by Tom Rich
WHITE BIRD
A Mayan 2012 Thriller
By Tom Rich
Copyright © 2012 by Tom Rich
All rights reserved
[email protected]
All contemporary persons are fictitious. Some ancient persons are fictitious. Liberties have been taken with what is known about ancient persons that are not fictitious.
Cover art copyright © 2012 by Carol Ann Newsome
Contents
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue: Cult of the Quetzal Serpent
1: Ludlow Viaduct
2: MNF
3: Ch’ak
4: Cenote
5: Omega Moon
6: Executive Committee
7: “It’s a bird…no…”
8: Tree Hugged
9: Smith and Jones
10: Machete
11: Waterworks
12: Sylvie
13: Sad Chick
14: Ukit Took
15: Ol
16: Delucia
17: Penance
18: Balamq’e / Tranquilino
19: Pale Rider
20: Ciriaca
21: “Sense of place.”
22: “A. M. in the Apolis”
23: Vertigo
24: Mr. Literal
25: Soren Kane
26: Clove
27: “L’il and brown.”
28: Cenote Explained
29: Buzzer Beater
30: Message
31: Avendano
32: Beers of the Bible
33: “Let’s ride.”
34: HQ
35: That Night
36: Next Day
37: Ulysses
38: Sweet Daddy Sol
39: Witness
40: Girl Talk
41: The Party at the End of the World
42: “Ain’t Comin’ Back This Time”
43: Convoy
44: Sac chic
45: “Haven’t we met?”
Epilogue: Now the Sun is Bitten
WHITE BIRD
When the sun is bitten, there will descend ropes of fire and stones and sticks.
When the sun is bitten, the heavens will collapse, and so will the earth collapse.
If from the devastation rise four birds into four ceiba trees, the cycle of Creation shall continue.
But should human corruption have grown too great, the white bird, the yellow bird, the birds of black breast and red will not find the trees from the darkness.
It is then that all life shall perish.
Ukit Took, pretender to the throne of Yax K’uk Mo’: 9.19.11.14.5 (6 February, 822 AD).
The ancient Maya used their superior skills in mathematics and astronomy to create a system of calendars with the purpose of predicting the future. They made calculating the position of today’s moon, correct to within a few scant minutes over a period of centuries, look like child’s play. That their Long Count Calendar ends on the day of the winter solstice, in the Year of Our Lord, 2012, suggests the end of His children playing.
Phillip Arbanian, author of Voices Across Time: 2009 AD.
PROLOGUE: Cult of the Quetzal Serpent
It was the silence that called to Kurtwood Franz that long ago night. The clear, ringing silence that follows the most violent of storms.
A series of hurricanes knocking around the Caribbean had sent wave after wave of thunderstorms sweeping across the isthmus. Day and night, crashing gales whipped trees far inland with salt spray before tearing them from their roots.
Voices long dormant rose from the scarred earth to meet the raging torrents; voices raised by tongues bursting with languages unspoken for centuries. Tongues sliced from throats and cast into hellish realms joined in the call, as did tongues rotting in the fetid marl of poisoned soils. Tongues of the betrayed lashed out, and tongues wrenched for speaking unwanted truths. Flayed tongues unleashed, and tongues lacerated and pierced and sewn from parts of other tongues. There was the defiant tongue of a singer stifled, and tongues of those having barely spoken at all. With all these tongues joined together, long neglected voices screamed back with their own hurricane force.
Then all was quiet.
It was the silence that drew Kurtwood Franz from his calculated position in his measured world. A silence calling across the ages.
Startled from a fitful sleep, Franz crawled from the tent pitched among those of the other students in the slumbering camp. He stood.
Low figures marched across the darkened site to the beat of his pulse. Startled, Franz braced for their onslaught. What ancient vendetta had he stumbled into?
A great eye eased open from above.
White light sent the phantom army on the run.
The full moon, rising behind the pyramid, dissolved the shadows cast by dozens of tents.
The would-be assailants had been nothing more than fading remnants from his nightmare.
Franz watched until the moon rested perfectly atop the capstone on the peak of the stepped pyramid. A portentous event, he thought, perfectly calculated centuries ago. Why didn’t the lead archeologist have everyone up recording this moment?
Then Franz realized his mistake. The alignment would be perfect only for someone standing where he now stood. No need to waken anyone with that news.
Franz continued to watch as the moon lifted from the capstone. He’d schooled himself on not awing the mysterious. Succumbing to mystery, he felt, was merely a symptom of youthful romanticism. Discipline and drive could get Kurtwood Franz through the mysterious and into the practical.
But a thin ray of moonlight beaming from the capstone creased the darkness. This suggested his own portentous event forming. Franz passed through the crease and into the forest.
Partial glimpses through the treetops caused the moon to appear to travel quickly across the sky. Franz matched its pace, not knowing where he was going, yet confident something would arise from the silence to inform him.
The moon suddenly vanished. The great eye had closed.
They could have formed from the darkness itself. They were as silent as the silence after the storm. Their impact took his breath.
The assailants pinned Franz to the ground before he knew he had been hit. They bound his hands behind his back.
He thought to cry out. But instinct suggested he remain silent. Silence would make him a role player rather than merely being played upon. Besides, only his assailants would hear his cries in the dense forest.
Four hands yanked Franz to his feet. Two figures moved into place ahead. The two behind drove blunt instruments into his back to force him forward.
Franz managed to keep up with the brisk pace, stumbling now and then, but never falling despite his hands being bound behind his back.
On the mean streets of home, the young man could have dealt with four suddenly appearing from a dark alley. He’d advanced rapidly through his youth organization’s boxing ranks, often fighting above his middleweight classification. But these four had stripped him of his tools.
His wrenched-back shoulders flared with pain. Repeated jabs into his back made it feel that his own jagged bones were lacerating his kidneys.
The two forward captors reached a mound. They quickly disappeared over its top. Franz stumbled and fell at the base of the mound. The others jerked him up. A prod jammed into his spine. Struggling over the mound, he fell face first at the bottom. He was dragged into the mouth of a cave, thrown down and kicked repeatedly.
Then total darkness.
Franz came to face down in dank dirt.
General Rios Montt had promised to protect all parties working on the archeological dig. Montt’s government flaunted
Guatemala’s national treasures before the world while making war on the descendants of those whom had created the treasures. Franz now assumed locals from the antigovernment Guerilla Movement had kidnapped him to be used as a pawn in the politics of modern nations. Why else would they have gone to the trouble of taking him so far, wasted time by debilitating him with pain, if they’d planned to kill him outright and use his corpse as a message.
His own country had a history of exploiting this land and its people. Franz felt he owed no apologies; he’d come for knowledge only.
He managed to lift his head. He struggled to his knees.
Several candles in nooks on the walls cast pockets of glow. The light exposed cave paintings. Or was he seeing shadow forms shadows cast by the uneven light? Franz chose to not believe paintings. Paintings might indicate his abduction was about something other than the politics of modern nations. Politics was more logical than the impulse behind cave paintings; was more practical with its abductions and murders than those of trembling sycophants appeasing tyrannical gods.
A figure moved deep within the cave, purposefully, as if preparing something.
The figure stopped, slowly turned.
Franz narrowed his eyes. Was it now facing him? He could close his eyes, send this incubus the way of the shadow figures in the camp; summon the storming rage of his nightmare and drive it into an infinite recess of the cave. But it was light that had vanquished those phantoms. In this place darkness ruled, light granted only enough presence to cast the sight of uncertainty.
Sight be damned. If I had use of my hands—
Fist-sized, flaring black eyes loomed from the darkness. A broad nose pointed downward over lips curling back from a mouth in mid-scream. Rows of turquoise teeth swirled in a vortex around a red tongue vibrating deep within the throat of this demon. Long, green feathers dangled from its lips.
A burning sensation in his stomach informed Franz this was no matter of modern nations.
A scepter cracked hard where Franz’s neck joined his shoulder. The mask moved behind. A blow to the back of his neck put Franz face down.
Franz had learned what a mask dangling the Quetzal bird’s green feathers from its mouth represented. But he couldn’t recall. He’d studied Mayan mythology, but only to fulfill classroom requirements. Myths were what empire builders used to control their people. Franz’s real purpose in this land was to understand the power of Mayan mathematics. It was numbers that did the real work of creation: calculation and application leading to form and substance.
Still, he should remember….
Then Franz knew why a demon devouring Quetzal Serpent—regenerator of life— was remote to him. The symbol was not in any of the books because no glyphs had been found referring to it. Yax Pac, having created this symbol of utter hopelessness, nearly 1200 years earlier, was nothing more than a rumor floating on ancient winds.
Yet here was a cult exhibiting the failed king’s symbol.
Franz was dragged deeper into the cave. The captors pulled him to his knees and bent him backwards. All four had donned masks. They splashed something on his face. They ripped away his shirt and lifted him over their heads.
He could have been carried on their voices, the four men screamed so loudly.
Franz was thrown onto an outcropping that formed a narrow bed.
The masks shook furiously above him. Eight arms flailed wildly.
A black obsidian blade appeared.
The captors passed the blade rapidly from hand to hand in a high circle. The obsidian absorbed the light so greedily the blade appeared to travel by its own volition.
At what signal will it descend?
Franz put the question from his mind. He focused on remaining silent. His silence had been his only desirable companion since the moon had abandoned him. He’d found strength in his silence. He’d fought the pain with his silence. And silence was the only thing to deprive his assailants from knowing his fear.
He silently prayed.
The screaming stopped.
The blade came down.
A dim voice from the direction of the cave’s entrance halted the blade against Franz’s chest.
A fifth entered the chamber. He gestured to the others, speaking an ancient language. One of the original four spoke. There was disagreement. Chests thrust forward. Voices grew louder. A sixth entered the chamber. The fifth approached the altar and spit on Franz. The blade on Franz’s chest drew back.
Two more entered, dragging a second captive. The second captive moaned, struggled feebly against his captors as if they were nothing more than specters from a nightmare.
The fifth native shoved Franz from the altar. Two others kicked and spit on him until he rolled away.
Face down, something pounded at Franz’s abdomen. Was his silence now a punishing implosion of voice? Were his own thwarted screams tearing at his organs?
The nightmare of a thousand screaming tongues made visceral!
The cave revealed itself to be the mouth of a screaming mask. Franz swirled in a vortex of shuddering teeth. A red tongue loomed and retreated as if intent on ejecting him from a scalding throat.
Franz rolled over.
A restless force rushed from a narrow opening in the floor.
The second captive was lifted high and slammed onto the altar. All eight tore at his shirt.
The force rushing from the opening enraged the bare faces with expressions more fearsome than those of the masks.
A black tendril—black as obsidian—rose from the opening and directed the blade among the sixteen hands.
Franz now understood the opening to be the cave’s ol: the cult’s conduit to the gods of the Underworld. But to actually experience a force emanating from the ol? Their ritual is effectively manipulating my fear. If only my hands were free. I could tear off one of those masks, throttle at least one of them before they kill me.
The second captive fell in with the screaming.
The blade’s circling stopped.
The screaming ceased.
A single voice rose in terror.
The blade plunged out of sight.
A still beating heart rose into Franz’s view. The eight passed the heart around, each smearing the bloody organ on exposed skin.
Franz thought his captors occupied enough for an escape attempt. He rolled onto his stomach and struggled to his knees.
As if cast from his nightmare a severed tongue hit the floor next to Franz. A bare foot kicked the tongue into the ol.
Grabbed by the hair, Franz’s own language came in a whisper. “This happened in a time different from that to which you will return. We can enter into your time and strike you down if ever we so choose.” Franz’s face was pushed to the dirt. “Never seek this place out.”
Two of the captors dragged Franz from the cave and over the mound.
~ ~ ~
Next morning Franz regained consciousness in a part of the jungle that he recognized. Hands now free, he managed to stand. He found his way to the archeological site. The place was a frenzy of activity, more so than usual. He waved to a volunteer running by. “What’s going on?”
The volunteer looked Franz up and down. “What’s going on with you?”
Keep silent about it, thought Franz, and remain a player rather than having been played upon. He doubled over. “Dysentery,” he gasped. “Been out in the woods with it all morning.”
“Then you haven’t heard? Last night a soldier from the army was brutally murdered not far from here. Looks like a vengeance killing in retaliation for some local being disappeared. Anyway, the locals have dispersed into the forest. The rest of us are splitting up and heading to different sites before Montt rallies his troops. Check with your group supervisor to see what your plan B is.”
Franz found his supervisor and told him he was going to the nearest town to get treated for dysentery.
“Looks like a hell of a lot more than dysentery. And what’s with the blue on your face? Looks like paint.”<
br />
Franz touched his face. “Crazy native remedies,” he mumbled. He lunged toward the trail leading to town.
“Hey, you know what that looks like?” yelled the supervisor after him.
1: Ludlow Viaduct
TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS LATER
Ghost-band shadows danced on the far wall.
Cast by the stage lights, dark figures loomed and retreated as if caught in a magnetic field between opposing worlds. Aly Roarke tilted her head, raised a hand as an offer to pull one of the refugees through. She fluttered her fingers to sync them with the trembling shadow…then snapped back her hand. “Nah, you’d only pull me in.” She leaned back against the railing, planted her elbows on the bar, and settled her eyes on Night Town’s crowded dance floor.
“Those eyes, those eyes,” Blue had sung to her that morning while piecing together a song. “So lovely, so large, so soulful and sincere.” Aly hoped Blue would change “sincere” to “sexy.” “Passionate” would be even better.
Meanwhile, Trish had just told Aly that her recent streak of sarcasm had been causing friends to doubt her sincerity. Aly promised herself to work on not being such a smartass. Not just yet, though. Maybe after Blue finished writing the song.