Shenjung focused on the carvings beneath the growth. There were whorls, strokes, and lines, some carved in, and some raised in relief. Further along, there were depictions of birds, snakes, something that could have been a big cat, and a bison type animal. And then there were the faces: tongues lolling, some gnashing teeth, and many with wide eyes, staring, holding looks of anger combined with fear.
“Look here, this one.” Yang pointed, and Shenjung followed his arm.
At the center of the relief was a huge glyph of a small mountain that had what looked like coiling snakes emanating from it, and a giant eye nesting in its middle.
“Their god?” Shenjung grunted, staring for several moments more. “Perhaps our demented survivor was right — perhaps it is Zhàyǔ, the devourer of men.” He turned. “Remember, it lives in the underworld.”
Yang scoffed. “I think I will ignore any intelligence briefings derived from a frightened dumpling cook.” He shook his head, his eyes flint-hard. “To me it looks like a representation of the sun… sunlight. It is telling us that this is probably a way out.” He turned away, to more brittle crunching beneath his feet, and stepped away from the wall.
Shenjung sighed, about to follow the PLA captain, when instead he crouched as something caught his eye. The crunching beneath their feet, it wasn’t stone chips as he expected, but instead bone fragments — different shaped shards and splinters, the fragments brown and aged and mostly pulverized. He picked up a tooth, a human molar.
“Captain Yang.” He held it up.
Yang leaned closer but didn’t take it. He shrugged. “Maybe some cavemen got trapped in here.”
Shenjung got to his feet. “Cavemen do not create this type of carven symbolism. They paint, using natural dyes, charcoal, and some rubbing.” He scoffed at the bone fragments. “And then what happened to them? They’re ground to pieces.”
Yang shrugged. “The cutter crushed the bones when it broke through.”
Shenjung shook his head. “No, even the edges are…”
“Captain?”
Yang turned towards the voice. A soldier, standing further along the stone shelf.
“Steps, Captain Yang. Cut into the cliff wall.” The tall soldier stood at attention. “There is evidence that they were used recently.”
“Steps?” Yang clapped his hands once, the sound like a gunshot in the cave. “So, now we are getting somewhere. Hoi!” He circled a finger in the air, and followed the young man. The rest of the soldiers fell in behind them.
A few hundred feet farther along, the ledge narrowed to about six feet, and then simply ended. Cut into the wall were steps, descending, and also disappearing upwards into the darkness. They were narrow, small, and barely wide enough for a normal foot. Shenjung could see that they changed angles as they descended, before they disappeared in the blackness of the void below.
Yang pointed his flashlight upwards. “To the surface?”
Shenjung also craned his neck, following the steps. “These look thousands of years old. The stone is age-darkened by moisture, and cave gasses.” Shenjung shrugged. “Maybe there was a surface when the steps were cut, but that was around 12,000 years ago. Our position now is far out under the ice sheets, so too much ice and snow above us.” He stepped back, lifting his light. “However, I would be interested to see where they lead.”
Yang turned away. “Lieutenant, beacon signal source and direction.”
The PLA soldier held up a small-screened device, panning it around. He then spun back to his captain. “Four point eighteen miles due west, point ninety-two miles on vertical descent… down.” He pointed.
“Good.” Yang turned back to Shenjung. “Upwards, is likely to be miles of more labyrinth, or a dead end.” Yang brought his light down to the descending steps. “If there is scuffing on the lower steps, then most likely it was made by Zhang Li and his team. If they went down, and our objective, the submarine is down, then we will follow.”
Shenjung could tell that Yang probably didn’t give a damn about the missing engineers. His priority was the signal, and only the signal. He waved his light over the stone ledge at its brink. “Doesn’t look like footprints, more like drag marks.”
“Come.” Yang ignored him.
Shenjung stared down into the darkness. He had a feeling that the massive hole in the earth was more like a gigantic mouth that was about to swallow them all. He could feel a slight updraft against his face — it felt warm, humid, and there were hints of salt, methane, and an odd sourness among other odors… odors of living things, or perhaps things long dead. It did nothing to dispel the image of the mouth open and waiting. He followed the PLA captain, but couldn’t shake the feeling that sunlight was a luxury he may never see again.
CHAPTER 18
Cate was smashed into Alex’s body. Her face became immediately wet, and she knew her nose was gushing blood. The upside was, her goggles were still around her neck and hadn’t cracked. She shifted position and groaned. Every part of her ached — muscles, bones, and even though she had covered up as much as she could, she could feel blisters under her wetsuit. But what she felt, and endured, must have been nothing compared to the man above her who hadn’t been covered in thermal sheeting and had literally acted as a shock absorber for her body. She had felt him go limp, and knew he was either unconscious or dead.
Inside the capsule it was blacker than anything she had ever experienced in her life, and a moment of disorientation washed over her. Then there came the sensation of the capsule turning slowly as it settled correctly in the water. That’s something, she thought. She had seconds now before the launch, and blindly reached up to find and then feel the soldier’s neck — thank god, a pulse. She lifted his mouthpiece and pushed it between his lips, automatically starting the oxygen. She covered her face with her own goggles and jammed in her mouthpiece.
Below them, there commenced a minute electronic vibration running up through the skin of the hull, and then came a more ominous sound — rushing water, welling up. She had a moment of panic, but swallowed it down, remembering what that meant: the outer doors of the capsule had opened, and Orca was about to launch.
Here we go, she thought, and reached down to wrap an arm around one of the propulsion struts, and then hung onto the limp form of Alex with her other arm.
Like a ten-foot torpedo being launched from its shaft, Orca, the deep-water submersible, began to slide free, taking Cate and Alex with it.
She felt an unbearable sense of alarm, as they were pulled out of the capsule and into the inky black water, miles below the Antarctic’s icy surface. Cate screwed her eyes shut and instinctively held her breath.
Darkness, warmth, and saltiness. She opened her eyes. Cate Canning’s laboratory readings had told her to expect it, to assume a near tropical environment of a constant seventy-eight degrees in the underground sea. But now, only when she was immersed, could she really believe it. What she hadn’t expected was the blue glow radiating down from above — bioluminescence, she thought. If she was at the surface, the radiance would still only be like twilight, but at least it wouldn’t be anything like the impenetrable nothing that was below her.
Orca pulled them along a few dozen feet below the surface, and Cate’s scientific mind took over, and blanked out any thoughts about what could be down underneath. The inky blackness fell away to crushing depths of over a thousand feet, and she knew there were organisms down there, big organisms, and she just hoped she could get herself and Alex to the nearest shoreline before they were detected.