Chapter 24
Jack, Sophie and the Professor made their way up the road. Jack saw Sophie look back toward the bridge.
“Jack, should we not stay and try to help him?” The pain in her voice betrayed her feeling of guilt over abandoning the man that had saved them all.
“I promise Sophie, he’ll be fine. Let’s find him a way out of here.”
“Follow me, I know the way.” She said taking his hand.
The three made their way to the tunnel where the twenty four golden idols had looked down from their glorious thrones. They found them in ruins strewn across the cracked black floor surrounded by brightly painted pieces of the broken ceiling. Sophie and her father paused and looked at one another curiously when they both noticed a small hatchway in the wall, its door standing ajar, near the archway leading out of the room.
A tremor shook the mountain. Jack seized them both by the arm urging them forward. A few minutes later they exited the two monolithic stone doors. One now leaned precipitously against one of the obelisks at its side. The other, with its pillar, lay in large pieces in the jungle beyond.
As the three exited they were momentarily blinded by the early morning sun filtering down through the overhanging canopy. They moved forward slowly letting their eyes adjusted to the light. Jack picked up a pistol and a machine gun from one of the dead soldiers whose entrails were spread across the road.
As they arrived at the river’s edge Jack saw the spinning whirlpool below them and became aware of the awful stench emanating from the courtyard beyond. They cautiously stepped out onto the bridges surface moving toward the walled courtyard. Jack suddenly froze. In the center of the courtyard a naked man hung upside down bound and bloody from two long crossed poles.
“Grissop!”
“Jack, we have to help him.” Sophie said.
“No, wait, something isn’t right.” Jack had an uneasy feeling. “Quaid?” he shouted.
The blood soaked man opened his eyes. Jack could see now that Quaid Grissop’s skin had been removed. He had been fileted alive.
“Oh my God!” Professor DeWulf choked out the words.
A tremendous concussion erupted behind them sending a shock wave through the green trees and knocking them off their feet. Hundreds of brightly feathered birds exploded in to the air and monkeys of every kind screamed and clamored through trees. Jack was about to hurry his companions into the courtyard when Grissop suddenly screamed out through his pain.
“RUN!”
A hundred tall, razor toothed Indians erupted from the jungle behind Grissop. Jack instinctively fired into the wave of painted flesh descending upon them. He looked for Sophie and her father finding them already running back in the direction of the mountain. He followed, as did the Xingu.
Passing the great doors as arrows and darts rained down around them Jack once again turned and fired. Running back down the black road they met Jolly running toward them.
“Where are you going?” He asked confused. “We need to get out of here!”
“Not that way!” Jack shouted back over his shoulder as the Xingu spilled in around the doors.
“Follow me!” Sophie called back to them.
Rounding a corner and entering the long hallway Sophie ran straight to the open hatchway and pushed her father inside.
“What are you doing?” Jack had a concerned look on his face.
“Do you have a better idea?” She asked as she stepped inside and disappeared.
Jolly shrugged his shoulders and followed her. Jack hesitated until a Xingu arrow whizzed past his ear.
“Shit.” He declared and jumped through. He found himself duck walking down a dark narrow tunnel. He moved forward as fast as he could expecting to meet Jolly. Instead the floor suddenly dropped out from under him as he found himself sliding faster and faster down a steep, slick, slope. Ahead he heard a scream and then three consecutive splashes. He suddenly found himself falling through the air. A full three seconds later he splashed down in cold swift moving water. He came up coughing and sputtering in pitch blackness.
“Sophie? Professor? Jolly?” He shouted each time his head bobbed above the water.
Up ahead in the distance, above the sound of water rushing through a tube, he heard voices calling back to him. Jack was pushed along at a break neck speed. Occasionally he felt a tremor pass through the water as the mountain rumbled. He tried to keep his head low near the water’s surface unless he might slam into a low hanging rock. Eventually the water became more turbulent and it became difficult to stay afloat. Ahead a pinpoint light began to grow and take shape.
Jack felt butterflies taking wing in his stomach as the light ahead got bigger and bigger and approached faster and faster. He heard a new sound like static from a radio. The statics volume increased until, in a flash of recognition, he realized what lay ahead.
“Shit!”
Jack shot out the end of the tunnel like a bullet. Falling through the air for several seconds he eventually splashed down in a deep pool careening and rolling under the water’s surface until he felt a strong hand take hold of his arm pulling him toward the surface. Bursting forth he heard familiar voices calling his name.
“Jack! Jack, are you alright?” Sophie helped Jolly haul Jack up onto the muddy bank.
“Ya, I think so. Are you alright? Jolly? Professor?” Jack noticed that the professor was holding his arm against his chest and that his right shoulder was slightly deformed from an obvious broken collar bone.
A deep rumble was first felt, and then heard. It seemed to be building in the mountain behind them. Looking back they saw a convulsion pass through it from base to peak. The water escaping the tube from which they were ejected exploded forth as if from a canon.
The mountain shook and hundreds of small fissures appeared in its surface as it began to crumble and fall in on itself. As its peak disappeared, a black and grey cloud, filled with blue lightning and spinning like a huge cyclone shaped hurricane, erupted in its place. The cloud darkened the sky as catastrophic winds swept down upon them and bolts of lightning struck and destroyed trees and sent huge clumps of dirt and rock sailing hundreds of feet through the air.
They had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Jack grabbed the professor and moved toward the river’s edge.
“Back in the water! It’s our only chance of putting distance between us and that storm.”
No one hesitated. Sliding in, the cold, swift current grabbed hold, cradling them in its icy grip and propelling them away from the dying city. Jack struggled to keep Professor DeWulf’s head above water but every now and then the water turned him around so that he caught site of the cataclysm behind. It was horrible and at the same time beautiful. The fabled city of El Dorado had been found only to be lost again, this time forever.
The four were borne along until the river grew wider and the current slowed. Making their way to shore Jolly and Jack determined that they had been tossed out on the west side of the mountain range and so needed to make their way south toward Cuiaba. After Sophie tended to her father as best she could they moved off into the jungle.
Five days later, dehydrated, hungry and sick they stumbled into an old explorer’s camp. Here they found a catch of canned peaches which provided them with some nourishment and fluid. Jolly was rummaging through some old wood boxes when he came upon an old newspaper clipping lining the bottom of one. It was dated 1925 and the headline read, “Forster Party to Seek Fabled Lost City in Amazon”.
“Jack?” Jolly called to him excitedly. “Do you know where we are? This is Dead Horse Camp! This is Forster’s camp. It was the last place the three of them were ever seen.”
“Do you suppose they had any idea of what they had discovered?” Jack asked the Jolly.
“I hope so Jack. I hope so.”
“So much life sacrificed in the pursuit of treasure?” Sophie asked softly taking the news article from Jolly’s hand. “Why do men do this Jack? Sacrifice so much pursuing tre
asure. These men traveled thousands of miles, through an environment that tried to kill them, facing wild animals that want eat them, insects that try to ingest or infect them, and dangerous savage untamed men that want to take what little they have. What could possibly be of such great value to a man?”
Jack rested his head against a tree while untying his boots. As she spoke he watched her and a warm smile spread across his face. He stared at her longingly, contemplating her words. Jack knew exactly why a man would undertake such a quest and why he would endure the rigors, pain and suffering of such a journey in search of the one thing he considered as being of an inestimable value.
Jolly who had been watching them both and could read Jack’s face like a book, began to chuckle softly. Soon the professor giggled and then both men burst into a joyous laughter. Sophie looked at them both as if they had lost their minds.
“Jack, what are they…?”
Sophie had turned toward Jack to ask him what was so funny. She could only smile when she saw him leaning against the tree, asleep, with a contented grin spread across his face.
Jack was so tired he had fallen asleep while taking off his boots.
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About the Author
Patrick S. Linscott
Dear reader,
Thank you so very much for reading this story. I had a great time writing it and I hope you found it enjoyable.
Writing this book has been an enjoyable, frustrating, cathartic and sobering experience. I am only a simple firefighter with no college education and so there was a steep learning curve. Thank God for the internet.
I realize that this is not a masterpiece and financial success was never my goal. I just wanted to create something I could be proud of.
Thank you,
PatrickS. Linscott
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Chasing El Dorado Page 27