The Milestone Protocol Ernest Dempsey (best short novels of all time .txt) 📖

The inflated roof over their heads merged with wide strips of rubber hanging from the edge of a thick steel frame. Once through the entrance, bright lights fixed to the center of the arched stone ceiling illuminated a massive corridor with a paved road that stretched far ahead into the mountain. Dozens of similar SUVs lined the road, all parked in neat rows on both sides. Four men guarded the entrance from positions on either side of the road, each pair housed in guard shacks similar to the ones outside—probably, Kevin figured, because despite the huge rubber flaps hanging over the entrance, a fair amount of cold air blew into the tunnel.

“It’s like NORAD,” Kevin whispered as he looked around at the engineering marvel. Steel girders stretched across the road, bracing the ceiling above. Narrow walkways stretched down both sides of the tunnel with yellow railings next to them. Huge ventilation ducts lined the ceiling, running next to the lights.

“Have you been to NORAD?” Magnus asked, genuinely curious.

“Actually, no,” Kevin confessed.

“Then how do you know what it looks like?”

“Movies, I guess.” The answer came with a shrug, but he felt like an idiot for saying anything.

“The movies don’t get it completely wrong,” Magnus said. “But there is much they don’t include whenever you see depictions of that high-security site.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Of course.” Magnus responded plainly, as if he were talking about visiting his local grocery store. “I have been there on several occasions. While I took some of their design aspects to heart when engineering this place, we made some necessary modifications. One being the heat pumped through those ventilation ducts up there. This part of the tunnel gets quite cold when the gate is open.”

“Why don’t you keep it closed?”

“Full of questions, aren’t we? The steel door that seals off the bunker from the world will be closed in the next few hours, but we have another couple of shipments due to arrive before then. Once those shipments arrive, we will seal the door shut. It takes several minutes to close, and when the delivery arrives, we want the convoy to be able to get inside as quickly as possible.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Kevin hedged. He’d noticed the guards protecting the place and wondered why there weren’t more, but he figured there had to be several he didn’t see, both on the surface and somewhere in this tunnel.

The road curved to the left, then straightened. Up ahead, it stopped where several more SUVs and a few military cargo trucks were parked around a shipping container that had been modified into an office. The makeshift HQ was wedged into the corner of the tunnel where it ended next to another inflated awning much like the one on the surface, though smaller in scale.

“Is that where we go in?” Kevin asked, pointing at the air-filled tunnel.

“Yes,” Magnus said. “That’s the entry point to the pyramid passageway.”

“And to the right?” Kevin nodded toward a steel scaffold with a winch at the top and cables attached to lift.

“Faster way down into the bunker. Trust me when I say you’ll want to take the lift. This pyramid was built around five hundred feet down into the mountain.”

“How is that possible?”

Magnus rolled his left shoulder. “You’re the expert on that,” he said with a wink. “Let’s just say that they had much more advanced technology than we ever thought possible.”

The driver followed the other cars to five open parking spots on the left and pulled into the middle one.

Once stopped, the guards in the vehicles exited and fanned out to secure the area, though Kevin felt like that was a tad redundant at this point. No one was going to be able to infiltrate this stronghold. It was a veritable fortress, not to mention located on one of the most remote islands he’d ever heard of. Even if Wyatt and his friends had escaped the ambush in Russia, there was no way they’d be able to get into this passage.

The thought made him feel more secure as he stepped out into the cool, but not unpleasant, air in the tunnel.

Kevin walked around the back of the SUV and followed Sorenson’s lead as the older man stalked toward the inflated entrance abutting the rock wall.

A million questions floated in and out of Kevin’s mind as they walked. He stared ahead at the original entrance to the tunnel compound and, despite being told what to expect, couldn’t hold back his surprise at the sight.

Two stone columns, one on each side, supported a matching header beam. Kevin stared at the inscriptions as he approached, noting that it was indeed written in some form of ancient Sanskrit, but with a few instances of Egyptian hieroglyphs interspersed.

“This is authentic?” Kevin asked when he stopped at the doorway.

Magnus turned to him with a scowl. “Do you really think I invested so much money and time to create all of this if I had a single doubt as to its authenticity? And do you believe I would have brought you here if this weren’t real? Not to mention the pyramid down below us.”

“Right. Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Ah. Well, it’s one you should drop. Yes, it’s authentic. We date it to nearly fourteen thousand years ago, though it could be older. We’re certain it matches fairly close to the timeline of Göbekli Tepe.”

“The mixing of languages,” Kevin said as he stepped closer to the columns. He ran one hand along the stone, though he was unwilling to touch the engravings. “This could indicate the original peoples or tribes on Earth, joined here at this place for a—”

“Holy endeavor,” Magnus finished. “They were unified in their purpose, knowing that someday there would be a need to eradicate the earth’s population again if it didn’t reach the right milestones.”

Kevin’s face darkened. “You said, ‘again.’”

“Yes.” Magnus turned his eyes to the inscription. “You see, it says that the followers of Thoth gathered here to build the first of the chain