His guts tingled. Something was definitely wrong here. The sudden urge to sprint from the cavern nearly overwhelmed him.
He passed a dark orifice filled with shadows impervious to his light on his left. His beam barely penetrated the darkness.
Rivale nearly knocked him over in her hurry to retreat. She had shoved aside a heap of desiccated flowers, leaves, and grasses to reveal a foul puddle of concentrated urine and feces. The brownish-black logs were well- formed and undeniably human.
Someone was definitely living in here. Several people, most likely. One man couldn't haul, hang, and skin a bear. So where were they hiding? And better yet...why?
'I don't like the looks of this,' Nelson said. 'We shouldn't be in here.'
'We can't risk the climb back down after nightfall,' Rivale said.
'We can hole up in that cave up there and set off at first light.'
'There's another option,' Pascual said. He stood in the mouth of the tunnel that branched from the back wall, shining his light deeper into the mountain. 'That bear had to weigh at least a thousand pounds. Whoever dragged it in here didn't scale the mountain like we did. There has to be an easier way out.'
'We don't know who's in here with us or where they might be,' Ladd said.
'You're letting your imagination get the better of you. There's no reason to suspect that whoever's here is hostile. It's probably just a nomadic Kyrgyz tribe riding out the winter. They'd probably even be willing to show us the way out of here.'
'This doesn't feel right, Carlos. You saw the bear. It looked like someone had been gnawing the meat right off the bone.'
Pascual waved off his concern and started into the stone passage. He was probably right, but Ladd couldn't dismiss his unease so quickly. He had tapped into his survival instincts, which screamed for him to get out of there before it was too late.
Ladd forced his legs to move and followed Pascual. Rivale and Nelson fell in behind him. The clatter of crampons and their haggard breathing echoed in the confines. Nelson flashed the camera repeatedly, more for light than for documentation's sake. The narrow walls were covered with writing. It would have taken lifetimes to carve so many symbols. Ladd hurried to catch up with Pascual as he exited the passage into another chamber. Were it possible, this one smelled worse than the last. The musty, sour aromas of body odor, ammonia, and festering meat made his eyes water.
His cleats made a crunching sound as he stepped from the bare stone onto a more forgiving substrate. He crouched and shined his light at the ground. Sand. He scooped up a handful and allowed it to cascade between his fingers. The grains were small and powdery, as though individually they had no substance at all, like the sand from a tropical beach or the most remote desert. Whatever the case, it definitely wasn't from around here. He again thought of the cuneiform and its Arabian origin as he stood and followed Pascual deeper into the mountain.
The tunnel opened into a chamber much smaller than the last, perhaps the size of a two-car garage, but the ceiling was much higher. As with all of the others, the walls were covered with the cryptic writing. A mound of sand filled the room, drifted against the far wall, as though a dune had been magically transported into this one cave.
Nelson flashed his camera. Ladd glimpsed what had to be thousands of bats suspended overhead between the stalactites. They wavered from side to side as though blown by a breeze only they could feel.
Their flashlight beams crisscrossed the cave like spotlights at a movie premier, showing them random pieces, but never the whole.
'There's another passage over here,' Pascual said.
Ladd turned toward where Pacual stood in the opposite corner, silhouetted by his flashlight, which diffused into another pitch-black corridor.
'How in the world did all of this sand get in here?' Nelson whispered.
'I feel a faint breeze,' Pascual called. His voice echoed from the orifice. 'At least we know we're heading in the right direction.'
Ladd skirted the edge of the dune. His reluctance to walk on it was irrational, he knew, and yet he simply couldn't bring himself to step on any more of it than absolutely necessary. There was something unnatural about it. Not the sand itself, per se, but the fact that it simply shouldn't be here. He felt a swell of relief when he ducked out of the room and into the tunnel.
'Amazing,' Pascual said from somewhere ahead, his voice hollowed by the acoustics.
'What is it?'
'You have to see it to believe it.'
Ladd wasn't in the mood. The feeling that he needed to get out of this mountain this very second nearly overwhelmed him.
The stone corridor opened into another domed cavern. Pascual stood in the center, directing his light at the walls as he slowly turned in circles. Another dark channel exited the far side.
Ladd followed the beam with his eyes. The walls weren't covered with writing. Hundreds of recesses had been meticulously carved into them instead, small arched shelves separated by a finger's width of granite. They were barely large enough to accommodate the skulls wedged inside them. More shadowed eye sockets than he could count stared directly at him.
'It's an ossuary,' Ladd said.
'Of sorts. There aren't any other bones. Only the skulls.' Pascual's voice positively trembled with excitement. 'Notice anything interesting about them?'
Ladd directed his light at the nearest arch to his left and stumbled backward in surprise.
'Jesus.'
'Tell me about it. I've never seen anything like them on a hominin. A Great Ape, maybe, but not on a proto- human.'
'What in God's name do you think---?'
'Ramsey!' Rivale shouted from behind him. He spun toward the tunnel leading back to the room with the sand. 'Ramsey!'
Something in her voice awakened the panic inside him. He took off at a sprint, made awkward by his crampons. Something was definitely wrong. Everything was wrong. They shouldn't be here. No one was ever meant to be here.
Ladd burst into the cavern to find Rivale kneeling beside Nelson on one of the dune's peaks, waving her hand, palm-down, over the sand. He hurried to her side. She glanced up at him, eyes wide.
'Hold your hand right here. Just like this,' she said. 'Can you feel it?'
Ladd removed his glove and waved his hand over the ground just as she had. The tip of a reed reminiscent of the stalk of a cattail stood several inches above the sand at a slight angle. Warm air caressed his palm when he passed over it.
'What is it?' he asked.
'I don't know. Nelson found it. And several more just like it.'
'At least four more,' Nelson said.
'There's something under here.' Ladd brushed the sand away from the base of the thin reed, only to find that it extended deeper than he had suspected. The fine grains slid back into place. 'What could possibly---?'
'Quit screwing around and just do it already,' Pascual said. He shouldered Ladd aside and shoved scoops of sand away from the reed. 'For someone in such a rush to get out of here, you're sure taking your sweet time about it.'
Ladd glanced back toward the tunnel through which they had initially entered. Suddenly, the prospect of descending the sheer, icy face of Mt. Belukha wasn't nearly as intimidating, even blindly in the darkness and the blizzarding snow.
'Stop, Carlos.'
'I can feel something down there.'
'For Christ's sake, stop digging! Let's get out of here while we still---'
'What the hell is that? Someone. Give me some more light.'
