by WW Mortensen
Nervously, Rebecca ran her gaze up the wall. The nylon rope passed through the anchor at the top. Both ends lay at her feet.
Ed looked at her and pulled her aside. “One end of the rope will be attached you, and I’ll be at the bottom holding the other. If you slip, I’ll take your weight until you’re able to swing back to the rock face and regain your grip.”
“What about you?”
“Once everyone is up, Robert will assist me from the top with a second rope.”
Rebecca listened while he clarified this. “I’d like to go first.”
“Are you sure?” Ed said. “You don’t want to wait and see how it’s done?”
“I watched Robert. Let’s do this.”
Ed smiled.
“You go girl,” Owen said, patting her on the back.
Once more, Rebecca slipped into the harness. Ed attached the rope and checked it. “Just remember, face the rock and maintain three points of contact. Don’t overstretch, and push with your legs.” He spun her gently by her chin to face him. “Take it nice and slow, like you did on the way down. Don’t get overconfident.”
“You needn’t worry about that.” Despite the bravado, she was still as nervous as hell. She took a deep breath. “I can do this,” she murmured.
Retying her ponytail, Rebecca stepped up to the wall, brushing aside the feathery underbrush at its base. Lifting her arms, she dug her fingers into a couple of thin cracks above her head, feeling around to ensure her grip was good.
This time there was no delay. Rebecca pushed up hard with her legs. She wobbled but felt strong. Pausing, she made certain her footholds were secure before reaching high above her head with her right hand. Again, she felt for a crack and dug in. She did the same with her left hand.
Three points of contact. Push with your legs. Don’t overstretch. Oh, and don’t look down.
The group cheered her on as she ascended, but she shut it out, reaching for the next handhold, the next foothold. Even when her limbs screamed with pain, she kept moving. Soon, she could hear Sanchez at the top, his voice suddenly clearer than those below, but she shut it out until the voice was so close it could no longer be dismissed.
“Senhorita, would you like a hand?”
She’d made it! She stole a glimpse, just briefly. Sanchez crouched at the edge of the precipice, looking down at her.
Rebecca gave him a strained smile. “No, thanks,” she said, teeth gritted. “I can manage.”
With a final effort she heaved herself over the ledge and rolled onto her back with a groan. Gasping for breath, she lay there as relief coursed in waves through her body. She wanted to celebrate but was too exhausted. Her limbs ached, her muscles burned, she couldn’t bend her stiffened fingers. Sweat drained out of her, stung her eyes.
“You okay?” Sanchez asked, leaning over her.
“Yeah… fine… just need a moment to get my breath back…”
After a while she managed to sit up and remove the harness. She was on a narrow, lichen-covered ledge that stretched to a dense fringe of vegetation.
Free of the harness, she slumped down again and was still there when Owen’s head peeked over the top of the ledge. She dragged herself into a sitting position nearby, making room so that he could lie in similar fashion, exhausted and panting. Before long, the remaining climbers were at the top, so too the equipment.
Still puffing, Rebecca said to Ed, “Now that was an experience.”
Ed smiled and patted her on the back, and moments later, heaving their packs yet again, the six of them moved towards the green curtain and passed through it.
Back into the jungle.
Once more, they found themselves hacking at the surrounding vegetation, moving deeper along the trail Ed and Sanchez had cut the last time they’d made the journey to S2. The sound of the trickling stream behind them grew steadily fainter until it disappeared.
When she could no longer hear it, Rebecca felt oddly depressed, somehow empty at having left it behind. The change of scenery back at the stream had done her good, and the sense of achievement she had felt in conquering both sides of the ravine had revitalised her, despite the energy it had sapped. Now, heading back into the same environment as before—the thick-boled trees and their snaking buttress roots, the leaf-covered floor and its waist-high underbrush, the perpetual shade and visibility that rarely seemed to stretch more than a few feet in any direction—she felt her spirits slip away. She was tired again, and sore, and now, unusually claustrophobic as everything closed in around her. After all the hiking and hacking through the unrelenting heat and humidity, re-entering this world after emerging from the ravine felt like a regression of sorts, as though they hadn’t gone anywhere at all and were somehow starting over.
She wondered how long it would take to get to S2.
In less than an hour, she had her answer.
It was strange, surreal almost.
Out of place.
All around them, steam rose eerily, as though a thick grey cloud had settled in the forest.
“This is weird,” Jessy said.
Owen agreed. “It doesn’t feel right, does it?”
They slowed their pace, Ed out in front, Sanchez close behind, the Weatherby now off his shoulder and in his hands. At the rear, Enrique too, held his rifle in front of him.
They moved almost blindly through the grey heat, bunched closer and quieter than normal. Occasionally, a fern frond or tree root would appear from the steamy haze as they passed, only to disappear a moment later in a swirl of grey vapour. Like before, the calls of birds and other wildlife floated from the surrounding trees, but their disembodied cries now set Rebecca on edge.
She soon realised they were walking through a depression, a shallow gully where the vapour had collected. When they started to head uphill, the vapour thinned, and visibility improved. Moments later, the cloud had disappeared altogether. She could see clearly again.
And for the second time in two days, the sight caused her to stop abruptly in her tracks.
“Welcome to S2,” Ed said, breathlessly.
• • •
At first, Rebecca thought she was looking at another cloud of vapour. They stood on the lip of a huge crater within the walls of a valley fringed by low mountains, and perhaps a hundred yards down the slope lay another, smaller bowl-like depression. It appeared more vapour had collected down there—it looked like one of those satellite images from high above a hurricane—but Rebecca knew they’d left the rising steam behind. They were looking at something else entirely.
The greyness wasn’t vapour at all.
By now, Owen had retrieved a pair of rubber-armoured binoculars from his pack and was staring through them. “Holy shit…” he breathed.
They were looking at a huge web.
15
A gigantic web.
Like a dense mesh of huge, silver-grey netting, it smothered the crater-like bowl. The silk must have stretched for more than a hundred yards across—weaving through the trees, cocooning the leaves and branches and thick trunks from the top of the canopy all the way to the ground. Nothing in its path was spared.
Rebecca held her hand over her mouth, too shocked to do anything but breathe.
But that wasn’t all.
Within the web—inside it—was a huge, grey shadow.
Rebecca grabbed the binoculars from Owen, who wore them hanging limply around his neck. His mouth was agape, and the colour had drained from his face.
What Rebecca saw when she held them to her eyes defied description—defied belief.
Enmeshed within the web was a huge form covered in centuries of forest growth. It towered above the jungle floor.
A great, stone pyramid.
• • •
My God… what the hell have we stumbled on?
Rebecca lowered the binoculars, then raised them again abruptly, held by the thought for several long seconds. Her mind raced as she tried to take it all in.
No way…
A part of her was simply bursting with excitement. With possibility. The scientific implications of such a discovery were mind-blowing. Yet as she looked at the pyramid—she guessed well over one hundred feet or more in height and more than two hundred across the base—enshrouded as it was by jungle and the massive web, another part of her was terrified. She’d never felt such contrasting emotions all at the same time. It was exhilarating, yet troubling, too.
“Before you ask,” Ed said, shattering the grip of awed silence, “there’s no-one home; the place is deserted, abandoned. Whatever built that web… well, it’s long gone. The joint’s a ghost-town.”
“Holy shit,” Owen breathed. “Can you believe this? I mean, look at that, will you? Goddamn…”
The words were left to drift into more dumb silence before Jessy spoke, her voice flat and even. “I’m confused,” she said simply as she turned to face her companions. “I didn’t think they could be both.”
Rebecca lowered the binoculars. “Sorry?”
Wide-eyed, Jessy looked at her. “I thought they had to be one or the other,” she said. “Either a hunter or a web-builder. I didn’t think they could be both.”
It was an unexpected comment. Given Jessy’s field of study, it was surprising her initial observation should be about something other than the pyramid, but Rebecca understood what she was getting at. The arachnid she had examined two days ago, the one that had attacked Sanchez, was, as she had herself determined, a jumping spider. It hunted its prey. Its physiology, and the way it had attacked Sanchez, had put that beyond doubt. Yet here was a web. Hunting spiders weren’t web-builders.
“You’re right,” Rebecca said. She scanned the web. She saw no movement, no inhabitants. Ed was telling the truth—it was deserted. She turned back to Jessy, but she spoke absently now, her mind preoccupied. “While all true spiders have organs for spinning silk, generally, yes, there are two distinct types.”
“However…”
“However, there are exceptions.” She bit her lip, searching for an example. “There’s a unique Australian spider, for instance—Portia fimbriata—that uses different methods to capture prey. Like the specimen back at Base Camp, it’s a salticid: a jumping spider. But Portia is both a hunter and a web-builder. It can even invade and take control of the webs of other spiders; unusual, as most hunting spiders can’t move very well in webs and web-builders have trouble moving in the webs of others. Portia can do it all, though, sometimes even stalking and killing other jumping spiders—”
“A real opportunist, by the sounds of it,” Owen murmured.
“Indeed, and perhaps today, we’ve discovered another,” Rebecca said. She was more focused as she looked again at Jessy. “I mean, Portia can do these things because it’s smart, probably the smartest spider we know of. It uses tactics and strategy—and it can problem-solve. Couple this with the sharpest vision of any terrestrial invertebrate on the planet, and you’ve got a very proficient and deadly species of arachnid. Given the larger brain, and presumably greater visual awareness of these guys—”
Jessy interrupted. “Hang on… these guys?”
Rebecca nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think this is—or was—some kind of nest.”
“Whoa…” Owen said, “You mean like a colony? Are you serious?”
Rebecca glanced at him. “While aggregating behaviour amongst spiders is rare, yes, I think that whatever built that web down there is social.”
Owen blanched. “Shit. Giant spiders,” he whispered. “I thought that was bad enough, but a giant community of giant fucking spiders? Fuck me.” He whirled on Ed, removing his cap and running his fingers through his hair. “Are you sure about this, Ed? I mean—it’s safe, right?”
“Trust me,” Ed said, “it’s okay. As I said, the place is a ghost-town. If at one time it was a nest like Bec said, it’s since been abandoned. They’ve moved on. We haven’t had any problems.”
“It’s just that last night—”
“Owen, there’s nothing here,” Ed said.
Jessy shook her head. “Ed, I can’t believe you kept quiet about all of this, that you couldn’t have told us about this earlier, told us what to expect!”
Defensively, Ed held up his hands. “Take another look down there! Just how, exactly, do you describe that?”
It was an entirely inadequate response and Ed knew it. Perhaps cornered, he shifted his pack up his shoulders and moved forward, past Jessy, oblivious to—or avoiding—the look of incredulity that had spread across her face.
“We need to get moving,” he said, directing his words to all of them. “The camp isn’t far, but we’ve got a bit to do before dark.”
Rebecca flashed Jessy a puzzled look. Ed’s response wasn’t washing with either of them. Jessy was right: why couldn’t he have told them? The two of them stood their ground as Sanchez and Enrique formed a group behind Ed. Owen could obviously sense the tension, his expression uneasy. “Ed, you’re certain about this?”
“It’s safe, Owen.”
Owen nodded, conceding. Rebecca, though, still hadn’t moved, and in truth, she was hesitating for a couple of reasons. Ed was acting cagey, but more than that, she wasn’t ready to head to camp. Not yet. Hell, she wanted to begin her analysis, and after what she’d endured to get here—the heat, the mosquitoes, the impossibly long days of travel—the thought of having to delay it was a kick in the guts. Even more so given that finding a colony of these things—extinct or abandoned as it may be—had never figured in the equation. She’d known Ed had stumbled onto something, but not something as big as this! This would prove the greatest discovery her field had ever seen.
Rebecca was about to state her case for taking a closer look at the site, but the words never made it out.
“Come on, Bec, let’s go.”
It was Jessy. Tilting her head, Rebecca turned to her, but the younger woman was already on the move. Rebecca got the feeling Jessy knew Ed wasn’t telling them everything, but she seemed to be hinting that now wasn’t the time to pursue it.
Wavering, Rebecca glanced again at the pyramid and the huge web, weighing her options. Reluctantly, she heaved up her pack.
Without allies, an argument would get her nowhere—that much was certain. More than that, her curiosity had been piqued. She recalled how two days ago back at Base Camp Ed had acted similarly secretive when pressed about the exact nature of S2. Just as she had then, she’d let things play out.
Running the back of her hand across her forehead, Rebecca wiped at a line of sweat that had seeped into her eyes. She noticed that both her arms were caked in dirt and covered in numerous tiny scratches, the result of having pushed for hours through unaccommodating jungle foliage. Maybe I can use the time to clean up a little, she thought.
Accepting it was her only recourse, she joined the group, and with that they moved off, again single-file, Rebecca slotting behind Owen and Jessy, Enrique and Priscilla piling in behind her, and Ed and Sanchez out in front, leading the way, the web-enshrouded pyramid looming in their wake.
16
While not deliberate, Rebecca moved quietly, her footfalls softer than normal as the group wove through the jungle. They followed, in a clockwise direction, the lip of the large, bowl-like depression at the bottom of which lay the pyramid, the whole time keeping at least a hundred yards from the giant structure. She sensed that Owen, at least, may have been pleased by this.
Soon after they’d moved out, Enrique had tapped her on the shoulder. He’d obviously detected her disappointment at having to leave, and told her she shouldn’t worry, that the view was much better from the north-western side, where they were now heading. Rebecca had smiled, eager to get to the new vantage point.
And with each passing minute, she could sense the truth in his words. As their position changed, so too did their line of sight. Stunning new angles fuelled her exhilaration. The sheer size and scale of it all was overwhelming.
She thought again about what Ed had said: that the nest was abandone
d. Looking closer, she saw no activity. If the nest was occupied, then by now she should have noticed something. Ed was right.
She felt another tap on the shoulder. Rebecca stopped, having already spotted what Enrique had intended to point out. She gently nudged Jessy in turn. “Look.” Rebecca motioned through the foliage, down towards the pyramid, to a spot a few dozen yards away.
At first, it was difficult to detect, but rising through the ferny undergrowth at the extreme edge of the web was a tall, vertical mass of carved stone, for the most part smooth and intact, though chipped and broken at the very top.
A moai.
The carving was almost identical to that at S1, bearing the same deep-set eyes and postcard features Rebecca associated with the statues of Easter Island. It was only now, due to the change in vantage point, that it appeared through the thick foliage—yet even so they might still have missed it. On one side, the statue was obscured by a series of fat, silken strands, wrapping it in an unfinished cocoon. It looked as though the great stone carving was trying to escape its silken prison and had half-succeeded in doing so.
But as engaging as this was, it was obvious there was much they hadn’t noticed from their original vantage point, the place where they’d first laid eyes on the pyramid. Enrique had been right. From this new position, other details came into view. Suddenly, Rebecca noticed other moai… and other buildings.
The ruins of buildings, anyway. Piles of collapsed and broken stone lay scattered under the forest canopy, remnants of structures jutting flimsily skyward or lying worn and crumbled and strewn across the forest floor at the foot of the pyramid. And although the web consumed every piece, she could identify a vast amount of rubble. In fact, the longer she looked, it seemed as if the entire inner region of the bowl was simply blanketed in ruins.
The pyramid was exciting enough. But what she saw here was the physical remains of a city. An ancient, lost city.
Intihuasi.