Zero Point (36 page)

The three had covered the first thirty feet back when a bone-jarring seismic quake hit them without warning. It sent them cascading to the floor as ancient fissures in the walls on either side of them began fracturing. The black basalt crumbled away from the wall, allowing jets of super-heated steam to escape through newly-formed fissures.

Eli looked nervously at the others as he noticed that the path ahead of them had partially collapsed, threatening to seal them all in a permanent tomb. All that remained was a narrow opening just large enough for one person at a time to squeeze through. The scattered basalt dust settled all around them as Eli heard the ominous hissing sound of steam being released in the dark recesses of the lava tube behind them. He projected the beam from the flashlight around the tunnel to survey the damage, but stopped when the light reflected off something glimmering on the wall.

“Maria! Look!” he yelled in excitement, pointing the beam at a large section of basalt that had fallen away from the side of the tube. A natural ledge was revealed, and sitting on the ledge was a small rectangular box.

“Oh my God, do you think we’ve found it?” Maria asked as the two made their way over to the narrow, waist-high ledge.

“It must have been buried by past eruptions, sealing the ledge with loose basalt rock and protecting it,” Eli said as he gently grasped the object. He pulled it free from the crumbling rock that entombed it for almost twenty centuries.

The ancient wooden box was encased in copper sheathing. Oval shaped handles, forged from bronze, were what reflected the light from Eli’s flashlight. It measured approximately eight inches high by fourteen inches long. One of the wooden knobs at its base had broken off.

Eli brushed the dust off the top of the small chest. The structure of the chest was still intact, but its copper exterior was dulled by the centuries of dirt and debris lying atop of it.

“Leave it,” Burr protested from the narrow opening that led to the entrance. “We have to get out now, before it’s too late.”

“Let’s take a look,” Eli said, in childlike amazement, oblivious to their present danger. He ignored Burr, who had moved to the other side of the tunnel.

“I just wish Josh were here to see this,” Eli whispered, smiling at Maria, who was now soaked with perspiration from the intensifying heat in the lava tube. He slowly lifted the lid to the small ancient chest and placed it at the side of the box.

Shining the light inside, the two saw an ancient woven fabric covering something. Maria, ever so carefully, lifted the woven material off its contents and gasped in awe. They looked at each other for a moment and Eli could see tears mixed with sweat running down Maria’s face.

There, on the left side of the chest lying on its side was a wooden cup made of olive wood. The cup was simple in design and measured barely five inches high, with a deeply carved bowl that had no stem; its base was the same
diameter as its top. Delicately hand painted designs inscribed on its side were still discernible after almost two thousand years. In the center of the chest was a roll of copper sheathing, which Eli identified immediately as a copper scroll. “Look, Maria,” he said excitedly. “It’s just like the ones found in 1952 in the cave at Khirbet Qumran on the shore of the Dead Sea. The copper scrolls found there were scribed to preserve religious text.”

“Look at this,” Maria said, pointing to the opposite end of the box. “That's the remains of euphorbia milli, a thick, thorny brush plant that grows throughout the Dead Sea region, and was common to the vicinity of Jerusalem.”

Eli marveled at the remains of the thorn brush. Although fragmented through the centuries, the interweaving of the thorny brush could be clearly discerned.

“We found them,” Eli said joyfully. “After two thousand years of speculation, stories, and myths, we have factual proof.”

“Imagine what could be written on that copper scroll,” Maria said as the two archaeologists stood, mesmerized by the treasures that lay before them.

They gazed in amazement for a few moments until the silence was broken by Alton Burr.

“I’ll take those now, Turner, if you don’t mind,” he said. Eli and Maria looked at Burr to see him brandishing a gun.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Burr?” Eli said. They were suddenly stunned back to reality by Burr’s action.

“What I originally came here to do; make sure that free-thinking people are not subjugated back into the stone ages from the likes of these superstitious symbols.”

“But what if they are real?” Maria cried out in frustration. “These are part of history, and you have no right to keep them from the rest of the world.”

“You said earlier that you wanted to find the truth, Burr,” Eli said. “Well here it is, looking you square in the eye. We were meant to find this chest. Think about it, Burr, do you really contend that everything that has transpired up to now has been merely by chance? Discovering Simon’s parchment, our escape from those madmen on Tenerife, the quake that revealed the opening to this lava tube, and the one in a million
chance
that we would be at the precise spot where the chest was located when a tremor occurs, revealing it to us after two thousand years; these can't be mere coincidences.”

Burr’s eyes softened for a moment as he reflected on the elder Turner’s reasoning, but the fires of his deeply-rooted hatred of religion regained control of his emotions once again.

“I don’t care about what you consider to be the truth, Turner. My truth, and, the truth of those I speak for, won’t be silenced by a hand full of ancient trinkets,” he spat, as he waved the gun back and forth. “You were a fool to believe I wanted to help you, Turner. I plan to make sure these relics
never see the light of day. I will never stop in my task of ridding our society of ideology that is based on myth and superstition.”

“Yeah I know, you keep using that concept of moral ideology as an excuse for your hatred,” Eli said. “What happened to you to make you hate religion so much?”

“I was hoping nature would have resolved this little problem without the need for violence. If I had realized that this volcano was going to erupt, I would have never suggested us coming here. I knew that you would not be able to let it rest,” Burr said, ignoring the question that burned into his tortured soul.

“You didn’t answer my question, Burr. Why do you hate religion so much?” Eli asked again softly, hoping to gain the intellectual upper hand as the heat in the tunnel became more oppressive. “A person of faith strives to live an upright life based on their core beliefs. How does that hurt, what you call, a free-thinking person? A free-thinking person, as you describe, has a right to choose based on facts along with all the evidence presented. By doing this, you are being a hypocrite of the very ideology you purport to stand for. Why don’t you—”

“Shut up!” Burr yelled as he waved the gun wildly at them, not wanting to hear any more as his tortured mind screamed at him. “Stand away from the chest, both of you.”

Eli and Maria slowly backed away from the ledge where the copper chest sat. As the two backed up to the opposite
wall of the lava tube, Burr slowly walked over to the ledge. Looking quickly at its contents and then back at the two archaeologists, he swung his backpack off his shoulder and opened it. Burr proceeded to pick up the woven thorn bush, which pricked his finger and drew blood, and then forced it into the backpack along with the olive wood chalice.

At that moment, Eli felt a sudden sense of serenity and peace that he had never felt before; expunging any feeling of fear, or trepidation of their predicament. As in a slow motion world, images of his dead wife and his son permeated his mind. Those were followed by visions of a good and fruitful life doing what he loved. He felt young and reborn, as if he were a brash, youthful student back at Texas
A&M
. He looked at Maria and smiled at her; a smile that caused her to look at him in confusion.

“
It’s
okay, Maria,” he said gently as he grabbed her hand, holding it for a moment. “I think I understand now. Please tell Josh that I love him.” He released her hand then started walking towards Burr, who now held the copper scroll in his hand.

“Stay back, Turner,” he spat with malice in his voice. He pointed the pistol at Eli, who just smiled and continued to approach.

“You were part of this plan also, Burr,” Eli said, coming closer as he raised his hands and outstretched his open palms towards the copper scroll.

“Eli, no!”
Maria screamed as the single shot rang out, reverberating throughout the lava tube over the racket of the escaping steam from the newly formed fissures. Eli slowly fell to his knees as blood began to issue from the wound in his chest, streaking red crimson on his shirt. He continued to hold his hands upward at the copper scroll that Burr held tightly. Just then, the scroll began to glow and Burr stared incredulously at it.

“This is my truth,” Eli said softly as the copper scroll began to illuminate the cave with a blinding light. Terrified at the sight, Burr threw down the radiating scroll, which rolled in front of Eli as Maria stared in astonishment.

“What kind of trick is this?” Burr yelled as Eli, illuminated by the brilliant glowing scroll, smiled at Burr.

“No trick, Burr. Like I said, this is my truth,” Eli responded serenely, as if he were disconnected from his now bleeding body. “Nothing is impossible. If I have the faith to say to this mountain ‘move’, then it will move.” Now feeling the pain of his wound, he slowly slumped to the floor.

Maria ran over to him, knelt down, and cradled him in her arms.

“Eli,” she cried softly. “Why?”

At that moment, forces beneath the Cumbre Vieja were going through turbulent changes. The Scalar weapon had abruptly changed from dispersing momentous heat within the magma core to one of absolute cold from the weapons conversion to an endothermic wave form by Yashiro. It was
as if someone had dispensed a titanic iceberg into a sea of boiling water with the same catastrophic reaction.

The heat began to quell instantly within the magma chamber kilometers below the island, resulting in a tremendous shock wave from the instant cooling. The pressure wave radiated toward the surface, causing a thunderous sonic boom heard hundreds of miles away from its epicenter. Windows were shattered all over the island of La Palma and people were shaken to the ground from the devastating shock wave that now moved across the waters at super-sonic speeds. This final chaotic insult was far too much for the already weakened western flank of the Cumbre Vieja to endure. Ever so imperceptibly, a half-trillion ton of rock began to lose its friction force under the superheated caldera and slide toward the sea far below the ancient volcano.

Back in the lava tube, the tremendous sonic boom and subsequent shock wave stunned Maria and Burr. Its thunderous report deafened them and left a ringing in their ears. Maria threw herself on top of Eli, who lay motionless on the floor bleeding from his chest wound. Burr was forcefully thrown backward against the basalt wall, striking his head and falling unconscious.

The fault line traversing the Cumbre Vieja’s ridge ruptured violently along its entire length with an agonizing crack that sounded like a gigantic thunderclap. Maria, her ears still ringing loudly, saw the ground beneath Burr
suddenly split apart as she desperately tried to drag Eli away from the ever-widening fissure.

After dragging Eli to the high side of the lava tube, she saw a light emanating from the ceiling of the dust-laden tunnel and realized it was actually the light of day. Astonishingly, the ground above them was being peeled back, rumbling downward like a colossal sliding roof.

Alton Burr, who now began to regain consciousness, felt himself being dragged helplessly by the momentum of the widening crack into the deep chasm that was forming beneath him. He screamed in terror as he clawed desperately at the loose basalt, not able to gain a firm hold. Sliding further and further downward, he soon found himself wedged at the bottom of the forty-foot deep fissure.

The earth trembled violently around Maria as she felt a hand touch her shoulder. Eli said something, but with the ringing in her ears from the shock wave, she could not hear his voice. She made a gesture to her ears, signifying her lack of ability to hear him.

“Get the backpack,” Eli mouthed, pointing weakly to the bag lying dangerously close to the chasm. Beside the backpack sat the copper scroll that now ceased its luminance. He looked at her pleadingly, and then shut his eyes in pain. Maria started to crawl along the still trembling rocky floor toward the gigantic fissure, which was still slowly moving. She gazed at the scroll, wondering what made it emit such a
radiant light. Maria then carefully picked up the scroll and put it in the backpack with the other items.

The ringing in her ears finally began to subside, and she was able to discern the sound of Burr screaming somewhere below. She carefully crawled to the edge of the newly-formed precipice, where she looked down to see Burr lying helpless at the bottom and howling in agony. His right leg was mangled and crushed under the huge sliding landmass, which slowly pulled his body inward like a gigantic paper shredder.

“You’ve got to help me!” Burr cried out in blinding agony as another sliding jolt pulled him in further. His hip joint was ripped out of its socket as he let out a blood-curdling scream. Maria looked at Eli, who lay silently with his eyes closed coughing up bits of blood.
He has done nothing to deserve this fate
, she thought angrily.
He has been my mentor and friend and almost a father to me.
She gazed at him with affection then looked back down at Alton Burr, who held out his bloody outstretched hand.