Coincidence Theory
Carl woke groggily; his hip hurt and blood trickled from a cut above his eye. He could remember only the vaguest of things. The frantic run from the Ark, the explosion ripping through the tunnels, being blasted against a wall, and then nothing.
Through the dimness, he tried to discern his location. He was back at the bottom of the ramp. Huge boulders and shattered stones littered the incline, blocking any escape. Dust clung in the air and only the faintest streaks of light penetrated the dark.
“Justin? Louisa?” he said, his voice echoing as he called out.
From his side came a cough. He twisted, desperate to focus in the near blackness of his surroundings. There, pressed against a wall, Louisa lay prostrate. He knelt down beside her and checked her pulse.
“I’m fine.” she said, gasping through the choked air.
“Take it steady and give yourself a once over. I’ll try to find Justin.”
“Don’t bother. I saw him blasted out of the opening before the roof collapsed. He’ll be outside somewhere.”
Carl stared at the rubble blocking their path and sized up their options. It came half way down the slope, maybe fifty feet or more thick, and pieces of it must weigh a tonne each. There was no way they would ever get through it. “We’re going to have to find another way out.”
“I thought you might say that.” said Louisa, standing wearily to his side.
“You have any ideas?”
“From my memory of the layout, there are a few chambers that might allow us some form of exit, if the roof system has caved. If not, I think this will be it.”
Carl grimaced. One entrance to the labyrinth made sense. If they did not find another passage to the surface, their survival chances would be slim. “We’ve got to try. So, let’s make a start.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew his mobile phone. Pressing the menu button repeatedly to get the small device to continuously emit light, he set off into the black.
It took half an hour to make their way through the shattered remains of the tunnel system to the grand, five corridor laden chamber where Louisa finished outlining the maze.
The massive room was a mess. Chunks of stone from the walls lay pulverised on the floor, and the ceiling had collapsed into a wide V shape in the centre of the room. Scrambling over the fragments in their path, they began to climb up the sloping stones.
As they rose, Carl levered boulders out of their way, hoping each time to catch a glimpse of daylight. Stone after stone, higher and higher, until eventually, with a sigh of relief, a large boulder tumbled from a ledge and slammed to the floor below. Where it once sat, a gap no more than three feet across led out into the deepening blue sky.
Carl helped Louisa through the hole, before climbing out after her. As he walked into the cool evening breeze, he stared at the scene on the surface. For half a mile in all directions, the desert was torn asunder. Gaping wounds had appeared all over the land and jagged twists of stone now protruded into the fading sky. He did not know for certain, but he felt sure that somewhere underneath the rubble and the collapsed chambers of the once magnificent labyrinth, the remains of the Ark were now lost to time.
Out in the distance, the wailing sirens of police cars and ambulances drifted toward them as they converged on a location a few hundred yards away.
Wanting to remain hidden, Carl led Louisa off toward the outskirts of the debris field. As they reached an isolated promontory, he caught sight of a figure being forced into the back of one of the police cars. His heart lifted when he recognised him; it was Justin. He was glad the boy was safe.
Looking over the vista, he could pick out spires of smoke rising from the villages bordering the site and realised the scale of the explosion was far greater than he imagined.
“So what now?” asked Louisa. “Justin’s been captured, the Ark is gone, and so is all our evidence.”
“Justin’s a bright kid. If anyone can prove we’re innocent, he can. I just hope he finds someone to trust.” It was still a worry to Carl that capture could mean torture or death, but there was little he could do. Justin’s fate rested with the Gods.
“And what about you?”
“I don’t really know. I’ve stood in front of the Ark of Ra and touched artefacts that belonged to a civilisation nobody thinks existed. I’m not sure what they managed to accomplish and I’m not even certain if I believe any of what I’ve seen, but I need to get the information out there. I certainly don’t want to go to my grave knowing we ruined everything again with our greed. Surely, we’re better than that as a species. Surely, we’re not the same, simple-minded, selfish, asinine bigots who travelled out of Egypt all those millennia ago. We have to have grown up in the last three and an half thousand years, don’t we? I’m not sure I can go through the rest of my life without a comfort blanket of one kind or another. With no God, I’m left with putting my faith in man, but Chris has wiped the last residue of that from me, and I think that’s a similar problem for everyone. As a species, we’ve refused to give up the God delusion because we all want what the Tree of Life or heaven offers; eternal existence. Everyone in the world can remember with total alacrity only a handful of things in their lives. We can remember where we were when we shared our first kiss. We can all remember with amazing detail our wedding day, and the birth of our first child. However, those pale into insignificance by the side of where we were when we first grasped our own mortality. At that moment, we all stop believing we are immortal and start trying to do something that will make us immortal. Having kids, writing music, teaching the young, in fact just about any driving act of creation, they are all things we use try to glean the immortality we crave. Man has made the world you see around you because he’s driven to create. Not by some unseen guiding hand, but because he’s afraid. We’re all scared to death, of death. I’m not sure if that makes any sense?”
“Not to me.” said Louisa, staring wide-eyed at Carl. “And I’m sure I’m won’t be alone in that assessment either.”
Carl looked at Louisa and realised his response was way over the top, yet again. He cracked out into a wide grin and let the seriousness of the previous days dissolve away.
The two laughed loudly, their mutually experienced horrors drifting away as they shared the quiet comfort of knowing their journey was at an end.
As the sun dipped below the horizon and the activity around them dissipated, they began their trek back to civilisation. As they strode away from the devastation, the light faded from the sky and the final reddish hues of day swept down into the night.
As he walked, Carl dragged his now ruined Bible from his pocket and flipped it over in his hand. He smiled as he thought about the journey that delivered him to this exact moment, before tossing it away into the desert forever.
Chapter 55