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

  She finished feeding the pollo through the Blender, a small chamber with precision blades that ground the chicken – meat, bones, feathers and all – into a pasty mulch.

  At the glass sphere, Morley hummed along to the next track on the album, a song he never remembered the name to. The warm paste remains of what had moments ago been a live chicken moved through the tubes and began its descent within the sphere.

  “Open wide,” he said, unable to control his laughter.

  The assistant pulled down her mask. Several thick black hairs lifted from her upper lip like a spider’s legs.

  Morley thought he might throw up.

  “Que es esta brujeria?” she asked.

  Though Morley spoke no Spanish, he understood what she was asking. At least in principle. He decided for the easy answer. After all, she’d have no one to tell. Not after today.

  There was a reason he was assigned a new assistant every day.

  “It’s a stomach. A human stomach. And we’re feeding it.”

  Verse V.

  Faye’s condo was what New Yorker’s considered a flat – a studio apartment with one room, kitchenette and bed separated only by a half wall. The only door, beyond the entrance, lead to the shower and bath. Totaling just under five-hundred square feet, and at twelve-hundred dollars a square foot, it was an atrociously expensive way to guarantee a place to rest her head. Especially considering how little she was there.

  Her job required more travel than most commercial pilots saw in a year, and when it wasn’t work, it was Donavon, who lived almost three-thousand miles away in the smog-ensconced hills of glittering Hollywood.

  In December she had actually taken the time to add up the number of days she had been in town last year, dividing it by her monthly mortgage, to determine how much her place truly cost. She could have had her pick of the most luxurious hotels in the area and still saved a quiet fortune. But, she argued to herself, no hotel maid service – no matter how prestigious – would give the kind of love Georgie and Penelope required.

  “You know, every time you bring me back here, I start to question our relationship,” Donavon said from the bathroom.

  Faye set down her watering pitcher and rubbed Penelope’s stems. “Did I forget to hide the used rubber in the bathroom again?”

  Donavon laughed, a sound that always began like a bark that could no longer be contained. “Well I wonder whether you come out to see me or if it’s just to sleep in a room with enough space to sneeze.”

  The water from the sink shut off and Donavon stepped out, running his hands through his thick black hair. “You know we can afford a bigger place.”

  “I like a small place and besides, I’m not sure I’m the one needing to make a change. I mean the garage for your servants is three times as palatial as my humble abode.”

  “I don’t have servants,” he said, moving toward her.

  “Oh, I forget, you Hollywood type refer to them as ‘personal assistants.’”

  He grimaced. “That’s not fair.”

  Faye reached up and kissed him, her pierced tongue pressing briefly against his. She always felt tiny next to him, his barrel chest and linebacker physique so much more intimidating in person than on screen. “You’re amazing,” she said, “and the fact you changed your plans to do this? Well it makes up for at least half the emissions of your army of yes-men.”

  He laughed, relaxing, his whitened teeth showing the chip in front that only made him more perfect by revealing him flawed. “Only half?”

  “And that’s generous. Make the bed?” Faye twisted out of his arms. “Or is that a skill you’ve forgotten?”

  “If I wanted this much abuse I’d visit my mother,” he said, though he picked up one of the pillows that had been thrown to the floor.

  “You weren’t complaining when you flung them off the bed.”

  She returned her attention to Penelope. The tips of her smooth leaves had curled inward like a dog wagging its tail at its master’s touch. A Mimosa pudica, Faye had groomed this particular strain for the past four years. Its blooming lavender and violet-tinged flowers, like dandelions gone to seed, were the largest she had ever seen on such a plant.

  Georgie, on the other hand, was a shingle plant of the apocynaceae family. His flesh-colored leaves shone with an interior gloss when cared for. Little clusters of cream blooms hung from the pot dangling by the window.

  Donavon called Georgie the White Rastafarian.

  After saying goodbye, she cracked the window before turning to leave. Donavon stood at the mirrored dresser next to the bed, the lumps beneath the bedspread something she was willing to ignore. She wondered what trinket had captured his fascination this time – the petrified wood specimen from Bali or maybe the carved fertility statue that, when picked up, revealed a large wooden dong that stuck straight out.

  As she joined him she felt the temperature in the room drop though she knew it was her imagination. He wasn’t looking at her collection but the postcards hanging from the top of her mirror.

  Borneo Island.

  Mount Cameroon.

  Angel Falls.

  “You never told me you’d been there,” Donavon said. “Venezuela?”

  Faye ran one hand against the side of her shaved head, the tiny bristled hairs massaging her fingertips. “I haven’t.”

  “Well, nothing like a redeye,” Donavan said with a chuckle, lightening the mood.

  Faye pressed her body against his back, hugging him from behind. Of all Donavan’s traits she was most grateful for his uncanny sense to know when not to press, to let her open up as she was ready. There had been a lot of opening up in the sixteen months they had been together and still they were barely at the surface. Did he have any idea how deep her scars ran?

  Her hands moved down from his pectorals, following the ridges of his tight abdomen beneath his shirt, then slid between the gap of flesh and jeans, continuing lower. Maybe there were other traits she appreciated more, she thought with a smile.

  “I just made the bed,” he said.

  “Yeah but I can do it better.”

  A few seconds later the pillows were back on the floor.

  Verse VI.

  Fingertips cradled over the lip of the large armoire like blind larvae; searching, searching, finally alighting upon a small brass key. A thick carpet of unmolested dust covered the top of the dresser, except for the few inches of wood in front of the key where prints frequently tread. Like a worn path where snow hadn’t time to settle.

  Remmy Shumway walked the narrow room in his thick heavy robes. His right eye twitched with the spasm of a dying dog’s last kick. The tile of the floor was cool against his bare feet, at such odds with the dampness at his neck and pits, and crawling up his lower back.

  He was old – at seventy three he should have been long retired, living in some form of luxury. Even a nursing home, at times, seemed preferable to his circumstance. Instead he bore the weight of each day like the mule he had become, trudging in an endless circle of scenery that never changed.

  His eye twitched.

  At the end of the long room he knelt before an old chest. Its unlacquered wood and rusted bronze straps allowed it to pass without remark. Like a well-worn disguise. Often Remmy found himself looking in the mirror, wondering when the wrinkles would peel back from his skin, his white hair returning to its natural dark roots, staunch flesh regaining its once smooth texture.

  Some masks, when worn too long, could no longer be pulled away.

  The thick heavy sleeves of his robes hung down as he pressed the key into the lock at the chest’s center. This was the moment he always feared and yet secretly longed for – that small key bending at the weight of the gears within. One day it would snap and he would pull out a handle that would no longer open a passage to the past, the only escape he could afford, and that barely. But today was not that day.

  Above him, a crucified Savior looked away with mournful eyes.

  Remmy lifted the heavy l
id, its hinges groaning. He stared down at the contents of the chest.

  Prayers were useless now.

  A knock sounded at the door, startling him.

  “Quien es?” he asked, his voice anything but calm.

  “Father?” a young man’s voice asked from the other side of the door, heavily accented. “There are more people. Refugios.”

  The knock came again.

  “Father?”

  Remmy looked longingly at the artifacts in his chest, his left eye twittering, reminding him of his want – his need. A few minutes and he could be back on his knees, praying to the only God who had ever answered his cries.

  He almost laughed. Instead, he blinked back heavy tears.

  “Father?” the voice came again from outside.

  The heavy lid fell back, brass key disappearing into an inner pocket of his robe. Remmy dabbed his forehead against the arm of one sleeve, then opened the door.

  Josue stood in the outer room, a look of concern flashing across his face like sunlight breaking through clouds, gone almost before there was time to notice. At fourteen he was a scrawny kid, malnourishment accounting only partly for his childlike frame. He had a black birthmark the size of an open fist just beneath his left eye that looked like a mole had exploded outward, spreading like a fungus. The deformation had been so prominent at birth that his parents had left the child at the doors of the church, the previous pastor not finding the crying baby until the following morning.

  In a town the size of Santa Elena, one would think it easy to uncover the culprits of such a crime. But small towns, Remmy had learned, held to their secrets tighter than their riches.

  He reached one hand out, resting it atop Josue’s head. “Thank you, my son.”

  He only spoke English to Josue, one of the few semi-bilinguals in the community. A good thing, considering Remmy’s Spanish was as crude as a newborn’s. “I thought we had reached everyone in need?”

  Josue answered as they walked down the narrow hallway. “They were in the campos when the terramoto hit.”

  “Earthquake.”

  Josue continued as if Remmy hadn’t interrupted. “They just returned to discover their homes perished. I know we are full but I remember the mother Mary and the men who said there was no room.”

  “Innkeepers.”

  “Innkeepers,” Josue repeated. “They could have made some room, somewhere, no?”

  Remmy’s heart was still hammering in his chest, like being worked up almost to the point of orgasm only to have your partner walk away – that excitement still took a moment to fetter down, yet he knew what the boy was hinting at. Damn him, he knew the boy was right.

  It was a problem a few days ago they could never have hoped for, the average weekly attendance less than fifteen, and those comprised of several women and their many children. Even at Christmas or el Domingo de Pascua they were lucky to have half of the church pews filled.

  The building itself was small, an open assembly hall with two rows of six wooden benches that had all been stacked and pushed to the side to make room for the displaced families. The earthquake hadn’t been that strong but these homes, many made of sheet metal and slats of aluminum or tin, required barely a huff and a puff to be blown in.

  Sheets were strung up in the assembly hall, sectioning off areas of the room for some semblance of privacy, while the families waited. For what, Remmy wasn’t sure.

  God?

  Their government?

  Both had been equally silent.

  Of the four adjoining rooms to the small building – a kitchenette, small classroom they used for a nursery, Josue and Lucas’s room, and Remmy’s own quarters – his was the only domicile occupied by one.

  Unless you counted their storage room, but Remmy had no intention of changing that.

  “I can sleep outside. On the dirt,” Josue said. “I have done it before.”

  “Let us see what God will provide.”

  They walked into the main assembly, Remmy ducking beneath a rope, to greet the two families standing near the entrance. Seven, no eight children.

  A baby’s wail reverberated in the hollow room.

  “Bienvenidos,” Remmy said.

  The cold eyes and hardened faces that met him didn’t soften in the slightest. Even when you have nothing, seeing it ripped away could be devastating.

  Before he could tell them there was food, a large voice carried from the church’s entrance into the hall. It felt like a gust of wind vanquishing every lit candle at once.

  “El pastor de las ovejas!”

  Every muscle in Remmy’s fragile body went taut.

  A bull of a man stepped in from the entrance dressed in dark grey army fatigues, a fedora gripped tightly to his massive head. General Marco Gutiérrez, the alcalde or mayor of Santa Elena de Uairen. Also their chief of police. He was one of the most corrupt men Remmy had ever known, which said a lot.

  The General was mustached, his face moist, covered in a constant sheen of sweat he seemed unaware of. “Por que no veo un carnero aqui,” he shouted in his booming voice. Laughter followed, both from the man and his cohorts around him, thinner and younger soldiers with equally cruel eyes.

  “If you’re going to insult me, at least do it in English,” Remmy said. “You brought these people?”

  “Dey are gifts, Pastor! More souls for jou to save.”

  More laughter followed from just outside the church. The General never went anywhere alone.

  “And where do you expect me to put them? Look around!”

  “Maybe jour God will tell you,” Gutierrez answered.

  “Close the tavern for a few days. You can put a roof over these people’s heads while homes are repaired or rebuilt.”

  “The tavern is a private business. I cannot dictate what does or does not happen dere.”

  “A private business you yourself own!”

  “Ahhh,” Gutierrez spread his hands wide as if caught. “Is it a sin to be, uh, investing?”

  “If you and your men spent half the time you do in that alehouse whoring about we’d have whole homes rebuilt already. These people need leadership! Someone who can help them pick up their lives and start over.”

  Gutierrez snorted then spit onto the church floor. It splatted near Josue’s feet. “What do you know of da needs of a Venezolano? A woman, a beer. Dose are our needs. Not jour God or jour hope.”

  “Get out!” Remmy shouted. He could feel his cheeks flush, his frame quivering.

  The General’s face darkened. “Careful, Pastor. Or perhaps it will be a new spiritual leader the people demand.”

  He left without another word, lugging his heavy frame through the open door. His lackeys followed him out.

  Remmy was shaking, the confrontation taking more from him than he had to give, at least at the moment. Than most moments, he admitted to himself. Josue closed the entry door.

  What the General had said was true; these people needed someone to lead them. But the General was just as correct – Remmy was not that man. He felt the pull toward the locked chest in his quarters and knew at least he could forget for a time.

  How often will I fail them? he wondered, his eyes looking upward. For once he was grateful God had no answer.

  Verse VII.

  The Gran Sabana was an interesting playing field, some parts spread open in great rolling savannahs, other areas as dense as the thickest jungles. Add the hundreds of cenotes and waterfalls, tepui mountains, above and underground rivers, and it was no wonder Dugan’s work had brought him back here.

  The Amazon rainforest was home to over a third of the world’s population of animal species; over two thirds of all plant life. It was believed a third of the fauna and flora had yet to even be identified. With a quarter of all medicine used today having some form of their origins in the rainforests, and with almost every plant known to have anti-cancer properties coming from the Amazon itself, there was enough work here to last lifetimes.

  But Dugan didn’t hav
e lifetimes. His own clock was running perilously close to its slow-winding end. An end he might be able to prevent.

  He bent down inspecting the leaf of a Puya raimondii. It was the largest species of bromeliad, a family that included the pineapple, and was typically found in higher elevations like the Andes. Its stickered flower spike, like an elongated pine cone, rose a good eighteen feet into the air. The plant was useless; Dugan had no intention of carrying a sample back, but the bent tips of its pointed leaves near its base were of concern.

  Dugan turned, stepping back the way he had come, his boot catching the end of the leaves to see how it would crease with his weight.

  Someone had been here, and recently.

  Beneath the cover of towering trees and brush that prevented any sunlight from reaching the ground, Dugan had tread into an area the vehicles were incapable of entering. Fallen logs and stones the size of Venezuelan houses littered the grounds, undisturbed for who knew how many millennia. His team had followed orders, taking the Humvees and leaving him behind.

  A silver beam of sunlight shot through a solitary crack in the branches above. It looked like the trail of a bullet passing in slow motion. The amount of particles and mites floating in those snatches of light always made Dugan question his need to breathe.

  He paused, casting his eyes about.

  Something wasn’t right.

  The air was as thick as ever, a humidity that hung on you. The many toned calls of native birds and insects, animals and snakes rustling leaves and plants; all continued as if Dugan weren’t present. And yet he sensed something … off. Something he couldn’t explain.

  Two tiger-herons sprung from the trees above, not from a sudden noise but perhaps the lack thereof. They leapt from tree to tree, gliding on their short wings before disappearing with a crackle of leaves.

  A mining frog, its red bulbous eyes unblinking, crouched at an intersecting branch a foot away. Dugan had had great hopes with that one; the poison secreted from its glands long used by natives on the tips of arrows. But that had been before he had come in contact with the Makuxi.