Moon Mask Read online

  MOON

  MASK

  A NOVEL BY

  JAMES RICHARDSON

  Copyright © 2012 James Richardson

  This work is registered with The UK Copyright Service

  Registration number 284652075

  The right of James Richardson to be identified as the

  Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

  in any form or my any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the

  prior permission of the copyright owner of this book.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to

  actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1480171541

  ISBN-10: 1480171549

  First Edition Published in 2012

  Second Edition Published in 2013

  CONTENTS

  Savage Mumbo Jumbo

  Jane Doe

  Black Death

  Sari . . . Sari . . .

  A Little Less Conversation

  The Evil Spirit

  Secondary Concerns

  The Demons of Sarisariñama

  Tachyon

  Fatal Distractions

  Into the Tunnels

  Death Above . . .

  . . . Death Below

  The Place of Fear

  Xibalba

  The Ball Game

  Pyramid of Death

  Leviathan

  The Ashes of Eden

  Escape from Xibalba

  Resting Place

  It’s All Politics

  Reunion

  The Castle

  Camaraderie

  The Kernewek Diary

  Sin City

  Ambush

  The Hand of Freedom

  Party Crashers

  Tortured Souls

  The Voyage

  Map of Names

  World’s End

  Overland Runaway

  Nail Him!

  On Ice!

  Rules of Engagement

  Traitor

  The Mummy’s Curse

  Follow the Arrows

  A Call to Arms

  Supernova

  The Destroyer of Worlds

  Out of the Ashes

  The Fires of the Phoenix

  Scars

  The Philadelphia Experiment

  To Kill a Sheep

  Yonaguni

  The Dive

  The Monument

  Blood on the Water

  Blood on their Hands

  Blood in the Sky

  The Watchers

  Phoenix Rising

  The Eye of the Storm

  Eldridge

  Belly of the Beast

  Kamikaze

  On the Catwalk

  The Power of God

  Tapestry

  Threads

  I’ll Teach You How to Run

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ‘Time travel maybe possible, but it is not practical.”

  STEPHEN HAWKING

  PROLOGUE:

  Savage Mumbo Jumbo

  Off The Coast of Jamaica,

  1705

  The stench of death engulfed the ominous black hulk of the slave ship. The L’aile Raptor lolled on the swell, her rigging creaking in the breeze. The sky above was as clear as a crystal, shimmering in the heat. Yet, despite the brilliance of the sunlight, the deck of the slave ship seemed swathed in perpetual shadow.

  Second Lieutenant Percival Lowe, of His Majesty’s Ship Swallow, had read merrily rhyming poems that dared to describe the darkest labyrinths of the devil’s realm. Those words paled in comparison to the hellish pall that enveloped the slave ship.

  The deck was deserted, the sails half-mast. It was strewn with debris, dirty. Not a soul was in sight. Even the gulls kept their distance, circling some distance away as though they too felt the menace this ship exuded.

  He had heard tales of these ghost ships; ships that were found drifting at sea, their hulls intact, their rigging fine, their galley’s full, yet all of the crew gone. His mind played through numerous fanciful scenarios, picturing sea monsters slithering up the deck, great tentacles dragging every last soul to a watery grave.

  He sucked in another lungful of sea air, ordering his stomach to calm itself. He was embarrassed enough already at having shown such weakness in front of the men.

  Following one of his boarding parties below deck moments ago, he had been utterly horrified at the sight which greeted him. Two hundred black bodies chained together, wrist to ankle, their skin decaying, their lifeless eyes staring at the low ceiling.

  The stench of rotting flesh had slammed into his belly like a hammer blow and he’d spun on the spot, raced back above decks just in time to throw-up over the side of the ship.

  Just to make certain that he hadn’t been sucked into the same netherworld as the Raptor’s crew, he glanced aft to ensure the Swallow remained at station keeping, and beyond her in the distance lay the faint outline of Jamaica’s golden coast.

  Satisfied that the remainder of his breakfast wasn’t going to find itself floating on the Caribbean swell, he wiped a handkerchief over his lips and chin.

  He glanced at Gil, an old sea dog with a wild mane of grey hair. “They were all slaves,” he said, his voice pitifully weak. Bile burned his throat. “So, where is the crew?”

  “Looks to me like the slaves all starved to death, sir,” Gil replied. “We did find one alive, though.”

  “Alive?” Lowe was shocked.

  “Don’t ask me how the devil he’s alive, sir, but he is.”

  Lowe nodded slowly. He wouldn’t put it past these lesser races to resort to cannibalism to survive. “But the crew?” he asked again. “What happened to the crew?”

  A call from astern caught his attention and he walked quickly over to one of his men.

  “We’ve found them, sir,” he said, his face green and sickly looking.

  Lowe’s heart thudded. “And? Are they alive?” he demanded.

  The sailor stared at him for long moments, eyes wide. “You better take a look, sir.”

  Lowe reluctantly followed the man below decks to the crew barracks. The door was closed but already the stench of decay wafted sickeningly at his nostrils. He demanded his stomach to be stronger this time, to hold on to the remnants of his breakfast as though it was a pirate's treasure.

  “Are you ready, sir?” the sailor asked, standing by the door. Gil stood behind him, hand over his mouth. On the lieutenant’s hesitation, the old sailor prompted him.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, yes! Get on with it.”

  The door opened.

  The vision of the staved slaves was nothing compared to the horror that confronted him now.

  Whereas the ship’s human cargo had all looked like deceased humans, albeit savage Africans, the crew looked as though they themselves were the monsters that had sealed their own fate.

  Their faces and bodies were distorted with hideous whelps, blisters and even what looked like burns. Many of the blisters had burst and seeped over the deck before drying into a sticky residue. Human hair, large tufts which had fallen from scalps before the natural decomposition of death had begun, stuck to the grotesque glue.

  Dead eyes stared at him accusingly as he staggered back, out of the room. He felt his breakfast race u
p his throat but swallowed it forcefully, retaining a tiny modicum of pride.

  “It’s a plague ship,” Gil exclaimed. “The crew must have succumbed, then, without anyone to feed them, the slaves staved.”

  “Lieutenant Lowe, sir!” a loud voice bellowed from above. Lowe gratefully used the call as an excuse to rush back on deck once more and suck in the fresh salty sea air. He relished the touch of sunlight on his face.

  “We’ve found another live one, sir,” the man who had shouted said urgently.

  “A . . . another live one?” Lowe stammered. He felt his body trembling. A plague ship?

  “Yes sir, looks like the cap’n . . . but you better come see.”

  With heavy footsteps, Lowe followed the boson across the deserted deck to the captain’s cabin. Cautiously, he creaked open the door and stepped in.

  Sat, cross-legged on the floor, in the middle of the room, rocking back and forward, his eyes distant and wild, Captain Edward Pryce, his head bald and blistered, his skin cracked and bleeding, cradled a brightly coloured mask in his arms and mumbled softly to himself.

  “Savage mumbo-jumbo,” he said again and again. “Savage mumbo-jumbo, savage mumbo-jumbo, savage mumbo-jumbo . . .”

  1:

  Jane Doe

  Baltimore,

  Maryland, U.S.A,

  Present Day

  Emmett Braun hauled the steering wheel around to the left and the Ford Mercury sedan slewed across the road in response. A cacophony of horns blared in his wake as he cut across Orleans Street and barrelled down Hillen towards the Interstate.

  Wind rushed through the shattered rear window and he knew that, embedded in the back of the passenger seat, were at least two spent bullets.

  He hadn’t felt any satisfaction at having cheated death by mere inches. He was an old man and knew he didn’t have long left on this earth. Nevertheless, he planned to die in bed in the arms of his wife, or at least relaxing out at sea, a fishing line in the water and the gentle waves lapping at his small boat’s blue hull. He had no intention of allowing a couple of CIA assassins, disguised as lowlife criminals, shoot him in the parking lot of John Hopkins Hospital.

  He might have believed the cover himself. Baltimore was a big city and old men were mugged and killed all the time. But he had seen the face of one of his would-be assassins, lamely concealed by a navy-blue ‘hoody’. It was the same man who had come to his house not twenty four hours ago.

  He had been out fishing at the time, enjoying the serenity of the gentle swell rocking him back and forth. He never went far and, from his canvas chair on the deck, with his feet up on his chiller box and a bottle of Bud in his hand, he could see his house on the shore. Gulls circled lazily above, waiting for the frenzy that his catch would instil in them.

  Then his radio had hissed to life. It was Martha, his wife. In a flap. Two men, flashing CIA badges, were insisting on speaking with him. They gave all the usual crap about national security but Emmett had retired from the navy a long time ago. He had done his duty. He had gone beyond it in fact. A pre-eminent specialist on radiation-related illness, he had seen the legacy of the splitting of the atom and had devoted his life to developing better treatments against the ultimate evil.

  He had left the navy, disgusted with the U.S. military’s blatant disregard for the dangers of radiation, and gone into civilian health care. He had treated men, women and children whose lives had been torn apart by a serial killer they could not see. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl. He had come out of retirement and flown to Japan to assist with the men and women endangered by the meltdown of Fukushima following the 2011 earthquake and tidal wave.

  Nevertheless, however disgusted he was with the establishment, he couldn’t turn a deaf ear to the pleas of sick and dying U.S. service men and women either. While he was rarely given any information about the missions which had subjected them to harmful doses of radiation, he had been called in time and time again to clean up the military’s mess, even if he could do no more than make his patients final days on god’s earth a little more comfortable.

  But he had been determined that enough was enough. He was retired. He was old. He was finally happy.

  “The Phoenix has arisen,” one of the CIA agents had told him over the radio. The agent didn’t have a clue what his cryptic message had meant, he was merely a messenger.

  But Emmett knew. The words had sent a cold chill down his spine.

  Only hours later, he had been on a private jet alongside the two agents who identified themselves as Jones and Tomskin. Touching down in Baltimore, he had been whisked to John Hopkins Hospital. The staff there had been confused by his presence alongside a female patient, labelled simply 'Jane Doe'. One of the world’s leading hospitals for infectious and tropical diseases, the doctors had been forbidden to talk to Emmett. He didn’t find this unusual. As soon as the government got involved, a veil of secrecy fell upon even the most innocuous of situations.

  Anyone who had any contact with, or knowledge of Jane Doe would be debriefed by government cronies, he knew, and forced to sign confidentiality agreements. If they ever spoke of what they had seen, they would be prosecuted. But Emmett knew such prosecution would never come. They would simply vanish.

  The moment he laid eyes on the Jane Doe, Emmett knew that she was not suffering from any tropical disease. Her skin was red and blotchy and in a few places the redness had swelled into ulcers which the medical staff had dressed. On first sight, it did indeed look like some tropical disease.

  He read the notes which had been carefully edited to remove any mention of the girl’s real name and any background information about her.

  He understood how the doctors at John Hopkins hadn’t immediately recognised radiation poisoning. Her initial symptoms, reported by the medical team first to treat her on site - wherever ‘on site’ was – were nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and high fever. The skin irritation had then developed, followed by unconsciousness. All signs pointed towards a biological agent but the doctor in charge, upon discovering hair-loss, checked her blood work for signs of radiological material and brought in a Geiger counter.

  Despite it looking more and more like radiation sickness, all tests proved negative for exposure to any source of radiation.

  At least, any known type of radiation.

  Emmett snapped himself out of his lapse in concentration to narrowly avoid slamming his rented sedan into a speeding truck. The large vehicle’s lights flashed crazily and its horn echoed as he shot through an underpass and then circled around, speeding up as he tore onto the interstate. In his rear-view mirror he saw the flash of the black SUV but then snatched his attention back to whip around a bus.

  Interstate 83 was busy, the rush hour traffic whirring all around him and he felt in a daze, trying to control the surge of adrenalin pumping its way through his body. His hands trembled as they clutched the steering wheel, while his mind hastily sought through his memories, desperately trying to think of someone, anyone, who could help him.

  After he had run his tests on the Jane Doe and confirmed his findings to Jones and Tomskin, Jones had stepped out to make a call. On his return, he’d thanked Emmett for his help and told him a rental car was waiting outside and a reservation had been made in a nearby hotel.

  Emmett had been shaky as he wandered through the hospital parking lot and identified his car, his mind working in overtime, absorbing what he had just discovered. Perhaps he should have known that now his task was complete, he wouldn’t be allowed to live. He had seen the two men approach, heads down, hoods up. He remembered an odd thought as he noted their shoes- black, polished, matching.

  He’d quickly got in the car, started the ignition but, glancing in the mirror, he’d seen one of the hooded men look up. Recognised Jones’ face.

  Without thinking, he’d slammed the car into drive and stamped on the gas, squealing away even as two shots rang out and glass shattered.

  Now, he raced for his life, d
odging and weaving amongst the heavy traffic. The black SUV was there again, closing fast, flicking in and out of view as its driver fought his way through the mêlée.

  Emmett slammed his palm down on his horn as he braked hard to avoid smashing into the back of a slow vehicle in the fast lane. The offending car drifted out of his way and Emmett floored the gas again, squeezing through the narrow gap between the car and the centre of the road. The SUV pushed in front of the bus Emmett had already passed, and hauled between two other angry drivers to plant itself in the fast lane directly behind Emmett.

  He watched through his mirror as the assassins closed the gap, their more powerful vehicle easily-

  The slow moving car slammed into Emmett’s hind quarters. Panicked by the sedan’s angry order to move out of his way, the incompetent driver had swerved into the middle lane just as a large truck was pushing out of the slow lane to overtake. He panicked and swung back into the fast lane but too quickly.

  It was only a glancing blow but, pushing one hundred miles an hour, Emmett instantly lost control. The steering wheel spun on its own accord and he felt the vehicle slew out, its front end intersecting the middle lane only to have the incompetent and now petrified driver scream as he rammed into Emmett’s broadside. The sedan rolled and Emmett heard the crunch of metal and the screech of rubber above his own scream as the car rolled over once, twice, three times. Each time, Emmett’s world got a little smaller as the metal of the car compressed on him. His head smashed the windscreen, the steering wheel, the roof, the chair, and the erupting airbags. He realised that he hadn’t fastened his safety belt in his haste to escape the gunmen and now rolled inside the crushed wreck.

  But no safety belt or airbag could have saved him.

  Even as its driver fought with the brakes, its twenty-foot-long trailer swinging out from side to side and taking out half a dozen other vehicles, the large truck which had indirectly caused the pile-up hammered into the crumbled sedan. It exploded into two separate pieces which spun away, rolling and twisting until at last they came to a stop.