“All quiet from here on,” Coulthard said and waved Beaumont forward.
They fell into practised unison; moved with determined caution.
“I’m a glowing target up here,” Beaumont whispered nervously.
“That’s why the new boy takes point,” Coulthard said. A soft wave of giggles passed through the squad before the sergeant hushed them.
Dillman patted Beaumont on one shoulder. “I got your back, Donkey.”
Beaumont’s torch beam shot back into the group as he looked around. “Don’t call me that!”
Laughter rippled again. Brown grinned. Poor sap. Caught petting a donkey back in Kandahar, just a lonely kid far from home taking some comfort by hugging the soft, furry creature’s neck. Of course, he’d been spotted, photographed and by the time he got back to barracks the story had him balls deep in the poor animal.
“Enough!” Coulthard snapped. “Are we fucking professionals or not?”
Their mirth stilled and they crept forward again. The ground sloped downwards and Spencer paused every fifty yards or so to place a marker. After about three hundred yards the passage opened out into a wider cavern. Something lay rucked up and definitely man-made on the far side.
Weapons instantly trained on it and Beaumont moved cautiously forward. “False alarm,” he called back after a moment, his voice relaxed and light. Relieved. “Someone’s been here, there are blankets, signs of a fire, an empty canteen. But it looks months old, at least.”
The squad relaxed slightly as Beaumont shone his torch in a wide arc, illuminating the cave. Nothing but rough, curved rock. A few small fissures striated the walls on one side, black gaps into the unknown, but nothing big enough for even a child to get through. On the far side, a larger gap yawned darkly, a tunnel leading away and down. Large rocks lay scattered around the opening.
Coulthard nodded the squad forward.
“Looks like these have recently been moved,” Gladstone said.
Brown moved in to see better. “Looks like this passage was blocked up and those fuckers cleared the way.”
Dillman kicked at a couple of broken stones. “I guess they weren’t so keen to ambush us here and are looking for a better option.”
Brown shook his head. “Why would this passage have been blocked? And by who?”
“Emergency bolt hole they knew about?” Coulthard mused. “Move on.”
The tunnel beyond was around three metres in diameter, sloping down again. Beaumont’s was the only light, but in the otherwise total blackness it made the tunnel bright. Shadows flickered off the irregular surface.
Beaumont took his flashlight from his helmet and held it at arm’s length to one side. “If they do ambush and shoot at the light…”
After a couple of hundred metres, Brown, bringing up the rear, paused and looked back. “Hold up,” he said quietly.
Coulthard glanced over his shoulder. “What’s up, Doc?”
“Kill the light, Beaumont.”
“Gladly!”
There was a soft click and the tunnel sank into blackness. Within seconds, their eyes began to adjust to something other than the dark. In crevices on the walls and ceiling of the passage, even here and there on the floor, a soft blue glow emanated. Almost imperceptible, easier to see from their peripheral vision, a pale luminescence. No, Brown thought. Phosphorescence. He crouched and looked closely into one crack. He pulled out a pocketknife, flicked open the blade and dug inside the crevice. The blade came out with a sickly blue smudge on it.
“Some kind of lichen,” he said. “I’ve heard of this kind of stuff, but always thought it was green.”
Gladstone pulled his googles down and flicked the adjustment. “Doesn’t matter what colour it is, it’s giving enough light for night vision.”
“Lucky us,” Coulthard said. “Goggles on, people. Keep that light off, Beaumont.”
“Thank fuck, Sarge.”
Brown pulled his own goggles down and watched the squad move forward in green monochrome. He was glad they didn’t need harsh torchlight anymore, but the glowing blue lichen gave him the creeps. He stood and followed before they got too far ahead, shifting his heavy medical pack as he moved.
They continued silently for several minutes, Spencer periodically dropping markers. At a fork they tried the left-hand path and quickly met a dead end. Backtracking to the main passage, they travelled further and found a small cave off to one side, too low to stand upright. No passages led from it.
“Looks like this one tunnel is gonna keep heading down,” Beaumont said. His voice had lost some of its excitement.
Coulthard raised a fist bringing them to a halt. “How far?”
Spencer checked the tablet that shone in their night vision even though its brightness was down to minimum. “Seven hundred and eighty-three metres.”
“Three quarters of a k in, really?” Dillman whispered.
He sounded as nervous as Brown felt. The strange lichen continued, scattered randomly in cracks and fissures. Occasionally, a larger patch would glow like a bright light but for the most part, it was soft streaks like veins in the rocks.
“Move on,” Coulthard said.
After another couple of minutes, Spencer whispered, “That’s one kilometre.”
Before any discussion could be had about that fact, Beaumont hissed and cursed. “Sarge, got something here.”
The squad sank into fighting readiness and crept apart to cover the width of the tunnel.
“Bones,” Beaumont said. “Just a skeleton.”
Coulthard turned. “Doc, go check.”
Brown went to Beaumont and looked down on the bones lying at the curve of the tunnel wall. Streaks of the blue lichen wrapped the skeleton here and there, like snail trails. He crouched for a closer look. “Male, adult. No discerning marks of trauma that I can see at first glance.”
He took a penlight torch from his pocket and lifted his goggles. “Mind your eyes.”
The squad looked away as he clicked on the light and had a closer look. The bones lay scattered, no flesh or connecting tissue remained to hold them together. “There’s a kind of residue,” Brown said quietly. “Like a gel or something.” He took a pen from his pocket and dragged the tip along one femur. It gathered a small wave of clear, viscous ichor. It was odourless.
He put one index finger to the same bone and gently touched the stuff. It seemed inert. As he brought it close to his face to inspect, he frowned, then pressed his finger to the bone again. “This is warm.”
Tension tightened the squad behind him.
“What’s that?” Coulthard asked.
Brown swallowed, heart hammering. He looked at his fingertip then gripped the bone, felt the heat in his palm. “This skeleton is warm. And too clean to have rotted here.”
“What the hell?” Beaumont demanded, his voice quavering.
“You shitting us?” Gladstone asked. His voice was stronger than Beaumont’s but with fear still evident.
Brown held one palm over the skeleton, only an inch or so away from touching, moved it back and forth. “It’s warm all over,” he said weakly. His mind tried to process the information but kept hitting dead ends. The cold rock under his knee seemed to mock him.
“Warm?” Coulthard asked.
Brown’s heart skipped and doubled-timed again as he spotted something beneath the bony corpse. “Hey, Dillman.”
“What?”
“When you scoped those fucks we were following, what did you see that you thought was funny?”
A tense silence filled the space for a moment. Then Dillman said, “One of them had a big fucking gold dollar sign on a chain around his neck. Fancied himself a rapper or some shit.”
Brown used his pocketknife to hook up a chain from where it hung inside the stark white ribcage. With a toothy clicking, he hauled it up link by link. Eventually a metal dollar sign emerged from between the bones, its surface no longer gold but a tarnished, blackened alloy.