Thunderhead

by Douglas Preston

  Wordlessly, Swire laid the pole alongside the bagged corpse. Then, as quickly as possible, the two men lashed it to the pole, winding the rope around and around until it was secure. Swire tied off the ends with half-hitches. Then, grasping each end, they hefted the body out of the tent.

  Holroyd had a slight frame, and Smithback raised one end of the pole onto his shoulder with relative ease. I’ll bet he weighs one fifty, one sixty, max, he thought. That means eighty pounds for each of us. Strange how, at times of severe stress, the mind tended to dwell on the most trivial, the most quotidian details. Smithback felt a pang of sympathy for the friendly, unassuming young man. Just three nights before, under Smithback’s journalistic probing by the campfire, Holroyd had opened up at last and talked, at unexpected length, about his deep and abiding love for motorcycles. As he’d talked, the shyness had left him, and his limbs had filled with animation. Now those limbs were still. All too still, in fact; Smithback did not like the stiff, unyielding way Holroyd’s bagged feet jostled up against his shoulder as they proceeded toward the slot canyon.

  He thought back to the discussion about what to do with the body. It had to be placed somewhere secure, away from camp, elements, and predators, until it could be retrieved at a later time. They couldn’t bury it in the ground, Nora had said; coyotes would dig it up. They talked about hanging it in a tree, but most of the trees were inaccessible, their lower branches stripped away in flash floods. Anyway, Aragon said it was important to get the body as far from camp as possible. Then Nora remembered the small rock shelter about a quarter of the way through the slot canyon, above the high-water mark and accessible via a stepped ledge. It was a perfect place to store the body. The place was impossible to miss: the shelter was twenty feet off the canyon bottom, just above the trunk of a massive cottonwood that had been wedged between the walls by some earlier flood. The threat of rain had passed—Black had checked the weather report from the canyon rim—and the slot canyon would be safe for the time being. . . .

  Smithback brought himself back to the present. There was a reason his mind was wandering. He knew himself well enough to understand what was happening: he was thinking about something, anything, to keep his mind off the job at hand. Deep down, for some reason he didn’t fully understand, Smithback realized he was profoundly frightened. He’d been in more than his share of life-threatening situations before: struggling against a killer in a vast museum; and later, caught fighting for his life in a warren of tunnels far beneath New York City. And yet here, in the pleasant afternoon light, he felt as threatened as he ever had in his life. There was something about the diffuse, vague nature of the evil in this valley that unsettled him most of all.

  Once again, Holroyd’s rigid foot pressed sharply into Smithback’s shoulder. Ahead, Swire had stopped and was glancing upward toward the mouth of the slot canyon. Smithback followed his gaze into the narrow, scarred opening. Clearing skies, Black had said; Smithback hoped to hell the weather report was right.

  Once in the slot, they were able to float the wrapped body, buoyed by the drysack, across the stretches of slack water. At the base of each pourover, however, Holroyd’s corpse had to be half pushed, half dragged up to the next pool. After twenty minutes of pushing, wading, swimming, and dragging, the two men stopped to catch their breath. Farther up the winding passage, Smithback could make out the massive cottonwood trunk that marked the location of the rock shelter. He moved a few feet away from the drysack, untied the bandanna from his mouth, shook it out, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

  “So you think that Indian you saw had nothing to do with killing my horses,” Swire said. They were the first words he’d spoken since they left Holroyd’s tent.

  “Absolutely not,” Smithback replied. “Especially since the people who killed your horses must have been the ones who wrecked our communications gear. And we were with the shepherd when that happened.”

  Swire nodded. “That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

  Smithback saw that Swire was still staring at him. The brown eyes had long ago lost the humorous squint Smithback remembered from the first days of their ride. In Swire’s sunken cheeks, bony face, and tight jaw, Smithback could see a great sorrow. “Holroyd was a good kid,” he said simply.

  Smithback nodded.

  Swire spoke in a low voice. “It’s one thing to get in trouble back there”—he jerked his head in the hypothetical direction of civilization—“but it’s a whole other deal to run into trouble out here.”

  Smithback looked from Swire to Holroyd’s body, then back to Swire. “That’s why Nora’s doing the right thing,” he said. “Getting us out as quickly as possible.”

  Swire spat a line of tobacco across a nearby rock. “She’s a brave woman, I’ll give her that,” he said. “Volunteering to track those horse killers on her own . . . that took guts. But guts alone ain’t enough. I’ve seen even the smallest problem end up killing people in a place like this. And you know what? Our problems ain’t small.”

  Smithback didn’t answer. His thoughts were still on Nora: her quick tongue, appraising eyes, resourceful pluck—her courage and determination. And he realized, with a sense of astonishment, that he was scared, not so much for himself but for her.

  Swire appraised him, eyes glittering. Then he stood up and grabbed the lead end of the pole. Smithback rose, snugged the bandanna once again around his mouth, and scrambled toward the corpse. They climbed the rest of the way to the rock shelter in silence.

  41

  * * *

  AARON BLACK STOOD IN THE DAPPLED shadows of the westernmost tower, surveying his test trenches and portable lab setups with a practiced eye. The soil profiles were perfect, naturally: a textbook model of the latest in stratigraphic analysis. And the labs were, as always, a picture of economy, efficiency, and accuracy.

  As he stared, the satisfaction he usually felt when admiring his work was eclipsed by a stab of disappointment. Muttering under his breath, he drew a large tarp over the test trench and staked it down, pinning the sides with rocks. It was a wholly unsatisfactory way to preserve his accomplishments, but at least it was better than backfilling. Here he was, about to run away from the site that, by all rights, should be the crowning glory of his career. God knows what they would find when they returned. If they returned at all.

  He shook his head in disgust and pulled a tarp over the second trench. Still, he wasn’t entirely sorry to be leaving. His usual assistant, Smithback, was off burying Holroyd, and as Black worked he managed to feel deeply thankful that particular task had not fallen to him. It didn’t really matter whether poison or disease had killed the technician. Either one was dangerous. A part of Black hungered for civilization—telephones, fine restaurants, hot showers, and toilets that flushed—a world hundreds of miles away from Quivira. Of course, he’d never admit this to Sloane, who had moved off in stony silence to take the final photographic records of the site.

  As his thoughts turned to Sloane, he felt a hot flush begin to spread out from his vitals. Memories of the night before gave way to hopes and fantasies for the night to come. Black had never had much luck with women, and Sloane was a woman, all right; a woman who . . .

  Tearing himself from these thoughts with difficulty, he turned to the flotation lab. Unhooking the jug of distilled water from the apparatus, he dumped the water pan over the edge of the cliff. Then, with a sigh, he began unscrewing the equipment, draining the hoses, and packing everything into two metal suitcases filled with custom-cut foam. It was a job he had done many times before, and despite everything he prided himself on his tidiness. Snapping the suitcases closed, he set them aside and began breaking down the paper chromatography setup.

  He paused in the act of stacking the unused papers into plastic folders. By rights, they would have all been used over the coming weeks, forming the foundation for half a year of analysis back in his comfortable lab. He stared at them, all the brilliant articles he planned to write for the most prestigious scientific journ
als going up in smoke inside his head.

  Suddenly, a gust of wind caught a pack of the chromatography papers, blowing them toward the back of the cave. He watched as they scattered and disappeared into the darkness.

  Black swore out loud. The papers were ruined—contaminated—but he couldn’t just leave them. He’d publicly humiliated more than one archaeologist for leaving trash in a ruin.

  He finished packing the chromatography setup and buckled the case shut. Then he stood up and walked toward the back of the cave, eyes to the ground. The papers had scattered along the very back of the midden heap; he could see some still blowing about in the random eddies of wind. Muttering again, he walked past the first granary along the rear wall of the ruin, trapping the papers with his foot as he went, picking them up and shoving them into a pocket. Soon he had counted eleven. The papers came twelve in a pack, he knew; where the hell was the last one?

  Ahead of him lay the narrow opening to the Crawlspace, and he moved toward it, bending low under the rock roof. It was too dark to see, and he fumbled in his pocket for a penlight. Its feeble gleam struggled to pierce the darkness, illuminating dust, scattered bones, and—about ten yards away—the last paper, caught on a piece of broken skull.

  To hell with Aragon and his ZST, Black thought sourly, getting down on his hands and knees and childishly shoving the bones out of his way. Another eddy of wind stirred up the dust inside the Crawlspace, and he sneezed explosively. Kicking the bones aside, he grabbed the final paper and stuffed it in his pocket. As he turned to go, he saw a large pack rat shamble into the beam of his flashlight, disturbed by the clatter of bones. It turned to face him, yellow teeth bared.

  Black shied back, sneezed again, and waved his hand. The animal backed up with a chattering protest and a flick of its tail, but it did not flee.

  “Yah!” Black cried, picking up a longbone and aiming it at the rat. With a sudden movement, the rat vanished into a small pile of rock, lying against the back wall of the Crawlspace.

  Curious, he moved forward. On closer inspection, he could see that the rocks had not fallen from the ceiling of the Crawlspace, as he had assumed; they were of a different material than the sandstone cave. In the bottom of the pile of rocks the pack rat had made his opening, lined with twigs and cactus husks.

  Black crawled closer, wrinkling his nose at the strong smell of guano and rat urine. As he played his light into the rathole, he saw that it led to a black space beyond: a large black space.

  He examined the rocks again. It looked to his expert eyes that they were not a natural event. Rather, they had been piled there deliberately. A great deal of care had been taken to conceal this opening: Aragon must have passed it at least two dozen times without noticing anything, and Aragon had sharp eyes, even for an archaeologist. But his own eyes, Black mused, were better.

  He sat in the darkness, feeling his heartbeat quicken. Something had been deliberately hidden behind the rock pile; painstakingly, cunningly hidden. A burial, most likely, or even a catacomb. Perhaps of great archaeological value. He glanced up and down the Crawlspace. He was alone, Aragon busy elsewhere on Holroyd’s postmortem analysis. He shone his light into the hole once more, probing farther.

  This time, something glinted back at him.

  Black withdrew the light, sat up, and remained motionless for a moment. And then he did something he had never done before. He picked up a stray bone and began working loose the small rocks around the rathole. Carefully at first, then with greater and greater urgency, he scrabbled with the rocks, pulling them out. Soon, a small opening in the back of the cave became visible. Thoughts of discomfort, disease, and poison evaporated from his mind, replaced by a new thought: a consuming desire to see what lay on the far side.

  Dust began to cake on his sweaty skin; he tied a bandanna over his mouth and nose and continued. The bone fell apart and he continued working with his hands. In five minutes, he had cleared an opening large enough to admit his bulk.

  Breathing deeply, he wiped his hands on the seat of his pants and plucked the bandanna from his mouth. Then he put his hands on either side of the opening and pulled himself through.

  In a moment he was on the far side. He scrambled to his feet, panting hard. The air was thick, hot, and surprisingly humid. He looked around, his penlight stabbing through skeins of dust.

  Almost immediately he saw the glint again—the unmistakable glint of gold—and for a moment his heart stopped. He was in a large black cavern. There, rising in front of him, dominating the cavern, was another Great Kiva. Incised and painted on its side was a huge disk that winked gold in his light. The Great Kiva had once had a door in the side, also blocked with loose stones and half buried in sand. Behind it stood an exquisite Anasazi pueblo, small but perfect, its two-storied roomblocks and ladders sealed in the cave and untouched for more than seven centuries.

  He scrambled to his feet and approached the kiva, touching the gold disk with a trembling hand. The effect of gold had been created with a deep yellow pigment—Black guessed it was yellow ochre of iron—mixed with crushed flakes of mica. The whole thing had then been polished, creating a shimmering surface that looked remarkably like gold. It was the same method used to make the image in the Rain Kiva, only this disk was ten feet in diameter.

  He knew then that he had found the Sun Kiva.

  42

  * * *

  THE DIRTY SKY OF THE AFTERNOON HAD lifted, and the air above the canyon of Quivira was suffused with the last golden light of sunset. Already, the gloom of night was gathering in the bottom of the canyon, in strange juxtaposition to the brilliant narrow strip of sky above. The brief rain had released the scents of the desert: wet sand, the sweet smell of cottonwoods, mingled with the fragrant cedarwood from Bonarotti’s fire.

  Nora, struggling to close one of the drysacks, noticed none of the beauty, smelled none of the scents. To her, still numbed by the events of the day, the valley was anything but benign. A few minutes before, Swire and Smithback had returned from their grisly errand, and they now rested by the fire, exhausted, faces blank.

  With an effort, she heaved the drysack alongside the growing pile of equipment, then grabbed an empty duffel and began to fill it. Much of the evening would be spent packing the gear, caching some of it, getting the rest ready for the long, wet trip out the slot canyon to the horses. Once they had packed and gotten away from the valley and its divisive influences, she felt sure, they would be able to function as a team once again; at least, long enough to bring the details of their remarkable find back to the Institute.

  A harsh, ragged shout from the direction of the rope ladder intruded on her thoughts. She looked up to see the tall figure of Aaron Black come striding through the gloaming, his face gray with dirt, his clothing streaked, hair wild. For a terrifying moment, she was certain he had caught whatever it was that killed Holroyd. But this fear was quickly dispelled by the look of triumph on his face.

  “Where’s Sloane?” he boomed, looking around animatedly. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Sloane!” The valley reverberated with his shouts.

  “Are you all right?” Nora asked.

  As Black turned toward her, Nora could see sweat springing from the mud caked to his brow, running in dun-colored rivulets down his face. “I found it,” he said.

  “Found what?”

  “The Sun Kiva.”

  Nora straightened up, releasing her hold on the duffel and letting it fall back into the sand. “You found what?”

  “There was a blocked opening behind the city. Nobody noticed it before. But I did. I found it.” Black’s chest was heaving, and he could barely get out the words. “Behind the Crawlspace is a narrow passageway that leads into another cavern behind the city. And, Nora, there’s a whole secret city hidden back there. Right in front is a Great Kiva, a sealed kiva. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Nora said slowly. “You broke through a wall?”

  Black nodded, his
smile broadening.

  Nora felt sudden anger course through her. “I specifically forbade any disturbance like that. My God, Aaron, all you’ve done is open up a new area to be looted. Have you forgotten we’re about to leave?”

  “But we can’t leave now. Not after this discovery.”

  “We absolutely are leaving. First thing in the morning.”

  Black stood rooted in place, anger and disbelief growing in his face. “You haven’t heard what I said. I found the Sun Kiva. We can’t leave now. The gold will be stolen.”

  Nora looked more intently at his face. “Gold?” she repeated.

  “Christ, Nora, what else do you think is in there? Corn? The evidence is overwhelming. I just found the Anasazi Fort Knox.”

  As Nora stared at him, in growing consternation and disbelief, she saw Sloane come up through the twilight, oversized camera under one arm.

  “Sloane!” Black called out. “I found it!” He rushed over and embraced her. Smiling, she disentangled herself, and looked from him to Nora with a quizzical expression. “What’s this?” she asked, carefully setting down the camera.

  “Black found a sealed cave behind the city,” Nora replied. “He says the Sun Kiva is inside it.”

  Sloane looked at Black quickly, smile vanishing as comprehension dawned.

  “It’s there, Sloane,” he said. “A Great Kiva, sixty feet in diameter, with a sun disk painted on its side.”

  A powerful play of emotions ran quickly across Sloane’s face. “What kind of disk?”

  “A great sun in yellow pigment, mixed with mica and polished. It looks just like gold. I thought it was gold when I first saw it.”

  Sloane suddenly became very pale, then flushed deeply. “Paint mixed with mica?”

  “Yes. Crushed biotite mica, which has a golden cast to it. A brilliant imitation of the real thing. Which is exactly the kind of symbolic representation you’d find on the outside if they were storing—”