Deeper

by Jeff Long

  Gather with neighbors in an outdoor location to pool your lights. Enclose the group in a brightly illuminated circle. Flares, halogen lights, and strobes are excellent deterrents. Find out in advance if anyone has specialized equipment like a power generator. (Be sure to ration your light sources. They must last until full dawn or later.)

  Listen for information about signs and symptoms of diseases, if medications or vaccinations are being distributed, and where you should seek medical attention if you become sick. If you become sick, seek emergency medical attention.

  16

  DIALOGUES WITH THE ANGEL, NUMBER 5

  “I was swimming in a sea that no longer exists,” says the angel, “when a large fish appeared. It was a coelacanth, quite ancient, a vicious customer, I can tell you. Luckily it attacked me, otherwise I never would have thought to tear it open and find what I found. There inside its stomach lay a second fish, and inside its stomach lay what remained of a baby monkey.

  “I was stunned. I’d never seen such a thing. It had four limbs. It had hands and feet. It had two ears and two eyes and a nose. Why, it could have been me! Do you understand? Your kind was starting to resemble me.

  “After that discovery, I kept a sharp eye out for more of you. But back then there weren’t many primates to go around. It took millions of years more. At last your migrations reached out in my direction. The body of a drowned crocodile brought me the half-digested head of an early man. Australopithecus you would call him now.

  “That rotting head may as well have been my own. I thought to myself, it doesn’t get any closer than this. But then—more millions of years later—I received the body of a woman, and she was even more beautiful and like me. But she was dead. I wanted one who was living. So I waited and wished and waited.

  “Then it happened. A hunter got lost and came wandering down. I took him in. Here he is.”

  The angel holds up a skull. Blackened with age and polished from handling, it has a doggish snout and heavy brow. One sees such creatures in zoos.

  “He was my first disciple. From him I learned the colors of the sunrise and the shapes of the moon and about gazelles and rabbits and saber-toothed tigers. In turn I tried to teach him about the universe that I know. Unfortunately for him, he tried to brain me with a rock while I was taking a nap. But I have a very hard head. For the next year or so, he lived on morsels that I carved from his thighs and shoulders, like falafel meat, and fed to him. He begged me to stop even as he begged me to keep feeding him. He dreaded me. He loved me. Do you understand? Together we learned about the costs of freedom and the rewards of sacrifice.”

  The disciple continues sitting at the feet of his master. He closes his eyes. He contemplates two questions. Whose freedom does the angel mean? And whose sacrifice?

  ARTIFACTS

  ELLE

  “Skin Deep-er”

  Mineral Makeup, the Latest Craze

  The latest in cosmetics comes from Mother Earth’s deepest vaults. Sales of mineral makeup have skyrocketed over the last two years, thanks in part to fashion’s swing toward the pale and prehistoric.

  Some companies are marketing colors so vibrant they actually glow in the dark, others are focused on the natural benefits, and still others are selling the exotic lure of the world below. It’s Alive touts its raw mineral line as pure enough for a baby’s skin. Deep Beauty Cosmetics claims its “mineral feast” both beautifies and heals. (“Heal while you steal his heart.”) Homo Erectus, Inc. teases that “men won’t wilt when their women wear Wow [a fluorescent lipstick].” Aphrodisiac, topical medicine, or beauty aid: whatever it calls itself, mineral makeup is stealing its market share.

  Mineral cosmetics come from a host of deep minerals, some common to the surface, others more exotic (and expensive). The ingredients include chalk, zinc oxide; ultramarine, from lapis lazuli; titanium dioxide; even trace amounts of radium for that nocturnal glow. One popular product is old-fashioned red ochre powder, the same thing used by Neanderthals.

  Dermatologists warn that claims about the UV-blocking properties of mineral makeup are overblown. They also caution that some products, like Queen of the Night’s fluorite eye shadow, may be carcinogenic.

  17

  GUAM

  DECEMBER 17

  Rebecca turned from the mirror and laid down her brush. She looked out the window of her barracks room.

  The white sun hung like a paralyzed star. Military jets streaked the sky. A Princess cruise ship—hired by a computer magnate, his donation to the cause—was making its way through the harbor past a massive aircraft carrier. It carried almost five hundred men, the latest, but probably not the last, of her volunteers.

  Surrounded by an army—my army—Rebecca had never felt so defenseless or alone. Who were these people? What did they want from her? She only knew what she wanted from them.

  With the Princess cruise contingent, there were now over twelve hundred of them mustering on the island. Some were out there in the midday heat sweating off their beer fat in furious basketball games, or jogging under the palm trees, or teaching each other karate moves, or waiting to get approached by the wandering news cameras. Life-insurance salesmen and estate lawyers circulated among them, tireless as flies, signing up clients before the descent commenced in two days. Prostitutes had flown in from Russia and Bangkok. Vendors were hawking T-shirts and caps hastily printed up with quotes from Scripture or “To Hell and Back” or “Save the Children.”

  Rebecca’s Rangers, the media called them. Her Hell’s Angels. Her soldiers of the sun. They varied from superpatriots to petty criminals to Promise Keepers bent on demon slaying. Many were weekend warriors looking to put some emphasis in their lives. There were New Age “Iron Johns,” office nerds, Klansmen and American Nazis bent on racial purity, fraternity brothers from Texas A&M, gym buddies on andro and creatine, monkey wrenchers, bikers, deer hunters, libertarians, unemployed carpenters, bored lawyers, and lonely hearts. They formed a whole wacky mishmash of miscellaneous adventurers and dreamers and losers.

  Then there were the mercenaries, twenty-one of them. They referred to themselves as contractors and were employed by a private security company, or PSC, named Drop Zone, Inc. Their commander, Hunter (like something out of an airport novel), called himself a field manager. He and his men had all served at one time or another in the U.S. military before going into the private sector for better money. They kept to themselves. They had their own quarters, their own mess hall, their own daily rote. All had subterranean experience. None, for instance, was out ruining his night eyes in the noonday glare.

  Like so many other details of her mushrooming “crusade,” Drop Zone had come into Rebecca’s life from out of the blue. One morning she answered her door and Hunter was standing there dressed in Dockers and carrying a laptop computer loaded with the faces of his “security contingent.” As he explained it, Drop Zone had won a forty-day contract to aid in the search for the children, beating out Blackwater, DynCorp, Triple Canopy, and other PSCs whose names—and purpose and even existence—she had been unaware of until now.

  Hunter had not asked if she wanted their services. He had simply announced their participation. Their hiring, like their command, was completely out of her control. Their expenses, salaries, and firepower—$5.2 million was the figure being booted around—did not come from her general fund of private and corporate donations, endorsement fees, and movie and book money. Rather it had been “bestowed” by a consortium of American and Canadian land developers and mining companies. She wasn’t sure the consortium—or Drop Zone, or even “Hunter”—even existed, but had deliberately refrained from asking too many questions because she didn’t want too many answers.

  In the old days, not one of these men would have been part of her world. But that world was gone. The fact was, she needed them all at this moment, with all their bravado and bluster and willing violence and dys-function and weirdness, because eventually she would need some of them. How and when and in what numbers, sh
e did not know yet. That was one of the mysteries she lived with.

  She had never so much as fired a .22.And now she was a general. Some magazines were comparing her to Joan of Arc. Others called her Calamity Jane or Ms. Strangelove, the mother of World War III.

  She faced her mirror again. Lunchtime was near. Showtime.

  For the time being her job was to smile and make small talk and offer herself as their mother and sister and wife and high school sweetheart, whatever it took to bind this army to her for however long it took. Rebecca picked up a lipstick and drew her lips red.

  Everybody’s whore, that’s what she felt like. They came to her with their wants and needs, with their high-minded chivalry, their barely concealed lust, their undying loyalty, their greed, their loneliness, their fears, their glorious and mundane fantasies. And her existence depended on satisfying them. Because without them, Sam was doomed. And without Sam, she was doomed.

  A sharp knock gave her a start. She opened the door to Clemens. Her very own personal monster.

  “Rebecca.” He smiled his cannibal smile, teeth filed, the teeth still remaining. The holes where his nose had been were shiny with Vaseline.

  Clemens waited patiently. His scars and wounds were on full, awful display. He didn’t spare you a thing. She had come to the conclusion that he knew his effect on people. Repulsion—not pity—was his entrée. You took one look at him and your gorge rose, which forced you to confront yourself, because it wasn’t polite to stare and it wasn’t polite to look away. And while you were wrestling with yourself, he was somehow moving inside your boundaries. Squatting on your sympathies. Smiling.

  Rebecca made him stand out in the hall. She trained her gaze on the sunglasses balanced on the stub of his nasal bridge. She remembered he had no eyelids. Mary-mother-of-God, spare my daughter. “Yes, Mr. Clemens?”

  Clemens had appeared, like Hunter, a mysterious stranger standing on her doorstep insisting that she could not do without him. She had quickly realized he was right. Only two people still survived who had gone into the deep city where her daughter was bound. One was Ali Von Schade, who had rejected Rebecca’s plea for guidance. The other was this walking, talking atrocity.

  “I’m here about the guns,” he said.

  He had a smell, part medicinal, part bad meat. She made herself breathe the odor and pretend that all was normal. When in fact nothing was even remotely normal. Until Sam was in her arms again, she had to face the maelstrom, minute by minute. She had to deal with this other world.

  “What about the guns?” she said.

  “We have a problem,” he said.

  Before this problem of the guns there had been problems with lost pallets of Meals Ready to Eat, and the surplus tents and medicines and night goggles and the pocketknives inscribed with “Children’s Crusade” donated by a sports chain. There were a hundred and one things to attend to at every given instant. Things she had never dreamed about. Things for war. War. Rebecca couldn’t get over it. She was bringing war and death and slaughter into the earth with her.

  “The men are complaining,” he said. “They want to be issued their weapons. How can they use them if they’ve never trained with them? How do we know the guns even work?”

  “The guns will work, Mr. Clemens.”

  “But they’re surplus, you see. Secondhand. Passed down from one war to another. It could be worthless scrap for all we know. If the guns even exist.”

  They had been through this several times. A donor—everyone agreed it had to be the CIA—had contributed the expedition’s entire arsenal, on one condition: the guns were not to be distributed until they went underground.

  The last thing anyone wanted was a bunch of cowboys loose on the surface or TV footage of an armed mob streaming into the Interior. Things were tense enough with China watching every step they took. Not that China was her concern. But if her government was going to help her behind the scenes, like giving her access to this decommissioned naval base in the far Pacific and providing them with weapons and supplies, then the least she could do was give the administration and the spooks their deniability. That meant keeping the evidence out of sight. Once they entered the tunnels, people could hang guns and knives off their belt loops until the cows came home. Until the descent, however, they were on a short leash. Neutered.

  “The guns exist, Mr. Clemens.”

  “Yes, I’m sure they do,” said Clemens. “But have you actually seen them?”

  A shaft of fear straightened her. She blinked. Was this the Challenge?

  Day and night, she lived in fear that someone would stage a revolt, and wrest her army away from her. She lacked even the slightest experience with warfare. Whenever Jake used to fire up Gladiator or Blackhawk Down or his other “bruiser flicks,” she would go elsewhere in the house until the thunder and violins were over. Eventually her loyal troops would see right through her.

  Sam. She summoned the name. She fastened on the image of her daughter racing into her arms.

  “Yes,” she said to Clemens. “I have seen the guns.”

  Not that it mattered. She couldn’t tell an assault rifle from a shotgun. Also, beggars can’t be choosers. She had taken what the men in suits had given her, no questions asked.

  “The men are starting to grumble,” Clemens said.

  “Are they?” she said. Her throat went dry.

  “I hear them everywhere,” Clemens said.

  She tried to imagine pieces of metal bracing up her backbone and legs. “And have they delegated you to be their spokesman?”

  Clemens bent his head in a pantomime of modesty. The seams where they had stitched his scalping had little hairs. She tried not to think of that other atrocity, half castrating him. But only half. What was that about? He kept smiling at her.

  “I’m here as a friend,” he said.

  That was easy to deflect. She had no friends. She only had Sam. “Thank you for your concern,” she said.

  “I believe we can put a quick end to what seems to be brewing,” he said.

  “A mutiny,” she said. “Is that what you mean?”

  “There’s an ugly word. It sounds so old-fashioned, don’t you think? Don’t mistake me. The men are devoted to you.” He paused. “But they came to fight, you see, not play softball.”

  “The fight is coming,” Rebecca told him.

  “I know. Their hands are empty, though. That’s the problem. These are men of action, that’s how they see it. They need weapons.”

  “Soon, Mr. Clemens. You can tell them that.”

  Immediately she wanted to take it back. Because he was not her messenger or right-hand man or lieutenant or posse or whatever else he was angling for. She could tell them herself. This was her army. Wasn’t it?

  “But Hunter’s men are armed, you see. That’s the problem. There is a precedent.”

  More challenge. From this mutilated creature. She had thought Clemens only wanted to make himself whole on this expedition, to recover some of what he had lost on his last, disastrous journey. There was no regaining the lives of his film crew, of course. Nor the pieces of his flesh that the hadals had trimmed away. But he could at least heal inside, couldn’t he? That had been her wish for him.

  “We’ve discussed this,” she said. “They brought their own arsenal. I had no say about that.”

  “Are you suggesting that Hunter is out of control, ma’am?” Clemens asked. All innocence. Just wondering.

  “Not at all,” she said.

  “He’s not a good man, Rebecca. Are you really sure he belongs here?”

  Why did it have to be like this? The men didn’t have to be friends. But couldn’t they, together, be enemies of her enemy? Couldn’t they be joined by that? “I am aware that Mr. Hunter is a concern of yours,” she said.

  In fact, Hunter was an obsession with him. He wanted Hunter gone. In turn, Hunter viewed Clemens as a freak and a liability. Each had warned Rebecca about the other.

  “This is strictly a cash deal for him,�
�� said Clemens. “He and his mercenaries are in the pocket of the land companies. That, or they’re covert agents working for the government.”

  “Yes, you’ve deduced that for me before.”

  “Whatever they are, Drop Zone is here for one reason only, to get out in front of the competition and stake claims to deeper territory. Whether it’s for a company or the US of A, they see this as the biggest landgrab of all time.”

  They could grab all the land they wanted as far as she was concerned. At the same time, it worried her. There were twelve hundred different agendas out there, one for each man, each waiting to unfold in the days ahead. Once the men got what they wanted—land, gold, adventure, or bragging rights—her grand crusade might simply vanish into thin air.

  “What about you?” she said, trying to get him off the subject of Hunter. “What do you want out of this?”

  It was a stupid question. She had caught him ogling her. It knocked her off balance, not because he was grotesque or because she was supposed to be God’s gift to men, but because it was so strange and so mistaken. His desire wasn’t sexual, nor a matter of possession or love. That she would have recognized. Rather, he wanted a mask, a second skin. He wanted to cloak himself inside her beauty.

  “I’m here to help you get what you want.”

  “Of course,” she said. It had become a mantra. “The children.”

  “The children?” He shook his head no. “Sam,” he whispered, as if it were their dirty secret.

  He knew. Only one really counted, and that was Sam.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find her.”

  “All of them,” she said. “We’ll find all of them.”

  “Absolutely.”

  This was like quicksand. Enough. “Let me assure you,” she said, “Mr. Hunter is every bit as dedicated to the mission as you are.”

  “He’s using you,” Clemens said.

  And I am using him, she didn’t say. And you. All of you.