“A cave under a cave,” said Nick, lowering his voice. “There must be a word for that, right, like under-cave?”
“It’s an ossuary,” whispered Ajay. “And I have to say that’s a word I never thought I would have occasion to use.”
“What’s it mean, egghead?” asked Nick.
“A receptacle or vault for the bones of the dead,” said Ajay. “Or a cave containing deposits of ancient carcasses resulting from carnage. Emphasis on ancient.”
“Memorizing the dictionary again?” asked Elise.
“The Oxford,” said Ajay. “I’m halfway through the Ts.”
“I’m leaning toward something in the As,” said Elise. “Like abattoir.”
“When you two are done playing smarty-pants ping-pong, let us know,” said Nick.
“That means ‘slaughterhouse,’ ” said Elise.
“Great. Abattoir. My new word of the day,” said Nick. “Now let’s abattoir to find that key and get out of Dodge.”
Will led them single file, following the narrow path through the piles. As his light flashed off the bones, he saw shapes and sizes of all kinds—double-skulled heads, spines twelve feet long, arms with reptilian pincers, more than a few suggestions of wings. Many reminded him of the various creatures that had pursued him last year, things Dave had called vurlbogs or lamias. Maybe what we’ve found is the Other Team’s home, or some kind of lost colony.
“There’s violence here,” said Brooke, shivering as she looked around. “Terrible violence.”
“Ya think?” asked Nick.
Will elbowed him sharply.
“Doesn’t take an archeologist to track that to the source,” said Elise. “Part of the services offered upstairs. Start with a few inspirational hymns, a thoughtful Sunday sermon from Cardinal Watermelon Head, and then, to round out the festivities, three hours of human sacrifice.”
“Stop saying human,” said Brooke.
“I’d like to analyze some of these bones so we know exactly what they are,” said Ajay.
“You can pick up a souvenir on the way out,” said Will.
“Too bad we don’t have a dog,” said Nick. “A dog would go animal crackers down here.”
Will checked his watch. “Let’s stay focused.”
He hadn’t heard anything more from Dave, but he couldn’t figure why he was hearing him again. Maybe this place put him physically closer to wherever Dave was, or enabled some kind of stronger connection to the Never-Was. Will tried asking more silent questions to see if his missing “guardian” would respond from, well, wherever he was: How long ago did the Other Team live down here? Was Cahokia their headquarters or some kind of capital city? Is this where your final battle with them took place?
Nothing. Dave didn’t respond.
“Dudes, so I think I figured out what the hole in the center’s for,” said Nick as they continued following the path through the bones. “It’s like a garbage disposal after they’re done at the chop-shop upstairs. And when the platform gets too jammed, they could just ride it down, dump the whole load, hose it off, and head back up for more.”
“Okay, you can put your imagination back in its box now,” said Elise, grimacing.
“But it’s true that most ancient civilizations depended on sacrifices of one kind or another,” said Ajay. “That was how they reached out to the spirit world for assistance. They most frequently sacrificed animals, but a lot of societies didn’t stop there by any means.”
“Could be worse,” said Nick. “Maybe they were cannibals.”
Will took a worried look at Brooke. She was still shaking and seemed overwhelmed. Will put an arm around her and spoke softly: “You’re picking up too much,” he said. “Can you try to shut it out?”
She shook her head. “It’s overwhelming.”
“We’re going to be fine. This all happened a long, long time ago, and I think you can control what you’re feeling more than you know.”
She managed a slight smile. “I can try.”
Nick took the lead, holding up his flare. “There’s some kind of light up ahead. Maybe a way out.”
They trudged in silence for a while, accompanied by the dry rattle and crack of the bones, until that stopped and they realized they were walking on rock and dirt again. Heading for the glow in the distance, they followed the path down a short slope to a long horizontal gap in the rock wall. It was about six feet high with sharp edges that looked as if they’d been cut into the stone with precise tools. They ducked under it, passed through a short passage in the rock, and came out into another large, high-ceilinged chamber, onto a ledge overlooking the cave’s floor twenty feet below.
A building sat in the chamber’s center about thirty yards away. Intact, made of concrete, modern, or at least midcentury, like an office building. One story, long and wide, with a flat roof. The wall facing and nearest to them had floor-to-ceiling windows, lit up inside with a warm, amber light that imbued the surrounding darkness with a ghostly glow.
“That’s got to be the place Nepsted described,” said Will.
“The hospital,” said Ajay. “And it’s got power, all the way down here.”
“Totally nutso,” said Nick.
“So Nepsted wasn’t lying,” said Elise.
“Kill the lights and the flares,” said Will. “Everybody stay low.”
Nick discarded their flares and they knelt down behind a cluster of rocks. Will took out binoculars, and Ajay did the same. Will scanned the glass wall. It looked like some kind of administrative or reception area. He saw desks and chairs and doors inside, and what appeared to be a linoleum floor, but no people—or creatures—anywhere in sight.
“See anything moving?” Will asked Ajay.
“Not even a mouse,” said Ajay.
Ajay widened the scope of his search while Will blinked and summoned up his Grid, looking for heat signatures. Neither detected living creatures anywhere around or outside the building.
“What do we do?” asked Elise.
“Look, dudes, we didn’t come this far down the rabbit hole to stop on the one-yard line in the middle of like Nazi headquarters,” said Nick. “Did we?”
“No, but if you tried, you could probably mix a few more metaphors,” said Elise.
Will looked at his watch. “How many flares did you bring, Nick?”
“Plenty to get us back topside,” said Nick.
Will thought about it for a second.
RULE #56: GIVING UP IS EASY. FINISHING IS HARD.
“Nick’s right,” he said. “Switch your lamps back on and follow me.”
They picked their way down from the ledge along a narrow rocky shelf, which put them on the level of the building, about fifty feet away, directly facing the glass wall. The inside looked like a still life or a diorama in a museum. Will directed them around the left side so they never passed directly in front of the windows. The building was much bigger than it first appeared, extending back hundreds of feet, never rising above one story. The walls were plain cinderblock, painted dark industrial green. Before long, they came to a regular-sized door. Will turned the knob. Unlocked. He turned off his headlamp and the others did the same.
“Stay together,” Will whispered. “Single file. No freelancing.”
He opened the door and stepped inside. The same soft amber glow filled the corridor inside from hidden fixtures above. Cheap, industrial linoleum lined the floor between wood-paneled walls, and a slight hum oscillated from somewhere beyond the walls. They edged down the hallway to an intersection and turned right, heading for the area they’d seen through the windows. They reached it after passing through one more door.
The room looked as if it had been abandoned in the middle of an ordinary day’s work. Chairs had been shoved back from desks. Papers, pens, and books sat open on the main counter, next to an empty coffee cup, e
verything covered by a heavy layer of dust. Phones but no computers or printers; nothing that modern. A clock on the wall was still audibly ticking, the second hand advancing in small spasms around the dial. One of the fluorescent bars in the hanging fixtures above flickered, casting a fractured strobe effect around the room.
Ajay moved to the main desk, blew the dust off the pages of the largest book on the counter, and examined it.
“This is some kind of ledger,” he said. “Dates, initials, in English, but with lots of strange abbreviations.”
“Do you see a year?”
“Looks like 1938,” said Ajay; then he rapidly paged back through the book. “And it goes back from there about six months to, guess what, late 1937 … then it skips a lot of pages … and there’s another section toward the back from 1935, written in fountain pen. Letters and numbers, arranged cryptically. I’m guessing it’s some kind of code.”
“Take some pictures,” said Will, tossing him the pen-camera.
“I won’t have any trouble remembering—”
“For me, not you,” said Will. “Everybody, check all the drawers and cabinets.”
“Doesn’t really look like a hospital,” said Nick, looking around.
“If you were a key, where would you be?” asked Brooke.
She opened a small closet and found an assortment of white coats on hangers and a box full of construction hard hats.
“Make sure we leave no trace of our presence,” said Ajay as he finished taking pictures.
“I don’t know why,” said Elise. “No one’s been in this room since about forever.”
“What do you think it was used for?” asked Nick, opening the drawers in a desk.
Elise reached past him into one of the drawers and took out a handful of empty HELLO MY NAME IS ______ stickers. “Maybe a reception or visitor center, where they processed people in and out of whatever this is.”
Will found a calendar for 1938 with pictures of farm machinery in another drawer. “Built in the 1930s. And this part of it, at least, was abandoned not long afterward.”
“Really?” asked Nick. “How’d the people who used it get to work?”
“And what kind of work were they doing here?” asked Brooke.
Will opened a small box behind the counter and found a ring of keys on a hook.
“Let’s find out,” he said.
He grabbed the keys and led them back into the corridor, then down the hall past the door where they’d entered. The corridor continued deeper into the building for thirty paces, where it ended in a perpendicular corridor that took them right. Occasional doors led to smaller rooms on either side, empty or small clerical stations that didn’t seem worth exploring. But one opened into a larger space that looked like a barracks, with twin rows of cots lining the walls. Two doors down from that they found a corridor with a row of six barred cells.
“This looks like military construction,” said Ajay, examining the craftsmanship. “Fast, sturdy, relatively inexpensive. The army put up barracks like this by the thousands all over the country during World War Two, and through the Cold War, almost overnight.”
“A mile underground?” asked Elise. “Next to an ancient alien city?”
“And was that on purpose or an accident?” asked Brooke.
“Not sure,” said Will, “but there has to be some connection.”
“But how could they have done it?” asked Brooke. “How’d they get everything you’d need to build this down here?”
“There must be some other way up to the surface that we don’t know about,” said Will.
“You’d be amazed at what a few billion dollars can do,” said Ajay.
That corridor ended at a solid concrete wall, with a heavy, steel-reinforced door in the middle. The number 19 was stenciled on the door in red paint. Will tried the door. Locked.
He sifted through the key ring he’d picked up in the office and found one attached to a metal-lined cardboard disc with “19” written on it in red ink. He inserted the key, the lock gave way, and he opened the door.
The lights were off on the other side. Will turned on his flashlight and found a light switch by the door. He flipped it up. Fluorescent fixtures flickered on overhead and the room filled with harsh white light. They had entered a newer, entirely different section of the building.
The flooring was a white, high-gloss tile. Stainless-steel cabinets and metal lockers lined the walls. There were slots for nameplates along the top of the lockers but the plates had been removed. Brooke opened the lockers; there were red scrubs inside all of them.
“It’s a doctors’ dressing room,” said Brooke. “These are surgical scrubs.”
“Why are they red?” asked Nick, fingering one of the sleeves.
“So blood doesn’t show up,” said Brooke.
“Oh,” said Nick, gingerly replacing the scrub in the locker.
“There’s no dust anywhere,” said Elise, running a finger over a cabinet. “This room’s clean.”
“We’ve found the hospital,” said Will.
He opened another locker and saw round tin film canisters, rows of videotapes, stacks of DVDs.
“What’s all this?” asked Nick.
“Cans of film,” said Will, looking through them. “Dated from the thirties and forties.”
Nick sifted through the rest. “The tapes are from the eighties, the DVDs from the nineties.”
“Put everything back the way we found it,” said Will, replacing the cans.
“There’s air circulating through the room,” said Ajay, holding up his hand to an overhead vent. “A working filtration system.”
“Whatever it’s for, this section is still being used,” said Will.
“Considerably more modern,” said Ajay, studying the doors. “More substantial style of construction. Postwar definitely.”
Will opened a door at the far end and led them into the next room, a spacious laboratory outfitted with computers, servers, and every technological gadget you could think of.
“Electron microscopes … advanced cyclotrons … ,” said Ajay, walking through. “It’s as well equipped as the school’s labs.”
“Suitable for genetic work, gene splicing, that kind of thing?” asked Will.
“More than suitable.”
“When do you think they put this part in?” asked Elise.
“Probably 1980s,” said Ajay. “At the earliest.”
Next to a workbench, Ajay opened a large storage compartment. Inside they found rows of sealed glass containers, most holding a variety of bones suspended in a clear liquid. One held a skull, similar to but smaller than the monstrous one they’d discovered in the cathedral’s crypt.
“I have an idea why they built this place,” said Will.
“Who’s they?”
“The Knights,” said Will, pointing to an insignia on the door, an image of the Paladin. “They found Cahokia and wanted to study it. They punched into the bone room from this side of the cave, not the other way around. That’s what the older section was for, built in the thirties, a command center for the dig.”
“So why’d they build the hospital section?” asked Nick.
“For when they stopped studying,” said Will, shining his flashlight through a door he’d opened into the next room. “And started experimenting.”
Lights switched on as they entered, activated by sensors. This room had a higher ceiling and was perfectly round, with elevated seats surrounding a space with that same shiny, spotless white flooring. An adjustable stainless-steel table, surrounded by medical equipment, stood in its center. Spotlights were suspended over the table. Everything looked immaculately clean.
“An operating theater,” said Elise.
Nick looked more closely at the table and lifted some straps at the corners that ended in complex shackles
. “Is it normal to lock people down during surgery?”
“Of course not,” said Brooke.
“Didn’t think so.”
“Who were they operating on?” asked Ajay.
Will didn’t answer. “Let’s keep moving,” he said.
Nick led them through swinging doors at the far end of the surgical theater, feeding into another corridor, this one all white, floors, walls, and ceilings. The electric hum they’d heard since they arrived grew steadily louder here; they were moving closer to whatever its source was.
At the end of the corridor they reached another metallic door, stenciled with a red number 9, in the middle of a solid, poured concrete wall. Will found the corresponding key on the chain and unlocked it. He flicked on some switches to the side of the door and lit everything up.
The square space in front of them was the largest and deepest they’d encountered in the hospital complex. Halfway across was a wall with three equidistant glass doors, which divided the area. There was only darkness behind the door to the left; the pulsating hum they’d heard, much louder now, was issuing from in there. The door appeared heavily secured.
There were lights on inside the door on the right; looking through it they saw a large wall on the room’s right side, which rose out of sight and the ceiling along with it. Set into that wall was a pair of large dark steel doors—ten feet wide, eight feet high—and an operating panel with small lights to the left of them.
“What does that look like to you?” Will asked the others.
“I don’t know,” said Brooke.
“Nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said Elise.
“Like massive steel doors in some super, super top-secret evil scientific laboratory?” asked Nick.
“Hard to top that description,” said Ajay, his eyes opening wide. “But perhaps the entrance to a freezer? There are digital readouts on that panel that could be related to temperature.”
Will turned his attention to the middle section, walking to the solid glass door. Behind it was the smallest room of the three, rectangular, low ceilinged, painted all white. Overhead lights revealed the only two objects in the room—identical bright steel cylinders, shaped like two strangely formed, elliptical beer kegs, in the center of the room.