The silence that followed was more condemning than Hunter's tone. And, shaking his head once more, he added somberly, "No matter what, Dixon, I'm gonna see that you're held responsible for everything you've done. That's a promise."
Turning away slowly, Hunter heard Brick grab the CIA man's shoulder and move him forward. The ex-marshal's burly voice had a grim intonation of doom. "Move on, boy," he growled. "You signed up to serve your country, didn't ya? So serve it."
Eventually the passage became almost like a shattered stairway, narrower and more defined.
Leading cautiously and in complete silence, Hunter no longer searched the shadows because the connecting corridors had faded. Now they were on a definite pitch that was carrying them directly downward, and in the distance Hunter saw specks of white light on the wall where the tunnel bent into blackness. Approaching stealthily, he lifted a flare and saw tiny leechlike creatures clinging to the moist stone.
The air was warmer, and utterly still. Hunter realized they must be at the base of the mountain, if not beneath. Yeah, they had come at least three miles through the cavern and were probably at the final chamber; this didn't appear to be a maze cave. Rather, the entire serpentine structure indicated that it led inevitably to a cathedral-like cavern.
Hunter had explored similar caverns and knew from experience what could be expected. And then, as the path turned sharply around a huge stalagmite, they saw it.
What was more amazing — the faded, titanic images painted on the sweeping cathedral walls, the underground lake that burned with a strange green tint, or the last and most terrifying discovery of all — Hunter could not say. But the last was, without question, a sight that chilled his blood and made his skin tighten.
Heaped in endless dunes and mounds and bleached crests, scattered across the vastness of the underground mausoleum, were hundreds of thousands of stripped bones — skeletal specters of some hideous subterranean slaughter. The scent of ancient decay, of old death, hung hauntingly in the blackened atmosphere, and as Hunter stared over the skeletal underworld he could almost count every bony finger pointing motionless into a dome of darkness, could almost register every crushed skull, shattered spine, or splintered bone.
To himself, he nodded.
Yes, it made sense at last, and he understood completely. Just as he knew that this ghastly tribute to mindless savagery was all that remained of the greatest predators ever to walk the earth.
Together they stared over the ghostly remains of a long-ago carnage that must have been the ultimate of horrors to behold. None of them broke the silence.
Scattered across the shadowed chamber, bony arms stretched silently from heaps of twisted, shattered skulls and taloned hands even now locked in combat — all that remained from a ten-thousand-year-old rampage that had decimated a nation, an entire species, in a single devastating battle.
Staring somberly, Hunter could read the scene, knew what had happened in this dark moment of history. Without equal in might or ferocity, this predatory species had stormed without rival to the height of the food chain, conquering all the world as they knew it, fearing nothing. With physical supremacy rivaled only by their inherent savagery, they had killed all that could be killed, leaving only themselves. Hunter saw the severed heads and dark skulls shattered by the sweeping black claws still buried in bleached bone.
It was a war, but it was only themselves that they destroyed.
Insatiable in their lust for blood, uncontrolled because the nexus of mind that powered their ferocity had no restraint or regard even for their own kind, the predators had eventually directed that unlimited thirst for blood and physical rage into this.
Hunter imagined that it had begun with a single attack that had somehow spiraled through the cavern like a forest fire. For once the rage was fueled it had met no barriers of consciousness. No, it had been pure and unbridled, and it had caught and spread as they blindly turned one upon the other, each rending and striking with that inhuman strength to slaughter the next.
Head bowed. Hunter imagined the wholesale battle as it must have been — monstrous forms slashing to dismember and slay only to be slain in turn. And he thought, dimly, that it had probably happened in the space of a few hours. The remorseless conflict had raged until there were only three, two…one.
Finally the wounded survivor, if any, had perhaps wandered into the mountains and died or simply remained here and perished from age or some pestilence. It didn't matter; what happened here had been their death. Their own ferocity had been their doom. There were no questions remaining.
Chaney's voice was strange.
"Well, now we know," he said in an unnatural voice. He shook his head, attempting to control his tone. "They actually killed themselves off! And all at once!” An awed pause; “Must have been a hell of a fight."
Takakura shook his head, frowning across the ghostly maze of shattered bone, the slashed or shattered skulls staring emptily toward the torches. He gazed somberly upon a twisted heap of slender skeletal arms and legs that lay in a larger dune.
"Such stupidity," he said.
"No," Hunter remarked. "Not stupidity. They were never mindful enough for that. They were without minds, really, as we understand it. They were just creatures of impulse. They killed on a whim, a thought, the slightest inclination. Whatever controlled them wasn't the conscious mind. It's what all of us fear inside ourselves. The beast, the rage we control because it terrifies us.” He nodded. “We've evolved beyond that. But they hadn't. They were the closest thing to the unconscious mind of man that this world will ever know."
"And look what it got 'em," Brick grunted. He, too, revealed astonishment, but was recovering quick. "Guess it goes to show you; be careful what you ask for."
A moment passed, and then Takakura walked forward, igniting another flare and tossing it onto a ledge where it cast a higher angle of light across the room. Shadows vanished at the elevated illumination and, slowly, they moved forward.
Then a familiar scent reached Hunter and he bent, examining a black pool. Vaguely the size of a man, the depression was heavy and stagnant, and he felt the thick liquid with a hand, slowly raising it to his face.
"Oil," he whispered, as Bobbi Jo knelt beside him. "Here," he added, "let me see your flare. Stand back." He touched the wick to the pool and it ignited explosively.
The mushrooming blast swept past Hunter's face before he could jerk back. Shocked, Hunter felt his face for a moment, reflexively checking for injury. But there was none and the fire burned bright, dulling the light of their flares to insignificance. Now the entire room was brilliantly visible, and they saw cave paintings that had endured the centuries.
Faded red images of creatures that had ruled this region long ago were inscribed on the stone — images of beasts running, leaping, hunted, slaughtered. And as Hunter turned slowly he saw that the entire mammoth cave was decorated in the primitive art. Entire frescoes of huge animal hunts— whole herds of buffalo and deer driven from cliffs by hunters in ragged clothing — occupied vast spaces before another image, some kind of cleaning and gutting, was detailed.
Almost every image involved hunting, killing, slaughtering, as if that had been the dominating force of their existence. There were no displays of family or play or societal rights — not anything that would indicate culture or civility. It was simply the bestial exultation of carnage — of slaying and gutting and feasting. And as Hunter saw it altogether he was overcome by the wild, barbaric atmosphere.