Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (25 page)

Among them he sought they who worshiped those who dream.

He burned their temples.

He burned the people.

Our king raised an army,

ten thousand men.

His army of ten thousand, Gilgamesh marched

to the land no man was meant to walk,

to the land no man was meant to see.

Gilgamesh slaughtered the demons who pretend to be men.

He extinguished their bonfires.

His army of ten thousand, Gilgamesh marched to the mountain.

And the mountain laughed.

Their swords broke against the mountain,

Their arrows would not bite.

Gilgamesh could not kill that which was not living

but not dead.

The snakes crushed one thousand men, then one thousand more.

The mountain breathed death and two thousand men died.

Two thousand men fell on their knees to give the mountain worship.

Gilgamesh burned them.

The survivors returned with our king to Uruk.

At night no one in the city slept,

the nightmare screams outnumbered the stars.

The temples swelled with those who spoke the tongues of gods.

Gilgamesh raised a new army,

another ten thousand men.

He taught them new ways to revel.

He taught them new ways to kill.

They marched through the land,

Gilgamesh knew the secret places.

Beneath new temples to the gods,

Gilgamesh buried the locks.

His army of ten thousand, Gilgamesh marched,

on other sheepfolds,

to seek they who worshiped those who dream.

One in a city condemned all within the walls.

Gilgamesh tore down these cities.

His army reveled and killed in the new ways he taught them.

The fathers were slaughtered, the mothers burned,

the sons were made slaves, the daughters prostitutes.

Through blood and fire Gilgamesh cleansed the earth.

And the mountain laughed.

=[]=

Bruce L. Priddy
is a single father, writer and editor living in Louisville, KY. His works can be found at
Flashes in the Dark, Morpheus Tales
, the upcoming
Bigfoot Terror Tales
, and the
LovecraftEzine.com
, where he also serves as co-editor. He is the creator and editor of the flash-fiction site
EschatologyJournal.org
. In addition to his fiction writing and editing, he pens a sort-of-monthly column promoting skepticism for the website of the popular
Binnall of America
podcast. Follow him
@MisterPriddy
on Twitter or at
misterpriddysmarvels.wordpress.com
.

Rob Rosen

=[]=

“Nothing lasts forever,” is a truism that affects all civilizations. As generations pass, it really doesn’t take long for peoples and monuments, even those considered once-magnificent, to fall and be buried by the sands of time. What wonders of today will be deemed “mysterious” or “archaic” when their relics are rediscovered in the future? Rob Rosen offers one wry possibility. Quick-witted and fun, the author leads us on a fast-paced tale of exploration and revelation. Join him on his trek, as he searches for
Buried Treasure
.

=[]=

“Ain’t no water up there,” the patrol guard informed me. “Not for well over five hundred years, anyway. If you want my advice . . . ”

Which, of course, I didn’t.

“Thanks, but, between you and me, and this here five grand, I’d like to see for myself,” I told him, with a polite interruption.

He pocketed the cash and nodded his assent, allowing me to pass with nothing more than an additional, “Just endless desert up there, buddy. Good luck to you, though.”

That far up north, the guards were paid little and, naturally, little was what was expected of them. After all, there wasn’t much point in guarding a bunch of sand. Still, in terms of public safety, at least the government, what was left of it, was doing something to protect us.

Five hundred years too late, I figured.

Anyway, water, being the most precious of commodities, was worth seeking out. Though, like the proverbial needle, I was sure to find only hay in this here stack; and, of course, a hell of a lot of sand. Still, rumors abounded that water did indeed exist, if you knew where to look for it.

And the map, which I’d stumbled across quite accidentally, was sure to prove helpful in this endeavor.

Those who began the great exodus toward the equatorial regions left tantalizing clues of what once was. In some cases, that something being water. In this case, in particular, a large supply of it, worth untold riches. But was it worth the risk of traveling into no-man’s land? Well, that I was about to find out.

Fortunately, though the map I had in my possession was now five centuries old, it did give longitude and latitude as points of reference. I say fortunately, because there were no longer any road markings. No roads either, for that matter. Just endless dry desert, as the guard had pointed out, and the occasional hawk in search of what meager prey there must have been. There were also mammoth dunes covering Lord only knows what. Or worse yet, things I assumed were buried underneath and didn’t have the desire to uncover.

The trek, after all, was depressing enough. We reaped, as the saying goes, what we sewed, and this was living, or not-living, proof of it.

Hours later, my body badly shaken, I arrived at my destination. Judging from the map, this area had always been desert up until an even greater desert encroached, surrounded, and then replaced it. For some reason, water, at some point in the distant past, had been brought to this place; and perhaps, just perhaps, it still remained, hidden below the oddly shaped giant dunes that stood before me.

Hints of what lay beneath poked out high above, though. The tops of towering steel buildings, only skeletons now, shown brightly under the unforgiving midday sun. Oddly shaped structures unlike any I’d ever seen, stripped of their hides, indicated that some sort of giant desert town had once been located in this spot. A city that must’ve needed a great deal of water to survive. But how could the water still be here? That was the conundrum of the map, which displayed various sized lakes scattered about, one of which, the largest, was situated in the center of the town.

And the makers of the map indicated that it was somehow protected.

The sand, sadly, was my biggest obstacle in getting to it all. But then, as my eyes scanned the lofty, beige horizon, an unexpected grin splashed across my face.

“Then again, maybe not so big an obstacle, after all,” I whispered to myself. For there, in just about the location of the lake I sought, part of a still-roofed edifice, just the barest tip of it, actually, could be seen in between squinting eyes such as mine.

“An entrance,” I quickly added, already walking up, up, up the giant dune, with a river of sweat now cascading down my face.

The roof, it turned out, was badly damaged, with a gaping, jagged hole at the top. Still, the dune had not worked its way over it yet, allowing my access to the building inside, and then requiring only a minimal drop into a sand-cushioned stairwell.

One story down and I found an open door leading to a long corridor. I flicked on my powerful flashlight and had myself a look around. It was obvious right away where I was.

“A hotel. And, judging from the number of rooms, a large one at that. But a hotel out in the middle of the desert?” I whispered to myself. It was a strange concept, considering that man had been avoiding these sweltering, merciless places for centuries now. “Maybe even back then they came for the lake,” I thought to add.

I returned to the stairwell and proceeded downward, until only the light from my flashlight lit the way through the pitch black darkness. I emerged inside a cavernous room, lined on all sides with brightly colored machines of similar size, all with lifeless monitors that reflected the radiance of my flashlight. The room itself, at one time, had been richly appointed; now it was a dusty, faded memory of what it once had been.

“What is this place?” I asked myself, shivering in the chilly space. Considering how far beneath the dunes I now was, this wasn’t at all that surprising. See, the room, it seemed, was more like a desert tomb.

The blue swirling light at the far end of the room, however, was unusual, to the say the least.

I’d seen images like this before, in movies and in pictures. This was the reflection of a pool, flashing a dull blue glow against the farthest walls. My heart quickened as I approached the source.

“Water,” I fairly groaned, in shock at the sheer volume of it. The lake, obviously man-made, sat, at one time, outside the building. Except the building’s façade had long ago crumbled, making one long contiguous space, covered, it seemed, by other collapsed buildings, creating a protective ceiling over the lake. This explained why the sand had not long ago engulfed it as it had everything else.

The coolness of the air had obviously maintained the lake, and whatever evaporation occurred accumulated on the ceiling above and then dripped back down. In other words, the lake was in a perpetual state of flux, one that had maintained itself for centuries.

At least, this is what I assumed.

Looks, I was soon to discover, could be deceiving, even in such an apparently stagnant place as this.

For the stagnation did not last long.

In the blink of an eye, the water erupted. Like cannon fire, a deafening explosion filled the cavern. And the once-tranquil waters, like a terrifying volcano, shot up from all sides, sending out an ice-cold mist as it slammed into the ceiling above. I jumped back and tripped over ancient debris, landing hard on my rump. The water continued to rise and fall in tremendous sheets, as clear as glass, each time rumbling the enclosure with a noise so loud that I was forced to cover my ears.

Then silence, once again, save for the drip, drip, drip of the water as it trickled down from the roof. And then, out of the nothingness, a voice bellowed.

“Leave now,” it said, the words echoing all around me, shaking me to the bone. A figure then appeared. Then two. Then dozens more emerged from the other side of the lake, dressed in garish clothes, tattered and torn, weathered as the building above us. In sharp contrast to their attire, their skin was a ghostly pale, white as the snow I’d only ever seen in pictures.

“Who . . . who are you?” I managed.

The same voice repeated, “Leave. Now.”

“But all this water. Do you realize its value?”

The odd group laughed, low and deep, the sound collectively pinging this way and that as it ricocheted off of the walls and the lake.

“Value?” the voice asked. “How do you place a value on a god?”

I paused, realizing what was meant by this statement. Clearly, they worshiped the lake. Before I could answer, however, once again the waters trembled and rocketed to the ceiling, bursting forth in fits and starts, dousing the area once more in its chilly mist.

The figures knelt and bowed their heads. The voice shouted, “See, you have angered the god. You must leave, now.”

I stood there and trembled as the lake again returned to its peaceful state. How was I to reason with them? If the lake was man-made, so must be the mechanism that controlled it. But how do you caution a people that what they are worshiping is a false god, and live to tell about it? I stared at the water, in all its brilliant blue glory, nearly salivating as I pondered the wealth that lay within. On a planet long dry, water indeed was a god, but not one such as they thought it to be.

“Yes,” I finally shouted. “I see that your god is indeed most powerful. But should you not share it with the world? Shouldn’t your god be worshiped by countless men and women, and not just a paltry few?”

They looked up at me from their kneeling positions and, strangely, again began to laugh. Eventually, a man walked toward me.

“You are not the first to find us,” he informed. It was then I noticed that his eyes and hair were as colorless as his skin. “You mean to take our god away from us, as the others have tried, for the sake of riches.”

I heard no menace in his voice, just a knowing sadness.

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “I am sorry, but water is as sacred above the sands as it is below. And therefore valuable.”

His frown quivered and turned to a smile, just as the waters again shook and exploded forth, as they had done before, circling round and round the lake in a continuously loud frenzy.

“The god appreciates your honesty,” the man said. “And so, we will reward you with what you seek.”

And now it was my turn to smile. “How?” I asked. “Are there waters elsewhere?”

For the third time, the group laughed in unison.

“No,” the man replied. “You seek riches of a monetary value. Of this, we have as much wealth as there is sand above.” He pointed within the building. “The machines you passed,” he told me, “contain precious metal. The desert around us abounds in these machines. Riches in unimaginable numbers. For your silence, when you leave here, we will reward you with as much of this as you seek. We simply wish to live in peace, as we have for generations, with our god.”