Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  Hashim backed up two steps, visibly shaken, and instantly pointed the light machine gun in Ben’s face. A weapon that could cut a car in half, just a few inches away. Close enough to have taken it from Hashim and driven the butt down his throat, if Ben moved fast enough. But Ben was also close enough to Samunder’s SLR to be certain of getting shot, if he made any rash moves.

  Hashim snarled, ‘What the fuck did you just do to me?’

  ‘It’s called the Dim Mak death touch,’ Ben said. ‘The reaction is delayed a bit. You’ll probably go out like a light in about an hour from now.’

  ‘I’ll blow your head off, you touch me again.’

  ‘How does it feel knowing you’re going to die in this place?’ Ben replied, his voice calm and level. ‘Because one way or another, you’re not leaving here. I promise you that.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, asshole. Keep moving.’

  Ben smiled to himself. Hashim was rattled. Rattled was good.

  They trekked on. It took several minutes for the slow-moving group to reach the foot of the escarpment. The massive rock formation was some kind of spectacular geological wonder in its own right, multi-hued striations of blues and yellows and browns and reds showing the sedimentary layers that had built up over millions, probably more like billions, of years. Only in its relatively recent history had some unknown scribe carved the strange marking into its face.

  The symbol was like no alphabet letter Ben had ever seen. The only things that came remotely close were the weird Indus Valley glyphs that Imran Gupta had shown him at the Red Fort Archaeology Institute in Delhi.

  Kabir stood looking up at the ancient symbol like a devout believer gazing in awe at a religious icon. ‘When I came across this, I knew I’d found it,’ he said, shaking his head in wonderment. ‘It’s amazing. Even though I was half dead with pain and sickness, it gave me the strength to keep going.’

  Hashim spat on the ground. He shouldered his weapon and fired a burst of fully-automatic fire at the carving. The roar of the machine gun echoed like rolling thunder over the valley. Chips and shards of stone flew off the rock. The young girl covered her ears and screamed. The old lady didn’t seem to notice.

  Hashim lowered the smoking machine gun and spat on the ground again. ‘Not so fucking amazing now, is it?’ Someone’s ego had obviously taken a knock. Hissy.

  Kabir stared in anguish at the pockmarked ruin that had been the Indus Valley glyph. ‘Do you have any idea of what you’ve just done?’

  ‘I have a pretty good idea what we’re going to do, if you don’t stop gabbling like a woman and lead us inside,’ Takshak said.

  The vertical fissure in the rock that had looked like a tiny crack was over ten feet tall. Much less in width. One by one, they slipped through. No problem at all for the young girl and the old lady. Nor for the slender-built Ray brothers, especially Kabir after his illness. Takshak, Hashim and Ben all had wider shoulders and had to turn sideways to slide through the gap. Samunder went last, and had the hardest time of all. Like trying to squeeze an elephant through a house doorway. Ben enjoyed watching him sweat.

  The immediate interior of the grotto was only slightly wider, cool and dark inside. Takshak had brought three heavy steel flashlights from the truck for himself and his men. He shone his around him. ‘So where is it?’

  ‘We have to go deeper,’ Kabir said.

  ‘How much deeper?’

  ‘You’ll see. Give me your torch and follow me.’

  Takshak reluctantly handed over his flashlight. ‘Any tricks, you’re a dead man.’

  ‘Come on,’ Kabir said. ‘It’s not much further.’

  They kept going. The floor sloped one way and the other, hard to traverse. The way ahead gradually opened up. If the outside of the escarpment had been impressive, the inside was simply stunning. Ben had never seen such weird rock formations, of such vibrant colour. As it opened up further still, it felt like entering the maw of some gigantic mythological creature with jagged stalagmites and stalactites for fangs, some of them twice his height. The grotto smelled faintly of bat shit, but the air was surprisingly fresh, as though a current was circulating deep within.

  Kabir stopped. Takshak almost walked into him. ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘Do you feel it yet?’ Kabir asked.

  ‘Feel what?’ Takshak was getting tired of playing this game. He just wanted his loot.

  Ben didn’t know what Kabir was talking about. He couldn’t feel anything either.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Kabir said again, and moved on.

  The grotto wound its way deep into the rock, sloping more steeply downwards as it went. Ben was sure they must be some way underground by now. It was like delving into an old mineshaft, except one created millions and billions of years ago when dinosaurs wandered over the landscape above them, by the ravages of some prehistoric ice age, or the slow grinding slip of tectonic plates maybe, or some vast geological event powerful enough to rip vents in the very fabric of the earth.

  Down, down they went. The torch beams scanning left and right, picking out crags and splits in the rock, more spectacular features, more incredible spikes hanging from the roof and jutting upwards from the ground. Ben had visited the famous caves at Lascaux in France. This place was on a whole different scale in terms of weird splendour. But he had other things to occupy his mind. He was supporting Amal, who could barely walk any more for the constant agony in his arm.

  ‘It better be down here somewhere,’ Takshak’s voice echoed back at them from the front.

  ‘Not much further now,’ Kabir’s voice echoed in reply. Then he stopped again. ‘Close your eyes. Can you feel it now?’

  Ben wasn’t about to close his eyes while in close proximity to Takshak, Hashim and Samunder. But he could feel it. It was subtle, but he wasn’t imagining it. A strange harmonic vibration that seemed to come from deep under his feet. From somewhere behind the harmonics, a soft continuous rumble, so low that it was almost subsonic. He couldn’t begin to guess what was capable of making such a sound. He looked at Kabir. Amal was looking at him too, with the same expression of confusion. Even Takshak seemed to have lost his surly confidence. ‘What the fuck is that?’

  Kabir smiled mysteriously and said, ‘Just a few more steps. Follow me.’

  And just a few steps further through the rock tunnel, his words turned out to be true. Because when he’d said the lost treasure of the Indus Valley people was like nothing anyone could have expected, he hadn’t been kidding.

  Chapter 68

  The vibration and rumbling that Ben had been able to sense just now were suddenly amplified a hundred times, to a rushing sound that filled his ears. He felt the freshness of moving air cool the sweat on his brow. Heard Kabir’s voice raised over the strange noise, saying, ‘Careful. Don’t go any further. Two more steps you’ll go right over the edge and it’s a long way down.’

  The eight of them had emerged onto a short and narrow craggy prominence that overhung a vast empty space, like a truncated bridge leading nowhere. Kabir stepped a little closer to the edge and shone his torch to show them.

  Ben wasn’t easily amazed, but the vastness of the cavern into which the tunnel had opened up was an incredible sight. The great domed ceiling arched high above them. Geological formations like gargoyles cast eerie shadows that trembled and flickered in the torchlight. The rushing sound was a continuous roar coming from below. Only one thing on earth could make that sound. It took Ben straight back to the days when he’d lived on the western Irish coast and spent many contemplative hours on his empty stretch of beach, gazing out to sea as the breakers rolled in to crash against the shore.

  ‘Look.’ Kabir directed the torch beam across the huge space at the cavern wall opposite, some eighty or more yards away. Once upon a time, the prominence on which they were standing must have bridged the whole width of the chasm. Which was the only possible way to explain what Kabir was pointing out. Ben blinked as the pool of white light traced the contours of the same Indu
s glyph that had marked the grotto entrance. The carving had to be twenty feet high. More than just a marker. Like a symbol of veneration, designating a holy place. A shrine, or a temple. He shivered. The man standing next to him had probably been the first person in thousands of years to have taken in this sight. And now Ben was seeing it for himself. It felt strangely humbling.

  Kabir raised his voice again and said, ‘And here it is, people. The lost treasure of the Indus Valley Civilisation. The discovery that could have saved their entire civilisation from doom, if only they’d found it sooner. It was already too late to reverse their fate.’

  Kabir inched forward as close to the edge as anyone would have dared, and shone the torch vertically downwards. He’d been right. It was a hell of a long way down. Ben peered after its beam and saw movement down there. Roiling and churning and swirling and foaming movement. Breathtaking in power. The great roar of the water filled his ears.

  Kabir swept the light as far to the left as its beam could reach, to where it dissipated in the murk. Then did the same to the right. And Ben realised that what he was staring down at was the surface of a vast underground lake stretching for maybe hundreds of metres end to end. The reservoir had to contain a million tons of water. Maybe far more. He had no idea. It was cascading out under pressure in a great jet from a channel a few feet above the surface, a perpetual waterfall driven by what must have been a virtually limitless source. No telling how far it had flowed to get here. Miles, Ben guessed. The overflow from the lake must then in turn be running off down natural drainage vents that carried it onwards, deeper still underground. So much water, sitting here for countless centuries, for millennia, locked inside its own natural cave system deep below the surface of the arid wilderness. The rock ceiling above them was so thick and dense that not a drop of moisture could seep upwards to quench the thirst of the land.

  Now, suddenly, he understood everything. The same revelation that had struck Kabir when he’d made this discovery was also clear to him. It was the answer to the age-old enigma of what had killed off the biggest and most culturally advanced civilisation of ancient history. The force that had destroyed them hadn’t come from within, like the overexpansion and social decay that had eaten up the great Roman Empire like a cancer. And it hadn’t come in the shape of conquering invaders from the outside, in the way that had spelled the end for ancient Babylon. No, the long, slow, agonising demise of the Indus Valley culture had resulted from the inexorable cycles of nature. Once upon a time their land had been lush and green, fertile and bountiful and teeming with diverse life. It had sustained them aplenty for over fifteen hundred years, allowed their harmonious and peaceful civilisation to blossom into a long, happy peak of refinement that had been unique for its day. Perhaps unique in all of history.

  But what Nature provides, Nature can also take away. It must have been such a gradual change that people didn’t notice at first, when the rains stopped coming and the water levels began to ebb lower. Slowly but surely, maybe over hundreds of years, the moisture had receded from the earth. The once-great rivers had become streams, then trickles, then turned to mud, and then to bare rocky trenches where lizards basked in the heat. The land had become crumbly and poor. The crops had failed. The livestock had perished. The people had begun to starve. Even the builders of the cities could no longer mix the clay and lime with water to make mortar, or fashion the bricks that had been a hallmark of their technical development when the civilisation was in its prime. Water, not gold or jewels or material wealth in any such crude forms, was their most precious commodity. They must have travelled far and wide in their desperate search for sustenance, as farmers watched their fields turn to dust and mothers helplessly witnessed their babies fade and die.

  Little wonder that finding a sustainable source of water would have been the equivalent of the greatest mineral wealth discovery of their age, or any age. Whoever could restore life to the dying land would literally have been the saviour of an entire race.

  Kabir had said it. By the time some intrepid Indus Valley explorer had stumbled on this subterranean lake, thousands of years in the past, it had already been too late to reverse the fate of a whole civilisation. It was a timeless lesson with as much relevance today as back in the mists of history. Little wonder that it had passed into myth and legend the way it had, only for the mystery to be unravelled all these millennia later.

  ‘It’s awesome,’ Amal said, able to forget his pain for a moment.

  But not everyone present could appreciate the momentous sight in front of them. Takshak’s eyes were bulging and his teeth were clenched in rage as his vision of mountains of gold and endless riches suddenly crumbled and fell apart. He pointed his torch at Kabir and screamed, ‘No way! This can’t be it! You’re lying to me!’

  Kabir should have been afraid, but he was smiling. Then his smile grew broader until it was plastered all over his face in a huge grin. Despite everything that was happening in that moment, mirth got the better of him. His laughter echoed all around the vast chamber, ringing out over the thundering roar of the water below.

  ‘What the FUCK is so funny?’ Takshak screamed.

  Kabir was laughing so hard that he could barely speak. ‘I told you you’d have trouble loading the treasure on your truck. You were warned, but you wouldn’t listen. This joke is all on you, my poor pathetic friend.’

  Hashim and Samunder were too stunned by the sudden catastrophic disintegration of all their dreams and plans to do anything but stare helplessly at their leader. Totally distracted. None of the three were paying any attention to Ben.

  That was their big mistake.

  Chapter 69

  Ben stepped back into the shadows. Takshak was still raging at Kabir. Hashim and Samunder were still standing there in mute bewilderment, with no clue as to what to do. The old lady might as well have been in another world. Nobody was watching him, except the young girl. Her face was half-lit by the torchlight and wore a knowing expression, as though she could tell what he was planning. The first tiny flicker of a smile he’d seen on her curled her lip. He put a finger to his own, signalling her to stay quiet. She replied with an almost imperceptible nod to show she’d understood. She backed away a couple of steps towards the tunnel.

  Ben bent at the waist and slid his right hand down the outside of his right leg. All the way down to his boot.

  What happened next was inevitable. Ben had seen it coming, ten seconds before Takshak’s fury and frustration finally boiled over. Now Takshak exploded. He made a savage lunge at Kabir with the torch, wanting to beat his brains out. Once Takshak had kicked off the violence, his men would quickly follow his lead.

  Ben thought, Not going to happen.

  And it didn’t. Before Takshak got halfway through his backswing Ben was re-emerging from the shadows and coming up behind him with something clasped in his hand. It was the item he’d palmed off the floor earlier while putting his boots on. Something small, hard and shiny, made of tempered steel and extremely sharp. Pihu’s surgical scissors. Made for the purpose of helping heal the sick, rather than to cause harm. But the brutally simple truth of the matter was that, as with every manmade tool ever devised dating back to the primal beginnings of human evolution, all that divides the benevolent from the deadly is the intention of the user.

  And Ben’s intention was to end this, right here, right now.

  He reached his left hand past Takshak’s left ear and cupped his chin and rocked him violently backwards off his feet while simultaneously reaching around with his right and stabbing the open blades of the scissors into the flesh of Takshak’s neck.

  Another brutal truth, one that Ben had learned a long time ago, was that it takes only an inch or two of keen-edged blade to effectively and decisively end the life of another human being. Anything bigger was just a luxury. As long as it was sharp. The sharper the better. And Pihu’s little scissors were like razors. Ben had already noted that as he’d watched her cut the bandages for Amal’s dressing a
nd sling.

  Ben slashed Takshak’s throat from left to right, all the way from ear to ear, in a single savage sawing motion that sliced through gristle and muscle and soft tissue. Takshak’s left carotid artery went first, then the right a second later. The blood jetted out as hard as the gushing water below. It sprayed Kabir and soaked Ben’s hands and filled the air with its coppery stench. Takshak let out a guttural howl of fear and struggled like a gazelle in the teeth of a tiger. But there was nothing he could do. It was all over for him before he’d even fully registered what had happened. Ben let go of him, and he crumpled forwards and crunched face-down to the stone floor.

  Then Hashim and Samunder were screaming too, in a confusion of whirling light as the torch beams flashed and crisscrossed wildly all over the place in the darkness. Hashim’s machine gun came up to point at Ben, but the weapon was long and clumsy in such a restricted space and Hashim had to wield the heavy gun one-handed so he could hold his torch in the other, which gave Ben more than enough leverage to easily deflect the muzzle. The gun rattled deafeningly but missed Ben by three feet. Ben swept his legs out from under him with a low scything kick, and Hashim went toppling over sideways. If there had been a stone floor under him, Hashim would have come down hard on his shoulder and ribs, and then Ben would have waded in with a series of savage kicks that would have pulverised his face and smashed his head in.