Book of the Dead

by Greig Beck

  “How we lookin, hotshot?” Frank’s voice squawked from his belt mic. Andy could imagine his buddy up top, standing a good fifty feet back from the edge in case the walls started to slide. He’d be fifty again in front of everyone else, keeping the police rescue, residents and general public well back until he, and others, had fully examined the site. The entire block would remain evacuated and sealed off until their work was done.

  He touched down. “I’m okay; just hit bottom, pop.”

  He heard Frank whistle. Andy unsnapped the harness hook and grabbed a secondary flashlight dangling from his belt; he flicked it on, adding the beam to his helmet lamp’s halogen, and looked around.

  Andy’s number-one priority was to locate Bill and Margaret Anderson, and his hopes rose. The house was virtually intact, sitting in the center of several feet of green lawn, now littered with carcasses of dead birds.

  “Bill Anderson! Bill and Margaret Anderson, can you hear me?” He waited as his words bounced around the huge pit. After a few minutes, there was still silence. Light from above gave the scene a nighttime atmosphere. He looked closer at the house: aside from some cracking in the external structure and the front door hanging off its frame, he might have expected to see Bill and Margaret sitting on the porch as if nothing was wrong.

  “Structure’s pretty good; I’m going in.” As he approached he winced at the smell. Weird, he thought. Wonder if they’ve got a septic tank. He quickly checked the anemometer on his belt – the air quality was still good. Just leaking shit, he hoped.

  Andy adjusted his helmet, sweat now streaming from his pores. As well as the smell, the heat was near unbearable, which was also weird, as he should be feeling lower temperatures at a few hundred feet. He knew there was no volcanic or geothermal activity in the area, and there hadn’t been for close to a million years.

  “Bill Anderson?”

  Andy leaned forward to wave his light across the doorway and windows. He guessed if they were in there, they’d be damned confused and frightened. And if Bill had a gun, Andy was liable to catch a gutful of double ought if he went barging in.

  He approached carefully, his feet crunching on something. He looked down to see hundreds of roaches moving about. “Nice.” At the doorframe he rested his hand on the broken wood, and then snapped it back, revolted. Even though he wore gloves for the descent, he recoiled from the thick, viscous material that coated the rough leather. He shone his light on it – glistening, milky with darker streaks. He brought it close to his face.

  “Aw, fuck.” He ripped it away. It had to be the source of the smell enveloping the area. It was like fish, sulfur and crushed snails all in a jellied paste. He shone his light around at the walls, wondering where it had come from. In his decade and a half in geology, he had never come across anything like it occurring naturally above or below the ground. He brought his light back to the frame.

  “Bill, I’m coming in, if that’s okay.” He shone his light inside. “If you can hear me, just make a sign…anything.”

  Andy counted off the few seconds – nothing but silence. He swallowed noisily, and then moved inside, avoiding the fallen furniture and going quickly from room to room. The smell was worse in the small building, and he held his breath as he searched. In a few minutes he had examined the house in detail, and stood again on the porch.

  “Nothing, Frank; are we sure they were home?” He looked up to the sky, hundreds of feet overhead; suddenly wishing he was up there.

  “Yep,” Frank said. “Neighbor said he saw them only an hour before, and he’s sure they didn’t leave. Have you looked everywhere – the perimeter?”

  “I’ll do a final sweep now.” Andy stepped off the porch. The lawn was littered with dead birds down here too, but incongruously, it otherwise seemed almost untouched by the drop into the pit – as if it had been lowered gently. Flowers in their beds still stood upright, their blooms straining towards sunlight they would never feel again. There was a wheelbarrow, with gloves laid over one handle, and a flagstone pathway ran for two dozen feet to abruptly stop at a wall of dirt and rock.

  Andy circled the house. He had about twenty feet of space between himself and the walls of the sinkhole. They looked solid and not saturated, as he would have expected.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?” he whispered.

  He knew sinkholes occur because groundwater erodes away porous limestone creating a karst feature below the surface shell. Eventually the ground just collapses into the void that’s been created, and might have been there hiding for days, months or even years. But water is the key ingredient, and down here it was dry…and hot.

  “Talk to me, Andy.” Frank’s voice sounded tight.

  “It doesn’t make sense – it’s bone dry down here.” Andy continued to pan his light.

  “Maybe drained away. That pocket could be years old, and by now we have a total percolation effect. Water’s long gone – it happens,” Frank said.

  “Yeah, but in limestone, and not in bedrock like this. This just feels…different.” Andy walked to one of the walls and frowned – there was something on it, or pressed into it – a symbol or shape. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small camera, taking a few images, and then turning to snap off some more pictures of the structure and size of the cavity.

  He tucked the camera away and then reached out to touch the dark soil where the shape was indented. It was soft and spongy, like Styrofoam packing. He knew the earth was capable of some amazing feats – it could sink, rise up in columns or waves, it could spin like a whirlpool, and become as hard as rock or soft like quicksand. But this was something outside of his experience. Besides, as he’d said to Frank, down this far, it would have to be mostly bedrock, not soil.

  Andy pulled a small plastic bottle out of a pocket and scraped some of the spongy soil into it. He capped it and had begun to turn away when he stopped, and then spun back, frowning. He lifted his flashlight, holding it up and centered while reaching into yet another of his numerous pockets. He carefully drew forth a flat folding knife that he expertly opened out one handed while keeping his eyes on the wall.

  Andy used the blade to dig in gently, carefully, edging out the spongy soil, and letting it plop wetly at his feet. He used the tip of his blade to snag the object and drew it out: it was a sleeve – blue checked wool, thick, like you get in those hunting or lumber shirts. He tugged it free and held it up on the blade tip. Despite the dirt covering the material, it was clearly fairly new.

  “How the hell did you get in there?” he whispered, and then looked briefly to the surface – not a chance that this thing had been buried by sedimentary processes. Anything down here would be tens of thousands of years old, at least. He flapped the dirt free and looked at it again; even from a foot from his face, he could smell the stink – the same fishy, sulfurous odor that was in the slime.

  It was a sleeve with a shiny button still on the cuff end, shredded at the other. He moved his light a little closer – the ragged end was damp. It was hard to tell what it was in the whitening glare of the flashlight, but the fluid glistened, and he knew what he hoped it wasn’t – blood.

  “Jesus, Bill, what happened down here?”

  He quickly checked his pockets. Damn, no sample bags. He cursed his poor preparation and ended up wadding the material up and tucking it in a spare pocket. He dug a little more into the soil without finding anything, and then turned away looking again towards the sunken house. It was tomb quiet, and a prickle lifted the hair on his neck.

  “Ah, Frank…” Andy cleared his throat. “Frank, there’s nothing here.” He lifted his light again. The slime glistened back at him from the door. “If the Andersons were ever here, they’re gone now.”

  “Probably never down there. They’ll sure get a shock when they get home this evening.” Frank didn’t sound convincing.

  Andy felt the sleeve wadded up in his pocket. “Sure…sure they will.” He took one last look around, moving his light slowly over the pr
operty. Smears of the glistening slime reflected the beam back at him. The dark or confined spaces never worried him. Being a geologist meant caving, tight tunnels, basically a lot of underground work, but this down here…He felt the hairs on his neck rise, and stay risen like the hackles of a dog. This is a hundred percent pure weird, he thought.

  Andy snorted softly. “Only in America.”

  “What was that?” Frank asked.

  “Nothing.” Andy reconnected himself to the drop line. “Grabbing some samples and coming up.”

  Chapter 2

  Kirov, Russia

  Viktor smoked the pungent cigarette slowly. He managed to tune out the sound of his five young children and screaming wife, Alina, as he read the morning paper. It’d be another long day driving the bus from the airport to the city and back. It was a twelve-hour shift now; it had been eleven hours only two years back, but the manager had cut staff with the remaining drivers working longer, or risking being cut themselves. The biggest joke on the drivers was that though the hours increased, the pay stayed the same. Big, big joke, he thought and blew more thick smoke into the tiny apartment.

  His wife’s voice went up a few decibels and he raised his eyes over the paper to look at her – he smiled and winked – still beautiful after five children. Alina had managed to turn her face beet-red from screaming at the young ones. Only Maria, their oldest at seven, ever listened to her. Alina straightened, blew hair from her forehead and grinned and shrugged.

  He nodded in return. He’d work a hundred hours a week if it meant keeping food on this woman’s table. She made it all worthwhile. He looked up at the stained walls and the roaches moving along the peeling picture rails. She deserves better, he thought glumly.

  He sipped at a metallic-tasting coffee and winced – extra flavor thanks to the old copper pipes, he knew. He lowered the cup just as the table jumped.

  “What is – ?” The table jumped again. Alina stopped moving, and the house quieted as the children ceased their mad dashing about. They all stood in silence. Alina and the five little ones turned big eyes towards him.

  Something struck the window, making Viktor jump and little Rakael squeal. Viktor looked to the pane as another wet thump sounded against the glass – it was a bird, momentarily stuck on the sill, its beak shattered and bloody, its eyes round and mad. It fell away, leaving a streak of blood as it plummeted towards the earth.

  Viktor started to rise to his feet. Earthquake? he wondered. Kirov had minor tremors all the time, but these buildings, most twice as old as his babushka, were little more than cheap, crumbling brick and powdery mortar – a good breeze, and they’d collapse like a deck of cards.

  He felt a juddering vibration beneath his feet, and then a waft of hot, stinking air. Birds started to crash into the building as though being fired from a cannon. That’s it, no more waiting, he thought. Better to be safe in the street, than crushed to muck in an old building.

  “We go quick. Out, out.” Alina took control, snatching up the two youngest and yelling instructions. Maria grabbed Rakael, and he took his eldest son by the hand. They went down the old steps two at a time, their feet squashing roaches on every riser, as the building started to grind. On the way down, doors opened and old gray heads poked out, but then were pulled back in as though on a leash.

  “Get out!” Viktor yelled to them, but no one followed or even acknowledged him. In this building, like many others, neighbors rarely talked, and all were strangers to each other.

  Viktor kicked open the downstairs doors and rushed into the freezing street, not stopping until they were on the opposite sidewalk. He checked his brood were all with him, and put an arm around Alina. Only then did he look back.

  The building shimmied, rose a couple of feet, and then, staggeringly, dropped into the ground as though on a fast elevator. It didn’t fall and then stop, crumble, or even collapse. It simply went down, and kept going down.

  Viktor could hear the crushing grind of earth and brick as the three-story edifice disappeared into a massive black void. There was silence for a minute or two. Then the screams came.

  Chapter 3

  Matt Kearns pushed long hair back off his face, and then ran across Massachusetts Avenue towards the Qdoba Mexican Grill. He kept a hand over his leather satchel on one shoulder and pushed open the small door, inhaling the scent of chilli, spices, and roasting meat.

  “O-ooh, yeah.”

  His interview with the board in at the Harvard Lamont Library had gone well – very well – and he expected an offer to come through within the week. After all, he was still one of the top paleolinguists in the world, had an understanding of more ancient languages than anyone else in the USA, and was witty and charming – Why shouldn’t they love me? he thought, and grinned, as he was shown to a table.

  He snatched a copy of that day’s newspaper from the rack and slid into the booth. If he got the job, he’d start teaching a basic languages class at the Resource Center. Low down the ladder, but he’d be home, and that was all that mattered. Besides, he was sure he could climb back to full tenure quickly.

  He waved to a pretty waitress and she nodded in return, and then made a beeline toward him. He looked around – the diner was near empty, save for a few foreign students, a large family eating without talking or even making eye contact with each other, and a solitary coffee drinker.

  Matt lifted the satchel over his head, leaning it on the seat beside him as the waitress stopped.

  “Welcome to Qdoba Mexican Grill. My name is Andrea. We have specials today that–”

  “I know.” Matt smiled. “It’s all good, Andrea.” He smiled, sweeping his hair back again. She nodded, and her eyes lingered just a few seconds longer than was necessary, before flicking away.

  He smiled. Still got it, he thought, as he looked down the menu quickly, already knowing what he wanted: chicken quesadilla – one enormous corn tortilla filled with spicy chicken, bell peppers and melted cheese, then folded in half and lightly toasted – heaven on a plate. He used to have them once a week when he worked here three years earlier…and he planned on resuming the same delightful habit now he had returned.

  “Andrea, I’ll have the prince of tortillas – quesadilla de pollo, por favor.” He grinned and winked. Andrea giggled as she wrote and then headed to the kitchen.

  Matt dropped the small laminated sheet, picked up the newspaper, and flicked through the headlines while he waited – financial crisis in France worsening; the Middle East still beating itself back to the Stone Age; and another picture of the President grinning and swinging a golf club. He sighed and continued flicking through, only glancing at the stories, until – Unexplained bird deaths accompany sinkholes. “Huh?” Matt frowned and read quickly.

  Huge sinkholes have opened up across the country, over forty to date. Some are over two hundred feet across. Geologists have been left baffled.

  “Now that is interesting”, he whispered.

  Matt didn’t know that much about geology, but he did know that sinkholes had been around forever and occurred when too much groundwater dissolved away the subsurface layers. The ground just fell into a void. They were common in places like Florida with a lot of rain and lots of limestone rock below the soil surface. But they were near unheard of in places like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, which were way up in the mountains.

  And what’s with the birds? he wondered. Intrigued now, he swiveled and reached for his satchel, taking out a slim computer and opening it on the table. In a few moments he had powered it up and found the restaurant’s wifi and was entering the headline. He selected one of the most detailed results and quickly read down the page.

  In Red Oak, Iowa, expert environmental geologist, Andrew Bennet, who was first into the hole, stated that the cause for the Iowa sinkhole and others was unknown, as the ground was geologically solid, and no severe rain or underground stream activity were present to cause the subsurface erosion. In addition, investigators could find no link between the bird
deaths and the sinkhole. Other than a noxious odor, no gases were detected, and no identifiable toxins had been found on the site. Other samples collected were still being analyzed.

  Hmm, ‘and the Earth shall fall’, Matt thought, remembering a scrap from some unknown ancient Arabic prophecy. The pretty waitress appeared beside him, balancing a huge plate on the tips of the fingers of one hand.

  “The prince of tortillas…for a prince.” Color rose in her cheeks at the blatant flirting, and she slid the plate in front of him.

  The quesadilla looked magnificent. Matt looked up at her and flashed his most charming smile. “Beautiful…and the quesadilla looks pretty good too.”

  The waitresses face went a shade redder and she scampered away, looking back over her shoulder when she got to the kitchen door. Matt looked back down at the food, his mouth watering.

  As he ate, he used one hand to find more results for recent sinkholes and was near overwhelmed with the hits – too many to count, and all over the world. Some had pictures – massive dark craters, in some cases hundreds of feet deep. There were a few from the Iowa hole – shots of a lonely house down deep in the darkness, and then a picture of the wall and the symbol. He leaned forward.

  “Hello there, what are you?”

  Matt knew hundreds of languages, and spoke most. He had studied dialects living and dead all his life, and he knew a communication symbol when he saw one. This picked at his deep memory, but still wouldn’t surface. He shook his head, and then read on. The final details almost obscured the geological impact – people were missing – dropped down into the holes and not recovered.