House of Cabal Volume One: Eden Read Free Page A

the Blackwater officers shot at any perceived threat. Joey
passed out, missing most of the action, and was incinerated all the
same.
    While Uriel slaughtered those with guns,
those with scientific knowledge, and those native to the land, Dana
ran toward the light, only glancing back once to make sure her
husband followed.
    The gate, the portal to paradise, closed just
as she and her husband crossed the threshold.
    Uriel took his time, relishing his grim work.
He found an Iraqi guide cowering, praying to Allah. There was an
atheist scientist hiding in the latrine. A Christian clung to the
stone tablet and begged for forgiveness. The sandstorm swept up the
ashes and flowed south, leaving only the charred, twisted husks of
the Humvees and mobile laboratory behind.
     
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
    I
    Dana and her husband had entered paradise
while Uriel was distracted. Impossible. Yet there the two humans
were, inside the gates.
    To find out how, I entered the timestream and
witnessed the expedition, the Eden mite, and the tragedy that
befell Boris’s family in Tbilisi, Georgia.
    At the David Tatishvili Medical Center, the
mother and child’s death was classified as a rare case of
spontaneous combustion caused by childbirth. Their ashes were kept
in a large ceramic tub for scientific study in a private room only
accessible by keycard.
    Experts flew in from Germany and hastily
concluded that the remains were similar to a 1980 case. Old Man
Henry combusted in his home in South Wales. His greasy clothing
caught fire in his sleep and acted like a candle wick. He died from
smoke inhalation, and his fat burned over the course of the night,
leaving an ash pile and his legs below the knee eerily untouched.
The “wick effect” didn’t explain the mother and child’s combustion.
Among other things, their incineration was too instantaneous and
complete. The experts ignored the contradictions and flew back to
Germany.
    The hospital disregarded the extended
family’s wishes (most of the family were still in Russia), and
unceremoniously threw the remains in a reusable plastic bin for
biomedical waste, burying used syringes, bloody gauze, and a
swollen foot amputated from a diabetic in the coarse, gray ash of
the mother and child. An outside company later that day removed the
waste and in strict accordance to procedure disposed of it off
site.
     
    II
    The ravenous bugs of Eden left Dana and her
husband naked and trembling. The humans were frightened, but
unharmed. I re-entered the timestream, this time back before the
expedition, still thirsting for a fuller picture.
    Omar al-Jamadi strode down the deserted main
hall of the Iraqi National Museum and scanned the darkness with a
flashlight, making sure no one lay in wait. He had worked here as a
security guard. His boss had let him go (really, he had fired him)
for his own safety, saying it was too dangerous for anyone to
remain behind during the invasion.
    Outside the quiet museum, looters ravaged
Baghdad. Bombing had knocked out most of the city’s power, and men
with guns and makeshift weapons now prowled the darkened streets.
Many scrounged for necessities, while others, some in large groups,
looked to cause trouble.
    The museum stood out in the open and begged
to be plundered. Its front facade resembled a castle, but its back
half, with its large glass windows, resembled an office building,
and it would be easy to infiltrate.
    The galleries appeared scavenged already.
Whole display cases were empty. Mannequins overturned. Banners
strewn across the marble floor.
    The museum staff, hearing the US’s drumbeat
for war, had hastily moved much of the collection to an undisclosed
location outside the city, leaving the place in disarray. Before
that, the Iraqi government had confiscated a significant portion of
the more valuable exhibits without explanation. There wasn’t much
left to loot.
    Omar quickly descended the back stairs. He
scanned the underground storage rooms and searched for