Free Humanity Unlimited 1: Liberty Station by Terry Mixon Page B

a few days, I want to know what that site is before he does.”
    They broke camp half an hour later and resumed their trek. In the end, they didn’t have to do a lot of searching. There was a big hill overlooking the general area. Sandra climbed a tree at the top to get a look.
    “I have something to the northeast. A gap in the trees. It might indicate ruins.”
    All Harry could see was undergrowth. He waited for Sandra to climb back down and sent Rex off in the indicated direction. Odds were that he wouldn’t find anything.
    And, in fact, Rex didn’t find any ruins. He did find something strange about the clearing. The gap was a perfectly circular clearing about a hundred feet across.
    Even the undergrowth was missing. The limbs from the surrounding trees hid the spooky symmetry from the air, breaking up the curve. Bare ground was all that greeted them. Only a few dead limbs lay in the open.
    Harry stopped at the edge, his finely honed subconscious screaming at him to back up. It thought he was about to be ambushed. He wasn’t entirely certain it was wrong.
    He glanced over at Jess. Her expression told him this wasn’t what she’d expected, either.
    “Can you tell me why there aren’t any plants in there?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “No. I’ve never heard of anything like this.” She stepped out into the open before he could grab her and ran her hand over the ground. “It feels like regular dirt.”
    “Maybe you shouldn’t be out there. What if it’s some kind of poison?”
    “One that works in a perfect circle? Doubtful. And even in poisoned areas, some plants are hardier than others. There’s no natural reason for a clearing like this.”
    Harry couldn’t think of one, either. “Spread out, everyone. If there’s a group of people cleaning this spot, I don’t want to be surprised if they come calling.”
    He stepped out beside Jess. “Why would someone clear a random spot in the jungle?”
    “Because it isn’t random. It means something to them. Let’s give the ground in the middle a better look.”
    She marched to the center of the clearing resolutely while he followed behind her, his weapon up and scanning for threats. It felt like the trees were staring at him.
    Jess squatted and ran her hand across the ground. “This feels different. More compacted.” She opened her pack and dug inside, producing a small hand pick. “I grabbed this from the camp in case we needed to dig.”
    Within a few minutes, she had a section of the dirt dug up. It didn’t go down far. Maybe six inches under the surface, she found stone.
    “This isn’t natural,” she said. “See the tool marks? Someone put this here.”
    That made him shake his head. “Why cover something with stone and then bury it?”
    “Because you want to protect whatever is under it. We might not be able to find out why the man marked this area by his book. We’re not set up to dig up anything like this.”
    “How far out does it go?”
    “Let’s find out.”
    She moved a few feet over and dug into the ground. “More stone here. And this looks like a seam. Maybe there’s a buried trapdoor.”
    Rex came out of the jungle as she started digging again. “I found a trail off to the east. There were some bare footprints. That might mean locals. It doesn’t appear to have been used in the last week or so.”
    Harry stared off in that direction. “Post a watch. Tripwire protocol.”
    “Copy that. I’ll put people out in the other directions, too. If we see anything, I’ll warn you trouble is coming.”
    “Hey,” Jess said. “I found a handle.”
    Harry examined it as Rex headed back out to set the perimeter watch. Sure enough, the stone slab had an area carved out so that someone could lift it. That wasn’t to say that the two of them would be able to do so by themselves.
    “Let’s see how big the door is,” he said.
    It took them working in turns for half an hour to uncover the slab. It was a dozen feet across. That meant