The first thing he came to realise was that the villagers didn't die all at once like the papers said they should have. The pyroclastic flow should have burnt them alive, rendering them a modernised Pompeii and yet the bodies they dug up were soft and fresh.
As they continued to excavate the site they managed to tunnel their way into the old hospital. Again they found evidence that it had taken quite some time for everyone to die, or at least enough time that they managed to rearrange the unused room and barricade all the exits before they resorted to cannibalism. The newer corpses had to be autopsied before they could officially say this of course, but they were still found with half-eaten legs clutched tightly in their hands.
After breaking through the barricades they found that the lava had formed a natural roof over the town, trapping the moisture from the heat it created so that it formed a misty haze of a ceiling that almost looked like the natural sky under their weak torches.
The further in they went, the more signs of recent life they found. Mouldy food, sinks full of dirty dishes, corpses who were in the early stages of rigor mortis - none of them died the day the village was buried. None of them died yet the world claimed they all had and left them all to rot.
He found the last living villagers hiding under the church floorboards, tearing into an infant like rabid dogs.
Needless to say, they joined the others in body bags.
It was safer that way.
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