Death in the Beginning (The God Tools Book 1) Read online

  DEATH IN THE BEGINNING

  THE GOD TOOLS: BOOK 1

  Gary Williams and

  Vicky Knerly

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Gary Williams and Vicky Knerly

  Previously published by Suspense Magazine

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonEncore are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  eISBN: 9781477870518

  This title was previously published by Suspense Magazine; this version has been reproduced from Suspense Magazine archive files.

  WORKS BY GARY WILLIAMS & VICKY KNERLY

  Death in the Beginning (2011)

  Three Keys to Murder (2012)

  Before the Proof – A Samuel Tolen short story (2012)

  Indisputable Proof (2012)

  Please visit our web site at www.williamsknerly.com and join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/WilliamsKnerly

  DEDICATIONS

  Gary dedicates this book to his wife, Jackie. Words cannot express my thanks for everything that you do.

  Vicky dedicates this book to Stephen, Nicolas, and Julian. Family is everything.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A novel is never completed without the efforts of many people. In that regard, Gary would like to thank his family—his wife and children—for their relentless support. And of course, he is grateful to his parents, Cecil and Betsy Williams, in more ways than he can describe.

  Vicky would like to thank her family for their support and for putting up with a lot of long days (and nights) of her complete solitude, locked in her office working on the manuscript.

  The authors would also like to commend the following people for their efforts with this book: Janice Lake, Wayne Kryspin, Maryanne Pease, Susan Parker, Les Williams, Chris & Sonya Ashton, Mille & Mark Sorger, Dalerie Fisher, Tracy Frost-Ferguson, Jason Haire, Michael Curry and Tony & Margie Hawkes. We covet your support, and you have our sincere gratitude.

  A special thanks to Roy Harris, Wilton Tuten, and Dr. Lloyd Muller for sharing their expertise on airplanes and flying.

  Lastly, we would like to thank all the readers. It is because of you that we do what we do. We hope you enjoy this story and follow us on future adventures.

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR “DEATH IN THE BEGINNING”

  “This novel is an excellent read. Mixing scientific fact with religious history and the supernatural, it moves readers relentlessly through a suspenseful tapestry of action. Its images are vivid, the characters lively, and their control of the story line makes for a real page turner. I’m anxious to see their next book.”

  – Lloyd H. Muller, author of “Family Tales and Letters” and “Old Ghosts”

  “Science, spirituality and the supernatural collide in this break-out debut thriller, with an action-packed storyline so tightly woven, you won’t be able to catch your breath until the very end. It’s a delicious, twisting journey unlike any I have read.”

  – CK Webb, co-author of “Cruelty to Innocents” and “Collecting Innocents”

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  PREVIEW: EVIL IN THE BEGINNING

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wednesday, June 29, 8:48 a.m. DST - Isla de la Palma, Canary Islands, off the African coast

  Dr. Curt Lohan stopped to catch his breath while gazing at the southwestern slope before him. Ahead, fellow archaeologist Dr. Lila Falls tirelessly pushed onward and upward.

  “Hey, you want to slow down?! You’re aware this is the steepest island in the world, right?!” Curt yelled.

  Lila continued as though she had not heard him. Curt muttered under his breath, and she wheeled around with an icy stare.

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Curt scoffed. “Ignore the shouting and catch the mumbling.”

  He resumed scaling the incline, picking up the pace. Minutes later, they stopped on a small plateau. Curt’s excitement stirred. “This looks promising.”

  Lila did not respond; her expression never wavered. It was the same stoic look Curt had lived with for six years. He did not miss it in the least, although it was not hard to see why he was initially drawn to her. Tiny in stature, with shoulder-length black hair, she had a toned body that was on display in her hiking shorts and white form-fitting, long-sleeved tee shirt. They had met at an excavation of a 17th–century Creek Indian village near Macon, Georgia. He called it ‘Love at First Archaeological Site.’ After the divorce, she noted that the Indian settlement and their marriage suffered from the same, corrosive decay. Lila was not one to mince words.

  A cool mountain breeze bristled through Curt’s
stubby brown hair as they stood upon the ledge. He was wearing a long-sleeved denim shirt and blue jeans, yet he shivered as a line of sweat chilled his cheek. At this higher altitude, the temperature had dropped significantly, yet Lila seemed unaffected.

  “This stone surface appears hewn,” he said, examining the ledge.

  She gave him a sullen look. “And you base this conclusion on what?”

  “Its uniqueness.” As was usually the case when dealing with Lila, his tone involuntarily turned defensive.

  “For an archaeologist, you sure are quick to leap to conclusions,” she said as she unshouldered her pack.

  “I use my instincts, thank you.”

  Lila rolled her eyes as she turned away.

  Curt placed his pack down on the narrow plateau. He appraised the wall of solid stone before them. Lila removed a magnifying glass and examined the surface of the ledge, then moved to the wall. Curt followed.

  He spotted it almost immediately. He pointed to the stone facing where two arcs overlapped like a collapsed circle and formed the symbol of the Christian fish. It was no more than an inch long, but the deep lines in the stone were unmistakable. “There it is: Ixthus!”

  Lila examined the spot with her magnifying glass. She backed off with a nonplussed look.

  “Don’t you see it?” Curt asked.

  “Yes, I see it. I’ll grant you, it’s promising,” she said.

  “Don’t you ever get excited?”

  “Not by anything you show me,” she said. She pulled a camera from her bag and took no less than a dozen photographs of the image. Then she returned the camera and grabbed a small pickaxe. Curt did the same, and they began working on the section of wall beneath the image of the fish as the text had directed. In less than a dozen whacks, the stone facing gave way, and a small section of wall crumbled inward.

  Curt gave Lila a triumphant look. “Told you.” He took a flashlight from the bag, crouched down, and placed his face flush against the stone ledge as he aimed the light through the small opening. “There’s a sizable cavity behind.”

  He chiseled away at the stone with Lila’s help, and they soon expanded the hole to an opening wide enough to enter. Each held a battery-operated lantern. Curt led the way as they eased through on their stomachs.

  They found themselves at one end of an austere, rectangular passageway. The floor was smooth; the ceiling approximately seven feet high and uniform. A musty smell saturated the stagnant air. There was complete quiet within the long chamber.

  They moved ahead, searching the floor and walls by the light of their lanterns and soon reached the far end, where they were met by a solid stone wall. There were no visible images or other identifying marks.

  “What did we miss?” Curt asked.

  “We didn’t miss a thing,” Lila responded.

  “There’s got to be more here,” Curt rubbed his chin, spinning slowly around with his lantern. Light basked the cavern from floor to ceiling in every direction.

  “It appears not,” Lila offered with a small shrug.

  “You really think someone carved this passageway for no particular reason?”

  “Look, I know it’s disappointing. We’ll start fresh in the morning and reexamine the text. This is a dead end.”

  Curt’s distrust piqued. For Lila to give up so easily was distinctly out of character. For her to console Curt was pure deception. “Out with it,” he turned, glaring at her.

  “What?” she gave him a coquettish look of innocence.

  Curt stared at her.

  “Oh, all right,” she said in resignation. “I don’t feel like arguing.” She retreated from the wall. “Over here.” Lila returned to the far end where they had entered. There, she shined her lantern back to the wall.

  At first Curt did not see it. Her light struck what seemed to him to be flat, barren wall. Then Lila took several steps to the side and changed the angle in which the light struck the stone. The faintest outline of an image appeared. She moved farther to the side to increase the severity of the angle, and the light and shadows began to show the unmistakable outline of another Ixthus. This time, the image was huge, spanning at least eight feet wide and five feet tall.

  “Splendid, isn’t it? It’s the outline of a relief,” she finally said. “Very common among Christian decorative works.”

  “And when were you going to tell me about it?”

  “After the story ran in the National Geographic, and I’d inked the deal for the television special.”

  “Ever the cold-hearted woman. I’ll give you one thing, at least you’re consistent.”

  “Unlike some people who couldn’t—”

  He cut her off. “Shall we find out what’s on the other side of that wall?”

  Without waiting for a response, he returned to the wall and began lightly tapping on it with his pickaxe. Hollow reverberations echoed everywhere he struck, indicating the wall was nothing more than a stone curtain. His excitement returned.

  “Let’s break through,” he said, turning to Lila.

  “Remember, small hole. If, and I mean if, this turns out to be an archaeological site, we want minimal damage.”

  “Gee doctor, you think?”

  “Quiet. Let’s just get through,” she said.

  Curt started to speak but held his tongue. “Back up,” he said, putting his hand to her shoulder and giving a gentle nudge. She brushed it away and took several steps back. Curt took his pickaxe and made a low, arcing swing like a golfer, impacting the base of the wall. The point sunk in and stuck.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Lila scolded.

  “Do you miss wearing my pants?”

  Lila dropped her pickaxe. It clattered on the floor. She crossed her arms, looking at Curt repulsively.

  “Look, I made a small hole. All we have to do is extract the pick and then gently enlarge the opening until we can fit through. It’s perfect: minimal damage and it’s the way a real archaeologist would do it.”

  Curt turned back to the wall and eased his foot under the pickaxe, applying upward pressure in an attempt to release it from the stone, but it was considerably harder than he expected. The point was deeply embedded. He suspected it had passed through to the other side and wrapped at an upward angle, creating a bind. In order to gain some pliability in the wall, he stepped on the exposed half of the blade and began jumping up and down. He stopped when he heard the first tortured crack of stone. Curt paused and glanced back at Lila. He was met with a disapproving “I-told-you-so” grimace.

  “Calm down. Everything’s okay,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  Lila said nothing.

  He jumped on the blade again. This time the crack sounded as if dynamite had been detonated behind the wall. It started with a loud pop and grew to a monstrous earthly groan.

  “Get back!” Curt yelled. He turned from the wall and tried to spin Lila around to assist her retreat. Instead, the two became entangled and fell in a heap of flailing arms and legs. She wound up on top, face to face, straddling him. He turned over on top of her to shield her as a deluge of stone fragments careened off their bodies from the collapsing wall. There was a swell of air accompanied by a cloud of dust that had them coughing and gasping. As the last of the small rocks fell, they turned their heads in unison. A mound of rocks and rubble littered the floor. A thick drape of dust extended from the ceiling to the floor. Slowly, an open space beyond materialized.

  Emitting a final cough, Lila looked up into Curt’s eyes and huffed with festering rage as she struggled to get out from beneath him. “This is just what you wanted, wasn’t it? Well don’t get used to me being this close ever again.”

  Curt stood, cringing from the pain of Lila landing on his chest and the rubble pounding against his back. “Yeah, Lila, my evil plan worked to perfection,” he said, dusting himself off. “I crumbled the wal
l and damn near killed us both, just so I could land on top of you. Remember, we agreed to name the baby Jedidiah Ezekiel Lohan after my great-great-grandfather.”

  Lila was not listening. She looked off in the distance, past him, as if he were invisible. Curt turned around to follow her gaze.

  The filtering mist had all but dissipated. Where the wall had once stood, there was now a cavernous space beyond. Still ignoring Curt’s presence, Lila found the lantern she had dropped, dented but in working order, and walked forward. Curt followed silently.

  At the crumbled mound of rock, they both stopped to marvel at the sight. The spacious chamber beyond was massive. Lila adjusted the lantern to get maximum power. For whatever reason, the room seemed to self-illuminate with this added boost. The curved wall rose several dozen feet to form a perfectly symmetrical, domed ceiling of stone. The floor was comprised of concentric stairs which led down half a dozen steps to a large, round saucepan-shaped cutout in the center of the floor.

  “This is extraordinary,” Lila said in a low voice. The two quickly navigated the rock debris and stepped inside the room. Not until they were both well inside did the magnitude of the place become apparent. The walls, which seemed to have given off light, were actually filled with colored pictures and images that began halfway up and extended to the apex of the dome. Each picture had two halves which were mirror images, but they were too high to make out exactly what they were. Lila spun about, staring in awe. “They’re…unbelievable!” Her words were filled with astonishment.

  Curt looked at the ornate images upon the near wall. The care and precision that someone had taken to create the pictures was mind-boggling. The detail and indescribable beauty was like nothing Curt had ever seen depicted on a cave wall. He felt his chest tingle. Speaking barely above a whisper, he sighed, “This is incredible.” He caught fleeting movement out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, where are you going?”