by C. J. Waller
“Guys…” There’s a guarded hint of worry to Janos’s voice. I hadn’t realised he had wandered off further into the room, I’m so mesmerised by what is all around me. He’s crouching off just ahead of us in a darkened corner. And for the first time ever, he looks seriously worried.
“What is it?” I say.
“You’d better come over.”
There it is again. That nasty knot in my guts that says ‘no’. But I go over anyway. Janos stands up. He’s switched his headlamp back on. I follow its beam. For the first time, I notice that the smell – that unpleasant rotted sweetness – is stronger in this corner.
At first, I can’t quite work out what it is. It looks like a dark lump, full of curves and shadows. Then the curves begin to knit together, and the shadows define.
My hand flies to my mouth as I bite back the urge to gag.
It’s a person.
And judging by the smell, they’ve been dead for a while.
Janos shakes his head, and his light strobes over the body.
“Who is it?” I whisper. It seems disrespectful to speak any louder.
“I don’t know,” Janos says. He steps back and allows the other three enough space to join us.
“Jesus,” Fi says. Jesus, indeed. She hunkers down and tentatively pulls the body back. It flops back with an unpleasant squelch, and we all recoil as the stench intensifies.
“Ugh… how long do you think they’ve been here?” Marcus asks, his voice muffled by his arm.
Fi shakes her head. “It’s hard to tell. There aren't any insects down here, and the – oh Jesus Christ, that smells horrible – atmospherics are unknown, so it could be, I dunno, a week? Give or take. I’m not an expert at this.”
“Who is it?” I ask again.
“Looks like Clark,” says Fi. “There’s what looks like a tattoo on his wrist.”
Janos nods.
“I think so too. Right height. Right… body shape.” He swallows hard. “What are we going to do with him?”
“Nothing,” Marcus says. “What can we do?”
He’s got a point, but I can’t help but feel it’s wrong to leave him down here.
“Well, at least we know what happened to one of the Alpha Team,” Brendan says.
“Do we?” I ask. “How did he die?”
Fi purses her lips and makes a weird smacking noise between her teeth; all the while, she is studying the body.
“Head trauma, I think,” she indicates the back of his head. “There’s a lot of blood there.”
“So someone hit him over the head?” says Marcus.
“Either that or he… fell? Look, I don’t know, and I wouldn’t want to speculate. Either way, this doesn’t fill me with confidence. Alpha Team were experts. That’s why they were the Alpha Team. For this to happen to them is… disconcerting to say the least.”
Fi pauses to chew on a hangnail, a sure sign that she is nervous. She quickly realises what she is doing and drops her hand. She knows that by displaying her nerves, she risks unsettling all of us. It isn’t arrogance. It’s a fact. Out of all of us, except maybe Janos, she is by far the most experienced, and is as tough as nails. I can’t help but think that if she is disconcerted, the rest of us should be nothing short of downright terrified.
“So… where are the rest of them?” I ask. “We’ve found Clark… I can’t see any other evidence of Alpha Team’s presence at all.”
“Maybe the thing in the water did get them,” Brendan says, gazing out of the nearest window. It looks eerily calm out there. I have no idea what process is illuminating the water, but as I watch, I see small schools of fish dart past, little green-tinged lights twinkling down the sides of their bodies betraying their deep-sea heritage. One by one, we all turn to the window. We should be marvelling at what is laid out before us – who thought we’d find fish down here? – but we can’t. Everything is too huge, too surreal, to allow us even to contemplate what we are experiencing.
Other small things dart past, little squid-like things about eight inches long. They have huge eyes and are a mottled grey in colour. Janos steps towards the pane, his brows drawn.
“Belemnites? He says. He voices it like a question, even though we know he doesn’t mean it. “There’s a whole Jurassic ecosystem out there.”
As if on command, something large and fast darts out of the blue. It’s about eight feet long, with a streamlined, dolphin-like body. It snaps up a mouthful of the belemnite creatures and then with a flick of its tail, it’s gone.
I can’t breathe properly. I know what that was. I’ve seen fossil ones nearly everywhere. The Posidonienschiefer is full of them.
“Ichthyosaur,” I whisper. Janos faces me and nods, his expression curiously slack.
“This place is amazing,” Brendan says. “It’s like the ocean time forgot. We're so lucky!”
The rest of us glance back to the sad remains of Raymond Clark, caving expert, extreme survivalist. He wasn't so lucky. Once upon a time, I would have agreed with Brendan. Now, all I want to do is get away and forget it ever existed.
Chapter Six
We watch for a few minutes longer, but nothing else makes an appearance. Well, why should they? It’s a big stretch of water out there. By silent agreement, we decide to leave Clark’s remains where they are. What would be the point in moving them? It’s not like we could take them back to his loved ones. We haven’t even worked out how to reach our radio, let alone a strategy that might get us out of this place.
At the other end of the galley is another ribbed corridor. This one is shorter, and after only one turn of the corkscrew, there’s another archway with more blue light spilling from it.
This room isn’t as large as the gallery upstairs (heh, funny how you think of those things in such human terms even when blatantly not human. We haven't come across anything resembling a bathroom, and there aren’t even any stairs) but it is no less impressive. This one is square with a circular design carved into the floor. Around it, sit six huge chair-like constructions, like thrones for kings of old.
And in one, sits a figure.
The suffocating feeling is back. The quality of the light isn’t so great that we can make out any details, but it’s obvious whoever (or whatever) it is, they’re too small for what they're sitting on.
“H… hello?” Janos calls out. His usually steady voice cracks a little. “Who is it?”
There is no reply.
He takes a tentative step into the room. Nothing stirs.
“Hello?” he tries again.
Nothing.
Fi follows him, then me, then Brendan, and finally Marcus, who has his arms wrapped around himself as if he’s trying to seek comfort from them.
Still the figure does not move.
“Is it… dead?” I ask.
Janos doesn’t answer. Instead, he continues to creep forward.
“Oh, dear sweet Lord… Yuri?”
Yuri? What? Then it dawns on me. Yuri Blavatsky. Another member of the Alpha Team. Now I can’t breathe fast enough. My heart drives my lungs like a piston until I feel as if I am going to pass out.
“Oh, no,” Fi whispers, and picks up the pace to draw level with Janos. “Is he…”
“What do you think? Does he look alive to you?” Despite the panic that grips me, I can’t help but feel for Janos. Yuri was his friend. They’d climbed together a lot in the past, and mapped out a huge virgin cave system in Bolivia together.
“He doesn’t smell,” Brendan says, and I almost slap him for his insensitivity. What a thing to say.
Again, we gather around the corpse of an Alpha Team member. A curious feeling of deja-vu settles over me. Yuri is sitting with his eyes closed, his teeth gritted. In death, he had gripped the arms of the chair, and it looks like he never let go. It’s weird. He kind of looks like one of those pictures of astronauts during their high velocity training, testing to see how many Gs they can withstand. Fi shakes her head, and Marcus wipes his mouth with one hand to disg
uise the way his jaw is trembling. Even Brendan has the courtesy to glance down at the floor in respect. Janos mutters something under his breath – a prayer, I guess – and leans over to touch Yuri on the arm.
At this slight pressure, Yuri’s body begins to convulse. We all jump back, uttering barks of shock. My heart just about gives up when Yuri starts to scream, his eyes now wide open and staring.
“Oh, dear Jesus – he’s alive!” Marcus whispers, both his hands covering his face, like a small child hiding from the Bogeyman.
“Help him!” Janos pleads. “Help him!”
I don’t know what to do. The desire is there, but I’m rooted to the spot, paralysed. Yuri is trying to wrench his hands from the chair, but they’re stuck fast. Fi muscles in and grabs one of his arms whilst Yuri keeps emitting high-pitched shrieks. She pulls, but nothing happens. Janos takes his other arm and mimics Fi, but it's no use. Yuri's whole body continues to shake and blood streams from his left nostril. Marcus and I share a helpless, terrified look.
Then, as quickly as it began, it’s over. Something in the chair clicks, and Yuri’s hands are released. Fi topples over – she was still trying to free him. Yuri slumps forward.
“Is he…” Brendan asks.
Janos reaches out with a shaking hand and presses two fingers against the side of Yuri’s neck. He shakes his head.
“No. He’s alive. Just.”
Fi and Janos help Yuri out of the chair. He’s out cold. He looks gaunt, lying their stretched out on the floor, and the blood from his nostril is smeared all over the lower half of his face, making him look like some cheap make-up job in a zombie B movie. It’s clear from the way we all stare at him that none of us has a clue what to do. Yeah, we all took the advanced first aid course, but (unsurprisingly) that doesn’t cover finding emaciated team mates trapped in a murder chair.
“We can’t leave him here,” Janos says after a long stretch of silence. I find myself nodding in unconscious agreement.
“We may not have a choice,” Fi says. Janos snaps his head around angrily, but before he can protest, Fi continues. “He’s barely alive. He’s definitely too weak to even contemplate trying to get him back to the other shore.”
“But we can’t leave him here,” Janos says, again. “He needs proper medical attention-”
“You think I can't see that? Hey, anyone got a cell phone? Maybe I should just dial up 911 and get an ambulance down here.” Fi's tone drips with sarcasm and I wince when Janos's expression hardens.
“If we leave him here, he will die,” Janos says through gritted teeth.
“And if we take him out there, he'll die. Either way, we're potentially looking at another corpse. In the long run, this is the best place for him.”
In the long run? No. But for the time being, I have to agree with Fi. I can understand Janos's desire to get his friend out of this place, but whether he likes it or not, this is the safest place for him.
“Look, Janos... I get it, okay? I get it.” Fi risks reaching out and touching him on the arm. He tenses for a moment and we all hold our breath, but instead of punching her, Janos lets out a long, defeated sigh. “Until one of us can get to the radio and let Rescue know what has happened here, I say we don’t move him. We keep him as comfortable as we can and…” she trails off.
No one says anything to that. No one has to. We take it in turns to explore the rest of the room. We decided pretty quickly that one of us should stay with Yuri whilst everyone else went off, but it was clear from the way everyone glanced at him that no one really wanted to be the one told they have to stay. So, in the end, we sort out a little system, a tried and tested method to settle difficult decisions the world over. We drew straws.
I picked the short one.
“We’ll be back soon,” Janos says, and pats me on the shoulder. “Promise.”
Fi gives me a wry smile and the four of them set off, exploring the room and the environs beyond. All the while I can hear them, I’m kind of okay. Yuri’s breathing is shallow but steady, and there’s enough light in here for me to get my notebook out. Huh. Isn’t that ironic? We’ve lost every other way of communication apart from the written word. I must remember to write to Steadmarsh & Sons and commend them on their field journals – they really are waterproof and capable of withstanding any environment.
Without anything else to do, I sit cross-legged on the cold floor and begin to jot down my thoughts, which are nothing more than random words. Lost. Ancient? Who built this? Technology beyond anything humanity is capable of. I think. Does anything still work? Who? Why? What is in the water? Is it natural?
Are we doing to die down here?
I stare at the last question. Well, are we? I don’t know if I’m ready to even contemplate the answer. At the moment, everything feels so surreal; I’m still waiting to wake up. Well, maybe that’s it. Maybe this is just a really vivid anxiety dream, and in reality, I’m still back at the barracks, fast aslee-
“Water…”
I drop my pencil.
“…water…”
“Oh my God. Oh, dear Lord. Yuri? Are you okay?” My notebook tumbles from my hands as I scrabble forwards. Yuri’s eyes are still closed, but his lips are moving.
“…water…”
Water. Of course. He’s been stuck in that chair. I fight with the strap of my water canister and shakily hold it out. Oh, right, yeah. Way to go, Meg. Exactly how is he going to hold it? I’m going to have to hold his head up and feed it to him. But the thought of touching him makes my skin crawl. I feel ashamed to say that, but it’s the truth.
“Guys?” I call out. “Guys? Where are you? It's Yuri. He's awake.” I try (and fail) to keep the panic out of my voice. “Guys?!”
“…water…”
“Hang on, Yuri, just hang in there…”
Oh, get a grip, girl! The man needs water, and you’re dithering because he looks like he’s sick? This could be it – if you don’t help him now, he could die. Then what would the others think? But the thought of touching his bony neck, of cradling his blood covered head with its papery, grey skin, makes me feel ill.
“…please…”
His eyes flutter open, exposing yellowing corneas. He’s trying to look at me, at the person who is at once his saviour and his torturer. I reach out to him, but snatch my hand back just before I can touch him.
“Come on, Meg,” I tell myself. “He’s another person. He needs your help. Come on, you can do this...”
This time, I slide my hand under his neck. The skin there feels surprisingly smooth. Despite his ragged appearance, Yuri isn’t an old man, so I don’t know why I’m surprised. I swallow down a bloom of bile, disgusted with myself that I’ve even reacted in that way. He lets out a long, hissing sigh and I almost drop him in shock.
“Oh, dear Jesus... no. No. Get it together, Meg. Keep going.”
I keep talking to myself, my internal cheerleader back flipping and pom-pom shaking for all she is worth. Finally, I raise my water bottle to Yuri’s dry lips and trickle a small amount over them. Most of it runs down his chin, but some hits the mark. I feel him swallow.
“…more…”
I tip the bottle a little more. His gulps are stronger now. I begin to calm down a little, feeling better that I did the right thing. A little part of me frets that I might do him some damage by giving him too much water, but sod it. Too much water is infinitely better than not enough.
Yuri’s looking at me now through heavy eyes. My brief moment of do-gooder self-satisfaction is punctured. I don’t like the way he is looking at me. Like I’m not really there-
His hand shoots up and grabs me by the back of my neck. It happens so fast, I can’t even squawk out a protest. I drop the canister, and water spills down his front, but he doesn’t seem to care. He drags my face close to his, and I can feel the heat of his breath upon my cheek.
“So cold…” he whispers. “So long. In there. I know. I saw. They did it. They’re here. In here. Cold now.”
Finally, I find my voice and let out a ragged screech. It feels like my heart is in my head, pounding against my temples as Yuri keeps on babbling, sometimes in English, sometimes in Russian, a jumbled mash I can't follow.
“Meg!” A voice calls out, a blessed, beautiful voice that isn’t mine or this mad man’s. Another pair of hands grasps me and prises Yuri’s skeletal fingers from the back of my neck, allowing me to scramble backwards. Yuri lets out a bark of laughter and slumps back to the ground whilst I battle down a huge, salty lump in my throat. I’m not going to cry. That just isn't an option. Not going to cry. Not going to.
“Are you all right?” Janos asks.
Okay, so maybe I am going to cry. I don’t want to, but I can’t help it. Janos wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls my head to his chest. Part of me wants to pull back, but another, bigger part of me knows this is exactly what I need.
I hear running footsteps approach.
“What the hell happened?” Marcus asks.
“I heard Megan scream,” Janos says. “So I ran back. Yuri… Yuri…”
From his prone position on the floor, Yuri giggles.
“He’s awake?”
“Oh yeah,” I say. “He’s awake. He… He attacked me.”
“What?” Marcus sounds shocked.
“I don’t think it was an attack,” Janos says. I pull away from him, a sudden flush of fury filling me.
“Oh, and I suppose you saw enough to come to that conclusion, did you? You were close enough to see what was in his eyes?”
“Megan, calm down,” Janos says. “He grabbed you, yes – but did he hurt you? Really?”
I rub the back of my neck. No, I suppose not. He might have scared the hell out of me, but he didn’t hurt me. Not really. But, for some reason, I don’t really want to admit that to Janos. So, instead, I shrug. Good old shrug. Answers everything.