They collected Cheng and Macy at the dry river and continued across the desert landscape. Before long, a rising plume of orange dust signalled a vehicle’s imminent arrival. Sandra climbed a mound and waved. A white Land Cruiser pulled up and a paunchy middle-aged Anangu man in a ranger’s uniform climbed out, donning a cowboy-style hat. ‘Heard you on the radio,’ he told Sandra with alarm. ‘Rosie’s dead?’
‘Yeah,’ was her terse reply.
‘Where’s her body? Her family’ll want to—’
‘There isn’t a body. There’s nothing left.’ She went past him to the truck. ‘You got your rifle?’ He nodded.
‘You’re armed?’ asked Nina, surprised.
‘We get dingoes out here, and kangaroos can mess you up if they’re in a bad mood,’ said the new arrival. ‘Better to be safe. Who’re you?’
She made the introductions. The ranger, whose name was Barney Jungala, was not impressed. ‘An archaeologist? What’s that got to do with one of my mates being killed?’
‘She thinks there’s some kind of ancient prison buried under the rock,’ said Sandra, returning with a hunting rifle. ‘I didn’t believe her at first, but then we found a flying saucer, so now I don’t know what the hell to think.’
Barney regarded her with a fixed expression. ‘A flying saucer,’ he said flatly.
‘I wish I was joking. But whoever or whatever came out of it killed Rosie, then headed for the rock – so I want a rocket up the arse of every single tourist to get them out of the park, fast. We’ll bring in outside help as quick as we can, but it’ll take a while for anyone to get here, so for now it’s up to us to keep everyone safe.’ She inserted the rifle’s small magazine and chambered a round.
The ranger shook his head. ‘This is a load of Pine Gap conspiracy crap, Sandra. I don’t know what you found, but it can’t be a flying saucer! There’s not a single bit of proof that space aliens are real.’
‘Actually, there is,’ Macy piped up.
Everyone looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’ asked Nina.
‘There’s a carving of a giant alien skull on Uluru’s side,’ she said. ‘I saw it in one of my para-archaeology videos!’
‘By para-archaeology, you mean pseudo-archaeology,’ her mother said with a deep sigh. ‘I keep telling you, Macy, just because you see something on YouTube doesn’t mean it’s real! People will believe any old nonsense, even without a scrap of evidence to support it.’
‘Actually,’ Barney said, ‘there is a big skull on the side of the rock.’
Eddie grinned. ‘High five,’ he fake-whispered to his daughter, who clapped her hand against his.
Nina glowered at them, then turned back to Barney. ‘You know what she’s talking about?’
‘Yeah. It’s right over there.’ He pointed at the rock. ‘You can’t see it from here, there are trees in the way, but it’s pretty well known.’
‘Does it have a name? In the indigenous language, I mean.’
‘Sure. We call it “the head”.’
Nina couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic, but decided not to ask. Instead, she said, ‘Can you take us to it?’
The Land Cruiser brought the group across the desert to a road. Rather than turn onto it, Barney went straight across towards the base of Uluru. ‘Is this an airstrip?’ Eddie asked as they crossed a suspiciously straight stretch of flat ground.
‘Used to be,’ said Sandra. ‘Until the Anangu decided, “Hey, we don’t actually want tourists landing right on our sacred land.” So we built the airport on the other side of Yulara.’
‘Still named it after bloody Ayer,’ muttered Barney, rounding some trees. ‘Here’s the head.’
He stopped. Everyone got out and looked up at the rock. ‘Well, yep,’ said Eddie. ‘That’s definitely an alien skull.’
Nina was forced to admit he was right. A long swathe of the monolith’s northern face was a near-sheer cliff, worn smooth by aeons of wind and rain – but set into it as if carved by giants were numerous shapes, rough and striated in sharp contrast to their surroundings. Most seemed natural, the result of erosion . . .
But one was very familiar.
About halfway up was what she could only see as a giant skull, side-on, lower jaw agape as if shouting. The head was unnaturally elongated, resembling the popular image of an alien – or the proportionately larger cranium of the Nephilim and their parent species. It was almost identical to the image of the skull set into the resurrection key. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘why has nobody ever shown me this before? I would have realised it was modelled on the Veteres the moment I saw it!’
Macy let out an all-too-teenage ughhh of exasperation. ‘I did show it to you, Mom. You just never paid any attention!’
Cheng was also entranced – but he was looking beyond the skull itself. ‘The other markings . . .’
‘What about them?’ Nina asked.
‘They’re distorted, they’ve been eroded . . . but they look like words. Nephilim words. Just a moment.’ He removed his pack and took out his laptop.
‘You won’t get any Wi-Fi here, mate,’ said Barney.
The young Chinese was too absorbed to recognise the mockery. ‘I don’t need it, the files are on the hard drive.’ He sat, balancing the machine on his thighs as he worked. ‘Yes! I was right. They are words.’
Nina looked up at the indistinct shapes. ‘What do they say?’
‘They’re a warning. I can’t read the whole thing, but my guess would be “Stay away, there are Nephilim inside.”’
Macy gave her mother a smug smile. ‘See? I was right.’
‘Yeah, that’s enough of that,’ Nina sighed. ‘Okay, this is the place. So where are the Nephilim?’
‘Who?’ asked Barney.
Eddie beat her to an explanation. ‘Ancient race of bad guys. They were frozen, they woke up, they’re not happy – and they think their mates are inside the rock.’
‘Frozen?’ The idea appeared to trigger some memory for the ranger.
‘If the warning is here, the entrance must be here as well,’ Cheng suggested.
‘Good point,’ said Nina. ‘If we can find their tracks, we’ll be able to see where they went.’
Finding the footprints of over twenty giants, even after several hours, was not difficult. The oversized tracks led to a small cave almost directly beneath the giant skull. ‘Okay, they went in,’ said Eddie, ‘but they didn’t come back out.’
Nina checked the cave. It did not take long; it was barely ten feet deep. ‘Secret entrance, maybe?’
Barney made a sarcastic sound. ‘We’ve lived here for thousands of years. We know every centimetre of the rock. But I suppose another great white explorer’s going to find something we missed?’
‘This isn’t the time for that, Barney,’ chided Sandra.
He grudgingly acknowledged her words, but still muttered, ‘She’ll probably name it after herself.’
‘Cultural imperialism bad, that’s Archaeology 101 – at least in my classes,’ said Nina, taking a closer look at the cave walls. ‘But right now, all I care about is stopping the Nephilim. They came in here, and since they can’t walk through solid rock, there must be another exit.’ She put her palms flat on the stone in the hope of feeling some connection to whatever had brought Gadreel’s people here, but there was nothing.
Then where had they gone? The cave was shallow enough that sunlight reached the back wall, exposing every detail. There was nothing that could be an opening, a keyhole . . .
Some instinct made her look up. The ceiling was naturally in shadow, and at first glance it seemed to be made of the same vivid sandstone. But a crack ran to join a larger one angling all the way down the edge of the rear wall. She gazed at it. There appeared to be a piece of darker stone in the crack above. ‘Eddie, can you pick me up?’
‘You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman,�
� he replied.
‘What? Ohh,’ she groaned, getting the joke. ‘No, I meant literally. I need a closer look at the ceiling.’
The cave’s roof was about twelve feet high. Eddie crouched to grab Nina around her lower legs with one arm and support her with the other, then hoisted her upwards. ‘Bloody hell,’ he complained, ‘I used to be able to lift a full-sized bloke and all his gear with no trouble. Getting old is a load of arse.’
‘But think of how much you save on haircuts!’ she replied, rubbing his bald head before looking up. At full stretch she could reach the crack, but first she needed to see what was inside it. She fumbled out her phone and switched on its light.
A dark purple stone was revealed. Set into it was a crystal splinter . . .
‘I think I’ve found how they got in,’ she said with excitement – and trepidation. She extended a finger, brushing its tip against the inset stone—
A crack of energy made her jerk away. ‘Whoa, shit!’ she gasped, arms whirling as she overbalanced. Eddie dropped, rolling backwards to catch her. She landed on top of him with an undignified squawk.
Macy ran to them. ‘Mom! Dad! Are you okay?’
Nina struggled off her husband. ‘Yeah, I think so. Eddie?’
He half grinned, half grimaced. ‘I’m okay. Who needs ribs anyway?’ He sat up. ‘So, did it do anyth—’
A deep, grinding thud echoed through the cave.
The two rangers drew back in alarm. ‘What was that?’ said Barney.
‘I think,’ Nina replied, helping Eddie to his feet, ‘it’s a secret entrance.’
Dust and sandstone flakes spat from the rear wall – and the vertical crack widened as the whole section of rock slowly swung back to expose a dark passage. ‘Wow!’ Macy gasped.
She was about to take a closer look, but Eddie stopped her. ‘Let’s make sure it’s safe,’ he said, turning to the rangers. ‘I need that gun.’
Sandra shook her head. ‘I can’t let a civilian have it.’
‘I’m ex-SAS, I know what I’m doing. And I know what we’re facing – you don’t. If one of the ten-foot-tall bastards who killed your friend comes charging out of that tunnel, you might hesitate. I won’t.’
She unhappily handed the weapon to him, and he checked it over. It was a basic wooden-stocked Beretta bolt-action hunting rifle, its magazine holding six .223-calibre rounds. Deadly enough – if the first shot was on target. If the iron sights were off, the moment needed to cycle the bolt and reload could be enough to bring retaliatory fire upon him. ‘Right, everyone back up.’ He waited for the others to retreat into daylight before going to the opening, aiming the rifle inside.
The tall passage sloped down into Uluru’s heart. It looked like a natural cleft that had been widened by hand. No movement in the shadows. Gun raised, he cautiously moved deeper and took out his own phone. Its light revealed only red rock as the tunnel snaked into darkness.
‘Looks safe,’ he told the others. ‘Don’t know what we’ll find further in, though.’
‘We have to look,’ said Nina. ‘If the Veteres prison really is down there, hundreds more Nephilim could come back up this tunnel any minute.’
‘Maybe we should just blow it up and seal ’em inside.’ The suggestion drew shocked disapproval from the two Australians. ‘Yeah, thought not. So I guess we’ve got to go in.’
‘Not you,’ Nina said firmly as Macy started towards the cave. ‘It’s far too dangerous.’ She addressed the rangers. ‘Can one of you stay here with her?’
Sandra and Barney exchanged looks. ‘Go into a dark tunnel with a white guy with a gun, chasing after giants who’ll try to kill me – or look after someone else’s kid?’ rumbled the latter. ‘I’ll take the tunnel.’
‘It’s no wonder you’re single, Barney,’ Sandra said. ‘Okay, Macy? Sorry, darling, but you’ll have to stay with me.’
‘Aw, Mom!’ Macy protested.
‘Go on, love,’ Eddie told her. ‘We’ll be back. Soon, I hope.’
‘And in one piece,’ Nina added under her breath.
Macy reluctantly went to Sandra. ‘There’s sunblock in the jeep,’ the Australian said. ‘Come on, let’s put some on you. You don’t even have a hat!’ She led Macy towards the Land Cruiser. ‘I’ll bring you guys some torches.’
Nina turned back to her companions. ‘We ready?’
Cheng peered nervously into the tunnel. ‘Not really, but . . . I guess I’ll have to be.’
‘You’ll do fine,’ Eddie told him. ‘You’ve managed all right so far.’
The young Chinese looked uncertainly at Nina. ‘From him, that’s a compliment,’ she assured him, before facing the dark opening. ‘Okay. Let’s see what’s down there.’
41
The group carefully descended the sloping tunnel. Sandra had provided two flashlights, Nina taking one and Barney the other. Cheng concentrated on keeping his balance while carrying his backpack, and Eddie led with the rifle.
The passage was originally a natural feature, but it was clear that the Veteres had worked hard to enlarge it. The walls were at least four feet apart at all times. The dimensions rang a bell for Nina. ‘Y’know, if they brought one of their sarcophagi down here, this tunnel is just big enough to fit it,’ she mused.
‘You think that’s how they got them to the prison?’ asked Eddie.
‘They couldn’t have flown here, only the Nephilim had the technology. They would have had to transport their prisoners the hard way – by sea, then across land.’
‘Australia as a dumping ground for someone else’s criminals?’ groused Barney. ‘Sounds familiar.’
‘They didn’t want them to die in transit; they considered themselves far too civilised for that,’ Nina went on, with scathing sarcasm for the race that used primitive humans as slaves. ‘So putting them in stasis was the best way to keep them alive.’
‘Saves on food and water an’ all, I suppose.’ Eddie glanced back at Cheng. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ Cheng replied, though he was breathing heavily with exertion. They had come quite some distance down the winding tunnel. ‘At least it’s cooler than outside.’
As Nina gave him a reassuring look, Barney caught her attention. The Anangu appeared nervous, understandable as the group descended into the unknown – but there was also something pensive about his expression. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘You say these . . . beings were asleep for a long time, frozen, and then were woken up?’ he said. She nodded. ‘We have legends about things like that. Like the Ninya, the ice men – they’re asleep under a lake a few days’ walk from here.’
‘The legends could be based on reality,’ said Nina. ‘I know there’s an Australian tribe with a legend of a fire demon that fell to earth, and scientists found evidence of a four-thousand-year-old meteorite impact in their territory.’
‘The Luritja,’ he confirmed. ‘But I always knew all our stories were true, if you understand the way they’re told. I didn’t expect this, though.’ He gestured down the tunnel.
‘If it makes any difference, nor did I.’ She gave him a small smile, which to her surprise was returned.
Eddie held up a hand. ‘Everyone stop,’ he warned quietly. ‘Turn your lights out.’
‘We won’t be able to see anything,’ Cheng said.
‘And nothing’ll be able to see us,’ replied Nina. She switched off her flashlight, Barney doing the same.
Darkness swallowed them. They stood statue still, listening. Faint echoes reached them: dripping water. ‘I can see something,’ she whispered. A faint greenish light became discernible down the tunnel.
‘Is it them?’ said Cheng.
‘Dunno,’ Eddie replied. One hand against the wall for guidance, he slowly picked his way onwards. The dim glow revealed a sharp bend in the passage ahead. Whatever the light’s source, it was constant,
unmoving. ‘It’s not firelight, and it’s not like earth energy. It’s . . .’
Unexpectedly, he laughed.
‘What?’ Nina demanded. ‘What is it?’
‘Come down and see. Turn your light back on until we get to the turn.’
She switched on the flashlight, and they made their way to the corner. ‘Okay, now switch off,’ said Eddie. ‘Close your eyes first, it’ll help ’em adapt.’
‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ asked Cheng.
‘I don’t think it’s the Nephilim. But you’ll see in a second.’
Nina gave the Chinese a shrug, then shut her eyes and switched off her light. Barney followed suit. She waited for several seconds, then looked again. The glow was now sufficiently bright to let her see the shadowy forms of her companions.
‘Okay, come through here,’ said Eddie, advancing cautiously. ‘Careful, there’s a drop.’
Nina followed him into what turned out to be a large cave. A path had been carved along one sloping side. Below was a dark expanse: a pool of water, stretching the cavern’s length. Its surface shimmered as droplets fell from the ceiling with almost musical plips and plops . . .
Wait – how could she even see the surface?
She looked up – and gasped.
The entire ceiling was alight with a galaxy of tiny blue-green stars. ‘What are they?’ Cheng asked, awed.
‘Glow-worms,’ said Eddie. ‘Saw some once when I went caving – when I was still in the army, long time before I met you,’ he added to Nina. ‘These are a lot more impressive, though.’
‘Never seen anything like this before,’ said Barney, also amazed. ‘There aren’t any glow-worms in this part of the country.’
‘There are now,’ Nina said. ‘It could be a new species. Maybe they’ll name it after you.’
‘Miserablus gittus,’ Eddie whispered to her. She tried not to laugh. ‘Must be cracks in the rock to let water down here – and for bugs to get in so the worms can catch them. But this is a pretty big pool, and it smells fresh. Maybe whoever built the tunnels used it as a reservoir.’
‘It’d make sense,’ said Nina. ‘But as beautiful as this is . . .’ She aimed her light at the water and reluctantly clicked it on. The cavern appeared around her, but the spectacular display above instantly vanished, even a single flashlight overpowering it. ‘We need to keep going.’
The Resurrection Key Page 46
