P. Deutermann - The Last Man

He rocked back on his heels, letting the Maglite shine into his face. He remembered the fateful words that had triggered Adrian’s theory and his own search: The cisterns have never been explored. Now he had some real work to do, and not much time to do it in. He set to shoveling sand again.

Thirty minutes later he had uncovered the entire slab, which was actually a crude rectangle, four feet by about two and a half, with the ring embedded on the centerline about a foot from one end. There was a quarter-inch seam all around the slab, with the bedrock of the cistern forming the outer edge of the seam. The stone of the slab was a different color from the bedrock. He studied it, running his knife blade along the seam, loosening bits of sand. Depending on how thick it was, this probably was not something he could just lift out of its hole, unless there was some kind of counterweight mechanism, which he doubted. Besides, this stone looked like it had been here for a very long time.

His knife was a bosun’s knife, and it had a four-inch stainless steel fid, or spike, on one end. He pried the spike under the ring and began to work it, but the ring’s hinge joint seemed to be welded in place. There were no hinges visible on the slab. He put the knife down, climbed up the sand ramp to the entrance hole, and slipped outside. He had to wait a few minutes to get his night vision back but then found a good-sized rock, which he took back into the cistern with him.

Using the rock as a hammer, he banged on the ring until he thought he saw it move as his hammering broke through the crust of rusty metal. This time he was able to lift the ring into a not quite vertical position. He sat back again, not even trying to lift the slab. If it was even two or three inches thick, it would weigh a couple hundred pounds, if not more. He needed some leverage. A pole. Maybe one of those steel scaffolding pipes up above — that would do nicely.

He climbed back up into the fortress and removed one of the steel pipes, which was two inches in diameter and about twelve feet long. He took this back down into the cistern, realized he needed a fulcrum point, and returned once more to the fortress to look around. He finally decided to hump loose building blocks down to the cistern until he had a solid fulcrum point on which to set the pipe. Then it became obvious that if the blocks were resting on sand, they would just settle when he tried to lift, so he had to dig some more sand away and then go get some more building blocks.

It took him an hour to get the thing set up, with two poles now and a second stack of rocks instead of just one, after he realized he would need something to wedge the slab open once he got it lifted. If he could get it lifted. He looked at his watch. Almost two. Moonrise in ten minutes. He would need two hours to get back to the hostel, assuming he didn’t have to hide from a patrol along the way. Sunrise was at around seven thirty. Twilight an hour before that. So he could stay here no more than two more hours. This had better work right away if he was going to have time to explore the cave underneath.

He went around to the lever end of the steel pipe, which was sticking up about six feet above the sand, its other end wedged through the ring. He draped his arms over the pipe and then pulled down. Nothing happened. The pipe flexed slightly over its fulcrum of stacked stones, but the big slab didn’t budge. He took a deep breath and hung his entire body weight on the end of the pipe. At first it simply flexed again, threatening to crimp, but then there was a noise of crunching sand and the edge of the slab came up out of its hole, rising about ten inches above the edge of the hole before becoming wedged against the end of the pipe.

Now what, genius? Cursing, David let the pipe back down again and went over to reset the pole and the second stack of stones. It did him no good to just open the slab while he was twelve feet away suspended on the lever arm. He had to wedge it open so he could go see what was down there. He obviously needed to be able to reach that second pipe once he had the slab raised.

He succeeded after two more tries and another trip to the rock pile up above. This time he was able to tip the big slab sideways a few inches onto a pile of building stones, leaving about a foot of daylight between the slab and the rim of the hole. He grabbed the Maglite and crawled over to the hole, being careful to keep his head and hands out from under the precariously perched slab. Holding his breath, he pointed the white beam down into the hole under the slab. There was another large, rusty iron ring attached to the bottom of the slab. That wasn’t what got his attention, though. To his astonishment, the light beam shone back at him from what looked like a bottomless pool of black, motionless water.

Judith awoke again at two in the morning. This time it was not a nightmare but rather a suffocating sensation, the feeling of a huge deadweight on her chest and lungs, accompanied by a lingering sense of some unspecified dread. The room was hot and stuffy, and she realized that she had again not opened her window before going to bed. Still, the aftereffects of that dreadful feeling clung to the edges of her consciousness like some night horror that was crouching behind her, remaining just out of her peripheral vision. Her face felt greasy with perspiration, and her mouth was dry. She swallowed a couple of times and then got up to find a bottle of water. She opened the window, and immediately a cool draft stirred the air by her legs.

She was getting a little tired of this. What was it about this place that gave her bad dreams and night sweats? She felt almost as if she had a hangover. Reluctantly wide-awake now, she threw on a robe and sandals and went down the hall to use the bathroom. She thought about going outside again but decided against it. Against the rules and a dumb idea besides. But the thought reminded her of the embarrassing scene that morning, when she had taken the hostel manager to the fire door to show him the piece of paper jammed in the bolt hole, only to discover it was gone. The manager, a fat man in his fifties, had given her one of those patronizing looks men reserve for semihysterical women while she insisted that the door had been blocked open the night before.

Now, as she headed for the stairs, she decided on the spur of the moment to check the door again. She stopped in front of it, ignored the operating handle, and gave the door a tentative push. To her amazement, it flopped open. Squashed into the bolt hole was another piece of wet paper. This time she pried the wad of paper out of the hole and reset the door lock. She unfolded the paper and found that it appeared to be a fragment torn from the hostel rules and regulation pamphlet.

Who the hell was doing this? Was someone leaving this door unlocked so that someone else could get in during the night? Two college kids, out for a lark at night? Thieves, perhaps, or, worse, hooded Palestinians bent on blood work? Then what had happened to the piece of paper that morning?

She went back to her room and tried to think it through. The answer finally hit her like a bucket of cold water: The most likely explanation was that someone was leaving the hostel at night, secretly using the fire door, and coming back before morning. She knew in an instant who that someone had to be: the goddamned American.

Easy way to find out. Go and knock on his door. What if he was a sound sleeper? Knock louder. Beat the door down, if you have to. As she remembered, most of the German students were all up on the second floor with her, but not all, she realized. If he comes to the door? Tell him the truth; explain about the fire door.

She hesitated. What would the man think of this story, of her coming to his bedroom door at two thirty in the morning with some wild tale about a piece of paper in the lock? She felt in her bathrobe pocket to make sure she still had the fragment. She almost couldn’t bring herself to do it, until she remembered that man, that Colonel Skuratov, who had called her earlier. Checking up on the American. To whom she had lied. Why did he care? What the hell was going on here?