Ice-coated tree branches glimmered in the early-morning moonlight, on either side of the raised gravel road. They were beautiful, as if they’d been dipped in glass, and for just an instant, I decided winter was my favorite season. Then I remembered frostbite and red, cracked skin, and I came back to my senses. I was an autumn kind of girl. No doubt about it.
Specifically, autumn in more southern climes.
I drove onto the causeway slowly, and the headlights bobbed ahead of me, casting shifting shadows behind weeds and rocks on either side of the land bridge. Loose chips of ice and concrete crunched beneath the snow tires as I passed into and out of beams from the succession of streetlights. The moon and stars shown clearly above, the sky amazingly void of clouds and smog. Despite the cold, I rolled the window down an inch, to chase away the lingering smell of the last driver’s stale cigarette smoke with the clean scent of snow and salt water. For the moment, at least, the night felt serene, the world full of beauty.
But with that thought came my instant suspicion of it. I’d never in my life—or in what passed for my afterlife—been given a moment of true peace that wasn’t followed immediately by chaos and pain.
In my world, tranquility was a clear harbinger of doom.
The light ahead grew brighter as the narrow path widened gradually. After another mile, the end of the road was marked by the emergence of a ten-foot-tall chain link fence, topped with broad loops of barbed wire.
Devich was serious about keeping people out.
As I came closer to the fence, details of the site came into focus, and disappointment settled into my chest like the weight of a bad cold. The infamous pit looked nothing like I’d expected. Nothing like the outdated images I’d found on the internet. Gone were the trees, including the one that originally presided over the depression in the ground. Gone were the wooden safety fences and the plank platform used to lower previous generations of workers in harnesses into the hole.
The history of this place had been obliterated.
Now the site looked like a heavy machinery graveyard. A collection of huge Tonka toys.
The first thing to catch my eye was a gantry, like a giant’s swing set, with a huge sliding crane in place of the swing. Easily thirty feet high, it towered over the trailer housing the foreman’s office and was only dwarfed by the last of the oaks at the mouth of the road. Scattered around the site were two semi-trailers, a backhoe, a couple of forklifts, a few oil barrels, a tool shed, and several bundles of rusted pipe. The three blue portable toilets, lined up in a neat row, were the only part of the site that even hinted at organization. The rest spoke of mud, grease, and messy chaos.
If not for the ten-degree wind chill, I might have felt right at home.
Even amongst all the clutter behind the chain link fence, the pit snagged my attention like a thorn in a wool sweater. Instead of the dark, muddy hole in the ground I’d expected, the pit was now a complicated modern excavation spread out beneath the gantry. The tunnel itself had a twelve-inch-tall concrete lip, probably to prevent tools from being accidentally kicked in. Trailing over the lip and out of the pit was a large PVC snake, slithering off to destinations unknown, alongside the tracks of a rail system beginning at the edge of the hole. And presiding over it all was an L-shaped control platform, five feet off the ground at one end of the gantry.
As I stopped at this second gate, my gaze slid past the pit and snagged on the first of several more large, dark holes scattered around the site. Each was surrounded by a barrier, some wooden, others metal, and they were all clearly constructed at least half a century earlier.Weird.
I leaned over the steering wheel again to inspect this latest barrier. In contrast to the one blocking the causeway, the gate at the dig site was tall and sturdy-looking. But just like the first, it was secured with only a padlock and a chain connecting two halves of the gate. It wouldn’t go down as easily as the one I’d rammed, but it was certainly worth a shot.
I’d just shifted the Corolla into reverse, preparing to continue my gate-ramming extravaganza, when headlights flashed in the rearview mirror, nearly blinding me, and bearing down on me fast. The foreman had arrived.
As the black SUV barreled toward my car, I climbed out into the snow, gasping as a burst of frigid air stung my exposed face and hands like a thousand shards of ice. The SUV stopped suddenly, sliding to a stand-still only feet from my rear bumper. I was impressed—until the driver got out, already cussing. He was heavily bundled in a red knit cap and a thick winter overcoat over a pair of puffy, insulated snowsuit pants and bulky black boots. He pushed his door closed and fished a pair of black work gloves from his coat pockets, pulling them on as he stomped toward me, thin lips pressed together.
“Are you the asshole who rammed the gate back there?” the over-bundled man demanded, his voice sharp with fury.
One glance at my front bumper told me that “It was like that when I got here” wasn’t going to fly.
“That’s me, but flattery won’t work on this asshole. I’m Lex Walker. I assume you’re Mike Bowman?”
“Youdrovethrough thegate,” he repeated, with no accent that I could discern. The man was clearly American. Probably Midwestern. So much for my “friendly locals” theory.
“You were late.” I shrugged, refusing to feel guilty for being a punctual self-starter. If I’d waited for him, we’d still be arguing in front of the first gate. I’d saved us a step.
He stared at me, either too astonished or too angry to speak coherently. I couldn’t recall ever having that particular problem. “Are you Mike Bowman?” I repeated, and finally the man nodded. From his coat pocket, the foreman pulled a balled-up tissue and began blotting at his red, irritated nose. “Well, now that that’s settled, shall we go in?” I eyed him as patiently as I could. “You first, since you have the key. Presumably.”
His face flushed, deepening in shade to match his nose. “You sure you don’t want to run through this one too, just for good measure?”
Shrugging, I turned to pull open my driver’s side door.
“I was only fucking kidding,” Bowman mumbled, trudging past me in the snow. “What say we try the easy way this time?” He gestured toward the gate with a packed ring of keys.
I reached across the front seat of the Corolla and grabbed the Walmart bag, then closed the door and followed him, my nose already numb and threatening to run.
Bowman opened the lock and pulled the chain loose, leaving it to dangle from one side of the gate. He shoved both halves open, and I walked onto the dig site, studying the foreman for any sign of non-human lineage as I passed close to him. I found none.
“Mr. Devich had us leave the place all lit up, so you should be able to see pretty well,” Bowman said, glancing around at the dig he’d headed up for nearly a decade.
Sure enough, the site was as bright as daylight, though it was at least two more hours until dawn. Over the tops of the trees, the sky had a pale-yellow tinge to it: artificial light glowing above skeletal white branches.
