Overlord

19

Aston was pleased Slater was talking to him like a friend again, but he didn’t want to jeopardize it by bringing attention to it. He would simply enjoy it for however long it lasted.

“Does it say why the Russians attacked?” Slater asked. She leaned in close, a loose strand of hair brushing his arm and sending a shiver through him.

“No.” Aston turned the page, eyes scanning. “But Professor Murray Lee got separated from his group and became lost. Seems he found his way down here.”

“To hide?”

“I’ll read it to you.”

Aston glanced quickly around the cavern to check no one was listening. He couldn’t articulate why, but he wanted to keep this knowledge between himself and Slater now. She was the only one here he trusted. Most of the others sat quietly, eating and drinking or resting. Dig had already curled up, head on his bag, eyes closed in sleep. Sol sat with Jen, helping her to eat small bites of rations. They talked in low voices. Reid, Gates, and Tate each stood at the entrance to one of the three tunnels leading from the cave, relaxed but alert. Aston couldn’t help feeling like they were sitting in the calm before the storm. He began to read.

“Once separated from my colleagues, lost in the swirling blizzard, and frightened I might run into the Russians once more, I decided the best course of action was inaction. At least until the weather cleared and, hopefully, the Russians moved on. I found a cave at the base of one of the strangely regular mountains (could these be the very pyramids we sought?) and I tucked myself into its safe depths. But the wind still whistled in and here’s where I made a mistake. Rather than winding up my dynamo lamp and checking carefully, I simply pushed deeper into the darkness, seeking shelter. The floor dipped suddenly downward and I had no purchase on the icy rock. I slipped and fell, hurtling down a steep incline, then dropping through open space. For an awful moment I thought I would surely be dashed to a premature death on sharp rocks below, but I hit a second incline that broke my fall, slid further, then crashed into a cavern floor. A jarring pain shot up my left leg (I believe I’ve torn ligaments in my knee there) but I was otherwise unharmed but for scrapes and bruises. Lucky, or so I thought, other than the obvious misfortune of falling through some natural fissure in the rocks. But there was no way I could scale the slopes that had led me in, so I needed to find another way out.

“I began following passageways, marking the walls periodically so I would know where I’d been, in hopes of finding an exit. Better, I thought, to take my chances with the Russians and the weather than to become lost and starve in subterranean darkness. And dark it was, pitch like the depths of hell. I would wind my lamp to check, then feel my way in blackness, then wind the lamp again. I went some way like this, beginning to despair of ever finding the outside world again, when a new wonder distracted me entirely. I began to realize that I could see, dimly, by a faint green illumination. Then I emerged into a cavern softly lit by its own radiant glow, emitted by sparkling veins of strange plants and minerals.”

“I guess he found this place,” Slater said.

Aston shrugged. “Or one like it. I wonder how far these caverns and the vines and crystals spread. It’s possible this stuff goes on for miles under the ice.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. This mountain range is massive, after all.”

“Exactly. But he must have been somewhere near here, as we found his body. So wherever he was in this account, he made it as far as us.”

Slater shivered, nodded. “Read more.”

“I limped on, the pain in my knee excruciating, but my determination to escape outweighed the inertia of agony. I found more caverns, lit by strange glowing tendrils of vegetation, and by glittering crystal deposits. I found streams of water, which slaked my grateful thirst, and underground lakes and pools. I began to wonder how extensive the network of caves and tunnels, and their indigenous life, could be. The water contained my thirst, but my hunger grew. Separated from the team, I had no pack, no supplies. Eventually I devised a way to use my clothing to net some of the small, slow-moving fish that inhabit the larger pools. Lacking any other means, I ate them raw, swallowing them down, cold and writhing. At first I felt my strength returning thanks to the fuel they gave my body, and despite the pain in my knee, I pushed on. But I began to hear things. Surely they could only be auditory hallucinations, but it was like the sibilant voice of something bodiless whispering to me. I assumed it was simply ravenous hunger, despite the small amounts of fish I had consumed, and general stress, of course, but now I’m not so sure. The voice cajoles me still.”

“That sounds a bit like what Jen told us about her friend,” Slater said.

Aston nodded. “Spedding. Jen said Spedding thought she was being called ‘down, down to the Jade Sea’.”

“Down to a sunless sea,” Slater whispered.

Aston cocked his head. “What was that?”

“Just a flashback to high school English.” She drew a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. “This journal creeps me out. What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know.”

“But Spedding ate the glowing plant stuff from the water, not the fish.”

“That’s true,” Aston said. “But I got a close look at the fish when I dived the pool over there. They share the same bright green bioluminescence. It stands to reason that whatever makes the plants glow, makes the fish glow too.”

Slater quirked an eyebrow.“You think the fish eat the plants?”

“It’s definitely possible. And honestly, I’m not certain they are plants. I think they might be some simple form of animal life, like anemones. And perhaps they all eat the same particulate matter. Or the water itself causes the glow. We just don’t know enough.”

Slater pursed her lips. “Well, I’ll be glad when we get out of here, because I don’t want us to run out of food. Seems like nothing is safe to eat or drink here.”

Aston pointed at the book. “That entry ends there, but then there are a couple of pages of drawings. It’s headed here ‘Observations’ and then lots of these pictographs.” He turned the book so Slater could see.

“They look a bit like Egyptian hieroglyphics,” she said.

“A little. But I’ve never seen any like this.”

“Do you have wide experience with ancient Egyptian?” Slater asked with a grin.

Aston laughed. “Not really. But don’t you think they look different somehow?”

“There is a unique quality to them.”

“And look here,” Aston said, turning to the next page. More sketches, little people with large heads bowing down before a roiling pool of water, steam rising in thick tendrils. The style was simple, like cave paintings. “You think he’s done his best to copy what he saw on cavern walls?”

“What other source?” Slater asked.

“Maybe this is how he draws and he’s recording something he saw happening down here.”

Slater looked up sharply. “I’m not sure I want to consider that.”

Aston shrugged. “Let’s assume he copied carvings he saw.” He turned the page. Another scene depicted two groups of the odd little people. One group carried fish, arms outstretched toward the same pool of water as if the fish were an offering. The other group, bearing spears, faced the opposite direction, poised to battle an unseen enemy.

“Surely he’s copied scenes from markings on the walls,” Slater said. “Like he copied the pictographs.”

“I don’t know. We haven’t seen pictographs like those or drawings like these. We’ve seen the strange designs on the doors, but not this.”

Slater frowned. “Doors? There’s only been one door.”

“Oh yeah. In all the excitement of finding Jen and everything else, I forgot to tell you something. Let’s concentrate on this first, then I’ll explain.”

“Okay.” Slater said, a note of reluctance creeping into her voice. She flashed him a skeptical glance, then returned her attention to the book. She pointed to the sketch of people offering fish to the pool. “So assuming Lee has copied things he saw on cave walls, rather than things he personally witnessed, who or what made those drawings?”

Aston shook his head. “I think we have to assume that at some point, an ancient race of some description lived down here. Perhaps in a previous era, before the Antarctic was all ice?”

“That’s buying into a lot of conspiracy theory crap.”

Aston thought that comment a bit rich, given the woman had built her career spreading conspiracy theories.

“No use getting annoyed about that,” Aston said. “The evidence for it is building up.”

Slater’s frown returned. “Read more.”

Aston turned the page to find more neat, tight handwriting, and read on. “I needed to rest, my knee had blown up to twice its size and throbbed with my pulse. I cursed the crooked landing I had made, wondering if I would ever find a way out. And, if I did, whether this ruined knee would allow me to climb should I need to. I distracted myself with ruminations on the strange designs I had seen.

“A rudimentary study of these unusual hieroglyphs, about which I feel I have some inexplicable intrinsic knowledge, has given me a starting point to understanding. Making inferences based on this knowledge and the pairings of glyphs and scenes, I believe I have translated some of it.” Aston pointed at the page. “He’s drawn a kind of key here. It’s all a bit out of context, but he’s sketched some glyphs and what he thinks they mean. Fish. Fight. Worship. Stuff like that.” Then Aston indicated an odd glyph at the base of the page, like a stylized squid. Next to it were several words, each a question.

Master? Ruler? Leader? Overlord?

“What do you make of that?” Aston asked.

Slater shook her head. “I don’t know what to make of any of this, Sam.”

“In your work have you seen anything like this?”

“Not really. I mean, I’ve seen pictographs and hieroglyphics, but this…” She finished with a palms-up gesture.

Aston turned the page. “The handwriting is worse here, look. Shaking as if he’s shivering or weak.” He read on.

“I rested as best I could, even slept a little, I think. But hunger and a desire to escape drove me on again. But I’m sure I’m followed.”

“The things that Jen described?” Slater asked.

Aston kept reading. “I don’t mind admitting that I began to panic. The pain in my knee, the hunger, the incessant voice in my head beckoning me on. It all began to drive me mad. The voice told me which way to go, every time a choice appeared in the form of a fork, or alternate passages, the voice guided me. But every time I listened to its instruction, I found my path blocked. So I did my best to ignore it and forge my own way, fighting against all instincts while simultaneously trying to trust my gut. And the hunger chewed at me, and my knee has become so painful I can barely take weight on it at all. My staggering, limping gait is exhausting. And then I saw one.”

“One what?” Slater asked.

Aston turned the page, fear and a stubborn refusal to accept the words he saw curdling his gut. “It was a horrific sight,” he read. “A small, gray man with a large head and dark bulbous eyes. The creature brandished a spear and, without thinking, I reacted defensively. I drew my .45 caliber Colt Peacemaker, a gift from my grandfather, and emptied it in the direction of the creature. At least one bullet found its target, for the creature lay dead before me. And then from behind, I heard angry muttering and saw movement. Lots of man-sized, shining chitinous black creatures, with huge mandibles snapping like blades, stalked toward me from the shadows. I panicked, flung the revolver at them and ran blindly into the darkness, howling as I went from the pain stabbing through my knee. I felt as though the joint were disintegrating further with every agonizing step. Behind me, the mantic creatures followed, unhurried. In screaming pain, my flight slowed, but still they didn’t overtake me. This is, after all, their domain, and I suppose they knew they would find me in their own time. Perhaps the hellish things even enjoyed the sport of my impotent flight.

“I made it to a large cave before my ruined knee finally gave out and refused to carry me a single step further. Almost unconscious from the pain, the fear, the weakness of hunger, I dragged myself hand over hand into the deepest shadows I could reach. I am out of options, out of luck. I believe also I am out of time. I write this entry now and I pray, and I wait.”

Aston turned the page. Nothing. The rest of the journal was blank. “We know how far his prayers got him.”

“I guess that would explain the stone blade in his heart,” Slater said. “We found him where he wrote that last entry. But as he was killed by that blade and not chopped to pieces like Jen’s colleague, do we assume another of the little gray men finished him, rather than the creatures?”

“Mantics,” Aston said quietly. “That’s what he called them.”

“And little gray men?” Slater said. “Sounds a lot like the aliens described by modern-day UFO enthusiasts. Is this whole thing some elaborate hoax?”

“Or maybe some crazy theories are not so crazy after all,” Aston said. “Except for the primitive weapons. But maybe they could be little gray men that aren’t actually aliens. Just some sort of ancient race. Lee described the one he saw as brandishing a spear. He was killed with a stone dagger. Hardly the tools of an advanced alien race.” Aston paused, thoughtful. Then he said, “Although this is pretty recent, so if it is an ancient race, they were still here only a hundred or so years ago. So they could still be here now, having survived for millennia!”

“Unless a UFO crashed in the Antarctic millennia ago and the survivors made their way down here and found a way to survive?” Slater said. “They may have lost their technology that way, but lived on.”

Aston shrugged. “Holy hell, Jo, it’s all so absurd. But so was the idea of a dinosaur surviving in a Finnish lake.”

Slater managed a smile, then it faded. “I wonder if they are still alive, still here, watching us.”

“People right here, right now, are dying,” Aston said. “We have to assume it’s all real, and that it’s all still happening. So where are they? Why aren’t they confronting us?”

Slater shivered again, then scooted up closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. Aston thrilled at the warmth of her, the closeness.

“You’re an asshole, Samuel Aston.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Jo. It wasn’t… personal.”

“Yeah, right. And sorry isn’t really good enough. You’re the only person in the world who can understand what I went through. What we went through. And I couldn’t talk to you about it. I had no one who believed me.”

“I struggled with it, honestly I did. But I had debts…” He stopped, took a deep breath. “Nah, you’re right. I was an asshole.”

“Especially after we, you know, connected like we did.”

Aston felt a slight flare of resentment at that. “Well, you made it pretty clear at the time that was a one-off.”

“At the time. We were facing a fucking dinosaur, Sam! That’s not to say we wouldn’t have found time for each other again afterward. But you let me think you were dead!”

Aston huffed a genuine laugh. “I will never understand women.”

“That’s because you’re an asshole.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I mean that.”

She pressed more comfortably into his shoulder and he puts his arm around her. “Let’s just survive this one together,” she said. “Once everyone is rested, we get the hell out of here, then out of Antarctica. After that, who knows, right?”

“Right.”

“But you’re going to have to make it up to me, asshole. I’m going to make you suffer.”

He grinned. “Fair enough.”

Exhaustion dragged at Aston. He rested his head against hers and shut his eyes.