The Secret of the Desert Stone (14 page)

Dr. Cooper looked at the Stone, then back at Nkromo, with carefully timed, occasional glances at Mr. Mobutu. “You should know, the God who placed the Stone there is not just the God of the Motosas. He is the God of all men, to whom all men—even you, Mr. Nkromo—must bow, now or later. The Stone is a sign, a message from Him, and according to our written data . . .” Dr. Cooper drew a Bible passage from memory, “‘The person who falls on this stone will be broken. But if the stone falls on him, he will be crushed.'” Nkromo started to smile in mockery, but Dr. Cooper wouldn't let him get away with that. “We took careful measurements, Mr. Nkromo! The Stone is growing, even as I speak! Based on the, uh, written data, there is a strong probability that the Stone will grow until it overruns you. It will strike you down, you and all your armies, and you will be swept away without a trace unless you humble yourself and honor the God who speaks through the Stone!”

Nkromo took that in and thought about it, his eyes glaring at Dr. Cooper and then at the Stone. His breathing was labored, his hands trembling. He was trying to look strong and unshaken, but Dr. Cooper could read the fear in his eyes. Finally, Nkromo spoke, his teeth clenched. “Dr. Cooper, I see nothing happening!”

“Well,” Dr. Henderson tried to soothe him, “there
are
different interpretations of the data—”

“You will!” Dr. Cooper insisted.

Nkromo forced a smile. “When?”

Dr. Cooper looked heavenward for just a moment and then answered boldly, “Now!”

Nkromo backed away a step as if expecting something. All the soldiers were looking toward the Stone with wide, frightened eyes. The ten men in the firing squad fell into disarray, muttering to each other, their rifles drooping toward the ground. Mr. Mobutu had his back against a big army truck, looking like
he
was about to be shot.

Dr. Henderson muttered, “Jacob Cooper, I almost hope you're right.”

A long, suspenseful moment passed.

But nothing happened.

Nkromo broke into a smile, and then he laughed. Stepping quickly backward, he gave the order, “Ready!”

“Well, nice try,” said Dr. Henderson.

“I still think something's going to happen!” said Lila.

The guards raised their rifles once again, though some of them seemed a little hesitant.

“Mr. Mobutu!” Dr. Cooper called. “You have known the God of the Motosas! You know the Stone is of God or you would not have sent for a godly man!” Mobutu was too timid to answer. “If you side with Nkromo now, you will perish with him!”

Mobutu just stood there, stiff with fright.

“Aim!” Nkromo shouted, his hand raised as a signal, and once again, the Coopers and Dr. Henderson were looking right down the long barrels. Nkromo was feeling cocky now. He kept his hand up, prolonging the moment. “Perhaps you would like to pray, Dr. Cooper—if you think God will hear you!”

Dr. Cooper sighed, then reached for Jay's hand as Jay reached for Lila's. Then, surprisingly, Dr. Cooper felt Dr. Henderson grab his other hand. He looked her way, and she said simply, “Count me in.”

He smiled and lifted his eyes toward heaven. A verse of Scripture came to mind, and he recited it. “‘During danger he will keep me safe in his shelter. He will hide me in his Holy Tent . . . he will keep me safe on a high mountain.'”

Nkromo dropped his hand.
“FIRE!”

Jay and Lila didn't remember hitting the ground. They only realized, suddenly, that they were lying in the sand, smarting a bit from the fall and wondering where the bullets had hit them. They could see their father, rolling in the sand and reaching for Dr. Henderson who was crying out, curled up in pain. The rifles had gone off; their ears were still ringing from all the shots.

But then they noticed something really odd: The soldiers in the firing squad were all on the ground too. Even Nkromo was rolling and wriggling in the sand, trying to get his feet under him again, having a fit, screaming at his soldiers.

And it wasn't just Nkromo and his firing squad; the whole army camp was on the ground, hollering, screaming, wriggling, and struggling to get up again.

Jay looked at Lila. “Something happened!”

She nodded back, starting to grin.

They struggled to their knees and checked themselves for wounds, but found none. The firing squad had missed. Everyone had been knocked down.

They were knocked down again as the earth gave another mighty lurch. Nkromo's men also toppled to the ground with a clattering of rifles and anguished cries of terror. The earth had come alive. It was shaking and rumbling, and the sound of thunder seemed to come from everywhere, pounding upward through the ground, throbbing in their ears, rattling the trucks and tanks and cannons and making the small rocks dance. The whole army camp was falling into chaos.

“Mr. Mobutu!” they heard their father shout. They could see him on his knees and one hand, pointing at Mobutu with the other hand. “Whom will you serve? Decide now!”

Mr. Mobutu was lying on his side, trying to prop himself up on one elbow, his eyes darting about as if witnessing the end of the world. His mouth was wide open as if to scream, but terror had stolen his voice.

Nkromo struggled to his feet and staggered about like a drunken man as the earth rolled and shifted under him, his long, silver saber in his hand. He waved his saber at the Coopers and Dr. Henderson and started screaming
“FIRE! FIRE!”
at his firing squad. The ten men regathered, grabbing onto each other for support as they struggled to their feet and got their rifles back in position to carry out his order.

“Mobutu!” Dr. Cooper yelled. “Choose!”

Mobutu finally got to his feet, his knees bent and his arms outstretched for balance as he beheld in horror the chaos around him.

“FIRE!”
Nkromo screamed again, and once again the soldiers tried to aim their rifles toward the Coopers and Dr. Henderson. In all the shaking and rumbling, the rifle barrels wavered and wiggled. The soldiers could hardly stand up.

“Mobutu!” Jacob Cooper yelled one more time.

From the west came a sound like an avalanche, like thunder, like a volcano erupting. It grew in intensity and shook the quaking ground even more.

Mobutu looked to the west, toward the Stone.

And then he decided.

He shouted something to the firing squad. Two of the soldiers looked his way. He gave them an order, and they immediately stepped out and trained their rifles on their fellow soldiers! The remaining eight looked at the two, then looked toward the Stone, and quickly reached a decision. They dropped their rifles and fled. The two soldiers closed in to protect the Coopers and Dr. Henderson, their rifles raised, preventing anyone from approaching them.

Jay and Lila got to their feet and staggered toward their father who was also standing and helping Dr. Henderson off the ground.

“Dad! Those two soldiers!” Lila shouted.

Dr. Cooper was smiling even as he held tightly to Dr. Henderson to help her balance. “I know. Bernard and Walter, Mobutu's two accomplices! I thought I recognized them.”

Mobutu ran in a jerky, zigzag course and finally came near. “The God of the Motosas!” he yelled, pointing to the west. “You are right! He is bringing His destruction upon us!”

They all looked west and saw a sight their minds could not understand. The Stone looked higher than it ever had before, and now they could tell the top edge was slowly rocking like a monstrous ship on the ocean, heaving left, then right, growing, reaching, filling the sky with acres and acres of dark, stony expanse. All along the base of the Stone, a tidal wave of rock, dust, and sand was building higher and higher, rolling and tumbling toward them, dug up and pushed along by the sheer, flat face of the Stone.

“It's growing!” Dr. Henderson cried, shaking her head in utter astonishment. “Growing at a phenomenal rate!”

“Growing
and
moving,” said Dr. Cooper. “It's headed this way.”

Mobutu hollered to Bernard and Walter, who immediately ran away on an assignment. “They will bring a vehicle! We must flee for our lives!”

Nkromo's army had already decided on that course of action. Even though Nkromo was waving his saber and screaming for order and discipline, a thousand soldiers were looking to the west and seeing something bigger and far more frightening than Idi Nkromo.

They dropped their rifles—some even yanked off their boots so they could run faster—and started abandoning the camp, fleeing across the desert. Those closest to the trucks and tanks jumped inside and started them up as scores of soldiers swarmed onto the vehicles like flies on raw meat. With engines roaring and wheels and tracks spinning, the huge, green vehicles thundered through the camp, running over and through tents, smashing through tables and equipment, trampling anything that got in the way as they made their escape.

“Well let's not just
stand
here!” Dr. Henderson cried, pointing toward the Stone.

The Stone was picking up speed, closing on them faster and faster, moving over the desert like the very hand of God, scraping up a mountain of earth before it and rumbling like a million freight trains.

Bernard and Walter came running and staggering back with a bad report. Mobutu passed the news to the others: “There are no vehicles left! We'll have to flee on foot!”

Dr. Henderson yanked at Dr. Cooper's arm, trying to pull him east. “So come on, let's go!”

“No,” said Dr. Cooper, looking at the advancing wall and the rolling, crashing wave of earth in front of it. “Not that way.”

“What!?”

He pulled Jay and Lila close. “We'll run toward it. We'll run
toward
the Stone!”

“Toward
the Stone?” Mobutu gasped.

Dr. Henderson could see the Stone still advancing, moving far faster than a human could run; she could also see the army fleeing, leaving clouds of dust behind their wheels, tracks, and feet and getting a very nice head start. “Cooper, you're crazy! You're out of your mind!”

“No, he's
right,”
Jay countered. “Everything he's said about the Stone is coming true! The Stone
is
sent from God!”

“How can you believe that?” Dr. Henderson squawked.

“Just take a look,” said Dr. Cooper.

She was already looking, of course. The desert floor was being ripped up and rolled up like a huge carpet before the Stone as it continued to advance. Large rock formations—some hundreds of feet high—were being smashed and disintegrated like glass bottles, the pulverized pieces flying hundreds of feet through the air, the sound of their destruction like exploding bombs.

“Even without that bad knee you couldn't outrun it,” Dr. Cooper argued. “None of us could, and we certainly can't move fast enough to get around it.”

“So we're dead . . .” she moaned.

“Not if . . .” Mobutu was still terrified, but beginning to see Dr. Cooper's point. “Not if God is merciful.”

“He's merciful,” said Dr. Cooper.

“Oh yeah,
right!”
said Dr. Henderson, watching the Stone demolish the desert.

Lila reached over and grabbed her arm. “Dr. Henderson, the Stone represents Jesus! If you really want to live, you don't run
from
Him; you run
to
Him!”

Dr. Henderson looked at Lila, then at the Stone, then at the retreating army still running, then at Dr. Cooper, and then she stood there, wrestling with the decision.

BOOM!
Another rock formation the size of a skyscraper exploded into particles.

Dr. Henderson wilted, swayed her head, then finally spouted, “All right, all right!”

“That's the stuff!” said Dr. Cooper.

Bernard and Walter didn't even need an order from Mobutu. They just came up to Dr. Henderson, made a chair of their arms, and picked her up. Then the Coopers, Mr. Mobutu, Dr. Henderson, and Bernard and Walter set out across the desert, hiking directly toward the Stone without veering to the right or to the left.

It was tough going. The earth was still quivering and quaking under their feet, throwing them off balance, rocking them from side to side. All they could do was hold onto each other in a desperate effort to stay on their feet and keep taking one perilous, chancy step after another.

The desert terrain was no help. With the shaking, the sand often seemed to liquefy as it closed over the tops of their feet. They had to keep dodging around loose stones that rolled, danced, and tumbled over the ground like living things. The air was turning brown with dust that stung their faces and clogged their nostrils. They could feel the grit between their teeth.

OOF!
A violent, sideways lurch knocked them all down and Dr. Henderson screamed in fear and pain. Bernard and Walter bore her up again, and they all kept going.

KARROOOM!
A tall, teetering pillar of rock gave way and toppled like a big tree right in front of them. They leaped back, covering their heads as sand and pebbles rained down. Then, picking their way through the rubble, they kept going.

The top edge of the Stone blotted out half the sky and seemed to be splitting the whole world in half. The rolling, tumbling mass of earth in front of the Stone had grown to the size of a small mountain range, and the roar of the cascading earth, sand, and stone was so loud it was the only sound anyone could hear.

Faith,
Lila thought as she watched the mountain-sized pile of tumbling earth coming right toward them.
This has to be faith.

“Lord,” Dr. Cooper prayed, the thunder of the Stone's approach drowning out his voice, “receive us. Shelter us, I pray!”

“God,” said Dr. Henderson, anticipating what it would feel like to have a cubic mile of earth come crashing down on top of her, “get us through this or take a gun and shoot me!”

All they could see was the Stone, the tumbling earth, the flying debris, the sky now brown with dust. They could feel the rush of dirty, dusty air being forced along ahead of the Stone's immense, flat surface.