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

  THE CREATION:

  AXIS MUNDI

  Part One in

  The Creation Series

  The Behrg

  Also by The Behrg

  Still Born

  Housebroken

  The Girl Who Couldn’t Come Up With an Original Title

  The Creation: Let There Be Death (Part Two)

  Text Copyright © 2015 by The Behrg

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Elder Lemon Design

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I – IN THE BEGINNING

  Chapter II – AXIS MUNDI

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  DEDICATION

  To the driver in the Gran Sabana, who miraculously kept our jeep from flipping when the back wheel of the vehicle suddenly dislodged and flew forty feet into the air, and to my companions on that trip: my then soon-to-be wife, though she didn’t know it at the time … (I certainly did); and to our chaperone, and my dear friend from Maturin, Javier.

  And to anyone who doesn’t appreciate a run-on sentence.

  “It comforts me to think that if we are created beings the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it.

  “It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality, that it would contradict reason.

  “But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality or it would not be reasonable.”

  --Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

  “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

  Genesis 1:1

  IN THE BEGINNING

  ________________________

  Chapter One

  Verse I.

  Contributed by USGS National Earthquake Information Center

  A 5.1 magnitude earthquake struck South Eastern Venezuela late Saturday evening in the region known as the Gran Sabana. The moderate quake hit 28 kilometers west of the southern Brazil border, its epicenter 12 kilometers from the former mining town turned logging community of Santa Elena de Uairen.

  Saturday’s quake occurred at 7:33 local time (UTC ) at a depth of 68 kilometers along the geologically complex southern boundary of the Caribbean Plate, a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast.

  Government officials have thus far received no estimates of casualties. Several indigenous tribes also populate the southern Amazonian area, though there has been no word as to their status.

  This boundary is a rich area of seismic activity with the collision of the Caribbean and South American plates. The Venezuelan petroleum fields are believed to be a result of this complex plate interaction.

  This is the first time in noted history that an earthquake has occurred at such a southern point along the Caribbean plate within the country.

  Verse II.

  “Don’t you want the lights on?”

  Frantz ignored the interruption, sitting behind his BIFMA level-three-certified desk. He didn’t bother glancing at the time on the upper right corner of the laptop he was working at, he knew the hour was ungodly.

  “Ruin those pretty eyes, with nothing but the glow of a computer screen. They say it’s like staring at an eclipse.”

  It wasn’t, but he saved his breath.

  Light sprang from the florescent bulbs overhead, causing Frantz to blink through the sudden change. He was surprised to find what his mémé had always called the sandman’s boogers at the corners of his eyes.

  He stifled a yawn on the back of one hand, dimly aware of how bare his office looked when lit. Small round black table of reclaimed wood, three Hiyashi stools in the far corner, synthetic poly-wood bookcase still waiting to be filled, and not a painting or poster on the walls. From the look of it, he could have moved in yesterday. Perhaps there were reasons he preferred working in the dark.

  “It’s late. You should be home,” he said, his French accent thicker than normal.

  Faye Moanna moved to the window overlooking Bryant Park. She twisted the hanging cylindrical stick, the slats of the blinds opening like a hundred synchronized eyes. She wore one of her business suits, a black powerful Ellecante that only served to accentuate her small figure and contrasting golden auburn hair.

  She was striking; the kind of woman every man noticed though few were brave enough to approach.

  Or that insane.

  She stared down at the garden, mushroomed tops of trees entrenched on all sides by monolithic skyscrapers. Not an inch of room to grow or expand. Frantz had often stood there himself. Respectfully, he gave her time.

  Moving their headquarters into the Bank of America Tower last year had been beyond controversial despite the building being considered the greenest skyscraper in all of Manhattan. But to affect change you had to stand out – do things differently.

  The next few days would certainly accomplish that.

  Faye finally spoke, though she remained at the window. “You heard about Venezuela.”

  Frantz noticed it wasn’t a question. “Did President Maduro pen an apology to the U.S.?”

  “I want to go.”

  Her bangs hung over her right eye keeping most of her face hidden. From this angle she could have passed for an average attorney or up-and-coming politician’s aide.

  No, Frantz thought, average was not a word to describe Faye Moanna.

  She turned from the blinds, walking toward him with her purposeful stride. Seeing the other half of her profile always gave Frantz pause.

  The left side of her head was shaved, a tattooed arm with claw-like talons reaching from below her collar up behind her ear and over the side of her left temple, visible even through the few days growth of fuzz. Her face carried more sharp lines than curves. Her nose ring, a diamond stud, twinkled both coyly and menacingly at the same time. The smart business woman had been replaced with a hardened street junkie who had just robbed a fashion store.

  Frantz wondered, not for the first time, which side more accurately represented the real Faye Moanna.

  “We have to go,” she said, pushing his laptop aside and sitting at the corner of his desk. “You know what an opportunity this is.”

  “We looked at their operation and it –”

  “When? This is the first I’ve heard of any lumber mill in southern Venezuela.”

  Frantz adjusted the small wire frames on the bridge of his nose. This was an argument he had hoped successfully avoided.

  That damn earthquake.

  “It wasn’t right for what we’re trying to accomplish,” he finished.

  Her green eyes glinted, acknowledging his lie. She knew he had kept that location off their reports for other reasons, reasons they both pretended he didn’t know.

  “I need you in Guatemala. It’s too late to be making changes –”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Frantz.” She accentuated his name with a poor imitation of his accent. She scooted further onto his desk, her skirt sliding up. It had been short to begin with. “We change our strategy; go in brin
ging aid to an area even the local government’s ignoring. You know Red Cross won’t touch this; maybe you’ll get some Mormons down there, but in Venezuela even that’s iffy. This is headline news.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s advantageous! Almost … meant to be.”

  “You know there weren’t any reported deaths,” Frantz continued.

  “You did read the article.”

  “We can’t let personal –” He stopped, not wanting to say the wrong thing. His fingers thrummed against an invisible keyboard as they always did when he was searching for the right way to phrase something in English. Unfortunately all his mental keyboard came up with was “asdf;lkj.”

  “It is personal. For every one of us.” She stood, flipping her hair as she moved back towards the door.

  “I won’t allow it,” Frantz said, standing. He somehow felt smaller than he had when seated in his chair.

  Faye paused at the doorway, the tattooed hand scraping against the side of her head seeming to sway back and forth. Waving goodbye or beckoning him onward? Or maybe it was the calculated rise of claws just before the first strike.

  “It’s late, Frantz. You should go home.”

  The lights went out.

  Frantz fell back into his Cobi chair and immediately picked up his phone, dialing the first of many numbers he would need to call. His night’s work apparently had just begun.

  Verse III.

  James Dugan brushed back a branch, letting it snap back behind him as he joined the small group gathered before the sheer face of solid earth. Up close, these plateaus felt unnatural.

  Tepuis, they were called; table-top mountains, like floating islands in the sky. They dotted the savannahs of this part of the Amazon rainforest, jutting from the jungle floor upwards of a thousand meters. Their natural evolutionary state created some of the most isolated fauna and flora known to man. The locals, however, knew them by another name.

  Temples of the Gods.

  And Dugan had ascended every one.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “She’s afraid of heights.” Rojo, his thick red beard rising to meet a complete absence of hair on top, spit a glob of brown juice onto the ground. His chest was almost as wide as he was tall. Dressed in dark khakis and a flannel shirt, he could have passed for a lumberjack – except that all the leñadores around here were Venezuelan.

  The source of their delay recoiled at Rojo’s words. “I am not!”

  Dugan removed his shades. The Venezuelan girl before him was the fourth student the University of Maturin had sent in the past six weeks, the third whose name escaped him.

  He hoped it remained that way.

  “Then what’s the problem, Negra?” He loved how calling someone by their skin color or stereotype wasn’t seen as offensive in this country.

  “He is telling me we have to climb up, that the helicopter won’t take us.” Her accent was thick, despite her grasp of the English language.

  “Did you ever consid-ugh –” Dugan’s words were lost as his throat tightened. A familiar wheezing rasp soon became the gasps of a dying muffler, heavy and wet.

  He was forced low to the ground, eyes watering, covering his mouth with one fist while he unslung his shoulder pack and began rifling through it.

  A thick native in cargo pants and a leather jerkin pushed past the girl, raising Dugan back up. His long black hair, thick as a horse’s mane, covered most of his sagging cheeks and pock-marked face. In his hands he held a cigarette.

  Dugan dropped the pack, taking the cig in a shaky hand. He brought it to his lips, fighting the cough leaping out, as the native lit it for him. He inhaled, holding the breath in. Not until his lungs felt at the point of bursting did he let the smoke curl out from his nostrils.

  “Thank you, Oso,” he said, his voice throaty and sore.

  The native tilted his head in acknowledgement and stepped back behind the girl without a word.

  The girl’s face suddenly lit up. “Is that why you’re doing this? To find a cure?” She pronounced the word coor. “You’re like the guy on Metastasis … the, uh, the Walter White. Breaking Bad? With, uh, Jesse? Y las drogas?”

  Rojo avoided looking at Dugan. Of his entire team Dugan was the only one to not take a nickname. Not that they hadn’t tried.

  “My grandmother had cancer,” the girl continued. “She died. Do you think we will find something up there today? Something to help cure the cancer?”

  “Negra,” Dugan said, his breathing still raspy. “We’re not Indiana Jones. We don’t go into a temple and walk out with a holy relic. We take samples; endemic plants or flowers, the root of a heliamphora, stem of a bromeliad, and we send these to labs, far from here. The results of those tests may not even come back in our lifetime. It can take that long just to figure out what we’re testing for, much longer if it proves of any worth. That, my dear, is phytopharmacology – we don’t look for cures, we pick lotto tickets whose numbers won’t be pulled ‘til we’re long dead.”

  The girl’s brow furrowed, a line forming at the corner of her mouth. “You won’t talk me out of going.”

  “Good, then grab the rope.”

  Rojo swung it toward her, the knotted cord dangling from the abyss above.

  “You’re joking,” she said.

  Dugan exhaled another plume of smoke then flicked the cigarette into a nearby brush. At the girl’s sudden panic, he added, “We’re in the rainforest, Negra, nothing dry enough to light.”

  Trust me, we’ve tried, he thought.

  “Now strap in or we leave. Your choice.”

  “But the helicopter …”

  “Does not land on a tepui,” Dugan said. “Ever.”

  Rojo held up a harness, spitting more brown juice onto the unsuspecting plant life around them. “We tie you in. It’s not even dangerous.”

  “Why can’t we land on top?”

  “Ground’s … unstable,” Dugan said.

  Temple of the Gods.

  Rojo glanced at him, recognizing the lie, or half lie. Still it was better than the truth. Sharing with her the fate of their last student who had fallen through a sinkhole, the weight of the helicopter causing the shifting sandstone to break loose and drop out from beneath them, certainly wouldn’t improve her chances of climbing to the top. Tepuis channeled the unknown, each harboring their own distinct evolutionary tract. But one thing Dugan did know, despite the endemic species of plants and animal life found atop each one, what he was searching for was hidden somewhere else.

  The young girl’s head tilted back, continuing until the muscles on her neck were strained.

  “Twenty two hundred meters high,” Rojo said.

  In the end Dugan had to hand it to her, at least she tried. Harnessed in she hadn’t gone up fifty feet before she was screaming to be brought back down. Rojo took his time lowering her, his childlike grin never leaving his face.

  Dugan however hadn’t been smiling. Half a day wasted all to keep up pretenses they most likely no longer needed. He sent the girl back to town in the helicopter accompanied with promises he had no intention of keeping.

  Now they could go back to their real task, not searching for a what, but a who.

  Verse IV.

  Zachary Morley sang the guitar solo to Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times” as he rolled his chair across the seamless white tile floor. The hard crunch of electric guitars and Robert Plant’s wailing shrieks overpowered the blips of hospital equipment – computers, monitors and electrical devices unable to keep tempo with the song.

  At the chair’s arrival, with one too many forced foot thrusts to counteract the sheer mass Morley had become, he pulled himself up into a standing position.

  Set on a roll-in table was a large glass sphere held in place by a metallic pedestal. It was filled with a viscous liquid, a two foot almost alien-like mass of grey tissue, suspended at its center like a deflated basketball. Thick tubes connected to the sphere from above, entering
the controlled environment with smaller tubes hanging down, connected to the growth.

  “Think this little guy knows what it means to be alone?” Morley asked.

  A heavy set Venezuelan woman in white, germ mask strapped over her face, did not reply. Not that Morley had expected her to. They never sent him help that could speak English.

  As if they couldn’t afford the additional cost.

  “After we finish here how ‘bout we head on over to my place?” He laughed, his entire body shaking from the effort. Remaining sane could be a task in this country, he had discovered, and Morley had never been one for multi-tasking.

  The assistant’s eyes darted from him to the large glass sphere. At least this one had some meat on her, he thought.

  “Quieres el pollo?” the assistant asked, Morley catching only the final word.

  “Yes, pollo. Pollo, pollo, pollo. Let’s do the pollo again,” he sang to the tune of the Time Warp, motioning for her to get on with it.

  She approached the sterile aluminum counters against the back wall of the room, fiddling with the latch to the crate set on top. Out came a chicken, its feathers pressed flush against its body. The assistant closed the crate, deftly placing the bird against the metal counter, one hand wrapped around its body.

  With the other, she lifted a heavy butcher’s blade.

  Morley turned his head. He hated this part of the job.

  The metallic thwank of metal against metal was as harsh as a hand lifting the needle from a record player.

  “Over here,” he said, keeping his sight away from the limp and headless body dangling from the assistant’s rubber gloved hand.