by Chris Fox
“Hmm,” Blair said. He removed his glasses and cleaned them with his shirt before examining the pictographs in the light provided by their lamps. “This is interesting. See these red figures here? They’re lying down as if sleeping or dead. But then in this next pictograph, they rise and begin fighting. These brown figures are driven back to what I’m guessing is this pyramid. Maybe the dead represent a foe they thought they’d defeated?”
“Or a foe that can’t be killed,” Bridget added, leaning closer to examine the next panel. “What we don’t get is this next part. Take a look.”
The next panel was odd. The red figures, the ones that had risen, had surrounded the pyramid. A few of the brown figures stood at the very top, and on the stairs loomed a prominent silver figure that Blair could only describe as a monster. It had elongated claws, was covered in what he guessed was meant to be fur, and had a mouth full of vicious fangs.
“I think this is some sort of champion or war god,” he said, dropping to a crouch and shining his lamp on it. There was something maddeningly familiar about the figure. “I think I’ve seen it before, or something very much like it.”
“Really?” Bridget asked, crouching next to him. “Who, or what, does it remind you of?”
He considered for a long moment, taking in the wolf-headed figure. “If it was male, I’d say it was an exact likeness of Wepwawet, one of the sons of Anubis. He was worshipped in Lycopolis, the Egyptian city of wolves. The ruins are still there, though they’re in a bad enough state that we aren’t sure what the place was used for.”
“Interesting that the gender is different,” Bridget replied, pressing against his side as she leaned closer to the image. “It is clearly female, though.”
“Gender aside, our wolf-headed friend here appears to be protecting the people from the red figures,” Blair interpreted, touching the figure with his index finger. Like the pictographs outside, it had no texture and a much higher level of detail than anything he’d ever encountered. The archeologist in him railed at the idea of marring the ink with the oils in his skin, but he couldn’t help himself. “I want to study these in detail before offering a hypothesis, but I’m betting this figure is central to their culture. Perhaps the best warrior was dressed in special trappings that make her appear to be a beast? It might be similar to the Mayans and their belief that warriors could channel the power of the jaguar. It would have terrified their enemies.”
“That’s a connection we hadn’t thought of,” Bridget admitted, resting her arm on his shoulder. “See? I’m already glad we called you in.”
He rose stiffly, letting her arm drop as he took a step back and turned his lamp on the other wall.
“Look at this,” Blair said. His momentary irritation was quickly forgotten. “The champion is standing at the apex of the pyramid, these brown figures being led up to her. It looks like she’s sacrificing them. But why?”
“We’re not sure. It could be some sort of cultural ritual. The Mayans would sacrifice their enemies to gain their strength,” Bridget offered, shining her headlamp on the same panel Blair was examining. “That was Steve’s theory, anyway. I’m not sure I agree, but I didn’t have a better one. What do you think?”
“The Mayan connection is a good one, but I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing here.” Blair leaned so close that the beast’s claws felt almost life sized. Each was tipped with a dab of red, and a victim lay prone at its feet. Its mouth was awash with blood as well. The figures were stunningly detailed. “These don’t appear to be enemies she’s sacrificing. They appear to be the same citizens from the first panel. If they were enemies, I’m guessing they’d have been bound in some way. I think she’s killing her own people. They’re going to their deaths willingly.”
“That’s bizarre. Take a look at the next panel. I’m curious what you think.”
Blair did as he was asked, shining his lamp on the panel closest to the doorway. The champion was helping one of the figures who’d been sacrificed to his feet. The victim was now silver as well.
“It seems to be a ritual,” Blair mused, scratching absently at the hair at the base of his neck. It was thick with sweat. “Perhaps this champion isn’t killing the citizens. Maybe she’s putting them through a test that wounds them, and if they pass, they are elevated to champion. It could have symbolized some rite of passage men underwent at a certain age.”
“Or women,” Bridget corrected, accidentally blinding him with her lamp. He blinked away spots as she continued. “I guess we should head down to see Steve. He’ll want to hear your theories. Listen, when we get down there…well, you’ll understand.”
She began to descend, and Blair trailed after, his vision still recovering. He moved slowly, glancing at either side of the hallway to see what the pictographs contained. He wanted to stop for closer examination, but that would come later. For now he needed to focus on Steve. Besides, it would be worth skipping this for a look at the central chamber.
“Watch your footing,” Bridget cautioned, pausing to shine her light in his direction. “The stones are remarkably well preserved, but some of them are slick. Alejandro twisted his ankle a few days back.”
“Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?” Blair said, imagining tumbling to the bottom with a broken leg.
“You’ve always been clumsy, but not that bad. Alejandro can trip on flat ground,” Bridget said with a too-quick laugh. He knew her well enough to know when she was preoccupied.
They climbed in silence up perhaps another hundred steps before the hallway leveled off. The floor now sloped downwards, but the decline was very difficult to notice unless you’d spent a lot of time underground. Fortunately, Blair had.
“The central chamber is just around the corner.” Bridget’s voice echoed off the stone.
A faint sliver of light splashed the floor ahead, proving the truth of her words. They quickened their pace, eventually reaching the light and rounding the corner. Blair could do nothing but stop and stare. The hallway continued for about fifteen feet, but what lay beyond was what had captured his attention so completely. He’d seen the inner chambers in nearly every pyramid on this continent, but nothing rivaled the room ahead.
The light from his headlamp barely touched a ceiling that had to be at least a hundred feet above. At each cardinal direction rested an enormous obelisk, like miniature versions of the one in Washington DC. Each probably weighed forty or fifty tons.
A fifth, larger one sat in the very center of the chamber. Blair guessed its height to be fifty feet, and it looked to be solid, black stone. Obsidian perhaps?
There was only one other feature of note, a perfectly carved replica of the wolf-headed goddess from the first panel. It stood against the far wall, palm raised in what appeared to be a gesture of friendship. It had nobility to it, majesty even. Every strand of fur was sculpted to perfection.
“It’s tough to make out unless we turn on the generators, but the walls are covered in hieroglyphs. The ones near the obelisks are the most exquisite in the entire structure. You’re going to wet your pants when you see them,” Bridget teased, though he could tell the behavior was forced.
“Blair?” a voice called, cracked from disuse. A figure hobbled into the light of Blair’s headlamp; apparently Steve had been resting in the shadow of the central obelisk. “Blair, is that you? You’ve come at last. I need you, my old friend. We must find the way down. She’s in there, waiting. She needs us. Blair, we have to get in.”
Blair’s eyes burned from a sharp odor when his old friend emerged fully from the shadows. Steve had always been muscular, the athlete all the girls loved. That was gone. Soiled khakis and a polo shirt hung from his emaciated form. His dark hair was disheveled, and his skin peeled in patches, as if it had been subjected to bad sunburn. The glasses were familiar, but the man who wore them couldn’t possibly be Steve. His eyes held a feverish glint that made Blair tense defensively.
“Steve?” he asked, aware of Bridget’s hesitant form on the step
behind him.
“Yes,” his friend answered, voice wavering. It was a bit more steady than it had been a moment ago. “I’m so glad you’ve come. The rest of these fools don’t understand, but you do. You can help me get in. You can, can’t you? Promise me. Promise!”
The last was delivered in a shriek that echoed through the cavernous chamber. Spittle flew from Steve’s mouth, and his eyes leaked hatred. He lurched forward, seizing Blair’s shoulders. The madman’s gaze locked with his, and to his horror, Blair could find no humanity lurking there. Not a shred.
“Of course, Steve. I promise. I’ll help however I can. It’s going to take some time though. I’ll need access to your notes,” he said, speaking slowly and calmly like he would to a wild dog.
“Notes? Yes. Yes, you’ll need those,” he said, releasing Blair and scurrying to a folding table that had been erected in the shadow of one of the obelisks. He began grabbing loose sheets of paper and arranging them into a ragged stack. “Here, you can study these, but you must hurry. The end is coming. We must get inside before it’s too late. We must, or the world will burn.”
9
Decisions
Blair shivered as he left the sun’s thin embrace for the shadowed pavilion. A fistful of now-familiar faces clustered around the portable heater next to the folding table. Blair set his coffee cup down, thankful for the gloves Bridget had insisted he bring. They had conductive fingertips, so he could use his smartphone without braving the cold.
“Good, Blair’s here. We can get started,” Sheila said, nodding at him from across the room. Her southern drawl was so faint it threatened to disappear entirely. This must be serious for that kind of lapse. Sheila prided herself on her Georgian heritage, though her family hadn’t lived there since she was three.
Blair followed her gaze to the pair of guards on the ridge and then watched as it roamed the lot of them.
What was going on? Everyone else looked as mystified as he felt.
“I called you all here because I want to address what we’re all thinking. Whatever we’re all too afraid to say. Something dangerous is going on in that pyramid. In the central chamber, specifically.”
Silence reigned. Bridget stared fixedly at the map on the table while Alejandro splayed his hands over the heater. The only sound was the wind as it tugged at the pavilion’s blue canvas. Blair had only been on the team three days. Should he speak up? No, it wasn’t his place.
“You’re not wrong,” Dr. Roberts finally said. He crossed his arms, eyes staring out from the bushy beard that covered his face. “I’ve compiled the seismic data from three separate sources. The pyramid caused the earthquake; I’m certain now. It chose to reveal itself…for reasons we can’t begin to guess. But that’s not the terrifying part. My data strongly suggests that what we’re seeing is, quite literally, the tip of the iceberg. The structure goes deep into the earth possibly a mile or more.”
“That dovetails with Steve’s notes,” Blair said, taking a step closer to the table. All eyes were on him now. “He believes we’ve only discovered the entryway to this place. What we assume is the central chamber might be nothing more than an antechamber at the top.”
“It doesn’t surprise me. Not one bit,” Sheila said, drawl back to full strength. She leaned into the table as she speared them with her gaze. “Why else would they spend millions of dollars to explore this place? We have an escort that’s three times as large as the science team. I don’t know much about guns, but what they’re armed with is more state of the art than anything we should find in Peru.”
“I do,” Bridget broke in, drawing everyone’s attention. He knew why she knew guns, and he wasn’t surprised she was still embarrassed about it. “Your average infantry are typically armed with an M4. It’s good for both close quarters and medium range, and the rounds are common all over the world. Did anyone see Black Hawk Down? That’s the gun they were using. These guys? The rifles are about the same size as an M4, but I’m unfamiliar with the body or that scope they’ve got mounted on top.”
Bridget’s father was a colonel, and she’d grown up living and breathing that stuff. She’d dragged Blair to the opening night of everything from Saving Private Ryan to the aforementioned Black Hawk Down. She’d spent countless evenings playing Call of Duty and waiting in line every time a new game came out.
“So, what?” Alejandro finally spoke up, glancing up from the heater. “Is this not a good thing? There are very many men protecting us, and they have lots of fancy guns. Not only do we not pay for this, but they pay us a fortune to become pivotal figures in the legends that will spring from this place. We are the few who will see the world’s understanding of the past change forever. We will shape that change. Are you not honored to be here?”
“You have to be alive to enjoy that, Alejandro,” Dr. Roberts said quietly. His gaze softened. “We’ve all seen Steve. The man is suffering. I’m no medical doctor, but he has severe burns all over his skin. The kind found after Hiroshima or Chernobyl. That’s saying nothing about his behavior. How many of you has he attacked now? Sheila, I know he came after you with a trowel last week. We’ve all seen the bruises Bridget tries to cover up. The man is melting down in there, maybe literally. What in the hell could cause that?”
“We already know that place eats signals. If you bring your cell phone in, the battery is drained in minutes. That can’t be a coincidence,” Blair said. “Dr. Roberts believes this place thrust itself from the earth. That takes power. Enormous power, I’d wager. It has to have been dormant for a dozen millennia, given your dating, yet it has a reservoir of power that somehow survived that long.”
“There’s only one type of power that could last that long, at least any power source we’ve discovered,” Bridget said, eyes widening as the group put the pieces together. “Steve has radiation poisoning.”
“Maybe, but we don’t have a medical doctor, so there’s no way to be sure,” Sheila said, seizing the conversation once more. “What we are sure about is that the people who brought us here know a lot more about this place than they’re letting on. Either they were expecting this place, or they move faster than any company I’ve ever seen. They had base camp set up within twenty-four hours of this place appearing. They know the central chamber is dangerous, but they’ve forced Steve inside, and now they’re forcing Blair. How long until he starts exhibiting the same symptoms?”
“I haven’t felt any adverse effects yet,” Blair said. The idea of the madness being somehow infectious had already crept into his mind, and Blair had spent the last several days practically having minor heart attacks every time he imagined a symptom.
“Are we willing to risk it without more data?” she asked. “I mean, come on, it’s our lives at stake here. I’m happy to explore this place, but if there are dangers, we need to be aware of them.”
“I agree,” Dr. Roberts said. “We’ve signed their NDAs and contracts. It’s not like we can tell anyone anything, but if our lives are at risk we deserve to at least have all the facts.”
“What do you propose we do?” Alejandro asked. His sharp tone made it clear he didn’t share their fear. “Should we run to them and demand answers? They owe us nothing. We signed forms agreeing to this. We are paid very handsomely not just for our expertise but also for our discretion. If knowing what they know would help us unravel the mystery of this place, I have no doubt they would share. Is there some risk? Perhaps. Is this not always the case when exploring a new frontier?”
“Typically, that risk doesn’t result in your skin melting,” Sheila retorted. She glanced back up the rise, and Blair followed her gaze. It had settled on Commander Jordan’s tent, perched like a hawk on the ridge overlooking camp. “I’m not expecting you to do anything. I just need to know where everyone stands. If we present a united front, we’re far more likely to get some answers. They might be able to replace one of us, but replacing the entire team would take weeks or even months. I’m betting they don’t want to spend that time.”
“I am deeply sorry, but I will not be a party to this. Do as you will,” Alejandro said, shaking his head. He wore the expression reserved for a child that has done something extremely disappointing. The normally jovial man picked up his coffee and left the pavilion, moving off toward the ridge.
There was a long silence as the group eyed each other uncomfortably. Dr. Roberts finally leaned in and drew their attention.
“He’s free to make his own decisions. Do the rest of us have a consensus that something should be done?” Dr. Roberts asked. Sheila nodded immediately of course, and then Bridget followed suit a moment later.
“We have to do something,” Blair said, crossing his arms. “I don’t want to think anything ill of our benefactors, but all we’re asking is a little more information. I do think we need to approach the matter delicately, though.”
“That, we can do,” Sheila said, darting a glance over her shoulder. “I’ll give it some thought, and we’ll come up with a way to approach Commander Jordan tomorrow.”
10
Answers
Jordan checked the slide on his .457, inspecting the heavy pistol for debris of any kind. Basic weapon maintenance was the first thing every soldier learned. If your equipment failed in combat, you died. It was that simple.
Satisfied with the weapon’s condition, he slammed the slide home and slid the weapon into the holster strapped to his thigh. The matte-black gun was larger than any he’d ever used, and he was still getting used to it. Even after Jordan spent countless hours at the gym, it kicked like a mule. He much preferred a .45, which could be fired one handed in a pinch and was incredibly accurate at close range. But then he’d never had to fight a werewolf before. If that thing returned he’d damned well be ready, and that meant his sidearm needed all the stopping power he could get. That thing had gotten up after having over a hundred rounds emptied into it. He didn’t have room to play around.