Subterrestrial by Michael McBride Read Free Book Online Page B

Anthropology had laughed in his face, yet it wasn’t two months later that he found himself clearing out his office. He hadn’t even been able to publish in any of the lesser-known, more questionable academic journals. As a last resort, he’d been forced to self-publish a book no one bought and post his findings to a website no one visited. Or at least one he’d thought no one visited it until Thyssen knocked on his door.
    The chopper banked and Nabahe looked past the woman with the furry hood toward where the horizon alternately appeared from and disappeared into the storm.
    “What the Sam Hill is that?” he asked.
    “I hope you took your Dramamine,” the pilot said. “Things are about to get dicey.”

THREE

I
    Diomede Village
    Little Diomede Island
    Fifteen Miles Northwest of Wales, Alaska
    65°45′15″ N, 168°55′15″ W
    The Bering Sea broke against the rocky shoreline with a sound that reminded Thyssen of his pulse pounding inside his head. Never in his life had he experienced stillness of this nature.
    The majority of the residents had been relocated to the mainland following the disaster. At last count, only 18 of the original 120 year-round residents remained.
    Thyssen followed his man around the four hundred thousand–gallon water storage tank and into what passed for the center of town. The generators that had provided the town’s electricity were silent and cold beneath the snow. Drifts had swept over the sides of diesel fuel storage drums the size of interstate tankers. The only tracks on the footpaths between buildings were so fresh that the wind had yet to smooth them over. He stopped and surveyed the village through the blowing snow.
    Clouds clung to the invisible crown of the island, the slopes of which were buried beneath boulders of varying sizes and shapes, as though an avalanche had started and then simply stopped. The houses were built right on top of the rocks and balanced on stilts that hardly appeared capable of supporting their weight. They were packed so closely together that were it not for the fading paint and disparate roofing, it would have been impossible to tell one from the next. Wooden stairways wended uphill between them and connected them to what looked like a school and the only building with an actual sign, the Diomede Native Store, which had definitely seen better days.
    There was a line of boats to his right, old aluminum numbers with outboard motors, now trapped fifty feet up the rocky shore from sea level. A pair of shoulders and the back of a man’s head protruded from the snow. Feathers blew from the rips in his down jacket. It looked as though he’d been attempting to shove one of the boats down toward the water when he was overcome from behind.
    “Walk me through it,” Thyssen said.
    “They came up through the vent,” Desmond Martin said. He wore a full snow-camouflage jumpsuit and an M4A1 carbine set to three-round bursts on a sling over his shoulder. “Our best guess is maybe sixteen hours ago. Not long before what passes for dawn. Most of them were still in their beds. Never knew what hit them.”
    “Not all of them.”
    There was another body under the stairs leading up to the general store. The man had attempted to hide after crawling through the maze of stilts. At least Thyssen thought it was a man. The condition of the remains required a little imagination.
    He followed Martin to an aluminum building that was by far the newest structure on the island, if not in the best of repair. The force of the water erupting from the tunnel had blown half of the roof clean off. The walls still stood, although the structure leaned at a fairly severe angle. The warped door was propped beside the slanted doorway against the siding from which a half dozen massive fans protruded. The ductwork inside had been destroyed by the accident, and the emergency pumps sat idly beneath a blanket of snow. The hole in the ground was five feet in diameter and reinforced with