Douglas Preston - Two Graves

Egon stared at him a moment, his eyes returning the reflected glow from the fortress. And he spoke for the first time. “Agricultural research. Animal husbandry.”

“Animal husbandry?” Pendergast shook his head. “Well, it’s none of my business. We’re for the forest.” He delved into his pack and pulled out a flashlight. “Here’s a red light for you. Don’t use a regular flashlight, please—the QB is aversive to light. Follow me, stay close, and make no noise.”

He handed Egon the red light and walked into the forest. The prickly branches of araucaria trees mingled with the thick understory to impede their way, everything still wet from the recent rains. But Pendergast, slender and nimble as a snake, moved with speed through the dark, dripping vegetation, shining his red light here and there, net in one hand, ready to strike.

“Keep up!” he whispered over his shoulder as Egon blundered along.

The ground began to rise. There were no trails in this part of the forest, no sign in fact that any humans ventured beyond the town. It had all the aspect of wilderness. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, it didn’t feel quite right.

“There’s one!” Pendergast suddenly cried out. “Do you see it? Oh, my God! I can’t believe it!” And in a flash he was gone, whipping through the undergrowth, red light flickering, net waving frantically. Egon gave a shout from behind and began to pursue, crashing along.

Ten minutes later—from a heavy tree branch about thirty feet above the ground—Pendergast watched Egon stumble about in the forest, calling Fawcett’s name and shining a powerful flashlight about, his voice strident and panicked.

Pendergast waited half an hour, until his escort had moved his search farther south. Then, as silently and nimbly as a monkey, Pendergast descended from the tree. Placing a special hood on the red light, he moved swiftly northward, following the sloping ascent of land. For an hour he continued his rise until he came out on a narrow rim—the lip of an adjacent crater. Here he turned off the light. The trees had thinned out along the rim, giving him a view down into the broad bottom of the vast crater, illuminated by the light of a crescent moon. It was quite shallow, miles across, encompassing several thousand acres of tightly packed fields and pastures, taking advantage of the rich volcanic soil. This was the breadbasket of Nova Godói, clearly the former location of the old tobacco plantation, the crater forming an almost perfect microclimate for agriculture. At the far end of the crater stood a tight cluster of dead cinder cones, like black cylinders. Nestled up against them were agricultural sheds, greenhouses, barns, and silos. All was quiet among them, not a light to be seen in the velvety darkness.

A faint trail followed the rim, and he walked along it until he came to a second trail switchbacking down into the crater, steep at first, but soon leveling out as it approached the fields. In another moment he had reached the edge of the first field, a great spread of corn, quite still in the pale moonlight. Pendergast entered it and continued on at a swift, silent pace toward the far end of the crater—and the cluster of agricultural buildings.

Past the corn were other fields, bursting with a great variety of produce—tomatoes, beans, squash, wheat, cotton, alfalfa, and timothy, as well as rich pastures for livestock. Swiftly he passed through them all until he came out on the far side, where the buildings were.

He selected the first: a huge, flat-roofed metal warehouse. He found that its door was padlocked. A quick pass of his hand caused the lock to seemingly fall open. He pulled the door ajar and slipped into the interior, fragrant with the scent of machine oil, diesel, and earth. A quick flash of the hooded red light revealed rows of agricultural machinery—farm tractors, cultivators, ploughs, disk harrows, row planters, manure spreaders, harvesters, balers, backhoes, and loaders—all of old vintage but excellently maintained.

He moved through the building and out a door on the far side. To his right rose a barn, in which he could hear the soft lowing of milk cows. To his left stood a row of silos, and straight ahead a grid of greenhouses. It was a remarkable operation, an extraordinarily rich and productive farm, vast in size, impeccably run and maintained. And apparently deserted.

Pendergast scouted the edges of the greenhouses, their glass panes gleaming in the moonlight. Inside could be seen a profusion of flowers—flowers upon flowers. One greenhouse was bursting with exotic roses in every size, color, and shape.

At the far end of the greenhouses stood the dead cinder cones, steep and tall, their flanks covered with sliding volcanic ash. Pendergast skirted the base of the closest, and then stopped: there, built into the bottom of the cone, stood a narrow shed-like building, with no windows, its rear buried in the cinders.

He crept up to the door of the building and pressed his ear to it. At first he could hear nothing, but, over time, he picked up the faintest of sounds: movement, sighing, shuffling, perhaps even a cough.

This door was incongruously strong, of heavy wood banded and riveted with steel. The lock was sophisticated, but nothing that withstood Pendergast’s efforts for more than sixty seconds. The door swung in on oiled hinges, the air exhaling a mephitic, offensive smell. All was dark.

Pendergast advanced, keeping the red light well shielded. The shed now revealed itself as merely an entrance, leading down into something built underneath or perhaps into the cinder cones. Before him was a shallow, broad staircase of well-worn stone. Pendergast paused at the top step, turning the red light off before beginning his descent. He could see a faint light from below—of a reddish hue—and as he proceeded the stench became stronger, the air redolent of unwashed bodies. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, he found himself in a long tunnel. In the darkness he could hear the sounds more clearly now. They were the sounds of shuffling, snoring, mumbling—the sounds of people. Many people.

With infinite care Pendergast crept forward in the darkness, keeping close to the nearest wall. The reddish glow came from two barred windows set in a pair of locked double doors at the far end of the tunnel. Keeping low, Pendergast slipped up to the doors, examined the lock, and listened. There was someone on the far side, someone passing back and forth: a guard. He listened, timing the guard’s slow coming and going. At a safe moment, he rose and looked through the barred window.

A vast room greeted his eyes, illuminated in dull red light from strings of bare hanging bulbs. The room consisted of row upon row of crude wooden bunk beds extending into the gloom, stacked three bunks high, each with a single blanket wrapping up the form of a human being, faces sorrowful in restive sleep, while others moved about like ghosts, some going to or from a latrine along one wall of the room. Still others simply paced back and forth aimlessly, unable to sleep, their hopeless eyes reflecting the red light of the bulbs.

Everything Pendergast had not seen in Nova Godói was here: the deformed, the crippled, the ugly and squat, the weak, the aged—and, particularly, the infirm of mind. But what horrified him most of all was that he recognized some of these faces. Only hours before, he had seen some of the same faces in town, belonging to radiant, smiling counterparts—twins. Only these underground doppelgängers carried the strange and disturbing expressions of the mentally ill, the vacant of mind, the despairing and hopeless, their sinewy muscles, brown skin, and rough hands attesting to a lifetime of field labor.

At the far edge of his vision, Pendergast saw the guard turning. He was not of these people, he was one of the others: tall, handsome. His presence seemed unnecessary—these poor souls were in no condition to revolt, escape, or otherwise cause trouble. The look of resignation on their faces was universal and absolute.