by David Wood
Maddock and Bones went to work with the machetes, clearing a landing zone for the helicopter, while Angel and Miranda set up their base camp. Kasey would return in twelve hours, which meant that, regardless of whether they found the City of Shadow, they would be spending a night in the bush, and because tropical rainstorms could strike without warning, shelter was an immediate priority, though given the extreme humidity, Maddock wasn’t sure they would notice a difference. After just a few minutes of hacking away at the vegetation, he was drenched.
While the others were occupied with their respective tasks, Bell started poking around at the perimeter of the clearing, looking for anything that might indicate a Maya presence in the remote jungle, but it was Bones who discovered their first lead when the blade of his machete rang against solid stone, concealed under a dense covering of vines. He scraped away the undergrowth to reveal a stelae, carved with distinctive Mayan glyphs and topped with a full-relief sculpture of a style similar to what they had glimpsed at Copán.
“That’s the lightning dog,” Bell exclaimed. “Just like the image on the guidestone. Miranda, get video of this.”
As she moved in to record the discovery with her GoPro, Bell turned to Maddock. “You were right. The City of Shadow is here.”
“It’s an encouraging sign,” Maddock admitted, trying to temper his own enthusiasm.
Bell positioned himself so that he was facing the stone effigy. “This marker would have stood beside the ancient Maya road.” He pointed to the jungle behind it. “That’s where we need to look.”
They went to work, clearing the free-standing monument and then pushing the trail in the indicated direction. It was slow-going, and exhausting work, but neither of the two former-SEALs was going to admit to fatigue, ringing the figurative bell to call it quits. After an hour however, Maddock was feeling a little light-headed, a sure sign of dehydration, so he swallowed his pride and called for a water break.
Angel stepped forward with a water bottle, but instead of handing it to him, she pointed at the machete. “Trade you.”
As if that was her cue, Miranda approached Bones, one hand extended, palm up. “Hand it over, big guy.”
“What? I don’t get water?”
“Get it from Maddock.”
“He backwashes. If I’m going to swap spit with someone, I’d rather it was you.” Bones gave her a lewd wink.
Miranda shook her head. “And here I thought you SEALs were willing to drink each other’s piss.”
Without missing a beat, Bones turned to Maddock. “We’ve done that, right?”
“Stop!” Angel cried out with a shudder. “Not another word.”
She grabbed Maddock’s machete and went to work, hacking at the underbrush, while Bones just laughed.
The mood turned serious again when Miranda took a step forward and abruptly plunged forward. Her right leg, from the knee down, had disappeared into a hole covered by foliage. She caught herself and withdrew her leg, which was soaked from a complete immersion.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she spat, throwing down her machete.
Bell however, was excited by the mishap. He hastened forward and began clearing away the area around the hole, which turned out to be considerably larger than it first appeared, stretching several yards in either direction before curving away into the forest, out of sight. Yet, despite the fact that it was clearly a pool of water, the surface remained obscured beneath a blanket of floating vegetation, and the limbs of trees growing at its edge reached out to form a canopy that shrouded the area in ominous shadow.
“A cenote?” Maddock asked.
Bell shook his head. “Not exactly. Cenotes are naturally occurring pools, caused when limestone caverns collapse. The geology here is all wrong for that. This is a cistern. A man-made reservoir. The Maya of the Petén region didn’t have lakes or rivers, so they collected rainwater in enormous cisterns called chultuns.”
Bones regarded the pool with uncustomary apprehension. “Do we dive it?”
“We’re the first to find this,” Miranda said. “It’s probably full of sacrificial offerings. Dad, this is exactly what you’ve been looking for.”
Bell gave a patient smile. “There may be some trinkets in there, but unlike the cenotes, the chultuns were primarily utilitarian.”
“So this isn’t an entrance to the Underworld,” Maddock said. “Symbolic or otherwise.”
“Correct. And if this is indeed the City of Shadow, dedicated to worshipping the Lords of Death, then we may actually be looking for a temple.”
Maddock, who normally would have jumped at a chance to dive, felt an unexpected measure of relief at the reprieve.
They cleared a path around the chultun and kept going. Their trailblazing uncovered more artifacts—stone benches and carved blocks that might once have been stelae. Thirty feet or so beyond the cistern, Angel uncovered another stelae, still standing but considerably more weathered than the first.
Miranda moved closer to capture a video record. “Another guide dog?”
Bell reached out for the effigy, but as he did, Maddock saw something moving atop the stone marker. Bones shouted a warning, but before he could do anything else, there was a flash of movement. It looked like a vine—emerald green, flecked with gold—but it was moving, springing toward Bell’s outstretched hand.
And then something else moved, striking even faster. The blade of Angel’s machete slashed through the air between Bell and the stelae, slicing the vine-thing in two. One piece dropped at Bell’s feet, while the rest of it began coiling and writhing atop the standing stone before falling away into the jungle beyond.
For a moment, no one else moved. Bell looked like he might pass out. Then Miranda let out her breath in a long sigh of relief. “That was too close.”
Bones bent down and looked at the severed end of the creature. “It’s a palm pit viper.”
“Poisonous?” Angel asked.
“Venomous,” Bones corrected. “Poison refers to something you eat. Venom comes from something that wants to eat you. And yeah, their venom usually won’t kill you, but since we can’t exactly head to the ER, it’s probably best not to test that theory.” He pushed into underbrush beside the stela, evidently looking for the rest of the snake. “It’s a shame you had to kill it,” he went on. “These things are...”
There was a sudden noise of branches breaking and then Bones was gone, swallowed by the jungle.
CHAPTER 15
“Bones!” Maddock and Angel shouted, moving toward the spot where Bones had disappeared, heedless of whatever danger lay concealed in the undergrowth.
Bones was shouting too, though the noise of branches rustling and snapping partially drowned him out. The tumult subsided and for a moment there was only an ominous silence.
“Ow,” Bones muttered.
Maddock bent back some of the foliage, searching for his friend. “Bones? You okay?”
“It's cool,” Bones called out. His voice seemed to be coming from ground level. “Watch your step. There’s a hell of a drop off there.”
Maddock let out a relieved sigh, then took the machete from Angel and began clearing the foliage away to reveal an almost sheer cliff-face just beyond the weathered stelae. Bones was standing about ten yards away, the top of his head level with Maddock’s feet.
“It usually takes a bottle of Wild Turkey to make me fall like that,” he said, gingerly rubbing a knee. “I enjoy rolling down a hill as much as the next kid, but there’s a lot of rocks poking out of this one.”
“This isn’t a cliff,” Bell said, standing at the edge of the drop-off. “Not a natural one, at any rate. This is a ball court.”
Maddock peered out across the verdant landscape. Despite the thick jungle cover, he could just make out the undulations of the terrain. The long I-shaped depression like a perfectly straight river valley where Bones was standing, and beyond it, maybe fifty yards, another steep slope rising up. It wasn’t hard to imagine the area cleared of veg
etation.
There had been a large ball court at Chichén Itzá —over five hundred feet long, half as wide, with thirty-foot high vertical walls. This court wasn’t quite that big, and the walls had more of a slope, but Maddock could see the similarity.
“The ball game held enormous spiritual significance to the Maya,” Bell went on. “It was an intrinsic part of their religion.”
“So you’re saying they’d be okay with Tebow taking a knee to pray,” Bones quipped.
“Oh, most assuredly,” Bell said, not catching Bones’ mischievous tone. “The ballgame was invented over three thousand years ago by the Olmecs, but it was just a game for them. For the Maya, it was a sort of passion play. The ball represented the sun and the changing seasons, and the players were gods, battling each other to control the heavens. The ball game was a central aspect of the Hero Twins legend, and of particular significance to the Lords of Xibalba. The pyramid will be close.”
He turned toward the north end of the long depression. “It will probably be that direction.”
“Shouldn’t we be able to see it from here?” Angel asked.
“I could climb a tree and take a look,” Bones suggested.
“None of the trees around here will hold your fat ass up,” she retorted. “But it’s an idea.”
Maddock shook his head. “If there’s a pyramid here, I doubt you’ll be able to see it unless you’re standing on it. We’ll just follow the ball court to the end.”
He tied a safety line around the stelae overlooking the ball court, mostly for Bell’s benefit, and then they made the descent, one at a time, to join Bones at the bottom of the depression. The jungle had reclaimed the ball court along with the rest of the city, so forward progress continued at a glacial pace, and before long, Maddock noticed the shadows deepening as the sun sank into the western sky. He knew that base camp was only a short trek away, but making that trip in the dark was patently foolish. They had already had one close encounter with the local wildlife, and snakes were only one of the many creatures that could inflict anything from a painful bite or sting, to a fatal wound. Most of the creatures preferred to avoid encounters with humans, but in the dark, a single misstep could prove disastrous. But of even greater concern to Maddock were the jaguars which roamed the forest; the big cats with their notoriously strong jaws—capable of crushing turtle shells and caiman skulls in a single bite—might not shy away from them but actually stalk them as prey in the darkness. He was about to call for a turnaround when they hit what appeared to be a dead end. Directly in front of them was a solid vertical wall, rising higher than Bones could reach. Maddock scraped away the vegetation to reveal blocks of cut stone.
“This is a structure,” Bell said, stating the obvious. “A courtyard wall, or possibly the base of a pyramid. We have to explore it. There will either be a gate or steps leading up to the next level.”
Maddock checked his watch. The smart play was to head back and pick up again in the morning, but if they were able to actually find the city before dusk, they could continue exploring it by flashlight and, if they located any structures still standing, utilize them for additional cover and protection from jungle predators.
“Keep looking,” he said, handing Miranda his machete. “Bones and I will head back to the LZ and break camp.”
No one registered an objection to the decision, but as he and Bones hiked back down the trail they had cut along the floor of the ball court, Bones voiced a concern Maddock had not previously considered. “Are you sure you want to spend the night in a place called City of Shadow?”
Maddock looked at him sidelong, trying to decide if his friend was seriously spooked or just teasing. “I know. It sounds like the set up for a found footage movie.”
“Dude, you think I’m kidding? City of Shadow? Lords of Death? The Maya who built this place vanished without a trace. Like...” He made a little explosion with his fingers. “Poof. Whisked away. What if the Lords of Death were aliens? Or trans-dimensional beings? This could have been their...I don’t know, spaceport or portal to the home dimension.”
“You’re just bringing this up now? If Bell is right, we’ve been in the city for the last few hours.”
“Daytime is fine. Bad stuff only happens at night.”
“Who’d have thought you’d be scared of the dark?” Maddock said. “Frankly, I’m more worried about ordinary terrestrial creatures.”
“You mean the Serpent Brothers? You think they know about this place?”
Maddock had not meant that at all, but decided to address the question. “I don’t think anyone’s been here in at least five hundred years. If they know about it, they don’t visit. It’s more likely that they’re just protecting the legend. I think they’re looking for it, too.”
“Which means they could show up anytime.”
Maddock shrugged. Kasey had supplied them with two SIG Sauer P226 TacOps semi-automatic 9-mm pistols, six twenty-round magazines, and a box of spare ammunition. It was more than enough to handle a jungle predator—provided they had sufficient warning—but far from ideal for repelling an assault by a team of gunmen armed with assault weapons. But like it or not, that was the situation. They would deal with whatever happened because that was what they did.
And if they did have to fight, the stone walls of the lost city would offer a lot more protection than the thin nylon panels of their tents.
They packed up the equipment and started the trek, acutely aware of the fact that the sun was now below the treetops. Down in the trough-like ball court, the darkness deepened to the point that Maddock and Bones had to break out their LED flashlights, though this decision had more to do with keeping nocturnal predators at bay than actually illuminating their way. It also served to alert the others to their approach. An answering light from further up the trail guided them in. When they reached the wall, they found Angel and Miranda grinning in triumph,
“The girls look way too happy, Maddock,” Bones said in a stage whisper. “Maybe we should have split them up.”
If either woman heard, they chose to ignore the none-too-subtle jab.
“It is a pyramid,” Angel said, unable to contain her excitement. “And we found a way inside.”
CHAPTER 16
Maria stared at the opaque plastic wall, wondering if she should try to smash through it. She desperately needed to get past the obstacle, to get moving, even though she had no idea where she needed to go or why.
Except that wasn’t actually true. She did know why.
First, they wander.
She had known this was coming, even before realizing that the old woman she had met on the mountain road was infected. When she had gone into the house to assess the four critically ill patients, she had done so with the full knowledge that, no matter how careful she was, she might also contract the illness, but that was a risk she had willingly undertaken. She saw herself as a soldier, fighting microscopic enemies rather than human ones, but no less willing to sacrifice herself to save others.
And sacrifice herself, she had.
She felt chilled, a sure sign of the fever rising in her blood, but the tell-tale symptom was the perverse compulsion to move. Not aimless wandering as the villagers had suggested, but an overpowering urge to walk in a specific direction, like the homing instinct of a migrating bird.
But overpowering urge or no, three steps was as far as she got. That was where she encountered the sterile polycarbonate walls of her prison cell. Although she had never actually seen a room like it outside of the movies, she recognized the small enclosure for what it was: a Bio-Safety Level IV isolation room.
The soldiers—she assumed they were soldiers—had taken her along with the other visibly infected patients, about a dozen people including the three Maria had been monitoring. They had all been put in a makeshift isolation ward, nothing more than plastic sheeting held together with strong tape, aboard one of the helicopters. Maria guessed that about a full day had passed, but it was impossible to say with
certainty. She had not seen the sun since taking off in the helicopter. After a short flight, they had disembarked in a closed hangar. She didn’t think they could have gone very far. No more than a few hundred kilometers, but aside from knowing that she was in a BSL-IV facility, she had no idea where she was now.
Yet somehow, she knew which direction she need to go.
And she knew how it would end.
A buzzing sound distracted her, breaking the strange spell, momentarily at least. She turned and saw the light above the sealed door blinking on and off. This, she knew, was the signal that someone was about to come through the door, and that she was to lay down on the bed in a non-threatening manner. Failure to comply, she had been told, would result in her being placed in five-point restraints.
She turned away from the wall and stretched out in a supine position, but almost immediately felt herself sitting up again, swinging her feet off the hospital-style bed, turning in the direction of the wall.
“No,” she whispered, gripping the side rails forcefully to hold herself back.
The door opened with a hiss and someone entered. She didn’t immediately see the person’s face, not until he finished connecting the air hose from his environment suit to the supply valve near the door. It was the young man who had come in earlier to draw blood and check her vitals. Then he had spoken only a few words to her in halting Spanish—probably not his native tongue—and refused to look her in the eye or answer her questions.
That had been several hours earlier, before the urge to walk had come over her.
“Are you American?” she asked in English.
The young man stiffened a little at the question. “You speak English?”
“Si. I mean, yes. My name is Maria.”
“Please stay on the bed. I need to check your vitals and take more blood.”
“I have it,” she blurted. “The sickness. I am showing first stage symptoms.”
The young man in the space-suit did not appear surprised by this news, but he kept his head tilted down, hiding his face as he began wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her right bicep.