Deeper
A Novel
THREE YEARS LATER
1
BENEATH THE INTERSECTION OF THE PHILIPPINE, JAVA, AND PALU SEA TRENCHES
He snapped his fingers. Let there be light. And they popped the flares.
The faces of his crew sprang from the darkness, flinching. The flare light hurt their eyes. It painted them green and hungry.
The city of stone materialized around them.
Clemens gave a nod. The clapboard snapped shut like a gunshot. In grease pencil: "HELL, scene 316, take 1. IMAX."
"Dead, all dead," he intoned as the camera panned across the city. It was a bony thing, hard and empty, ancient long before Troy was built, before Egypt was even a word. Walls stood cracked or breached by geological forces. Arches hung like ribs. Windows stared: blind sockets. The camera stopped on him.
Clemens turned his head to the lens. He gave it the tired bags under his eyes, and his shaggy salt-and-pepper beard, and the greasy hair, and the bad stitch job along one cheekbone. No makeup. No concealment. Let the audience see his weariness and the marks of five months spent worming through ... read full excerpt from Deeper: A Novel ebook
