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

up the shot, it made Clemens uneasy. Like the crickets, mice, and other creepy
crawlers inhabiting these depths, it was an albino. What little facial hair it had was
white. The eyelashes and wisps of a mustache looked almost dainty.
The brow beetled out, heavy and apelike. Classic Homo erectus. This one had filed
teeth and earlobes fringed with knife cuts. Its crowning glory, the reason Clemens
had picked this over all the other bodies, was its rack of misshapen horns. Horns
upon other horns, a satanic freight.
The horns were calcium growths, described to him as a subterranean cancer. These
happened to have sprouted from its forehead, which fit his filmтАЩs title to a T. Every
hell needed a devil.
Never mind that this wasnтАЩt the devil Clemens had come looking for. This was not
the body of Satan, said to be lying somewhere in the city. Never mind that through
the millennia manтАЩs demons had been ancestors of a sort, or at least distant blood
cousins. Clemens would deal with the family tree later, in the editing room.
тАЬNow theyтАЩre gone,тАЭ he spoke to the microphone clipped to his tattered T-shirt.
тАЬGone forever, destroyed by a man-made plague. Some call it genocide, others an
act of God. This much is certain. We have been delivered from their reign of terror.
Freed from an ancient tyranny. Now the night belongs to usтАФto humanityтАФonce
and for all.тАЭ
Clemens stood back and gazed upon the horror, like Frankenstein contemplating his
monster. He held his pose to the count of five. тАЬAnd cut,тАЭ he said.
The cameraman gave a thumbs-up from behind his tripod. The soundman took off
his earphones and signaled okay. A clean take.
тАЬGet a few close-ups of our friend here,тАЭ Clemens said. тАЬThen break down the gear
and pack up. WeтАЩre moving on. Up. ThereтАЩs still hours in the day.тАЭ A running joke.
In a place without sun, what day? тАЬWeтАЩre heading home.тАЭ
Home! For once the crew jumped to his command.
The exit tunnel lay somewhere close. It would lead them to the surface in a matter of
weeks. For the millionth time, he pulled a sheaf of pages from a waterproof tube and
studied its hodgepodge of maps.
The pages came from the daybook kept by a nun, one of only two survivors to
emerge from this region three years ago. It was the ghosts of her doomed expedition
that Clemens was chasing on film. Hers had been one of the most audacious
journeys in all history, one to rival Marco PoloтАЩs or ColumbusтАЩs, a
six-thousand-mile passage through the tunnel system riddling the bedrock beneath
the Pacific Ocean. It had been a journey with a punch line, a journey of scientists
who bumped smack into an unpleasant article of faith. For here they had found the
home of Satan, or the historical Satan, the manтАФhominid, take your pickтАФbehind
the legend. The leader of the pack.
The nun, a scholar cunt named Ali Von Schade, had written of meeting him. The city
had still been alive back then, the plague not yet released. The last sheтАЩd seen of this
Satan, he was wearing a warriorтАЩs suit of green jade platelets. For three days now,
Clemens had been scouring the city for the body or skeleton, looking for his filmтАЩs
money shot, the one that would shock and amaze and bring the story all together in
one image. HeтАЩd found a suit of jade armor all right, but it was empty, discarded,
ownerless, not a bone in it. Despite his disappointment, he kind of liked that. In the
end, Satan had been nothing more than an empty suit.
Clemens had made numerous requests to Von Schade for an interview, all in vain,
always meeting the same polite refusal. I donтАЩt wish to share the details of that
disaster. As if the story belonged to her. As if intellectual property had some sacred