by David Wood
Fortunately, Angel saw what was going on and reacted immediately. As Kasey reached the top of her vertical journey, Angel reached out with both hands and snagged the strap of Kasey’s backpack. The sudden transfer of weight pulled Angel down, slamming her against the edge of the wall. Kasey swung back and hit the stone with an audible grunt, but within seconds, Miranda and Isabella joined the effort and, working together, easily hauled Kasey up.
On the floor of the ball court, Bell was slow to react. He jerked the gun around toward Bones, giving Maddock the opening he’d been waiting for. He sprang at the archaeologist, tackling him.
The gun flew from Bell’s hands and went skittering across the floor. Maddock heard a faint huffing sound as some of the Serpent Brothers launched darts at them, but didn’t feel any stings. Pushing away from Bell, he dove after the gun, sliding on his belly across the floor, caught it and brought it up ready to fire from a prone position, even as one of the warriors charged toward him, war club held high.
Maddock squeezed the trigger twice and the warrior went down.
The rest of the warriors, along with Scano and Carina, were scattering, but Maddock knew the pandemonium would not last. Eventually, the warriors would launch another volley of darts which were almost certainly tipped with poison. He spun around without rising, and scrambled on all fours toward the ball return gutter.
While he had been going for the gun, Bones had gone after Bell, scooping the treacherous archaeologist up, carrying him under one arm like a sack of dog food. He hesitated though as he stared into the dark gap at the bottom of the wall. “You sure about this?”
Maddock wasn’t at all sure. He knew that there was room enough for the skull-balls, which were a bit larger than the size of an actual human head, and that somewhere inside, under the pyramid, there was some sort of mechanical system for lifting the balls up to the launcher, but whether there was room enough for a person was anyone’s guess.
If he was wrong, instead of lifting them to safety, the stone machinery might very well grind them to hamburger.
“If you’ve got a better idea, let’s hear it.” Maddock didn’t wait for an answer, but plunged headlong into the gap.
He crawled a few yards through a claustrophobic gap before falling out into a trough that looked remarkably like a gutter at a bowling alley, except for the fact that it was tilted down at sharp angle. The stone was smooth, but provided enough resistance that he did not slide down to the end of the trough where something that looked sort of like an enormous upright stone screw was slowly turning. There were two more troughs leading away from the sloping floor, and similar screw-elevators at the end of each. Maddock assumed that the screws would lift a recovered ball—or anything else they picked up—up to one of the three launchers, but there would be no need for them to follow that route because there was also a raised walkway behind the screws, and a passage leading out.
He got his feet back under him and started down the trough toward the relentlessly turning screw. A glance back revealed Bones emerging from the gap, dragging along a stunned Charles Bell. After the earlier revelations of treachery, to say nothing of the fact that Bell might be infected with a deadly and highly contagious pathogen, Maddock had no idea why Bones had elected to bring the archaeologist along, but figured his partner had his reasons and didn’t question them.
“Bones. Down here.”
The big man nodded in acknowledgment, and climbed out into the trough behind him.
Maddock stepped up onto the spiraling screw and was immediately lifted up and rotated around toward the walkway where he was able to easily step off. Bones, with Bell now thrown over his shoulder, followed suit.
“Go!” Maddock shouted, urging Bones on as he swept the area behind them with his light and the business end of the pistol. There was no sign of pursuit yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time. “I’ll cover you.”
Bones hastened into the passage, and after giving him a few seconds’ lead, Maddock headed after him. The passage became a narrow staircase, sandwiched between walls of cut stone under a flat ceiling, and rising up to what he hoped would be an exit on the balcony where the others were already waiting.
He was almost right.
As he climbed the stairs, he could see a pale blue glow silhouetting Bones. The steps ended at a T-junction, with a passage where the glow was even stronger, and as he stepped out into it, he saw that the stone floor was dotted with large patches of phosphorescent blue lichen, glowing so brightly that he could see the full length of the passage.
Something about the luminous shapes nagged at Maddock, triggering a primal avoidance instinct.
“I think we’re inside the pyramid,” Bones said. “Which way?”
Maddock wasn’t sure there was a right or wrong answer, but before he could decide, he heard an urgent voice—Angel’s voice—echoing down the tunnel.
“Dane! Bones!” She was standing at the mouth of the passage to the right. “Here.”
“Go! But watch your step.” Maddock kept watch on the opening to the staircase, his gun at the ready, until Bones was clear. Then he turned and headed after Bones, careful not to step on the glowing blue spots.
The passage opened onto the balcony overlooking the ball court, at the base of the great pyramid at the center of Xibalba. As he neared the exit, Maddock saw that the blue light was even brighter outside. The balcony was completely covered in the blue lichen, a dense carpet upon which he would have to walk if he wanted to leave the pyramid. Bones had already stomped through it to join the others. If there was some hidden danger here, they were already deep into it, but as Maddock took a tentative step onto the glowing substance, his feeling of dread deepened.
He forgot all about that when he realized that someone was missing.
Bones had laid Bell down on the balcony floor, just a few feet from the exit, and both he and Miranda were kneeling over her father. Angel was also kneeling, only she was next to Kasey, who sat with her back against the side of the lowest tier of the pyramid, holding a hand to her head.
“What happened?” Maddock said. “Where’s Isabella?”
Kasey looked up, her face twisted in a snarl of rage. “Gone. She sucker punched me and took my backpack before I knew what was happening. She’s got all my demo gear. My night vision goggles, too.”
“I guess she wanted to make sure we couldn’t destroy Xibalba,” Angel said.
“Right now, all I care about is getting out of Xibalba.”
“Dane!” Bones called out.
Maddock felt an ominous chill. Bones never called him by his first name. He turned slowly to where Bones and Miranda were tending to Bell. The archaeologist hadn’t moved.
“What’s wrong? Is he...?”
Bones shook his head and spoke in a low voice. “He’s still breathing. Barely.” He looked up, meeting Maddock’s gaze. “You think Isabella was right? If he’s got it... I mean, we’ve been with him this whole time.”
Bell gave a rattling exhalation that wasn’t quite a cough, and Maddock realized he was trying to say something. “Dar...”
“Dart,” Bones said, sounding only slightly relieved. “He must have gotten hit by a blowgun dart. Probably tipped with curare or some kind of paralytic.”
“Mira...” Bell said, “Don... Don’t. Go.”
Tears streamed down Miranda’s face. “I won’t leave you, Dad.”
Bell’s eyebrows came together in a frown. In the blue light, his skin had the pallor of someone already dead.
“Atropine,” Miranda said, looking up at Maddock. “That might help. Do you have atropine in your first aid kit?”
Bones’ diagnosis was probably right on the mark. Curare compounds had been used for centuries in Central and South America. The poison was a powerful paralytic, which strangely did not affect the heart. It did however paralyze the muscles of the diaphragm, and without treatment or artificial respiration, death by suffocation was almost a certainty, especially for someone like Bell, whose
pulmonary system was already badly compromised. Maddock didn’t think atropine or any other treatment would reverse what was happening. He could tell that Bell knew it, too.
“Go,” Bell rasped again. “Dead... Shadow.”
“No,” Miranda said. She spoke with an urgency borne of desperation. “We’re here. The cure is here. You just have to stay with us.” She turned her gaze to Maddock again. “This lichen or whatever it is. It’s the cure, isn’t it?”
“No... Cure.” The effort seemed to take the last of Bell’s energy. His eyes rolled back and he was still.
“He’s not breathing,” Miranda cried.
“I got this,” Bones said, as he began repositioning Bell flat on the lichen-carpeted stone. He tilted the archaeologist’s head back a little, clearing his airway, pinched Bell’s nose shut with one hand, and bent over to administer a rescue breath, mouth-to-mouth.
“Stop!” Maddock shouted, so loud that his voice echoed throughout the chamber. He grabbed Bones’ shoulder, pulling him back.
“Maddock,” Bones warned, instinctively going on the defensive and fighting against the restraining grip.
“He’s infected. He’s got the Shadow. You heard what Isabella said.”
“Maybe he does,” Bones growled, a fierceness in his eyes that Maddock rarely saw directed at him. “And maybe he doesn’t. But he’s going to die for sure without CPR.”
“He’s already gone, Bones.” Angel said from behind them. She and Kasey had both moved closer, ready to interfere if the confrontation escalated.
“No,” Miranda said. “Curare is a paralytic, but it’s not fatal if we can keep him breathing.”
“Miranda, he’s infected.” Maddock softened his tone, knowing how much his words would hurt, but did not let go of Bones’ shoulder.
“And this is Xibalba. The cure is here.”
“It’s not a cure,” Maddock replied.
“You son of a bitch,” Miranda said, almost screaming at him. “Whatever he did, he doesn’t deserve to die.”
Maddock knelt beside them, drawing back Bell’s pant leg to reveal the bandage covering the wound the man had sustained in the City of Shadow. He carefully peeled the gauze pad away to reveal the scabbed-over wound. “Look.”
There were faint specks of blue light shining out of the scab, and a corresponding line of the same substance on the bandage.
“It’s not a cure,” Maddock said, again. “We have to go. Now.”
CHAPTER 34
After clobbering Kasey, Isabella Beltran had run, but not very far, only a hundred yards or so down the length of the balcony and around the corner of the base of the pyramid, just enough to be sure that none of Maddock’s group would pursue her. Once concealed there, she watched Maddock and the others arguing about what to do next. She couldn’t hear what was going on, but she could see everything through the night vision goggles she had taken from Kasey.
It looked as though Maddock had figured it out, for all the good it would do any of them.
She swung the goggles down to the ball court. The enhanced infrared display showed the large arena in startling detail, allowing her to see not only Scano, Carina and the surviving rogue Serpent Brothers as they attempted to follow Maddock’s escape route, but also the distant end of the court, and all of the skull-balls that were still bouncing wildly throughout.
She waited until they were gone, and then shouldered Kasey’s backpack and darted from her hiding spot to the edge of the balcony.
She peered over the side. Through the night vision device, the floor of the ball court looked deceptively close. Stuffing the goggles in the deep cargo pocket of her trousers, she dropped onto her belly and squirmed out over the edge, lowering herself down until her arms were fully extended and her fingertips supporting her full weight.
Only now did she feel a trace of panic. A two-story drop waited below, but there was no other way to get where she needed to go, and even if she had been inclined to change her mind, getting back up the wall would have been nearly impossible, especially as the muscles in her arms were quivering from the exertion of simply holding on. Bracing herself against the expected shock of impact, she forced her fingers to uncurl.
The landing was about as bad as she expected it to be. A flash of pain shot up through her feet, all the way to her hips. She pitched sideways, landing hard on her left shoulder. Another flash of pain went through her chest, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.
Just knocked the wind out of me, she told herself, fighting back a fresh wave of panic. She lay there, waiting for her body to recover from the shock. When she finally caught her breath a moment later, she rolled over onto hands and knees, then stood, wincing as the pain returned. Her ankles and knees screamed in protest, but she didn’t think anything was broken or sprained.
She took out the night vision goggles again and held them to her eyes, locating the safe path to the distant end of the ballcourt, and watching for incoming balls. Then she started moving.
After a few steps, she figured out how to mostly compensate for the constant pain in her feet and ankles, limping forward with a shambling gait that nevertheless allowed her to cover ground quickly. She only had to stop twice to avoid the hurtling skull-shaped projectiles.
The steps out of the ball court and back up to the passage into Bat House proved similarly challenging. She had to lean forward over the steps, supporting some of her weight with her hands, like a chimpanzee, in order to make the ascent, but she did so because she knew what had to be done.
Bat House was no longer a mad flurry of activity. Most of the bats, roused from their slumber, had fled, lighting out through fissures in the ceiling. The narrow crevices were a link between Xibalba and the outside world, emerging in the jungle a mile or so from the entrance to Naj Tunich, though they were much too small for any other creature to get through or even notice.
Isabella knew she would not be leaving through that route.
She unslung the backpack, and dumped its contents out onto the stone floor. There were three large red cylinders—incendiary grenades—along with a few other similar devices in varying shapes, sizes and colors. She was familiar with most of them and quickly located what she was looking for—paper-wrapped blocks of Composition C-4 and four pencil detonators. She set the latter to their minimum time delay and pushed them one at a time into the blocks of plastic explosive compound, which had the consistency of stiff modeling clay. Only after the first fuse was activated did it occurred to her that there was no undoing this, no going back.
She armed the rest of the improvised explosive devices, shoving them all back into the pack. When she was done, she heaved the bundle out into the midst of the guano pile. Then, she pulled the safety pins on the incendiary grenades and hurled those out as well.
At first, she couldn’t see where they landed, but a moment later there was a soft pop as the first of the grenades ignited, followed by a brilliant flash that lit up the whole cavern, and a harsh hissing sound as the white phosphorous inside the cylinder began to burn.
“Forgive me, Tio,” she whispered as the other grenades sizzled to life. She felt certain he would not only forgive, but approve. Indeed, she knew now that this had been her destiny all along.
You are dead already. The Shadow has touched you.
Isabella’s pronouncement rang in Alex Scano’s ears as he followed Carina and her warriors up the stairwell into the transverse passage beneath the pyramid.
Doug Simpson, that bleeding heart cretin, had done this to him, exposing him to the Shadow pathogen with his crazed suicide mission to destroy the lab and all traces of the fungus. Simpson probably hadn’t counted on Alex being able to get away before the explosion, but in breaching the BSL-IV safety barrier, he had just as effectively doomed his employer.
“No,” he muttered, clenching his teeth. “No, no. I’ll beat this. I’ll find the cure.”
That was, after all, why he had made the journey into Xibalba.
In his backpack, s
ealed inside multiple bio-hazard bags, was the little figurine of a dog—el Guia, was what Carina had called it—the vessel that contained the dormant fungus which, when exposed to a human host, began to multiply. Alex supposed he was also a vessel for the pathogen, but it didn’t matter because soon, he would have the cure as well.
Shadow and Light.
His designation for the project wasn’t just poetic; it was on-the-nose literal. He had realized that the moment he laid eyes on the glowing city. The phosphorescent blue lichen was the cure. He knew it, to the depths of his soul.
As he stepped out into the passage, he knelt at the first patch of the glowing material and began scraping some into an empty bio-hazard bag. The lichen clung to his fingers like damp soil. He held up his hand, staring at it as if hypnotized, and then touched one finger to his tongue. It didn’t really taste like anything.
“What are you doing?” Carina called back to him.
“This is the cure,” he said, reverently. “Light to banish the Shadow.”
When she didn’t reply, he looked up and found her staring down at him with a perplexed expression. “Your eyes. They’re...” She shook her head. “Your man, Bell. He’s dead. Maddock and the others left him behind.”
“Where are they?”
“They headed out into the city.”
“What are you waiting for?” He gave her a perturbed frown, and then looked down in order to begin filling another sample bag. “Kill them. We can’t have them getting out with the cure, can we?”
“We don’t know what they’re doing,” Carina said, her voice strangely uncertain. “They might be looking for a way out.”
“Good point.” Alex stuffed the bags into his pocket and stood, wiping his hands on his thighs, leaving traces of glowing blue on the fabric of his pants. “All right. We’ll ask them about that. Then we’ll kill them.”
CHAPTER 35
Maddock could feel Miranda’s hateful stare on the back of his neck as he ran through the streets of the dead city. One day, he knew, she would understand and realize that there had been no other choice, but right now, there wasn’t time to explain.