by Perrin Briar
“Booked up for the next two months,” Graham said.
“People seem to really enjoy it,” Chief Digger 138 said.
“What happens if interest dries up?” Jeremiah said.
“Oh, I’m sure we can rustle up a little two-pointer when the need suffices,” Chief Digger 138 said with a grin.
“You haven’t gone down to see the show yet?” Graham said.
“No,” Jeremiah said. “Not after we got stuck down there. Maybe later.”
“It’s a history of the little people, where they came from, how they lived underground,” Graham said.
“I read the pamphlet,” Jeremiah said.
“Just let me know if you change your mind,” Chief Digger 138 said. “I’ll get you some VIP tickets. Well, I’d better get this show on the road. He approached the tent. “You’re about to enter a world of surprise and intrigue, ladies and gentlemen. If you’ll take a seat we’ll begin descending deep into the Earth. But first let me tell you a little about our past. You see, we weren’t always nice people. Once upon a time we were led by an evil leader called, appropriately enough, Leader…”
The tent door closed, blocking Chief Digger 138’s voice.
“You’re off to the tree again?” Graham said to Jeremiah.
“I am,” Jeremiah said.
The two men rounded the huge tent to the back of the property, to a small space the tent did not reach. They took a seat on a protruding eucalyptus tree limb.
“Did you call your son?” Graham said.
“I did,” Jeremiah said. “He was surprised to hear from me.”
“I’ll bet,” Graham said. “How’d it go?”
“I explained to him why I did what I did, how it was his mother’s wish,” Jeremiah said. “He says he’s going to come visit. He’ll bring his wife and son.”
“Excited?” Graham said.
“Terrified,” Jeremiah said. “What if he doesn’t like me?”
“He’s guaranteed not to like you,” Graham said. “Just act cool.”
“I might recruit some little men kids to distract them,” Jeremiah said.
“That’ll work,” Graham said.
Jeremiah smiled. It was warm, not the cold frightful thing he usually gave to annoy someone, or to show how spiteful he was being, but the kind Graham remembered seeing on mornings when he would cook them a hot breakfast of sausages and eggs.
“Thank you,” Jeremiah said.
Graham’s cheeks flushed. He felt mildly embarrassed.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
They looked out at the sprawling red bleakness of the Australian Outback. It was starkly beautiful.
“Sinkholes have occurred through the entire history of the Earth,” Jeremiah said. “If one sinkhole buried this small tribe, then how many other nations and peoples and creatures could there be beneath our feet?”
“The thought makes my head hurt,” Graham said.
“Thinking again?” Jeremiah said. “I warned you not to do that.”
“With you throwing around philosophical questions like that, how can I not?” Graham said.
“God help whoever does have to go on those adventures,” Jeremiah said. “I want no part of it.”
“Who said you had any choice?” Graham said. “A sinkhole could happen anywhere and at any time.”
Just then, the ground began to shake. The two men pulled their feet up and clung to the branch they sat on. Ridiculous, because a sinkhole could just as easily swallow a tree as a man.
“Not again!” Graham said.
The ground opened up like hungry jaws. A small hole that grew wider and wider. And then it stopped. But Graham and Jeremiah knew better than to believe it was really over. Their eyes remained transfixed on it.
Three small helmets popped up. They turned around and looked up at Graham and Jeremiah. They had shovels clasped tight in their tiny hands. They grinned, exposing the large front teeth they’d inherited from their father Chief Digger 138. They chuckled. Graham and Jeremiah did not.
The Lost World
Prologue
GEORGE TATE felt the bitter cold the moment he stepped out of the shelter. Jack Frost gnawed on his nose like a feral dog, and his fingers felt like thick unthawed sausages. He reached into his pockets to take out his gloves, only to discover he was already wearing them. He also wore a pair of Inuit boots, inlaid with caribou fur, a coat designed to withstand temperatures of up to (or rather down to) fifty degrees, and a hat of reindeer fur. George was still frozen, and he couldn’t have been happier.
The sky was clear and the stars shone like diamonds on velvet. The aurora danced overhead, a rainbow caught in a playful wind, mixing green, yellow, and flecks of red, strumming his favorite tune on the ozone.
There were still so many mysteries about our planet we hadn’t yet solved, and although Jules Verne’s stories could rarely be described as realistic, George was convinced Verne was right in one respect: there were exciting unseen worlds beneath his very feet.
George carried a rifle in the crook of one arm in case of polar bears, and cast his experienced eye over the snow. Delicate veils of ice swept across the land’s surface. It was a desolate landscape, and yet life thrived here. Just the other day he’d seen a beautiful snow fox leaping and throwing its fragile weight against the frozen land in an effort to puncture a hole in the ice and get at the morsel of food it could hear below the surface.
George pressed his lips together and whistled a muffled tune, his lips numb and largely unresponsive. He lifted his legs over the snowdrift that reached up to his knees, and walked, using very difficult steps, over to a container. His boots made satisfying crunching noises on the white powder snowdrifts.
George loved his job. He was at one of the most isolated spots on earth, in Alaska at 71 degrees north, 156 degrees west. It was daylight twenty-three hours a day. The closest other person would be three hundred miles away, at another outpost like his own, and then another two hundred miles to the nearest settlement.
George input the passcode and the container door slid open. He ran an eye over the seismograph. There were slight fluctuations, but nothing to worry about. Arranged along the walls were all kinds of complex equipment. He bent down and picked up a set of thermostat rods. These were long needle-like devices with a touchscreen display on top.
A relatively new technology called ‘fracking’ had become popular amongst the world’s nations. Fracking meant digging for valuable natural gas beneath the Earth’s surface with the use of high-pressure water hoses. Controversy over the technique had stimulated protests across Europe and the US as it was believed to cause disturbances in the soil, namely earthquakes and sinkholes. Tests were run ad nauseam on a potential new fracking site until all were sure there would be no such event, but the people still protested.
As a seismologist, part of George’s job was to keep an eye on the seismographs at the fracking facilities he oversaw. So far he had found no evidence fracking caused earthquakes or any other seismic event. He had run tests all over the US, and was now running one here in Alaska.
George got sent to these locations at his own request. It was what made him know he was still alive. Without it life was pretty dull. He loved his son Aaron with every fiber of his being, but no matter how he looked at it, Aaron was still a kid who couldn’t share in his adventures.
George reached into a pocket on his Gore-Tex coat and felt at the woolly hat Aaron had given him, and let the warm memories wash over him.
It was hard to believe that it was only yesterday he was in the heart of civilization, his things packed and ready to go, when he had kissed his seven-year-old son on the head and told him he would be back in a couple of months. Each time he went, Aaron said, “Can I come with you?”
Aaron was going to be an adventurer himself one day. George was certain of it. George very much looked forward to one of those days answering, “Yes.” But it wasn’t yet, not for another few years.
“I got you a
present,” George said. “I’m sorry I won’t be here for your birthday. So, I wanted to give it to you now.”
Aaron tore through the paper like it was Christmas. He picked up the globe inside it. It was made of glass, in the shape of the Earth, showing all its mountains and valleys and oceans.
“Can you see this bit near the top?” George said. “I’m going to go there to do some experiments. Any time you get lonely, all you have to do is shake this globe and you’ll see me.”
Aaron shook it now, and a rush of small white flecks rose to the top of the globe and rained down on a scene from a fairy tale, complete with fracking machine, shelter, and little man.
“Is it cold there?” Aaron said.
“It can be,” George said.
“How cold?” Aaron said.
“You know the freezer in the fridge?” George said. “About the same as that.”
“Will you freeze?” Aaron said.
“Not if I can help it,” George said with a smile.
Aaron pushed back the blankets and hopped down out of bed. He went to a chest of drawers and rooted amongst the contents. After a moment he came out with the hand-knitted woolly hat he’d made in craft class at school. He handed it to his father. It had reindeers and Santa Clauses on it.
“To keep you warm,” Aaron said.
George put it on. It barely fit on his head – like a novelty party hat.
“At least the top of my head will be warm,” he said.
Aaron giggled and wrapped his arms around his father. George did the same. They were a cocoon around each other, warm and loving, and just like all the other times before he left for another adventure, George hesitated about whether or not to go. He missed large chunks of his son’s life whenever he went away. He missed birthdays, Christmases, often whole summer holidays. But it was a job that he loved and he knew Aaron would be safe and warm here in California. He lifted Aaron up with his muscular arms and set him carefully down on the bed and tucked him in again.
“I’m going to graduate from second grade in a couple of months,” Aaron said.
“I’ll be back by then,” George said.
“You promise?” Aaron said.
“I promise,” George said. “I’ll bring you something back from Alaska, how about that?”
Not for the first time he wondered why he didn’t just get a desk job like most people. Because you can’t, a voice inside told him. You need the thrill.
George carried the thermostat rods over to the fracking unit and switched one on. The tip glowed bright red and then white as it heated up to two hundred degrees. He sat it on the surface and held it steady as it sank into the snow and then lower, into the harder band of ice, until it had lost half its height. A green light flicked on. It was set.
George moved around the fracking machine at a ninety-degree angle, switched the next thermostat on and installed it. He did the same with the final two thermostat devices so they formed a square around the fracking machine, which made a hissing sound as it blasted away the rock and earth. The Hiss-Thump-Thump-Thump was strangely hypnotic.
George turned and headed back toward his shelter and considered how he was going to spend the rest of his day. Perhaps he would ride his snow mobile to the gorge and look around. But first he would make himself a cup of Joe and enjoy what remained of his morning.
George breathed in a deep lungful of the cleanest air on Earth and let himself feel the warmth of the mist before his face before the cold stole it. He looked back at the shelter. It was a drop box container, usually used in the military. It was designed for efficiency and conservation. No heat was wasted. It used snow and ice to heat the inside as well as filter water. Fuzzy yellow light fell across the snow from its tiny windows. A snow mobile sat beside the shelter, wearing its own overalls to keep it from freezing.
George’s foot sank up to the knee in the snow. He pressed his other foot on the snow and pulled his trapped foot out of the snowdrift. He took another step toward the shelter when the same foot sank again.
“What the blazes?” he said aloud.
He replicated the same procedure as before to extricate himself, but this time both his feet sank into the snowdrift. He turned to look back at the fracking machine. A small indentation of snow, like a worm creeping just under the surface, had fallen away. It curled around him in a spiral.
Bleep, bleep!
In the path of the sinking snow, one of the thermostat rods leaned over at an angle. The green light turned red and bleeped like a sheep needing rescue after getting trapped on the edge of a cliff. Bleep, bleep!
George frowned, turned, and waded back toward it. Maybe he’d placed it on top of a layered snowdrift. It sometimes happened.
George approached the thermostat and picked it up, drawing it out of the snow. He moved it to another spot and the tip, still glowing red hot, touched the snow’s surface and sank through it like a hot knife through butter, before it met something solid. Once it was at the right depth, the light blinked green again.
Bleep, bleep!
Now another rod was sinking into the snow.
What the hell’s going on? The ground was geographically solid – that was why they’d chosen it as a fracking site in the first place.
Flakes of snow dislodged and ran down each of the small snowdrift-like mounds. The ground quivered and shook. George’s heart stopped and his blood froze in his veins – an effect independent of the weather – as the indented spiral spread outwards, fast. It reached like a tendril for the shelter he’d been living in, and then paused. The wind whistled across the vast icy emptiness.
George found his voice and said breathlessly, “Sinkhole.”
The snow and earth shifted inwards, toward the center of the camp, like water swirling down a plughole. The fracking machine groaned and screamed, the metal breaking and snapping, and fell over at an angle, the gas from the Earth hissing, and then dying as it was stifled by earth and snow. The fracking machine sank halfway into the hole, and then inched slower and slower into it.
The thermostat rods fell over and swirled around in the ice until they couldn’t be seen, and disappeared through the center of the sinkhole. A great silent eruption tore through the space, and if it hadn’t been for the rods clinking together, and the snow mobiles rattling as they slid down into the sinkhole, it would have been silent. Even the two containers began to drift into the hole.
George pulled his legs from the shifting snow and pumped his muscles up the incline. The harder he tried, the faster the sinkhole seemed to pull on him. There was no purchase, nothing he could push himself off of. But he was strong. He lay down on his stomach and pulled himself through the snow, like he was swimming. It was bitter cold and the ice washed against him, down his neck and against his skin, but he worked hard, fighting the imposed tide. If he could hold on, if he could keep fighting, he would be able to outlast the sinkhole and emerge out of it.
Alarm bells rang in his mind as the snow mobile continued its slow orbit around the outer edge of the sinkhole and headed right for him. The snow mobile caught him, and he lost his rhythm.
George threw out a hand and caught the snow mobile’s engine. He pulled himself up, scaling the engine and soft cushion. The snow mobile fell further into the sinkhole and began to twist to one side. He always left the keys in the ignition – there was little chance anyone would be around to steal it. He turned the ignition over, and the engine coughed and spluttered, kicking up smoke. He tried again with the same result.
“Come on!” George said.
He turned the key again and this time the engine roared, and struggled against the relentless suck of the sinkhole. The snow mobile’s backend lifted from the muddy sludge and began to pull itself up out of the drift.
The shelter floated toward the sinkhole, heading directly toward it, too cumbersome and heavy to make swirling movements. George pulled on the snow mobile’s throttle, but he was fighting against the tide of snow. The snow mobile’s engine could bare
ly keep turning over. George turned the handlebars toward the shelter. He drove right into the door, knocking it open.
There were muffles from inside, someone fast asleep, or at the edge of waking. The sinkhole was silent, one reason that made it so deadly.
“Wake up!” George shouted. “Wake up! There’s a sinkhole! We’re going to-!”
And that’s when the snow and ice collapsed, the sinkhole giving up all pretensions of a slow drawn-out death and sucked the contents of the crater into itself.
George screamed, and there came another scream, high-pitched and piercing, from the shack. George fell back into the snow, his mouth clogged with ice. His eyes felt frozen. He took a deep breath as the sinkhole seized him and dragged him under.
The last thought that passed through George’s mind before he fell toward oblivion was of Aaron, his graduation, and his broken promise, and a deep regret, colder, harsher, and more painful than the ice that consumed him. The shelter and snow mobile followed him into the abyss.
As if it were a monster and it had had its fill, the sinkhole ceased, and the remaining snow dribbled down into the crater and lay there, untouched and perfect. The wind howled over the landscape, silent and still. Nothing remained of the camp. It, and the existence of anything that had been there, had been wiped clean, as if it had never existed at all.
1
“MISS TATE,” Rosetta said with a warm smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you again.”
Zoe Tate shook Rosetta’s hand. Zoe had five inches on Rosetta, but she quailed under the shorter woman’s stern expression, reminding her of a dislikeable French teacher from school.
“Nice to see you again too,” Zoe said.
Zoe’s assistant, Gavin, shook Rosetta’s hand too, letting himself hold it for a little too long.
“What lovely skin you’ve got,” he said.
“You think so?” Rosetta said, raising her hand and making each finger move independently. “It’s made of synthetic stem cells, grown in the lab and then grafted onto my robotic arm. It’s a great improvement on the plastic sheeting I had before.”