Free Subterrestrial by Michael McBride Page A

and climbing.
    In her mind, she saw a taller version of a bonobo with a cone-shaped skull and a sloped face reminiscent of a gorilla’s, although its proportions were much closer to those of a human than any primate she’d ever seen.
    “It’s amazing. Have you been able to date the remains?”
    “Radiocarbon dating won’t work,” Payton said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because the results are unreliable on a specimen like this.”
    “You’re suggesting it’s too well preserved?”
    “I’m suggesting it hasn’t been preserved long enough.”
    Hart looked at Payton and watched the smile form on his face.
    “Are you saying what I think you are?”
    “Based on the incomplete disarticulation, the color and texture of the bone, and the presence of adipocere on the rock, I would guess this specimen couldn’t be much more than fifty years old.”
    She studied the expression on his face. There was no hint of deception. In fact, he appeared nearly as excited as she was. She rounded on Thyssen.
    “If this is a hoax, you’d better tell me now, or so help me—”
    “This is why you’re here, Dr. Hart. This is beyond our admittedly limited expertise.”
    She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the lights. The rock walls were honeycombed with nearly identical recesses, all of them filled with carcasses in varying stages of articulation and decomposition. The pelts were shriveled and the fur had been bleached white by age.
    The truth hit her like an uppercut. These remains hadn’t found their way into these recesses by accident. They were burials, interments like those in the tunnels beneath Paris. These animals had been deliberately placed here with a certain level of care. Even bonobos, for all their empathy and intelligence, were incapable of such a feat. She’d witnessed them fighting off keepers who attempted to remove a deceased animal from the preserve, but this was an expression of respect and mourning beyond even their considerable cognitive abilities and devotion to their family units. It was a practice in the animal kingdom reserved almost exclusively for Homo sapiens .
    And if there were burials, that could mean only one thing. Some number of individuals had to have survived in order to bury them.
    Her heart was beating so hard and fast she could barely speak. She took Thyssen by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes.
    “Have you found any living specimens?”
    “Not yet,” he said. “ Yet being the operative word.”
    Her head was spinning. The notion that this species had somehow adapted to life down here in the darkness was almost too fantastic to believe. There were so many questions racing through her head that she couldn’t seem to focus on a single one. How had they survived? What did they eat? How did they get down here in the first place? Where did they fall on the evolutionary tree?
    She looked back at the remains in an effort to regain her composure. Before traveling to the Congo to live among the bonobos, she’d spent considerable time researching orangutans in the rain forests of Sumatra. They were two entirely different species, and yet she’d assimilated herself into their communities almost effortlessly. If there was anyone on this planet able to decipher their behavior patterns and potentially find them, it was she.
    “Where do I start?”
    “That’s the problem,” Thyssen said. “We don’t know. Everywhere we look there’s another tunnel leading in a different direction. Some of them are dry, but the majority remain flooded. There simply aren’t enough of us to explore every little nook and cranny, which is why we brought you all here. If those things are truly still alive down here somewhere, then you’re our best hope of finding them.”
    “What’s in it for you?” Nabahe asked. “A corporation like Halversen doesn’t do anything out of the goodness of its heart.”
    Thyssen’s eyes were hidden in the shadows beneath the brim of his helmet.
    “Let me be blunt,