Overlord

13

Aston had been developing a bad feeling about this whole expedition since Griffin had found him at the aquarium, and nothing that had happened so far had eased the feeling. In fact, everything only made him more uneasy. Syed’s shock from a tough vine-like plant should really have been the peak of weirdness for the day, but he would never be that lucky. Of course Slater had found a dead body.

At first, Aston had expected it to be the missing guard, the one whose fidget spinner they’d found. But that disappearance and the associated blood smear remained a mystery. Slater crouched beside the remains, Jeff spotlighting the camera over her shoulder to capture it all. Aston hurried to be the first there, and squatted beside Slater in the gloom of the small side cave.

The corpse was a man, slumped back against the far wall like he’d slid down into a sitting position, as if exhausted. His legs were stuck out straight, arms resting limply on his thighs, head tilted to one side like he had passed out. His mouth hung open, the blackness beyond his teeth absolute in the contrasting shadows. What little remained of his flesh was yellowed like old leather, sucked tight to the bones of his face and hands, split and flaking like old scales. He had simply wasted away, it seemed, nothing in the caves to consume him. Perhaps not even the bugs one might find topside, Aston presumed.

“Judging by his clothes, I’d guess an early twentieth-century explorer,” he said.

Sol Griffin stood behind, palms on his knees as he leaned in to look. “Have we perhaps found the other member of the missing party? The partner of the man who originally brought that tiny sample of greenium out of here so long ago?”

Aston shrugged. It was as good a guess as any, but still, only a guess. His scientific mind wanted evidence.

“I see no injuries. Looks like he simply collapsed here,” Dig O’Donnell said. “You think he got lost and starved?”

“Seems entirely possible,” Sol mused.

Aston noticed something hanging around the man’s neck and reached out a finger to lift it from inside the ancient jacket. A small, black Bakelite cylinder on a thick string emerged, with a silvery lens on one side. A small ring stuck out from the underside.

“What is that?” Slater asked.

“It’s an old explorer’s light from the days before batteries,” Aston said. He pulled the ring at the bottom firmly and a chain came with it. The unit made a soft whirring sound and a light glowed into flickering life, then dimmed again. “Still kinda works! The chain winds an interior mechanism, creating an electric current that lights the bulb.”

“A Dynamo lamp,” Dig said. “That is a real treasure! May I?” He reached out a hand.

Aston carefully lifted the device over the corpse’s fragile head and handed it over. As he did, he noticed the dead man’s jacket had a cut right through in the center of the chest, which had gone unnoticed at first glance.He gently lifted the side of the jacket open and saw a glint of black. Using just his thumb and forefinger, he delicately tugged on it, removing the item from between the man’s ribs. It was cool to the touch. But it was the artifact’s strange appearance that chilled him to the bone.

“It’s a knife,” he said, voice low with concern. “Looks like flint, but blood red, almost black.” He held it up for the others to see.

The Dynamo lamp forgotten in his other hand, Dig reached out to take the knife. “Primitive design, stone age method of construction by the looks of it. See how the edges have been worked?” He held it out so they could get a better look. “How could something like that be down here?”

“Perhaps another member of his team carried it here,” Anders Larsen suggested. “And I guess they had a disagreement.”

“Now we know he didn’t starve to death,” Terry Reid said, his voice echoing from the mouth of the small cave.

“Seems unlikely that a twentieth-century explorer would carry such an anachronistic weapon,” Sol said.

“Yet here it is,” Larsen said quietly.

“But I’m not sure it is the partner of the guy who got out with the greenium,” Dig said. “We’d have to study his possessions more, but it’s entirely possible this guy is from another expedition altogether. There had been a lot of activity in Antarctica back in those days, and lots of folk didn’t make it back. If they got lost down here, I can see why they never returned.”

“What about the color?” Reid asked. “Blood red flint. You ever seen anything like that?”

Dig nodded. “Yes, but only in one place, a long damn way from here.” He turned the blade over in his hands, his eyes taking it in. “Heligoland, an island in the North Sea. Red flint was so coveted that people risked their lives to recover it.”

“Why?” Sol asked. “Is it superior to regular flint?”

“No. Some think it was treasured for its rarity. Others believe it was valued because people believed it come from Doggerland.”

“Doggy who?” Reid asked.

“Doggerland,” Aston said. “It was a land mass that connected Britain to the rest of Europe. It flooded about eight thousand years ago.”

“Some call it ‘Britain’s Atlantis,” Dig said. Aston rolled his eyes but Dig didn’t notice. ‘

“Was it real?” Reid pressed.

“Oh, it was definitely real. Fossils and artifacts have been dragged up from the seabed. Mammoths, prehistoric tools and weapons. There are plenty of legends surrounding it too. The Nazis and even some factions within Russia shared some far-fetched legends about it.”

“Far-fetched being the operative phrase,” Aston said, momentarily discomfited by mention of the Nazis. He remembered all too well what had happened the last time he crossed paths with a Nazi legend.

“Do you think this stone is the same stuff as the red flint?” Sol asked.

“I can’t say for certain,” Dig said. “Perhaps, but this has a different…feel to it. Almost as if it’s made of blood, the red is so deep.” He barked a laugh. “Don’t listen to me. My imagination runs wild sometimes.”

Aston half listened as he continued to examine the body, gently probing through the jacket pockets. He found a small notebook, a journal of some kind. He glanced up and saw the rest of the party looking at the strange stone knife, so he slipped the journal into his own pocket for later examination. He wasn’t sure what made him keep the discovery from the others, but he felt a need to take some kind of control of events as they unfolded in ever more confusing and concerning directions. He certainly didn’t buy the theory that one of this poor bastard’s friends carried a Stone Age knife and had used it to murderous effect. But he had no better theory at this stage that wasn’t entirely fanciful, and that made him decidedly uneasy.

He took the Dynamo lamp back from Dig and put that in his pocket too. They could perhaps date this guy with an internet search of that item when they got back topside. Slater waved Jeff aside, nodding towards the group still discussing the knife. As the cameraman moved to get footage of their conversation, she pulled Aston out of the cave and past the burly Reid and his two associates.

With some privacy afforded by distance from the others, she whispered, “Have you had any sort of… weird feeling?”

Aston suppressed a humorless laugh. “I haven’t not had a weird feeling since all this nonsense began.”

Slater smiled wryly. “Yeah, I hear that. But that’s not what I mean. I don’t mean in general, but right now. I just had a sense of being watched or followed or something.”

“You think we’re not alone down here?”

“I get that distinct impression,” she said.

The skin prickled on the back of Aston’s neck. “Is it because we found that fidget spinner thing, and the blood?” he asked.

Slater shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. But we need to be careful. I’m convinced we haven’t been told everything about this place, maybe about stuff that happened here before. And Sol didn’t seem too bothered about what we found.”

“Maybe he thinks the guy just dropped it. And maybe he did. Perhaps we’re being paranoid.”

“It’s not paranoia when they’re really out to get you,” Slater said.

“Or when someone really is watching you?” Aston asked.

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” Sol said loudly, making them jump. The rest of the team had emerged from the side cave. “We need to keep exploring, as we can’t spend too much time distracted from the main purpose of our expedition.”

“What about that guy?” Dig asked.

Sol raised his hands. “I think it’s entirely possible several explorers got lost down here over the years, just like you said, Dig. We may well come across more unfortunate souls as we move on. Just like the frozen bodies on Everest, there’s not really much we can do about them.”

Syed still sat across the cave, recovering from her unexpected shock. “You can’t just leave him now we know he’s there,” she said.

“Well, we could. But we won’t,” Sol said. “I’ll have a couple of the security staff from Base come down here at some point and recover the remains. Or at least document them and try to inform any ancestors. And if we can recover him, we’ll keep him in safe storage and hand everything over to the right authorities.” He paused, thinking. Then, “I guess we’ll make sure we photograph the scene before we move him, too. But that’s not your concern, ladies and gents. We need to focus on our mission. If you’ve seen all you need to in here, we should press on. We need to find those crystalline greenium deposits and concentrate our efforts there.”

As people gathered their gear together, preparing to move on, Slater looked left and right, her brows knitted together. “Where is that idiot, Jeff?”