The Day of the Nefilim Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Imprint page

  Readers' reviews

  The Day of the Nefilim

  Prologue / 1

  Prologue / 2

  PART 1

  The New World Order comes to town

  A broken rudder

  Thirsts are slaked

  A map gives up its secrets

  A brief history of Barker’s Mill, and Reina makes plans for the weekend.

  An arrival

  The view from the dunes

  The General peruses some artefacts, and we meet Bisset

  An encounter in the dunes

  Archeology 101

  A decision is made

  Archeology 102

  Bryce and Reina go exploring

  Underground

  Various people meet each other

  Sahrin goes exploring, and finds some company

  Good morning

  PART 2

  Welcome to Mount Weather

  An alliance

  Thead’s career path opens up

  The Pilot’s Station

  The island of the mutants

  How Sahrin came to be on the island of the mutants

  Back at Barker’s Mill

  The difference chimney

  Interlude

  The UN observation base on the moon

  PART 3

  Deep shit

  New York

  The Secretary General’s New York office

  Interlude

  What we did during the darkness at Barker’s Mill

  PART 4

  Ice

  A conversation in New York

  Undertakings on the ice, and the General meets God

  Bark’s dream

  The Secretary General’s happiness comes under a cloud

  Yucatan

  Somewhere over Mexico

  Meanwhile, back in Yucatan

  The battle for Mexico City

  PART 5

  The Secretary-General sees a glimmer of hope

  Some things never change

  Battlefield Earth

  The Stream, and how the grid came to be in trouble

  Karma is a shit

  The Secretary-General’s alterations are noticed

  Interlude

  PART 6

  Geoca does theater

  The battle for Mount Weather

  The center cannot hold

  The ship turns peacenik

  The one that just won’t go away

  Sahrin and Geoca

  Reina decides to go home

  Barker’s Mill

  Sinus Roris, the Moon

  Epilogue

  By the same author...

  The Unspeakable Kangaroo

  The Tower

  The Princess Aslauga

  THE DAY OF THE NEFILIM

  Copyright © David L. Major 2011

  [email protected]

  The Day of the Nefilim is also available in paperback.

  Also by David L Major:

  The Secret Weapon

  A PLASTICINE eBOOK

  plasticine.com

  Reader reviews

  “I HAVE BEEN READING SF since about 1970, when I was ten years old, having inherited a bookshelf of the greats – Heinlein, Herbert, Azimov, Bradbury, Vonnegut, etc, when my family moved in to a new house. Since then I have devoured just about everything in most of the genres that have populated the print and electronic worlds as they have matured along with the realities of hard science. I have also been a fan of conspiracy lit, be it templar, illuminati, or of the X-Files sort. In the last year, as a result of having an iphone and discovering manybooks.net, I have started consuming more and more SF from the ‘unknowns’ and ‘unsigned’ which have been showing up with a greater frequency, and the fact of the matter is:

  The Day of The Nefilim is one of the best SF novels I have read since I began reading. Maybe that’s just because all of what I have read until now provided the knowledge and context to appreciate the depth of David’s work, which didn’t allow me to put it down until I finished it. Straight through, in one sitting. Yeah, that’s right, I did not put the book down until I finished reading it. Couldn’t. Well done David. Keep writing. Can’t wait to read your next book… You would make Robert Anton Wilson proud, and Douglas Adams smile.” — exiledsurfer on Manybooks.net

  “SCANNING OVER THE REVIEWS of this book which you have already received, I see that all the good superlatives have already been ably employed; the richness of praise so opulent and resounding that even a great big word freak like myself is hard put to say anything that would glitter for an instant in the clamoring tide. So, all I can say is that I love this book as much as I love all of my favorite science fiction books, and that’s a quantity that defies quantifiers. Everything in this book is perfect. The ending is perfect; the villians are perfect; the characters and images and settings are perfect. I, too, could barely put it down. And I want to also say, thank you.” — P. Deering

  “I’VE READ A LOT OF SF and conspiracy theories in my time, watched thousands of SF movies and documentaries, but I’ve never come across anything with the likes of your imagination. I was only able to understand it because of all I’ve read and watched in the last twenty years. I’ve never read any of your work before, but I believe you stand out.” — E.V.

  “THIS WAS AN EXCELLENT READ. Elements of Moorcock, Heinlein and Barker. Deserves serious consideration for the avid SF reader. Hopefully will spawn some more installments in the story line. Also feel it has the makings of a good screenplay. Thanks for the great writing David!” — Ron W.

  “AND JUST AS PIG ‘was going to have a crap in the grass, then a roll in the mud’, it finished. Great read, I hope to see more. Reminds me a lot of that Triffids book which sticks in my mind from about 40 years ago. Good read :) ” — be1952

  “LOVED THE BOOK. It ranks, in my mind, with L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth. Would be a great movie. Please continue.” — LG

  “THIS IS AN EXCELLENT FULL-ON FANTASY SCIFI that incorporates current parallels and a unique and engrossing universe. An interesting blend of 2D and 3D characters and an interesting ‘life in the interior’ scenario. When’s the movie coming?” — RS, PalmGear

  “WELL, I JUST FINISHED THE FIRST HALF of this fine story, what can I say other than I’m hooked!!!!!! Who’s the blue mutant woman, does Bark get with Reina?!?! Can the rebel mutants shut down the Nefilim grid and engage theirs before it’s too late?!?! Hmm, I guess I won’t find out until you release the second half. A big New York City thanks to you and some fine SF writing.” — LC, Palmgear.com

  “THANK YOU FOR PUBLISHING the The Day Of The Nefilim for the Palm. I have enjoyed the imagery that you have provided in the story and think that your style of writing is very captivating. Keep up the good work, and thank you again. I have enjoyed the reading MUCH so far!” — WP, Palmgear.com

  “WOW!!! OH MY. I almost quit work to finish the first part. I got lost in the awesome surrealism of this novel. When I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. Please (I beg), for humanity’s sake, make Part 2 available in the .lit version. I’ll pay for it. I’ll almost buy a Palm Pilot just to read the second part.” — lawalty, Handango.com

  “GREAT STORY! One of the most original I’ve read in a long time! Brilliant use of characters and current events. I couldn’t put it down.” — MF, Palmgear.com

  “OKAY, OKAY. That was cooooooooool.” — MP, Branch Manager, West Indianapolis Branch Library

  “IT’S AN ODD BOOK...” — DS

  * * *

  THE DAY OF THE NEFILIM

  - - -

  Prologue / 1

  THE SUN DARKENS. At first impe
rceptibly, and then with greater speed, it casts an unfamiliar veil over itself. It is the first eclipse in years.

  The people look up at the sky, where some of them notice to the east a star falling to its death, and others watch the hulking disk of the moon that obscures the sun. It was all there in the sky that day, above Barker’s Mill.

  After a few minutes, the eclipse is over. The planets creak slowly along their orbits, and soon everything is as it was.

  On the ground far below, life teeters on the edge of changing forever, but for today at least, it changes its mind and proceeds as it always has, grinding along the rusting tracks of its normality. It forgets quickly the strange orange dusk that had descended from the middle of the day.

  On the edge of a tree-lined bay, with water the same deep green that you find in the glass of old bottles, stands Barker’s Mill. The town has been laid out with the same care that a child gives to the arrangement of a new set of blocks. Its houses sit solidly, arranged in neat rows, portly squires gathered around a dinner table on their foundation seats of brick and bluestone. It is a most respectable gathering; everyone is well behaved.

  It has been like this since the town began. To the people who live there, it feels as though it has been like this since the beginning of time. Which, of course, is not the case.

  Meanwhile, far away, the General dreams, and Bark dreams.

  For now, they don’t remember the things they dream, but in time that will change; for one of them at least, and for the other it won’t matter.

  Their paths are linked, like the curls of a tattoo of snakes; but also like a tattoo, the effect will not be to everyone’s taste.

  Oh well, shit happens.

  * * *

  Prologue / 2

  THE PLANET HAD BEEN TRAVELLING through the cold, deathless silence for a long time. Like a marble worn smooth with age, it rolled across the black expanses of deep space, patiently following its preordained path. The planet’s orbit was a huge ellipse, and the sun that held it in its sway was growing closer now as the planet tumbled into the star’s inner system, towards perihelion.

  The star’s radiance began to heat the frozen orb. The liquid and gas that had long since been frozen solid by the unyielding cold of the vacuum of space began to thaw. If there had been anyone on the planet’s bleak surface to see, the approach to its star would have been greeted first with wisps of vapor as the atmosphere began to return to its gaseous state. Then clouds of mist formed, covering the entire globe in wreaths of swirling white. As the approach continued, continents of ice crumbled, disintegrating into the seas that had begun to form.

  Life that had been suspended in the death of absolute zero began to stir. Life cycles resumed as seed found sustenance in the chilled tundra, and creatures emerged from eggs hatching in the slight warmth of the sun. Spores drifted through the reconstituted atmosphere, seeking and finding refuge.

  Deep in the frozen earth, other processes were set in motion.

  Ice fell from hollowed, gaunt faces; deep black eyes flickered and opened. Muscles that had been as solid as ice for eons flexed and moved again. Tall forms moved through dark caverns.

  Nefilim, they called themselves.

  PART 1

  The New World Order comes to town

  FOR REINA, Barker’s Mill had been home since the day a few years ago when she had got off the bus that stopped here on its way north. It was coming up to eight years since she had left the city, and she had no nostalgia for any part of it. She had been on the dole when she first arrived in Barker’s Mill; she had worked as well, of course. This place didn’t suck money out of you with the same unrelenting efficiency that the city did. And you can’t spend your whole life on the dole, she had thought, so she gave it away, and got a couple more part-time jobs instead. Her life had soon settled down into the comfortable rhythm that the place encouraged in everyone who lived here.

  One of the several jobs she held was driving for an old farmer who came into town only when he had to. Which meant almost never these days, because Reina did his driving and ran his errands. Her job was to load her pickup with produce and drive it into the buyer in town. She and the old man had piled the crates of vegetables and fruit into the back. It was a fine afternoon for a drive; she had the window down and the breeze felt good.

  While Reina was driving into town, the government was doing the same.

  A couple of miles out, just as she was coming up to the creamery by the bridge over Old Goat Creek, the familiar shape of an army truck, painted white with its metal and glass all shiny and its headlights burning hot in the midday sun, filled her rear-vision mirror. As she rounded a curve, she saw that the truck wasn’t alone. She pulled over into the gravel and started rolling a cigarette as the convoy went past. Damn, it was hot. She felt like a drink.

  There were half a dozen trucks, followed by heavy transport vehicles that carried earthmovers, and other equipment covered by huge tarps. Everything was painted white and bore the letters ‘UN’, large and blue. The soldiers, of whom there were many, all wore the familiar blue helmets.

  This wasn’t new. There had been soldiers and other strangers all over the area for the last few months. They kept to themselves, in the base they had built among the sand dunes on the other side of the harbor. They didn’t have much to do with the town, and when they did, they hardly said anything, which only encouraged speculation among the locals.

  At the rear of the convoy were two long shiny cars, black instead of white, with windows of dark tinted glass and little blue flags that fluttered daintily on their front guards. Inside, the General and the other officers sat in air-conditioned comfort and watched the rustic world outside glide past.

  * * *

  A broken rudder

  FAR, FAR AWAY, within the curled and convoluted folds of a place and time far removed from Barker’s Mill, Onethian and Sahrin are becalmed, and although they’ve been becalmed for quite a while now, they’re happy.

  They are happy because finally they have a solution to the problem of the broken rudder. Using material scavenged from crates that tumble out of the cargo hold and over the deck, they’ve replaced the old rudder with a new creation of wood and rare metals and some strange pieces of ceramic, the original use of which is a mystery to everyone and of consequence to no one.

  The result of their labor more closely resembles an artifact from some exotic culture than anything as mundane as a rudder, but there is nothing to lose, and they had to do something about their predicament. They couldn’t assure the Captain that it would work, but he gave his assent to the exercise, there being no reason not to try, and besides, Bark is as eager as any of them to get under way again. They have been aimlessly adrift for long enough, he thinks, lying idly on a pile of sacks and eating a piece of dried fruit from one of the barrels in the hold.

  He looks up at the bare masts and imagines the sails unfurled and full, the ship once more making its way through the clouds and nebulae of deep space.

  But the ship sits idle. The clouds of space scud slowly around them, and until the rudder is fixed, they are going nowhere. Until then, here they must stay, suspended in an azure limbo of no time and no space.

  And until then, they have all the time in any world.

  Bark slowly calculates a trajectory, and then watches as the piece of fruit follows it, up, and then down, over the side of the ship, into the void. He idly plays with one of his earrings for a minute, then goes back to sleep. Bark has never been in a hurry, and he’s not going to start now.

  * * *

  Thirsts are slaked

  PASSING REINA, THE UN CONVOY drove into town. People stopped to look. The only time there were so many vehicles on the main street these days was when the army was passing through.

  The vehicles, and the soldiers in them, were from all over the world. There were Syrians, Israelis, Russians, Koreans and Africans, and there were Americans. Months ago, the children had run to hide, but now they gathered in small groups
and pointed and waved at the soldiers. Some of the soldiers waved back, and threw sweets to the children. The adults stood and crossed their arms and looked on with expressionless faces.

  The main part of the convoy – the soldiers and their heavy trucks and all their equipment – drove straight on without stopping, heading along the road that would take them around the harbor to the sand dunes opposite town.

  The officers consulted between the two black shiny cars on their cell phones, and decided to stop for a break. They pulled into the parking lot beside the Red Lion, and the officers emerged from behind the tinted windows, blinking in the sunlight as they put on their sunglasses.