Table Of ContentTHE
PHOENIX APOSTLES: A SENECA HUNT MYSTERY
by Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore
The Phoenix Apostles © 2011 by Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore. All rights
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DEDICATED TO
Jayne Ellen
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank the following for their assistance in adding
a sense of realism to this work of fiction.
Dr. Ken Muneoka, PhD
Department of Cell & Molecular Biology Tulane University
Dr. John Gore, PhD Director of Imaging Science Vanderbilt Kennedy
Center Vanderbilt University
Special thanks to Chris Fineout
"Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather."
-MATTHEW 24:28
"The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with
their bones."
-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR
AUTHOR'S NOTE
ALMOST EVERY CULTURE AND religion throughout history has had a
doomsday prophecy. Probably the most well-known predictor of such an
apocalypse is the ancient Mayan calendar. Archaeology has revealed that most
Mayan locations had astronomical observatories that enabled them to predict
events based on equinoxes and Venus cycles. They possessed such advanced
knowledge of time and space that their calendar was more precise than any in
use today.
use today.
The Mayan calendar is three calendars in one: a solar calendar based on 365
days which is ten-thousandths of a day more accurate than the currently accepted
Gregorian calendar; a ceremonial calendar based on 260 days, the same as
human gestation; and the combination of the two where the number of days and
months only repeat every fifty-two years. The ancient Maya and other
Mesoamericans used this same fifty-two-year pattern, or a cycle called the
Calendar Round. The Maya also had what they called the Long Count that began
measuring time elapsed since their beginning-August 13, 3114 BC-and ending
5,121 years later. December 21, 2012. The Aztec calendar had a date very close
to the Mayan. The same date can also be calculated using the ancient classic
Chinese text, I Ching. And there have been other similar prophecies and
predictions of doomsday from the Hopi, Nostradamus, Mother Shipton, and
Cumaean Sibyl, along with many interpretations of various legends, scriptures,
and numerological constructions.
So what might occur on the predicted doomsday? A rare cosmic alignment that
happens every 26,000 years when, on the winter solstice, the sun lines up with
the center of the Milky Way. At the same time, the Earth completes a wobble on
its axis and a pole-shift takes place-the North and South Poles reverse. The
resulting cataclysmic effect on life as we know it could be beyond imagination.
The next time this galactic phenomenon will come together is exactly on the date
predicted by the ancients.
December 21, 2012.
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RESURRECTION 1876, NORTHERN SONORA, MEXICO
BILLY GROVES DIDN'T KNOW if he was dead or alive. His lungs were
starving. He attempted to draw in a breath like it was the first in a long time, but
the dirt choked him.
He clawed at his face and suddenly realized what was wrong.
He was buried.
Panicked, he scuffed away clods of soil and debris, fighting to breathe, to take a
single life-saving breath.
Which way was up? Was he digging in the wrong direction?
Scratching and plowing, he pushed with his legs, trying to squirm free of the
blackness. The panic grew and his body convulsed. He would have cried out but
there was no air to power his lungs.
Finally, his fist broke through. He pushed at the heavy layer of gravel and earth
until he saw light. The heat from the sun struck his skin as he opened his mouth
and gulped in the air.
and gulped in the air.
Spitting grit, he crawled out of his would-be grave and collapsed beside it.
Groves brushed the dirt from his eyes and looked around. He saw what was left
of the valley floor and suddenly started to remember everything-the cave, the
gold, the Apaches, the earthquake.
And the arrow.
Groves forced his gaze to his torso. The arrow was there, it had run him through
nearly to the fletching, entering his chest at an angle and exiting from his side.
He twisted and looked at it in fearful anticipation of what he would find at the
end of the shaft. But there was no arrowhead. It had broken off.
Gripping the arrow protruding from his chest, he grimaced and yanked. The
shaft tore free of his flesh.
The arrow should have killed him. He inspected the hole in his chest. It was
there but it wasn't bleeding-
What the hell is going on?
The wound seemed to be already healing as he watched.
Some kinda miracle?
