John Adams - Wastelands - Stories of the Apocalipse

"Real pretty," said Rain.

Deaver woke up. The sun was just topping the mountains; it must’ve been light for some time. He looked where Rain was looking. It was the Moroni tower on top of the mountain above the old capitol, where they’d put the temple statue a few years back. It was bright and shiny, the old guy and his trumpet. But when the Mormons wanted that trumpet to blow, it had just stayed silent and their faith got drowned. Now Deaver knew they only hung on to it for old times’ sake. Well, Deaver lived for new times.

Lehi showed him how to use the underwater gear, and they practiced going over the side into the water a couple of times, once without the weight belts and once with. Deaver and Lehi swam like fish, of course-swimming was the main recreation that everybody could do for free. It was different with the mask and the air hose, though.

"Hose tastes like a horse’s hoof," Deaver said between dives.

Lehi made sure Deaver’s weight belt was on tight. "You’re the only guy on Oquirrh Island who knows." Then he tumbled forward off the boat. Deaver went down too straight and the air tank bumped the back of his head a little, but it didn’t hurt too much and he didn’t drop his light, either.

He swam along the outside of the temple, shining his light on the stones. Lots of underwater plants were rising up the sides of the temple, but it wasn’t covered much yet. There was a big metal plaque right in the front of the building, about a third of the way down. THE HOUSE OF THE LORD it said. Deaver pointed it out to Lehi.

When they got up to the boat again, Deaver asked about it. "It looked kind of goldish," he said.

"Used to be another sign there," said Rain. "It was a little different. That one might have been gold. This one’s plastic. They made it so the temple would still have a sign, I guess."

"You sure about that?"

"I remember when they did it."

Finally Deaver felt confident enough to go down into the temple. They had to take off their flippers to climb into the steeple window; Rain tossed them up after. In the sunlight there was nothing spooking about the window. They sat there on the sill, water lapping at their feet, and put their fins and tanks on.

Halfway through getting dressed, Lehi stopped. Just sat there.

"I can’t do it," he said.

"Nothin to be scared of," said Deaver. "Come on, there’s no ghosts or nothin down there."

"I can’t," said Lehi.

"Good for you," called Rain from the boat.

Deaver turned to look at her. "What’re you talkin about!"

"I don’t think you should."

"Then why’d you bring me here?"

"Because you wanted to."

Made no sense.

"It’s holy ground, Deaver," said Rain. "Lehi feels it, too. That’s why he isn’t going down."

Deaver looked at Lehi.

"It just don’t feel right," said Lehi.

"It’s just stones," said Deaver.

Lehi said nothing. Deaver put on his goggles, took a light, put the breather in his mouth, and jumped.

Turned out the floor was only a foot and a half down. It took him completely by surprise, so he fell over and sat on his butt in eighteen inches of water. Lehi was just as surprised as he was, but then he started laughing, and Deaver laughed, too. Deaver got to his feet and started flapping around, looking for the stairway. He could hardly take a step, his flippers slowed him down so much.

"Walk backward," said Lehi.

"Then how am I supposed to see where I’m going?"

"Stick your face under the water and look, chigger-head."

Deaver stuck his face in the water. Without the reflection of daylight on the surface, he could see fine. There was the stairway.

He got up, looked toward Lehi. Lehi shook his head. He still wasn’t going.

"Suit yourself," said Deaver. He backed through the water to the top step. Then he put in his breathing tube and went down.

It wasn’t easy to get down the stairs. They’re fine when you aren’t floating, thought Deaver, but they’re a pain when you keep scraping your tanks on the ceiling. Finally he figured out he could grab the railing and pull himself down. The stairs wound around and around. When they ended, a whole bunch of garbage had filled up the bottom of the stairwell, partly blocking the doorway. He swam above the garbage, which looked like scrap metal and chips of wood, and came out into a large room.

His light didn’t shine very far through the murky water, so he swam the walls, around and around, high and low. Down here the water was cold, and he swam faster to keep warm. There were rows of arched windows on both sides, with rows of circular windows above them, but they had been covered over with wood on the outside; the only light was from Deaver’s flashlight. Finally, though, after a couple of times around the room and across the ceiling, he figured it was just one big room. And except for the garbage all over the floor, it was empty.

Already he felt the deep pain of disappointment. He forced himself to ignore it. After all, it wouldn’t be right out here in a big room like this, would it? There had to be a secret treasury.

There were a couple of doors. The small one in the middle of the wall at one end was wide open. Once there must have been stairs leading up to it. Deaver swam over there and shone his light in. Just another room, smaller this time. He found a couple more rooms, but they had all been stripped, right down to the stone. Nothing at all.

He tried examining some of the stones to look for secret doors, but he gave up pretty soon-he couldn’t see well enough from the flashlight to find a thin crack even if it was there. Now the disappointment was real. As he swam along, he began to wonder if maybe the truckers hadn’t known he was listening. Maybe they made it all up just so someday he’d do this. Some joke, where they wouldn’t even see him make a fool of himself.

But no, no, that couldn’t be it. They believed it, all right. But he knew now what they didn’t know. Whatever the Mormons did here in the old days, there wasn’t any gold in the upper rooms now. So much for the future. But what the hell, he told himself, I got here, I saw it, and I’ll find something else. No reason not to be cheerful about it.

He didn’t fool himself, and there was nobody else down here to fool. It was bitter. He’d spent a lot of years thinking about bars of gold or bags of it. He’d always pictured it hidden behind a curtain. He’d pull on the curtain and it would billow out in the water, and here would be the bags of gold, and he’d just take them out and that would be it. But there weren’t any curtains, weren’t any hidey holes, there was nothing at all, and if he had a future, he’d have to find it somewhere else.

He swam back to the door leading to the stairway. Now he could see the pile of garbage better, and it occurred to him to wonder how it got there. Every other room was completely empty. The garbage couldn’t have been carried in by the water, because the only windows that were open were in the steeple, and they were above the water line. He swam close and picked up a piece. It was metal. They were all metal, except a few stones, and it occurred to him that this might be it after all. If you’re hiding a treasure, you don’t put it in bags or ingots, you leave it around looking like garbage and people leave it alone.

He gathered up as many of the thin metal pieces as he could carry in one hand and swam carefully up the stairwell. Lehi would have to come down now and help him carry it up; they could make bags out of their shirts to carry lots of it at a time.

He splashed out into the air and then walked backward up the last few steps and across the submerged floor. Lehi was still sitting on the sill, and now Rain was there beside him, her bare feet dangling in the water. When he got there he turned around and held out the metal in his hands. He couldn’t see their faces well, because the outside of the facemask was blurry with water and kept catching sunlight.