Keen quickly cleared off the rest of what covered the find, including the plain, yet unnerving skull. He grabbed it and hurled it behind him, smashing it to bits against the adjacent wall. “Death to the death god,” he said smiling with psychotic delight.
Once the now unburied object was revealed, he could now truly see it for what it was. “It’s…a coffin?” Then, he noticed something odd on the casket’s lid. There were symbols etched into the gold…Aztec symbols. What the hell are Aztecan hieroglyphs doing inside a Mayan tomb?
“Beware…” Keen spun at hearing the other man speak. “You know not…cough…” The dying man wheezed, spitting blood, but continued. “…what you seek. His wealth…cough…his wealth is tainted by...the death of his people.” With the last ounce of his strength, Dr. Weaver looked up at Keen, “He who finds the darkness…cough…so dies by it.”
Dr. Weaver’s eyes glazed over, his body slumping to the floor, lying in a pile of blood-stained riches, dead.
Keen looked away from his deceased superior, both in shock and also in confusion. He knew the man to be very superstitious, but he also understood that no one knew more about the local people and their beliefs than Dr. Weaver did.
He nervously turned his attention back to the coffin but wondered if the old man’s fear-filled fallacy had merit. “No, it’s just the delusions of an old man who belonged in the nut house.” He said it aloud trying hard to convince himself, but failed in the attempt. He was scared shitless.
Forgetting the historic relevance of his find, Keen grabbed the lid to the golden crypt and pushed. He was completely out of breath by the time the lid came free. As Keen slid the heavy covering off, he looked down into the dark innards of the casket and saw…nothing. He grabbed his flashlight and directed its beam into the dark space.
What he saw confused him. All that was in the beautifully crafted sarcophagus was an extremely decomposed corpse. The long dead person, who was missing his/her head, seemed to be holding a run-of-the-mill clay pot in their hands. Correction…hand. This person was missing the lower half of their left arm.
Okay… Why would they bury this down here with all this wealth? Keen thought, inspecting the one-armed native, who would have been huge by their standards.
Keen pried the pot free from the dead person’s grip. It fit perfectly in the palm of their hand, about the size of a large softball. There were a few carvings in the side of it too. Small Mayan glyphs, he deduced. In the hands of an Aztecan none-the-less. What the bloody hell is going on here?
He didn’t bother trying to decipher them like he probably should have and instead grabbed the pot’s lid and gave it a yank.
POP.
The lid came free and with it, an awful smell.
It’s like a skunk ate some bad cheese and then died, he thought while briefly covering his nose with his shirt.
After having no luck exiling himself from the stench, Keen let go of his shirt collar, opting to breathe through his mouth…and then gagged.
Cough.
Oh God, it even tastes like something died!
He quickly abandoned the mouth-breathing technique. He’d rather smell it than taste it.
After calming and refocusing his attention back to the task at hand, he stood and pointed his light into the small container. He saw only blackness, the pot’s innards consumed by the room’s shadows. Keen shook the pot a little, only to get what looked like dark black soot on his hand.
He tried to brush it off, but it didn’t come free. Again he shook his hand, and this time, it spread over his entire hand…then his wrist.
But the advancing blackness wasn’t the only thing that Keen watched. He also witnessed his fingers slowly shrivel up and fall off. His own screams filled the tomb as he turned to run, but tripped and fell over his former boss’ body.
The Aussie scrambled to his feet as he watched the darkness consume his forearm, stopping just below the elbow. Then all at once, his lower arm fell off, joining the rest of his appendage in a pile of ash on the chamber floor. Through tear streaked eyes, he looked to the coffin, remembering the corpse’s missing arm.
Was this how it happened?
Now in shock, Keen quickly scurried through the tunnel back towards civilization. He finally emerged from the hole to the delight of the crew that he and Dr. Weaver left behind. Only, he wasn’t exactly ecstatic to see them. Keen stood, wailing in agony, completely missing his right arm from the shoulder down. Overcome with shock and pure terror, he fell into the arms of an alarmed digger.
By the time the confused and terrified crew member realized what was amiss, it was too late. The local lifted his hand up to signal for someone to call a paramedic. It’s then he noticed that he was missing two of his fingers. He froze in horror as a shadow-like darkness quickly crept up his arm.
He screeched in fright and jumped to his feet, dropping the now lifeless form of the younger man in the process. The digger ran through the throng of people, brushing by and unfortunately touching some of them. A domino effect occurred as at least a dozen men—all at once— cried out in alarm.
Like a flock of scared turkeys, they bolted in random directions. Some of the infected men collided into each other, knocking each other to the dirt. While others crashed into more of the innocent crew, spreading the deadly anomaly as the darkness consumed them.
* * *
“Fils de salope!” Cursed the woman in perfect French. She was beginning to get tired of the constant interruptions. The noise especially drove her fou—it drove her mad. All she wanted was peace-and-quiet, but in a camp full of men, she knew it wasn’t likely to happen.
Dr. Olivia Dubois was your typical French-born woman—minus the tattoos and pink highlights. Her hair was cut into a perfectly messy bob-style, with unkept spikes randomly protruding in places. She had been sick to death of being the normal science geek while in school, so she decided to spice up her image a little before her senior year of universite.
As for the tattoos… She had every single Disney villain you could think of beautifully portrayed across her arms, shoulders, and even parts of her upper chest and back. She called them her, memoire de sa jeunesse, the “memory of her youth.”
Olivia also tended to wear tank tops a lot because a) the intense heat the Yucatan offered was unbearable in anything more than that and b) because she liked to flaunt her skin art.
She was proud of her childhood and had no qualm about showing it. She especially loved her left shoulder tat. It pictured Gaston, the villain from Beauty and the Beast, flexing his “barge-sized” muscles. It was her first tattoo and it paid homage to her French heritage. The winner of the 1992 Oscar in the Best Music, Original Score category was based in France.
Standing up from the examination table, Olivia stretched, popping her neck in two spots and her back in three. Sitting at the counter tops for hours on end was starting to have its effect on her, so she opted to stand and work at times.
She used to go out for early morning jogs before the sun got too intense. Then, the days went by, then the weeks. Now, she didn’t even exercise in her free time.
It had been exactly six weeks since she last went for a run, but thankfully her naturally athletic build kept her looking fit. She glanced up, seeing the mirror that hung in the tent’s restroom. The workstation was positioned as such, that she could see herself perfectly in the reflection.
She was short, five-foot-two, and of average build. She wasn’t exactly supermodel skinny but wasn’t overweight by any means either. She had toned, tanned arms and an ample chest, which she accentuated with her tanks. The tattoos drive as many guys away as the boobs bring back. She laughed at the thought. Her former roommate back home, Becki, had always said that.
After sucking in her stomach a little and being halfway satisfied with her outward appearance, she turned. One hundred sit-ups before bed tonight, she thought, letting out her breath and her barely discernable paunch.
Ever the perfectionist, Olivia approached the tent’s door remem
bering the strange sensation she felt a couple nights ago. She was doing the same thing in her personal quarters, a 120 square foot Barebones Livable Safari Tent, when it felt like someone was watching her.
It was late that night and she was changing, getting ready for bed when she thought she heard someone outside the entrance to her tent. Half-naked, startled, and a little freaked out, she peeked outside the door but didn’t see or hear anything. Pleased with not finding some pervert watching her change, she finished getting undressed. She immediately wrote off the eerie feeling to her hanging around the dead and a camp full of men for the last few months.
Shivering at the thought of one of the diggers, or God forbid one of her colleagues in the science team seeing her naked, Olivia opened the door of the research tent. Squinting at the early morning sun, she stepped outside, and into a throng of rushing figures.
Most of the men were of local descent, but some were her American colleagues. She and Dr. Keen were the only foreigners in the scientific team, having been hand selected for the expedition.
She was chosen by Dr. Weaver, a man she admired greatly. She loved his calm exterior and his jovial personality the most. He looked like a real-life Père Noël, or as Keen called him a “bearded Colonel Sanders,” due to his affinity for white linen shirts. Plus, he was the smartest man she’d ever met, both in the lab and in the field. The man had done it all and rumor was he was about to hang up his shovel.
Keen had been chosen by a man named Dr. Boyd back in Washington. She wasn’t exactly sure why the Aussie had been selected, with him being so young, but that wasn’t up to her. All she knew is that she hated the little snot and thought he was a rat. But, like Dr. Weaver, she knew not to second guess a decision handed down from Dr. Boyd. He was everyone’s boss and had the reputation to back it up. So she bit her lip and did her job—
One of the research assistants, a man she had become friends with named Sean Ellis, bowled over another, one of the locals. Both men went tumbling to the ground, but only one of them got up. The American hit the ground and broke in half at the waist, his upper body literally disintegrating. All that was left were his head and legs.
She then saw that Ellis’ eyes were wide open in shock as his mouth involuntarily gasped for air. His legs twitched like a bug’s during a death spasm and then all at once they too crumbled to dust.
As Olivia helplessly watched the man shrivel up into an ashy mess and fall apart, a scream to her left jolted her back into the now.
The man Ellis ran into bellowed in pain as he shambled towards her speaking incoherently and missing both his arms. Seeing her, the digger picked up his pace obviously looking for help, and sped right in her direction.
Just before the digger fell apart and landed on her, Olivia dove backwards into the research tent, where she unceremoniously cracked her head on one of the metal legs of a computer table. Her eyes blackened and her sight narrowed from the hit. She reached up, feeling something warm oozing down the back of her head. Blood, she thought.
In her final attempt to stay conscious, Olivia placed a hand on the cot stationed across from the desk, while her other hand groped the wound on the back of her head. Through spinning thoughts and memories, she remembered that Dr. Weaver had someone install it a few weeks prior. She had been known for working late into the night and falling asleep at her station.
Olivia looked at her blood-soaked hand, nausea momentarily taking over her other senses. Then, she tried to push herself back onto her feet, but the strain of the attempt mixed with the sight of her own blood, made her pass out and fall face first into bed.
5
Isla de Jaina, Campeche, Mexico
The man looked at the scene from afar through his tactical scope, surveying the chaos that ensued. He recorded the events on an HD video camera that had just taken place. His clients wanted to see the effectiveness of the ancient biologic that they were after.
He didn’t know what it was, but he had heard stories of a flesh-eating bacteria, or possibly some sort of old-world plague. It was supposedly locked away in a hidden vault-like crypt on Jaina Island, off the western shore of the Yucatan Peninsula in Campeche. Who or what created it was unknown and how it was contained was beyond his knowledge, but they had apparently succeeded…until now.
Through his scope, he witnessed a younger man, the Aussie, exit the recently unearthed tomb. He shrieked and quickly fell into the waiting arms of another, instantaneously setting off a chain reaction. Every time someone made contact with another person the biologic was transmitted.
“Well,” he said to himself. “At least I won’t have to steal it from under their noses and release it myself. The bastards did the hard work for me.”
That’s when he saw an infected man crash into another, grabbing his shirt as they fell. Nothing, he thought. Interesting. Then, the same man, screaming in fright grabbed another man’s ankle, pleading for help, successfully transferring the bacteria…if that’s really what it was.
So it’s skin-to-skin contact? He thought, scratching his head. Probably airborne too. Glad I came prepared.
He recorded everything.
Every death.
Every agonizing wail.
All of it.
“Where did the lovely French woman go?” He mumbled as he scanned the terrain. “Eh, she probably turned to ash, just like everyone else.”
It was hard to tell, there weren’t any bodies to count. Unless he counted the sweaty t-shirts and underwear. Um, no thanks.
John Frost, callsign Wolf, was formerly a member of the United States Army. Currently, he was the Operations Leader for his security firm, Broadsword Inc. BSI was presently contracted by an organization named Zero. They were themselves a relatively unknown group, and quite frankly, a little bit on the shady side. Not that he cared. Money was money. And they paid…a lot.
BSI trained in both defensive—and if the situation called for it—offensive measures. The offensive team, called Sword, was primarily comprised of ex-Special Forces soldiers, while his defensive team, labeled Shield, was primarily filled with former Regular troops and mostly used for straight security detail.
It was pretty cut and dry. If you needed to get something done, you used Sword. If you needed security for a research facility or something of the sort, you used Shield. If all hell broke loose…you used both, but that was rare.
Frost packed his gear once the mayhem ended, kneeling in the tall weeds surrounding the dig site. As he disassembled his scope, he thought back to what he just witnessed.
He had single-handedly watched over thirty people die in less than five minutes. None of it bothered him whatsoever, though. He had seen and done much, much worse, mostly in the name of the United States.
Frost, originally in the Army Rangers, was extremely deadly with a sniper rifle and was used to ending people’s lives. So death never bothered him. While in the service, he had always boasted that, “I can kill you with something long-and-strong like a sniper rifle, or with something short-and-sharp, like my Leatherman, or with something inbetween…and mean.”
He stood and zipped up his protective hazmat suit. Frost then exited his hiding spot and ambled down the hillside perch at the edge of the dig.
He double-checked that the seals of his hazardous materials suit were in fact sealed.
That would be bad, he thought. Collecting the original sample from inside the tomb shouldn’t be too much of an issue now. But without this suit…
He let the thought hang in the air. After what he’d just seen, he wasn’t taking any chances. Whatever this crap was…it was sure-as-shit lethal.
Frost entered the site and tiptoed around the debris left by the victims of the biologic. There were entire wardrobes just lying about. It was like a pissed off woman had just kicked out her cheatin’ ass husband and threw his clothes out in the street.
As he got closer and closer to the tomb entrance it became impossible not to step in the ash of the dead. Even a man as heartless as F
rost shuddered a little, an impossibly cold chill climbing up his spine in the morning heat. He realized that he was literally walking through the remains of a crematorium. Gross.
A few minutes after he entered the clearing the dig sat in, he arrived at the entrance and knelt. Crouching, Frost clicked on his own flashlight, showing it into the opening. He could see the shuffle marks made by the two archaeologists—
It’s then he realized that he was sitting in what was left of the Aussie, the one called Keen. “Good riddance,” he said to himself. “Bastard was a jerk-off anyway.” Frost had heard the way the man had talked to the people working with him through various listening devices he planted around the camp during the night.
He remembered a few nights back when the tattooed French woman had almost discovered him while he was covertly installing one just outside her personal tent, where her sleeping quarters were. He did the same to everyone else in the scientific team, along with their Eureka military-grade tents, where they housed all the equipment.
Frost entered, following the path taken earlier, straight through to the burial chamber. After passing the sets of mummified feet, he grunted and stood up in the entry way to the next room and grinned. “It’s not even my birthday.”
So far his intel, supplied by his employers, had been accurate. But when they said a “possible trove of wealth may be on hand,” he had dismissed the idea. Looks like some of the ancient tales may have been true after all.
The information came from an obviously wise, but unknown source. They seemed to know everything, except who to hire. He personally knew that, of course, ever since one of his newest operatives botched the job in southern Algeria. Omar Jafari was young and reckless and a little bit of a zealot nut job. He genuinely believed in Zero’s cause and beliefs.
And he was an ignorant moron for doing so, Frost had thought at the time. But the guy was motivated and jumped at the chance to lead an op.
Frost knew better than to fall under the spell of some secret society. When he was contacted he had told them straight up, “No bullshit, just pay me my fee.”
Mayan Darkness (A Hank Boyd Adventure Book 2) (The Hank Boyd Adventures) Page 3