The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences (The Second Coming Chronicles Book 2)

by Terry James

  “Where are my wife and daughter?”

  “You will soon see them. They are unharmed. And, whether they stay unharmed is…well…up to you, really.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Mark’s rage was growing. He forced himself to remember the rules of capture. Remain calm. Only calm brings rationality. One accomplishes nothing by rage or panic.

  “You will be inculcated shortly. You will then understand…the imperatives of our projects…”

  Randall Prouse’s cell rang. He looked at the caller identification display. “I think it’s Nigel Saxton,” he said, not able to remember the strange number Saxton had given him to expect if the Brit could get through to him. They had discussed that almost certainly an ordinary cell phone would be of little service. But, Nigel had a special phone that employed geosynchronous satellite technologies.

  Christopher Banyon moved closer to Prouse while the archaeologist talked.

  “Randall Prouse,” he said, his eyes brightening and looking toward Christopher when he heard the voice on the other end.

  “You’re through the mountain. That’s great! Run into any problems?” Prouse listened for a second, a frown taking the place of his earlier expression of optimism.

  He listened for a minute to the Brit explain about things that had happened.

  “Yes, I understand, Nigel,” Randall said, finally. “Yes. We will be ready for your call.”

  He folded the cell phone and looked at Christopher, then Susie Banyon.

  “A couple of those Yeti things intercepted them. But, then the things just…vanished.”

  “My Lord, you were given a dream-vision,” Christopher said. He looked at Susie and took her hand. “We are being shown that something is going on, something to do with the struggle against spiritual wickedness in high places…”

  “Saxton says he has specific instructions for us, should he call and need us to help them. He will call if he wants us to implement them.”

  “What kind of plans?” Susie said.

  “Something to do with help that’s available to him in the area if it’s needed,” Randall said.

  “They are going to need it! Those…things… sent to destroy them. They are definitely going to need help,” Christopher put in, a worried, puzzled expression on his face.

  “Yeah, well, this guy, Nigel, isn’t just a youngster out to climb mountains. It’s just like I said, Chris. He’s out here for other reasons. I’m betting it has something to do with all this government business, all these strange things going on. He’s probably an operative of some sort.”

  “But, for who?” Christopher said.

  “Probably an ally. Maybe the UK, maybe the EU. Fact is, he probably indeed can call upon help to extract himself from…whatever situation he might find himself facing. But, I don’t know how that would translate into removing four other non-trained types out of harm’s way.”

  “The beastly things didn’t get them. They vanished. There’s a much greater force at work here than those trying to stop those kids,” Susie said.

  Nigel Saxton’s worries were growing by the minute. Why did he go against everything he had been taught –against everything he knew was the correct course of action? Four untrained people, totally unprepared for the dangers they might face, two of them women. Quite fit women, perhaps, but not with the kind of strength that would be needed to climb some of the rugged rocks of this man-killing terrain.

  Everything was fine so long as they could move as they did now, along the relatively flat, smooth plain of Xavier pass. But, not in the cliffs and crags where they must find refuge if needed.

  The weather was another matter. It could turn at any moment. It could go from the 45 degrees and sunny to 10 below zero and/or blizzard conditions.

  The thing was done. They were his responsibility.

  But a much greater worry filled his thoughts while he led the other four and the rottweiler toward the valley. If not all the way to the valley of the strange goings-on, at least to where they could give Clark Lansing –the Brit hoped—a reference point so he could, by backtracking, find the back side of the secret mountain complex.

  The greater worry involved the weird things. The disappearing--what were they? Yeti? Bigfoot? Ezekiel, the old man who seemed, sometimes, as elusive as the hairy, four-meter tall creatures?

  The cabin had been there, on that very spot. The log home had been a welcome refuge after Zeke had saved his and the dog’s lives. Had the enemy taken the old man? Destroyed, then erased the log home from the snow field of Xavier Pass? It didn’t appear that that had happened. It looked as if the log building had never been there. But, Zeke had been real. Saxton considered that he had the old man’s strange flashlight to prove it. Ezekiel did exist…

  The big monitor screens were like none he had seen. They appeared to be holographic –three-dimensional in their presentation of the scientists, while they engaged in the business of this mind-boggling laboratory.

  Mark looked at one screen, then the other. His heart leaped, nausea rising from the pit of his stomach.

  “I see you recognize the subjects of all the activity,” Blake Robbins said, looking at the screens, then back at Mark.

  “You see? They are being well cared for,” Robbins said, when Mark made no response.

  “It is time that you are made aware of the importance of these procedures and know why we brought you and your family to this laboratory,” Robbins said in a voice much older than it should be, coming from a man in his early-to mid-30s.

  Mark didn’t hear him, his concentration on his wife’s face while she lay face-up on the gurney they had just rolled into the area beneath the bright operating room lights. Then, his daughter, like her mother, was rolled into place, the blue-garbed men and women –all wearing the dark goggles—working over Lori and Morgan.

  “You once interrupted our activities to improve upon humankind when you were Captain Lansing. You destroyed our pursuit helicopters that day in the Gulf. Remember?”

  Mark glanced at the tall Robbins, who looked downward at him while he asked the question.

  “Yeah. I remember,” Mark said. “They were trying to blow the cabin cruiser to pieces.”

  “Yes, well, there must be no more such interferences with our desire to help mankind achieve its ultimate destiny.”

  “And, exactly what is that?” Mark asked with anger rising in his voice.

  “Why, to improve mankind’s genetics, of course. To eliminate disease, death, poverty…all that plagues your kind.”

  “What about you? Are you not our kind?”

  “So to speak--when combined with the friends of earth.”

  “Friends of earth? From other planets, you mean?”

  “From other…places, let’s just say,” Blake Robbins said. “Other times, other places…”

  “Look, I know who you are, what you are,” Mark said, starting to stand. The big guards behind him forced him to sit again.

  “Oh?” the voice within Robbins’ throat said. “And who--what--are we?”

  “You’ve been here before doing these same things. You’ve been here all along.”

  “And, what else do you know, Mark Lansing?” the thing asked with an echoing snicker.

  “That the word of God talks about you in Genesis 6, and in Ephesians, chapter 12. That Jesus said it will again become like it was in those antediluvian days. That violence will fill the whole earth, that you will again try to change the genetic makeup of human beings.”

  The thing dwelling within Robbins cackled, then he removed his goggles, unveiling hideous black eyes that glared at Clark as if peering from the abyss.

  “This is why you need our kids, and my wife?”

  “And, you…especially you, Mark Lansing,” the thing growled.

  When Mark didn’t reply, the entity said, “The male contribution is needed to complete the project…our Imperatives for bringing in the kingdom.”

  “What kingdom?”

  “Well, ce
rtainly not the Kingdom you and all the Jesus sycophants think are coming!”

  “There’s only one other possibility,” Mark said. “And, it won’t work. It didn’t work before the flood of Noah’s day. It won’t work now.”

  The thing grumbled its displeasure with the insolent human. “It will. And it is you that will make it work.”

  “How so?”

  “The man was instrumental in the downfall of your kind. Adam was in disobedience –not deceived and deluded like the woman. It is the man who must provide the… to put it simply…the DNA for mixing with the Benai Elohim seed.”

  Mark’s senses grew dark as his emotions of rage, combined with the enormity of what was happening to his family, hit him with full impact.

  “Why my wife and daughter, then? If they can’t help you in your…”

  The entity’s voice interrupted Mark. “They have both been programmed from long ago. Don’t you know that? The woman called Lori since her time in the labs of Taos. You and she have been simultaneously programmed, given certain supernatural predispositions to provide genetic material necessary to bringing forth a special hybrid.”

  Mark again tried to leap from the chair but was forced to sit.

  “Your offspring have been the beneficiaries of earlier rearrangements with you and your woman’s cellular structures.”

  “What are you going to do with us?”

  “The girl, your daughter, provided a young, viable ovum for use in receiving the seed of the coming kingdom,” the hollow, echoing voice said.

  “Your wife provided part of the DNA and other factors to introduce into the now-growing new earth dwellers. You will provide the final DNA that will complete things begun before you and the woman were husband and wife. Before you became the follower of the abominable one.”

  Mark looked to the monitor screens –one containing the close-up of his unconscious wife, the other of Morgan. He looked to Blake Robbins, whose eyes were glistening pools of black.

  “You will cooperate, if you wish your wife and daughter to be set free,” the thing inside Blake Robbins said.

  The early evening sky above the westernmost edge of Xavier Pass began to darken. The outcroppings of the cliffs that turned into the mountain a half-mile distant provided a good place to camp.

  The temperature hovered at 40 degrees, Saxton noticed after letting the thermometer hang from its chain from a point sticking out from one of the boulders. The sky was clear. No snow.

  Cassie and Kristi sat near the small fire the Brit had made from twigs. They petted Jeddy, who lay between them on his stomach, enjoying the scratching.

  “You think he misses Morgan?” Kristi said.

  “Of course, he does,” Cassie said, giving the dog’s huge head a hug. “Poor baby,” she said, receiving a lick on her face for her affection.

  David Prouse handed Cassie a tin cup of coffee Saxton had just finished brewing.

  “Lucky doggie,” he said, himself rubbing between the rottweiler’s ears. “Some guys get all the attention,” he said, sitting beside Cassie.

  “Well, some guys deserve it,” Cassie retorted, then sipped from the cup.

  “Here you go,” Clark said to Kristi, while handing her the tin cup with coffee and powdered cream.

  Nigel joined them, with the rottweiler between them.

  “So, what’s our plan, Nigel?” David asked.

  “Haven’t got a specific plan. We’ll just play it by ear, as they say.”

  David looked at Saxton over the cup while he sipped. He had to frame the question in a way the Brit would –perhaps—respond truthfully. If David’s suspicions were correct –as he and his grandfather had discussed—there were more reasons for the man’s proficiency in this wild, mountainous country than simply that he was a climber in training. Finally, the lawyer in him surfaced to break the ice.

  “Nigel. Grandpa and I were talking, and we both agreed. You carry yourself much too well to be just some practicing mountain climber.”

  David’s bluntness surprised even himself. But it came from his legal training, he thought, watching the Brit’s expression as he absorbed the question.

  “Guess you wondered why I would come back here when I didn’t have to do so, right?”

  “Something like that. Yes,” Prouse said.

  Nigel’s slight smile, then more serious demeanor, made David believe he would get the manufactured version of the Nigel Saxton story –not the true one.

  “You and your grandfather have good instincts,” the Brit said. “Actually, I’m an operative for a-- shall I say—a group that is friendly to governments of the west, including the American government.”

  All eyes widened, and ears came to attention. Nigel’s tone was matter of fact, not stiff or contrived.

  “I was sent to learn of these things, whatever that is going on out here in these mountains.” He looked at Clark.

  “Sorry, chap, about that tiny bit of fiction I gave you on that ride into Alamosa. At that time, I didn’t know you, and didn’t know what I faced.”

  He drank down the black coffee, put the cup aside, and sat on his backpack, his forearms and hands dangling from where his elbows propped upon his raised knees.

  “Still wouldn’t be telling you, except that I’m going to need your help. And, you are going to need mine. We must trust each other, because we all know it’s something beyond the normal we must conquer.”

  “You have a number?” Kristi Flannigan asked. “You know…007, or something?”

  “Something like that. But my activities haven’t been in such exotic places as James Bond traveled, I’m afraid. They’ve been more like sheer agony, like in these mountains when it’s freezing, and there’s a blizzard blowing.”

  “Why were you sent?” Cassie said.

  “They…that is, the group I represent, have been concerned for some time about the things that have been kept from them. Things to do with the unidentified disks that have been moving in and out of these places. And, the fact that certain technologies, believed to have come from reverse engineering since Roswell, are not being shared with America’s allies.”

  “What are you supposed to do?” David asked.

  “Get photographic evidence. I’m hoping I can accomplish with the help of Clark what I couldn’t do before: get into that area I saw the disk fly into, then just seem to melt into the forest on that valley floor. I am hoping that you, Clark,” he said, looking at him, “might remember some things that could get me into the thing down in that valley, whatever it is.”

  Clark thought for a few seconds. “But, I don’t really remember anything much after drinking that hot chocolate, except for some strange lights in the sky just above the wooded area.”

  “Maybe revisiting will jog the old memory, eh, mate?” Saxton slapped Clark playfully on the leg.

  “And we can backtrack to the area where you took that snowmobile ride--find the back side of the inner-mountain complex they guard so closely.”

  Then, all ears heard a thumping in the distance. A helicopter!

  Chapter 22

  Nigel dove to the campfire and began shoveling snow onto the flames. David joined him.

  “We’ve got to move from here. Now!” Nigel’s shouted words set in motion a quick gathering of backpacks. With the flames doused, Nigel bolted from the campsite, followed by the others, who jogged to keep up with the Brit.

  “Jeddy!”

  He felt the rottweiler brush past him, headed in the same direction as he, himself, was leading the others. He didn’t want the dog to provide a target for the helicopter’s search lights. Jeddy’s big, dark body would be easily spotted on the white field below. The dog must be reined in; he had to risk it.

  Nigel flipped on the flashlight he had instinctively grabbed from his pack. Its bright beam struck the big dog’s rump in the distance. Jeddy was moving into a dark area beyond the outcropping boulders. He didn’t see a better spot to hide from the oncoming aircraft, so followed the canine into
the place that turned out, they quickly learned, to be a cave barely big enough to accommodate the six of them.

  Once everyone was inside, Nigel removed the semi-automatic and held it toward the cave entrance. Clark pulled a pistol from his own pack.

  “Didn’t know you brought one,” the Brit said.

  “It’s the one the guy tried to kill us with in the woods. The clip has a few rounds,” Clark said.

  Jeddy began to growl, expelling his anxiety-anger in short bursts that grew louder with each growl while he stood at the cave entrance looking past the numerous boulders into the vast plain of snow beyond.

  “Easy, boy,” Saxton said, easing beside the dog and kneeling as he tried to see into the dark distance.

  The roaring of the helicopters grew louder. They were now within a hundred meters outside the outcroppings of stone. Powerful lights shone from the choppers’ bottoms. There were two, and they hovered 50 meters apart, the Brit surmised. Big helicopters made for cargo, he figured.

  “They must have troops,” Nigel said over his shoulder to the others.

  Clark stood at the opening, looking with Nigel and Jeddy into the brightness that illuminated the snow-covered ground directly beneath the choppers. Several large, dark objects dropped the 10 feet or so into the snow. Then three more objects dropped from the other copter.

  “Guess we’ve had it now,” Clark said.

  The rottweiler stiffened, his muscles bulging while his growling intensified.

  “Looks like six of them,” Saxton said. “That what you counted?”

  “Yeah,” Clark said, but not really knowing, having not counted.

  Nigel pulled the pistol’s receiver back and released it, chambering a .40 round. Clark did the same on his semi-automatic. He had only four rounds, plus one in the chamber. A gunfight wouldn’t last long, he thought.

  The choppers engines revved to full power and they lifted out of view. The area was totally dark now, and the group in the cave dared not shine their flashlights toward the advancing party of however many…