Alpha Rising (35 page)

“
Oh, no,” Bach said,
“they’re afraid of us.”

In the midst of the alarm, an explosive
flash lit up the sky miles beyond the caves to the right, and waves
of heat rocked the air as a large volcano unleashed its fury,
spewing flame and rock five miles high. Before their eyes, a
blistering avalanche of boiling rain and brimstone rocketed down
the fuming mount’s slope like an electric-red cake frosting.

With the volcano’s mighty power
reverberating through his body, Bach’s mind clicked off the
distance between the oncoming flow and safety. He took Star’s hand
and hurriedly led her to one of the larger caves. It seemed empty,
but he moved deeper inside to be sure.

In the semi-dark cavern, Star noticed a
four-foot-high opening on one side that led to an adjoining
chamber. She bent down and yelled into the darkness, “Hello, is
anyone here?”

No reply.

Bach crouched down and felt his way into the
room. He returned minutes later. “I couldn’t see, and couldn’t find
much by touch.”

Star motioned him back to the entranceway.
She couldn’t take her eyes off of the sight of mountains, sky, and
caves illuminated in orange and red light from the blinding magma
flow. “It’s terrifying and somehow beautiful at the same time,” she
said, holding back fear. As the scorching crimson tide thundered
down the volcano’s side, the clay floor shuddered beneath their
feet. Star looked at Bach. “What if it comes this far?”

“
Don’t think about that
right now.” He turned her around. “Let’s go deeper inside where
it’s cooler.” He led her to the adjoining chamber. On the chance
cave dwellers were inside but too frightened to show themselves,
Bach yelled again as they stepped into the room. “Anybody
here?”

No answer.

As amber light from the
perdition beyond flickered through fractures in the walls, the
chamber slowly grew warmer and brighter. When Bach’s eyes adjusted
to the eerie glow, he thought he was seeing things. Sparkling
amethyst gemstones covered the walls. “Oh, my gosh,” he whispered,
“We’re inside a giant geode.” Exploring deeper, he found a
well-worn upright crevice that led into a narrow third room where
an inch-high flame burning in a small pit of rocks cast just enough
light for him to look around. A large box-like table with a heavy
rectangular slab on top occupied most of the floor space in the
room. He touched it.
Why would anyone need
this large table in such a narrow room?
Looking around, he found the walls etched and painted with
petroglyphs and rebuses, and the ceiling painted with Paleolithic
art that made the room look like a prehistoric Sistine
Chapel.
I don’t believe
this
. “Star!” he yelled, “come here and
look at this.”

She stepped through the crevice, and he
excitedly pointed to rows of lines and dots drawn on the wall.
“Look! This is similar to an ogham alphabet—various dots for vowels
and differing lines for consonants. Much like modern-day bar codes
on Earth, but it’s an alphabet.”

She ran her hand across the design. “This is
fascinating. But I can’t concentrate right now. Let’s go back to
the other room and keep watch. I’m worried about how we’ll search
with this volcano bearing down.”

The two looked from the cave’s entranceway
into the desolate area beyond where a red-hot river of molten rock
surged down the mountainside, coating everything in its path with a
glowing orange crust. But what seemed the end of all life suddenly
took a surprising turn when, through stifling hot air reeking of
death, a woman ran past the cave chasing after a black furry blur,
frantically trying to catch it with a net of twigs. She’d almost
snared the tiny animal when it withdrew its inch-long legs, curled
into a ball, and rolled in circles in front of the caves.

“
Phroo! Phroo!” the
cavewoman shouted. “Stop, little phroo, don’t die!” As heat
exhaustion weakened the woman, she dropped to the ground and
crawled on hands and knees after the squealing phroo. With a wild
scoop of her net she snared the elusive critter, then staggered
into the cave with the writhing phroo clutched to her chest. Star
and Bach were at the entrance.

Heart pounding, the woman gasped. “You’re
not Rooks….”

Bach replied, “No, we’re from Dura.”

The cavewoman held the noisy, black furball
by the scruff of its neck and tried to calm it by stroking the
circular patch of gray fluff on its stomach. “Have you seen the
other phroo?” she asked, trying to catch her breath. The tiny
rodent’s huge purple eyes peeked from behind a collar of unruly
gray fur framing a face that looked like a baby cheetah’s.

Star shook her head. “No, we haven’t.”

Bach reached out to touch the little
critter, but it pulled in its legs, tucked its head under, and
rolled into a ball in the woman’s hands.

“
It’s a phroo?” Star
asked.

Still trying to catch her breath, the woman
didn’t answer for a moment. “Yes. There’s a white one too, a male.
I have to find him. They’re the last ones. They search underground
for gemstones to line their burrows. We watch where they enter and
exit. The jewels keep us in the evil one’s good graces.” Her voice
intensified. “The phroos locate bountiful lodes after the lava
cools—carbon crystals, beryl, quartz, jasper, and other minerals,
which we cleave into objects of beauty to please the Specter and
his Rooks.” The critter squirmed, so she closed both hands around
it. “People became greedy—tried to tame the phroos so they would
search just for them. But these little ones don’t live long in
captivity, and now phroos are extinct, except for two.” She put the
furball in a small cage made from twigs. “Their underground
searches often set off minor eruptions, which cause the smaller
mounds to smoke. But those subterranean areas have weakened, and
this major eruption is the tragic consequence.” Head shaking, she
added, “These two are still young. Most of our animals have already
died.”

“
What happened to them?”
Star asked.

“
Over time, many of us
refused to join the Specter’s army. He vented his anger by using
our volcanoes as his dumpsite. He flaunts his power by coming back
and discarding toxic waste. It aggravates the volcanoes, and
chemicals spew like lethal rain. We’ve been safe in our caves, but
everything outside has slowly withered and died, and so did the
animals. Much of our water is contaminated. The poisons have taken
a toll.”

Star shook her head. “I’m so sorry to hear
of the evil he’s done.” She looked at Bach. “That explains the oil
splotches that hit the ship when we tried to reach Zarephath a few
days ago, and the rings around the planet.”

“
All the animals are dead?”
Bach asked.

“
Yes, the adults. But I
have some of their babies—trying to keep them alive.”

“
You have baby
animals?”

“
Those I could rescue, but
many are lost forever. I have eggs of the largest. They’re a long
time in hatching, so Ptero constructed a safe nesting place for
them.”

“
Is Ptero your mate?” he
asked. “Where is he?”

The woman pointed outside. “He’ll be here.
He knows the dangers of Zarephath.”

The three huddled in the arched doorway,
straining to see through air heavy with embers and smoke. A
staggering figure approached from the distance, struggling under
the weight of two metal buckets suspended from a pole across his
shoulders. At his back, the three-mile-long ruby river incinerated
everything from the largest tree to the smallest unseen
organism.

Bach rushed into the ash and smoke yelling
to the man, “Hold on!” He carried one bucket, and the man carried
the other.

As soon as they reached the cave, Bach moved
everyone into the amethyst chamber, away from the acrid smell and
visual horror approaching just hundreds of yards away. He couldn’t
help but notice a pouch hanging from Ptero’s shoulder with
something moving inside. Yet he was more interested in the two
metal buckets—out of place in such a prehistoric setting.

Noting Bach’s stare, the cavewoman slid one
of the buckets toward his feet and pointed inside. “Food for the
baby animals. Ptero cooked the fruits and vegetables we had left
after the last co-op exchange.”

Bach examined the contents of the bucket. A
four-partitioned divider that looked like the symbol separated the
different foods. “Uh … uh,” he stammered, realizing he didn’t know
the woman’s name. “Your name?”

“
Xian.” She pronounced it
like Shan.

“
Xian, where did you get
these buckets?”

Ptero answered instead. “Made them at the
fire furnace—to help with my feeding formula. I cook it all over
the same fire but separate the different foods, so I made
dividers.”

While the primitive couple held Bach in
conversation, Star felt compelled to return to the narrow room. She
slipped through the crevice for one more look at the ogham
alphabet, then studied various hieroglyphs on the walls. She easily
interpreted some: a man and woman locking hands, a dinosaur with a
baby, a series of eclipse phases taken from a nearby planet, a
volcanic eruption. But among the painted and chiseled designs she
noticed a different art form: a heat-branded image depicting a
right hand with a cross and circle in the palm. The symbol of hope.
She rushed to tell Bach, but as soon as she stepped back into the
amethyst chamber, he motioned for her to examine the bucket.

Star noted the symbol Bach had found, then
led him, Ptero, and Xian to the wall in the narrow room and pointed
out the right hand with the crossed circle. Bach touched it and
felt a form of energy coming from it. “Our sign!” He spoke
excitedly to Xian and Ptero. “We’re here to take you with us. We’re
on a mission from the Creator and we’ve come to take chosen people
back to Dura—both of you.”

“
When will we leave?” asked
Ptero.

“
As quickly as possible,”
Bach said. “And we must bring your animals. But we weren’t
expecting a volcano in the middle of everything. Where are those
baby animals? We have to hurry.”

The ancient pair motioned for Bach and Star
to step back from the box-like stone table, then Ptero slid the
heavy rectangular slab from the top. The huge slab rolled away with
little effort, amazing Bach. On closer look, he noticed a carved
trench around the table’s top with marble-sized stones inside that
worked like ball bearings. More surprising was seeing dozens of
baby prehistoric animals—none larger than the tennis-ball-sized
phroo—and various-sized eggs inside the box.

Ptero pulled nine small, twig cages and six
animal-skin pouches from beneath the table, then caught a baby
dinosaur the size of a chameleon and handed it to Bach. “I’ve found
a way to keep animals small so they’ll not require as much
food.”

Bach marveled at the miniaturized Stone Age
animals as he helped put them into the twig cages and pouches.

Star cradled the squirming black phroo in
her hands, then held it at eye level and looked into its big purple
eyes. The frightened critter squealed and rolled into a ball. “It’s
good the animals are all small. I don’t know where we would have
put those larger species at full size,” she said.

Star had barely finished her sentence when
Ptero swung the pouch from his shoulder. “Look,” he said, removing
the writhing white phroo from the bag. “Caught him.” The wriggling
furball sprang from his hand and scurried across the floor into the
main chamber. Bach and Ptero hurried after it, but weren’t fast
enough. The phroo balled up and rolled behind a boulder the size of
a refrigerator. Ptero dropped to his knees and strained to reach
behind the boulder. “Come back,” he cried out. He looked at Bach.
“We’ll never get him.”

Bach grumbled, “We have to.” He slapped his
hands on the boulder, trying to scare the phroo from hiding, but
the critter stayed put. “Let’s put his mate’s cage nearby. Maybe
he’ll come out for her.” An explosive blast outside seemed to
respond to his plan. The cave’s walls and floor shook, and Star and
Xian hurried to the entranceway. A second volcano had erupted to
the left of the caves.

Knowing that the two walls of lava bearing
down on the caves would soon enclose them, Ptero rushed to a
granite slab standing upright alongside the door. “Hurry,” he
bellowed to the others. The four lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and
leaned on the slab with all their weight, but it didn’t move.

Determined, they pushed again and again,
feet sliding, falling down, and shoving until their insides hurt.
Finally, Bach yelled, “Push in short bursts! Heave-HO!” The slab
slid an inch. The next “Heave-HO,” gained another inch, then
another, until the doorway was sealed. Yellow and red lights
flickered through cracks in the rocks like flashbulbs, and a wave
of lava slammed against the cave. Within seconds, the darkened
cavern seemed a merciless purgatory.

The thought of roasting to death propelled
Bach onward. “Quick,” he snapped, herding everyone into the narrow
chamber. “It’ll stay cool there the longest.” He turned back to the
main room. “I’ll plug up the cracks. Gotta keep out the smoke and
lava.”

Wearing his E-suit space
gloves, Bach stuffed every pebble and stone he could find into
crevices around the slab. In the savage heat, the cave’s oxygen
level fell to a critical low. Drenched in sweat, he grew
light-headed and confused. His eyes flickered open and shut and he
staggered backwards, leaning against the wall as he slid to the
floor. The white phroo scurried past his feet.
The white phroo? Am I hallucinating?
Then he saw it again, pawing at its mate’s cage. The little
critter’s purple eyes focused on him as if pleading for help before
it scurried back behind the boulder. The caged female lay panting
on her side.