At first I tried to aim at the Morcego without hitting Angelica, but with the first burst of fire the smoke veiled the beams of our flashlights so that I could no longer distinguish one figure from the other.
And besides I realized the doctor was already dead.
When the MP5 hammer stopped working, I reached for my pocket to get out a second magazine. I was ready to keep on shooting until that monster was dead.
But as I was putting the gun to my face to take aim again, Professor Castillo took my arm. “He’s not there any more, Ulysses!” he shouted over the din. “He’s gone!”
It took me a second to grasp what my old friend meant. Then I tried to make out the black silhouette of the Morcego through the cloud of smoke.
There was nothing there.
“Hold your fire!” I yelled at the archeologists, who were still shooting beside me. “Hold your fire!”
It took a moment before they too realized they were shooting at nothing.
Still aiming, while the curtain of smoke evaporated, they kept their eyes fixed on the spot where the Morcego had been.
Five seconds went by.
Ten.
The white beams of our flashlights pierced the space that separated us from the exit and showed us only the irregular contours of the stone walls.
The Morcego had vanished.
I was sure I had wounded him, but somehow he had managed to escape. Once again we were alone.
And he had taken Angelica’s body with him.
“Oh, no…” I heard Cassie mutter. “Oh, no…”
“It is not… possible…” Claudio said with trembling voice. He could not believe his own eyes. “Angelica…”
I had no words. Thoughts kept tumbling through my brain, but not a word could get past my mouth.
A great puddle of blood and a ghastly streak that trailed away in the darkness of the passage was all that was left of Angelica.
No, there was nothing to say.
This time it was Valeria who finally found the right thing to say. “Let’s get out of here! Let’s get the hell out of here, now!”
The flashlights were clearly not strong enough to scare those creatures, so we each lit a flare so as to illuminate every corner of the cavern.
Then, in response to that outburst of red light, we began to hear snarls and angry snorting from of all those caves around the perimeter.
Black, deformed heads began to appear at the entrance of the stone dwellings. Although they might have been there the whole time, and we had simply not seen them till now.
It was impossible to calculate the number of Morcegos that might be living in those niches, but I was sure of one thing: there were lots of them, and they were angry.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to Cassie as if I were afraid that the Morcegos could understand. “You go ahead, with Claudio. I’ll stay behind and cover our rear.”
“Be careful.” There was worry in her eyes.
“Don’t worry.” I winked at her, feigning a confidence I was far from feeling.
The professor was holding onto his daughter’s shoulders. Although she could walk, there was a certain weakness in his own legs. It was as if once he had found his daughter, his strength had left him all of a sudden.
“Come on, Doc,” I urged him under my breath. “Don’t stop. But walk slowly.”
“Slowly?” he asked, surprised. “Why?”
“If we start running they’ll all jump on us, like all animals do. Let’s keep close and calm.” I looked at Cassie out of the corner of my eye. “If they start to sense we’re afraid, they’ll tear us apart.”
When Valeria passed me, following Cassandra and Claudio, she gave me a sidelong look and shook her head almost imperceptibly. Wordlessly, she had expressed just what I was thinking. No matter what we did, the cards of our fate had been dealt.
Step by step, we walked deeper into the passage we had entered by. Cassie and Claudio went at the front, sweeping their flashlights around, while I did the same at the rear. I held a flare in my left hand, and in my right I carried the submachine gun ready for use.
We were nothing more than a great patch of red light threading that neverending underground tunnel like cavemen. A fragile bubble of light in that absolute darkness, a tiny flame illuminating hell.
The Menkragnoti were right after all, I thought. We could hardly claim we had not been warned. That place was hell, right enough.
The guttural sounds coming from the cavern we were leaving behind us were growing louder and angrier.
The snarls had turned into growls, and the snorting into roars which were rapidly approaching. Just as if they were driving us.
“Is it much further?” I asked impatiently. I did not dare look forward.
“We’re nearly there,” Cassie said. “Right behind this corn… Shit!”
“What’s up?”
Long silence.
Fast breathing.
“They’re here…” she hissed, as if she had just found a viper snoozing in her bed.
“Who is?”
“All of them, Ulysses,” she said. Her voice was no more than a thread. “They’re all here.”
What minutes before had been a great cavern, occupied only by a colossal statue and its shroud of human remains, was now teeming with Morcegos, with their long claws and sharp fangs.
Panting.
Snorting.
Snarling.
Radiating contained violence.
They were expectant, like a horde of hyenas about to lunge at a defenseless prey, knowing there is no way it can escape.
They formed a shapeless mass of greasy black bodies, illuminated by the light of the flares. They might have been an army of shadows, with only the eyes standing out: bloodshot and filled with fury.
I remembered the indigenous legends which described them as demons, and thought how accurate that description was.
Those beings from hell studied us with the same interest a wolf might show in a lamb.
The only thing that was keeping us from death was the light of the flares and flashlights which held them at a distance. And those flares, by the way, were beginning to die out, slowly but inexorably.
“For all the saints in heaven…” the professor murmured. “There are hundreds of them… maybe thousands.”
“How can there be so many?” Claudio whispered. “I never thought…” He stopped to swallow, with difficulty. “What are we going to do?”
“Keep going,” I said firmly.
“How?” Valeria said as if I had proposed to take to the air and fly away. “They are so many. We won’t get as far as the rope.”
“We have to,” Cassie said in the same tone. “It’s the only way.”
“Maybe we could use the same passage Ulysses—” Claudio suggested.
“No way,” I interrupted him. I had raised my voice just a little, although it was enough to make the closest Morcegos shift nervously. “They’d catch us one by one, like rabbits.”
“So…?”
“As Cassie said… there’s only one way.”
“But how are we going to get through?” the professor wanted to know.
“That’s easy too,” I said. “The only possible way.” I threw the flare at the mob, which immediately moved away from the bright light. I lifted the submachine gun. At the same time I reached for another flare from my pocket, lit it, and held it over my head.
The rest of the group understood that this was our only hope. They followed my example, throwing their flares in front of them and lighting the remaining ones.
Huddled tight, back to back like a Macedonian phalanx, wielding the flaming flares, we began to advance toward the stone statue with the rope hanging above its head.
We made our way slowly through the threatening mass, which kept no more than ten or twelve feet away from us, showing their teeth and clawing at the air.
Even at that short distance I found it hard to judge the true shape of those creatures. Their absurdl
y elongated skulls, animal movements, and wrongly-proportioned bodies made me doubt we could be related in any way.
Very slowly, step by step, we made our way through that multitude of fangs and bulging eyes which opened before us and then closed again behind. The circle was growing smaller.
“They’re getting closer,” Cassandra warned tensely.
“Yeah, I can see that.” I tried to conceal my own concern. “Just keep going.”
“I don’t know if we’ll make it…”
“We’re nearly there. You just make sure they keep their distance.”
As I said this, we were already climbing up the pile of skeletons toward the stone head, waving the flares this way and that, like animal tamers shut in the cage with the tigers.
All this time, the Morcegos were eying us with mounting fury. It was as though to the insult of entering their domains, we had added the injury of profaning their most sacred place.
The snarls had given way to real roars now, and the clawing had become much closer and more dangerous. I even saw one of them cover his eyes with one arm and lunge with the other as he tried to claw me, missing my right thigh by a few inches.
“Watch out!” the professor cried. “They’re losing their fear of the flares!”
“We have to shoot!” Claudio yelled almost hysterically.
“Wait!” I raised my voice over the growing din. “As soon as we do that they’ll fall on us and we’ll be lost! Shoot only as a last resource!”
We climbed backward, clumsily, up the pile of bones, cloaked in a halo of eerie red light.
We were like a group of Spartans, ready to sell our hides dearly. Although this time there would be no one to immortalize our deeds, no movie to exaggerate them properly.
“Start climbing the rope!” I shouted. “Professor! You go first!”
“No!” he replied. “My daughter will go first!”
“Cut the crap and get climbing!” I lit my last flare as the first one began to weaken, but every time they had less of an effect. I knew we would have to use our weapons in a matter of moments. “Get a move on! Time is running out! The rest of you, start climbing too! Quick!”
This time no one said anything, but when I turned around to see Valeria helping her father get up on to the stone head, a Morcego came out unexpectedly from behind the statue. Taking her by surprise, he jumped on her, driving his claws into her stomach and savagely tearing her guts out.
“Valeria!” Eduardo shouted in horror. Ignoring the Morcego, he knelt beside her as she held her stomach. Her face was contorted in pain.
The demon, his claws dripping with the anthropologist’s blood, flexed his body and turned his evil face toward the professor. He was getting ready to attack him while the professor’s back was turned and he only had eyes for his daughter. Then he leapt forward.
I raised my submachine gun, ready to open fire but knowing I would not be in time to stop him.
The Morcego was already in midair when a blast echoed along the walls of the cavern. The creature contracted with a spasm and rolled down like a ball toward the bottom.
Stunned, I turned to see streaks of white smoke coming out from Cassandra’s gun barrel.
She had saved the professor.
But she had also given the Morcegos the signal they seemed to have been waiting for.
The battle was about to begin.
For a very brief lapse of time—which seemed like an eternity—a surreal silence took over with the muffled sound of the shot still echoing off the walls of the cavern.
The Morcegos ceased their overwhelming cacophony.
Nor did anyone in the band of humans move or say a word, afraid of breaking the spell.
But it was just the calm before the storm.
Despite our twenty-first-century weapons, we would all be dead in a matter of seconds.
“Save your bullets…” I managed to say. I dropped the last flare at my feet as I grabbed the MP5 with both hands.
A roar of measureless hatred and rage burst suddenly from the legion of demons, and like a dark, bloodthirsty wave, they launched themselves against us.
83
“Quick! Get up that rope! Quick!” That was the last thing I remember saying before I pulled the trigger.
The submachine gun was set on semi-automatic, and in less than ten seconds I learned—all over again—how little time it takes for a magazine to empty. What’s worse, I was not even sure I had hit a single Morcego.
I had fired at random, thinking more in terms of scaring them than killing them, but clearly they had not grasped the idea. If it had not been for Cassie, who was still shooting beside me with military precision, I would not have had time to get Souza’s pistol out of my pants.
This time I took care to aim at the closest Morcegos, who were climbing the pile of bones on all fours with amazing speed. I hit the first two with two 9mm bullets, which threw them backward. While I took aim at the third, calculating that at the rate of two bullets each I could only hope to dispatch seven or eight out of the many hundreds that kept coming, a miracle happened.
All of a sudden the tide of fangs and claws stopped, and so did their deafening din.
Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a flash of yellow light just above the head of the statue.
I looked up, unable to fully understand.
There was someone there. A man. A man who was holding a small burning torch in his right hand.
In the light of the flame I made out his features at last.
It was Iak.
I was about to warn him to get out of there at once to avoid certain death, when the Menkragnoti did something unexpected.
He lifted the torch above his head, then with all his strength threw it down at the mass of Morcegos huddled at our feet.
An explosion of fire blinded me for a moment. By the time I recovered my vision, a great burning puddle had appeared between the Morcegos and us. They retreated instinctively, with howls of rage and frustration.
That was not a torch at all.
Then I remembered the bottle of gasoline we had taken from the German storeroom.
Iak had made a Molotov cocktail.
It was only then that I came out of my stupor. Shaking it off, I turned to the others and shouted: “Come on! We have to get up!” I pointed at the rope. “This is our chance!”
Realizing that we had to make the most of that moment of confusion among the Morcegos, they scrambled up the torso of the statue one by one and then up the vertical well, using the knots I had prepared in advance.
The professor went first, then Claudio and Iak. Once at the top they pulled up Valeria by the rope Cassie and I had tied around her. In spite of the ugly wound in her abdomen, the professor’s daughter was still breathing and appeared conscious.
As soon as they had done this, they threw the rope back down and Cassie and I began our ascent. On our way up we took one last look down and saw that the flames from the puddle of gasoline were shrinking fast.
Once I reached the rim of the well, right after Cassandra, I leaned out and retrieved the rope. It was obvious that as soon as the fire went out completely, the Morcegos would come out of their cave to hunt us, and in any case it was night already. I had no intention of making things easier for them.
When I finished I saw the others bending over Valeria, trying to stop the bleeding with her clothes.
I went to Iak and gave him a heartfelt hug of gratitude.
“My friend,” I said patting his back, “you saved our lives. How did you find us?”
He shrugged his shoulders as if it were nothing. “I follow all every day, you not see me,” he explained. “Iak recognize chief soldier, he one that came to my village to say we leave. When I see all go into well I know you need my help.”
“Well, you couldn’t have come at a better time,” I said. “And that’s putting it mildly.”
Then I went to the others to find out how Valeria’s was.
“We have to
do something,” the professor muttered in a trembling voice. He was bent over his daughter, who was lying on the ground. She was bleeding profusely in spite of all efforts to stop the hemorrhage.
“She’s bleeding to death,” Cassie whispered in my ear as we stood up. “That wound looks really serious.”
“I can see that,” I said with a worried eye on the growing pile of bloodstained clothes beside her. “But we have to get back to the temple this minute.” I glanced aside at the hole in the rock. “Before those monsters come out of their lair.”
While the anxious father did what he could for his daughter, the rest of us improvised a stretcher with four thin trees, using strips of palm leaves to tie them together.
We covered the whole thing with what was left of our shirts and laid Valeria carefully on top, then reloaded our weapons and started on our way to the temple.
The only place where we thought we would be safe when the Morcegos came after us.
Although we would soon discover how wrong we were.
Cassandra led the way, carrying a submachine gun in each hand. Behind her the professor and I carried the stretcher. Claudio and Iak brought up the rear: the one armed with an MP5, the other with his bow and arrows, ready to let them fly at the slightest sign of movement at our backs.
I was carrying Souza’s Glock in my belt. The professor had refused to carry any kind of weapon, claiming that with his terrible aim he was more of a danger than the Morcegos.
The path that before had seemed no more than a stroll to me had turned into a field of invisible obstacles which tripped me up constantly as we made our way through the flooded jungle. With every step our feet sank up to our ankles, while the spongy mud and dark water seemed intent on holding us back.
Despite this, we went on as fast as we could. We were urged on all the time by Valeria’s moans and the certainty that if the Morcegos caught us now there would be no more cat-and-mouse games. This time they would butcher us all.
Then, from out of the very depths of the rainforest, a terrifying clamor of howls and furious roaring filled the night. I knew that those creatures of the shadows were not simply hunting.
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 37