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“Yes, a worldwide astronomical cult of stargazers and calendar makers that appeared five-thousand years ago, in every corner of the world, leaving behind the pyramids and celestial calendars as their legacy.”

  “I’ve heard of the whole cocaine and nicotine thing, South American plant residues turning up in Egyptian mummies, suggesting some sort of a transatlantic trade route between the Old World and the New.”

  “Yes, but in the other direction. It was a route from the New world to the Old, by a movement that arose in the Brazilian rainforest, and spread like wildfire around the world. Europeans are so arrogant in their insistence that we were the first seafarers to circumnavigate the globe, when there is so much obvious evidence to the contrary. This feat was already accomplished many thousands of years ago by what seems to have been a rather aggressive religious movement.”

  “Well, now we can all enjoy a good laugh at their expense, because we’ve watched every one of those goddamned doomsday calendars run out, and the world keeps right on turning.”

  “Unless,” the engineer said, raising a finger, “those calendars simply indicated the approximate end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.”

  “Dad! It’s starting!” The teen lifted his phone to the plate glass window, and began to record a shaky video. Outside, the enigmatic face of the Sphinx was illuminated in an eerie spray of greenish light, haloed by shimmering holograms of scarab glyphs. The lighting inside the Pizza Hut dimmed. Overhead speakers crackled with the unmistakable static of an old record needle on dusty vinyl, followed by the tinny voice of a narrator whose canned recording had almost certainly been employed, in one form or fashion, since the 1950’s.

  “Civilizations are like islands in an ocean of barbarism,” the narrator stated, in a curtly nasal voice. “Over this, I have watched, for five thousand years. Man is but an insect before me, yet it was man who built me. I am the Sphinx.”

  A discordant reed soundtrack reminiscent of some dated educational program wavered through the speakers. The flow of music was synchronized to a gradual change in color of the Sphinx’s hooded countenance, from neon green to blue to purple, and finally, to a hellish red. Flickering symbols of ancient portents appeared in neon instants all across the horizon, as the pyramids blazed into view, one after another, bathed in fountains of crimson light.

  The staccato of chopping rotor blades disrupted the mystical ambiance. All heads in the restaurant swiveled from the Sphinx to the squadron of gunships, tacking deliberately through the dusk in the direction of the Giza Plateau. They were back, but something was different. This time, there was a menacing aspect of purpose in their approach.

  The clamor of conversation and clinking flatware throughout the restaurant was muted, as a thumping chopper came to hover directly over the Pizza Hut. The recorded symphony music was overwhelmed by the aircraft’s deafening pulse. The remaining gunships fanned out over the plaza, where the crowds of tourists and merchants dispersed.

  “What the hell is going on?” the American asked, gawping up at the restaurant ceiling, but his words were scarcely audible over the pounding cadence of the hovering machine. The casual dining ambiance devolved into the erratic behavior of a frightened mob. Customers left their tables and bolted for the side doors. As they made their escape, they were swallowed by plumes of windblown dust that roiled with oceanic turbidity. Thundering boots on the Pizza Hut roof ignited chaos throughout the restaurant. Women screamed, clutching their squalling children, as dark, villous forms descended through the brownish haze. One after another, they dropped like a hatch of spiders from their dangling ratlines.

  The engineer leapt from his seat. “Get up. We’ve got to go. Now!” He seized the arm of his boy, who was still snapping photos with his phone even as he was hauled to his feet.

  “Where are you going?” the American woman howled. “Richard!” Her husband had left the table. She cranked her head around, searching. He was gone, already lost amongst the mindless stampede for the nearest exit.

  The engineer and his son rushed for the foremost flank of the crowd, where blows were being thrown. Bodies toppled over tables and chairs. Stepping through the enmeshed patrons and pizza, the teen tried to snap photos of writhing bodies, as his father shoved his way through the portal, dragging the distracted boy behind him.

  “Richard?” The American woman rose from her seat, her gaze flicking from the dining room chaos to the squad of masked commandos that rushed past the opposite side of the glass. Enveloped in blinding dust, the first trooper reached the doorway, where he dealt a vicious strike with his rifle butt to her husband’s teeth. The American woman screamed, raising her arms reflexively as the prattle of automatic weapon fire filled the dining room. A wave of toppling bodies cleared a path to the doorway. A face she recognized appeared suddenly on the other side of the glass. Blood-drenched, gawping like a clubbed fish, the engineer slapped his red palms against the windows. His crazed eyes met hers as his body collapsed, streaking a gory arch down the glass.

  Distant bursts of gunfire across the plaza were marked by muzzle flashes, accompanied by the ongoing show of laser lights. Stilled bodies littered the ground. Others crawled, or hitched forward through the sand like half-crushed insects. From its altar of artificial light, the Sphinx glowered down upon the massacre with lofty indifference, as if scenes of slaughter were a common occurrence in the court over which it had long presided.

  Overhead, the chopper’s engines began to whine. The speed of the pulsing rotors increased. The aircraft lifted up and away, billowing filth around the dozens of masked commandos who were storming into the restaurant. Any possibility for escape was over. The crowds edged back from the phalanx of troopers, herding like sheep into the center of the dining area. A hush fell over the room as a final invader entered the restaurant, a hooded man who strode casually through the carnage.

  Unlike his company, he wore no military uniform. Nor did he wear any aspect of subservience on the hideously deformed face that leered beneath his ragged cowl. He was a living incarnation of the Sphinx, with a gaping crater where a nose was once presumably situated, bearing every scar of abuse that a lifetime of war might inflict. Commandos moved into their positions by directives so subtle that they couldn’t be discerned. They seemed to hear and obey his unspoken orders, as if their mind were somehow possessed by the rind-skinned monster who walked barefoot through the gore and shattered glass.

  The entire restaurant trembled on its foundation as a titanic shockwave inspired a collective scream. Restaurant patrons crumpled to the floor. Some crawled under tables and covered their heads as a wave of blackness rolled over the Giza Plateau. Facedown in the gloom, the American woman’s jagged breaths were amplified in the new and stifling silence. All power in the area had evidently been disrupted.

  Another dull fusillade rattled the sheets of glass in their panes. This impact was succeeded by a tremor so deep that it seemed to emanate from the upset organs of the planet itself. The American woman scrunched her eyes shut, whimpering against the greasy tiles. Through her eyelids, she could perceive the room brightening and waning, as if the darkness was occasionally pierced by flickering bolts of energy. The resonating trundle of what sounded like toppling boulders seemed to originate from the far end of the plaza, in the vicinity of the Great Pyramid. The thunder rolled on for several terrifying minutes until absolute silence reclaimed the Giza Plateau.

  No one spoke. No one dared to move. Only a single set of footsteps disturbed the absolute silence. The lone presence maneuvered casually through the wreckage, as though quite comfortable in chaos, at home in Hell. From beyond the proximity of her own jagged breaths, the American woman followed this dark attendant with her ears, as it drifted from the rear of the establishment to the front windows. Once there, the being stood silently beside her, as if admiring the view of whatever cataclysm had just transpired. She heard a muffled humming, not unlike the vibration of an electric shaver. This sound was soon accompanied by a robotic rendition of human sp
eech.

  “You are the lucky ones,” said the voice.

  A strange earthy odor permeated the dining room, like almonds and acid. She noticed that something was wrong with her throat. It was closing. The American woman’s eyes bulged. She sucked for a breath that wouldn’t come. She couldn’t breathe. She rose to her knees, jaw oscillating, clawing at her sealed windpipe, retching on a swollen tongue that was already extruding from her mouth. What had so recently been a cheerful restaurant, had become a cave of death. She stood and reeled through her final moments, twirling amidst her fellow dancers in a ghastly performance that seemed to entertain the hooded silhouette who loitered at Armageddon’s threshold.

  “You are the harbingers of a blood dynasty.” The words rattled from the throat of the man with no nose. Arms folded over his chest with an air of grim satisfaction, he maintained his sphinxlike stoicism, fearless, even as the lumbering horrors on the darkened plaza swiveled their massive heads, spotlighting the restaurant in the volcanic glow of their clustered eyes. “The first of seven-billion to die.”

  Chapter Three

  “I’ve never been involved with this kind of an investigation before,” the agent said. He placed the blunt remains of his right hand atop the evidence file that was situated on the conference table in front of him. He hung his head with an ingratiating air of admission. Shadows oscillated in the flickering glow of the gaslights. “Maybe it would be best if you told me how I’m supposed to begin, Ms. Raquet.”

  “You can begin by calling me Cecile.”

  She trusted the agent, despite his whiskers, mismatched clothing, and grime. A lot of folks distrusted the IDC, but this man didn’t try to hide the pain behind his eyes. He’d lost a lot, probably his whole family, but he was carrying on. That was more than could be said for a lot of folks who’d just given up, crawled into their holes and died. He was still interested in working. That was good. She liked the flavor of his smoke.

  “How do we begin, Cecile?”

  She smiled at him. “Usually, we start with a personal object. Like an article of clothing, a piece of jewelry, something like that. Best if it’s something they were wearing, or had with them at the time of their death.”

  The agent’s gaze fell to the manila folder. He shook his head. “In this case, I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that.” He looked back up at Cecile. “I might as well tell you right now that the individual in question is not dead.”

  “Not dead?”

  The agent slowly shook his head.

  “Honey,” Cecile said, raising a playful eyebrow, “you do know what a spiritual medium does, don’t you?”

  The agent stared across the table, but did not reply.

  “I commune with the spirits of the dead.” She clicked her chipped fingernails on the surface of the table, and her gaze returned to the abbreviated nub of the agent’s right hand. Purple scars mapped the hems where someone had stitched him hastily back together. She looked back into the depths of his eyes, and she decided that he’d performed the surgery on himself. “Did you lose someone special, a year ago?”

  The temperature of the agent’s stare suddenly dropped by twenty degrees. “Didn’t we all?”

  “Would you like me to—”

  “No.”

  Cecile pursed her lips and cleared her throat. She straightened up in her seat and drew a long breath of air. “Honey, what do you want me to do?”

  “I have a photograph.” The agent thumped his scarred appendage against the file. “We hoped that with your gift, you might be able to help us.”

  “I can’t commune with the spirit of an individual who is still living.”

  The agent nodded. “I understand that, but I guess we figured that spirits of the deceased are not exactly in short supply these days. We hoped that in some roundabout way that you might be able to point us in a new direction, tell us something we don’t already know. Anything would be a big help. We’re at a dead end in this investigation.”

  “Can I see it?”

  The agent opened the file with his left hand and removed a single print. He glanced at the image, and then placed it face down on the table. “This is the only known photograph of this individual in existence.” With a quick thrust, he slid the picture across the surface of the table.

  Cecile lifted her hand, and placed her palm on the back of the image. She cleared her throat, settled into her seat, and closed her eyes. “The person who took this photograph is no longer with us.”

  “That is correct,” the agent replied.

  “It was taken by a boy. A teenaged boy. One year ago.” Cecile’s eyelids fluttered. “He sent this picture to his mother, just before he died. His father was with him at the time. He died a violent death as well. They both did.”

  “All of that is correct.”

  Cecile opened her eyes, and gazed across the table at the agent. She’d turned him. It was always obvious when she’d made a believer out of a skeptic. They were always skeptical at first, until she softened them, and those walls came tumbling down. “I don’t want to scare you, Honey, but before I go any deeper, I have to warn you, because you’re new to this and what you may see and hear, might just be a little disturbing.”

  “I understand.”

  “Now, this is a little bit backwards from what I’m accustomed to doing. Normally, I try to connect with the spirit of victim of a violent crime. I earn their trust, and then, I try to coax them into revealing some clues about the circumstances of their death, but this is different. We ain’t solving a murder mystery here. We aren’t looking for clues about the death of a child photographer. You already know when, where, and how he died, and I’ll bet you even know who did it. The boy’s killer is on the photograph in front of me.”

  “That is all correct.”

  “So, what exactly do you want me to try to find out that you don’t already know?”

  “Just help.” The agent’s countenance hardened, flushing with hot patches of color. “Help us find this son of a bitch.”

  Cecile turned the photograph over. She frowned when her gaze fell upon the strange face staring back at her. “Can I ask you what you already know about this person?” The blurry image was that of a hooded man with no nose, enveloped in a cloud of what appeared to be windblown dust.

  “We don’t have a name. Only aliases. Last seen in Egypt, on Zero Day.”

  “On Z-Day? Then how can you be sure that this man is still alive?”

  “We can’t be absolutely sure. We aren’t sure of anything. All we hear is chatter. That’s why we brought you in.” The agent stroked his whiskered cheeks with his good hand. “You made quite a name for yourself in New Orleans, with the LBI. Helped solve something in the neighborhood of a hundred-and-fifty cold cases? That’s impressive, but I can assure you, in all the investigations you assisted, there has never been a killer more desperately in need of being apprehended than the man in front of you. We call him the ‘Green Man,’ on account of his skin discoloration. Maybe hypochromic anemia, chlorosis … again, we don’t know.” The agent’s eyes hardened. “We do have good reason to believe that he’s the ringleader of an underground terrorist network that crippled our world’s national defenses at the moment we needed them most. If we can establish the right connections, we’d like to be able to hold the Green Man responsible for Z-Day,” the agent said, placing his hand upon the twisted stump of the other, “as well as everything that came afterwards. We need this. The whole world needs it, moving forward.”

  Everyone lost something that day. Most lost everything. New Orleans was hit first, and hit hardest. Cecile was amongst the few folks in that city who were lucky enough to survive the first night, to crawl from dawn’s devastation like a collection of insects that had somehow survived a passing crop duster’s fumigation. Like every survivor, she’d learned to carry around a strange burden of guilt. The guilt was strange in the sense that while she could never understand why she was permitted to rise from amongst those billions who’d
fallen, her so-called luck came bound to an obligation to witness civilization’s collapse, the erasure of familiarity, and the gradual extermination of all her world’s species. It was a strange new reality that fostered a burning resent toward the governments that had failed to warn them, toward the armies that had failed to protect them from the horrors that invaded and promptly desecrated their world. Most folks called them dragons, because wherever they flew, cities burned.

  There were thousands of them. All emerging from below at once, like a great hatch of cicadas, the dragons wrought terror throughout their wakes of devastation, but they were not despised. Not exactly. That was the strangest thing. On one hand, the dragons were beautiful to look upon, but Cecile supposed they were forgiven their sins because they weren’t specifically killers of people. They attacked structure, and Dragons were just animals, after all. Much like a lion’s prowess, or a great bear’s majesty, their awesome destructive force was perceived as a natural dominance that was appreciable, even respectable, to human beings. There was no malice in an animal’s actions. Only intelligent life forms can commit the act of murder, and same as it ever was, it was people murdering people. True hatred was reserved for the new race of traitors to the human race who breathed the toxic air and walked freely amongst the titans, performing their unthinkable duties.

  “Most importantly, we have good reason to believe that the slaughter going on up there is not just some natural byproduct of a social meltdown. Immunity to the toxins isn’t just some freakish biological accident. I’m afraid that the Hunters are all part of a plan.”

  Cecile furrowed her brow. “A plan?”

  “Insurance.” The agent nodded with grim conviction. “They were bioengineered to insure a total holocaust, and every lead that we follow brings us right back to him.”

  As if humankind hadn’t suffered enough, Hunters were the most sickening insult. While the dragons were up there doing what came natural to their species, so was mankind—not humanity—mankind—all the way to the bitter end. Cecile refused to believe that we’d appeared on this world for no other purpose than to teach an unnecessary lesson in the futility of intelligent life, taught and learned by the same doomed experimental race. No, she had to believe that something, somewhere along the line, had gone terribly awry, and that we’d willfully departed from a better destiny that had always been so easily within reach, right up until the final moment, and we’d failed to grasp it, even after our erasure began. Our demise had never been a foregone conclusion. We’d had promise, but that promise was forsaken.