He drew an involuntary gasp at the tableau he found there. Around the chamber were four mummified human corpses; dry, taut skin stretched thinly over bone, brittle hair still attached to the skulls, perfectly preserved in the arid atmosphere of the edifice. It was clear from their sizes that they might be a family. Two small bodies, children, lay in a crude moss-stuffed mattress on the floor, clinging to each other, as if in their sleep. One was a boy, dressed in a nightshirt, the other, a girl, in a dress. The body of a man, sat on a rough chair, slumped over a makeshift table constructed of rough-hewn planks. He was dressed in a shirt and trousers, with braces. The remains of a once full and bushy beard now straggled wispily from his chin. On the table was an oil lamp. The body of a woman lay sprawled on the floor, as if trying to drag herself towards the children. Her hair was tied in a bun at the back of her scalp and she wore an ankle-length skirt and a blouse. The skirt and dirty white underskirt had ridden up to expose the shrunken and desiccated legs and feet still laced in worn leather boots.
A dark and terrifying thought began to uncoil in Atkins’ mind. His mouth went dry, and he suddenly found it hard to breathe, as if all the air in the chamber had been sucked away. It felt as if he were standing on the edge of a vertiginous black chasm.
Porgy came back from a brief exploration of further chambers beyond that one. “There are three more chambers like this one. Bodies in each of ’em.”
“Like these?” Atkins said in a hoarse croak, his mouth dry with fear.
“Yes, poor buggers.”
He felt his stomach screwed into a knot, as tight as that he felt when about to go over the top. A cold sweat broke out all over his body, chilling him. He shivered as he numbly followed Porgy into the next chamber; he could hear the pulse of blood in his ears, and his heart beat loudly in his chest, straining to burst out of his ribcage.
Beyond them, in the next chamber, Mercy held the torch high so he could see. Here was another group of people. On one side of the chamber were two bodies laid out and covered with sacking sheets. They had obviously died before the others and been laid out with the respect due to the dead. The other body had not. It belonged to a woman wearing a small white cap on her head, wisps of ginger hair escaping from underneath it over her brown, parchment-like skin. The body was sat slumped against a wall on another mattress, a tartan blanket covering her legs. Shadows cast by the torch danced in her sockets and her lips were drawn back, exposing rotten teeth. Her skeletal fingers were covered with a translucent film of skin, and they lay over a black object that sat on the blanket in her lap.
Atkins squatted down, his hands trembling, as he gently tried to pull the object from her hands. He winced as a finger snapped off, but retrieved the object. Covered in black leather, it was a book; embossed in gold on the front were the words Holy Bible. He opened it up. There was writing on the fly page in a neat copperplate hand. “This gift is of Ichabod Wallace to his beloved daughter Eliza on the occasion of her marriage to James Edwin Bleeker, April 1832.”
These were no urmen. These were humans, from Earth.
Atkins staggered back to the first chamber in a daze. Unlike him, the others hadn’t quite grasped the significance yet.
“The poor little things,” Nellie said, as she draped a blanket over their small frames.
“Blimey, even you couldn’t get much meat off this lot, Gutsy,” Gazette said.
“Maybe not,” he replied, “But my wife would damn well try and sell ’em if she could. Don’t let a scrap go to waste, she don’t.”
Gazette took in the butcher’s ample frame. “So, every little bit gets used, does it?” he asked, with a wink, indicating Gutsy’s trousers.
“Get away!” said Mercy. “You know what they say about butchers’ wives, only the best cuts for them, am I right, Gutsy?”
Gutsy replied with a lecherous grin and a wink, “Oh, aye, lad.”
Nellie gave a discreet, lady-like cough. It had more power than a dozen barking NCOs and resulted in a muttered chorus of embarrassed apologies.
Chandar was in its element. To the chatt, this was a treasure trove of urmen artefacts. It hardly knew where to start. It had learnt, though, not to touch the bodies, however much it might desire to.
“Here,” said Porgy sombrely. “This was on the table.”
It was a journal. Atkins leafed through the diary, taking in snatches of information like a hungry man tearing at bread.
They were a party of pioneers from Oak Springs, Illinois in the United States, emigrants under the captaincy of Edwin Bleeker, travelling west on the California Trail looking for a new life in California. It seemed that they, like the British Empire, felt they had a ‘manifest destiny.’ There were eighty-six people in the party and fifty-four wagons pulled by oxen and horses. They had made it to the frontier and Independence, Missouri, where, in March 1846, they started the two thousand mile trek that would take them north towards the Great Salt Lake along the California Trail.
Atkins didn’t understand the geography, but at some point, there had been an argument as to which way the overlanders should proceed. Oh, there were names he recognised from old Western Adventure story magazines — Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie — but the rest meant nothing. Having made it to the Rock Independence in late June 1846, where the travellers had carved their names, they set off again. More names: Fort Bridger, Sheep Rock, Devil’s Gate, Salt Lake.
A guide they had picked along the way, one Barnaby Witger, advocated a short cut, the Campbell Cut-off through the Wasatch Mountains, and across the Great Salt desert towards the Humbolt River.
From the earliest diary entries, it was clear it wasn’t an easy journey, between exhausted oxen, broken axels, and deaths from cholera.
Right now, though, the events on Earth were of little importance to him. His hands shook as he looked for entries telling of their arrival here, in this place, on this world.
He flicked forwards until he found it. August 14th 1846. He skimmed through from there.
August 14th. Today a fog descended as we made our way. We lit lamps but we could barely see the wagon in front of us. It was decided we would stop and wait for the fog to lift before we continued, but we were afflicted with a violent nausea and many of our party began bleeding from ears, nose and mouth…
A violent vertigo drove our oxen to their knees…
Louisa May Franklin fell from the wagon and under the wheels…
Lukas Bergen’s compass no longer works. We cannot tell North from South.
…when the fog did clear the sight that met our eyes was not one we expected. Some say we must have taken a wrong turning and that we should turn back and retrace our steps, but we can find no landmarks.
…the night sky is passing strange and affords no familiarity…
He read on…
August 16th. Foul demonic beasts descended on our wagons, mauling and killing most of our oxen, dragging them away. They overturned the Marchants’ wagon, breaking William Marchant’s leg…
August 17th. This place is a hell. Hourly we cursed Campbell and Witger’s names. The Campbell Cut-off has cost us dearly. Today we lost three dear children, stolen away by winged creatures…
August 24th. William Marchant died today of an ungodly infection to his leg. We made a coffin and buried him.
September 3rd. We have found shelter, an abandoned ruin in the woods. It is better than the wagons, which we had to abandon. We could not get them through the trees…
September 9th. Isaiah Walker led a party of twelve to find help.