Bentley Little - The Burning

A tunnel had been discovered under the street.

A tunnel crammed with corpses.

All of the information was secondhand, but it appeared as though the corpses were old, perhaps mummified. If so, this was a significant archaeological find, and the professor said he was planning to make arrangements for the class to view the site once the police were through, perhaps as early as this afternoon. "Keep an eye on the department bulletin board. I'll post on the Web site, but since a lot of you probably have classes in this building throughout the day, it might be easier for you to just stop by. I want to stress that this is entirely voluntary and won't affect your grade. In fact, it's not even going to be extra credit. This is strictly for those who have a special interest in local prehistory, an opportunity for you to be in on the ground floor, as it were, of what could be a major discovery in the field."

He started rhapsodizing about the possibilities of what they might come across. "As you know, there are several notable archaeological sites in the Flagstaff area, most prominently Wupatki and Walnut Canyon. But the unearthing of what may be a tomb in downtown Flagstaff, an area not previously known to house any significant dwellings or artifacts, by people who did not typically inter their dead in this manner, could prove to be important and consequential. We have the potential to learn more about how these people lived and died from this single discovery than from any prior dig."

Angela raised her hand. "Who found it?" she asked.

"From what I've been told, city workers were digging a trench under State Street for the new expanded sewer system when they came across a hard rock slab that turned out to be the roof of the tunnel."

The remainder of the class period was spent on a series of digressions regarding the burial customs of local tribes and the Anasazi. "Are you going?" a guy who sat several seats away from her asked as Angela made her way out into the corridor with the rest of the students. She looked around in surprise to make sure he was talking to her and not someone else. The two of them had never said a word to each other before. She did not even know his name.

"Uh, yeah," she said.

"Me, too. See you there, huh?" He smiled and waved as he started toward the elevator on the opposite end of the corridor.

She watched him go. This morning, after she'd told Chrissie about Brian, as they'd grabbed their hurried respective breakfasts, her roommate had said nonchalantly, "It's probably for the best. You're too young to be tied down. Have some fun first." She'd been surprised and hurt by the comment, had thought her friend was not taking her feelings seriously. But now she thought Chrissie might be right.

She turned in the opposite direction and took the stairway down to her next class.

It was clear by early afternoon that the bodies were not that old, that not only were they not from some ancient Indian tribe, but they probably weren't even pioneers. Still, Dr. Welkes intended to lead his classes on a tour of the underground chamber to view the bodies, and the mystery remained. Who were these people and why were so many of them crammed into a short tunnel under State Street? For the police had discovered that the tunnel began beneath an old hotel that was in the process of being renovated, and ended a few yards away in the basement of what had been a department store and was now a series of boutique shops. Both buildings had been constructed in the late 1800s, placing the date of death sometime around the turn of the last century.

But why were there so many corpses? Police counted thirty-three in that confined space. The professor and his graduate assistants had already scoured Flagstaff newspapers from that time period and found no mention of any unusual burials

or mass deaths, no sudden surge of missing persons. Waiting in front of the professor's office at the appointed time, one of the grad assistants speculated that the deaths had been from disease and the tunnel had been used as some sort of quarantine area.

"At this point, that's as valid a theory as any other," Dr. Welkes said. He looked at his watch. "It's about that time. Shall we go?"

There were around twenty of them gathered in the hall, and they picked up their books and backpacks, following the professor toward the stairs. Angela looked around for the nameless guy who'd spoken to her after class. She was disappointed he hadn't shown, but that was more than made up for by the excitement of seeing what one wit was calling "the tunnel of death."

There was a tap on her shoulder. It was Brenda, a girl who sat behind her in Dr. Welkes' class and who was also in her American Lit class. "Angela, could I carpool with you?" she asked. "I live on campus and I don't have a car."

"Sure," Angela told her.

"If any of you have flashlights, bring them!" the professor announced as he started down the stairs. "It's going to be dark down there!"

Two more people ended up carpooling with her, and hers was the first vehicle behind the professor's Jeep. He led them to a designated parking area behind the closed hotel. A policeman was waiting for them, and when all of the students had parked their cars and assembled on the sidewalk, the officer led them under the yellow crime scene ribbon into the hotel.

If this had been an amusement park ride, it could not have been designed any better. The lobby of the hotel, in the early stages of renovation, was devoid of furniture, and the ceiling and floor were composed of dark stripped wood. Tattered sections of old wallpaper hung against dirty white walls, and the out-of-service elevator was visible as a broken metal box through the open double doors. The hotel looked for all intents and purposes like a haunted building, and the lack of electric illumination combined with dim fractured sunlight seeping through the dusty front windows only emphasized the resemblance.

The students had been talkative and enthusiastic on the way over, even while waiting on the sidewalk for everyone to arrive, but the atmosphere of this place was deadly, and ever since entering, they had all been silent, cowed.

Afraid.

Angela didn't know about anyone else, but she was afraid, and she wasn't quite sure why. She thought of that terrible mumbling in Winston and Brock's apartment, and maybe that was part of it, but it seemed to her that what frightened her was more than a resemblance to something that had happened before. This was something new, even if along the same lines, and her dread was amplified by not knowing what was to come.

One girl from Dr. Welkes' advanced course stopped in the middle of the lobby, her face chalky, and said she'd changed her mind: she didn't want to see the corpses; she'd wait for them outside. Angela knew how she felt, and part of her wanted to flee as well, but her curiosity was stronger than her fear, and as the other girl turned and exited, she followed the policeman, the professor and her classmates through a service door and into a stairwell.

"Lights on!" Dr. Welkes called, and those who had flashlights turned them on. The policeman had a strong, powerful beam that illuminated a large swath of the area before them, but here in the back of the crowd it was dark, and Angela was glad her dad had made her pack an emergency flashlight in the trunk. Brenda had nothing with her and so she stuck close by.

They started down.

At the bottom, moving single file, they passed two industrial washing machines with adjacent dryers and a massive furnace, half-disassembled, before reaching more crime scene tape. The officer held up the yellow ribbon as they ducked underneath it. Beyond was a janitor's closet and, at the back of that, an ancient metal door that had been recently pried open. Crumbling and irregularly broken brick around the exposed doorjamb testified to the fact that prior to this it had been sealed shut for many years.