“I’m talking about hard, substantive evidence that Gabriel’s story of the Age of Creation is true. Evidence that’s always been right under our noses, we just didn’t recognize it.”
“Like what?”
“Like who built the statues on Easter Island, for instance. They’ve stood there for centuries, yet no one knows one iota about the people who built them or why they were built in the first place.”
Jake stared at his friend in disbelief, though the darkness prevented Sam from seeing his expression. “That’s your evidence? A bunch of lousy statues no one knows who built is your proof that some highly developed civilization ruled the earth before we did? Don’t you think that’s pushing things?”
“But that’s just it, Jake. It’s not the only evidence. It is just one example. There are others just like it. Look at the pyramids. Even today, with all of our modern technology, we still couldn’t replicate even one of those pyramids and get it as mathematically precise as the Egyptians did, and they used only their hands. And what about the Mayans and the Incas? Two incredibly advanced civilizations with both a spoken and written alphabet long before our ancestors in Europe had learned the value of writing. Both groups also had enough respect for geometry and astronomy to create a calendar that many argue is even more accurate than the one we use today. How else could they have done it, Jake, if not with a little help from someone else, like the Elders?”
Jake was interested now. Sam was actually making some sense. He remembered such theories had been put forth in the past, though they usually revolved around some extraterrestrial intelligence landing in flying saucers for a neighborly visit. Such ideas had always been scoffed at, with valid reason, in Jake’s opinion. But Sam’s idea struck a little closer to home. A prehistoric, intelligent race of “others,” for lack of a better term, was just as good a theory as any for explaining how man had managed to rise from naked, bestial savagery in such a short period of time, if you looked at things on the cosmic scale. It seemed impossible for them to have done it on their own. Jake turned back to stare out into the night, pondering this new twist.
Sam’s mind was still going a mile a minute as he sought to collect his thoughts into a coherent sequence. Everything suddenly made sense, and one simple answer could explain hundreds of mysteries.
“But why don’t we have any relics, any ruins, from these people? Every other civilization has left something behind, some record of the past, why not this one?” asked Jake.
“There wouldn’t necessarily be any ruins left. It’s the way they did things back then. Look at Troy, for God’s sake. That’s a perfect example. By the time Heidelmann actually found the place, he found not one city, but twenty-two cities, each one built on the ruins of the others, the materials of the former scavenged to form the building blocks of the next. Maybe that’s why some of the earliest human establishments were built where they were; they were building on the ruins of the civilization they remembered of old.”
Jake wasn’t buying all that, however. “There’d still be something left, Sam. Some reference, some clue that they’d been there before us.”
“But there is, Jake! What’s the one constant myth that can be found in hundreds of cultures? The myth of a great and shining civilization destroyed by some tremendous cataclysm in the earliest days of recorded history. Atlantis.
“Can’t you see it, Jake? Those last violent days, as the race you’ve nurtured grows into adolescence while your own dwindles into its final days, your ranks and those of your enemies diminished beyond recovery by centuries of warfare?”
Sam began pacing back and forth across an exposed portion of the Rock, no longer hiding, completely in view should anyone be looking in their direction.
Knowing that in his excitement Sam had forgotten what they were doing there and the need to remain undetected, Jake turned to tell him to shut up and sit down.
The words froze on his lips.
From over Sam’s shoulder, Jake could see a long, dark shape diving out of the night, its form darker than the darkness it descended from, silhouetted in the light of the stars it blotted from view.
The sight shocked Jake into immobility.
Down, down it came, traveling dozens of feet in seconds, hurtling toward its target, Sam’s unprotected back.
Jake tried to yell, tried to scream, to break the paralysis that gripped him, as raw, undiluted fear squeezed his heart like a vise and threatened to shut down his nervous system. Yet still he couldn’t move, couldn’t warn his friend of death approaching from the night sky above.
Everything seemed to happen at once.
A sharp, shrill shriek filled the air, as the Nightshade gave voice to the sheer pleasure and anticipation of the kill to come.
Sam spun around and looked up, seeing for the first time that dark shape streaking toward him.
The moon reflected off the claws of the beast’s outstretched talons as they prepared to rip and tear into its prey.
Jake’s paralysis broke.
He reacted without conscious thought; his body swung sideways without a word, his legs extended out before him in a wild kick with all the weight of his six-foot frame behind it.
His ankles struck Sam’s legs at a point just above his knees, knocking his friend’s legs out from under him, throwing him into an uncontrolled fall that forced him right over the edge of the Rock toward the water below.
With a sharp cry, Sam disappeared from view.
Knowing he had scant seconds to escape, Jake wasted no time in thinking about his response. He simply let his body continue the arc it had begun, throwing himself sideways and following Sam off the edge.
One moment the solid surface of the Rock was beneath him, the next he was falling through space. The drop seemed to last forever, until with a sudden impact he plunged into the icy waters of the Quinnepeg.
The fall took him deep, and the cold of the water seemed to suck the air straight out of his lungs. He frantically fought to the surface, feeling the weight of his wet clothes trying to drag him under, and he gasped with relief when his head broke clear of the water.
He found Sam coughing up a mouthful of water just a few feet away.
“You okay?” Jake asked him.
“Yeah.”
“I guess we found it,” Jake said weakly.
Sam chose not to reply.
Jake was about to continue when a whistling sound alerted him to the oncoming danger.
“Down!” he cried, not even bothering to look up, instinctively knowing that what he heard was the sound caused by the rush of air over the surface of the Nightshade’s wings as it plunged toward them from above.
Jake dived again, dived deep to evade the deadly claws that plunged into the river in search of his tender flesh. He struck out for shore at the same time, hoping that the Nightshade’s eyesight wasn’t sharp enough to see him beneath the water in the darkness. He planned to come to the surface a fair distance from where he’d gone under, hoping that would buy him enough time to figure out how to get out of this situation.
Jake stayed down as long as he could, until his lungs were screaming for oxygen and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he couldn’t hold out another moment.
He broke the surface of the water some thirty-five yards from where he’d gone under, having covered two-thirds of the distance to the other bank.
A quick, frantic look above told him the sky was empty for the time being.
It was a blessing, though there was no telling how long it would last.
Still, he’d take whatever time it gave him.
Where’s Sam?Jake thought, and looked around, doing his best to pierce the layer of fog that floated an inch above the dark water. A subtle motion in the haze and the rhythmic sounds of a swimmer’s strokes through the water reached him, and his heart began beating again.