Byrne shook his head to clear his thoughts. That line of thought was patently absurd. There had to be another, more logical solution; he just needed to come at it from a different angle. He was exhausted and hadn’t slept in several days. Things would undoubtedly make more sense after a good night’s sleep, although he wasn’t overly optimistic that would happen anytime soon.
The canopy remained silent, save for the dripping of condensation working its way inexorably to the ground, which did nothing to suppress the sounds of their passage. Despite their attempted stealth, Byrne could pinpoint the locations of the others around him, if only by the whispering of leaves grazing their isolation suits or the faint slurping of boots being drawn from the mud. Byrne was getting better at concealing the sounds of his passage, but he had a long way to go to catch up with the others, who maintained a diamond formation around him.
The intonation of the dripping changed. As did the faint whistling noise of the wind through the trees.
Byrne slowed and surveyed his surroundings. The branches overhead nearly blocked out the sunlight, only a fraction of which reached the ground in palpable columns of light. It diffused into the upper reaches ahead of him, dramatically lighting boughs that appeared noticeably less dense and shivered on a breeze he couldn’t feel through the oppressive humidity.
He resumed walking, alternately glancing from the trail to the treetops. The others passed through the bushes like specters. Their pace slowed. They obviously recognized the same thing he had. There was a change in the air. The goosebumps rose on his shoulders and neck. He felt the faint movement of air, but there was something else, something he couldn’t quite define. He watched the branches overhead. There was no sign of life. No motion. No sound. Even the metronomic dripping seemed to have ceased. And yet still it felt as though something was up there. Watching him. Tracking his every movement.
Byrne looked back down and pushed through a wall of saplings taller than he was.
Richards stood in front of him, silhouetted against the golden aura that passed through the canopy. The others appeared to either side of him and stopped when they reached the edge of a sheer cliff.
The whistling of the wind almost sounded like it came from beneath them.
Byrne approached the ledge and looked down into an enormous pit like the one into which they’d parachuted, only this one was so deep the light barely reached the bottom, where it shimmered on the surface of a murky brown pool.
The trail they’d been following since Daru terminated at their feet.
The diamond mine appeared to have been abandoned for decades. The spiral walkway that wound around its circumference was narrow and crumbling and often vanished behind cascades of roots and vines.
“Give me some more light,” Richards said.
Graves clicked on the underbarrel beam on his rifle and shined it down into the pit. It spotlighted the surface of the water and penetrated its murky depths.
“Jesus,” Warren whispered.
Byrne stepped backward so quickly that he tripped over his own feet. He hit the ground with a shout that echoed throughout the still forest.
The golden aura darkened to a rustic orange then to a deep crimson as the sun descended toward the Atlantic Ocean. Their route into the pit was even more hazardous than it had looked from above. The earth had fractured as it eroded and buckled beneath them with every step, forcing them to walk with their backs pressed against the uneven walls, as far from the edges as they could get. Chunks of dirt and rock broke loose and hit the water with echoing splashes and the occasional sickening thuck.
Byrne dialed up his respirator and tried not to think about how horrible the stench must have been. The bodies nearest the surface didn’t appear to float so much as rest upon the ones beneath. The vile water was soupy with gobs of flesh. There was no telling how deep the pit was, but the prospect of there being several hundred men, women, and children in its depths made his stomach clench. What kind of monsters would cast them into the pit so unceremoniously when setting fire to the village to incinerate the remains would have been far more respectful, not to mention sanitary? If the carcasses hadn’t been roiling with disease before, they certainly were now.
He wasn’t a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, but the manner of disposal seemed almost sacrilegious. These people had been thrown away like garbage, cast aside with no more thought than one might spare for a fast food wrapper. If Boko Haram was indeed responsible, then mankind was lost. Any religion – no matter the inaccuracy of the interpretation – that could spawn a faction capable of such callous disregard for the sanctity of life was a virus that needed to be eradicated before it damned the entire species to a mindless, predatory existence.
There were entire sections where the trail had entirely eroded away. The others were better trained at picking their way down the exposed rock using the vegetation as leverage than he was, but the prospect of falling into that horrible pit strengthened his grip every bit as much as his resolve. He would have been content to examine the remains through the scope of a rifle, and probably would have if the bodies had been in better condition. Water was notoriously unkind to human remains, which absorbed fluid to the point of becoming unrecognizable gelatinous blobs. After this long, he didn’t hold out much hope that he’d be able to determine the mechanism by which these people had been envenomated, let alone be able to collect anything resembling a useful sample of blood or tissue. He was in way over his head and everyone knew it, but he was also their only hope of figuring this out quickly enough to prevent this kind of carnage from happening to any number of unsuspecting towns, whether here or around the world. For all they knew, even now a man could be walking into Times Square with the means of wiping out Midtown.
A haze of mosquitos hung over the water, through which black flies twirled lazily. They alighted on the parts of the corpses that broke the surface and formed a living, seething second skin.
Byrne descended the ramp into ankle-deep water beside Richards, who shielded his eyes from the setting sun as he stared high up into the distant canopy with an indecipherable expression on his face. Warren paced nervously while Anthony and Graves kept their rifles trained on the forest floor fifty feet up. Byrne realized that down here they were at a serious tactical disadvantage and hurriedly knelt beside the nearest body before he lost his nerve.
The man’s black skin had faded to a whitish-gray and split when Byrne attempted to use a stick to draw the remains closer, forcing him to resort to using his hands. He took the man by the forearm and cringed when his fingers sunk into the waterlogged flesh.
“I don’t like this,” Warren said.
“You and me both,” Anthony said. “Hurry it up, would you?”
“You’re more than welcome to help,” Byrne said as he dragged the dead man from the deeper water onto the ledge.
Richards unslung his rifle and seated it against his shoulder. He leaned against the earthen wall and used the scope to look straight up into the rapidly darkening canopy, hundreds of feet overhead.
Byrne carefully rolled the man onto his back. His eyes remained open, but a film clouded his irises, making them appear to have rolled all the way back into his head. His features were swollen and misshapen, his neck engorged and goitrous. He was naked, save for his underwear, which had taken on the greenish-brown color of the water.