Elijah's Chariot (The Forgotten Children Book 1) (26 page)

Suddenly,
Sean realized his mistake. The huge rock stretching out in front of him was no
cliff – it was Jerry/Elijah. The meteorite’s surface was strangely blackened
and porous like hardened lava, with intricate pockets and perforations dotting
its entire expanse. It was potato-shaped – long, almost rectangular – and
stretched roughly 450 feet across, thirty feet high, about fifty feet deep and
sat atop a group of flattened trees. There was a wide, muddy gash in the earth
right in front of it where it had skidded to a halt. A clearing had definitely
existed here before the space rock had crashed, but it was even larger now, the
trees on the right side having been severely cropped by the meteorite’s passage. 

Sean
heard Viktor and Svyeta emerge from the forest behind him. He reached back
toward them, unable to remove his eyes from the awesome sight stretching before
him. Svyeta took his hand and squeezed. Viktor limped forward and gripped
Sean’s shoulder, leaning for support. The Russian boy had a long, red scratch
down the side of his face and was breathing heavily, but seemed alright
otherwise. He and Svyeta now stared, transfixed, at the immense meteorite
sitting in front of them. 

Two
large, transport helicopters sat on the far right side of the grassy area.
Their twin sets of rotor blades posed motionlessly over the short grass.
Several metal storage containers were positioned between the helicopters with
cargo nets and wires lying strewn about everywhere. A camp of temporary housing
was set up opposite the meteorite on the right side of the little clearing.
Various types of scientific equipment – computer monitors, scanning devices,
radiation detectors – sat in the back of jeeps and on wheeled carts. Not a soul
was in sight. A cool wind blew across the area and rustled the trees.

Without
a word, the four began walking forward simultaneously, their eyes still fixed
on the otherworldly chunk of rock looming before them. Sean could smell its
charred surface and could see cavernous depressions in its face large enough to
hide a fully grown person. Portions of it were smooth with veins of dark brown
iron grazing the surface. But, its most impressive feature by far was its sheer
size. Although it did resemble a small cliff face, the meteorite didn’t extend
into the ground, but rather sat on top of it – mashing trees and moist earth
into a pulp beneath its immense weight. 

They
stopped in front of Jerry/Elijah, their feet touching the edge of the ravaged
ground that had halted the meteorite. Staring up at the face of it, they could
see that it rested just a few feet below the level of the rest of the clearing,
having carved away the top soil as it slid. Sean remembered reading in his
history class about how glaciers would scrape tons of dirt up as they expanded,
slowly transporting nutrient-rich soil to other parts of a continent over
millennia. He had been unable to imagine how something could really be so large
as to move the top layer of dirt over several miles. Now, seeing the deep swath
cut in the earth by the meteorite’s passage and imagining the pile of soil and
pulverized trees on the opposite side, he understood. 

Sean
looked over at Viktor, then back up at the monolithic meteorite. This is from
outer space, he thought to himself – this rock is not from our planet. He
stared in amazement at its immensity, the overwhelming reality of its presence,
towering in front of him. Then, he found his feet acting almost of their own
volition as they stepped into the loose earth that sloped down toward the base
of the meteorite. He walked the few yards slowly as Viktor, Svyeta and Ryan
remained behind, watching him. 

His
hand reached up and touched the rough, blackened rock. It felt just as he had
expected: sharp and crusty in some parts and smoother in others from where the
heat of the atmosphere had fused portions together. Sean took his hand away and
stared at the dozens of tiny imprints of the meteorite’s face in his skin and
the few bits of loose crust that had stuck to his palm. “I’ve touched another
world,” he mumbled softly to himself. 

A
wave of dizziness passed over Sean and he quickly reached up to steady himself,
placing his hand again on the craggy, black surface of the meteorite. His eyes
refused to focus, blurring his vision. He remained leaning against the rock,
hanging his head down as he tried to regain his balance. Must be the hiking, he
thought. Not enough water. Dad always told me that I never drink enough water.

Gradually,
the sensation passed and Sean raised his head, pushing himself away from
Jerry/Elijah. As he did so, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye to
the right. Turning his head, he saw something coming out of the edge of the
forest on the other side of the clearing. 

In
alarm, Sean turned to his friends behind him, to shout a warning. Just as the
sound was about to leave his mouth, the words caught in his dry throat. The
slope behind him was empty – Viktor, Svyeta and Ryan were gone. Sean’s eyes
darted in panic to the wall of trees through which they’d entered the clearing
only minutes before, but there was no sign of them. Had they already run away,
Sean thought, without a word? How could they have moved so fast?

His
feet slipped in the soft, loose earth as he whirled around to face the
approaching creature. It was a man, he could see that clearly now. Sean began
to scramble back up the slope, his hands grasping at clods of dirt and tufts of
grass as his eyes remained locked on the man moving steadily toward him. 

The
man was of medium height, with brown curly hair, and was wearing a light jacket
and some rumpled-looking khakis. His hand reached up quickly to adjust the
thin-rimmed glasses that sat perched on his nose. Immediately, Sean stopped
crawling and stared in shock at the approaching man. 

Impossible,
Sean thought. It can’t be, something’s wrong, it can’t be. He opened his mouth
to yell, to scream, to say something, anything that would help him make sense
of this. Instead, all that came out was a whimper as tears began to slowly flow
from his eyes. 

The
man smiled and continued walking straight toward Sean as he sat frozen in the
shadow of the huge meteorite. The small smile remained on his thin face as he
stepped carefully over the torn chunks of dirt before stopping just a few feet
from the boy. Through tears, Sean looked up at the man smiling down at him,
extending his hand. An emotion-filled sob tore through his chest as he reached
up eagerly to grasp the hand of his father. 

Sean
was pulled up from his position on the ground into his father’s welcoming arms.
Burying his head in his father’s chest, he let the sobbing come full force now,
giving in completely to the pain, fear and confusion that was racing through
his mind, pounding relentlessly on the inside of his skull. His hands reached
up to squeeze his father’s arms, holding him tight out of fear that at any
moment he would disappear, leaving him all alone again. 

His
father continued to hold him close as his crying gradually ceased, the tears
drying up. Kevin straightened up, his hands on his son’s shoulders, and looked
down into the boy’s face. Sean stared with puffy eyes at his father, still
gripping his arms tightly. 

“Dad?”
Sean asked in a weak voice.

“Yeah,
son?” Kevin replied. His voice was exactly as Sean remembered, the same voice
that he’d been hearing occasionally over the past few weeks – but then only in
his imagination. It usually came as words of advice or in the form of a memory
of some joke his father had told. But now, the sound was in his ears, not his
mind. He could feel his father’s voice and the vibrations of the sound in his
chest as real as he’d ever felt anything before. 

“Dad,
you, you’re supposed to…” Sean swallowed another wave of tears that was
threatening to overtake him. “You died. We covered you up and… and… we cremated
you, just like, just like you’d said…”

“Shh,
shh, son.” Kevin pulled Sean close, holding him as he cried again. Sean quickly
tried to regain his composure, pushing himself away from his father’s chest and
wiping his eyes, but still holding onto his coat sleeve with one hand. 

He
looked up into his father’s smiling face again. He hadn’t changed at all! His
father looked like it had been only yesterday when he’d last walked around the
hotel room, had last joked about his courtship with Sean’s mother, had last
laughed. But, now, his eyes were different somehow. Sean looked closely as he
and his father continued to stand in the clearing, holding on to each other.
His eyes weren’t sad anymore, Sean thought. The last day or so of his father’s
life had been one of such sadness and grief. They’d learned of his mother’s
death only the night before and felt the terror of Elizabeth being left on her
own. Sean remembered his father’s attempts to prepare him for the inevitable –
on what had turned out to be the last day of his life. He remembered that his
father had found some small degree of peace at the end, in the knowledge that,
for him at least, it would soon be over. But, he also remembered the fear and
sheer helplessness that his father had felt at not being able to secure the
safety of his children before he left. Now, in these eyes, these new eyes that
were so familiar, Sean didn’t see any of that grief. All he saw was happiness
and contentment. And peace. 

How
is this possible, Sean wondered. A strange mixture of fear and hope passed
through him as his mind began to wander through the possibilities, carefully
grasping at each potential theory as if it were a tenuous lifeline being
dangled to him as he hung over the edge of a deep yawning precipice.   

Sean
hadn’t looked at the body’s face. He hadn’t wanted to, not wanting to remember
his father as a corpse, but rather as a living, breathing man. That was it,
that had to be it, Sean thought. His father hadn’t really been dead, he’d only
been in some sort of coma and the body that they’d come back and cremated had
been someone else’s! Somehow, his father had woken up and left and had been
able to follow them here! Or, it was possible that whatever had given all of
them their newfound powers had revived his father, had brought him back to life
somehow. And, if he was alive now, then it was possible that his mother was
alive! Maybe, even now, she was with Elizabeth, trying to contact them… 

Sean
looked up at his father, who was still quietly watching him, a faint smile on
his face. Kevin hadn’t said anything more since quieting the boy a few moments
earlier. He wasn’t offering any explanations as to how he got here, how he was
still alive. He was just standing there, his eyes full of love and
understanding. 

“You
aren’t real, are you?”

Kevin’s
soft smile didn’t waver as he continued staring at his son, standing in the
shadow of the monolithic rock. Sean saw a darkness, a twinge pass through his
father’s eyes. It was as if a painful memory had just flashed through his mind
and he was busily trying to push it away, barring it from entering his
consciousness again. But, all the previous emotions were still held in his eyes
too – compassion, understanding. Sean remembered that this was the same look
that his father had given him on their last day together as they walked on the
street. He’d begged Sean with his eyes to understand that he was going to die
and that he wouldn’t be able to protect him any longer. And that this – his
helplessness, the fact that he was going to leave his son and daughter all
alone in the world -–was, above all things, the greatest regret of his life.
His greatest failure. He’d silently asked Sean to shoulder this grief, to survive
and carry the memory of this pain because Kevin no longer could. 

Reaching
up to stroke Sean’s hair softly, Kevin said, “Come on, we’ve got some work to
do, okay?”

Not
waiting for an answer, Kevin walked quickly over to the meteorite, pulling out
a small black bag from his jacket pocket. Sean stood dumbly watching him,
unable to focus on any one thought for more than a few seconds. Kevin retrieved
a hammer and a clear plastic container, setting the latter in the soft dirt at
his feet before starting to chip away at the craggy rock. 

“Could
you come here and hold the samples?” Kevin asked as he squinted through his
thin, wire-frame glasses. 

Sean
obediently walked over to stand beside his father, staring dazedly at the area
where the hammer struck rhythmically. “What are you doing?”

“We
need to collect a few crust samples first. It’ll give us a basic idea of
Jerry’s composition and of the heat that it underwent upon entering the
atmosphere. We’ll have to find a larger drill to obtain some samples closer to
the core, but I think the lead crash site team left enough equipment to work
with.”

The
young teenage boy looked over his shoulder again at the spot where Viktor,
Svyeta and Ryan had been only a few minutes before. The entire clearing was
deserted. The tents, storage containers and helicopters stood abandoned. All
Sean could hear was the wind blowing softly through the surrounding forest and
the soft strike of the hammer. 

“What
are we doing here?”

Kevin
stopped chipping at the rock and dropped a few black chunks into the plastic
container at his feet, then knelt down to face Sean. 

“Son,
where are we?” he said, staring intently into the boy’s face.

Sean
thought for a second before answering. “I think we’re in Russia…”

“Russia,
right. Where in Russia?”

“Central
Russia. Near Yekaterinburg.”

“Where
near Yekaterinburg?

“About
two-hundred miles north north-west of the city.”

“Exactly.
And what’s here? What is right here?” continued his father, excitedly. 

“It’s
the crash site. Where Jerry landed,” Sean answered slowly. 

“That’s
it, Sean, that’s it,” Kevin said taking hold of Sean’s arms. “We’re at the
crash site of a huge meteorite that just dropped out of the sky and landed on
our planet. And now, you and I have the chance to study it, to look at it like
no one else has before. What could we learn?”

“Things
about the universe, about our galaxy, the history of our solar system,” Sean
said, speaking more quickly now. The familiar words felt so right, like a
comforting litany that had once, long ago, dispelled fear and doubt, leading
him and his father onward. “It could help us find out about how the planets and
stars were formed. And, maybe, about how we came to be here.”

Kevin
stood up and held out the hammer, his broad smile beaming down at Sean. “That’s
it, my boy. The sky’s the limit with this one. Now, let’s quit standing around
and get to work.”

Sean
stared up at his father, vaguely aware of the soft earth beneath his feet and
the cool wind blowing the clouds through the sky. This is my father, Sean
thought, staring at the man in front of him. But, my father’s dead. He glanced
again around the silent clearing, noting the position of Jerry/Elijah in
relation to the trees and the equipment brought here by the first team to the
site. I’m thinking clearly, Sean thought. I’m not dreaming. I think that I’d
like to move my head and it happens – I can do it. I think that I’d like to
stand up and walk over there and I do it. I’m really here. And it seems like my
father’s here too. But, he can’t be. He can’t be, but here he is. Somehow, this
is possible. Right now, we’re here and this is possible. In this moment, this
space, this can all be happening. In this moment, I’m here with my father and
we’re going to do what we both came here to do. We’re going to study Jerry.

Sean
reached up and took the hammer from his father’s hand.