Forsaken

by Michael McBride

  “You’ll have to forgive me for taking so long.” He emerged from the dark corridor into the now dimly lit room. The chiaroscuro on his face exaggerated his exhaustion. “I regret that my time is at a premium right now.”

  Tess didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.

  Roche retreated from the window, but appeared physically unable to turn his back on it.

  “What fail-safes do you have in place?” he asked.

  “The electromagnet on the door is so strong that you couldn’t pull it open with a tank,” Barnett said.

  “And the power to it?”

  “Redundant features on different grids.”

  “What would happen if they all lost power at once?”

  “That can’t happen. We have enough reserve power to outlast any storm—”

  “Unless something happens to those generators. You forget I’ve been here before.”

  “What happened here before was a tragedy, Mr. Roche. I like to think we’ve learned well the lessons—”

  “Where’s the kill switch?”

  “Rest assured, Mr. Roche, there is no way the subject will ever leave that cage unless it does so in a body bag.”

  “We don’t even know for sure that it can be killed.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? We’re dealing with a single organism composed of many. In my experience, it’s survived electrocution, scalding steam, a fall from considerable height, and being tranquilized. You’ll have to forgive me for not taking your word for it.”

  “Be that as it may, you’re just going to have to. I’m not about to give someone with your particular skill set enough information to figure out how to destroy it.”

  “It’s only in there because, for whatever reason, it’s chosen to allow it,” Roche said. “It’s only a matter of time before it finds a way out of there.”

  “Then perhaps we should get right down to business.”

  26

  ANYA

  Teotihuacan

  Small groups remained scattered throughout the park. Soon they would converge upon the exit, where the other tourists were already haggling over the prices of souvenirs and piling back into their vehicles and lining up to board one of the waiting buses. It was only a matter of time before the remaining researchers joined them. If Barnett was right and they were in some kind of danger, then they were running out of time to figure out what was in the maze.

  Evans had gone down half an hour ago, but had made precious little progress. He’d insisted that Anya remain in the trailer, and while she made a grand show of resenting being treated like a child, she was happy enough to watch his feed on the computer monitor with Jade, who’d brewed a pot of overly strong coffee while she was helping Evans into his gear. Assuming that whatever threat was heading their way wouldn’t reveal itself in front of so many witnesses, their plan was to reach the center of the maze before the site cleared out. Failing that, they would join the last wave of the exodus and avoid Barnett’s danger entirely. While they were all more than a little curious, they remembered what happened the last time they let their curiosity get the better of them. If Barnett wanted whatever was down there so badly, he could come and get it himself.

  “How much longer do we have?” Jade asked.

  “Twenty minutes,” Anya said. “Half an hour at the most.”

  “I do not understand why you must do this today,” Villarreal said. “Surely there is no rush.”

  The archeologist had insisted upon joining them when he found out what they were planning to do. At first, Anya thought that maybe he was sticking around for her. Unfortunately, he appeared far more interested in Evans’s progress than anything she was doing.

  “If you have someplace else you need to be . . .” Jade said.

  Villarreal shook his head and scooted his stool closer to Anya’s so he could better see the monitor.

  Evans had already taken several wrong turns, each of which led into a cul-de-sac from which he had to carefully retreat toward the last fork. He’d encountered several other human skeletons either similarly skewered from above or crushed beneath massive stones that had once been fitted into the ceiling.

  “We’re just about out of time, Cade,” Jade said.

  “This is hopeless,” Evans said. “I could be down here another ten hours and still not find my way through.”

  “My best guess is that you’ve covered roughly a quarter of it.”

  “And accomplished nothing.”

  “Give yourself some credit. At least now you know where not to go.”

  “Very funny.”

  “And you haven’t gotten yourself killed yet.”

  “Yet?”

  Anya heard a crackle of static from outside the trailer. One of the security guards walked past the window of the trailer on his way to rounding up the stragglers. Once they were done, the guards would insist upon escorting the remaining researchers to their cars, as well. While it felt like they were way out in the middle of nowhere, they were close enough to Mexico City that they needed to remain vigilant, especially considering the cartels had expanded from drugs to extortion and kidnapping, and Americans were some of their favorite targets.

  “We’re down to fifteen minutes.” She let the curtains close. “If that. We should just call it and get out of here.”

  “Anya says we only have fifteen minutes,” Jade said. “How does it look down there?”

  The image on the screen was grayish-green. The bubbles from Evans’s regulator occasionally burbled through the swirling sediment. His light barely limned the walls. A corridor opened to his right. He turned to get a better look and came face-to-face with a skull that had been speared through the back of the head and out between its eye sockets. The rest of the body lay in a disarticulated heap below it.

  “I think that about wraps it up,” Evans said. “Whatever’s down here is someone else’s problem now.”

  “What do you think this ‘sleeping god’ is?” Villarreal asked.

  “It’s starting to look like we might never know,” Anya said. “I’m not entirely sure that’s such a bad thing, either.”

  A knock on the door startled her.

  Emil opened the door just far enough to stick his head inside.

  “Catch you guys tomorrow,” he said. “Peace out.”

  Anya caught a glimpse of Alexandra and several others with him before he closed the door. Their scuffing footsteps trailed them toward the exit.

  “Can you find your way back out?” Jade asked.

  “I think I can manage,” Evans said.

  “Okay.” Jade set the headset down on the table, stretched her arms over her head, and yawned.

  Anya couldn’t understand how Evans could possibly be attracted to someone like Jade. Not that she wasn’t beautiful, which she totally was. It was just the way she talked to people. She was blunt to the point of bitchiness seemingly every single moment of the day.

  There had been a part of Anya that had really hoped to find something down there, and yet the relief of having not done so overwhelmed her. She wanted nothing more to do with Cameron Barnett or anything even tangentially related to—

  A dull thudding sound from outside. Barely audible. She would have dismissed it as a figment of her imagination had Jade not turned toward the window at the exact same time.

  The curtains fluttered gently on the faint breeze blowing through the open window.

  Anya climbed down from her stool and drew back the drapes.

  The shadows from the surrounding granite temples and black pepper trees stretched across the Avenue of the Dead. There was no sign of whatever had made the sound.

  She let the curtains fall closed again, shrugged for Jade’s benefit, and crossed the room to the examination table where she’d set her backpack. The sooner she was out of there, the sooner she’d be able to relax. She’d allowed Barnett to get inside her head, and the paranoia was eating her alive.

  “You can stay at my place, Ja
de,” she said. “If you want. It’s certainly not the nicest apartment you’ll find, but it serves its purpose.”

  “Thank you,” Jade said. “I appreciate the offer—”

  Thu-thump.

  All three of them turned toward the window as one.

  The faint hiss of static droned lazily in the distance.

  “What is it?” Villarreal asked.

  “I don’t know,” Anya said.

  She set down her bag, opened the door, and stepped out—

  Emil lay facedown in the dirt maybe a hundred feet to her left, his floral-patterned shirt flaring on the wind. Alexandra was crumpled on her side next to him, her face hidden by her long hair. There were two more bodies near the edge of the road, obscured by the weeds where they’d fallen. A uniformed security guard was sprawled at the base of a stone wall twenty feet past them, his walkie-talkie buzzing from beside his outstretched hand.

  Anya slammed the door and grabbed the edge of the nearest table.

  “Help me!”

  “Anya, what’s—?”

  Thump-thump-thump.

  The bullets tore straight through the siding and embedded themselves in the opposite wall.

  Anya screamed and jerked on the table.

  She could still feel the heat of the bullets’ passage on her right ear.

  “What is happening?” Villarreal shouted. He clasped his hands on top of his head and turned first one way, and then the other, as though unable to figure out what to do.

  Jade shoved him aside and helped Anya scoot the table in front of the door, for all the good it would do them. If whoever was out there wanted to get inside badly enough, there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop them.

  Anya caught motion from the corner of her eye. Through the gap beside the blinds. A black figure, moving stealthily toward the door.

  She turned in a circle. There was no other exit. They were trap—

  The front window shattered. Glass skittered across the table and cascaded to the floor.

  Anya screamed and ran to the back of the trailer. Threw open the window. Punched out the screen. Pulled herself up onto the ledge and looked down.

  The sinkhole was maybe four feet down and five feet away.

  A silhouette moved through the shade on the far side of the road. More motion from the left corner of her eye.

  There was no time for debate.

  She jumped down and sprinted for the hole.

  A figure seemingly clothed in the shadows stepped out from the ruins and sighted an assault rifle—

  The ground gave way beneath her and she tumbled into the pit. Landed squarely on her shoulder. Pushed herself to all fours and crawled toward the tunnel.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  Splinters flew from the siding of the trailer.

  She heard screaming as though from a great distance, and then felt someone push her from behind. She glanced back and saw the terror in Jade’s eyes and, behind her, a blur as Villarreal threw himself down into the collapsed street.

  Anya squeezed into the tunnel and scurried as fast as she could. Fell from the narrow opening. Lunged to her feet. Ran squarely into something solid and screamed.

  “What’s wrong?” Evans asked.

  He gripped her by the shoulders and attempted to steady her, but she swatted his arms away and shouted right into his face.

  “Run!”

  27

  BLY

  Uncharted, FOB Atlantis

  Dr. Desmond Bly was roughly a mile away from the base camp, as he thought of it, and currently in no position to turn around, no matter the reason why. The tunnel through which he squirmed felt like a birthing canal. He’d been in tighter places, though. Some of the labyrinthine fissures in Hang had been so narrow he’d been forced to dislocate his own shoulder while barely managing to keep his nose and lips above the water level. Whatever gene caused claustrophobia was simply not present in his DNA. He understood that this lack of fear would ultimately lead him to a horrible end, but he’d long ago come to terms with it. Everyone had to die sometime; better down here doing what he loved than in a hospice somewhere, rotting from the inside out.

  He needed some time away from people so he could think. Finding Berkeley’s body had really gotten to him. It wasn’t just the fact that the guy was dead—after all, he’d seen plenty of corpses through the course of his work, most of them drowned, asphyxiated, or shattered from a fall—it was the condition of his remains. Something had eaten him. There was no other way to describe it. Something had cocooned him inside what looked like a cave swallow’s nest and proceeded to crawl in there with him and consume him.

  He shuddered at the memory and forced himself to think about anything else.

  A cave was like any other living thing. If you paid close enough attention, you could feel it breathe and hear it speak. Bly had always had something of a preternatural connection with the Earth itself, one that helped him sense things that others couldn’t. He didn’t need to be able to see the tunnel ahead of him to know that it would slope gracefully upward for a short time before branching vertically into a chimney. That was just the natural consequence of a steady trickle of water and its erosive properties on calcium carbonate. If he closed his eyes, he could feel the almost imperceptible movement of air and the smooth stone guiding him inexorably toward it.

  The bend was right where he expected it to be and the chimney roughly the height he predicted. He placed one of the mousetraps from the stuff sack tied to his ankle at the base and contorted his body to squeeze his torso inside. It was a matter of minutes to squirm upward through the narrow chute and out into the bottom of a broad well, where once the water dripping from the stalactites overhead had accumulated in a small pool before eating through a weak spot in the limestone, a process that had undoubtedly taken hundreds of thousands of years.

  Only there were no stalactites.

  Bly shined the beam of his headlamp across the bare ceiling. The dagger-like speleothems must have been broken off at their bases and filed down to nothing. They would have eventually re-formed, were it not for the flooding that helped preserve this amazing system, if not the petroglyphs carved into the walls.

  The designs had been scoured nearly smooth by running water and yet, to his trained eye, they might as well have been painted with neon colors. He retrieved a piece of blue chalk from his harness pocket, flattened it against the wall, and rubbed it up and down until the faint impressions became clear. He scooted around the curvature of the cavern, scribbling as he went, until all that was left was a sliver of chalk he needed to hold in reserve in case of an emergency. He returned it to the tiny waterproof pouch and checked to make sure the GoPro live-action sports camera mounted to the bracket on the side of his helmet was actively recording. He slowly turned his head to make sure the camera captured every inch of the design.

  He’d never seen anything quite like it. The majority of cave art, at least from his extensive experience, was rudimentary and stemmed from the Paleolithic Period, when man first developed stone tools. It told simple stories of the hunt or memorialized sacred iconography with little artistic flair. These, however, were extraordinary and elaborate. They were like the petroglyphs throughout the ruins surrounding the pyramid, so intricate in their sculpting that he could almost imagine the three-dimensional characters as they’d once been. He’d heard them described as a cross between the styles of ancient Egypt and Sumer, which seemed fairly accurate to him. There were men in robes with stylized beards and conical hats. Others had bare chests and legs and the heads of animals. Some were giant and others small. Most wielded weapons, while others merely sat or looked to the sky. The designs surrounding the figures were largely unrecognizable, although they reminded him of the religious iconography he’d seen in the Himalayas.

  If the panels told a story, it was lost on him.

  Bly came to rest on the final image, which featured two bearded men, one standing to either side of a rectangle, inside of which was a
third, taller man with his arms crossed over his chest. He wished he had more chalk to bring out the other, largely invisible petroglyphs, but the researchers were just going to have to make do with what he could give them. He swept the camera across the remaining walls for the sake of documentation. Maybe they’d be able to glean the designs from the LiDar scan.

  He removed the laser scanner from his stuff sack and set it up in the middle of the chamber. The pinwheel laser started to spin as he moved deeper into the cavern, where a series of flowstone steps ascended to an opening in the wall, through which he could see a space of indeterminate size. He climbed up and perched on the highest ledge. A tunnel stretched away from him into the distance. Unlike the others, the walls had been artificially smoothed, although the petroglyphs adorning them were no better preserved. He traced them with his fingertips as he walked down the manmade corridor.

  If he was correct, he was approximately thirteen meters above the ice caves. It seemed strange that anyone would invest so much time and effort into creating such an elaborate sanctuary that no one, outside of skilled spelunkers like him, would ever see.

  The passage veered sharply to the left and terminated at a keyhole crevice. His light revealed an igloo-like space on the other side, the walls of which were similarly covered with weathered petroglyphs, but it was the massive granite box in the center that drew his eye.

  He’d easily explored ten miles of tunnels and caverns inside this mountain, but never once found anything remotely like this. It was easily eight feet long, wider than the entrance, and shaped like a coffin. He couldn’t even figure out how they’d gotten it into the small cavern in the first place. The only other ingresses were a slender fissure on the opposite side and a chimney in the domed roof.

  He approached it at a crouch so as not to hit his head and smoothed his palms over the rectangular box. A four-inch-thick slab of granite served as the lid. The characters carved into it were similarly smoothed. Using the last of his chalk went against everything he knew about spelunking, but his curiosity got the better of him. He removed the remaining nub and rubbed it gently over the lid, barely pressing down so as to make what little he had left last. When it was gone, he used his fingertips to spread the blue dust to the edges.