The Crypts of Eden

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Alyssa and Savage saw the Megalania Prisca keeping pace on the bank beside them, the creature bounding like a puppy in play, its head taking periodic glances their way, the receptors within its frill telling it that they were there, they were close.

“John!”

“I see it!”

They reached out and held hands so that they weren’t driven apart by the current. In the distance was something they immediately recognized. It was the incessant roar of water rushing over the edge of a ravine.

“John, it’s a waterfall!”

The Megalania Prisca called out, its frill shaking in agitation. It was about to lose its quarry.

“Swim to the edge of the opposite bank!” he shouted.

The current was getting stronger, pulling them faster. The roar of the falls was getting louder.

“We’re not going to make it!”

“Swim!” he goaded.

They paddled for the edge with every fiber in their bodies, with all the strength they could muster, fighting their way to the shore opposite the Prisca.

They were ten feet away from the bank, the depth getting shallower. But the edge of the fall could be seen.

They were eighty feet away.

“John!”

…Seventy feet and closing…

The Megalania Prisca was livid. Its prey was about to be lost forever.

Rearing up to a bipedal stance, the creature then dove into the water. In general, the lizard is a natural swimmer, graceful and elegant in waterways, using its tail as a rudder. Its head stayed above the level of the surface, getting closer, its tail moving back and forth in serpentine motion.

“John, it’s coming!”

They were close to the bank, only feet away, Alyssa buoying them because of her ankle.

The Prisca was getting closer.

The current was growing stronger, faster.

And Alyssa was losing her grip. “John!”

The roar of the falls was deafening, coming dangerously close.

…Forty feet…

And then Savage reached the bank, clawing at dry surface, his other hand barely hanging onto Alyssa as the power of the current threatened to sweep her out of his hand, out of his grip.

The Prisca fought against the current by trying to swim vertically and against the grain. With powerful sweeps of its tail it had propelled itself halfway across the river, but it continued to fight against the increasing power of the current, which drew it closer to the edge.

…It was thirty-five feet away from the spill…

It roared.

Savage was able to grab Alyssa by both hands and pull her to the bank.

…It was thirty feet away from the spill… inching closer…

Now it was two-thirds across the river, its tail sweeping.

Above them was a manhole-sized opening that allowed a streamer of light to filter in. To get to it, however, was going to be tough, since it was a near vertical climb along a stone wall, which was impossible with Alyssa’s ankle.

She read his mind. “You know I can’t.”

The Prisca was twenty feet away from the fall’s edge.

“It’s going over,” she said.

But she was wrong. The Prisca made it to the bank and was watching them intently.

Savage looked at the wall, at the climb. “You have no choice!” he told her. “You have to try!”

And then the Megalania Prisca came forward.

Leviticus, Nehemiah and the rest of the team had completed the set up of the charges with them set to go off in a coordinated pattern beginning with the center explosion, then working outward toward the perimeter so that the structure would implode upon itself, leaving a gaping sink hole.

“An hour or so before sundown,” said Nehemiah. “We’re right on schedule.”

“The chopper is on its way,” said Leviticus. “So give it another few minutes before we blow it. We don’t want to draw the authorities too quickly on seismic readings. I want to make sure we’re long gone by the time the readings are recorded.”

“Ten minutes, then?”

Leviticus looked at the horizon. “Ten minutes,” he confirmed.

The Megalania Prisca was moments away from a final kill when the receptors of its frill informed it that its quarry was trying to escape.

Alyssa and Savage were about ten feet above the base floor with Alyssa struggling with the footholds, her bad ankle becoming a disadvantage, the climb glacially slow. John Savage was beneath her assuring that she made gains. In his hand was the KA-BAR. Beneath him, the Prisca was looking up with its tail swinging back and forth along the ground like an excited canine. Its jaws were open with its pink gullet and needlelike teeth, waiting for the fall.

“You can do it, Alyssa.”

She didn’t complain. With the strength in her arms and her one good leg she pulled herself upward, her good foot finding a gap that kept her firm to the wall.

He edged up behind her, taking glances at the lizard beneath him. The thing was huge, he considered, so the knife would essentially be ineffective given the toxicity of a single bite. And then he began to climb at the same painfully slow pace as Alyssa toward an opening that seemed so far and so out of reach.

The hole was at least thirty feet away and the light was fading fast as the angle of the setting sun pinched the illumination into a thin streamer of light.

The creature was growing bolder.

“I’m sorry, John! We’re running out of time! There’s no point to this! You need to pass me and climb out!”

“I’m not leaving you behind!”

“You’re not being rational!”

“I’m a man! We’re never rational!” The Prisca began to pace below, anticipating. “Climb, Alyssa! We can do this!”

She pulled herself up, straining every muscle in her body and winning the fight. She moved up another foot. And then another.

But the light was growing dimmer, causing shadows within the cavern to become pools of absolute darkness rather than just spots of gloom. When the Megalania Prisca found the moment of opportunity, when the light was at its weakest point, it began to scale the wall using its talons like pitons.

Looking downward to gauge his position, John suddenly found himself staring right into the maw of his predator.

It was that close.

Nehemiah had his thumb on the switch, his eyes on Leviticus as he waited for the OK.

“This is your baby,” Leviticus told him.

It was getting dark. The sun halfway beyond the horizon, which meant the chopper was on its way.

Nehemiah nodded. “Fire in the hole!” And then he hit the button.

When the center charge went off, a mushroom cloud of dust boiled skyward. And then the subsequent charges went off in sequence, the explosions working across the landing one after the other from the center to the temple’s perimeter.

The center of the facility caved, and then its edges followed, the hole growing wider as the charges continued to go off.

Dirt and rock and desert sand tried to fill the gap, but the hole was too deep.

“What was down there?” Isaiah commented softly and more to himself.

…Whump… Whump… Whump…

The Semtex continued to fire off.

…Whump… Whump… Whump…

Dust began to roll like a sandstorm across the desert floor in all directions, the dust thick and cloying. The visibility was becoming problematic with the closest thing to them nothing but vague shadows.

They coughed and swiped uselessly at the air as if to clear some space for clean breathing. At best it was a futile attempt as dust clouds swept in.

When things began to settle and the world became less brown and vague, the Knights of the Holy Order went to the edge of the crater. What was once an incline was now a hole of at least forty feet deep. Whatever hollow was beneath that was filled to capacity.

The men were summarily stunned as they stood along the edge looking downward. The hole was massive.

“A little Semtex goes a long way,” said Nehemiah.

“Apparently,” replied Job.

Leviticus checked his watch. The chopper was minutes out. “Gear up, fellas. Time to bug out.”

They went to grab their gear.

Within the dark niches of the temple of Edin, the Megalania Priscas who had gorged themselves into a state of digestive inertia, or those finding refuge from the apex predator, became agitated as the temple walls shook. This wasn’t like before during marginal shifts, but more catastrophic.

Numerous cracks raced across the walls and the ceiling of the black silica, the crushing pressure of a concussive explosive so powerful that it killed the majority of the lizards instantly. Others died when the walls and ceiling collapsed, the entire area imploding inward and downward, the creatures incapable of finding any kind of refuge.

When it was over and done with, the temple was destroyed along with the creatures that had been indigenous to the area for tens of thousands of years.

Eden was gone.

The apex predator swung its raptor-like claw at Savage’s feet and missed, the point of its talon scoring the rock below him with a deep groove.

Alyssa gave all she had to move as quickly as she could, but her Herculean effort wasn’t enough as she fell short, the Prisca quickly closing the gap.

Savage swung the blade of his KA-BAR, the point striking and dragging across the snout of the lizard, making a score of his own. The Megalania Prisca roared and shook its wide frill in agitation. It swung its talon once again, and once again scored the stone.

The opening was fifteen feet away. The sun had almost set.

And then a series of muffled pops sounded off in the distance.

…Whump… Whump… Whump…

The cavern began to tremble violently as concussive waves rippled their way through, shaking the area with the intensity of a high-scale earthquake. Stones within the walls began to loosen, dust from the ceiling cascaded downward, and the earth began to shift.

John lost his knife, the KA-BAR bouncing and skipping off the rocks and landing by a grouping of stalagmites. With his free hand he grabbed a hold of stones not completely stable against the wall. Alyssa hugged herself close to the wall as pebbles and stones peppered her from above.

The waves grew worse. And then the instability of the stones and the weight of the beast were too much for the wall to handle. The rocks gave way and the beast fell, the predator peeling away from the wall and falling to the floor below.

Since the tips of the stalactites were blunted they did not impale the creature, but snapped like chalk sticks beneath its weight as it landed on them. Shaking its head to gather itself, it then looked up at Alyssa and Savage and cried out in bestial rage.

Then the ceiling cracked and separated as running fissures raced across the earthen ceiling above them. Chunks of rock began to fall, the earth imploding from above and pouring downward like the sands of an hourglass.

The creature roared as it was being buried alive, its anger gone as self-preservation kicked in. Sand and stone poured downward, the roof of the cavern collapsing as Alyssa Moore and John Savage continued to cling tightly against the wall.

The only thing visible of the creature was its head, the rest buried as the level of the sand continued to sift downward to cover the creature in its entirety. It squirmed. It cried out. It did all it could do to pry itself free.

And then the entire ceiling gave, the weight of countless tons falling on the creature and snuffing out its life.

When the earth stopped shaking, Alyssa opened her eyes. What was once an opening the size of a manhole was now the rim of a crater. She could see the entire sky, and the transition of colors that marked the moment of an approaching sunset. At that moment she thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

They labored and finally made it to the surface. John aided Alyssa onto level ground far from the crater’s edge. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She fell into his embrace. And John Savage gladly accepted her. He then gazed off to the horizon. It was going to be next to impossible to walk through the desert with Alyssa and her injury — the distance incredibly far, especially with no water.

She pulled back from him. “Now what? You know I can’t walk.”

“Then I’ll carry you. Maybe we’ll get lucky and come across shepherds or something.”

She feigned a sad smile. “Thank you, John. Thank you for not leaving me behind when you could have.”

“I told you. I’m a man. And men are irrational.” Her sad smile was replaced by a real one. “All right,” he said. “I can carry you on my back through the night. It’ll be cooler that way—”

“You won’t have to carry her at all,” said a voice from behind.

When Savage turned to confront the voice, he saw a heavily armed contingent of soldiers.

Leviticus was angry beyond words. He had been assured that no one was going to get hurt in the mission but certain aspects of the assignment had been omitted by papal intention.

When the chopper lifted them to safety and Alyssa’s ankle had been attended to, Savage explained everything to Leviticus regarding the temple of Eden from the moment of his agreement to follow through with Alyssa’s assassination to the moment of their escape. He left nothing out.

Leviticus looked at Alyssa, and then leaned forward into Savage’s ear. “I see you missed your target,” he whispered, smiling lasciviously. “Especially when she’s ten feet away from you.” When he spoke he did so in jest, taking a jab at Savage.

Savage smiled. “Loyalty above all else,” he said, “except honor.” And then: “You were right, Leviticus. There’s more than just duty to others. There’s also duty to one’s self.”

He agreed. “To know the difference between right and wrong, John, is to know honor.”

Savage looked at Alyssa, who was toying with the bandages around her ankle. She was oblivious to their discussion. “Pope Leo was wrong,” he told Leviticus.

“Leo was afraid. And when men are afraid, they become lost.”

Like me? thought Savage. The way I was lost?

“But he’ll find himself,” said Leviticus. “Good men usually do before it’s too late.”

Savage leaned his head back and listened to the rotors, the sound eventually lulling him to sleep.