Myths and Monsters by William Meikle & Mark Markzilla Hogg

Author:William Meikle & Mark Markzilla Hogg [Meikle, William & Hogg, Mark Markzilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781505211603
Amazon: 1505211603
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2014-12-10T23:00:00+00:00

THE ANGEL

Tom watched as the monitor came to life and the short film began.

The picture slowly came into focus, taking in the skeleton, starting at the feet, up the long bones of the legs, across the wide ribcage, panning up the elongated skull, dwelling on the vast empty eye sockets before sliding sideways, to the shoulders, focusing sharply now, taking in a blur of features before drawing back, high above, to show the full extent of the wings.

The frame froze.

Tom Daly stared at the image on the screen for a long time, only turning away as the man behind him started speaking.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think we’ve been had,” Tom said, his voice rising in anger, “Four and a half years in that damned desert, putting up with flies and the sand and the shit and the sun, and all we get is a five thousand year old practical joke.”

“Not so much a practical joke,” said Paul Healey, “More of a mystery. The wings are real.”

That stopped the younger man in his tracks.

“Come on Paul. You must be joking. Aren’t you?”

The older man motioned with his hand. “Have a closer look,” he said, a smile spreading across his face.

Tom turned back to the image, scrutinising it more closely as his employer continued.

“We turned the thing over. There is a complete system of bones and indications of vast muscle structures. These wings were definitely attached to that body. Whether it was ever able to fly or not is another matter - I’ve got the biophysicists working on it at the moment.”

Paul Healey had his finger in many pies, from genetic engineering to space flight, from male contraceptives to bio-chip technology. He was reputed to be among the richest men in the world, having made his fortune when his labs made a series of breakthroughs in containing the HIV virus in the early 1990s. Nowadays he had the top brains at his beck and call, but he preferred to spend his time pursuing his hobbies, the main one of which was archaeology - in particular the Middle East in biblical times.

“I think we’re on to something big here,” he said, leaning back in his leather armchair, his small figure dwarfed in its shiny black opulence. “I’ve got people working on a computer-enhanced reconstruction - we should have a scale model within the week. The geneticists are trying to isolate some material - they’ll be able to tell us if it was human or not.”

Tom interrupted. He could see the gleam coming into the older man’s eyes, could see the fervour building up.

“What do you mean - if it’s human? Of course it’s human - just look at the bone structure. It must be some sort of mutant, a one off.”

“If that’s so,” continued Paul, “Why did they go to the bother of burying it inside five concentric tombs a hundred feet underground? Surely they would have destroyed a mutant at birth.”

He stopped as he played with a cigar, eyes looking off into some imagined distance.

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