“They fought over the thigh,” Ilya said.
I nodded. The shamans had exhausted all sources of prey, then turned on themselves. I could imagine them, mutated lunatics, fighting face-to-face or setting traps, killing one another, then sneaking to this mural to record their “triumphs.” They didn’t have time to paint details; just a few fast daubs to commemorate some victory over an opponent, then they’d scurry away for fear of getting caught by other enemies.
“There’s one thing missing,” I said. “The final battle. They couldn’t paint that one because nobody survived.”
“You’re thinking of the explosion?” Ilya asked.
“The great Tunguska blowout. The last blast of the war.”
“But the explosion didn’t happen in these caves,” Ilya said. “It detonated many kilometers up in the sky.”
I pointed to the wall—the picture of six shamans poised around the bronze talisman. “What if the last six survivors agreed to a final duel? A contest of power, winner takes all, with the thigh as the prize. Can you picture them flying, high in the air, ready to loose all their might on one another? They’d probably leave the thigh here where it would stay safe underground . . . and where it would be out of reach in case someone tried to grab it for an energy boost. But the shamans themselves could have opted for a gigantic airborne Armageddon.”
“And their clash caused the explosion,” Ilya said, “annihilating them all.”
“They may have been so deranged they
wanted
annihilation. A fifteen-megaton suicide pact.”
“Leaving the bronze thigh behind in their underground bunker?”
“We’ll see.”
I turned away from the mural. As I did, gunfire sounded in the distance, echoing and reechoing off the tunnel walls.
“The shamans left more than the bronze thigh,” Ilya said. “I’ve got a feeling that the mammoth and saber tooth were only the start of the welcoming committee.”
“It’ll be a shame,” I said, “if they rip Urdmann to pieces before I can kill him myself. Come on.”
Ilya and I slipped deeper into the caves.
The tunnel had dozens of side passages—probably leading to sleeping quarters, latrines, and all the other facilities an underground society needs—but the main shaft continued straight ahead, still lit with its ice-reflected glow. Ilya and I pressed forward another five minutes until we came to the scene of the fight we’d heard: another dead mercenary, another dead creature, both bleeding the ground slick.
The creature had the size and build of a bear, but its face was insectlike—some breed of black fly, with huge scarlet eyes above a dripping sucker mouth—and its forelegs ended in snake heads rather than paws. It must have walked upright, with serpent mouths hissing as it reached to grab prey. I could imagine it lurking out of sight in a nearby side passage, then storming out with a roar when the mercenary came within striking distance. The bear thing’s right-hand fangs had pierced the man through both cheeks, like double spikes rammed into the flesh; then the left-hand fangs had ripped out the man’s throat. Other mercenaries had shot the monster, dropping it in its tracks . . . but that was too late to save the injured man. Urdmann and his team had simply moved on—though I imagine they were much more wary when they came to other side tunnels.
I was wary myself. First, I put on my night-vision goggles; the tunnel’s dim light was adequate for simple walking, but perhaps it was time to see farther into the shadows. Then, keeping well away from the bear-fly-snake in case it wasn’t as dead as it seemed, I started forward again with my nerves on high alert.
My precautions were wise but not wise enough—I should have kept my distance from the mercenary, too. As I passed his corpse, his hand darted out and caught my ankle. Before I could react, he yanked and pulled me off balance, toppling me to the floor. My goggles went flying and smashed against the tunnel wall. As for me, I hit hard on one shoulder, not able to do a proper break fall because the grip on my leg didn’t let me move freely. A second later, the man grabbed me with his other hand too, clutching my ankle and squeezing so hard I felt bones grind against each other.
I shot him in the face. It didn’t make a bit of difference.
The man had looked dead before—half his throat was missing, and he’d been lying in a pool of his own blood. Now, he was
definitely
dead; my bullet blew away enough of his skull to give new meaning to the term “scatterbrained.” Yet the grip on my leg didn’t lessen. In fact, the dead man pulled me toward him, hand over hand, dragging me closer with his bloody fingers.
Note to self: the bronze thigh didn’t just produce monstrous animals, it made zombies too.
I fired at the man again. Generations of movies had assured me the living dead would cease to be a nuisance once their gray matter got minced. But two point-blank head shots didn’t slow my attacker at all—he continued to paw my leg as if crawling up a rope. So much for believing Hollywood. Instinctively, I kicked the zombie with my other foot . . . as if a kick would work where bullets didn’t. No. But I could slam my boot heel down on the zombie’s fingers, a target I didn’t dare attack with my guns for fear of shooting myself in the leg. As my boot struck home again and again, I heard the pleasing snap of undead metacarpals.
The zombie’s grip eased. At first, I thought it was because of my knuckle-crushing footwork. Then I saw that one of the arms clutching me was no longer attached to the dead mercenary’s body. Something glinted as it slashed in the darkness . . . and the other arm came loose too, sliced off at the shoulder. I looked up to see Ilya holding the katana. He contemplated the zombie as a butcher might size up a side of beef before deciding where to cut next. After a moment, Ilya swung the blade again . . .
I was pleasantly surprised that chopping up the zombie actually seemed to disable it. Too often in movies, undead arms keep working even after they’re detached from the body. But perhaps there was something in the steel of Ilya’s century-old sword that gave it power against monstrosities—some samurai magic that worked where bullets didn’t. I was thankful for whatever little advantages we might have.
I was also thankful the dead man had already shed most of his blood. Otherwise, my nice white snowsuit would have been ruined.
Several sword chops rendered the cadaver sufficiently discontiguous that it posed no further threat. Partway through this dissection, the zombie fell still. I couldn’t tell whether it was now irrevocably dead or just in a sulk at being carved up.
As Ilya cleaned off his sword blade, he said, “Life is full of the unexpected, Larochka, whenever you’re around.”
I picked up my fallen night-vision goggles, looked at them for a moment, then tossed them aside again. They were shattered beyond repair. Tsk. “Life is
always
full of the unexpected, Ilyosha,” I said. “These caves have been here for centuries. The monsters too. I didn’t make them.”
“But you opened the door.”
“It’s good to open doors. Better than tiptoeing past for fear of what’s behind.”
Ilya smiled softly and put his hand on my cheek. “We each tiptoe past
some
doors, Larochka. We just pick different ones to avoid.”
Without another word, he turned down the tunnel and walked quickly away.
A short distance onward, we came to the heart of the underworld: a vast cavern larger than Wembley Stadium, its walls terraced, its ceiling more than ten stories high above its floor. Like Wembley, the layout was oval; our tunnel entered at one end, halfway up the wall, then split into narrow paths and walkways that ran the circumference of the place, connecting to all the terraces.
The light was the same feeble dimness we’d seen in the tunnel—too faint to show us the cavern’s far end. But I had no doubt the bronze thigh was down there. This chamber felt like a cathedral. In the years before the shamans went mad, the people of the tribe must have come here to worship: to behold the bronze talisman, to bow down before it, and to watch as their fellows were killed in sacrifice.
A steep ramp led to the cavern floor. I started down but stopped when I saw Ilya wasn’t following. He’d gone along a side path to the nearest wall terrace; I trotted back and found him on one knee. “Dirt,” he said, touching the ground. “Not rock.” He dug his fingers into the earth and let bits of soil trickle out. “Feels like humus. Good and fertile. Smells rich too. I’d like some for my vegetable garden.”
“No, you wouldn’t. This soil has been mutating for millennia. It would only grow Venus flytraps. Or triffids.”
“Still . . .” Ilya looked around the cavern, his gaze slowly taking in the terraces. Each was a flat ledge jutting from the rock wall. The ledges varied in size from a few feet square to patches twenty or thirty yards long. They all appeared covered with a fair depth of soil above the underlying rock. “I think they were gardens,” Ilya said. “The people may have used these terraces for cultivating crops.”
“There’s not enough light,” I said. “Maybe you could grow mushrooms, but nothing that photosynthesizes. Unless . . .”
My eye had been caught by an irregularity in the terrace’s wall. When I investigated, I found an expanse of sewn-together animal hides hanging on spikes driven into the rock. Some of the hides had mangy bits of mammal fur; others had scales, like snakeskin; a few felt like tree bark. Considering how long these skins had been down here, they should have rotted to dust ages ago; but just as the mutant mammoth had been kept alive for thousands of years, the patchy animal hides must have been preserved by the wonders of bronze radiation.
At the seams where one skin was sewn to another, ghosts of light oozed through from the other side. Not what you’d expect from something spiked against a solid rock wall. I grabbed one edge of the hanging and pulled. The hides tore away from the spikes that held them. Light flooded out from behind—not powerfully bright but hard on the eyes after spending so long in semidarkness. Both Ilya and I lifted our hands to block the glare.
After a moment, I peeked through my fingers to get a better look at what I’d uncovered. It resembled a window . . . not glass but some translucent material that acted as a lens: perhaps the same material that served as “ice” on the walls of the tunnels we’d just left. The lens gathered light from beyond, illuminating the terrace garden where we stood. The light only shone on a part of the area; but the lens was mounted in an adjustable wood frame that allowed a degree of movement. I shifted the focus until light covered all of the terrace—a perfect greenhouse for whatever once grew here.
“Where does the light come from?” Ilya asked.
“The surface,” I said. “The sun. It may seem bright to our eyes, but it’s only winter daylight. Heaven knows how the sunshine is collected; maybe through cracks in the rock. Every stone outcrop for miles around might hide gaps that funnel light into underground channels . . . like prehistoric fiber optics. Surprising what you can do with high-tech ultrasorcery.”
“High-tech ultrasorcery?” Ilya made a face. “Please, Larochka, don’t babble.” He let his eyes roam over the dozens of other terraces lining the cavern. “I suppose they all have light sources, too?”
“Probably. You were right about the people using these terraces for crops. They could grow practically anything down here . . . especially in summer when days are twenty hours long.”
“But why would they cover the lenses?” Ilya nudged the animal-skin blackout curtain with his foot. “This place would be much more cheerful if they let in the sun.”
“Once the shamans went mad, they wouldn’t want ‘cheerful.’ And maybe light caused them pain. There’s a long mythological tradition that light injures evil beings. In my line of work, one learns to respect long mythological traditions.”
“If we had the time,” Ilya said, “I’d go around this cavern, pulling down all the curtains I could find. Let the light in.”
“We might do that after we’ve dealt with Urdmann. I’m always game for unveiling ancient ruins . . . but first things first.”
We returned to the ramp and descended to the cavern’s floor. Still no sign of Urdmann. I thought I heard whispers from the far end of the chamber, but it might have just been a breeze. It might also have been the sound of monsters sliding softly toward us.
Rather than walk across the middle of the cavern, Ilya and I kept to the gloom along the wall. Urdmann’s men would be watching for us . . . and this group wouldn’t be like the bunglers in Warsaw. The thugs who invaded Jacek’s were handpicked to fail; they had to let Reuben escape with the booby-trapped statue. The thugs with Urdmann now, however, were apparently top-drawer, as evidenced by the fact that they hadn’t cut and run despite the monsters they’d encountered. They’d also have top-drawer equipment—probably including night-vision goggles. Since my own goggles were broken, all I could do was creep forward, wondering if my body heat was glowing a bright green in somebody’s infrared sniper scope.
Several times we came to side tunnels leading off the main cavern. Ilya and I passed each one cautiously, watching for hungry bear-fly-snake things. We saw nothing . . . but three-quarters of the way along the cavern, we came to a tunnel where we
heard
something: a bubbly crackle, like bacon in a frying pan when it starts to spit. Whatever made the noise, I didn’t want to meet it; I glanced at Ilya and could tell he felt the same. We stepped up our pace to a trot. That might make it easier for Urdmann’s thugs to spot us, but they seemed the lesser of two evils.
The bacon-fat sound didn’t fade behind us. It continued at the same volume, as if the source of the noise was following on our heels. When I glanced behind, I saw nothing. That didn’t reassure me. Either our pursuer was keeping low to the ground and hiding in the shadows . . . or else it was truly invisible. Neither possibility filled me with buoyant good cheer.
Then—as if things couldn’t get worse—something in front of us went flash-
crack.
A sniper rifle. Ilya staggered, then dropped to the ground. I joined him an instant later. “Are you hit?” I whispered.
“My leg. Damn.”
I reached toward him, intending to probe his injury, but he pushed me away. “You deal with our other problems. I can patch myself up with my first-aid kit . . . but not if something is trying to eat me.”