Restless Soul - Alex Archer [33]
She squatted in front of it and dug her fingernails into the wax, clawing at it even as she told herself she should open it later. The same way she’d told herself she should have come out here by herself.
Maybe Roux would have one more thing to lecture her about. But she wasn’t going to wait. She couldn’t wait.
Something was demanding she open the bowl now, an inner voice that had nothing to do with the one saying, “Free me.”
“Now, not later,” she told herself. She’d not wormed her way through the tunnels and risked the rising river to wait.
The waxy material broke loose and crumbled in her fingers. She held it in front of the flashlight. It was clay, dried by the years.
The lid shifted. She hesitated for just the barest fraction of a second, and then swiftly plucked it off.
Something threw her backward. Pressure slammed into her chest, like so much compressed air, and shoved. Something she couldn’t see.
Images flashed through her mind. The paint-smeared faces beaded with sweat and the rain, visages filled with a mix of wonder and horror and finally relief.
She heard the rat-a-tat-tat. Her mind wanted it to be rain, but she knew in her gut it wasn’t. There were shouts in a language she couldn’t understand, a voice thick with a Southern accent shouting.
“Annja? Annja!”
She blinked. Reality slammed back into her mind, shutting out the voices.
Luartaro was standing over her, holding out his hand. “Are you all right?”
She nodded and picked herself up without his help. “I’m fine. Just slipped.” Another lie to Luartaro.
“Find something interesting?”
She looked down at the skull bowl, but she didn’t touch it again. “Just this. It has dog tags in it.”
“Odd place for dog tags, but then this is an odd place for golden Buddhas and crumpled cigarette packs.” He took a few pictures of the bowl, and then one just of her. “I’d like to send some pictures of this to the university where I teach. Never saw anything like it.” He took several more pictures of the bowl. “I’d like to get that translated. I don’t recognize the script.”
When Luartaro turned to take more pictures of the rest of the treasure, Annja gingerly touched the bowl, poised to jerk her hand back if anything happened. The voices were gone, as were the impressions of the men’s painted faces. She picked up the bowl, cradling it carefully in her hands.
The dog tags were coated with dried blood, and more dried blood covered the bottom of the bowl. The blood had been at least an inch thick when it was poured in. Her stomach knotted at the sight. She stirred the tags with her finger and read the names. Some of them were difficult to make out, the caked blood so thick. But she flecked it off with her fingernails. Thomsen, Gary A., Baptist; Everett, Timothy J., Catholic; Moore, Gordon A., Lutheran; Winn, Edgar B., Baptist; Mitchell, Samuel R., Baptist; Farrar, Harold B., Methodist; Collins, Robert B., Catholic; Wallem, Otis H., Methodist; Seger, James A., Jewish; Duncan, Ralph G., Lutheran. There were also blood types and social security numbers on each tag, nothing to indicate rank or home city, and USA to stand for United States Army.
Not from World War II. Dog tags then had serial numbers, not social security numbers. Somewhere she had picked up a bit of trivia about dog tags, and it had served her well during a session of Trivial Pursuit. Dog tags had been used by the military since 1906. The ones just prior to and around the early part of World War II listed the first name of the soldier, the middle initial, the surname, serial number, blood type, next of kin and address. From 1941 to 1943 they included immunizations such as tetanus, and the soldier’s religion. They dropped the address line in the latter part of the war. In 1959, dog tags switched from their rounded shape to rectangular.
These were rectangular, so definitely post WWII, Annja decided.
And not from the Korean War. If she remembered correctly, it was in 1965 that the dog tags changed again, to use social security numbers