Chapter Two

The day before our scheduled departure for Zimbabwe, we received another Skype call from Akeesha to tell us that it wouldn’t be necessary for us to go after all. The body had been successfully exhumed and processed, and samples of the bones and various tissues as well as the wolf-skin and blood that was still in the veins had been taken and dispatched to various academic centres. So it was with much disappointment that we had to wait for the samples to be delivered to us in Durban.

***

We could hardly contain our excitement as I pushed our SUV well past the maximum speed-limit down the N3 freeway towards Durban. The blood and wolf skin and Nordic Warrior specimens had arrived in South Africa, and technicians at our varsity were getting all of the specimens ready under containment procedures. The delivery of the specimens world-wide had been timed so that simultaneous investigations could begin.

“I haven’t felt this excited in ages” said Rachel, eagerly. Her face was alight with wonder and anticipation. I reached over and grabbed her hand in mine and it felt as natural as it had when we had first started dating some twenty years previously.

I grinned broadly as well, and focused on the road in front of me. In those moments my mind wandered back to when I first met Rachel. 

***

I was in my first year of studying History at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. I was loving it, and I was a party animal of note. Every Thursday night was party night in Maritzburg, and my word did I love to party!

On one particular Friday morning, I was suffering more than I normally did. My mouth felt like the inside of a dog’s rectum, and my eyes felt like I had fallen asleep with my head buried in sand. My head felt like I had a hundred midgets with jack-hammers pounding away at the inside of my cranium.

But, second period on a Friday morning was our European History 103 - my course, the one I wanted to continue. So I somehow managed to pull myself together after my alarm had rang five times and I had put it on snooze each time. 

I rolled off my bed onto the hard wooden floor of our shared digs where five of us guys lived together. My head hit the floor as well and I groaned with the extra bolts of lightning shooting through it. I slowly got onto all fours and grabbing my bed I pulled myself to standing.

Once in the kitchen, as quickly as possible I grabbed a cup of instant coffee. My stomach protested loudly at the scorching caffeine so I took a milk bottle and drank a big few gulps directly from the bottle. The stomach settled and then I added some yoghurt to it. I continued the coffee whilst popping two Asprin’s and two Panado’s. I looked at the clock on the wall and swore loudly. I was going to be late if I didn’t haul ass quickly. I ran to my room again and hastily put on some deodorant and pulled on some fresh clothes. I couldn’t find my car keys, and anger started growing inside of me. In the hallway there was no bunch of keys awaiting me either, but I found a note from Geoff, one of my digs-mates. He had borrowed my car to get to his early morning swimming training and would be back in time for me to get to my classes. But he wasn’t back in time. I punched the wall a bit too hard, and pain immediately told me I had done some damage to it. Swearing loudly I went out the front door onto the porch where I found my mountain-bike. Grabbing it, and hoisting my varsity backpack onto my back, which I had retrieved from the floor in the hallway, I carried the bike down the stairs and jumped onto it and began cycling to varsity.

I knew I was going to be late, so decided to try some biking tricks to get there on time. Again, I won’t bore you with too many details, but as I rounded the bend in a road, I slammed into the back of a semi-truck that was stationary, and I was knocked off my bike landing hard on the tarmac, and I then went blank, surrounded by a cloud of intense pain everywhere.

When I woke up, I was very disoriented, images of the partying the previous night intermingled with brief flashes of the morning’s event. I looked around me and found myself in a hospital emergency room. As I lifted my head, bright lights exploded inside and I lowered my head quickly. 

“Hello bike-man” the voice was soft and gentle, and a face swam into view above mine. As my eyes corrected, it focused on the face of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my entire life. The smile was warm and open, and the eyes were bright green and sparkled with life and vitality.

“Wow” my voice croaked out. I tried again and cleared my throat.

“Wow, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” The face blushed and she said “I’m sure that’s a good line that you must use often.”

“No, seriously.” I kept my voice down because if I raised it a bit my head protested. “What’s your name? Why are you here? Are you a doctor or a nurse?”

“All these questions” she tut-tutted. “I was driving behind that semi-truck which you connected with. I brought you here to St Anne’s Hospital.

“Thank you.”

“I think you’ve broken your hand, as well as a leg-bone. The orthopaedic specialist has just been in.” She chuckled for a few moments. “He thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend.”

I chuckled along with her, loving the sound of her voice. “What did you say?”

“I said we met by accident, and that it’s too early to tell if we are going steady or not.”

I laughed, and immediately regretted it because of a stabbing pain in my right chest.

“Oh, sorry. I forgot to mention that you also have two cracked ribs.” Her voice had changed to genuine concern.

“Don’t leave, please?” I asked her. I knew I was going to have to go to the operating theatre to have my leg fixed and couldn’t bear the thought of waking up without anyone being around.

“But isn’t there a girlfriend or family you want me to call?” the tone in her voice sounded a bit distant and off-ish.

I sighed a long but ginger sigh. The were a few moments silence and I was glad she didn’t say anything. So much ran around in my head that I wanted to hide from, but there was something so special about this girl that I needed to talk to.

“No, there is no-one.” I paused again, turning my head properly for the first time to look at this angel that had stepped into my life, who was standing next to my bed. I hadn’t realised it until now, but she was holding my hand, and the physical contact was warm, and reassuring. Something special. She smiled again and nodded almost imperceptibly. So I continued, and told her about how both my folks had been killed in a car crash when I was ten years old and that I had grown up with my older sister. She had developed leukaemia at the age of 22 and died a month later, and I was left with no-one. I stayed with a friend’s family until I left school and fortunately my very good grades at school ensured a full scholarship at the university, including living expenses.

When I had finished, I looked up at her again, and was surprised to see tears in her eyes, which she slowly wiped off with her thumb. She still hadn’t let go my hand.

“The orthopaedic surgeon said it’s going to be a long process of healing after that accident. You are going into theatre in about an hour’s time.”

I continued looking at her. “Will you be here when I come around?”

She hesitated, and then said the strangest thing. “Where is your spirit, Frank?”

My first question was “How did you know my name?”

She laughed again and said “Your ID and medical aid card were in your wallet. And my name is Rachel.” Then she got serious again and repeated the previous question.

“To be honest with you, Rachel, I don’t know. I’ve been angry at God for a long time and felt abandoned by him.” I stopped and looked out the window, thinking deeply about things that I had been trying to drown in alcohol and parties for far too long. Eventually, I sighed again and looked at her and said “I need help to get back to Him.” It was a simple statement full of intent, and fear.

She nodded, and said “I will be here, and I will visit you every day and we will talk lots.”

“But you don’t even know me” I said.

“I know lots about you already. It’s only the time factor that makes you think that.”

She then proceeded to tell me about her, how she was in first year science, that she was a Christian, that, like me, had lost both parents when she was young and grew up with her uncle and aunt in the Natal midlands. The nurses arrived while she was talking to me and gave me a tablet to take under my tongue. Things became blurry after that, and the last thing I remember before the operation was me asking her never to leave me, and she smiled back at me and said “Hang in there biker-boy.”

When I awoke, I felt like I was swimming in a warm fuzzy gooey pool. I knew it was the Morphine. I slowly opened my eyes and looked at myself. My left leg was in a cast with a metallic frame which a came to know later as the External Fixator. My right hand was also in a cast. I looked around the room and was surprised to see Rachel sitting in the chair next to my bed.

“Hey rescuer.” My voice croaked.

She looked up and smiled in a way that made my tummy flip over a few times. I had been so overwhelmed by pain initially that I hadn’t really had a good look at her, but looking at her now I was blown away with how beautiful she was.

“Hey Biker-boy. You’ve been asleep for quite a while.”

I glanced out the window. It was dark outside. I was immediately concerned.

“It’s dark outside, Rachel. You should be getting home.” In those days, crime was still very high in South Africa, especially violent hi-jacking. 

Again that gorgeous smile.

“Don’t you worry about me. How are you feeling?”

“Great - the morphine is too nice.”

I fell silent and stared at the wall, suddenly feeling empty inside despite the artificial glow of the morphine.

“A penny for your thoughts. Talk to me Biker-boy.” She put down her book and came and sat on the bed next to me. Again, I noticed she took my left hand in hers. 

So began our relationship. I had wandered far from God, angry at him for so many things, and over the course of the next week, she let me vent, and after I had let it out, she had let me cry. I hadn’t cried for years, but when the tears started, they didn’t stop, and her embrace was the greatest source of comfort I had ever had. Then she gave me a Bible and told me to read. So I did. And, you guessed right, I found my way back to God. Or, should I rather say, He reached out and plucked me from the edge of the abyss that I had been staring at for so many years.

When I came out of hospital, I started going to church with her and formed amazing friendships with the young adults there. My varsity grades suddenly started climbing, despite the fact that Rachel and I spent almost every waking moment together. Her ideas about intimacy were very strong and she set the boundaries in place right from the start. I wanted nothing more than to take her back to my digs and make sweet love to her, but I respected her and God’s Word.

Our wedding was about a year later - fortunately both of us had those full scholarships to fall back on so finances were fine, allowing us to find a small house in Scottsville near the varsity. It wasn’t much, but we didn’t need much. Our honeymoon was the most special time of my life….

***

Sorry, I just needed a break from writing there - I became overwhelmed by what I have just written.

Anyway, undergrad years turned to post-grad years turned to PhD years and lecturing and you know the other stuff from earlier on. Rachel was my world, my life, my everything. And she was taken from me.

Chapter One

The thing that my wife and I unwittingly helped to unleash has destroyed mankind, except for a tiny, ravished remnant. Without someone with knowledge like hers in one of the most unique fields of human study, it wouldn’t have happened. Without her genius mind connecting seemingly un-connectable dots, it wouldn’t have happened. Without the expedition that found what, to me now, should never have been found, it wouldn’t have happened. Without the expedition having been so successful, it wouldn’t have happened. Without some seemingly random mutations, it wouldn’t have happened. Without the release of the virus, it wouldn’t have happened. The virus. The Berserker Virus. Once the “release line” was crossed, there was no going back, no matter how good the containment attempts were. And, my goodness, were those containment attempts good! But they didn’t work. And that is how I come to be sitting on a rocky prominence in the Drakensberg mountain-range looking out at the vast expanse of hills, and fields below, in what once was South Africa.

Maybe I should formally introduce myself. Frank Smit. Professor-of-Napoleonic-Studies-at-the-University-of-Kwa-Zulu-Natal-turned medical doctor. The year is 2020. I am currently 40 years old. The month is September, date is the 21^st. It would have been my wife’s 38^th birthday today. And since I have survived, I thought it best to honour her memory by putting to paper the events that began in July of 2019. It truly is remarkable to think it has been over a year now.

My wife’s name is, or was, should I say, Rachel. She was a world expert in an extremely narrow field - that of medical mytho-archeology. It sounds really impressive, and to tell you the truth, I still don’t fully grasp it. But I know enough to give you plenty of back-story to my account of the events from that July morning onwards. We had two children. Carmen would have been seven this December if she had survived. Matthew, our honeymoon baby, is now fourteen years old, and has matured unnaturally fast since the gates of Tartarus were opened and has seen more horror than a boy of his age should.

Rachel’s expertise took her all over the world, and most of the time I got to go with her. In the beginning, when she was just starting her PhD, I would lead all of her expeditions. Those days were exciting, and often frustrating. Her first PhD finally and conclusively dated fossilised bones at being no more than seven to ten thousand years old. It took her five years to have her PhD granted because her research and conclusions were so earth shattering that the staid old scientific community resisted it to the last. Kind of like General George Custer. But, just like him, their days were numbered. As a result of her work, there followed a slew of high-profile research projects that confirmed her findings on multiple continents and under the authority of a number of world-class universities. Within five years of that PhD having been granted, the scientific community finally put to bed the reign of Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism, which had held sway over the scientific community ever since the very first publication of Darwin’s ‘Origins’. Intelligent Design became the new gold-standard for scientific research. To us, it was a huge leap in the right direction, and was far more than we could ever have hoped or expected. Those who had wanted to publish research that had relied on the premise of Intelligent Design before Rachel’s paper had stood no chance. But after Darwin was laid to rest, there was once again a major upsurge in scientific discovery. For decades, research had kept scientific knowledge growing at a slow rate, despite what the popular media said. However, soon that knowledge exploded, and major advances were made in every major field of study. 

Rachel went on to do a further five PhD’s, during which time I studied medicine, did my internship and Community service and then immediately specialised in Pathology. Rachel’s last two PhD’s focused more on the medical side, and especially ancient medicine. She became a leading expert in Norse medicine and mythology for her last paper, and the second last was the about the medical advances of the ancient Zimbabweans and the impact they had on the other ancient, post-Babel peoples in Southern Africa. She was the youngest person to ever achieve six PhDs in the space of four years (that is the granting of them, not necessarily the hair-raising hell-ride through Darwin-infested waters!).

It was because of these two fields of expertise that she received an unusual Skype call on July 3^rd 2019. It was because of these two fields of expertise that she received an unusual Skype call on February 3^rd 2019. Akeesha, one of her graduate students from University of KZN in Durban had taken up a position in Norway teaching Norse mythology to under-graduates. During a local dig in the mountains north of Oslo, Akeesha and her students had excavated a very strange and never-before-seen artefact that made no sense to her. The reason for this was that the runes on the piece of pottery were much older than the oldest known Nordic runes, and along with them was accompanied drawings and another artefact. This second one was a perfectly round stone that had obviously been placed inside the original pot, which was recovered fully and re-constructed. The strange thing was that the rock had been engraved with a type of hieroglyphic that seemed to have elements of Norse and some completely new element that had never been seen before. It took Akeesha and her fellow Professors some eight months to unlock the first two words of the Nordic runes only, and that slow progress made Akeesha call Rachel.

I know I’m probably boring you, but I have to write this down so that maybe some day my stuff will be dug up and deciphered and those future archeologists will be warned against the Apocalypse. And, I don’t care if I’m boring you - it’s cathartic for me!

Anyway, now that I’ve had my explosion, I will carry on. But I will cut a long story a bit shorter. The pottery runes described a meeting that took place between one of the first Nordic warlords, and a group of powerful warriors described in the runes as the “Dark gods”. But the runes for “dark” were not apparently describing their fierceness or magical power. They were describing the warriors’ appearance. But it was known that the meeting that took place happened about 1100 years before any Nordic race came into contact with any African or Middle-Eastern people. And, the runes placed this particular Nordic clan a good 2000 years before it had been thought the Norse had formed into a particular group and in an area that was thought to have been covered by the post-Flood ice-sheet. Anyway, they subsequently deduced that the group had been isolated from the outside world because of the geographic location. Even though they were well north of the ice-sheet limit, it seems they lived in a valley that somehow kept ambient temperatures at survivable levels, and after more extensive digging, it was found that a whole village had once be there. As the Ice Age neared it’s end, it seems that these “dark gods” had ventured from a very distant land on some sort of sea-going craft built in a long-boat configuration, but was much more durable. This is where Akeesha and her colleagues began to draw blanks. More and more questions piled up, so she called Rachel, and after a three-hour Skype conference-call, Rachel and I began sifting through the information that had been sent to us. (You notice how liberally I am including myself in this venture! (Cheesy grin in the background)). By day three of our investigations, our joint study-room in our home in Winston Park was filled with pictures, diagrams, multiple MacBooks and desktop computers. It was looking like your typical manic Professor’s office. I was staring at a diagram of the valley in Norway where the discoveries had been made, admiring the military knowledge that those people must have possessed, and on my iPad on the desk next to me was an image taken of the some of the stone engravings laid alongside some runes that looked similar. By this point I had learned to read Nordic runes like I knew Afrikaans. I knew the answers to many of the questions lay right in front of us, but it eluded my brain.

Suddenly, there was a sharp intake of breath from my wife from across the room, and a sudden silence.

“Frankie, I think I have figured it out, but it is beyond the craziest thing that even I could dream up.” There was obvious excitement on her face and in her voice.

“Look at those images right in front of you, but instead of the valley on your Macbook screen bring up an image of the last few rune ‘words’ on the pottery shards.” Having done that, she continued, “See the runes that make up the word . That is the oldest recorded version of the god Odin - Gwadan. But here, these runes tell us that he was a real person, and that he was the Warrior-Chieftain of this clan. Now look at the hieroglyphics on the stone engravings directly half way through. The hieroglyphs are similar in shape. But open the image of those in Photoshop and fiddle with the contrast, remove the greens and bring out the reds.” I duly followed orders, and suddenly gasped. Underneath the engraving was the impression of another engraving, but not done with any sharp instrument. They must have used some sort of dye - even luminous dye that only reveals itself under certain lights. Kind of like certain bank notes that we use, aaaah, used! Beneath the engravings was the unmistakable shape of the Zimbabwe ruins, but with a number of other structures attached, obviously showing it in it’s original shape.

“But honey, that’s not all. Read the last few lines of the runes on the pottery shard. No, let me just tell you. The secret of the Bezerker state is revealed. There seems to have been a certain genus of early wolf which was sacrificed before battle and the warriors drank the blood of the sacrificed animals, and then wore their skins and covered themselves in the wolf’s blood. It describes how it would drive the warriors into a frenzy, and we know the rest. So the original inhabitants of the Zimbabwe settlement were much older than I thought, and the climate must have been much cooler because there were great populations of wolf-type animals. We always thought those engravings in the Zimbabwe ruins were simply early kinds of the current Wild Dog, but now it seems like they were these wolf-kind ancestors. And, from what these are saying, I’m beginning to be able to decipher the stone hieroglyphics and so far it seems that the “Dark gods” were driven from their land by warming temperatures and by the subsequent dying out of the wolf-kind population. They wanted to find a cooler place to live, and somehow, where the current Great Rift Valley is now, there was a huge river existed back then, obviously a left-over of the Great Flood, which they said took seven days to cross and I’ve got to the point where they say it took them two full moons to enter the ‘Great Circular Sea’ - my guess that being the Mediterranean. But the parts I can’t yet decipher probably describe how they ended up so far north. So, these “Dark gods” were given deity status in that early Nordic Valley because there was some kind of property in the wolf blood that really did cause a Bezerker state. Wolves were bred specifically for the purpose of preparing the Bezerkers for battle. The ancient Zimbabweans brought a pack of these wolf-kind with them on their journey north, and the Nordic runes end with a chant of praise to the ‘Dark gods’ for bringing with them the power to defeat their enemies.”

She sat back in her chair with a look of triumph on her face, grinning from ear to ear.

“So, Miss-Multiple-PhD,” I said in a fun way, “what ist thou bidding?”

“Well, I won’t take much longer to finish deciphering the pottery hieroglyphs - by the ay, they have some interesting correlations to very early Egyptian hieroglyphs - and once that’s done, we need to arrange an …”

“…Expedition to the Zimbabwe ruins.” We finished the sentence together and then burst out laughing.