“The warrior stared into the black.
He yelled his mighty war cry,
And oblivion looked back.”
Traditional Athabastara song
Chapter 1
March 1968
Sam Hobson ran his fingers over the bristles on his chin and looked down at the yellow plastic telephone. He’d been staring at it for five minutes, telling himself that it wasn’t going to be too bad. Hobson let out a deep sigh, scooped up the handset, and punched the number in before he chickened out. The cold plastic handset felt clammy against his ear despite the sweat running down his face. The phone rang once before it was answered. The man at the other end didn’t speak; he just listened.
“I think I’ve found it,” Hobson said in a strangled gasp.
“Think?”
“I’m sure I’ve found it.”
The line was silent for five seconds.
“Where?”
“Alaska. It’s called Black Cove.”
“Give me the exact location.”
Hobson did as he was told and could hear the scribble of pencil on paper on the other end. Jennings never used pens.
“I’m sending the plane. I want to see it immediately.”
Hobson shook his head. He’d been awake for eighteen hours straight, but he knew it was pointless to argue.
“Okay, I’ll—” The line was already dead.
#
Hobson knew better than to second-guess Joseph Jennings. He’d thought that his boss was crazy before, betting on a seemingly insane business idea only for Jennings to win big. Whether it was with the original drill bit business which had started it all off or the airline, Jennings had an uncanny ability to know what the next big thing was going to be. Hobson had learned to trust Jennings. He’d worked for him for a long time – just over twenty years now – having joined Jennings Tool and Bit Co. when he was seventeen. That was back when the company consisted of only ten people. His first day was burned into his mind. Hobson was surprised as he walked into a prefab building on a bit of scrubland. It was not at all what he’d expected after hearing about a business whizz kid. He’d checked the job offer letter twice just to make sure he had the right address.
Inside the “office,” the receptionist sat behind a stack of papers, peering at her typewriter. After a moment, when she hadn’t acknowledged him, he coughed and said, “Morning! I’m Sam Hobson. I’m starting work here today—or I’m supposed to be.”
Just then the door shot open, and a tall, thin, handsome man with piercing green eyes barreled in.
“Who are you?” he barked at Hobson.
“I’m Sam Hobson. I’m—”
“Great! Come with me. I’ve got a little project for you.”
The little project was sourcing airplanes for Jennings’ new airline, and for the next six months, Hobson’s feet didn’t touch the ground.
#
Jennings had been so confident back then that Hobson found it easy to overlook his slight eccentricities, but ever since Kennedy and Khrushchev’s game of chicken over Cuba in ’62, Jennings had been a special kind of spooked. With all the noise from the US/Soviet standoff, no one had noticed Jennings go to ground and not appear again for two weeks, once he was certain that the clock wasn’t going to chime midnight. Since then, the project that had obsessed Jennings was finding his own sanctuary so that he could escape the nuclear apocalypse that he was certain was coming. He’d taken Hobson off the government aeronautical project he’d been working on so that he could exclusively search for his sanctuary, and, as with everything Jennings did, he had a very precise set of criteria for his bolt hole. Ultimately, the sanctuary had to be completely self-sufficient, which meant that it needed its own water supply that would remain uncontaminated.
Hobson guessed that, from the outside, people would have a hard time seeing why he continued to work for Jennings. The pay was good—though not as good as you’d expect working for a multi-millionaire—and the hours were long. Hobson would often get back home and his wife, Fran, would have been long asleep, accompanied by a half-finished glass of red on the side of his bed and a dog-eared Wilber Smith novel on the bed. He’d groan with relief to be easing, finally, into his bed, only to have the phone ring soon after with another urgent request from Jennings, which just couldn’t wait. After three months into the midnight phone calls there wasn’t anyone in the bed to come home to.
He’d often wondered over the years why he’d stayed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had offers to leave, but he’d realized that it was just too exciting being in Jennings’ orbit. There had been times when working for Jennings that Hobson hadn’t known what he’d be doing from one day to the next. As much as there was a big part of Hobson that wanted to get away from the craziness, he also wanted to see how it would all end.
Hobson had been searching for an appropriate sanctuary for Jennings coming up to four years. He’d come up with three possibilities, two of which had instantly been dismissed by his boss, even though they seemed to fit his criteria down to the tee, they’d been found lacking by his boss. The third place had, a set of deep caves in a cliffside on the west coast of the Mexican had required a two-day off-road trek to reach. Jennings had spent six minutes there. He hadn’t said a word. He’d just left shaking his head and had given Hobson a withering look of disappointment. There was no additional feedback—that was his way and it was understood. Hobson was expected to deliver, and he knew that he was running out of choices.
#
The mountain stood high above the Arctic Ocean. Waves lashed against its base. The rock turned with a dizzy suddenness into a horizon of water. A few hardy trees and some vegetation clung desperately to the cliff’s edge, defying the elements. Clouds rolled across the ocean in a vast expanse. From a distance, the mountain had a purple hue, veined with seams of black and gray. Trees clung stubbornly to the rock face, jutting out at angles that seemed to defy gravity, their roots digging into the rock. Water ran down one of the other sides.
Hobson looked up at the mountain deep in thought. The proximity of Russia to the location concerned him. Still, it could have been worse; they could have been on the west coast. If Hobson had had any other options, he wouldn’t have brought his boss here. But he was out of choices. In the distance, dark clouds obscured the endless horizon, making it difficult to tell exactly where the sky began. It was one vast dark gray, cobalt canvas. Hobson strained his eyes, thinking he could see a ship in the far distance. He could feel the waves of the arctic chill rolling off the sea and shivered.
Not far from the cliff’s edge was a tower of rock that stood stubbornly against the erosion of the sea. It looked very solid, and Hobson decided he’d need to take a closer look at that if Jennings liked this place. They might be able to make use of the rock outpost if it proved to be sound. He guessed it had originally been part of the cliff but had been eroded away and now managed to survive alone in the water. The arctic wind gusting off the sea blew through the layers of Hobson’s clothing and chilled him to the bone. Despite his layers, when a gust of wind blew off the sea, he felt as if he was standing in his underwear.
It wasn’t just the view that took your breath away. For one sharp second he thought about leaping off—a heart-stopping moment when he imagined himself plummeting to the rocky shore below, air rushing past, and the final impact before the waves took his body out to sea.
“Ready?”
Hobson snapped back to the moment and turned around. Standing with him on the mountain was Joseph Jennings, his thin frame covered with a charcoal gray suit and matching overcoat. In all the years that Hobson had worked for Jennings, he’d only ever seen him in this style of suit. The only thing that ever changed was the color—and that just alternated between black and gray. His black hair was slicked back from his face. He had icy-green eyes and a lean face, which when he smiled – a rare occurrence these days – could be described as handsome. Jennings used an expensive cologne called Amethyst, which smelled like peppermint to Hobson—a smell he always associated with Jennings.
“Yes,” Hobson replied, noticing that Jennings was holding a copy of the New York Times. “Bobby Announces Presidential Campaign” the headline declared.
“It looks like Bobby could go all the way,” said Hobson.
“He’s never going to get to the White House,” said Jennings with a cold certainty. “Are you sure about this place?”
“Yes, it meets all of your criteria.”
“You said that about the last three locations and they were sadly lacking.”
A cold chill ran down Hobson’s spine.
“This place is different.”
Jennings was silent and let Hobson lead the way.
“We discovered the caverns on the second sweep of this area. They’re shielded by the mountain.”
They walked along a freshly made dirt path to some large rocks that had been moved aside. There were deep troughs in the ground showing where they had one stood. Even with the path cleared, the two men had to navigate their way carefully through brambles, small hills, and rocks into a damp and muddy path.
“I took your advice and wore some old clothes.”
Hobson looked at Jennings’s immaculate suit, thinking that he’d never owned a suit which looked nearly as good.
“You’ll need to put these overalls on … and this helmet and lamp.” Jennings did as he was told. Once Jennings had the heavy-duty overalls on, Hobson handed him a thick torch, sealed in rubber. “There’s a stream that runs into the entrance. It goes on for around eighteen feet, at its deepest it gets is about up to your midriff.”
“And there’s no other entrance?”
Hobson shook his head. “This is the only one at the moment. If we were to develop this, we’d build other entrances and redirect the stream from the current entrance location.”
The path weaved its way to a cave mouth, which gaped in the middle of the mountain.
“I’ve rigged up some lights. They’re not much, but these torches will help.” He took two torches out of his rucksack and handed one to Jennings. They turned them on as they entered the cave, but the vast area seemed to swallow the beams. Hobson pressed down hard on the handle of a generator and cranked it into life. Slowly lights blinked on, casting long shadows across the rough ground. Jennings breathed in the mossy, earthy smell of the cave.
“The cave goes on for around fifty feet, and then …” Hobson walked up to a hole in the ground. Despite his nerves he couldn’t help but smile. “This is where it gets good.”
He took a flare out of his backpack, lit it, and hurled it into the dark. He followed it with two more. The flares erupted with red sparks, offering crimson glimpses of the cavern below.
The flares illuminated the jutting rocks which framed a tar-black darkness. A few moments later, they heard the faint thud of the flare hitting the ground. They could just make out the red pinprick of light as it blinked out.
“Hmmmm,” murmured Jennings—which was as close as Hobson ever heard to him expressing any emotion.
“Have you been down there yet?” Jennings asked him.
“Yes, I took a small team down there last week. The space is roughly the shape of a bottle—narrow at the top but then opening out into a large cavern.”
“How big is the cavern?”
“So far we’ve mapped the ground level to the distance of four hundred by two hundred and seventy feet.”
“Ground level?”
“Yes. We’ve identified three levels, and possibly a fourth. The ground level is the largest. There are catacombs and tunnels leading off all of the levels. We haven’t begun to explore them yet. We found the spring on the ground floor.”
“Have you been able to trace the source?”
“Not yet. We’ve identified a layer of lime in the rock which acts as a natural water filter.”
“Can we go down there?”
“Uh … well …” Jennings’s request surprised Hobson. His first instinct was to say no, but Jennings wasn’t a man you said no to.
“Yes, we can. We’ve rigged up a rudimentary type of ... well, I guess it would be too grand to call it an elevator, but it’ll get us down to the ground level. First, we’ll need to get down to the plateau just a few feet below. There are no lights set up so we’ll have to be careful.”
Hobson went first, shining his torch into the black, inky darkness. He lowered himself down and was swallowed by the black. Jennings paused and looked into the hole. An unexpected spike of fear gripped him when he peered into the void. It looked like the waiting mouth of a hungry beast.
“Mr. Jennings?”
“Coming.”
The plateau was a short drop from the hole. The two men swept their torches around. The space was as big as a good-sized hotel suite.
“The ridge goes out for around forty feet,” Hobson pointed out with his torch beam where the ridge ended.
“It falls off to another ridge around twenty foot below, and then it’s a sheer drop except for a few outcrops that mark the different levels.”
Hobson’s voice echoed around the cavern. Jennings went up close to the edge and shone his light into the abyss.
“Hmmm,” Hobson heard him murmur again.
“We’ll have to do more structural and environmental surveys,” said Jennings.
“Yes.”
“And I want the source of the spring found.”
“Right.”
“So I’ll have that information by Friday.”
Hobson had to stifle a groan. That gave him three days.
“The sea can provide one source of energy,” Jennings mused.
“As should some well-placed solar panels around the top of the mountain. The mountain provides some natural shielding and we can also incorporate additional shielding, and perhaps a wind farm on that outcrop we saw on the way in,” added Hobson.
“Hmmmm.”
Jennings walked around the plateau deep in thought. The wind howled around the space, carrying an earthy but not unpleasant smell. Jennings stopped suddenly and whipped his head round.
“What?” Jennings asked.
“Pardon me?”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything, Mr. Jennings.”
Jennings was silent. He stood stock-still but rotated his head.
“Wait, what’s that?” said Jennings, pointing his torch at the rock face in front of him. Hobson walked up to the rock. Painted on the rock, he saw what at first glance looked like a furnace, but when he looked closer details began to emerge. Set deep into the mass of red “flames” were two dark globes, which could have been eyes. On either side of the flames were two appendages, which were either hands or claws. The flaming creature was towering over some stick figures, which seemed to be holding something up towards the creature—perhaps offering something in sacrifice or attempting to ward it off. The creature looked as though it was getting ready to attack. There was something else...
“That’s incredible!” said Hobson. “Cave paintings! I hadn’t noticed them. I wonder how long they’ve been here? I wonder if there’s any more?”
“Can you hear that?”
“What?”
“The...whispers.”
All that Hobson could hear was the a slight breeze around the space. Jennings jabbed a finger at the paintings.
“ What’s that behind the paintings?” Hobson looked at where Jennings was pointing. The only thing he could see was a fission in the rock.
“What is that?” Jennings hissed, his eyes wide with fear and wonder.
“I … I can’t see anything.”
A shudder rustled through Jennings’s body.
“No, no of course. It’s just shadows. I thought I saw … just shadows. I’ve seen enough.”
They walked towards the makeshift elevator. Hobson looked behind him and saw Jennings staring back at the cave paintings.
Jennings heard the paintings whisper.
“We found something else, sir. Something else that seems to suggest that we weren't the first people here.”
“Other people? When?”
“Let me show you.”
A set of pulleys had been set up with a large weight levied at the bottom of the cavern. Hobson and Jennings approached a crate made of wire and wood.
Jennings paused and looked it up and down.
“It looks flimsy, but it’ll easily take our weight,” said Hobson.
“Right.”
Jennings walked in, missing the fact that Hobson had his fingers crossed.
“I’ll warn you, it won’t be a smooth journey to the bottom.”
Jennings nodded. Hobson untied the rope, and they plummeted what felt like a huge drop until one of the pre-set stop dead weights kicked in and stopped them. Hobson thought he might lose his lunch, but Jennings looked fine. They sank deeper and deeper. Eventually, the crate shuddered to the bottom of the cavern where Hobson had set up a series of arc lights.
Jennings looked at his surroundings, sweeping his torch in a circle. The space seemed to go on forever.
“I need to show you something,” Hobson grinned.
They padded through the ground level, Hobson nodding his torch back and forth to illuminate the way. As the two worked deeper into the cavern, a green light began to slowly illuminate their surroundings. Coming from a sub-cavern to their left, the green light revealed details of the cave.The two men entered, Hobson leading the way. The ceiling and walls were ringed with crystals and stalagmites like jagged teeth. The crystals seemed to pulsate with a green light.
“A cave of diamonds,” said Jennings, and Hobson saw him smile for the first time in a long time. “What’s causing the green glow?”
“We think it’s some kind of phosphorescence. The crystals or diamonds themselves are actually made mostly out of apatite and another element that we haven’t been able to identify yet. The other noteworthy thing is that this is the first of the chambers where we have found human habitation and maybe a continuation of the images from the cave paintings.”
Illuminated by the green glow was, what appeared to be, a collection of rotting scarecrows made from twigs, mud, and mangy animal skins. The scene mirrored what had been depicted in the cave painting. Three stick figures had been made out of twigs and bark and tied together with vines and other vegetation. Judging from the twigs and vegetation scattered the subterranean cave, there had been more of the figures, but they’d slowly decayed and fallen apart. They formed a ring around a large central figure, which could have been mistaken for a bonfire if it wasn’t for the rotting animal skins it was dressed in. It had a central body of branches, which rose vertically from the ground, with branches for arms tied across it. It dwarfed the other figures. Set in front of the giant figure were two stones with a third laid across them. It was stained a deep crimson. Both men stared at the stain.
“With the altar and the figures, the Smithsonian has speculated that this could’ve been a place of worship.”
Jennings stared at the stick figures.
The only sound in the cavern was the slow drip of water in the distance. The ground was uneven with small rocks scattered throughout. Jennings shone his torch at the walls, which were jagged and wallpapered with moss.
“The conditions are right for at least moss to grow down here?”
Hobson nodded.
“And if moss can grow down here, it’s a good sign that we could engineer limited crops.”
“We think there may have been a group of Indians who lived here after the dwellers who created the paintings you saw earlier.”
“Indians this far north? When you say ‘we’, who do you mean? How many know about this?”
Hobson thought he might ask this.
“I went through an intermediary and contacted three experts in early North American history at the Smithsonian. The story was that it was a collection of artifacts acquired for a private collection and your name was never mentioned.”
Jennings nodded.
“The experts at the Smithsonian date it as being the Athabastara tribe. We found some other paintings, which I’ll show you later. They date from later than the paintings you saw. They make reference to a tunnel they call the Bridge of Souls.”
“Bridge of Souls?”
“Uh, the experts aren’t sure that’s the exact translation. The entrance of the Bridge of Souls has a red ring around it—maybe that’s how it got its name; we’re not sure yet.” Hobson coughed. Now was as good a time as ever to mention the one fly in the ointment. “Uh, I was thinking … the proximity of the cavern to ... uh …”
“To Russia?” Another smile. “No, that doesn’t concern me. Alaska isn’t even a secondary strike target for the Soviets.”
How does he know?
Hobson waited a few moments before asking the vital question. If this place didn’t make Jennings happy, he didn’t know what he’d do.
“So, Mr. Jennings, is this …”
“Have I ever told you about my mother?”
Hobson’s eyebrows furrowed and he slowly shook his head.
“She was a young girl living in Dresden when they bombed it. She said you couldn’t hear the bombs until it was too late, but that, just before it would blow up, there would be a terrifying silence. It was a terrible time ... a terrible time. She had to dodge around the dead and dying. She was barely more than a child, but she found a way to survive. During the heaviest bombardment, she was running blind, in a panic, like anyone would, like an animal. When she was running scared, a floor beneath her collapsed — lord knows how far down — into a basement. Everyone else around her was dead, but that accident saved her life. She was buried down there for two days as the bombings continued. She managed to scavenge food amongst the debris, not knowing whether another bomb would bring down more of the house to crush her. But she survived down there—buried. She told me time and time again how she had to hide in basements of burning buildings to stay alive. She burrowed down—deep, deep down. That’s the only way she survived the bombs. It was the only way she could feel safe.”
Jennings stared at the crimson stain on the stone altar.
“Yes,” he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Yes, I think this will do fine.”