Jacob Cooper looked at himself. He looked as if he’d fallen into green chalk.
“I had to laugh at your question about starting a carvy farm,” said the ruthless weapons dealer. “Carvies aren’t worth the trouble. Their poison doesn’t drive you crazy, it just kills you. But this stuff . . . ! Remember the video of the Corys admiring the artifacts they’d brought back? Remember how John Cory wiped them down with a rag, wiping off all the green dust? It’s more than dust, Dr. Cooper. It happens to be a spore that can sit dormant for centuries until it infests the respiratory system of a human being. Once you inhale it, it germinates, giving off a toxin that turns you into a raving animal until . . . well, you saw what finally became of Brad Frederick and now John Cory: The spores grow into a deadly fungus that eats you alive. Kachi-Tochetin must have covered his treasure with the stuff, forever guarding it from outsiders. He was a clever old brute, wouldn’t you say?”
“Manasseh . . .” Dr. Cooper could hardly talk because of the spores in his throat. “What have you done with my children?”
“You’re still worried about them? What about yourself?”
“Manasseh!”
He laughed. “Basehart is taking them to the tomb to seal them inside. As you can see, this pit isn’t big enough for all of you. The ‘deadly curse’ of Toco-Rey is too important a secret for kids to know about. They must not leave the jungle to tell the world.”
Horror and anger coursed through Dr. Cooper’s veins. “NO! Manasseh, go ahead, take me, do what you want, but let them go!”
Manasseh scolded him. “Dr. Cooper, I’m already doing what I want with you. You see, we were hoping we could salvage some spores from the artifacts the Corys brought out, but unfortunately, the carvies found them and licked them clean. Then we thought maybe we could harvest spores from Brad Frederick’s body, but the carvies ate all of those too. So, since you won’t help us access the tomb to gather more spores, I guess you’ll just have to serve as a human incubator right here in this shed! As you can see, John Cory has provided us with a healthy crop of fungus already, and it won’t take long before you do the same.
Dr. Cooper could observe John Cory’s body being processed from flesh to fungus before his very eyes. “How long?”
“Oh, the speed of the infection depends on how much of the spores a person ingests. The Corys wore dust masks in the tomb, but received a light exposure from handling the dusty artifacts back at their camp. Their infection took awhile. Your daughter Lila got only a small dose, so her infection took some time as well. But Dr. Cooper . . .” Manasseh made a tsk-tsk sound. “With the heavy dose of spores you’ve inhaled, I would say you’ll be a raving maniac within an hour. As for the kids . . . well, it may be a few more centuries before anyone ever finds out what happened to them.” He laughed again, amused by his own cleverness. “Too bad for you it’s morning.”
“What? What was that?”
“Never mind. You should have taken the deal I offered you, doctor. You could have looked forward to being alive and rich. Good-bye.”
Jay and Lila stood very still on the soft, gooey floor of the pit, afraid to make any sudden moves. All around them, the walls were alive with an unbroken, living layer of green carvies. They were humming and twitching, slithering and sliming over each other’s bodies and occasionally flitting from wall to wall.
Tomás stood beside them with a gun in his hand, trying to act like a tough guy but obviously as scared as they were. Dr. Armond Basehart, suddenly cured of his claustrophobia, was just coming to the bottom of the ladder.
“Ah, yes . . .” said Dr. Basehart, shining his flashlight around the walls of the pit. “They just thrive down here, don’t they?” He shined his light sideways and found the tunnel. “And that would be the route into the tomb, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jay, also pointing his flashlight that direction. “But this time it’s full of carvies.”
“No matter. A little green slime won’t hurt you.”
Lila couldn’t figure that. “But I thought . . .”
“Trust me. I’ve learned a lot from your blood tests, young lady—and from your nose. Go ahead.” He handed Jay an extra flashlight and then prodded them with the barrel of his gun. They started stepping slowly over the bones and through the carvies toward the tunnel. “Tomás.”
Tomás answered, “Sí, señor,” but he didn’t take a step or take his eyes off the thousands of little black eyes that looked back at him.
Dr. Basehart opened a bag he carried over his shoulder and brought out a hand-sized explosive charge with an electronic detonator. He put it in Tomás’s hand and whispered, “It’s preset for five minutes after you activate it. Get them inside, and then . . .” Tomás hesitated. Armond Basehart gave him a nudge. “Go on!”
Tomás pocketed the explosive, clicked on his flashlight, and followed the kids down the tunnel.
Jay and Lila kept moving, crouching down to stay clear of the carvies that clung to the stalactites above, and stepping gingerly on the slime-slickened tunnel floor.
They could see a light shining on the floor ahead of them. It was Lila’s flashlight, still lying where she had dropped it. When they reached it, Jay picked it up and handed it to her. “You feeling okay, sis?”
“I’m not sick or crazy, if that’s what you mean,” she answered. “But we’re not doing okay, not at all.”
Jay looked back at Tomás. “Why are we down here?”
Tomás waved the gun at him. “Just keep moving.” Then Tomás looked back.
Dr. Basehart stood in the pit, still watching them go. “Farther, Tomás.”
Unhappily, Tomás waved his gun at the Cooper children. “Farther. Into the tomb.”
“Why do you listen to him, anyway?” Jay asked.
Tomás smiled weakly. “Mucho dinero, muchacho. Much money.”
They came to the hallway that circled the inner chamber of the pyramid. This was as far as Jay and Dr. Cooper had gotten last time. Jay examined the intricate carvings in the wall—the ones they had guessed might be a warning not to proceed farther.
“How you doing, sis?” Jay asked again.
“I’m all right, don’t worry,” she insisted.
“Go on, get back farther,” said Tomás.
The kids walked down the narrow stone hallway, still stepping around and crouching under resting carvies.
“I think Dad was right,” said Jay, exploring the passage with the beam of his flashlight. “This hallway must go clear around the pyramid with an inner chamber in the middle.”
“So maybe there’s a door somewhere to get inside.”
Tomás watched the kids recede down the hallway, then called back up the tunnel, “They are inside!”
Dr. Basehart, waiting at the bottom of the pit, answered back, “Very good, Tomás. You may proceed.”
Tomás started fumbling with his gun, his flashlight, and whatever he had in his pocket while trying to keep an eye on the kids.
Dr. Basehart quickly reached into his bag, brought out another explosive charge, and looked around for a bare surface of stone on which to place it.
Suddenly, he heard a whisper from above. “Basehart! Basehart, can you hear me?”
Armond Basehart scurried to the center of the pit and looked up. It was Manasseh! “Have you taken care of Cooper?”
Manasseh made an “okay” sign with his fingers. “Tucked neatly away in the shed. Where are the children?”
Basehart smiled wickedly. “Inside the pyramid.” He held up his explosive charge and grinned. “It’s going perfectly.”
Manasseh smiled, very pleased. “Then let’s be rid of them.”
Basehart hurried to the tunnel entrance, anchored the charge, and set the detonator. “Tomás, you are far too trusting,” he whispered to himself.
On the ground above, Manasseh held a small radio transmitter in his hand. “I hate to share, Dr. Basehart.”
He pressed a button.
Dr. Basehart suddenly saw a red
light on the detonator.
The ground shook with a mighty explosion. Smoke, dust, pulverized rock and liquefied carvies shot out of the pit like a geyser.
The sound of the explosion rang through the stone hallway like a bell. Tomás was knocked off his feet and across the stony floor, his own unarmed explosive still in his hand. Jay and Lila dropped to the floor with their arms over their heads as the earth shook beneath their feet.
Standing in the jungle above, the man called Manasseh watched the dust and debris settle and smiled pleasantly, satisfied that the secret of the world’s most hideous biological weapon was now safe with him alone. He slipped the little transmitter into his pocket and started hiking back through the ruins.
Dr. Cooper had tested the walls of the pit for handholds, any way to climb out. He’d tried jumping a few times in an effort to grab the ledge above, but the soft ground broke away in his hand and he fell back, kicking up more of the green dust.
Next to him, the body of John Cory had all but disappeared under the rapidly growing fungus. Every time Dr. Cooper moved, more green fungus puffed around him.
His nose and throat burned. He could imagine the spores burrowing into his nasal membranes and throat lining. He was getting dizzy. Disoriented. Scared.
Jay and Lila ran back to help Tomás to his feet, and then they all raced up the tunnel, stepping around dead and stunned carvies, shining their light beams through the dust and smoke. When they reached the end of the tunnel, their worst fear was confirmed: the tunnel was blasted shut.
They were trapped.
NINE
The kids. The tomb. The curse.
The cure.
Come on, Cooper. Think! Think! You’ve got to find a way out of here. You’ve got to save your kids.
He felt like the ground was moving beneath his feet. He planted his hand against the dusty, dirty wall of the pit to steady himself.
A raving maniac within an hour? He could feel his mind start to spin even now. Millions of little spores were busy.
The cure. There was a cure. Manasseh said so. But what?
“Too bad for you it’s morning,” he had said, but what did he mean?
“Thanks to your daughter . . . we were able to discover the cure.”
Dr. Cooper’s mind wandered. He began to stare at the green, chalky walls and the rapidly vanishing remains of John Cory. Fear began to course through him. I’m finished. I’m going to die!
NO! He shook his head and forced himself to think.
Too bad for you it’s morning. A carvy in a jar. Carvy poison doesn’t make you crazy, it only kills you.
Too bad for you it’s morning. What happens in the morning? What can’t happen in the morning?
Wait. Wait. Morning slugs. The slugs are green in the morning, green and docile. They’ve been eating all night.
Green?
What did Manasseh say about the artifacts?
The carvies licked them clean.
And what did he say about Brad Frederick’s dead body? The carvies had eaten all the spores on it.
They’d found a carvy underneath a rag in the Cory tent. The Corys had used those rags to wipe the green dust off the artifacts. The carvy could have been attracted by the dust on the rags.
Jacob Cooper prayed, Dear Lord, keep my mind steady. Help me to think!
Yes! It had to be: The spores must be like candy to the carvies.
So what does that mean?
Why don’t the spores kill the carvies?
The carvies must be immune to them. They get happy and docile and turn green, but they don’t go crazy and die.
Lila helped Dr. Basehart and Manasseh find the cure.
Too bad for you it’s morning.
The yellow slugs must carry the antitoxin. But how did Lila get a dose of it?
He had a hunch. There were pieces missing. But it could be the answer. It had to be the answer, there was so little time.
Dr. Cooper’s breath was coming in deep chugs through his clenched teeth. His fingers were curled like claws.
No, this pit isn’t going to hold me! I’m going to get out of here! WITH GOD’S HELP I’M GOING TO—
Without thinking, with a loud cry and a huge, semicrazed leap, he shot out of the pit and clamped two iron-strong hands onto the frame around the shed door. With a growl, several kicks, and a violent wrenching, he tore the door loose, snapping off the slide bolts and sending the padlock spinning into the weeds. He was free. He moved out in front of the trailers, groping about in the dark, trying to think, trying to plan.
Uh-oh. He could see Juan and Carlos bursting out of their little hut with rifles in their hands. They must have heard all the racket.
No problem. They took one look at him, screamed, and ran, first in frightened circles, and then to their land rover.
“Hey!” he called.
They didn’t even look back, but cranked up the old machine and roared down the rutted road toward civilization.
He didn’t know what had scared them, and he didn’t have time to think about it. Only one thought kept pounding in his hazy mind. Get to the Kachaka village!
With the speed of a gazelle, he bounded up the trail toward the ruins.
The man who called himself Manasseh walked along the Avenue of the Dead briskly, humming a happy little tune and thinking up his next move. He figured he could hire Juan and Carlos to harvest the spores from the shed—after the two incubators were fully used up, of course. He would have to devise airtight containers in which to store the spores as well as a way to measure them out and weigh them for marketing.
Then he would have to figure out a neat and clean way to dispose of Juan and Carlos. Perhaps they, too, should become incubators. As always, the secret had to be protected.
He stopped. He thought he saw movement in the bushes near an immense stone head, a likeness of a past king, no doubt. He drew his pistol from a holster at his side. He didn’t like having an animal sneaking around that close, especially when he didn’t know what kind of animal it was.
But nothing moved. He relaxed, put away the pistol, and quickened his step. He did not like this place. Too many things could go wrong, there were too many unknowns.
A scream! A pouncing figure struck him from behind before he had time to react. He was on the flat pavement stones, staring up at a green face, flaming eyes, bared teeth.
His screams echoed across the dead ruins for a quick, terrible moment, and then fell silent.
“We are going to die!” Tomás wailed, no longer the tough guy. He’d stuffed the explosive charge back in his coat pocket without thinking.
“Hey, come on,” said Jay. “Get a grip! We haven’t even weighed our options!”
They were huddled in the dark hallway under the pyramid, acutely aware that a man-made mountain of limestone lay between them and freedom.
“The tunnel we came through can’t be the only way out of here,” Jay insisted. “The priests got in another way. Dad and I were theorizing about that.”
Lila was already exploring down the hallway. “Let’s have a look.”
They headed down the hallway, and Tomás followed timidly behind. As their lights swept over the cold stone walls, the sounds of their footsteps and breathing resonated up and down the long, narrow passage. The hallway, only six feet wide and just high enough to walk in, was laid out in a big square, tracing the shape of the pyramid but providing no way to reach whatever rooms might be inside. They explored it carefully as they worked their way around, finding a few primitive stone tools, some items of jewelry but no other passageways.
Then, when they rounded the third corner, they found a massive pile of rocks that appeared to have fallen in from above.
“What is this?” Tomás asked. “A cave-in?”
Lila studied the wall. “Look here, Jay. Slots in the wall, just like a ladder.”
Jay used his light to follow the ladder slots up to the ceiling. “Yeah, and look where they go: That used to be a way out.”
>
Lila’s heart sank. “But it’s full of rocks.”
Jay was not happy about his conclusion. “After they buried the king, they must have filled in the entrance to this level of the pyramid.”
“We will run out of air!” Tomás whined. “We will starve to death!”
Jay and Lila paid him no attention but conferred again.
“The Corys found the treasure room,” Jay mused.
“And we haven’t,” Lila added. “Which means they got in and out of here a totally different way.
Remember what Dad said? He thought the tunnel we used was dug out by the Oltecas. The Corys thought the tunnel they found was dug out by José de Carlon. There has to be another tunnel somewhere!”
“And it has to lead into the treasure room.”
“So if we find the treasure room we’re bound to find a way out through the other tunnel.”
Jay pointed his flashlight at the wall. “Is there any soft mortar along that wall? Tomás, help us look!”
They backtracked through the hallway, searching the inside wall with their lights.
“We’re looking for old mortar, for cracks. . . .” Jay instructed their captor-turned-helper. “Somewhere there has to be an entrance to the tomb that was sealed up after the king was buried. After a thousand years the mortar should be soft.”
They moved along quickly, tapping and poking at the wall as they went. Tick, tick, tap. The wall produced a solid, stony sound as they struck it. They kept moving, kept tapping.
THUNK. About halfway down the hall, Lila’s flashlight hit something soft, and she made a slight dent in the decaying, powdery surface. “Hey.”
“This could be it,” said Jay. He picked up one of the old tools they’d found and used it to chip at the soft spot in the wall. The material broke away freely, falling to the floor in dusty, jagged chunks.
The Deadly Curse of Toco-Rey Page 9