Only then did he turn and look back down on the settlement. The only movement was Wiggins and Davies far below, coming out of one of the huts that was still roofed. Nothing else stirred the whole length of the glacial valley apart from the lone eagle that now circled silently in a high thermal overhead as if keeping a wary eye on them. It screeched as if annoyed at being noticed. Banks looked west, retracing their route. Far off to the south and west, a thin line of sea could be seen shimmering on the horizon. There were no jet trails in the sky, no boats out in the ocean, and no sign of civilization at all, as if the squad had been dropped several hundred, if not thousand, years back in time.
Banks was still looking at the view when he heard Hynd’s Zippo clatter and click as the sergeant lit a smoke. Banks turned towards him and caught a whiff, not of tobacco but of something putrid. It was only a faint tang but he’d smelled death often enough to recognize it immediately.
“It’s coming from inside, Cap,” Wilkins said, the color having suddenly gone from his cheeks.
“Don’t worry yourself, lad. Nobody’s been here for years; if there’s anything dead in there, it’s long past being able to do us any harm.”
He’d spoken with more confidence than he felt as he switched on the light on the barrel of his rifle and headed into the cave.
The smell got worse fast and Banks tried to breathe shallowly as the cave narrowed, concentrating the odor further.
The cave walls were rough and unworked, leading him to believe this might be a natural formation worked into the stone by weathering, ice, and water over the years since the last ice age. But worked or not, it quickly became clear that someone had lived here; someone, or something. White, bleached bones lay strewn in alcoves. Some were obviously animal, large deer in the main, but others were all-too-clearly human.
Hynd came up behind Banks and knelt, focusing his light beam on a pile and pointed at several grooves along the length of a long, all-too-human thighbone.
“Teeth marks?”
“Looks like it, Sarge,” Banks replied. “But as I’ve said already, these are old, more than sixty, nearly seventy years if I had to hazard a guess. Whatever happened here, we’ve missed it.”
Hynd didn’t look convinced but followed at Banks’ back with young Wilkins bringing up the rear as they went in deeper, now in darkness, having left the light from the cave mouth behind.
After ten paces, the passageway opened out into a larger area. Banks expected to see a rudimentary hearth, maybe a bed, or at least some sign of habitation, but there was only an empty space, a rough stone floor, and rock walls. The chamber was approximately cubical with smooth walls in the main apart from the one directly opposite their entranceway that looked strangely rounded and ridged, furrowed and almost organic in texture. The hackles rose at the back of Banks’ neck and his guts roiled; it didn’t matter that his senses were telling him that there was no danger here — his battle-hardened hunches were telling him otherwise.
“Looks like we’ve come on a wild-goose chase,” he said, already backing away. “There’s nowt for us here. Let’s head back and see if Wiggo’s got anything.”
“Hold on, Cap,” Hynd said. “What the fuck is this?”
He held his light beam fixed on the ridged and furrowed section of the wall and stepped forward closer, targeting the beam on one particular spot. He pointed at the area, the light wavering slightly as if the sergeant’s hand was trembling.
“Tell me that’s not a fucking hand.”
Banks stepped up alongside the sergeant and added his own light to the area. He had to agree with the sergeant’s assessment. It looked like a hand, a heavily lined palm and five stubby fingers hewn in rock rather than flesh and more than twice the size of a normal man’s hand. And now that he’d seen it, he stepped back, moved the light slightly to one sight, and saw the rest of a wrist, arm, and shoulder.
“There’s more,” Wilkins said quietly from their back. “Come back here; once you see it, you can see the whole thing.”
The two men stepped back to Wilkins’ position and all three of them shone their beams on the far wall.
There were four distinct figures in the stone, crowded together as if they had all crawled up into the rock and fallen asleep in a huddle, and Banks couldn’t say whether they were carved by some crazed sculptor or were once living creatures, now somehow embedded in the rock. Three of them looked to be truly ancient, scarred and riven by time, cracked and run through with pencil-thick fault lines where pale moss and lichen clung precariously to life.
The fourth and by far the largest of the figures was different again. It was the one they’d seen the hand of and by contrast, it looked to have been put into the rock far more recently.
Banks saw a shinier patch of rock reflecting light back from his beam and stepped forward again for a closer look. A large part of the leg, from thigh to ankle, of one of the older figures had been chiseled away — up close, you could see the tool marks. He remembered his reading of the journal.
“Fucking specimens and samples,” he muttered.
“What’s that, Cap?” Hynd said.
Banks turned to the sergeant.
“This is where their troubles all started. They should have left well enough alone. Break out the C4, Sarge. We’ve got some sanitizing to do.”
They set charges both inside the main cavern and in the corridor that led to the outside then Banks had the three of them retreat almost a third of the way back down the slope, stopping under a slight overhang that should give them shelter from any falling debris.
“Fire in the hole,” he said and triggered the remote.
A muffled whump echoed around the glacial valley, followed quickly by a shower of fine gravel. Scree loosened, shifted, and ran away from just below them in a shotgun spatter, setting off a small avalanche that raised a cloud of gray dust and took more debris almost all the way to where Wiggins and Davies stood on the valley floor below. The eagle overhead screeched twice in a high-pitched yelp of concern. Finally, the dust settled and the glacier fell quiet.
“Should I hop back up for a look, Cap?” Hynd asked. “Check that we got it all?”
Banks stood back as far as he dared on the ledge and looked up. All that he could see of the cave mouth was a pile of fresh rubble.
“Nah, fuck it. Job’s done. If anybody wants to come all the way up here to check on our workmanship, they’re welcome to it. Let’s see what Wiggo’s got to say, have a fag, and a cup of coffee, then double-time it back to the shore. We’ll use the rest of the C4 on the huts, finish off that whisky, then bugger off home sharpish. Yon supply boat should be waiting for us by the time we get back.”
They descended the narrow trail gingerly, aware that some of the ground underfoot may have been loosened by the blast and subsequent avalanche, and Banks was relieved when they all got safely to the valley floor without any sprained ankles. His relief was short-lived, for the look on Wiggins’ face when they walked over to the tumbled huts told him that something was amiss.
The thing that had Wiggins concerned was in the largest hut of the small settlement and one of the few not to be either caved in or ravaged by fire. Banks found the reason why it had been spared as soon as he ducked inside the domed building.