Pompeii's Ghosts (A James Acton Thriller, #9) by J Robert Kennedy

things and repurchase them at the new destination, but before
the twentieth century, belongings were far fewer and far more precious. Things
were only abandoned or left behind for a reason, and those reasons were rarely
good.
    War,
famine, pestilence, natural disaster. People forced to abandon their villages
due to war, it burned to the ground by the marauders, the villagers never
returning. That was a common reason found in their digs. Some natural
phenomenon such as landslides, earthquakes or volcanos, forcing a rapid escape,
or worse, the calamity creating a tomb not only for their possessions, but
themselves.
    Pompeii
popped into his mind as he reached the first of the gold bars, the brand of Emperor
Vespasian, who died only weeks before the eruption of Vesuvius, clearly marked
on the bar by the assayer two millennia ago. The eruption had been violent,
catastrophic, and when the end finally came, so devastatingly swift, the city
was essentially abandoned, it impossible to salvage anything after the
destruction wrought by the sleeping giant that was Vesuvius.
    Over the
ensuing centuries Pompeii, and the neighboring town of Herculaneum, were
forgotten to history, life moving on as an empire collapsed. It wasn’t until
1738 that the lost city was rediscovered, and even then it took decades before
any real excavations began. Now thousands of tourists roam the streets of the
nearly perfectly preserved ancient city, flash-heated in time.
    Acton
peered deeper into the hold then held up his cellphone, snapping a rapid series
of pictures in panorama mode. As the flash snapped, he spotted a partial
skeleton at the far end, and said a silent prayer for their soul. It was a
common misconception that the bodies famously preserved in Pompeii were the
actual hardened or petrified remains of people. Instead, they were actually
plaster casts of the voids created by the bodies of the victims. When the final
disaster struck, super-heated air rolled down the mountain and through the
city, instantly “cooking” everything. The heat was so intense it caused many of
the victims’ muscles to contract, which resulted in many dying in the fetal
position, as opposed to actually having already been in the position when the
final blow came. These bodies were then buried in tons of ash that solidified
over the centuries, and as the bodies decomposed to nothing, voids were created
in the ash.
    When
archeologists began to excavate, they came upon these voids, and curious, one
decided to fill one of them with a plaster of Paris mixture. After it
solidified, they carefully removed the ash from around the now solid void, and
were shocked at their discovery. Over one hundred bodies to date have managed
to be preserved, their death throes now on display for all to see, from man,
woman, child and beast.
    But not
here, not today. He had no doubt they might find more skeletons, but nothing
preserved like the human voids in the ashes of Pompeii. Examining the
skeletons, however, might give some indication as to how they died, and at
least some of their uniforms might have survived, which could answer another
important question. Was this vessel from the time of Vespasian, or was it from
much later, merely transporting gold minted in Vespasian’s time?
    “Coming
out!” he yelled as he began to shuffle backward. He felt a gentle tug on his
harness as the slack was pulled out along with him, and within moments he was
back outside, lying on his back, gasping in the fresh air. He held up his phone
to the crowd circling him, all looking down with expectant expressions on their
face. “I took a panorama of the inside.”
    Laura
grinned, grabbing the phone as Tucker pulled Acton to his feet. They all rushed
to what had been identified earlier as the Command Tent, it containing computers
hooked into a diesel generator available for the gathered to use. Laura hooked
the phone into her computer, sending the image to a large display for all to
see.
    Gasps
filled the