Monte Antelao, Italy
Sharyn stood at the bunker’s door, staring out as a new day dawned. She cradled a tin cup of coffee in her hands, so hot it threatened to burn her palms. Russo had prepared the blend by balancing a dented, well-used percolator on hot ashes at the edge of the campfire.
She sipped at the steaming brew and surveyed the mountains outside. The blizzard had finally blown itself out sometime during the night, leaving behind skies that ached an impossible blue after such a fierce storm. A few straggling clouds marred the expanse, and pillows of ice-mist hugged the slopes and sifted through the lower forest.
Otherwise, the world outside had been sculpted of snow. Rolls of wind-swept powder formed ridges along the slopes. The narrow cliffside trail lay buried in white. Above, huge cornices hung in sharp-edged waves, frozen in place. Closer at hand, a waist-high mound filled the apron outside. The bunker might have been totally buried, except the fire in the tower had heated its stones, enough to hold the storm at bay.
Outside, snowmelt dripped and ran down the bricks. Huge icicles had formed a row of fangs across the top of the doorway. Higher up, streams of smoke trailed into the sky.
Duncan drew alongside her. “Everyone is finished with breakfast. Laurent wants us to begin a renewed search of the levels below.”
She nodded and turned to him. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired and sore. You?”
“Same. But the coffee is helping.” She squinted at him. Her inquiry to him had not been a casual one. “Yesterday, when we were down below, did you feel sick?”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a horrible headache. I thought it was from exertion and stress. But I saw Laurent rubbing his temples as if he were suffering the same.”
Duncan’s gaze turned into a long contemplative stare, then he slowly nodded. “I had felt a migraine coming on. I get them sometimes.” He frowned at her. “What are you thinking?”
She headed back inside. “Let’s check with the others first.”
They crossed through the bunker’s main chamber to the archway that led into the tower. The fire inside had turned the air stiflingly hot, especially after they had faced the frigid landscape outside.
Duncan challenged Archie with the same question.
His friend shrugged. “My sinuses always bother me. So, I can’t say if it was any worse than usual.”
Sharyn frowned, finding this far from conclusive.
Laurent drew closer. “I had a stabbing pain behind my eyes. But what are you getting at, Ms. Karr?”
She waved to the large stack of dry branches by the fire. “I don’t think we were the first visitors to suffer this way. Past campers went to a lot of effort to haul up so much fuel for their fires. Yet, they never got through it all. Over the decades, more and more wood ended up accumulating here, abandoned as those who trespassed became sick and, either consciously or not—or maybe believing they were hungover—they got driven out.”
Duncan’s eyes widened. “You’re thinking the air down below is bad. Stale, maybe poisoned by carbon dioxide. Like you find sometimes in deep caves.”
“Notgonebad. I think it’salwaysbeen bad.” She turned to Russo, who had stopped stacking the tin breakfast plates to listen. “Your story of witches, those who cast spells that knocked out trespassers, then killed them—”
“Theanguana.”
Sharyn nodded. “It’s almost as if that folk tale could have a natural basis, a way of explaining toxic caves like this one.”
“Reminds me of the Salem witch trials,” Duncan said. “Where the hallucinations and seizures that triggered the accusations are believed to have been caused by ergot poisoning, from a toxic fungus on moldy rye bread.”
Archie added his support. “Or how the magic found in potions and herbal remedies often had a pharmacological basis. Like Tag always keeps harping about.”
Sharyn pointed to the stairwell. “If this cavern system existed long before the bunker, I could see such a myth rising out of these depths. People could have been sheltering down here for centuries, especially if the spaces were made more habitable by chiseling them out.”
“Like with the Barbiers’ limestone quarry,” Laurent noted.
She faced the group and broached a fear that was more speculative. “But I don’t think it’s carbon dioxide that’s the source of the poisoning here. The bunker’s lowest level isn’t all thatdeep. I wouldn’t expect the air to be all that bad.”
“Then what is it?” Laurent pressed her.
She stared hard at him. “I think it’s a boobytrap.”
