Burial Ground

by Michael McBride

  The jungle dictated his wending course, turning him this way and that, around massive trunks and through screens of shrubbery. Mosquitoes sang around his head in the absence of birdsong and the chatter of monkeys. Now that he truly thought about it, with the exception of the stinging cloud that escorted him through the foliage and the din of flies off to his right, there didn't seem to be any animals in the vicinity. That observation did little to settle his rising unease.

  He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had already passed. Time to start working back toward the camp.

  Veering back to the south, he wound through a maze of trees and vines, ducking, climbing, crawling. The drone of flies grew louder with each step. He must be closer to the clearing than he thought, or perhaps the forest had steered him toward it. Either way, it meant that his navigational instincts were off, which unsettled him even more. As he closed in on the buzzing sound, he realized that his instincts hadn't failed him. The trees were all wrong. Even coming in from the opposite direction, he would have recognized them.

  He willed his heart rate to slow, and softened his tread on the damp leaves and kindling. The darkness shifted through the branches of a ceiba tree ahead. He raised his flashlight beam toward the gaps between the leaves. Thousands of bloated flies roiled and buzzed beyond. The smell wasn't as atrocious as it had been in the clearing they had stumbled upon earlier, but it wasn't a naturally recurring scent either. It was the damp reek of the inside of something never meant to be opened, tainted by the scents of freshly chopped meat and bowels.

  Colton eased through the branches and steeled himself against the sight. Arcs of black blood covered a cluster of tree trunks. Several heliconia bushes had been ripped from the disheveled ground and shredded amid tatters of clothing. He identified the rifle in the dirt first, for it was the one object not covered with insects. An FN-SCAR-L/ Mk. 16. Disarticulated remains were spread through the underbrush, seething with black flies. Even the backpack was covered with insects trying to draw blood from the fabric.

  Breathing fast, he retreated from what was left of Rippeth, and hurried back toward the lake. The unobstructed shore would be the fastest route back to camp.

  He pressed the transmitter button on his communications device and prepared to speak into the microphone, and then thought better of it. What would happen if he called for backup? The other men would come running, but what would be the consequences to the expedition if they found their brother-in-arms butchered in such a ghastly fashion? He had to determine how to proceed very carefully. They couldn't afford to scrap their plans now. Too much money had been advanced, too many man-hours expended. And he would not tolerate failure, especially with the potential payoff being so enormous. This one mission could provide him with enough cash to finance a luxurious retirement.

  But the first order of business was saving his own skin. Lord only knew what kind of creatures could butcher a heavily-armed soldier without allowing him to squeeze off a shot. That SCAR fired six-hundred rounds per minute. A gentle tap of the trigger, just the slightest application of pressure, would have easily expelled several rounds. And he hadn't heard a single report.

  He stumbled out of the trees and nearly fell into the lake before regaining his balance and sprinting through the mud toward the camp. Webber and Sorenson were already waiting beside the fire, watching him approach. Morton appeared from the far side of the tents at the same time.

  Colton slowed his pace and struggled to regain his composure. He slid his pistol back under his waistband and clenched his hands into fists, willing his heart to slow. How was he going to handle this?

  "Report," he said, and sat on the log they had rolled over beside the campfire.

  "No sign of Rippeth," Sorenson said.

  "Not a single fresh track," Webber added.

  "Nothing in the jungle," Morton said. "And the path has too many sets of footprints already to tell if there was a recent set headed in the opposite direction."

  Colton studied their faces. They appeared less certain that their comrade hadn't abandoned them now.

  He thought of how savagely Rippeth had been torn apart. Even if he did say something, would it guarantee their safe return to Pomacochas? Rippeth had been alone, perhaps an eighth of a mile from anyone else. Whatever attacked him had chosen to isolate him in the bush rather than in the camp itself, where even more prey slept unaware. Perhaps safety was in numbers. If that was the case, then what would sharing the details change?

  "I think we need to face the grim truth," Colton said. "Rippeth deserted us, and we must proceed. With or without him."

  II

  8:08 a.m.

  The mood when Galen awakened was somber. One of the men, who no longer maintained the pretense of simple hired excavation help, had abandoned them during the night. The man with the dragon tattoo on his neck had made him uncomfortable, but he looked like the kind of man one would want to have beside him when one's life was on the line. Those that remained were grumpy and impatient. Their red eyes and the bags beneath them suggested that the previous night hadn't been remotely restful. They didn't chat amongst themselves as usual, and pressed the group harder to reach its goal, which contributed to Galen's overall sour disposition. After being awakened well before the designated hour and forced to pack at an absurd rate, the morning had started out poorly. Add the fact that he'd been denied even the comfort of a single cup of coffee filled with floating grounds, and the day was already shot.

  They had passed around the far shore of the lake under the light of the moon, and witnessed the sunrise as a weak dilution of the shadows beneath the canopy as they continued to the west into the jungle. Where the bottom of the valley met the steep slope of a mountain, they had encountered a thin path that switchbacked up toward the low-lying clouds. It was barely wide enough to scale single-file, and seemed to only service whatever animals used it to reach the lake from the high country. Often it grew steep enough that they were forced to crawl, using the roots that poked out of the hillside for leverage. At those points, it took four men to haul the crate of sensing equipment.

  He was amazed that so many trees could grow so densely on the nearly vertical hillside, especially where the side of the path occasionally turned into a pitfall over the treetops far below. Such moments granted stunning views of the shimmering lake way down in the valley, a small mirror set into an infinite forest of green. Even from this vantage, he could barely see the blue pinpoint of Laguna Pomacochas on the horizon and the linear depression in the trees where the river that had brought them to the foot of the Andes flowed. The fortress they had been steered through the day before was invisible from above. Even knowing where to look didn't help. It was no wonder the tribe had avoided discovery until now.

  They took frequent breaks wherever the trail was wide enough to allow them to gather and pass around one of the water bladders. Conversation had been limited to heavy breathing as they acclimated to the exertion at the increasingly higher altitudes. Dahlia and Jay had seized every opportunity to capture the panoramic view since they were unable to film while they climbed. Leo and Colton had begun to consult the map more and more often, and agreed that they needed to be on the southeastern face of the peak on the other side of the one they currently ascended. Already they had encountered two tree trunks marked with Hunter Gearhardt's initials and the date he had carved them, which caused Leo to shorten their breaks and drive them ever faster.

  At the end of an especially challenging section of the trail, the world fell away to the right. He stood on a sheer limestone cliff, shaded by the omnipresent ceiba trees, and finally saw what he had come here to see. A large nest constructed from broken sticks had been built onto a ledge below, from which the gnarled remains of dead, gray trees protruded. Bluish dots spotted the feather- and down-lined nest, remnants of the Andean condor eggs that had hatched there through the seasons.

  Galen felt a swell of hope. If these raptors could successfully procreate in the wild, then surely there was a
chance that the California condor could return to its former glory. He wondered what might happen if some of their captive-bred juveniles were to be released somewhere like this. The problem was they weren't producing hatchlings in large enough numbers to experiment with their lives. Perhaps someday...

  Movement caught his eye from hundreds of feet below. Two condors, perhaps the owners of the nest, circled the jungle, easily identifiable by their black bodies and staggering wingspans, and, of course, by the white rings of feathers around their bald heads.

  Galen smiled. They weren't members of the mysterious species he had come to find, but just seeing them in their natural habitat, doing what vultures do, did his heart good. Even after all of the tribulations they had endured up until now, this one sight made it worth it.

  He watched them a while longer as they continued to whirl around the same section of trees before they finally dropped down into the canopy and vanished from sight. What kind of carcass awaited them? In the process of speculating, he realized he hadn't seen any animals other than the ducks far out in the center of the lake. There had been no mammalian presence. He hadn't even seen a single rodent. And the cluster of trees wasn't far from the edge of the lake, or from their campsite. Had the condors returned to the clearing where they had found all of those alpaca bones? It seemed unlikely. He had only performed a cursory inspection of the site because of the god-awful stench, but there hadn't appeared to be enough meat on any of the bones to warrant a condor's attention. And wasn't that clearing farther to the east? He shrugged. It was a question he'd be able to investigate on the return trip. Something must have died or been killed during the night. Condors weren't that picky when it came to scavenging, regardless of how old the remains might be.

  The others started their upward trek once more. There was only one more thing he needed to do before he joined them. He could always catch up if he fell behind.

  Galen turned back to the forest and snapped a long, slender branch off of the nearest tree. He stripped the leaves and scoured the trunk until he found what he was looking for. A crust of amber had formed over a wound in the bark. He chiseled it away until fresh sap bled through, then dabbed the end of the stick into the syrupy sludge. Once he had a suitable gob, he returned to the cliff and sprawled flat on his belly at the precipice. Holding the stick in his right hand, he extended it down toward the nest. It swung from side to side just over the haphazardly assembled wooden bowl.

  Just a little farther.

  He scooted closer to the edge until his entire shoulder hung over the abyss, and stretched his arm downward. The tip of the stick grazed the feathers in the nest. He retracted it just enough to confirm that several feathers were stuck to the sap. Excellent. They would make for fine comparisons to the ones he already had in his pocket. It would be a good launching point for his study into whether or not the iridescent green and brown feathers had developed as a new morph or as an evolutionary offshoot of the Andean condor.

  Pleased with his own ingenuity, he pulled his arm back up. With a crack, the rock ledge broke beneath him. Fragments of andesite fell away and landed in the nest. His whole body canted to the right, toward the nothingness below.

  "Oh, God."

  He felt gravity pull at his body and grabbed for anything to hold onto with his left hand. More pebbles skittered out from under him and tumbled down the stone face.

  His body began to slide and his stomach lurched with the inevitability of what was about to happen. He raced through the various scenarios in his mind, all of which ended with his broken body tangled in the canopy or splattered on the forest floor.

  The skin on the fingertips of his left hand tore as he clawed at the smooth stone.

  Galen could feel his inertia building. He was going over the ledge and there was nothing he could do about it.

  He would know how it felt to be a condor in the moments of freefall before he was impaled on the branches.

  "Please," he whimpered. He cried out as the right half of his chest slid over the edge. "Don't let me die."

  A hand grabbed his belt, another the back of his shirt.

  "Quit being so melodramatic," a voice said. With a sound tug, Galen was hauled back onto the path and away from the cliff.

  Breathing hard, heart racing, Galen leapt to his feet and embraced his savior. His legs trembled so badly he could hardly stand on his own.

  "That's about enough of that," Merritt said. He extricated himself from the embrace and dabbed his fingers at the back of his neck. "Ugh. What did you wipe on me?"

  Galen realized he was still holding the stick. He had pressed the sappy end against the man's neck.

  "I'm sorry," he said, but Merritt had already turned to follow the others. Galen called after him. "You saved my life. Thank you!"

  Merritt gave a slight wave of acknowledgment over his shoulder.

  Galen struck off after him, pulling the feathers from the sap as he walked. He didn't want to be left behind again. What would have happened if Merritt hadn't grabbed him when he had? The image of his rag-doll form plummeting through the sky nearly caused his knees to buckle.

  Jesus Christ. He should have been dead. Merritt may have shrugged it off as no big deal, but it was a big deal to Galen.

  He hurried back into line behind Dahlia and reached into the breast pocket of his vest with trembling fingers, withdrew one of the feathers, and compared it to one of the remiges from the condor's nest.

  It didn't appear possible that they were, or had even once been, the same species.

  The β-keratin fibers of the iridescent barbs were better aligned toward the center than to the outside, where they appeared slightly frayed, while those of the Andean condor feather were uniformly aligned. He blew on the greenish feather and the barbs flared subtly apart. He did the same thing to the condor feather, but the tips of the barbs remained fixed together by the barbules and barbicels. How had he not noticed this before? The feathers were nearly identical in structure and shape on a macroscopic level. If he hadn't been so excited by the prospect of finding and identifying a new species, he would have recognized it before now.

  Somewhere out there was a raptor that no one had ever classified.

  Only if he was right, this one couldn't fly.

  III

  10:50 a.m.

  Over the course of the last hour, the temperature had dropped nearly ten degrees, while the humidity had steadily increased. The air grew thinner as they climbed toward the ceiling of clouds that hid the peak above. Perhaps it was only by degree, but the forest didn't appear as dense as it once had. They had only been walking for six hours now, and yet it felt as though days had passed since they broke camp.

  Merritt shrugged the backpack up onto his shoulders. He was sure that it magically grew heavier with each step. He couldn't remember whose bag he carried, but the way the men struggled with the monstrous crate on the narrow, steep path, he figured it was the least he could do. Better this than being the downhill man bearing the brunt of the crate's weight.

  A faint breeze penetrated the canopy as the trail wound around the northern slope of the mountain. He welcomed the cool movement of air across the skin beneath his clothes. The distant rumble of a waterfall filtered through the trees, in the upper reaches of which he could see wisps of white, a sight that set him momentarily at ease. He thought of his plane and the feeling of preparing to ascend into the thick cloud banks, where he would be flying blind, completely isolated from his worldly cares.

  The birdman trailed him, scrutinizing a pair of feathers as he stumbled uphill. If the man thanked him for saving his life one more time, Merritt was going to throw him over the next cliff himself. The guy had barely been leaning over the edge, but the way he told it, he made it sound like he'd been dangling by a single fingertip. Whatever. At least the feathers kept him occupied for the time being.

  Sam trudged ahead of him, eyeing everything they passed as though searching for something specific. He admired her passion, and wished that t
here was something in his life that mattered as much to him.

  Her scent trailed on the breeze. He inhaled deeply. She smelled of mint and dragon fruit with an undercurrent of sweat. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, which showcased her slender neck. He imagined how it might feel to press his lips to the gentle curve under the collar of her flannel shirt...

  She glanced over her shoulder and caught him staring. He offered a smile, which she returned easily enough. At least she hadn't turned around a minute ago when he'd been mesmerized by her swishing hips in those khaki shorts.

  Sam faced ahead again as they wound around the northern slope. The ground fell away to the right to the point that they could have stepped from the path onto the treetops. To the left, the mountain became a vertical embankment covered in vines and lianas. The path appeared to narrow to a mere foot wide. It was hard to tell with the way the vines covered it and spilled over the edge in a cascade of flowering emerald ropes.

  Colton and Leo were already scooting slowly out onto the thin ledge, testing their footing on the uneven ground while maintaining what little distance they could from the drop into the valley far below.

  Sam stopped in her tracks directly ahead of him. He was about to ask if she was all right when he noticed the barely perceptible movement that had captured her interest.

  The breeze ruffled the curtain of vines, behind which he saw deep shadows, not a smooth sheet of stone.

  Sam eased forward and reached out with her left arm. Her hand passed through the deceptive screen. She glanced back at him with a glint in her eyes, smiled, then stepped from the path and vanished through the cascade of green.