The Genesis Plague - Michael Byrnes [120]
‘Crazy bitch,’ Ramirez seethed as if one of the victims had been his own brother.
‘How? How did she kill them?’ Holt pressed. He felt like he was a boy scout again, hearing haunted campfire stories. Hazo reluctantly cast his bloodshot eyes to the ground. ‘Come on, Hazo. If we’re stuck in a demon’s grave, it would be nice to know what we’re up against.’
Trying to catch his breath, Hazo managed to force one tentative word from his lips: ‘Pestilence.’
‘Pest-a-what?’ Ramirez asked, agitated.
‘Disease, Ramirez,’ Shuster said. ‘Learn the language, will you?’
Ramirez lingered on the word, his M-16 drooping in his grip. He repeated it to himself with a sense of fatalism: ‘Disease.’ He pulled a gold crucifix out from under his collar and blessed himself with it.
‘It’s just a story,’ Holt reminded him.
‘A story? You saw Al-Zahrani when they pulled him out of here. Man, he was sick … real sick. You saw him.’
Holt rolled his eyes and spread his hands.
Then Ramirez took a hasty step back from Hazo, looking spooked. ‘And look … now he’s sick,’ he said accusatorily. He tightened his hold on the M-16. A psychosomatic tickle came to the back of his throat and he grabbed at it. ‘I don’t want to catch no damn disease …’
‘Settle down,’ Holt said.
‘Guys!’ Shuster’s voice echoed up from the mountain.
Holt cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted back: ‘Yeah?’
‘Get down here … I found something!’
Holt set off on a brisk pace through the tunnel, Ramirez and Hazo bringing up the rear. The passage essed twice and curled sharply before spilling into a cavernous black hollow. Holt stopped dead in his tracks. ‘What the …?’ he gasped.
‘Over here,’ Shuster called to him from deep within the hollow.
He spotted Shuster’s flashlight floating in the voluminous darkness. The light played over the surface of a massive angular form plonked down in middle of the cave, which resembled an unhitched semi-trailer or a railroad boxcar. And it seemed that the sounds they’d been hearing - now clearly recognizable as the whirring of mechanical parts - were coming from inside it.
‘Come on, Holt!’ Shuster shouted. ‘Get over here!’
‘Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?’ Ramirez said over Holt’s shoulder.
‘This ain’t no dream,’ Holt said, pointing his light down to illuminate the ground. He was surprised to see that a section of the cave floor had been levelled into a two-and-a-half-metre-wide path, definitely not by natural means, but by some kind of excavating machine. On either side, the natural limestone formations had been left intact, looking like a moonscape. Around the cave’s perimeter walls, his light glinted off enormous stainless-steel holding tanks shaped like inverted baby bottles. For a moment he felt like he was back on the tour of the local Budweiser brewery, in the fermentation room.
Holt and Ramirez trotted over to Shuster, while Hazo paused to catch his breath.
‘How did this get down here?’ Holt asked.
‘Must have been brought in here in pieces … assembled on site. Modular construction. See there,’ Shuster said, moving his rifle muzzle up and down so that the light emphasized one of many riveted seams connecting the container’s outer steel panels.
‘Looks like a shipping container,’ Ramirez said.
‘Sure does,’ Shuster said, making his way around it.
‘For what, though?’ Ramirez mumbled. Thoughts of the ancient legend had his imagination running wild. The short hairs on his neck bristled.
‘Take a look at this,’ Shuster called over.
Holt and Ramirez kept their M-16s at the ready and angled around the hulking container. A pale purple light glowed on to a grooved steel ramp that led down from the side of the container. The container’s short side was two and a half metres square, partially enclosing a central entryway a metre wide, two metres high. Beside it, a mechanical door mounted on rails had been slid open. Semi-transparent