The Genesis Plague (2010) by Michael Byrnes Read Free Book Online Page B

studied the image, saw no sign of activity. ‘All right, Camel, keep it moving … slow and steady.’
    ‘Hear anything yet?’ Jason asked.
    ‘Nothing,’ he reported. ‘It’s quiet in there. Really quiet.’
    Jam jumped off the pile and helped Hazo feed more loops to Camel.
    A few metres in, Meat spotted something on the walls. ‘Hey, see that?’
    ‘Hold up,’ Jason called up to Camel. The picture steadied. ‘What is it?’ he asked Meat.
    ‘Something on the left wall,’ he replied, squinting tight at the screen. He toggled the joystick to get a better angle, then zoomed out for a wide shot.
    When the picture came into focus, Jason was amazed at what he was seeing: the entire left wall was filled with narrative scenes carved in pristine bas-relief. The central figure depicted in the scenes was a shapely woman holding a cylindrical object that emanated wavy lines. Assembled around her were men and women presenting gifts and food. There was even a group genuflecting as if in worship. Beneath her feet was a repeating pattern of nautilus-shaped swirls. ‘Whoa,’ Meat said. ‘That’s weird.’ He panned side to side. ‘Looks like a mural or something.’
    ‘Sure does,’ Jason agreed. ‘Hazo, come take a look at this.’
    The Kurd passed the coiled cable to Jam and joined them.
    ‘What do you make of that?’
    Hazo’s brow rumpled. After ten seconds, he shook his head. ‘I don’t know this … ah … but this rosette here?’ He pointed to a bracelet on the woman’s wrist. ‘This means she is like a god, or how you say … ?’ He fished for the word.
    ‘Divine?’ Jason surmised.
    ‘Yes, divinity. This says divinity.’
    ‘So she’s a goddess. Some kind of religious image.’
    ‘I think so. But not Christian. And Muslims would never allow these pictures. Very blasphemous.’
    Pointing to the swirls on the image, Jason asked, ‘Is this supposed to be a river?’
    ‘Um, yes. I’d agree with that.’
    ‘And what’s this in her hands?’
    Hazo shook his head. ‘A large fruit … um, no … maybe a container. These lines …’ Hazo said, tilting his head sideways to ascertain a meaning. ‘Maybe a light?’
    ‘Or something radiating from it.’
    Meat gave Jason a surprised look. ‘What, like magic?’
    He shrugged. ‘All right, let’s document everything. Meat, take some still shots, then keep the camera moving along this wall.’
    ‘Got it,’ Meat said.
    For the next ten minutes, Camel worked more cable through the pipe to push the camera deeper and deeper into the passage. The images on the left wall had become progressively disturbing. The swirls rose with each ‘frame’, and Hazo’s early guess that this portrayed rising flood waters proved correct, when later images showed bodies and animals being swept ‘downstream’ in elongated swirls.
    Most disturbing, however, was how the story’s depiction of the woman progressed. Her devotees from frame one had obviously had a change of heart, because the final frames showed men binding her, then leading her away with spears to the mountains. The final frame depicted the woman’s gruesome beheading.
    ‘She must’ve gotten too lippy with them,’ Meat joked as he saved the image as a pix file.
    Jason shook his head. ‘Not funny.’
    At the end of the storyboard, the wall was covered top to bottom in wedge-shaped hashes laid out in neat rows. Jason asked Hazo to take a gander at what it might mean.
    This time Hazo was quick to respond: ‘That looks like a very ancient alphabet. Maybe from Sumer.’
    ‘Sumer?’ Meat asked.
    ‘The southern region of ancient Iraq,’ Jason told him.
    ‘Yes,’ Hazo concurred. ‘Sumerian.’
    ‘So what is this place?’ Meat asked. ‘One of Saddam’s old bunkers? He liked all this ancient stuff, right? Thought he was the reincarnation of a Babylonian king or something …’
    ‘Correct,’ Hazo said. ‘King Nebuchadnezzar.’
    Jason shook his head. ‘We’ve seen plenty of bunkers. Nothing like