“I don’t understand. Why did the Zapatistas stop fighting if you had the power of the Talking Cross among you all this time?”
“Simple. We took a lesson from the Cruzob. When they discovered that they could not defeat their oppressive landlords and an ignorant caste system, they wisely turned their focus to their own preservation. Their decision was echoed throughout most Maya groups across Mexico. Just like those who suffered in the days of the conquest, a silent movement was created to preserve Mayan heritage. But instead of creating sacred books, the Cruzob focused on the irreplaceable relics left behind by their ancestors. Thirteen different groups joined the cargo alliance commissioned with gathering their last sacred objects and accumulated them into one safehouse, this room. But they left clues to its location, clues they thought only the Maya people could decipher.”
Chac casually traced a finger over the relief carving adorning the lid of a large stone box. Father Ruiz recognized it as the one-of-a-kind volcanic stone vessel stolen from a cave in Guatemala six years ago. Its theft had made national headlines and was presumed to have been lost to the black market. Chac’s face fell as his eyes blankly inspected the artifact.
“This place has been the single biggest secret in all of Maya history—that is, until the Zapatista war-lord leaked its existence to Abdullah in his desperate attempt to finance the revolution. When Abdullah continued to hang around after the revolution simmered down, we tried fooling him with a date in which the calendar and cross would function. Someone jokingly suggested the end of the world, so December 21, 2012 was chosen. In 1994, that date seemed far enough into the future for Abdullah to forget. We grossly underestimated his patience and persistence. When we did finally realize just how far we’d come to jeopardizing everything the Cruzob had protected, we decided that our remaining resources would be better spent protecting what we still had, not what we didn’t.
“With some of Abdullah’s own money we took extreme measures to ensure he would never find this room. Since he already believed there was power in an original Long Count Calendar, we built the decoy wheel and incorporated the decoy cross that the Cruzob surrendered. We also made this place far more secure. The Cruzob originally locked the Calendar Room using a combination pillar but as you saw outside, we replaced the pillar with a more sophisticated security system.”
“What happened to the pillar?”
“We engineered it into the decoy calendar wheel.”
“Sounds like a lot of trouble to go through to hide your secrets from one man.”
Chac gave the Guatemalan vessel a parting tap with his finger. “That’s the price we’ve paid for trying to gain by deception. But by tomorrow, none of it will matter anymore.”
Father Ruiz shook his head. “You hypocrite!” he said. “Here all this time you complained about the misinterpretations of 2012 and yet, you manipulated the Long Count Calendar’s end date yourself.”
“Is our use of the date any worse than the rest of the world’s use to doom themselves?” Chac asked. “We just never thought Abdullah would get past the decoys. Now I’m not so sure.”
“But Abe seems to be taking the bait. Why did you bring me here if he’s busy tinkering with your decoy calendar? Aren’t you afraid someone may have followed us?”
Chac sighed heavily. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take. It’s a gamble. For Peet’s sake, it’s a gamble.”
Chamber
“What’s going on?” Lori demanded above the echoing gunfire now drowning the low hum inside the chamber. “Why isn’t the wheel spinning?”
Peet double-checked the pillar ball. It was well seated onto the pillar. So why wasn’t it doing anything? He spun the ball clockwise once more. Still nothing.
He swallowed hard. It was time to make a desperate move. With Lori no longer tied to the pillar he just might be able to pull her around to the other side before Abe and his men could fire off a shot. It would be risky, but then what? They could dive into the pool and swim to the other side but it wouldn’t take long for Abe to catch up. It’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. Then again, if there might be some sort of underwater outlet…
“Wait!”
Peet jumped at the sound of Lori’s voice. Given the intensity of the gunfight outside and the obvious impatience of Abe’s anxious pacing, his nerves were on edge.
“Spin the ball again,” Lori said.
“It isn’t working,” Peet protested.
“Just spin it.”
Peet turned the pillar ball one more time with no result.
“The clicking,” Lori said. “Don’t you hear the clicking?”
Peet lowered an ear to the pillar and spun the ball one more time. Sure enough, just as the ball completed its full rotation there was a slow click.
“It is doing something,” Lori announced. “Keep spinning it!”
Peet needed no further prompting. His hands began furiously working over the ball, spinning it atop the pillar and listening to the clicks as it rotated. The ball spun and spun until he was nearly convinced there was nothing to them, and that’s when the ball jammed to a stop.
A loud, earthen rumble trembled the chamber and the calendar wheel they were standing on.
“Look!” Lori exclaimed. A massive slab door fell from the ceiling of the tunnel entrance, sealing them in.
“Oh my God!” Lori gasped. “That was our only way out of here!”
For a brief moment the chamber was shocked into silence. The thunder of the slab slamming to the chamber floor seemed to rattle the very air inside before dissipating into the stone walls. The noise from the fighting outside was suddenly blocked out while Abe and his surprised men found themselves suddenly locked in.
“Open that door!” Abe roared from his position near the Calendar Deity. “I’ve got a bead on Lori’s head.”
It only took a glance to see that Abe wasn’t kidding around. He was indeed sighting through a rifle he must have torn from one of his men’s hands, and the gun was aimed directly at Lori.
Peet quickly spun the pillar ball counter-clockwise, his hands working frantically over the stone as it clicked with each rotation. Finally, it jammed to another stop and just as it did the constant humming they’d all but come to ignore by now, suddenly changed pitch.
“Maybe it’s gearing up to lift that door,” Lori offered hopefully.
“No,” Peet said slowly. “We’re moving.”
* * * *
Abe’s finger was on the trigger ready to pull when he felt something brush against his thigh. Without lowering the rifle from his shoulder he quickly glanced down to find a date symbol etched into the rim of the wheel inch by.
The Calendar was in motion!
That scientist knew what he was doing after all! Suddenly forgetting about the tunnel door and the mujahedin fighting off the Zapatistas outside, Abe finally handed the rifle back to Sonjay and anxiously watched the date symbols creep ever so slowly by. He quickly recognized a pattern to them and anxiously calculated the symbol for the thirteenth Baktun to arrive in alignment with the next giant wheel spoke.
He waited and watched as the anticipated spoke painstakingly swung toward him. The moment he’d been waiting for was taking its sweet time getting there, but it was on its way nonetheless. As hard as he tried, Abe couldn’t lick the smile from his lips. All the expense, all the work, all those years—it was all about to pay off.
The thirteenth Baktun was coming.
It was within reach.
It was right there in front of him!
The giant wooden arm came with the day’s correct sign, just as he expected, but it didn’t stop. It spun right by without slowing. In fact, the wheel seemed to be speeding up!
Abe reached out to stop it, to set the calendar on its correct date, but despite its tiresome pace, there was no stopping the enormous wheel. Grabbing onto it was like trying to stop time itself—the calendar just kept spinning onward.
“Stop the wheel!” Abe howled, exchanging the FN Sca
r for his Sig Sauer. “Stop the wheel or the girl dies!”
Lori was no longer facing him directly from her position against the pillar. The wheel had spun her a few degrees, but she was still within his line of sight. It wouldn’t be difficult placing a bullet through that pretty little head of hers, and the scientist had to know that. With satisfaction, Abe watched as Peet resumed work on the pillar ball behind her.
“Stop the calendar NOW!”
The wheel continued to gain momentum. The chamber now hummed with the whir of machination. That’s when Abe noticed the date carvings had disappeared. The massive wheel was still moving slow enough for the eye to catch each passing symbol, but to Abe’s astonishment, there were no more symbols to see. The wheel was incomplete! And that’s when it hit him.
The calendar was a trap!
“Chac, you son-of-a-bitch!” he bit between his teeth. No wonder the Mayan refused to enter the cave.
How could Abe not have seen this coming?
Furious, he aimed his pistol at the wheel’s hub. The pillar. Lori had not yet revolved out of harm’s way.
“Open fire!” he barked.
Abe pulled the trigger and a volley of rifle fire immediately followed.
Eschaton
Lori flew around to the backside of the pillar, aided tremendously by Peet who had grabbed her and pulled her around the stone just as Abe and his men open fired. Together, they huddled behind the pillar as bullets zinged around them, ricocheting off the pillar and plunking into the water. Meanwhile the wheel continued to turn.
“We’re as good as dead,” Peet growled as he ducked beneath a spray of bullet-shorn rock. “Even if there is a way to swim out of here, they’re going to shoot us before we ever find it.”
“Maybe not,” Lori said. “There may still be another way out.”
Peet shot her an incredulous look. “You know something I don’t?”
“The pillar—it’s a combination. I’ve been counting the clicks each time you spin the ball. There were twenty clicks that closed the tunnel door. It took eighteen clicks to start the wheel in motion and the next twenty clicks sped it up. Do you recognize a pattern here?”
Peet thought a moment. “The Long Count is the combination,” he said.
“Exactly!”
Lori knew he’d catch on. There were twenty Kins to a Uinal, eighteen Uinals to a Tun, twenty Tuns to a Katun, twenty Katuns to a Baktun and thirteen Baktuns completed the Long Count cycle.
“We still have to spin for the Katun and Baktun combinations,” she said. “Perhaps one of them will trigger another door.”
She waited as Peet considered. He didn’t take very long. “I guess we don’t have many options,” he said. He peered over the pillar. A bullet zinged just past his ear and he ducked back down again. Keeping his head low, he grabbed onto the pillar ball. “I sure hope you’re right because they’re coming after us.”
“What?” Lori gasped. “While the wheel is still moving?”
She peeked around the pillar to confirm Peet’s worry. Both of Abe’s men had climbed onto the wooden wheel. With more balance than Lori would have given them credit for, the men were halfway down a spoke beam and fast approaching the pillar. But it was Tarah that worried her the most. She chose the long way, following the outer rim to get around to the pillar’s backside.
The side Peet and Lori now hid.
Peet spun the pillar ball. Those twenty clicks couldn’t count down fast enough as Lori watched the men slip into position. The ball stopped on the last click, triggering the wheel mechanism into high gear. With a jolt, the wheel suddenly picked up speed.
The first man on the spoke was caught off guard by the sudden shift and clumsily fell a mere foot away from the waterline. It didn’t matter. With only inches between the wheel and the ground, the man hit the earth just as the very spoke beam he’d been walking on slammed into him and swept him unconsciously into the water. His body skidded along the surface until the water was deep enough for him to sink beneath the beam. When he popped up again, it was only to meet the next spoke beam that chopped him back down again.
The second man had managed to stay on the spoke, but the sudden change in the wheel’s momentum had forced him to cling to the beam on all fours, effectively stopping his advancement. Tarah however, appeared undisturbed by the speed. Like a cat she continued to round the wheel’s great rim.
A pistol shot whizzed overhead, reminding Lori and Peet that the wheel had spun them back into Abe’s line of sight. With Peet’s goading, Lori shifted around the pillar, but the stone couldn’t shield them much longer. If they continued to shift with the wheel’s movements, they’d eventually align themselves with the man riding the spoke arm. He’d already pulled himself up to straddle the beam, careful to keep his legs from dropping into the water, preparing for his shot.
But again, it was Tarah that posed the more immediate threat. With each shift to keep the pillar between them and Abe, Tarah’s trip around the rim was shortened tremendously. And with the wheel continuously speeding up, it wouldn’t be long before they would be in her line of sight.
“Spin the ball again!” Lori yelled above the pillar’s whining engine. She needn’t have bothered for Peet was already counting off the last thirteen clicks of the ball.
Lori shifted behind the pillar again. This had to work. There had to be another door. The wheel was spinning at a dizzy speed and still gaining. The momentum of the spoke beams began to kick up a spray of water as they flew only inches above the surface and Tarah was now in line for a shot.
It couldn’t get any worse than this.
Lori cringed as Tarah stopped, securing her balance as she lifted her pistol. The pillar ball clicked to its final stop and a door did suddenly open. But it wasn’t an escape hatch. It was a flood gate, high above the broken waterwheel where the spring trickled out of the rock. As the gate opened, the trickling spring grew into a roaring river—a deafening waterfall. A watery death trap.
Lori’s heart caught in her throat.
The worst was yet to come.
Inertia
The pillar was all but useless. The pillar ball was jammed tight with no more combinations to complete. Peet yanked Lori out of Tarah’s line of sight but a quick shot from Abe’s Sig Sauer warned him that he was now exposed to a different danger. There was nowhere to hide. There was no time to hide.
“Lori! Run for the beam!” he yelled, pushing her as he rose.
Lori didn’t hesitate. With hands still cuffed behind her back, she ran onto a spoke beam with Peet hot on her heals. Keeping up with the wheel’s inertia was tricky enough, but holding Lori’s balance while maintaining his own was infinitely more challenging.
Tarah shot just as Abe did. Peet felt the heat of one of the bullets as it clipped his thigh. He faltered, nearly losing his balance and throwing Lori off the beam. He grabbed her hips and together they fell forward, just enough ahead of the sweeping beam to land squarely on it.
Lori groaned beneath him as he held her to the beam. Water sprayed into their faces and that’s when Peet realized the water level had risen by the sudden influx from the spring. What had been three or four inches of breathing space between the thrashing surface of the water and the whipping wheel was now reduced to one or two inches. No breathing room at all.
Tarah and Abe were now openly firing at them. Peet felt another bullet slam into his shoulder. They were a harder target lying there on the beam, but it would only be a matter of seconds before they swung over the ground again—right to Abe’s advantage.
They were sitting ducks.
Peet had no choice. “Deep breath, Lori!” he yelled.
He felt her inhale just beneath his chest and with that, he pulled her off the beam.
Peet used his weight to pull them deep under water before they could begin their frantic kick beneath the cyclonic wheel. He held tight to Lori’s arm, pulling her along as she kicked with all her might. And then she broke free. Whether from the lubricating
water or sheer will, or both, Lori slipped a hand free from the cuffs and was swimming through the darkness beside him. Peet couldn’t see her, but he felt her, stroke for stroke, pulling through the water.
With their buoyancy threatening to lift them toward the chopping wheel, they swam for the darkest end of the pool. Random bullets sliced the water around them as Tarah swung somewhere overhead, and then they quit. Still, they continued to pull and kick their way through the darkness. Peet’s lungs began to burn. He didn’t know how much longer he could stay under. That’s when he realized there was less thrash on the water’s surface above.
That’s when he realized Lori was no longer with him.
Peet cautiously broke the surface, nose first for air. There was no spray, no whipping wooden beams. He finally rose safely to tread water. The outer rim of the wheel was churning two feet away but at least he was out from under it. And so was Lori, gasping and panting as she pulled herself through the water toward him.
“Where to…now?” she sputtered.
Peet glanced around to find the chamber wall less than a yard away. There was nowhere else to go and if Tarah was still riding the rim of the wheel, she’d soon swing back around.
The wheel was screaming at a high pitch now, its speed was out of control. At first he found consolation in the fact that Tarah would hardly get a shot off before being whipped back around again, but he didn’t want to take the chance that she wouldn’t get a lucky shot. With any luck at all, the speed of the wheel would have flung her off by now.
But again, he didn’t want to take that chance.
“Do you hear that?” Lori asked.
“Hear what?”
Lori’s face had fallen deathly serious. “That low rumble. It sounds like it’s on the other side of that wall.”
Peet listened. Just beneath the whining, whipping wheel he could hear something. It was a strange sound. Almost a growling sound.
“Dr. Peet,” Lori said. “The water is a lot warmer here.”
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