On the High Road to Oblivion

Chapter 15—Into the Pit

Dodge was more than a little surprised that their quest had brought him back to Naples, Italy. During the brief stopover only a few days earlier, he had been painfully aware of two things. First, that the breakneck pace of their journey was denying him an opportunity to actually enjoy the places they were visiting; and second, that the world was changing, and there was no guarantee that he’d get another chance to see these places again.

Dodge was acutely aware of the political situation in Italy. The Fascist government had grown increasingly belligerent, and diplomatic relations with the United States were strained to the breaking point. Of course, Italy had historically never thought of itself as a single nation, but rather a collection of small city-states, each with its own very distinctive cultural identity. The people of Naples saw themselves as Neopolitans, first and foremost; the political affairs of Rome were less important than the potential to earn some lira from tourists with deep pockets. And Walter Barron had very deep pockets.

Despite his apprehensions about traveling with Barron, the long flight had been incident-free. Hurricane sat in the front with Dodge, while the rest occupied whatever space they could find. The Catalina had been designed as a working military aircraft, so most of its empty seats were positioned according to utilitarian considerations like the bubble-windowed gun turrets — though the plane was not armed — and observation ports originally designed for spotting enemy submarines. The closest thing to conflict had been Fiona’s displeasure at being denied a chance to sit in the front. A relatively new pilot himself, Dodge understood her eagerness to broaden her experience, but he wanted to keep some distance between Hurricane and Barron.

Fiona’s can-do-anything attitude and her experience as a flyer also reminded Dodge a lot of Molly, and that led to a place in his mind he didn’t want to go.

Eight souls made the flight from the Caspian to the Tyrrhenian. In addition to Barron, Fiona and Newcombe, Vaughn had come along, at Dodge’s urging. Faced with the possibility that Barron might be up to no good, Dodge and the general had mutually put aside their prior differences.

The remaining two seats would have gone to a pair of crewmen, but upon learning of the flight, Nora Holloway had insisted on being allowed to come along, much to Lafayette’s dismay. Dodge wasn’t sure how he felt about having her along. He like her well enough, even though she also reminded him of his lost love, but his automatic instinct was to want to protect her from the uncertain dangers of traveling into the earth’s interior. Alamut had been bad enough; there was no telling what sort of perils they would face journeying into a place the ancients had associated with Hell itself. In the end however, it had been a very different consideration that had prompted him to let her come along; with her taking up one of the available seats, Barron would be able to bring along only one of his “loyal crewmen.”

If the arrangement bothered the industrialist, he gave no outward sign of displeasure. During the flight, he had contented himself with a seat in one of the gun turrets, more or less completely isolated from everyone else, but upon arriving in Naples, he had been personable in his dealings with Dodge as well as in making arrangements for an overnight stay before beginning the next phase of their search.

A short taxi ride brought them to Cumae, an ancient village that, Fiona informed them, had originally been settled by Greek colonists in 750 BC. Cumae had been the site of one of famed oracles of Apollo — the Sibyl of Cumae — who had seen visions of the future from her cave on the edge of the Avernus Crater and written her prophecies on oak leaves. The Sibyl had led Aeneas into the Underworld, evidently following a similar route as that taken by Odysseus… if, of course, the legends were to be believed.

What was known to be factual was that the crater did mark the site of a long dormant volcano, part of which was now filled with water to form the lake known locally as Lago d’Averno, and that the surrounding area was riddled with volcanic caves. Fiona expressed confidence in the Polybius account, which gave explicit directions through the underground labyrinth, using the Sybil’s cave as a starting point. In the time of Polybius, it would have been necessary to trek over the surrounding hills, but in the first century BC, a Roman architect named Lucius Cocceius Auctus had burrowed a half-mile long tunnel through Monte Grillo to connect Cumae with the lake. The tunnel, Grotta di Cocceio, was entirely man-made and elaborately decorated with statuary and colonnades, but as far as Dodge was concerned it marked the beginning of their voyage into Tartarus.

They were an odd-looking bunch of explorers. Fiona led the way, her translation of the Polybius account in hand, with Newcombe close behind, chattering about geology and possible scientific explanations for some of the phenomena associated with the place. Von Heissel—Barron, Dodge corrected himself — was right behind them, occasionally commenting on the scientist’s observations, but mostly keeping to himself. Vaughn stayed a few steps behind Barron, as if trying to maintain a buffer between the industrialist and Hurricane. Nora walked with Dodge and Hurricane, stopping frequently to write observations in her notebook, and Barron’s crewman brought up the rear. All in the party carried rucksacks containing supplies they might need for spelunking, but Hurricane carried an extra burden: the disassembled parts of the resonance wave generator. It was a bulky machine, but on the big man’s back it looked merely like just another backpack.

When they emerged from the tunnel, Fiona steered them toward the oracle’s grotto as if it was a journey she had made dozens of times before. Once there however, she began to pay more attention to the details of the environment, and walked with carefully measured steps, like someone counting the paces to find a pirate’s buried treasure.

Exactly like that, Dodge realized.

After trekking about a quarter of a mile along the lakeshore, she turned to the hillside formed by the edge of the crater and pointed. “It should be here.”

The rock face to which she pointed was indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape. If there was a cave leading into the hillside, countless centuries of erosion and drift had covered it and smoothed over the patch.

“You know,” Hurricane said nonchalantly, “if your stride is off by as much as an inch, we could be twenty… thirty yards from where we ought to be, and never realize it.”

“That’s why you’re carrying that thing on your back.” She turned to Newcombe. “Time to work your magic, Findlay.”

Hurricane eased the pack with the wave projector to the ground, and the scientist went to work reassembling it. Dodge drifted over to where Nora was, as ever, busy scratching notes in her journal.

“Quite a ways from the Big Apple,” he remarked.

She looked up, and he saw by her smile that his intrusion was not unwelcome. “Until this week, the farthest I’d been from home was Atlantic City.”

“I was a little surprised that you wanted to come along. I mean, we found Rodney, safe and sound. Mission accomplished?”

“Do you really have to ask? This is so much more fun that just sitting at the typewriter. Or do you think adventure is just a game for boys?”

“I’d much rather be back in my office, with no one trying to kill me, than out here in the middle of… where are we again?”

Nora wasn’t buying it. “You’d rather just write adventure stories than live them? I find that hard to believe.”

Dodge’s gaze drifted to where Newcombe was deploying seismographs in order to locate possible void spaces in the hillside that would indicate the location of the cave entrance, an entrance which, if the legends they were following were true, led to Hell itself. And if they found it, it might very well put a massively destructive weapon in the hands of a man with extraordinary resources and unpredictable loyalties. Viewed in that light, Nora’s question seemed patently foolish. He managed to keep his smile as he answered: “Someone once told me that adventure is the result of poor advanced planning. I’m all for a little world travel and sightseeing. I can do without the rest of it.”

A few moments later, Fiona gave a little cheer as Newcombe reported an empty space no more than a few feet into the hillside. Her estimate had been spot on. Newcombe made a quick adjustment to the machine and turned it on again.

Loose earth began to shower down as invisible waves pummeled the face of the crater, but the effect was most pronounced in the area directly in front of the device. The soil poured away, as if turned to water, revealing a ragged vertical slit. Even after the scientist switched it off, dirt continued to pour down from above the uncovered hole.

Dodge turned back to Nora. “I guess it’s time for the next adventure.”

Although he was aware of the rich history of Cumae and the surrounding area, it was only as he stepped into the cramped confines of the passage that it occurred to Dodge that he might be treading the same ground as the legendary heroes Odysseus and Aeneas, or at the very least, the ancients who had inspired them.

He realized that he hadn’t been entirely honest with Nora. No sane man enjoyed putting himself in danger, but there was an undeniable thrill in exploring the earth’s wild places, unlocking mysteries of the ancient past, and facing and overcoming hardship. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that, in the past at least, his actions had served a greater good. Perhaps that was why this affair was so troubling; he couldn’t shake the feeling that, even if Barron was not the villain Dodge feared him to be, a successful outcome would only result in the creation of a terrible weapon.

They moved single-file into the cave, with Hurricane, hunched over and dragging the bulky wave projector, barely scraping through some of the tighter spots. The passage wound erratically back and forth but Dodge felt certain they were descending. The air was stale and stank of old sulfur, evidence of its volcanic past, and although everyone carried an electric lantern, he felt the funereal gloom even more acutely than he had in the river-carved passages beneath Alamut.

The cavern opened up with unexpected abruptness. Dodge had just struggled through yet another of the tunnel’s needle-eyes, and suddenly found himself at an intersecting tunnel that was wider even than the train tunnel he’d explored back in Pennsylvania. The floor of the new tunnel sloped away from the junction in a series of terraces that looked at first glance like they had been cut deliberately by human artifice. At their base flowed a slow moving stream about fifty feet across. The still air smelled of rotten eggs and carried a sharp tang that stung his eyes and nose, and as he ventured out into the new passage, joining the group, his flashlight beam illuminated swirling vapors, which were rising from the narrow waterway.

“Sulfuric acid,” Newcombe warned. “I would strongly recommend that you avoid touching it.”

“This is Acheron,” Fiona said, almost reverently. “One of the rivers that carried the dead into the Underworld.”

“I don’t know about that. My guess would be seepage from the lake that acidifies as it passes through the surrounding rock matrix. These terraces probably correspond to periods of drought, when the lake level fell and the flow decreased.”

Ordinarily, Dodge would have drawn some comfort from the scientist’s rational assessment of the phenomenon, but somehow Fiona’s explanation felt closer to the mark.

“Acheron,” Fiona repeated. “We’re almost there.”

Acheron or not, Fiona’s prediction was again right on the money. They had been following the meandering course of the acidic river for about two hundred yards when Newcombe called everyone to a halt and shone his light into the deadly waters. The beam reflected off what looked like silver sand, just below the surface.

“Those are particles of metal. The acid dissolved the surrounding rock, leaving only the metal particles behind.”

“Is it adamantine?” Barron inquired.

“I can’t say with certainty, but it’s certainly some sort of rare earth metal that doesn’t react with the acid.” Newcombe backed away. “If it is naturally refined adamantine, then it’s no good to us. What we need will be in the rock all around us.”

Dodge flashed his light on the cavern walls, trying to pick out some glint of metal flakes in the rock, but it all looked the same to him.

“The ore will probably be indistinguishable from ordinary rock,” the scientist explained. “But it may have striations that look like quartz or some other material.”

“Polybius described gates made of the stuff,” Fiona insisted. “We need to keep going.”

She pressed on and there seemed little alternative but to follow. As they went forward however, Dodge saw evidence of what Newcombe had described. The cavern walls were shot through with streaks of white. And then, with the same abruptness that had heralded the discovery of the river, the tunnel ended. A slab of gray rock, laced with porous white crystals and nodules of glinting silver, stretched across the entire width of the passage. Part of the rock wall had been eroded by the river, but veins of metal had formed into stalactites that hung down into the acid stream, looking like the bars of some ancient portcullis.

Fiona grinned triumphantly. “As promised, gentlemen, I give you the gates of Tartarus.”

Dodge didn’t share her excitement. He was familiar enough with the substance Barron called “adamantine” to recognize it for what it was: the same metal that had been used by the builders of the Outpost in Antarctica to harness otherworldly energies. His contribution to the effort had been incidental; Fiona Dunn would have found both the library at Alamut and the gates of Tartarus on her own anyway, but Dodge could not escape the feeling that he had just handed Barron the prize.

Newcombe took out a small rock hammer and chipped away a pea-sized grain of metal. He allowed the bead to roll on his palm. “It’s very lightweight.”

Barron crowded forward, exhibiting uncharacteristic eagerness. “But is it adamantine?”

“It’s impossible to say with absolute certainty. The original samples I worked with had been refined. I was never able to find a melting point, or identify any chemicals that would react with it. But I was able to measure the density of the refined metal.” As he spoke, Newcombe took several pieces of laboratory equipment from his pack. He weighed the metal nugget, then transferred it to a graduated cylinder that was about half-filled with water. After taking precise measurements of the amount of water the specimen had displaced, he did some quick calculations, and nodded. “It’s the same. In fact, I’d say this sample is almost pure.”

Excitement danced in Barron’s eyes. “And the ore? Can you refine it chemically?”

“I’ll have to test it, but judging by the effects of the acid in the river, I think I can narrow the field quite a bit.”

“We can run those tests back on Majestic.” The industrialist’s voice took on a commanding tone. “Use the wave projector to pulverize the ore.”

Dodge saw a flicker of doubt in Newcombe’s eyes, but he did not give voice to his apprehensions. Instead, he meticulously packed up his lab equipment and then went to work assembling the resonance device.

Fiona seemed oblivious to their discussion. While Newcombe had been examining the sample, she had busied herself studying the wall itself. “How does it open?” She turned and caught Dodge’s eye. “The legends call them ‘gates.’ Gates open, they let you in. How does this open?”

Dodge wasn’t convinced that the legends could be taken at face value, but he had seen the metal relics from the Outpost become as fluid as quicksilver. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that those relics might have once been used to command the element in its raw form. That wasn’t something he wanted to explain to the archaeologist, however.

“It’s ready,” Newcombe said. He positioned the wave device a few feet away from the wall. “Stand back.”

As soon as Fiona was clear, he activated the switch.

Dodge had seen the device used twice previously, once to deadly effect, and thought he knew what to expect, but this time it was different. He immediately felt the silent vibrations in every nerve of his body, as if he was holding onto a gigantic tuning fork. As the seconds ticked by, the sensation intensified into debilitating agony. From one moment to the next, the entire party of explorers dropped to their knees, in the grip of an overwhelming sensory experience.

An involuntary wail escaped from between Dodge’s clenched teeth. He heard similar cries and groans from his companions, and still the pain grew. Dodge knew that he was only seconds away from paralysis, and with a supreme effort of will, reached past Newcombe and swiped his hand at the wave projector’s power switch.

In that instant, a chorus of shrieks erupted from the dark confines of the cavern.

The vibration ceased as soon as Dodge hit the switch, but the shrieking continued. Dodge felt a tingle of fear shoot through his body that had nothing to do with the wave device, and as soon as he could move again, he directed his flashlight beam into the shadowy depths of the passage behind them.

Something moved there, flashing out of view as if the touch of the light was anathema.

Despite his legendary fortitude, Hurricane had been as helpless as the rest of the group during the strange episode, but he recovered quickly when he glimpsed the figure moving in the tunnel. He whipped his pistols out and aimed them down the tunnel, following the sweep of Dodge’s light, searching for a target.

The shrieking subsided slowly, and Dodge knew that it had not been a single voice crying out, but rather a chorus of voices, issuing from all around them.

“I think we woke someone up,” Hurricane said.

Barron turned to his crewman, whom Dodge now saw was also armed with a pistol. “Go see what that was.”

The man blanched visibly at the command, but nodded tersely and set out, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other.

“I’ll go with you,” Hurricane said.

“What the hell just happened to us?” Vaughn asked.

Newcombe adjusted his glasses. “Conductivity. Stupid of me really. Metal is an excellent conductor of energy. We’re surrounded by the ore, so the energy from the waves was all around us.”

“You could have killed us all,” the general grumbled.

The accusation was not altogether warranted, but if Newcombe had an answer, it was forgotten as Barron pushed forward to examine the results of the attempt. “Never mind that. It worked.”

Indeed, directly in front of the wave generator, a hole about three feet in diameter had appeared. Sloping away from the hole was a pile of what looked like fine sand. Barron shrugged out of his rucksack, unceremoniously dumped out the contents, and began scooping handfuls of the dust into the bag.

Dodge poked his light into the hole and saw that it went clean through — a depth of at least five feet — and opened into the darkness beyond. “Gates let you in,” he muttered. If Fiona and the myths she followed were right, on the other side of that hole was the legendary land of the dead.

He turned his attention back to where Hurricane and Barron’s crewmen were cautiously making their way down the tunnel. The conductive properties of the adamantine might have conducted the wave generator’s energy back at them, but it was not the source of the shrieking they had heard. Not directly at least.

“What do you think that noise was?” he asked Newcombe.

“An animal of some kind—”

Another scream cut off the scientist’s speculations, but this one was all too human. The flashlight beams from the lights held by Hurricane and the other scout suddenly began dancing crazily, illuminating random spots on the walls and ceiling. Dodge shot his light down the tunnel, and even though he knew that something was dreadfully wrong, what he saw beggared belief.

The tunnel was filled with pale, vaguely humanoid shapes. They were small — though they were hunched over, even the tallest of them was only about waist high — and moved quickly, making it almost impossible to get a good look at their faces. Dodge saw no eyes; only rat-like teeth and claws, and ghostly white, naked bodies. The creatures seemed to ooze from the rock, slipping through cracks in the walls and ceiling that had gone unnoticed when the explorers had passed through only a few moments before.

Hurricane was still on his feet, but just barely. Dozens of the creatures were swarming over him, gripping his arms and legs. Though individually they could not hope to budge him, their collective mass was driving him closer to the acidified river.

Barron’s crewman had already succumbed to that fate. The lone scream they had heard at the onset of the attack had been his last outcry. He lay unmoving in the toxic flow, his flesh already boiling off his bones.

Hurricane struggled mightily against the assault, stripping his assailants off, but for every one that he flung away, three more moved in to take its place. With every passing second, their victory became more certain.

Even as Dodge racked his brain to come up with some way to help his friend, he saw some of the creatures advancing past the struggle, sniffing the air as they caught the scent of more intruders in their midst.

In a rush of inspiration, Dodge turned the wave projector toward another section of the wall. “Brace yourselves,” he shouted. “This is going to hurt.”

He flipped the switch.

The vibration instantly permeated every square inch of the cavern, and Dodge felt his nerve endings come alive with pain. The creatures screamed again, and this time their howl was deafening. They fell to the cave floor, writhing in agony, and in their midst, Hurricane also fell to his knees.

Dodge switched the device off and hastened to help his friend, but the big man waved him off. “I’m fine!”

He struggled to his feet, half-stumbling back to the rejoin the rest of the group. The creatures were recovering almost as quickly however, and the vibrations had only served to further amplify their mindless rage.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Barron shouted.

Vaughn shook his head grimly. “We’re not getting out that way.”

Dodge thought the general was being optimistic. A wave of pale flesh — dozens of demonic shapes, driven by primal rage — rolled toward them, blocking the only avenue of escape.