Man and his pitiless enemies are mere pawns in the greatest escape ever devised. The real Satan can’t be killed, and he has been waiting since the beginning of time to gain his freedom. But a lone explorer, the linguist Ali von Schade, learns that a far greater menace lies in the unexplored heart of the planet. Against the backdrop of a looming war with China, a crusade of volunteers races to find the vestiges of a lost race. Hell boils up through America’s subways and baseme*nts to take its revenge and steal our children. Now Deeper arrives to explode that complacency and plunge us back into the sunless abyss. Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, a doomed science expedition killed the subterraneans’ fabled leader, and suddenly it seemed that evil was dead and all was right with the world again. After millennia of suffering terror and predation, humanity’s armies descended to destroy the ancient hordes. In an intense and imaginative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Jeff Long takes readers into the depths of the earth where a primordial intelligence waits in the darkness.Ī decade has passed since doomed explorers unveiled a nightmare of tunnels and rivers honeycombing the earth’s depths. It is a real, geological, historical place beneath our very feet. Is he lurking in wait for the expedition, or is he roaming the earth? One thing is certain: Miles inside the earth, evil is very much alive. Meanwhile, on the surface, a band of aged scholars scours for clues to Satan’s existence. In the dark underground, as humanity falls away from them, the scientists and mercenaries find themselves prey not only to the savage creatures, but to their own treachery mutiny, and greed. Fathom by fathom, Ike guides an expedition and Ali deeper into the deadly wilderness. Nations, armies, religions, and industries rush to colonize and exploit the subterranean frontier. With all of Hell’s precious resources and territories to be won, a global race ensues. So begins mankind’s realization that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth riddling the continents and seabeds, one inhabited by brutish creatures who resemble the devils and gargoyles of legend.

In Bosnia, Major Elias Branch crash lands his gunship near a mass grave and is swarmed by pale cannibals terrified of light…

In a leper colony bordering the Kalahari Desert, a nun named Ali von Schade unearths evidence of a proto human species and a deity called Older than Old…

When his lover disappears, Ike pursues her into the depths of the earth… In Tibet, while guiding trekkers to a holy mountain, Ike Crockett discovers a bottomless cave.

The descent by jeff long