Free The Lost Ark by J.R. Rain Page A

and his chest seemed to shrink down into the rocky soil. I shut his eyes.
    Five minutes later, Faye was still holding his head. I reached over and touched her shoulder. She looked at me, eyes troubled and wet. “Why did they kill him, Sam?”
    Thunder rumbled overhead. Water dripped steadily from the end of my nose. I looked at the beaten body. “My guess is that Emir Omar Ali has something to hide. Perhaps something very important.”
    We stared down at the sodden, broken body. The rain washed the blood away from his face. Faye finally said, “Won’t the wild animals get him?”
    “Probably.”
    “Well, I won’t have that.”
    Faye shucked her backpack, scavenged the area for the dark volcanic rocks and began placing them around the body. I slipped out of my own pack and helped, taking us the better part of an hour to completely cover Makmur’s small body. Finally, I broke his gnarled staff a third of the way down and secured it with twine from my backpack and shoved the makeshift cross between the stones over his head.

    Chapter Sixteen

    The rain turned into a freezing drizzle. We had been hiking for the better part of six hours. During that time I thought of Makmur. He was murdered, that much was true. A powerful man like Omar Ali, acting within Turkish authority, could do just about anything. And trespassers were fair game. A simple beating of an old shepherd would go unnoticed, even if it resulted in death.
    The temperature continued to drop; our breaths fogged before us. Later, the drizzle stopped and there was a break in the clouds and the sun shone brightly down as if making up for lost time. A pair of white snowfinches streaked overhead, followed by an alpine chough that turned its head and watched us, then disappeared up through the clouds.
    The grassy slope was mostly barren, with the occasional outcropping of igneous rock. Later, we stopped beside a crystal clear stream, which wound down from above, bubbling over smooth stones. I handed out dried fruit and almonds. Almost too exciting for words. After eating, we sat back in the lush grass. Faye laced her fingers behind her head and stared up at the overcast sky. “Let’s be reasonable, Sam. There is no ark.”
    “Not according to Mrs. Dartmouth,” I said.
    “Who’s Mrs. Dartmouth?” she asked.
    “My Sunday school teacher.”
    “Of course.”
    The water made relaxing bubbling noises, the sort that’s recorded and sold in alternate health stores everywhere. I pulled out a shoot of grass and stuck it between my teeth. It tasted just like grass.
    I said, “I’ve heard all the arguments before. The arguments bore me. It’s a moot point. A classic example of science versus faith. I don’t know much science, and I don’t have much faith.”
    “That’s taking the easy way out, Sam,” Faye said. “Other than some unusual animal deposits that may be the results of a massive local floods, there’s just no evidence of a world-wide flood.”
    “They say God works in mysterious ways.”
    “But where did the water come from, Sam? And I don’t buy into the Canopy Theory. There’s little if any evidence supporting that Earth was covered in a layer of water vapor which contributed to the flood. Even so, where did all the water go? How did all the animals fit into one ark? How did the animals come to be on the ark?”
    “Refer to my prior comment.”
    I closed my eyes. My stomach made some digesting noises. Something rustled in the grass maybe twenty feet away. Probably a field mouse.
    “To be fair,” she added, “there’s substantial evidence of a massive flood occurring in the Black Sea basin about seventy-five hundred years ago. Two colleagues of mine, both noted oceanographers, have proven this event to be the largest in recent history, geologically speaking. Many lives were lost, including whole communities. The evidence even suggests that this disaster helped spread farming into central Europe, and could be the basis of the Noah’s ark