Zara felt a sensation crossed between dread and euphoria. Unable to let herself believe again, she was unwilling to relinquish something she’d spent her entire life working towards. She looked up into the starlight and screamed out loud. When she was finished, Zara settled down to a reverent silence and noticed a second note for her.
It was addressed to her, handwritten and signed, Michel De Nostradamus. It was hastily written on the side of the codex, next to quatrain number, 43.
As you will see, the following were much too dangerous for any one person to ever bear witness! I wrote them and then immediately removed them from Centuries VII before the damage could be done. I myself was uncertain what to make of them, but the danger in their power is obvious.
I pray upon discovering the equation, you will know what to do with them.
God speed,
Michel de Nostradamus
Zara sat there in silence, contemplating what she might find once she read and studied the 58 missing quatrains. Her heart pounded in her chest and her mind begged her to look immediately, but she waited. After so many years searching, she needed a moment to grasp the enormity of what she was about to see. A strange feeling of peace arrived, as though her life’s purpose was somehow about to be revealed.
The sensation was fleeting, and the silence soon broken.
Destroyed with the sound of thunder cracking in the distance. Immediately followed by the stirring of a low level sand storm. It was the same type of localized meteorological event responsible for killing more people than the desert itself. Tourists who wandered from their camps to stargaze, only to become lost in a violent sand storm. Zara chided herself for not taking more precaution. It had been a good walk, a whim. And it might just end up costing her life.
Zara ducked down low and covered her face with her green headdress in an attempt to protect her eyes. She looked at her smartphone. GPS was unable to locate any satellites above the sand storm. She switched to her compass App and pointed it towards the camp before her camp completely disappeared. She then ducked down low and slowly braced herself for the long journey back — terrified of what she would find once she reached it.
Rain dumped on her from a cloud carried by the fast moving winds in a way she’d never experienced in a lifetime traveling the Sahara.
“You’ve got to be kidding me?” she said out loud. The rain drenched her clothing bringing with it a delicious reprieve from the desert’s heat and ice cold fear into her heart.
I don’t believe the prophecy’s really coming true! Even as she thought it, she doubted herself, trusting a scientific answer would somehow explain it all.
The wind blew Zara onto her back. She rolled on her side and quickly got to her feet again. Dipping her head low again she focused her eyes only on the compass bearing. The storm stopped as quickly as it had begun. The dry sand fought to swallow the rain. Two more sand dunes away, she saw a bright orange glow coming from the camp. She’d never seen such an intense glow anywhere in the desert before. Her mind searched for an answer, but never found a solution. Instead, her thoughts were interrupted by the distinct sound of gunfire.
My people! They’re all going to be slaughtered!
Zara ran towards the camp. She needed to get back there. Everything else that Nostradamus had written could have been faked, but no one on earth knew a storm would rage through the camp tonight. Her pulse raced. Not because of the effort of running, but because of what the storm meant. She recalled the warning Nostradamus had given her — Free your mind from the trappings of your beliefs — they’re about to be shattered forever.
She crawled to the peak of the sand dune closest to her camp. Down below she saw the destruction. The large mesh of interconnected tarpaulins were missing. What remained of the bounded wooden sticks which formed the camp’s skeleton was crooked or missing entirely. The dry sand had swallowed all evidence of the recent rain; the only sign of its presence being the sudden introduction of humidity in a land that rarely experiences more than a few inches of rain per year. She saw men running through the camp. They appeared to be feverishly working to bring order to the destruction. Their skin was dark and they wore green camouflaged clothing — and held AK-47s in their hands.
Zara felt her throat tighten and her chest pound. The image just confirmed the first step of the prophecy had come true, and her world would be shattered forever.
Chapter Twelve
Zara slid forward until she could get a good view of the camp. There were bodies huddled together at the northern end of the camp. They might be sleeping, or they could be dead. Either way Zara couldn’t tell and even if she could, there was nothing she could do to help any of them. At least a hundred camels were penned down at the edge of the camp, their masters working hard to keep them from fleeing. Her eyes turned to focus directly on her tent. The tarpaulin had disappeared, but the brass box vault remained. Adebowale was missing, and for a fleeting moment she allowed herself to believe he’d made it out alive. She recalled his words when she left — he would protect the book with his life — and she doubted he survived.
She heard the shots fire and saw the sudden flashes of light bursting from the weapon’s nozzle. One of the bodies she’d seen lying at the northern end of the camp had moved and one of the attackers emptied his full magazine into the remaining bodies until there were no movements left.
Who the hell are these people?
The sound made her focus on her own life again. Nostradamus had written that she’d survive, but she would have to head south. How could she possibly do that? There was over a thousand miles of sand between her and the southern edge of the Saharan desert in Chad. Even knowing where the periodic waterholes and few oases were, she could never cross the desert on foot.
Zara crawled up to the edge of the sand dune, trying to dig herself as low to the ground as possible. She watched two men enter the remains of her tent. They examined Nostradamus’s brass vault. The box which had housed one of the most extraordinary relics ever made. The two spoke to one another animatedly.
“Master, Ngige!” the second man yelled into a radio. “I think we found it!”
A black SUV drove through the middle of the camp. A Range Rover Autobiographical edition. The sort of thing whose ownership was limited to royalty, the ultra-rich, and film stars. She’d never seen anyone attempt to drive one through the Sahara. From what she’d heard it was sort of a cross between a race car and an all-purpose, go-anywhere, four wheel drive. A man stepped out of the vehicle, leaving the door open and the engine running. He wore dark green camouflage seen on the other men in the camp, but there were golden crowns on each of his epaulettes.
Zara watched him approach the two men standing next to the brass chest. They both saluted him and she guessed the man with the crowns was their leader.
“We found it, Ngige!” The shorter of the two men said.
Ngige shook the man’s arm. “Well done! We have found it!
So they had come for the book of Nostradamus. Zara looked at the black Range Rover. It was her only possible chance of escape, and it might as well have been on the moon for all the chance she had of reaching it. Even if she did make it, there was no telling whether or not someone else was still inside.
“Gabe Ngige! Gabe Ngige!” The men started shouting the name and firing their AK-47s into the air like madmen.
Pandemonium raged through the camp and Zara thought her odds of making it may have just risen to a percentage point above zero.