by David Wood
The ball bounced once, twice, and then hit the wall.
Or more precisely, the wall hit it.
A fraction of a second before the skull would have made contact, a ten-foot long section of the wall swung out on concealed hinges to bat it away. The bounce, combined with the boost from the wall, supplied just enough energy to send it shooting right back at Maddock.
“Oooh, no joy in Mudville,” Bones chortled.
Maddock considered shooting his friend a one-fingered salute, but since he still wasn’t sure what would happen if he let the ball stop rolling, he readied himself for another swing.
There was another distant thump at the far end of the court as a second ball was launched.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” he muttered, then raised his voice to a shout. “Guys, you’d better get down here. We need to get through this fast, before it gets any worse.”
And then it got worse.
From behind and above, Miranda cried out. “We’ve got company! The Serpent Brothers. They’re here.”
CHAPTER 32
Maddock batted the first ball away again, timing his strike so that it sent the skull-ball sailing back down the length of the court and hopefully out of play. He recalled that the ball game could be won by getting the ball through a hoop, a virtual impossibility given the rules which did not permit the use of hands or feet, and the fact that the ball typically weighed about eight pounds. This ball didn’t seem quite that heavy which was something at least. The Lords of Death might have been cheaters, but surely the game was still winnable.
He looked around quickly, searching the walls for a hoop, and instead found a hole in the wall right behind him, just below the balcony. It was the right size for a goal, but trying to deflect the ball coming straight at him into it would require precise timing and position. He doubted he would be able to get it right on the first try, and with an unknown number of Serpent Brothers swarming down from above, he wasn’t going to get too many more chances.
He knocked the second pitch back, trying for a high pop-fly, but even as he made contact, he heard a second sound, the muffled noise of the other ball being struck by something solid.
Still in play, he thought.
Angel appeared on the floor of the ball court, with Kasey and Isabella right behind her. Miranda and Bell were there a second later, and Bones brought up the rear, looking like he was contemplating giving the ailing archaeologist another ride.
“What’s going to happen if we make a run for it?” he called out, hoping that either Bell or Isabella would have an answer.
There was another loud crack as a third ball was launched across the court to join the other two, which were careening back and forth, rebounding off of walls. The stelae were also moving, swinging out to deflect the balls whenever they got close. Something was triggering that action, probably pressure plates in the floor. The same thing would probably happen to them if they got too close and triggered that mechanism.
“Rabbits!” Bell shouted.
“Outstanding,” Bones growled. “Now we’ve got to worry about killer rabbits. Kasey, I hope you’ve got the Holy Hand Grenade in that pack of yours.”
Bell shook his head and pointed to one of the nearby stelae. “That’s a rabbit.”
Maddock didn’t ask how he could tell the difference. The carvings were stylized and grotesque; Maya artisans were not exactly known for their realism. But he thought he grasped Bell’s meaning. “A rabbit helped the Hero Twins in the final game. How?”
“The rabbit distracted the Lords of Xibalba so they could switch out a gourd for the ball,” Bell explained quickly. “But I think the solution is much simpler. The rabbit stelae are safe. The others aren’t. If we stay close to the rabbits, we should be able to make our way across the ball court.”
Maddock hoped the archaeologist was right. There wasn’t time to test the hypothesis with a weighted stand-in. He charged to the towering stelae that Bell had indicated, bracing himself for the hit if he was wrong, but nothing happened. He stopped just short of actually touching the carving, and looked back. “Doc, get up here. I need you to show us the way.”
Bell advanced, shuffling more than jogging. Kasey dropped back, her pistol now unholstered and at the ready. Bones had his weapon drawn as well. Behind and above them, the serpent warriors were scattered up and down the staircase, brandishing war clubs and blowguns. He counted at least six, but more were emerging from the passage to Bat House. If it came to a fight, their primitive weapons would be no match for the firepower Maddock and his friends were carrying, but the ball court was not the place to make their stand.
He turned back, keeping an eye on the skull-balls—four of them now—caroming around the ball court. “Doc!”
“There!” Bell pointed to another column, fifty feet away near the left edge of the court.
“Let’s move,” Maddock called.
The court was now alive with noise and movement as multiple balls were batted back and forth all around them. Maddock gave up trying to track them all, and simply kept his head on a swivel, checking in all directions for incoming projectiles that might pose a threat to himself or the others. By the time they reached the halfway point, there were at least six balls in play. He wondered if there was a limited supply of them, or if the unseen mechanisms that controlled the game would run out of steam, figuratively, if not also literally. Twice, he had to stop to deflect a ball away.
He also kept track of the serpent warriors, some of whom had already ventured out onto the ball court. He wondered if they knew about the rabbits, too.
As they neared the far end, Maddock realized that the Lords of Xibalba had one final test for them. There was a gap at the bottom of the twenty-foot high back wall where it met the sloping floor, an opening just wide enough to let the balls roll through. It reminded Maddock of the goal slot on a foosball table, and it probably served the same purpose, allowing the system to retrieve balls and put them back in play. Higher up on the wall were three openings just like the one at the far end, but unlike that hole, these were not for scoring goals. As if to confirm this supposition, a few seconds after they reached the wall, another ball shot out of the center hole and sailed out over the court.
Conspicuously absent, however, was a staircase to take them out of the arena.
Maddock intuitively realized that they were probably supposed to beat the game, maybe by scoring a goal, or maybe more than one, but he also knew that doing so wasn’t really an option. There probably was a staircase there somewhere, hidden in the floor or walls, just waiting for them to pass the final test.
From further down the court he heard a truncated scream and a loud crunch, the sound of breaking bones, as one of the Serpent Brothers went down. The rest were still coming.
“Buddy system,” Maddock shouted, turning to face the others and putting his back against the wall. “Human ladder.”
Bones understood immediately. He stuffed his pistol into his waistband and ran forward to take a similar stance alongside Maddock. He leaned over slightly, hands coming together to form a step. “Kasey. Angel. You’re next.”
Kasey, who had no doubt gone through the same kind of team-building exercises as the two former SEALs, ran to them and without a moment’s hesitation, planted her right foot in the cradle formed by Bones’ fingers, and vaulted up onto their shoulders. She repositioned herself so that she was also facing out, one foot on Maddock’s shoulder and one on Bones’, and extended her hand to Angel, who was already starting up.
Angel had watched enough Spartan Races on television to grasp what was expected of her. She scrambled up Bones’ chest and caught Kasey’s hand. Though Angel was a little heavier, her momentum was going the right direction, and Kasey was able to launch her even higher. High enough to grasp the stone lip. She used her feet to push even higher and then, with a final heave, pulled herself to safety.
Isabella went next, a little more tentatively, but with Angel reaching down from above to catch
her, the final part of the ascent was considerably easier.
Miranda also seemed to know exactly what to do. “Dad, I’m going next. When I get to the top, you go up. Kasey will boost you, and the rest of us will pull you up. Don’t think about it, just do it.”
She didn’t wait for him to acknowledge, but ran forward and scaled the human ladder like an old pro, joining the others at the top.
“Move it, Doc!” Maddock yelled, a lot more forcefully than was his custom, partly because he hoped to jolt Bell into motion, and partly because two Serpent Brothers were emerging from behind the last line of stelae, just fifty feet away.
As Bell closed the distance separating them, a skull-ball bounced into view and struck one of the snake warriors. The blow knocked him flat, spilling him into the path of his comrade, but when the ball struck, it ricocheted away at a right-angle that put it on a collision course with Bell.
“Kasey!” Maddock yelled. “Shift!”
As soon as he felt her weight leave his shoulder, he pushed off the wall, leaping toward the uncomprehending archaeologist.
Bell stopped in his tracks, eyes wide in disbelief as Maddock barreled toward him. It was absolutely the worst thing he could have done, but Maddock poured on the speed, reaching Bell a fraction of a second ahead of the ball. Tackling the older man to save him would probably have been just as dangerous to both of them, so instead he grabbed ahold of Bell’s arm and spun around on his heel, whipping the other man around and out of the way. The ball bounced past both of them, and disappeared into the gap at the bottom of the wall, missing Bones, with Kasey standing on his shoulders, by scant inches.
Now Maddock and Bell were out in the open, with more Serpent Brothers emerging from the shadows. Maddock, still in mid-pivot, propelled the other man ahead of him, toward the wall. “Bones! Take care of him.”
He kept turning until he was facing the ball court again, drawing his SIG Sauer as he moved. He dropped the nearest Serpent Brother with a controlled pair, took a step back, found another target. Fired.
The reports echoed throughout Xibalba.
The Serpent Brothers were scattering now, but behind the elaborately tattooed warriors, a pair of figures in street clothes—a dark-haired man and a woman with red hair—were urging the warriors to press their attack. The woman had to be Carina, the renegade acolyte from the Serpent Brotherhood. The man could only be Alex Scano.
If you want to kill the snake, Maddock thought, cut off the head.
But as he put Scano in his sights, he heard Bones call out. “Uh, Maddock, we’ve got a problem.”
“Deal with—”
There was another report, but it hadn’t come from Maddock’s pistol. He ducked as a round sizzled through the air above his head.
“Drop the gun, Dane!”
A chill went through Maddock. The voice, like the shot, had come from behind him, and both had come from Charles Bell. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you kill him. Drop the gun.”
CHAPTER 33
Stunned, Maddock did the only thing he could. He raised his hands, the barrel of the SIG pointed up at the ceiling, and turned around.
Charles Bell was standing a few paces away from Bones, a pistol in his shaking hands. He seemed uncertain of what to do with it, pointing it at Maddock, then at Bones, then back again. The gun was just like the one Maddock still held. Bell had probably swiped it from Bones’ belt. The question of where he’d gotten the weapon was of far less importance than why, but Maddock thought he knew the answer to that question as well.
“Dad!” Miranda shouted, frantic. “What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Maddock shouted, locking stares with Bell. “He’s working for ScanoGen. Helping them find Xibalba.”
“That’s impossible,” Miranda said.
There was a strange grinding noise in the wall, and then with another loud report, a skull ball—possibly the same one that had just rolled past—shot out of the elevated hole on the right.
Some kind of automated ball return, Maddock thought. From start to finish, the process had taken only about thirty seconds.
Bell flinched as the ball sailed over their heads, but then stabbed the pistol at Maddock. “I told you to drop it. No one else has to get hurt.”
“That’s right, Maddock!” called out another voice. Maddock knew it had to be Scano himself. “I don’t want to hurt you or your friends.”
“Dad?” Miranda said again, but this time it was a desultory question. “Why?”
“He’s the mole?” Bones said, incredulous. “Not Miranda?”
“Me?” Miranda gaped at Bones. “You thought I was working for the other side?”
“You were always on your phone. And you got all pissy when you thought we were leaving you out of the loop. You were the logical choice.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Sorry.”
“ScanoGen got to Copán ahead of us,” Maddock added, maintaining eye contact with Bell. “And they showed up here right on our tail. We knew someone was leaking information to them. Just couldn’t figure out why. I know you said ScanoGen was giving you grant money, but this is something else, isn’t it? Did he offer to let you and Miranda be among the chosen few to survive the apocalypse he’s going to unleash?”
Bell clenched his teeth. “I said, drop it!”
Maddock inclined his head and then slowly bent his knees and lowered his arm, placing the SIG on the floor rather than actually letting it fall. He was stalling, waiting for his chance to act. He did not believe for a second that Bell really wanted to shoot anyone, and it looked like Scano and the snake warriors were adopting a wait-and-see mentality, but eventually someone would do something to escalate the situation.
For a few seconds, the only sound in Xibalba was the noise of the ball court—skull-balls bouncing, walls and stelae swatting them away. Maddock risked a glance back and saw Alex and Carina advancing, with six Serpent Brothers spread out in a half-circle behind them. Some had blowguns raised, others were hefting war clubs studded with obsidian blades. The warriors looked about uncertainly, clearly as concerned with what was going on behind them as they were with the confrontation.
“Dad,” Miranda said again. Her voice sounded hollow, desolate with disbelief. “Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me that you didn’t know what he was planning. This is just a mistake, right?”
“Unleashing the apocalypse?” Bones said. “Yeah, definitely a mistake.”
“There isn’t going to be an apocalypse,” Bell said. “The Shadow will be just another doomsday weapon that nobody will ever dare use. But the cure. The knowledge that studying it will reveal? That will change the world. New antibiotics. Cures for cancer, and other diseases we don’t even know about yet.”
Maddock nodded in understanding. “Maybe even a cure for your COPD.”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Were you dropped on your head as a kid, Doc?” Bones snarled. “You can’t believe anything he says.”
“ScanoGen is not the same company it was under my father,” Alex said, taking a step forward. “Whether you believe it or not, I just want to help people. Save the world. And men like Dr. Bell share my vision of looking to the past for the cures that will save the future.”
“You’re going to save the world with bioweapons.” Maddock shook his head. “Sorry, I just don’t buy it.”
“You’ve been misled, I’m afraid,” Alex said, smiling. Maddock guessed the man had no idea how arrogant it made him look. Or maybe he did and he just didn’t care. “We’re only trying to develop a cure for a terrible disease.”
“Sure you are.”
Another ball bounced into view, most of its energy spent. The warriors shifted a few steps out of the way, though they were never in much danger to start with, and the ball rolled past them, into the slot at the base of the wall.
As ancient stone machinery rumbled to life again, Maddock started a mental countdown. He glanced past Bell, meeting Bones’ stare for a second
, telegraphing his intention with his eyes. Then he looked up, ever so slightly to Kasey, still perched on Bones’ shoulders, a good ten feet from the top of the wall where Angel, Isabella and Miranda waited. He flicked his eyes up, hoping she would get the message.
“You are a fool!” Isabella shouted from the wall, an accusatory finger pointing at Scano. She spat the words out with a contemptuous laugh. “You are dead already. The Shadow has touched you.”
Scano stiffened at the odd accusation, and then looked at Carina. “What the hell is she talking about?”
“I know the signs,” Isabella said. “Eyes as red as blood. I saw it earlier. Now I am sure. Did you do this to him, Carina? When you found el Guia?”
Carina looked back at her wide-eyed. “No. She’s lying. Trying to divide us.” But she nevertheless took a step back, as if trying to distance herself from him.
“Damn it,” Alex snarled. “That worm, Doug. He did this. Don’t worry. I’m probably not contagious yet.”
Isabella’s pointing finger now shifted to Bell. “You have also been touched.”
Bell’s eyes went wide, wide enough for Maddock to see that the whites of his eyes were indeed blood red. After all they had been exposed to—from smoke to ammonia fumes—that was hardly a surprise, but Bell sagged a little under the weight of the revelation.
“The scorpion sting,” he whispered. “In the City of Shadow. I was infected.”
Scano shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here now. And so it the cure.”
“Fool,” Isabella said again. “There is no cure.”
Her revelation could not have come at a better moment.
With another loud crack, the skull-ball was launched into play, startling everyone.
Everyone except Maddock, Bones and Kasey.
“Now!” Maddock shouted.
Right on cue, Bones reached up to grab Kasey’s ankles, and then thrust her straight up. She flew like a rocket, rising as high as the top of the wall, but her back was turned to it, and even though she tried to twist around to face it, there was no way she was going to be able to grab the edge.