The Mayan Resurrection

by Steve Alten

  The ball … don’t forget the game!

  Jacob races after the skull-ball, overtaking two more warriors, who are batting it between them as they dribble it toward the eastern goal.

  One of the warriors wheels around to fend off Jacob’s attack as his teammate prepares to shoot.

  Jacob leaps, using his momentum to launch a double-snap kick, the toes of his boots striking the startled warrior in the solar plexus. He lands, then glances up in time to see the skull-ball bank off the eastern wall—

  —nearly slipping through the donut-shaped goal.

  In one motion, the shooter turns, throwing a needle-sharp dagger at Jacob. The white-haired twin, caught off guard, staggers backward as the poison blade strikes his environmental suit just above the heart.

  No blood. You got lucky, the blade didn’t penetrate. Don’t be so careless!

  Angry with himself, Jacob yanks out the blade and hurls it at his would-be killer like a fastball. The knife strikes deep, puncturing his enemy’s abdomen clear up to the handle.

  The transhuman grunts, then drops to his knees, his stomach drenched in blue blood.

  ‘Ja—cob!’

  Jacob looks up. Fubitch …

  Dominique is being forced to retreat over the edge of the eastern wall as the remaining three warriors, now in the temple, stab at her from above with their spears. She lets go, dropping twelve feet before grabbing on to the donut-shaped goal.

  Jacob runs to the base of the eastern wall and drops his sword. ‘Mother, jump.’

  She looks down and jumps, her son catching her in both arms.

  ‘You okay?’

  She nods, struggling to catch her breath.

  Jacob senses the three warriors hurrying down the stairwell. ‘Go get the skull.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘It’s not Mick’s head, mother. Now get it—quickly.’

  She hurries off, ignoring the moans of her son’s dying victims, as she steps over severed body parts.

  Jacob turns to face his remaining enemies, finishing them off with a dozen quick slashes of his sizzling sword.

  Dominique returns with the skull. It is elongated, the face bruised and bleeding, but it is not Michael Gabriel.

  It is the face of a child.

  Disgusted, Jacob dropkicks it at the western goal. The skull sails through the vertical hoop, the successful shot triggering a hidden mechanism within the goal.

  A wave of nausea returns as the open jowls of the serpent’s second mouth inhales Jacob and his mother into its vortex, transporting them into another realm.

  Opening their eyes, they find themselves standing at the base of a narrow chasm, which cuts a winding passage through an imposing jagged mountainside.

  Grabbing his mother by her arm, Jacob leads her down the Dark Road to Xibalba.

  39

  ‘Jake, where are we?’

  ‘The Mayans called this Xibalba Be—the Black Road to the Underworld. I suspect we’re still on Earth, somewhere underground.’

  Slipping the blade of his sword between his belt and exoskeleton, he takes Dominique by the hand and leads her into the ravine. The eight-foot-wide passage snakes between the towering vertical cliff walls, the mountain faces so straight and high they nearly obliterate the lavalike scarlet ceiling percolating above their heads.

  Whiffs of dense smoke cause the shadows to dance. The gray limestone rock face drips with heavy humidity. The lead-colored soil is as moist as wet sand, causing their feet to sink deeper with each step. A high-pitched wind whistles through the ravine, depositing a fine gray mist on their exposed faces and environmental suits.

  Jacob pauses. Looks up.

  The sound of fluttering wings echoes through the chasm.

  Dominique tightens her grip on his hand. Points ahead.

  Seated on the ground, its back against the canyon wall, is a humanoid.

  It is a transhuman—a female. Her shaved, elongated skull sports a jaguar-hide tattoo that serves as hair. She is naked, save for a thin, tattered cloth that barely covers her exquisite torso. Her right side, exposed to the wind, is slick with an oily gray residue.

  The woman is rocking back and forth, her dark, frightened eyes purplish red from crying.

  They approach, Jacob’s hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Dominique kneels by the woman, her motherly instincts taking over.

  ‘Mother, don’t!’ He grabs her arm, dragging her back.

  ‘Jake, have some compassion. Can’t you see she’s terrified?’

  ‘We don’t know who she is or what she is.’

  The sound of flapping wings grows louder, echoing like old-time machine-gun fire in the narrow ravine.

  The female hears it too. Panicking, she jumps to her feet and races through the chasm.

  Dominique glances at her son, then chases after the woman.

  ‘Mother, wait—’

  Jacob starts after her, but is forced to stop, unable to run with the bulky sword dangling at his hip. He withdraws it from his belt, then sprints with it through the twisting canyon.

  The ravine ends, Dominique’s footprints continuing on ahead. He hears the sound of a heavy surf. Remaining at the edge of the mountain, he wipes beads of gray moisture from his eyes, then searches for his mother.

  The mountainous passage has opened to a swampy beach. Silver waves crash upon an unearthly shoreline, which is littered with seaweed-type residue and tall, dead, dust-infested palm trees.

  His mother is up ahead, hiding in the crevice of a large rock formation. She points.

  Lining the beachhead are tall wooden posts, as thick as telephone poles. Fastened to each pole by heavy steel chains shackled about their necks are dozens of transhuman females. Bloody purple claw marks scar their naked, bruised bodies.

  The flapping sounds grow louder, approaching from somewhere above. The female prisoners cower behind their posts like frightened children.

  And then Jacob sees him.

  The dark figure of the Seraph-reincarnate circles like a hawk, soaring hundreds of feet above the beach. The being’s torso is heavily muscled, his bizarre, twenty-foot wings protruding from his genetically altered spine and latissimus dorsi.

  Devlin …

  Jacob and Dominique remain motionless and out of sight.

  The winged Seraph detects movement coming from beneath a mound of seaweed. It is the escaped female.

  Pulling his wings back, he dive-bombs after her like a pelican tracking a fish.

  The female tosses aside her camouflage and races back toward the refuge of the cliffs.

  Jacob signals to his mother to stay put, then grips the sword in both hands.

  Leveling out over the swampy beach, the Seraph swoops in from behind the terrified woman and lands on her back, pinning her forcefully against the silicon sand.

  Trapped beneath the heavier predator, the female tries desperately to crawl away on hands and knees.

  Devlin is simply too big and strong. Like an enraged lion subduing a zebra, he claws at the girl’s back, tearing her clothing and skin with his razor-sharp talonlike fingernails until she stops struggling. Pinning her facedown with his left arm, he caresses her breasts with his free hand, then bites into her exposed buttocks with his fang-shaped incisors.

  The female screams and hisses at the Seraph, who mounts her from behind to rape her—

  —never noticing Jacob, whose steel sword slashes downward against his still-flapping wings.

  The glancing blow slices the moving appendage as the ever-alert Devlin wheels around to face his enemy. An insane leer is pasted on his angelic face, his mouth dripping the girl’s bluish blood. The sociopath’s eyes blaze violet, his pupils, a scarlet red.

  Welcome, Father. We’ve been expecting you.

  The voice—telepathic. Very deep, almost hypnotic.

  Father?

  As the being leaps toward Jacob, the twin slips inside the nexus.

  The crimson ceiling instantly brighte
ns, the beating wings of the Seraph slowing to a crawl.

  Pushing forward through waves of energy, the white-haired twin meets the attacking humanoid with his raised sword, this time aiming for the mutant’s exposed head—

  —ignoring the female transhuman, who is suddenly racing at him at ungodly speed.

  Lilith!

  The Succubus embeds her fingernails into the flesh of his back, while her son claws at Jacob’s forearm, tearing tendons and muscle, forcing the twin to relinquish his weapon.

  Jacob swoons, the toxin adhered to Lilith’s fingernails quickly attacking his bloodstream.

  The paralyzed twin collapses in the ankle-deep mire.

  Lilith scans the swampy shoreline, her predatory senses sweeping the area. ‘Where’s the other twin? Do you see him?’

  ‘No. And I did not sense him enter the nexus.’

  ‘Hmm. Perhaps he’s more cunning than his brother.’ She gazes at Jacob, then whispers in his ear, ‘I’ve missed you, soul mate.’

  Devlin looks down the beach to the canyon walls. ‘We’re vulnerable here. Let’s return to the portal with this one. The other twin is sure to follow.’

  He manipulates his injured wing, testing it. Satisfied, he allows his mother to wrap her arms around his neck, then he bends down and picks up Jacob, as if the twin were a small child.

  Flapping his mighty wings, the Seraph rises away from the ground, heading north.

  Dominique waits another five minutes before coming out from hiding. She is terrified and angry and suddenly all alone.

  Just stay calm and think. She picks up Jacob’s sword, carrying the heavy weapon in both hands.

  The shackled women cry out to her in animal-like grunts, motioning to their chains.

  One of the females, a brown-skinned transhuman with claw-mark scars striping her breasts and back, opens her mouth, showing Dominique that she has no tongue.

  Dominique points to the north. ‘Do you know where they took my son?’

  The female nods, pointing inland. Looming in the distance is an ominous mountain, its craggy summit backlit by the subterranean world’s fiery scarlet roof.

  ‘If I free you, will you take me there?’

  The abused female nods.

  Dominique examines the steel shackle around her neck.

  A moderate chop with the sword’s ultratech edge and the chain is broken.

  It takes Dominique another ten minutes to free the remaining prisoners.

  40

  There are two colors in the subterranean world, both appearing in varying shades.

  Gray is the color of death. It is the desolate plain Dominique and her transhuman companion have been walking on for hours, its solder gray, parched surface scarred with deep fissures and charcoal-tinged boulders. It is the brownish gray clouds rising from distant funeral pyres, smoldering like toxic smoke from a petroleum inferno. It is the muddied gray of the mountainside looming before them, its barren, clay-colored escarpments smooth and twisting, like cooled magma. It is the lead gray backs of the foot-long beetles that continuously scamper between their boots like restless vermin.

  Red is the color of heat. It is the sliver of rose-colored horizon peeking between the mountain’s summit and the roof of the subterranean habitat. It is the orange-red glow of embers twinkling like stars upon the cloud-covered ceiling.

  Red is not the color of blood. Blood bleeds blue in this godforsaken carbon-dioxide habitat, appearing violet in the pinkish hue of everlasting twilight.

  Violet is the shade of red Dominique sees every time she squeezes her eyes shut. Violet is the dull, aching, maddening pain that presses against the back of her eyeballs. It is her feet, throbbing inside her boots. It is her lower back, which still aches from a prolonged menstrual cycle. It is her overwrought nerves, which cringe at the perpetual squish-squish sound of recycled water being pumped by her leg muscles as she moves in her constricting environmental bodysuit.

  But worse than the pain, worse than the colors of the Underworld, is the terror that gnaws at her brain, the anxiety of knowing her soul mate is close, but her son is in great danger.

  They reach the base of the mountain. Dominique stares up at its twisting forty-degree incline and escarpments, seeing only violet.

  The mute transhuman points.

  ‘Guess it’s not too bad,’ Dominique lies, straining to see the summit. ‘Almost looks like an extinct volcano.’

  Dozens of beetles scamper across the tops of her boots. ‘Go away!’ She kicks at them, nearly losing her footing.

  The transhuman starts up the slope.

  Dominique follows, using the sword as a cane. Jake’s strong, he’ll be okay. If they wanted him dead, they would have killed him back on the beach.

  Her thoughts turn to her other son.

  At least Manny’s safe …

  And then she stops, tears welling in her eyes as the reality of her situation finally hits home. Manny’s not safe, Manny’s dead! He died on this rotting hellhole millions of years ago, along with the rest of our godforsaken species.

  Leaning against a boulder, she sobs uncontrollably, choking into her regulator.

  Her transhuman companion stops. Climbs down to her and takes her hand, squeezing it.

  Have … faith.

  The message, delivered telepathically, is but a faint whisper in Dominique’s brain, but it speaks volumes.

  Yes, she is marooned and desperate, but she is not alone. There is her other son, and maybe there is Mick.

  And now—a friend.

  If you have to die, go down fighting. Take that bitch Lilith with you!

  Dominique stands.

  The two women embrace, then continue climbing.

  Hours pass.

  The transhuman female reaches a plateau and stops climbing. Dominique joins her, the two humanoids staring at the challenge that lies before them.

  Separating the plateau from the mountain’s summit is a great crevasse, its sheer thousand-foot drop disappearing into blackness. Even at its narrowest point, the gaping slice is still a good twenty feet across.

  The face of the mountain on their side of the fissure curves around to the left, but the geology is a sheer wall, impossible to maneuver around without equipment.

  ‘Can’t go up, can’t go across, what the hell do we do now?’

  The female points to a narrow ledge of rock, eight inches wide, which skirts the face of the mountainside as it curves around to their targeted destination.

  ‘That ledge? That’s way too narrow to walk on.’

  The female motions with her hands, indicating that they are not going to walk on it, they are going to lower themselves over the edge and make their way along the rock face, hand over hand.

  Dominique breaks out in a sweat, causing the thermostat of her bodysuit to kick in, dropping its internal temperature fifteen degrees. ‘It’s suicide. We’ll never … I know, I know … have faith.’

  The transhuman leads her to the ledge. Points to her eyes, warning Dominique not to look down.

  The long-skulled female lies down on her belly and rolls over the ledge, carefully lowering herself so that only her palms and the insides of her wrists are supporting the weight of her body.

  Dominique bites nervously into the regulator’s rubber housing. She urinates into her environmental suit’s bladder cache, waiting for her companion to move farther along the cliff face before she kneels.

  Just do it. There are worse ways to die.

  Shut up! You’re not going to die, you’re going to make it and find your family! Now get your ass over that ledge!

  She lowers herself gingerly, the muscles in her arms shaking, her boots searching for unseen toeholds. Palm over palm, she begins making her way around the narrow outcrop of rock.

  Keeping her wrists tight, groping for toeholds here and there, she finds herself actually making progress. Right hand, left hand … right hand, left hand …

  She ignores the white-hot ligaments straining in her wrists,
continuing her mantra.

  Right hand, left hand … right hand, left hand … only another fifteen feet. Right hand, left … not so scary. Scuba diving in that cenote with Mick—now that was scary.