The priest abruptly came to his senses. He snatched the robes around him and scurried up one of the aisles on the opposite side from Hooker to disappear through an entrance cloaked by another black curtain.
Hooker jogged on down to the altar and leaned over Connie. “Are you okay?”
“Are you kidding?” she said groggily. “They doped me, slung me over the shoulder of a giant, and carried me in here where that old fart was going to rape me. How the hell could I be okay?”
“At least you’re not permanently damaged.”
“I don’t think so. How about unbuckling me. I feel kind of exposed.”
Hooker undid the straps that held her arms first, and while Connie chafed the circulation back into her wrists, he went to work on her ankles.
“How did you find me, anyway?” she asked. “Where’s Buzz?”
“I’ll answer all your questions later if we get a chance. Right now all we have time for is finding a way out of here.”
Pulling the naked Connie along behind him, Hooker started up the aisle he had come down. As they reached the curtain, he heard the pounding feet and angry shouts of pursuers coming toward them.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
Connie was beginning to look more alert as her head cleared. “What about the other side, where the old fart went out?”
“Probably no better than this one. Let’s see if there are any other exits.”
While the shouts from the approaching Indians grew louder, Hooker and Connie hurried along the rim of the amphitheater, searching the walls for a break. At approximately halfway between the two exits, they found one, again concealed by a heavy curtain of black cloth. Hooker fought his way through it to find another corridor leading away from the amphitheater. It was dimmer than the one he had used to enter, with fewer lamps providing illumination.
“Where does it go?” Connie asked.
“Damned if I know, but it’s got to be someplace better than where we are.” Holding Connie’s hand, he ran along the dim corridor, trying not to think about the possibility of stumbling into a nest of snakes. Or worse.
A light brighter than the oil lamps flickered on the wall of the corridor ahead of them. Apparently, there was a turning in the passageway.
“What’s that?” Connie said hoarsely.
“More fucking Indians, if I’m not mistaken.”
“What do we do?”
“I guess we walk up to them and introduce ourselves. I’m fresh out of ideas.”
“Hooker, there’s an opening down here.”
“What?”
She tugged on his hand, pulling him down toward the pebbled floor. “Here. Feel.”
Connie guided his hand along the wall to where there was a gap in the rock. He shoved his hand through and felt no obstruction. He ran his fingers around the perimeter and figured it to be about three feet square.
“Shall we try it?” Connie said.
“It can’t get us into any worse trouble than we’re already in. You go first.”
On her hands and knees, Connie went into the crawl space off the corridor. As Hooker went in behind her, the flickering lights outside brightened, and the voices grew louder.
He followed, crawling. From time to time, to maintain his distance, he reached out a hand to her bare, smooth buttock. Behind them, running feet pounded past the opening where they had come in, then faded. Looking back over his shoulder, Hooker saw the light in the corridor dim once more to a pale gray smudge at the entrance to their crawlway.
“Are they gone?” Connie whispered in the darkness.
“For the moment. Keep moving.”
Cautiously, he reached up over his head. His hand felt nothing solid.
“Hold it a minute.” Hooker rose to a kneeling position, then stood up slowly. He banged his head on the stone ceiling of the passageway.
“Ouch. Son of a bitch.”
“What’s the matter?”
“They must have built this for short Indians. I think you can stand up here, though.”
Connie rose gingerly to her feet and discovered that the uneven rock that roofed the tunnel cleared the top of her head by about six inches. “That’s better. Are you still behind me? Give me your hand.”
Hooker, standing with his knees bent and head lowered to keep from bashing the ceiling again, reached forward in the darkness. His hand found the soft, bushy mound of her pubis.
“Oops.”
She took his hand firmly, held it where it was for a moment, then tugged him forward in the tunnel.
“Watch your step,” he said. “You can’t see a damn thing in here.”
“I think there’s a light up ahead.”
Hooker moved up beside her and peered into the gloom. She nestled close, making him acutely aware of her nakedness.
“It looks like something in the roof of the tunnel,” she said. “Maybe there’s an opening there.”
In the total darkness of the tunnel, bent over as he was, Hooker felt thoroughly disoriented. There did, indeed, seem to be a lighter patch in the black up ahead of them on the rocky roof. Connie let go of his hand and hurried toward it.
“Wait a minute; there might be — ”
Hooker’s warning was cut off by a shriek from Connie, followed by muffled sliding, rattling sound.
“Goddamnit!” Her voice echoed strangely.
“Where are you?” he said.
“I fell into some kind of a hole. Oh, my Christ!”
Hooker inched forward carefully, feeling his way along one rough stone wall. He saw now that what had appeared to be a light from the ceiling was actually a reflection from below.
The ground under his feet began to slope more steeply forward. At the same time, the stone smoothed out and turned slippery, as though coated with a film of oil. With nothing solid to hold on to, Hooker lost his balance, falling heavily on his butt, and skidded out of control down a slide of about six feet to a drop-off that deposited him in a tangle with the naked Connie.
“Hurt yourself?” she said.
“No, something soft broke my fall.”
“Before you start feeling too good about it, take a look around.”
By the light of a single oil lamp that illuminated the pit where they were, Hooker took a look. The chamber was roughly round, about twelve feet across. Everywhere he looked were skulls. Human skulls. He and Connie sat on skulls so deep, they could not see a floor beneath them. They were jumbled about in layers and stacks and untidy piles; some broken, some toothless, some nearly whole.
“Holy shit.” Hooker picked up one of the skulls nearest at hand and looked at it. The lower jaw was missing; the upper teeth smiled at him in a deadly rictus. He had seen skulls before in worse states of preservation, but what made this one odd was an uneven round hole, the size of a quarter, at the “Y,” where the frontal bone joined the left and right parietal bones, just at the crown of the head.
Hooker put the skull down gently and picked up another. It, too, had the peculiar hole at the crown. He quickly examined a third and a fourth. They all had the same disfiguration. Looking around him, he could see holes in each of the skulls whose top was toward him.
“What the fuck?” he muttered.
“Are you all right, Hooker?”
“Sure, peachy. Just wondering why all these skulls have holes drilled in the top. And whether it was done before or after the owner was dead.”
“What difference does it make.”
“None, probably. Let’s see if we can find a way out of here.”
He got to a semierect position, balancing with difficulty on the unsteady footing, and gazed up at the drop-off from the tunnel where they had fallen in. It was a perpendicular wall of featureless stone, and above that, the slicky slide that had deposited them here.
“We can forget that way out,” he said. “Let’s hope there’s another. This place is full of surprises.”
He and Connie began edging around the wall of the pit in opposite directions, feeling along the damp ston
e for anything that might indicate an escape. There was considerable clattering as the skulls rolled and crunched under their feet, so Hooker did not hear the heavy footfalls behind him until two slablike hands clamped on either side of his head.
He grunted and saw Connie turn to look. Her eyes went wide, and she lost her footing, falling into a heap with the grinning bony faces. Hooker’s muscles tensed to fight, but the pressure on the sides of his head increased to an agonizing squeeze. He had a flash picture of little Earle Maples’ head crushed like an egg, and he relaxed.
“Okay, pal,” he said through gritted teeth. “You got me.”
CHAPTER 26
Hooker, Buzz Kaplan, Connie Braithwaite, and Alita, their wrists bound firmly behind their backs, stood at the base of the dais in the throne room of Holchacán’s palace and faced the king. There was no more of the smiling urbanity shown earlier by the tall Mayan chief. The veneer of civilization had been stripped away, and the anger of his Indian ancestors glittered in the dark, deep-set eyes.
A row of guards stood immediately behind the four captives. They were armed with the usual spears, plus mean-looking double-edged swords, and knives at their belts. Hooker, Kaplan, and Alita wore the white Indian garments provided for them. A loose-fitting cloak had been thrown over Connie’s shoulders and fastened in front to cover her nakedness.
Ranged behind the captives and their guards were some dozen Mayan men who wore robes of soft cloth in colorful shades and complex decoration to indicate their rank. Their dark faces were impassive.
Holchacán turned his glittering eyes on Hooker. “It was a mistake,” he said, “after I had given you the freedom of the city, for you to enter the sacred temple of my people.”
“Sacred, my ass,” Hooker said. “What your high priest was going to do when I walked in wasn’t any catechism.”
He broke off with a grunt of pain when a guard jabbed him in the kidney with the butt end of a spear.
“You will be silent until you are instructed otherwise,” said Holchacán. He turned to the assembled Indians and spoke for several minutes in their own language.
When he had finished his speech, the Mayan chief returned his attention to the captives.
“As I told you, we had planned a ceremony for this evening at which I hoped to have you as my guests. The ceremony will still take place, and I still expect you to be there, but as we know, your situation has changed.”
“Why don’t you get on with whatever your going to do and cut the bullshit,” Buzz said. He stood upright with difficulty, leaning awkwardly on a cane, his wrists bound together. His wooden foot was missing, and his face was a mass of bruises.
A guard raised his spear to Buzz, but Holchacán held up a hand, staying him.
“You are impatient, Mr. Kaplan. Don’t be. You will not have long to wait.”
“How about giving me my foot back?”
The tall Indian studied him for a moment, then said something in the Mayan language to the guard standing next to Buzz.
“Your foot will be restored to you,” he said in English. He waved a hand, and Kaplan and the women were taken away by a detachment of guards.
The robed Indians filed out after them, leaving Hooker alone, flanked by a pair of guards, to face the Mayan chief.
“You are a disappointment to me, Hooker,” said Holchacán. “I had hoped that as men of some experience and education, you and I could come to an understanding.”
“Why bother with the con?” Hooker said. “You never had any intention of letting of us leave here.”
“That is true,” the Maya admitted. “There was no possibility that the secret of Iztal would have remained safe had I allowed your party to return to the outside, and we both know it. I did, however, entertain the hope that you might choose to remain here and join me.”
“Join you in what, drilling holes in people’s heads?”
“Ah, yes, you found the Pit of Skulls.”
“I wasn’t exactly looking for it.”
“I’m sure you weren’t, but you were in a part of the temple no Maya, save myself and the high priest, would have dared to enter.”
“You should have put up a sign.”
There was no amusement in the Indian’s unreadable eyes.
“Speaking of your high priest,” Hooker said, “is screwing white women part of his job?”
Holchacán’s face clouded. “What happened in the temple today was not my doing. Zoaltl will be called to account for it in due time. Meanwhile, I suggest you do not concern yourself with our affairs.”
“I guess I do have enough other things to worry about,” Hooker said.
“Quite so.”
“Can I ask you about something?”
“Specifically?”
“The skulls with the holes where they shouldn’t be.”
Holchacán glanced at the guards, who stood alertly on either side of Hooker, understanding nothing of what was said but ready to slit a throat, their own or their captive’s, at a sign from the chieftain.
“I suppose it can do no harm,” he said. “You will carry no stories out of here. In ancient times, the Mayas had a highly developed understanding of medicine. Even then, they recognized insanity as an illness, while the so-called civilized people of the outside world were still blaming it on possession by devils.
“Surgical methods of the day were, of course, primitive. Yet through trial and error, the ancient Mayas discovered that in certain forms of mental illness, the symptoms could be relieved or removed entirely by an operation that involved cutting through the skull and removing the diseased portion of the brain.”
“Lobotomy,” Hooker said.
“In a very rudimentary way. Naturally, the percentage of cures was small, considering the rather unsanitary conditions under which the operations were performed. Nevertheless, enough of the patients recovered so that the risk was considered worthwhile. Especially when the alternative was insanity and death.
“Unfortunately, or so they thought at the time, there were certain side effects to the operation that appeared with marked regularity.”
“Aha,” said Hooker.
“You are ahead of me?”
“It’s just a guess, but do these brain operations of yours have anything to do with the walking dead men … the muerateros?”
“It was observed in that long ago era that sometimes, even though the victim’s condition was relieved by the operation, he was turned into something like a walking vegetable. Through the ages, the surgeons among my people became more skillful in bringing about exactly this result. They discovered that by severing certain nerve endings in the parietal lobe and removing minute portions of tissue from the motor area of the brain, a willing, if insensible, slave could be produced.
“When it was done properly, the subject would come out of the operation with enormous strength and absolutely no sense of pain. He could be given simple orders, which he would follow even if it meant his own destruction.”
“And with your premed work at Stanford, you learned how to do it,” Hooker said.
“I did return with certain refinements to the operation, which was still being performed in the crude manner of my ancestors. I also saw the value of keeping alive the legend of the muerateros, the walking dead. Mayas throughout Yucatan, even the most civilized of them, are surprisingly willing to make donations to the ancient city of Iztal to assure themselves immunity to the muerateros.”
“Nice racket,” Hooker said. “You collected protection money, and you built your own army of goons.”
“Ideal as it sounds, there is a flaw. You see, even with the refinements I brought back with me, the operation causes a rapid degeneration in the subjects that I have been unable to check.”
“Rapid degeneration,” Hooker repeated. “That means the walking dead men quickly become real dead men.”
“Bluntly stated but true. Some of them last only a matter of days; others, several weeks. In some instances, they continue to exist f
or months, but always the decay is there, and it is irreversible.”
“So you need a constant supply of raw material.”
“Fortunately, that is not a problem. Quintana Roo has long been a hiding place for renegade Mexicans — murderers, bandits, chicleros. When one of them disappears, no one ever comes looking for him.”
“Do any of your own people ever get the treatment?”
“Only for the most heinous crime. That is why we have no crime in Iztal. You have seen the muerateros. Would you take the chance of breaking a law that might sentence you to become one of them?”
“Not likely,” said Hooker.
“Quite so. That is why outsiders are the ones who are chosen.”
“I suppose that’s another story you wouldn’t like spread around.”
“I don’t think it would make much difference. Oh, I would like to keep superstition of the muerateros alive, but even if the people knew we were creating them by drilling into the skulls of some worthless Mexicans, I doubt they would rise up and march on Iztal. You must have noticed there is a reluctance among Mexicans, even Yucatecans, to enter Quintana Roo.”
“Yeah, I found that out,” Hooker admitted.
“I thought you might have. I admit that some of the fearsome tales of Quintana Roo may be exaggerated, but others, I assure you, are most horribly true.”
“One thing still puzzles me,” Hooker said. “Even if you collect from the peasants in every village of Yucatan to keep the muerateros away from them, you could hardly have made enough to fix the city up like this. There must be another source of income.”
The eyes of the tall Maya were lost in shadow. His mouth compressed into a thin line. “That is one question too many,” he said.
Holchacán spoke briefly to the guards, who moved in to seize Hooker by the arms. They spun him around and marched him down the length of the throne room and out of the temple.
• • •
Back in the dwelling where he had been briefly housed with Buzz, all the homey touches were gone. No cozy fire in the fire pit, no bubbling pot of savory stew. No Mayan maiden, brown teeth or not, waiting to do his bidding. Despite his situation, Hooker had a momentary regret that he hadn’t at least tried Xita out on something simple.
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