Among the Living E-Book

Tim Lebbon

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 370

Beschreibung

From the New York Times bestseller and author of Netflix's The Silence comes a terrifying horror novel set in a melting Arctic landscape. Something deadly has lain dormant for thousands of years, but now the permafrost is giving up its secrets… "At once a thrilling novel and a call to action against climate change..." - New York Times Estranged friends Dean and Bethan meet after five years apart when they are drawn to a network of caves on a remote Arctic island. Bethan and her friends are environmental activists, determined to protect the land. But Dean's group's exploitation of rare earth minerals deep in the caves unleashes an horrific contagion that has rested frozen and undisturbed for many millennia. Fleeing the terrors emerging from the caves, Dean and Bethan and their rival teams undertake a perilous journey on foot across an unpredictable and volatile landscape. The ex-friends must learn to work together again if they're to survive... and more importantly, stop the horror from spreading to the wider world. A propulsive horror thriller––fast-moving, frightening, and shockingly relevant―this adventure will grip you until the final terrifying page.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Tim Lebbon and Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

ALSO BY TIM LEBBONAND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

The Last Storm

Eden

Coldbrook

The Silence

THE RELICS TRILOGY

Relics

The Folded Land

The Edge

The Cabin in the Woods: The Official Movie Novelization

Alien: Out of the Shadows

THE RAGE WAR

Predator: Incursion

Alien: Invasion

Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon

Kong: Skull Island – The Official Movie Novelization

Firefly: Generations

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Among the Living

Print edition ISBN: 9781803365947

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803365954

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: February 2024

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Tim Lebbon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2024 Tim Lebbon. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Howard Morhaim, my agent and friend.

ONE

Dean stared into a darkness that no human had entered for at least thirty thousand years. The shadows appeared solid, bearing mass and viscosity, rather than simply being an absence of light. It was as if they hunkered down in defiance of the long days and short nights experienced at this time of year on Hawkshead Island. They held the weight of history. Or maybe it was just the cold of the dawn playing tricks on his mind.

“Looks like a good place to tie on,” Lanna said. She pointed at a spur of rock to the left of the narrow fault in the ground as she shrugged a coiled rope from her shoulder.

“I’ll give you a hand,” Dean said.

“Hmm, promises.”

Dean rolled his eyes and glanced back over his shoulder at the Stallion. Emma was climbing down from the high cab, and she caught his eye and smiled. She didn’t smile like that very often. That caused Dean’s paranoia to kick in. Maybe it was quiet laughter. Maybe she’d heard Lanna creep into his tent the previous night. Not that it mattered. Lanna made no secret of their occasional trysts, passing jokes in front of the others without embarrassment. They’d slept together a few dozen times over the years, and Dean took her lead on what any of it meant. Just a bit of fun, she’d say. He definitely agreed with her that, yes, it was fun. But sometimes he’d find himself wishing it could be a little more. Today he’d planned to talk to Lanna about things, find out what their future might hold. Emma’s smile cooled that thought.

“How’re things, Wren?” Emma asked. Wren claimed he’d picked up the nickname on a South American expedition a decade ago, but Lanna said she’d heard it was what his mother used to call him. Six feet and four inches of gruffness and sharp edges: naming him after the UK’s smallest bird gave him a Little John vibe.

“Ready to rock and roll!” Wren said. He was at the Stallion’s open rear doors, prepping the four identical backpacks that they would wear down into the caves. Each one was loaded with tech and worth about ten grand.

“Hey!” Lanna said, punching Dean’s arm. “Dreamer!”

“I don’t dream,” Dean said.

“Sure you do. Everyone dreams.” She waved the rope at him, and he went to help her tie it around the rock spur. “You were mumbling in your sleep last night.”

“I needed a leak.”

“You were saying, ‘Just cut the line’. Something like that.”

“Huh.” A cool thump hit Dean’s stomach. Cold pulsed through him. Just cut the line. He grabbed the end of the rope and scrambled up and around the sharp rock. “You must’ve made me delirious. Raised my heart rate.”

“Raised something.” He caught her eye and he wondered yet again. Really? Just a bit of fun? But the moment to say something had come and gone. Maybe his lack of confidence meant he’d lost too many opportunities to make things more than they were.

They tied the rope around the rock, taking turns to hold on and lean back to test its strength, then threw the coiled end down into the impenetrable darkness of the narrow fracture that formed the cave mouth.

“Okay, come grab your packs, guys,” Emma said, and Dean and Lanna headed over to the parked Stallion, light from their head torches dancing before them. It was a large vehicle, the best that money could buy for an expedition like this, with six chunky-tyred wheels almost as tall as him, independent suspension rods as thick as his thigh, a sealed rear compartment with thick solar-panelled walls and roof, and reinforced windows, which would have slept four comfortably if it wasn’t so packed with kit, and an elevated cab where Emma usually drove and Wren rode shotgun. It was designed for the most inimical terrain, and they’d used it in places far worse than this.

Somehow, though, Hawkshead Island felt more desolate than anywhere Dean had ever been. He’d visited deforested regions of the Amazon on several occasions, the vast Siberian steppe, and a scattering of remote Antarctic islands exposed by melting ice, but this place sang of solitude and whistled with a constant gentle breeze that originated from unknown places, heading nowhere. The terrain was harsh and rocky, marshy and unpredictable, nurturing a dozen ways to kill them, but it wasn’t only that. Dean thought the feeling was more to do with his memories of being a child in Boston, when harsh winters and hot summers brought real distinguishable seasons. He’d loved it most when it snowed, especially those winters when a storm dumped thirty inches over a weekend, because that had meant a few days off school and endless fun outside with his friends. A fresh new world, a pristine landscape for a while. As the covering melted, revealing the old familiar ground underneath, his heart would sink back towards a less exciting normality.

Hawkshead Island had been smothered with snow all year round for millennia, but that was no longer the case. Large patches still remained, but wide swathes of landscape now showed through. Temperatures had risen, hovering above freezing for most of the year. This was a changing place, and the island’s desolation was painfully obvious.

They took turns shrugging on their caving helmets and packs, and letting Wren ensure they were all a perfect fit.

“You’re putting on weight,” he said as Dean shouldered his pack.

“Easy living,” Emma said.

Dean laughed. “Screw you.”

“Wren’s right,” Lanna said. “You are developing love handles.”

There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence. Then Lanna caught his eye, wriggled an eyebrow. Wren chuckled.

“Jesus, guys,” Dean said, smiling.

“Okay, gang, let’s hustle,” Emma said. Wren locked the Stallion—he called the vehicle his baby, and however remote their expedition he was always paranoid that someone would come along with the desire and know-how to hotwire a million-dollar piece of kit and steal it—and walked up the gentle slope towards their chosen cave. The Stallion’s big lamps were programmed to stay on for half an hour, lighting their approach and descent into the system. They had sent down a remote-controlled drone that Emma piloted with aplomb, and they’d zeroed in on these caverns as the most likely source of rare earth minerals.

After that, Dean had sent a simple, anonymous message with these coordinates. He didn’t know if Bethan had received them. He didn’t know if she would come, and when she might arrive. If she did, he had no idea how it might be between them. But whatever happened, he knew that in sending her that message he had taken a step away from this world that had never really been his.

What they sought was worth a fortune, and their small team was renowned for its success rate. In the right circles, at least. It wasn’t exactly legal, and the moral side was something that Dean used to put into a solid mental box and set to one side. Once, huddled in a one-person sleeping bag, sweat still sticking them together as their heartbeats and breathing started to slow down, he’d tried talking to Lanna about this. They were on a rocky South Atlantic island where penguins watched their every move and wind drove freezing rain against exposed skin like bullets. She’d laughed at him, then fallen quiet. He had fallen asleep waiting for her to say something profound.

“Follow me, I’ve got the map!” Wren said. He had a small screen attached to his wrist on which he could call up the virtual 3D map of the caverns made by the drone. It wouldn’t be a complete map, but it would show the general lie of the land. “A tight wriggle to start with, so feet first. Twist to the left, then it opens out. It’s a scramble down a steep slope to the first cavern big enough to stand in. Hold onto the rope all the way. I’ll guide you.”

“Don’t get stuck,” Dean said, and Wren grinned. He was a big man and had been on a fast track to semi-pro football when a shoulder injury finished his career. He was always the first of them to venture into narrow spaces. If he could make it, they all could.

Wren grabbed the rope, backed up to the narrow cave mouth, and eased his way in and down. As the darkness swallowed him, Dean experienced a twinge of claustrophobia. Am I really following him in there? he thought, and he frowned. He’d never felt like this before. He’d been caving since he was a kid, and it was usually heights that got to him more than enclosed spaces.

“Don’t wait up,” Wren said, and his face and upper body were swallowed by the darkness almost too soon, as if greedy shadows had closed him off from the rest of the world.

“Comms on,” Emma said, and they each tapped the communications unit curved over their right ear. It transmitted their voices through bone conduction, leaving their ears free to detect any localised dangers. They started calling their names so that the others could check that the systems were working.

“Wren?” Emma asked after a pause.

“Balrog,” Wren growled, and then he said, “Whoops!”

“What is it?” Dean asked.

“Slippery. Rocks oozing moisture. Muddy. Be careful on the way down. You can start heading in now.”

Dean stepped forward before Emma or Lanna could move, keen to get on with this. He didn’t like the unfamiliar nervousness, and knew that the best way to subdue it was to confront it head on. The more he thought about things, the more troubled he became. Just like his problem with Lanna.

“What is it, Dean?” Lanna asked.

“Huh?” Dean grabbed the rope and stood at the cave mouth, facing his two teammates.

“Dunno. I thought I heard you sigh.”

Wren laughed, and Dean heard it echoing up from behind him as well as through his comms.

“Just wind,” Dean said, and he started easing back into the cave mouth. Darkness drew him in and down, cooler even than the cold air outside. The atmosphere in the cave was utterly still, like a held breath, and he gripped the rope hard as he descended. The powerful light from his headlamp washed across the sloping floor beneath his feet. Wren was right, it was slippery and muddy, and his teammate’s footprints were already being washed away as Dean added his own.

“I’m in the cavern,” Wren said. “Whoah.”

“All good?” Emma asked.

“Yeah. All good. It’s beautiful.”

Dean smiled at the wonder in Wren’s voice. Letting your mask slip there, big guy.

“We’re heading down,” Lanna said. Dean felt the rope above him tighten and then vibrate as the other two started descending after him.

He slipped a couple of times, easing his weight and grip on the rope to keep himself upright. Then he saw his own shadow splashed ahead of him and felt Wren grab his waist, easing him down the last slippery slope into the larger cavern.

Dean turned to thank him and then saw what Wren had seen.

“Wow,” he said. The cavern wasn’t huge, but one end was taken up with a pool of water, a sheen of retreating ice an inch below the surface casting a ghostly glow upwards when his light fell upon it. It silvered the cavern’s uneven walls and low ceiling. Gentle ripples passed across the water, perhaps from their footsteps on the cavern floor, or maybe from something that had just ducked beneath the surface.

Stop that shit right now! Dean thought. He smiled at his overactive imagination.

“Told you,” Wren said. “But look this way.” He tapped Dean on the shoulder, and he turned and added his light to Wren’s.

At the other end of the cavern a wide crack split the wall from floor to ceiling, offering them a way deeper into the system. They’d guided the drone in that direction the day before, but none of them had appreciated the full detail of what they were seeing. The fault they had just descended, this cavern, and the tunnels leading off it had been clogged with ice for many millennia until the permafrost started thawing forty years before. That melt had sped up during the past decade: as the ground thawed so had much of the surface ice, creating routes for the passage of warm air from above that accelerated the melt even more. Now, sculptures of ice clung to walls and hung from ceilings, some of them ragged where they’d cracked and fallen away, others smooth and shimmering where water flowed across their surface. The ice was dark and dirty in places, a deep emerald green elsewhere, and here and there it seemed to swallow the pure white light from their headlamps and glow as if lit from within. It illuminated the whole cavern.

“Amazing,” Dean muttered, and then he felt Lanna nudge against him and grasp his hand. He’d been so enraptured with the scene that he hadn’t heard Emma and her complete their descent. She squeezed, and he experienced one of those sublime moments of overwhelming peace, wholeness, and presence that rarely lasted more than a few seconds.

They stood together for a while, just looking around and taking it in. Their combined headlamps set the cavern on fire. It was as if the icy cave relished this first touch of light in many millennia. Perhaps it was the first time ever.

“Okay,” Emma said at last. “Let’s move on. Wren?”

“Yeah.” He tapped the display on his small wrist screen, and as he turned the image followed his movement, perfectly synchronised with their surroundings. “This way.”

They headed off into the cave system, feet splashing in mud, thin thermal jackets protecting them from most of the chill. It was colder down here than up in the open air, but their suits were designed for such environments. Lanna tied the end of a ball of strong wire-threaded string to the rope they’d left hanging down from above. The reel was attached to her belt, and as they moved off she rested one hand there to ensure the string played out behind them.

Wren went first, as usual, then Emma followed behind him. She carried a probe which she used to tap the walls, pausing now and then to check the readings.

“Anything?” Dean asked after a while.

“Traces,” she said.

“Maybe just picking up minerals in the meltwater,” Lanna said. The walls dripped and flowed, and they splashed through mucky water that streamed in the direction they were heading, sometimes shallow, sometimes up to the shins of their heavy boots. There was probably a series of subterranean waterways ploughing through the melting permafrost, carving new channels or following old routes that had frozen thousands or millions of years before. It was something that always worried them in situations like this: as the team geologist, Dean was supposed to put their minds at rest. Yes, sure, the tunnels are safe, he’d say, but they all knew the truth—they were taking their lives in their hands.

That was why they were never keen to go too deep.

These tunnels, illuminated by bright splashes from their helmet lamps, were ancient natural architecture revealed as the deep soul of the ground itself began to thaw. Billion-year-old rock existed on a different timescale to puny people. One day these tunnels would cave in, change, erupt, just as someday a tree would fall. That didn’t stop a person from touching it or walking by. Dean’s trust in his surroundings, his awareness of risk and its mitigation, came from his understanding of geological timescales.

Those timescales had been upset, and sometimes accelerated, by the thaw, potentially causing flash floods, ice-weakened cracks and faults in the seemingly solid surroundings, and cave-ins. Plenty of stuff here was ready to kill them without a second’s warning. Dean felt the weight of this place ready to drop and crush them flat.

They moved onwards, erring down, and ten minutes later he realised that they’d passed the last of the strange ice sculptures. They’d been reducing in size and frequency, catching light and reflecting deep, old colours and suspended dirt. Now there were no more.

“This is it,” he said. “We’re past the point where ice formed down here.”

“Ground’s still slick,” Wren said.

“A century ago these caves would’ve been mostly dry.”

They were in a wider passage, the floor uneven, several tall dark cracks slashed upwards into the ceiling. Some of these faults would provide routes deeper into the cave complex. Emma edged closer to one wall and ran the probe up and down, and a series of loud uneven crackles echoed around the chamber.

“Okay,” she said, checking the digital readout. “Okay! This might be a good place to start. Dean, check it out.”

Dean moved beside her and shone his lamp across the surface. The powerful light reflected from the dampness there, a thousand glimmering drips, and it was far too bright. He flicked it off.

“Aim your lights left and right,” he said. “Not directly at the wall.” The others did as he asked, and he pulled a small, weaker penlight from his belt. He stepped in closer and ran his gloved hand across the surface. He shook away the moisture and leaned in, moving the torch slowly left and right, up and down. Plucking a knife from his belt, he pressed its point against the wall… and stopped.

“What?” Emma asked.

“Hang on.” Dean took a couple of steps back and lowered his penlight. “Am I seeing things?”

The others turned and their lamps splashed from the wall again, too bright for detail.

“Just penlights,” Lanna said, and Dean heard something in her voice.

“You see it?” he asked.

“Maybe.” She turned off her headlamp and took out her own smaller torch, and the others followed suit. The cave became much darker, shadows crowding in from deep cracks in the walls and scampering across the ceiling as if trying to avoid being seen.

“Come on, rock boy, what is it?” Wren asked. “Signs of cerium?”

“Paintings,” Emma said, and Dean let out a deep breath, relieved that it wasn’t just him.

“Holy shit,” Lanna said. “How old?”

Dean shook his head. His heart beat faster. He was trying to comprehend, compute, but all sense left him as he attempted to understand just what they were looking at.

“Not just paintings,” he said. “Carvings. Images carved deep into the rock, then dyed or painted in somehow. Otherwise they’d have eroded away by now.”

“So how old?” Emma asked, echoing Lanna.

“Don’t know.” Dean played his light back and forth across the uneven cave wall, trying to establish the extent of what they had found. He was no archaeologist, but sometimes his own expertise crossed with different disciplines that all explored and investigated Earth’s history. He’d been more immersed in such things during his time with Bethan, and he often found himself missing that. Sometimes, he mourned it. She’d always told him that his work was in the realm of aeons as opposed to millennia, but he still experienced the power and deep history of what he was viewing right now. If anything, it made the caverns feel that much older.

“Don’t know?” Wren asked, an edge of impatience in his voice. “You’re the one with a rock degree, why don’t you—”

“Thirty thousand years?” Dean muttered.

“That’s impossible,” Emma said. “How’d you figure?”

“These caves were frozen solid, shut off from the outside world, tens of millennia ago. I dunno, they might even be sixty, seventy thousand years old. Even older.”

“There were people doing shit like this that long ago?” Wren asked.

“Sure,” Lanna said. “There are cave paintings in Indonesia that are maybe fifty thousand years old.”

“But there’s good trace in these walls, Emma?” Wren asked.

“Readings certainly look promising.”

Dean stepped closer to the cave wall and turned around. “You’re joking, right? These carvings and paintings themselves are probably priceless.”

“We can’t take them down and sell them, can we?” Lanna asked.

Dean ignored her and looked to Emma. She stared at him, grim-faced.

“I mean, what are they even supposed to be?” Wren asked. “Is that a person? What the fuck’s happening to their head?”

“Emma,” Dean said. “These tunnels go deeper.”

“We don’t go deep unless we have to, you know that. And we’re not archaeologists, Dean.”

“The next chamber. That’s all. We can’t just—”

“Dean!”

He blinked, paused. His usual stance was to give in, but not here. He couldn’t back down here. “We can’t just tear this down, Emma. Besides…” He turned and examined the wall again, running his hand more carefully across the surface. He felt carved runnels that he’d previously thought were natural faults, marvelled at how old they were, tried to imagine the last hands that had felt across the rock like this. He wished he could see with their eyes.

“Besides, what?” Lanna asked.

“Don’t like the look of these faults,” Dean said. There were faults, but he didn’t think they were that bad. He wasn’t lying. Just massaging the truth. “Deeper, maybe we’ll find somewhere easier and safer to excavate for samples.”

“Huh,” Emma said. “Okay, next chamber, and that’s it. Wren?”

Wren consulted the map on his wrist screen, turning slightly left and right to orient himself. “Yeah, got it. Maybe ninety feet that way. Tight squeeze, then it opens out into a much larger chamber. That’s as far as the drone went, and maybe that’s the place.”

Emma nodded, and Dean sighed with relief.

“That’s it, though,” she emphasised. “Deep enough. There’s too much meltwater here for my liking. Remember Patagonia.”

Dean could hardly forget. They’d been trapped in a cave system for three days after a flash flood, with no one aware they were down there. It was only Emma’s brave swim through flooded caves, with no knowledge of their geography, that had found them a way out. Dean had suggested the attempt, Emma had taken it on. She’d said it was because she was the best swimmer, but they all knew the truth. She felt responsible for them.

As the others headed off towards a narrow, low fault at the end of the cave, Dean took a last look at the paintings. Touched by only his light they were given more shadow, more texture, and they jumped out in sharp relief. He breathed in the wonder of what he saw. To the left, a huddle of shapes that might have been people, a dozen or more squatting or crouched down. They were tall, with spindly limbs and large heads. To the right stood another figure, an object in its left hand that might have been a weapon, and something in its right hand that resembled a drooping plant or several individual lengths of rope. Standing above this scene, and somehow set behind it by the way it was carved and coloured, a much taller figure on three propped limbs. A tree, perhaps, with a thick trunk. Or maybe a strangely shaped cloud emitting three streams of lightning down at the prone people.

Between the standing figure and group of people, another shape sat in a strange attitude, and Dean couldn’t get Wren’s comments out of his head. Is that a person? What the fuck’s happening to their head?

“Dean, keep up,” Lanna said in his coms. “We’ll take pictures on the way back. Maybe we’ll leave an anonymous tip somewhere if this cave doesn’t work out.”

Dean glanced back the way they’d come, wondering if and when Bethan might arrive. There were no questing lights, no sounds of anyone else within these caves. Maybe she knows it’s me and won’t come at all, he thought.

He switched on his helmet and pack lamps and headed after the others.

They entered a narrow, twisting route, splashing through the thick, muddy water. It got even deeper the further they went, and a couple of times they had to crouch down and crawl on hands and knees, pulling themselves through a long, narrow section that was almost too small to fit through. Despite their waterproof clothing and gloves, Dean felt the bite of cold slowly freezing his fingers. Their helmets scraped on rock, and he had to grasp on and pull, pushing with padded knees and the steel toecaps on his boots, taking deep breaths to try and settle his fear and his beating heart. Wren grunted and swore up ahead, and Dean knew the big man wouldn’t do anything he considered too dangerous. They often took sensible risks, but always balanced against potential outcomes. They did this for the money, but none of them was reckless. That was why they worked well as a team.

Just as Dean was beginning to think they’d have to turn back and start excavating into the walls of the painted cave after all, Wren’s voice rasped in through their comms.

“Holy shit, guys. I think we’ve found Dean’s life models.”

“What?” Dean said. “What do you mean?”

“Jesus,” Emma said.

“Oh my…” Lanna’s voice faded away into a deep intake of breath.

Dean sped up his crawl and reached out when he saw Lanna leaning down for him. She grasped his hand and helped him up and out from the muddy crawlspace. He knocked his helmet on the low ceiling of this new cavern, and his light flickered a few times, adding a strobe effect to the scene that awaited them.

The cave painting they had left behind, come to life.

Come to life in living death, Dean thought, and the idea, though accurate, sent a chill right through him.

“Okay, I am officially spooked and ready to get the fuck out of here,” Lanna said.

No one replied. Dean was ready to follow her. Yet fascination took him another few steps forward.

“Dean…” Emma breathed. “Stay back.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“How the fuck can this be okay?” Wren asked.

“Because they’re old and dead,” Dean said.

“How old?” Dean wasn’t sure if that was from Emma or Lanna. Their voices were low, whispered, as if afraid to cause echoes that might have touched the strange tableau.

Afraid that they might hear.

“Very,” Dean said. He took a step closer and turned his head, splashing the bodies with light.

And their eyes open because it’s the first light to touch them in thirty or fifty thousand years—

He hissed at his spooked thoughts, making the others jump.

“They’re just like those paintings,” Wren said.

The cavern was larger than the one with the decorated walls, the ceiling towards the centre higher, and the air here felt dry. A stream tinkled into a crack in the ground and echoed away further, deeper, into hidden places they’d never see. The air smelled dusty, not damp, a scent that Dean associated with deep age.

The bodies were higher up, untouched by the flowing water, on an elevated section of the cavern floor. A dozen or more sat huddled together, so close that they looked like one large, confused tangle of limbs and merged torsos, heads drooped or resting on each other’s bony shoulders. The remains of ropes encircled them, individually and also as a mass. The scene was confusing, but Dean could see that the bodies were mostly mummified, skin tight across skulls and drooping from arms, hanging in swathes across torsos, and still hidden in places behind the remains of clothing. Eye sockets were empty, mouths hung open to display a few yellowed teeth. Hair clung on where scalps remained, though there were places where the skin had dried and crumbled, taking the hair with it. Clumps of it settled in the hollows between bent limbs, dark as the shadows that haunted this cavern’s deeper places.

Every skull bore a puncture wound. Some were small, no more than a finger’s width, while others had cracked and crazed around the impact point.

“Tied up and killed,” Dean said. His words echoed away to nothing. He wondered if their screams had disappeared into the same hollow places beneath the ground, or whether this had been something else. Something none of them here, now, could understand.

Dean made out a dark spread on one body’s bare shoulder which might have been a tattoo. The same body wore a necklace made from delicate shells on a thin leather thong. Another corpse clasped a round clay bowl in one hand, finger bones twisted through a hole in its side. Elsewhere, a shredded cloak held memories of a faded, wispy colour.

“So old,” Emma said.

“Yeah,” Wren said. “Like, when does a mass grave become archaeology, you know?”

Dean knew what he meant. Yet even so old, their presence here felt like a transgression.

“This one’s different,” Lanna said. She was standing by two more figures, the taller of which seemed to be seated and slumped on a high rock, leaning forward onto a thick metal spear. It punctured the body’s chest and exited through its back, metal barbs down its length caught on ribs and spine.

“Suicide?” Emma asked.

“Maybe,” Dean said. It was a haunting display, but his focus was drawn again and again to the figure between the seated speared body, and the huddled mass of bound corpses.

“Now that is pretty fucking bizarre,” Wren said. “Is it… a kid?”

It was difficult to tell. Definitely a person, the corpse seemed compressed down, legs tucked beneath the body that crouched to the ground, arms hugging itself tight, head—

What the fuck’s happened to their head?

—curved down beneath the torso. An impossible position, unless the neck was broken or completely severed.

“It looks ritualistic,” Lanna said. “Like a sacrifice, or something.”

“Who knows?” Emma said, and then her probe started ticking and crackling. “Hey!”

Dean glanced back to see Emma at a far wall of the cavern, checking back and forth across an area low to the ground.

“Well, that sounds hopeful,” Wren said, his voice lighter.

“Good readings,” Emma said. “Dean, take a look.”

Dean took another glance at the ancient bodies, mummified and dried and playing out their strange last moments forever. Then Lanna grabbed his arm and leaned in close.

“Let’s get working and get the fuck outta here,” she whispered. She knew that the others would hear through the comms, but it still felt like it was just between them. She was so close that he could smell her breath, her scent, and he was glad for that.

Emma and Wren were already taking the heat wands from their backpacks, checking that the trailing wires were clear and preparing to fire them up. The wands were just part of what the hi-tech packs contained, tools designed to gently heat ground that might still be frozen solid to make digging and extraction of samples easier. They were only hand tools, and as such their effectiveness was limited to very small areas. But the minerals they sought were rarely found in large concentrations, and this expedition was simply to gather samples. They made their money from selling location information. The larger-scale mining operations that might follow were always in someone else’s hands. As such, they didn’t need a large amount of a good quality sample to make their trip worthwhile.

And if Dean was reading Emma’s excited probe’s chattering correctly, they might have found what they were looking for.

He stepped in closer and examined the cavern wall. It was mostly solid rock, but down closer to the floor there was a layer of looser sediment, maybe three inches thick, that exuded a heavier, saltier water. He scraped with his knife and a curl of sand fell away.

“This might be it,” he said.

“Okay, get to work,” Emma said. “Wren and Lanna down that end, me and Dean here. You know what to do.”

They all knew. They had done this before. But never while being observed by the dead.

Dean crouched down close to the ground and shone his headlamp at the wall, while Emma fired up her heat wand and aimed it at the layer of sediment. She prodded it forward for a few seconds, then drew back. The burst of heat washed over Dean, surprising him, and he flinched and blinked to moisten his eyes.

“You’re too close,” Emma said. “Ease away.”

He shuffled back and she passed the wand across the wall again. The sizzling echoed around the cave, repeated from a few feet away where Wren and Lanna were doing the same. Dean took a blunt bladed tool from his belt and scooped along where the surface had been heated, drawing out more of the loosening sandy sediment. Emma swept the wand again, he took another scrape, and they repeated this process a dozen times until there was a small mound of excavated material on a smooth part of the cave floor.

Dean reached around and took a small device from the side pocket of his rucksack. He switched it on, and even though he’d done this earlier he initiated a quick diagnostics check to ensure all readings were accurate.

“Warming up in here,” Wren said.

“We’ve only been doing this for five minutes,” Dean said, but Wren was right. The air in the cave seemed to be agitated. A breeze breathed through where there had been none before, carrying a skein of mist so thin and slight that it might have been dust across his eye.

“We got anything?” Emma asked. She sounded impatient. Dean checked his device to confirm that the diagnostic was complete, then rested its series of five metallic probes on the small mound of debris. Its screen flickered to life as it analysed, and moments later the results were displayed in a small chart.

“Top notch,” Dean said.

“Okay, good shit,” Emma said. “Let’s clear out what we can in an hour.”

Dean shrugged off his pack and pulled out a selection of folded plastic sample boxes. Lanna did the same. They worked smoothly, filling the boxes with the residue they’d filter and refine later in the Stallion, clicking them shut, and stacking them to one side. His device showed impressive traces of rhodium in each scoop, and he glanced left and right along the wall, starting to wonder just how rich this deposit might be to whomever came after them with proper mining equipment. The amounts they were removing now were minuscule; it would take industrial mining and refinement to make this site profitable.

Which is exactly what Dean wanted to avoid. If Bethan came, as he’d hoped, she and her associates would do everything they could to ensure this place remained untouched. The cave paintings would help, for sure. They might even get UNESCO involved.

Dean glanced back over his shoulder. The bodies were shadows now, with the team’s lights concentrated on their work. As his headlamp moved, so did the spidery silhouettes cast by the bodies. He tilted his head left and right, making them dance, and wondering once again what had happened here, and when, and why. It was haunting and disturbing, but he also relished the mystery. He liked the idea that not everything could be known and explained, much as the soul of the land often kept its secrets close. Sometimes the past should remain buried.

That pile of corpses, tied up and bound together, each bearing a head wound. A sacrifice or an execution.

The dead person seated on their own, slumped forward onto the propped metal spear. A suicide or a murder.

That crouched, huddled figure that sat between them.

“Hey, Dean, keep in the moment,” Emma said, slapping one gloved hand against his leg.

That’s the biggest mystery, he thought, and he shone his light at that strange shape.

“What’s that stink?” Lanna asked.

“Dunno,” Wren said. “Maybe those bodies have decided…”

They saw and realised, all at the same time. Dean’s heart thudded in his chest, and he heard Emma’s indrawn gasp, and Wren muttering something under his breath. Lanna dropped the sample box she’d been holding.

The crouched corpse had changed, and it wasn’t an effect of the light, or a shifting shadow, or even that their being here had perhaps disturbed the air or ground.

It had moved. The head was up, still facing down at the floor but lifted from its previous impossible position beneath the body, a few strands of clotted hair swaying as if tasting at the gentle breeze their presence had caused.

On that breeze, the stench of something old, rotten and rank.

A thin limb encased in leathery skin shifted and braced itself against the ground, and with a crackling, snapping sound it exerted pressure.

In a confusion of boiling shadow and panicked, flickering light, something began to shift.

What the fuck’s happened to their head?

Something wet.

TWO

This isn’t what we agreed,” Bethan said. “A Ford Xtreme, fully charged with solar backup array, freeze-dried rations for a week, water purifier, camping kit and climbing ropes and winch. Three thousand dollars for eight days. And you told me you’d advise us on routes and recent terrain changes, and give us info about the other team. Instead… that?” She nodded at the vehicle parked close to the dock. She was amazed it still ran. Actually, strike that—she hadn’t seen it moving yet. “For fuck’s sake.”

“Hey, the advice and info I can still offer,” Frank said. He was old, weather-grizzled, skin like faded leather. He might have been Goyo’s twin, except Goyo had a long grey ponytail. And more than an ounce or two of honesty and honour. “But my brother needed the Xtreme to travel along the coast to his wife’s parents’ place, and you know what it’s like here.”

“Brutal,” Bethan said. “I hate this fucking place already.”

“Family comes first.” Frank glanced over his shoulder at the small coastal town of Joyce Sound, then back at Bethan, as if one look could encompass everyone he knew in the town, and how community bound them tightly together. He raised an eyebrow. “You always swear so much?”

“Only when somebody fucks us over.”

“Come on, Bethan,” Goyo said, touching her shoulder. Always the calming presence. He never raised his voice, never broke out in anger, and sometimes that drove her mad. It levelled her, too. When they were out in the field he was the order that tempered her occasional penchant for chaos.

“Goyo, it was agreed—”

“But things appear to have changed.” Goyo nodded at the old Land Rover Discovery. Alile was walking around it, kicking tyres, shading her face at the window to look inside. She looked back at Bethan and Goyo, mouth twisted in an I dunno expression.

“What’s the mileage?” Bethan asked.

“Round the clock,” Frank said.

“How many times?”

He shrugged, and a smile ghosted his mouth. Damned if the fucker wasn’t enjoying this.

“Listen—” she said, and Goyo was there again, his voice holding her back. She’d been about to take a step towards the big man, with no idea what might follow. Anger often made her run off at the mouth, and sometimes she acted without thinking. And she knew it wasn’t really anger at Frank. He was just a good guy looking after his family and community, and they were a bunch of strangers come here to do things he had no idea about. To him, Bethan and the others were just like the team they were following.

They were nothing alike. But Frank wasn’t to know that.

It was them she was angry at, and it was a familiar feeling from other places, other journeys.

“We’ll take it,” Goyo said. “I used to drive one of those things back in twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Decent vehicle. Rugged.”

“It’s thirty years old!” Bethan said. “Look at it!” The Discovery had certainly seen better days. It might have been black, once, but the harsh environment of Hawkshead Island had abraded it so much that several repaints had overlaid each other, and now it was matt green, blue, and swathed with patches of rust brown. The windscreen had a crack zagging down from one top corner to the bottom centre. One rear window was missing and covered with a heavy seal skin folded and screwed roughly into the chassis.

“It’ll get you where you want to go,” Frank said. “Especially with the free advice and maps I’m throwing in.”

Bethan bristled. Was he kidding? “Free?”

“It’s fine,” Goyo said again, and though his voice was gentle, she saw the look in his eyes. Save it for other battles, it said, and she knew he was right. She sighed, then offered Frank a weak smile.

“Sorry. Been a long journey. Free advice and maps, and a decent hot meal before we head out, and it’s a deal.”

Frank held out his arms. “You think I’d let you go without a meal? Look at you. You’re all wasting away.” He chuckled. “Got bottles of my homebrew we can share, too, while we go over the maps. I call it ‘Old Bastard’.”

“Apt,” Bethan said.

“Did you do that for the other team?” Goyo asked. Bethan’s flush of anger rose again—at what the team they pursued was here to do, the carelessness they carried like a bad smell, their greed—but she knew this was best left to Goyo.

“How’d you know the Kelland doesn’t belong here?” He nodded at the modern vessel anchored offshore, white and gleaming. When none of them said anything, he shrugged and smiled.

“They were up their own, for sure. Sailed in, took their beast of a truck off the boat, acted like they owned the place. Asked me a few questions, bought some fresh supplies then headed inland. Can’t have been in port for more than three hours.”

“You get their names?”