"Jeff Long - Deeper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Long Jeff)

BENEATH THE INTERSECTION OF THE PHILIPPINE, JAVA, AND PALU
SEA TRENCHES

He snapped his fingers. Let there be light. And they popped the flares.
The faces of his crew sprang from the darkness, flinching. The flare light hurt their
eyes. It painted them green and hungry.
The city of stone materialized around them.
Clemens gave a nod. The clapboard snapped shut like a gunshot. In grease pencil:
тАЬHELL, scene 316, take 1. IMAX.тАЭ
тАЬDead, all dead,тАЭ he intoned as the camera panned across the city. It was a bony
thing, hard and empty, ancient long before Troy was built, before Egypt was even a
word. Walls stood cracked or breached by geological forces. Arches hung like ribs.
Windows stared: blind sockets. The camera stopped on him.
Clemens turned his head to the lens. He gave it the tired bags under his eyes, and his
shaggy salt-and-pepper beard, and the greasy hair, and the bad stitch job along one
cheekbone. No makeup. No concealment. Let the audience see his weariness and the
marks of five months spent worming through the bowels of the earth. I have
sweated and bled for you, he thought. I have killed for you. And for my cut of the
box office. He put fire in his blue eyes.
тАЬDay one hundred and forty-seven, deep beneath the deepest trenches,тАЭ he said.
тАЬWe have reached their city. Their Athens. Their Alexandria. Their Manhattan. Here
lies the center.тАЭ
He coughed quietly. The whole film crew had it, some low-grade cave virus. Just
one more of their shared afflictions: a rash from poison lichens, fouled stomachs
from the river water, lingering fevers after an attack by crystal-clear ants, rot in their
wounds, and headaches from the pressure. To say nothing of the herpes and
gonorrhea raging among his randy bunch of men and women.
Clemens approached a tall, translucent flange of flowstone. It had seeped from the
walls like a slow, plastic, honey brown avalanche. A carefully placed flare lit the
stone from behind. The dark silhouette of a man hung inside, like a huge insect
caught in amber.
Clemens glanced at the cameraтАФat his future audienceтАФas if to ponder with them.
What new wonders lie here? He pressed his flashlight against the stone, and peered
in. Through my eyes, behold.
He moved his light. Inch by inch, the shape revealed its awful clues. This was no
man, but some primal throwback. A freak of time. The camera closed in.
Clemens illuminated the pale, hairless legs covered with prehistoric tattoos. His light
paused at the groin. The genitals were wrapped in a ball with rawhide strips, a sort of
fig leaf for this dreadful Adam. That was the creatureтАЩs sole clothing, a sack tied
with leather cord from front to back across the rump. Leather, in a place devoid of
large animalsтАжexcept for man. These hadals had wasted nothing, not even human
skin.
тАЬWe were their dream,тАЭ Clemens solemnly intoned to the camera, тАЬthey were our
nightmare.тАЭ
He scooted the light beam higher. The beast was by turns delicate, then savage.
Winged like a cupid, this one could not have flown. They were more buds than
wings really, vestigial, almost comical. But this was no laughing matter. Like a
junkyard mutt, the creature bore the gash marks and scars of a hunter-warrior.
Moving higher, his headlamp beam lit the awful face. Milky pink eyesтАФdead
eyesтАФstared back at him. Even though heтАЩd seen the thing while they were setting