by Dela
I hustled to my car, slammed the door shut, and fumbled for the locks. It was a false sense of safety, but I did it anyway. I revved the wagon and took off toward the lake, not wanting to be alone anymore. When I hit Baldwin Beach and found the gravel-covered driveway along Route 89, I turned in.
My stomach immediately twisted into knots. Poppy’s red sedan was parked next to Jett’s black truck. Bri’s car was there too, and many others I didn’t know. I shifted into reverse quickly, backed out, and headed for the pier. Why was Poppy there? It was midday. High school didn’t let out for a few more hours.
I drove to the pier, furious, feeling blindsided by Jett. The windshield wipers were working double time, but the rain poured down in sheets, and their tiny blades couldn’t work fast enough. The parking lot was empty when I pulled in. I parked by the staircase that led down to the dock between the library and the coffee shop, where I intended to go first.
As I stepped underneath the eaves and out of the rain, I heard my name spoken in a way that gave me shivers. I stopped and turned. The sexiness in it excited me, but I felt an uncontrolled rage coming when I saw Lucas walking toward me.
I was about to give him a mouthful for pulling the no-show on me when suddenly a pounding rose in my chest, rhythmic and hard.
“Were you always like this?” Lucas asked as I grabbed the doorframe to steady myself. He clearly realized he was done for, even though I’d grabbed my chest to stop the pain.
“Like what?” I snarled, out of breath.
“Angry. You are angry a lot.”
The pounding spiked, and it was too hard to stand. I bent over and braced myself, clutching my fingers over my knees. “No. It started after the accident.” I hated that I was telling him this.
“What started after the accident?” Lucas leaned in and put his hand on my back.
I focused on his blue eyes through short breaths. They were blurry, so I squinted as I wheezed, “The moodiness, the obsessive compulsiveness, the migraines, the heart pain.”
The worry that consumed his face sharpened. “Zara, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Lucas,” I snapped. As luck would have it, the pressure lifted and I could breathe. I straightened up and breathed in deeply. “What were you doing all week? Our report is due tomorrow. How can you not care?”
His eyes flickered to the coffee shop doors behind me, and he laughed coldly. “I’ll save you some trouble.” My heart nearly stopped again when he reached past me. The scruff on his face shadowed the dimple in his chin so handsomely, but I wondered if he ever shaved. He noticed and smiled softly as he opened the chiming door. “I do care.”
My mouth flew open as he backed away. I improvised by pausing in the middle of the doorjamb to buy more time.
“How?” I grunted.
My body blocked his way, and we remained wedged together between the smell of hot coffee and the chilly rain outside. His face was only inches from mine when his grin widened.
“I only care when it’s in my best interests.” His mystical voice urged me to move closer, but his strong hand pushed the hollow of my back, forcing me into the coffee shop.
I huffed and spun back to Lucas, laughing incredulously. “In your best interests?”
“You ask too many questions.” He closed the door with a teasing smile, delighting in my confusion. “See you later.”
“You’re not getting coffee?” I lashed out.
His perfect smile melted me into giddy goo, and I could tell he knew it from the soft laugh that escaped his kissable lips. “No, muñeca.”
I stared at him as he walked away, hating that arrogant smirk of his. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I waited for my coffee.
The rain was settling as I walked to Tahoe Pier Library at the end of the strip mall. Mae sat at the circulation desk reading a book as I walked in. Though she was old, there was nothing about her that reminded me of my own grandmother. Her white hair was short and stuck out straight at the back of her head. She hated perms. And her frail body looked lost in the large, chunky sweater she wore.
“Well, hello there, Zara,” Mae said, setting her book down.
The library was small, the size of two of my bedrooms. It was dark inside; today the large windows only brought in the outside gloom, but the marigold walls made it feel cheery anyway. The place was old, with the original sixties sparkling popcorn on the ceiling, and the stagnant air smelled of old pages and dust, but I loved to come here. Near the window sat two high-backed chairs, a place I used to sit in summer and read books with Mae.
“Hi, Mae. It’s been too long,” I said as thunder boomed outside.
“I heard about your accident. Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah, of course,” I answered. I didn’t want to talk about anything that reminded me of Lucas. “Hey, listen, I need your help with a report on Aztecs, and I know that you like to read books about that sort of stuff.”
She giggled lightly to herself.
“What?” I asked.
“Stuff. You say it like you are completely lost.”
“You’re right. I am. But can you help me? My partner began writing some things down. I have it right here so you can see what we have so far.” I pulled the sheet of paper out of my purse and unfolded it. I had to admit, his all-caps handwriting was sleek.
Mae grabbed the paper and took a moment to read. Her head started to shake.
“What? Is it bad?” I pressed nervously.
“This is very interesting.”
“Good interesting?”
“This”—she held up the page—“is not freshman-level reading.”
“What do you mean?” I snatched the paper from her hands quickly and searched it for answers.
“Have you read it yet?” she asked.
“Not line for line.”
She pointed to the paper and picked up her book again. “I’ll give you a moment, honey. You need to read that.”
I brought the paper over to the window and sat down to read. Hairs rose on my arms as I finished the disturbing contents. Kidnapping women and children to be slaughtered didn’t sit well with me. I shoved the paper back into my purse to distract myself from the slime stirring in my gut.
“Did you know all of this?” I asked.
“Some of it, not all.”
Mae disappeared among the bookshelves. She came back with an old book, twined together by thin thread. “Here. This will help with your report.”
As she set the burgundy book down on the counter, I worried it would fall to shreds on contact with my fingertips.
“What is it?” I asked, afraid to touch it.
“A book on the New World.”
I continued to stare at it. The old paper was a burnt-yellow color on the edges, and rips marred the sides of the volume.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“My great-grandfather was a geologist who studied Mesoamerica.” Mae chuckled. “This was just one of the many crazy things he had that he didn’t want the government taking. So he passed it on to me when I was a girl. It looks like it’s made of skin or something—it’s always given me the jibbers.”
“Mae, I can’t take this,” I said, scooting it closer to her.
She shoved the book back quickly. “No. This is an emergency.”
“No, it’s not. I’ll just do my research on the Internet,” I insisted, taking a step toward the door.
“You will do no such thing. Listen, right before my grandfather died, he told me that a Maya Indian gave it to him when he was in Guatemala during the Depression. He never told me why it meant so much to him, only that it was very important. Maybe you can find out why it’s so special. I’ve tried to find books similar to this, but I can’t find anything in print. As far as I know, this is the only book of its kind.”
I looke
d to her for permission before snatching up the book and nestling it inside my bag. “I will take good care of it, Mae, I promise.”
“I know you will, honey.” Her face filled with excitement as she looked over my shoulder. “Hey, will you look at that. The rain stopped.”
I turned around, confused. There was no blue sky just moments before. “It has. I guess I better go before I get stuck driving in it again.”
“Take care, Zara.”
I was treading in the small puddles at the top of the stairs leading to the dock when my heart pumped again. Sharp pain rocketed through my body, making me jerk upward.
“Augh!”
I grabbed at my chest and tried to rub away the pain as I staggered over to the railing. Between breaths I calculated the distance to my car. If I ran I could get there quickly enough; I could sit down before another attack. But then the agony spiked higher than ever before, and I collapsed to the ground.
I was lying in darkness on sharp rocks and broken branches. I had turned my head up toward the moon that shone frothily in the dark blue sky when a loud scream shattered the silence.
“No, NO!”
There was pure fear in the voice, which came from a place I couldn’t see. Thick trees surrounded me, but I cocked my head, searching for it. Then the sound of a deep horn filled the air. There was sudden movement above. I looked up, past the tall trees, and my heart stopped.
There were hundreds of puffy clouds flying low toward the horn, except within the clouds I could see figures, their skin ropy with bones. There were no whites in their black eyes, which were set back in hollow sockets. I heaved, knowing that they were like the creature I saw when I crashed. I wrapped my arms tightly over my stomach as the voice—a girl’s—screamed again.
“NO!” More urgent now.
The thread of fear froze me, but when those black creatures dropped in the distance, I followed. I crept quietly over the rugged terrain, afraid I would be noticed, but as another horn blared I sped up. I was running steadily, dodging rocks and ducking under branches, when I saw a clearing a few paces ahead.
I stopped atop a hill, above the valley where the creatures had gone. A massive pyramid crouched in its center, its tiered levels growing smaller as they rose, with steep stairs that climbed up one side. I snuck down the hill through a thick forest to the lake that surrounded the pyramid city. Ahead, a stone bridge stretched across the water, joining the land and the floating town. I moved along the trees until I reached the edge of the bridge, and when the last canoe had passed me, I ran as fast as I could over it and into the city.
Canals wound through the smaller buildings that surrounded the pyramid, cut right up to the foundations like the channels of Venice. As I passed an odd tree with tangled roots that coursed above the hard dirt, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye—three of the city’s inhabitants walking toward me. I hustled to the shadow of one of the buildings. One walked almost close enough to touch, a male, I thought, speaking some unknown tongue to the other male-ish figures walking with him. I sucked in tightly and held my breath. Too mesmerized to shut my wide eyes, I saw the undead clearly. I am doomed. I am stupid. I shouldn’t have come.
The men appeared human, skin wrapped around their bones as it should be, but in full light, the skin appeared thin, and I could see formations of bone underneath. The tall one, his face covered in war paint, paused briefly. My heart stopped; my back burned as I forced it harder against the wall. Where can I run if he sees me? I looked over my shoulder to the right and then the left, then cursed silently. I had been so busy observing the three men that I hadn’t noticed that there were creatures everywhere: on the steps, in doorways, in canoes on the canals, and on every corner. There was no place to run.
I glanced back to the one who had stopped. The other two had turned toward him, waiting as he bent down and messed with the back of his calf. Something was wrong with it. It was more sinewy than the other parts of his body. I squinted harder. His skin was completely transparent. I gasped, quickly throwing my hands over my mouth. None of them seemed to have noticed me. His long fingers massaged at it while he yelled in irritation. He slapped it a couple times, then straightened up. He balanced on his good leg and started shaking his leg. The ligaments and muscles underneath the skin of his calf began to fade away, and the skin became visible again.
My sweaty hands slipped against my mouth. I didn’t move, though, as the three undead walked past me. As they turned a corner, I stepped away from the wall, surprised to have gone untouched and unnoticed. Can they not see me?
Suddenly stale smoke stirred in the air, and my gut wrenched. I’d never smelled anything worse in my life, but somehow I knew this stench. My hands flew back toward my nose to block the smell of burning flesh.
A line of black smoke grew in the air near the pyramid. I swallowed against my heaving and stepped out of the shadow and into the orange light. A group of half-naked children with excited faces rushed past, showing no sign they had seen me. How? I could feel the hairs on my arms swaying in the wake of their movement as another cry circled in the air. That cry. And it was coming from the place the boys were running to. Wait. The whole town was moving toward the scream, toward the main pyramid.
I moved on the outskirts of the crowd, staying as far from them—and their shifty skin—as possible. When we entered the hollowed-out space surrounding the main pyramid, I could see the smoke rising from the right. The crowd gathered in tightly at the base of the temple and faced the ascending steps. I moved around them more easily now that they were focused on the pyramid, but stopped abruptly when I saw the smoking pile. Though already charred, the dismembered bodies, pieces of white bone shining through, shocked me. The limbs were small—my size—and I couldn’t stop the strong pulse deep within my stomach; the chest cavities looked as if they’d been ripped open. And where are the heads?
I stepped back. Two men sitting on the ground a few feet away, their faces half covered in a thick red paste, were chewing noisily on something. My nostrils flared, and I could feel chunks clogging my throat as I watched one bring half a human arm to his hungry mouth. The other gnawed a piece of a leg already pocked with bite marks. I looked away for relief, but instead found the heads. They had been impaled on the spikes of the fence behind the two cannibals. There were too many heads to count, the fence extending deep into the trees, but I could tell which heads were the newer prizes by the fresh, dripping blood seeping from the necks. They were all young women, some with short, curly hair and others with long locks now matted over their faces with dried blood.
I have to leave, now.
I turned and ran.
This isn’t the way. No, it’s this way. When I ran into the same canal by a large rock formation twice, I knew I was lost, but at least the streets were empty. Then an abrupt screech echoed off the narrow stone walls. I needed to escape, but instead I was returning to the death trap, looking for higher ground. I climbed a short stone wall stained with deep burgundy streaks from the top down to the dark soil. The girl screamed again, louder.
The hovering creatures had landed at the base of the pyramid before the gathered crowd. The haze around them vanished, and their forms shifted to the unnerving, humanlike shape of the others. A few members of the crowd came forward and welcomed them with hugs and kisses.
Then, as one, the crowd turned to stare at the entrance to the temple courtyard, parting to form a walkway. I was squinting, trying to make out the approaching figures, when the scream rang out again. Chills raced up my neck. It was the girl, dragged through the dirt by two of those creatures and followed by two more. The parted crowd watched; some cheered. She screamed and squirmed, thrashing against their grasp, but their grip was firm, and they began climbing the pyramid. Eventually, her legs weakened and dragged behind her, and I noticed the color of the steps. They were red and slick with wetness. That’s odd—the girl didn’t look bloody.
At his nod, the workers threw her onto the stone slab in the center of the pyramid’s peak. She flailed, but each grabbed a limb and yanked hard.
No, please! Don’t!!
The feathered priest moved to stand behind her head and, without flinching, raised a dagger above her. Tears swelled in my eyes as he plunged the knife down and her pleading cry turned to an unbearable scream. I looked away just as her screams ceased. I covered my mouth, trying not to vomit as the cheers rose from below. When I wiped my tears and looked back, I wished I hadn’t. Her body was rolling down the steps, a fresh, red streak trailing behind her.
I hopped off the ledge and hugged myself tightly as I backed away—and my shoulder was suddenly pushed back as if I had been hit. I stumbled for balance, but looked to see who pushed me all the same.
“Zara!” There was another voice in the air, much softer than the horrifying screams that still echoed in my ears. I shuffled around, shaken, looking for the person touching me as my feet searched for solid ground.
My other shoulder jerked back, my feet slid on the loose gravel, and I began to fall.
“Zara!”
My eyes closed when I landed, but when they opened Lucas was there, close enough for me to smell his minty breath.
“Zara!” His voice shook. “Are you okay?”
It took me a moment to realize I was back at the pier, lying in Lucas’s arms, of all places. His arm was a firm bar under my back, supporting my weight. Cold sweat drenched my head, and I suddenly felt embarrassed.
I tried to sit up, but my head spun painfully.