circle onto the gray stone and glistened off chunks of what looked like mica, the bendable, peel-able rock he’d played with as a child. It wasn’t common in southern California, but on a trip to Canada, he’d been able to mine some at a tourist mine and returned to So Cal with pounds of the stuff. Seeing it in such quantities made him nervous. It wasn’t exactly the strongest, most stable mineral. Their prison could collapse at any moment.
“Here,” al-Aziz said loudly. He crouched by the floor of the cave, peering into a long fissure. Cruz bent down next to al-Aziz and aimed his flashlight inside. The flat tunnel moved forward at a slight downward slope further than Cruz’s flashlight could penetrate.
It would be a hell of a squeeze, but the pulsing air told him that there was an opening somewhere. It was their only chance. They might not suffocate to death where they were, but they’d eventually starve and dehydrate. The risk had to be taken.
Cruz slid off his backpack. “We’re going to have to follow this tunnel and see where it leads. If we can get to an exterior wall, thinner than the one we’re in now . . .” Cruz tapped his backpack. “I’ll blow us a way out.”
Al-Aziz nodded. “I will go first. I am smaller.”
Cruz nodded. He wasn’t looking forward to this one bit. He felt like he was about to go on a deep-sea dive, but without the gear. He felt the weight of the mountain pushing in all around them like water. A sensation of drowning filled his body with dread for a moment, but his next breath reassured him that drowning was the least of his worries. He looked back down. Al-Aziz was already in the tunnel and shuffling forward.
Al-Aziz stopped suddenly. “Tie your pack around my foot. You will have access to it if you need it.”
Yeah, and you’ll be able to leave me in the dust if I get stuck, Cruz thought. But he was beyond distrusting the man. Al-Aziz, with his quick thinking, had saved their lives and risked his own by revealing the bomb around his waist was not trapped. Of course, al-Aziz had been lying about it being rigged in the first place..
Cruz looked around the small crevasse. What choice did he have but to trust al-Aziz? He quickly tied the backpack to al-Aziz’s foot. “Good to go.”
Al-Aziz shuffled forward on his elbows, military style.
Cruz knelt down and slipped forward on his belly. He was enveloped by cold stone a moment later. He picked his head up and felt the ceiling brush against his hair. Not a lot of space. He slid forward, pushing with his toes and pulling with his elbows. It wasn’t the fastest way of moving, but both men were disciplined and they made good time. The downward slope helped, too, but Cruz knew if there was a need to go backward, it might be nearly impossible.
Time seemed to move as slowly as they did. What felt like two hours was closer to twenty minutes, and after an actual hour, both men were exhausted. The tunnel slowly closed in on both sides. The space constricted so tightly around them now that Cruz pushed forward with his elbows stretched straight out, arms locked. He could only move a few inches at a time. His sides rubbed against the walls and where there was an outcrop, even if it was only an inch, he had to really push hard to continue. One protruding stone seemed as though it was cracking his ribs one at a time as he inched past it.
All he could hear was his own breath, ragged from breathing the dust kicked up
by al-Aziz’s movement ahead and the shuffle of his backpack being dragged. He had no vision of what lay ahead; he had kept his head down for the past ten minutes. Bringing it up, even a little, was impossible. The tunnel was closing in.
He felt the ceiling tickle his hair then rub against his back. All sides of his body were rubbed raw by the rough stone that felt more like a hundred tiny fingers clawing at him, trying to keep him still. With his arms stretched forward to shrink his body, Cruz began pushing with just his toes. Movement came an inch at a time. Then a centimeter. Then not at all.
With one last heave, Cruz moved an inch, squeezed tight, then stopped. He couldn’t look forward. He couldn’t move back. All he could feel was pressure all around his body, a constricting pressure that made breathing almost impossible. His lungs could not fill with air. Growing lightheaded and panicked, Cruz felt his mind give way to mania.
“Aziz!” The shout echoed loudly in the tight space. The effort pushed his ribs painfully against the surrounding walls. “I’m stuck!”
The response was muffled. He couldn’t understand the man. The backpack would be blocking the tunnel completely by now.
The man’s voice was faint: “I’ll come back for you.”
Al-Aziz was moving on, leaving Cruz to rot beneath the mountain. The sound of scraping grew faint as al-Aziz pushed on. But the sound wasn’t fading with distance, it faded with consciousness. Panic and pressure had taken the air from Cruz’s lungs. He fell unconscious, trapped beneath a mountain of stone.
Chapter 58
Dreaming of Portsmouth and Sam, Whitney was displeased to wake up and find herself in the same gargantuan prison cell. Darkness loomed on the other side of the high window and a crescent moon glowed in the night sky. The cell was lit by reflected light from the hallway, the origin of which was hidden from view. What caught Whitney’s attention was that the illumination did not flicker like firelight but was solid, like modern lighting. Whitney glanced out of the cell and cringed. The light also illuminated the bodies in the opposite cell. The smell of decomposition permeated the air. She winced and turned away.
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