The Genesis Plague (2010)

general wasn’t part of this too.

68

The inverted-V ceiling dropped precipitously once more as the passage drilled through the mountain in a wide hollow tube that reminded Shuster of an earthen storm drain. He kept the procession drumming along to a steady, furtive cadence - Ramirez, Holt and Hazo following in his wake. Sweeping his light in wide arcs over the rough stone confirmed an absence of mining or tool marks. Only time and the elements had been this tunnel’s quarrymen.

The tunnel curved gently from left to right, then back again, the ground rising and falling along a general downward trajectory. The air quality was degrading quickly, and Shuster worried that if something were not soon found, he’d need to abandon the exploration. One thought kept cycling through his mind: why would Fahim Al- Zahrani have retreated back towards his enemy? If Al-Zahrani had met a dead end, they had to be nearing it - which coincided all too well with the strange sounds that were growing stronger with every step. He paused once more to try to decipher the noise.

‘Goddamn it, what is that?’ Ramirez said.

‘No idea,’ Shuster replied, trying to conceal his deepening anxiety.

‘Sounds like something’s alive down there,’ Holt said.

No one challenged the idea.

‘Wait here,’ Shuster suggested. ‘I’ll go check it out.’

‘Absolutely,’ Ramirez said. ‘That’s a very good idea.’

They all watched in silence as Shuster disappeared around the bend.

With time to rest, Holt became acutely aware of Hazo’s worsening health. Hazo, bracing himself up with the tunnel wall, was ashen and sluggish, and his chest heaved every time he inhaled.

‘Hey, Hazo,’ Ramirez said. ‘You know anything about this place?’

Hazo shrugged. ‘Just legends.’

‘That’s a start,’ Ramirez said. ‘What legends?’

Hazo paused. ‘A demon was buried here,’ he explained bluntly. ‘This is what some say.’ His thoughts flashed back to Monsignor Ibrahim and Michelangelo’s painting of a half-woman, half-serpent entwined around a tree.

‘Demon?’ Holt jumped in. ‘Exactly what kind of demon?’

There was no reason to keep secrets at this juncture, thought Hazo. ‘Those are her pictures on the wall near the entrance. Her name is Lilith,’ he explained weakly. ‘Thousands of years ago, she came to this place … these mountains. She killed every man and boy.’ The conversation quickly exhausted his lungs, forcing him to cough.

‘Crazy bitch,’ Ramirez seethed as if one of the victims had been his own brother.

‘How? How did she kill them?’ Holt pressed. He felt like he was a boy scout again, hearing haunted campfire stories. Hazo reluctantly cast his bloodshot eyes to the ground. ‘Come on, Hazo. If we’re stuck in a demon’s grave, it would be nice to know what we’re up against.’

Trying to catch his breath, Hazo managed to force one tentative word from his lips: ‘Pestilence.’

‘Pest-a-what?’ Ramirez asked, agitated.

‘Disease, Ramirez,’ Shuster said. ‘Learn the language, will you?’

Ramirez lingered on the word, his M-16 drooping in his grip. He repeated it to himself with a sense of fatalism: ‘Disease.’ He pulled a gold crucifix out from under his collar and blessed himself with it.

‘It’s just a story,’ Holt reminded him.

‘A story? You saw Al-Zahrani when they pulled him out of here. Man, he was sick … real sick. You saw him.’

Holt rolled his eyes and spread his hands.

Then Ramirez took a hasty step back from Hazo, looking spooked. ‘And look … now he’s sick,’ he said accusatorily. He tightened his hold on the M-16. A psychosomatic tickle came to the back of his throat and he grabbed at it. ‘I don’t want to catch no damn disease …’

‘Settle down,’ Holt said.

‘Guys!’ Shuster’s voice echoed up from the mountain.

Holt cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted back: ‘Yeah?’

‘Get down here … I found something!’

Holt set off on a brisk pace through the tunnel, Ramirez and Hazo bringing up the rear. The passage essed twice and curled sharply before spilling into a cavernous black hollow. Holt stopped dead in his tracks. ‘What the …?’ he gasped.

‘Over here,’ Shuster called to him from deep within the hollow.

He spotted Shuster’s flashlight floating in the voluminous darkness. The light played over the surface of a massive angular form plonked down in middle of the cave, which resembled an unhitched semi-trailer or a railroad boxcar. And it seemed that the sounds they’d been hearing - now clearly recognizable as the whirring of mechanical parts - were coming from inside it.

‘Come on, Holt!’ Shuster shouted. ‘Get over here!’

‘Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?’ Ramirez said over Holt’s shoulder.

‘This ain’t no dream,’ Holt said, pointing his light down to illuminate the ground. He was surprised to see that a section of the cave floor had been levelled into a two-and-a-half-metre-wide path, definitely not by natural means, but by some kind of excavating machine. On either side, the natural limestone formations had been left intact, looking like a moonscape. Around the cave’s perimeter walls, his light glinted off enormous stainless-steel holding tanks shaped like inverted baby bottles. For a moment he felt like he was back on the tour of the local Budweiser brewery, in the fermentation room.

Holt and Ramirez trotted over to Shuster, while Hazo paused to catch his breath.

‘How did this get down here?’ Holt asked.

‘Must have been brought in here in pieces … assembled on site. Modular construction. See there,’ Shuster said, moving his rifle muzzle up and down so that the light emphasized one of many riveted seams connecting the container’s outer steel panels.

‘Looks like a shipping container,’ Ramirez said.

‘Sure does,’ Shuster said, making his way around it.

‘For what, though?’ Ramirez mumbled. Thoughts of the ancient legend had his imagination running wild. The short hairs on his neck bristled.

‘Take a look at this,’ Shuster called over.

Holt and Ramirez kept their M-16s at the ready and angled around the hulking container. A pale purple light glowed on to a grooved steel ramp that led down from the side of the container. The container’s short side was two and a half metres square, partially enclosing a central entryway a metre wide, two metres high. Beside it, a mechanical door mounted on rails had been slid open. Semi-transparent plastic flaps - like those used for meat lockers - dangled like a curtain from the top of the entryway to provide an air barrier. The flaps distorted the details of the container’s interior, but provided enough visibility to suggest that there was no one inside.

Ramirez immediately spotted six identical containers lined neatly in a row behind this one. ‘Seven containers?’

‘That’s right,’ Shuster said, backing up and aiming his light up over the container. ‘And take a look up there.’ He traced the beam along the tubular flex-duct leading out from the top of the container to where it joined a boxy central trunk that rose like a chimney for fifteen metres before disappearing through the cave’s lofty vault. Six identical flex-ducts branched off the main feed and patched into the tops of the other containers. The gentle breeze pushing out between the entryway flaps confirmed that fresh air was being pumped in from above ground. ‘It’s a ventilation system,’ Shuster said.

‘Detainment cells?’ Holt guessed.

‘Maybe Saddam’s weapons lab,’ Ramirez said.

‘Only one way to know for sure,’ Shuster said, noting PVC pipes snaking down beside the duct work. Water lines, he guessed. ‘Stay here. I’ll take a look inside. See what we’ve got.’ He swung his M-16 up on to his shoulder and ascended the ramp. Bathed in pale purple light, he felt like he was boarding a spaceship.

69

While the marines were preoccupied with the strange box-like structure at the cave’s centre, Hazo had just