by Chris Fox
“Over here,” Jefe said, leaving the road to pass through rows of corn.
Liz followed, growing increasingly nervous about what horror might lie waiting. She’d seen a dead body once, but the woman had died in her sleep. It wasn’t at all the same thing. She steeled herself as they finally left the corn, emerging near the clearing the village used as a graveyard. Gonzalez stood shirtless in a hole that came to his waist, shoulders flexing as he heaved another shovelful of dirt from the mass grave he was digging.
Next to him lay neatly stacked bodies, dozens of them. Men, women, and children. All were covered in blood. Some were missing a limb, others a head. A few had been torn entirely in half. Most had been partially eaten. The gore was more than Liz could take, and she dropped to her knees, retching the remains of her breakfast onto the damp soil.
“Take your time, Liz,” Jefe said, resting a calloused hand on her shoulder. “I am sorry you have to see this, but we must know what caused these wounds.”
Liz wiped her mouth with the back of a hand and wobbled to her feet. She approached the stack of bodies, which had already attracted a thick carpet of flies. The corpses stank, cloying and acrid at the same time. She knelt next to one of the bodies, a partially eaten man.
“Jesus, I need a cigarette. You know I’m not a real doctor, right? Everything I know about forensics comes from TV shows,” she admitted, when she could finally speak.
“I know. You’re all we have, Liz.”
“I’ll do what I can. I’m guessing the jaw is canine, from this bite,” she said, voice quavering but as steady as she could make it. “I don’t see any obvious claw marks, not the sort you’d expect from a great cat. It might be a bear, but the wounds are the wrong shape for that. This is like a dog attack. Or a wolf, maybe. Something with a muzzle.”
“If it was, then it must have been a really big dog,” Gonzalez said, pausing to wipe sweat from his forehead. He didn’t meet Liz’s gaze.
“So, a dog then. Perhaps a mastiff or a large pit bull?” Jefe asked.
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Look at this. The arm has been crushed, like in a vice. This thing must have had one hell of a grip,” Liz said, strangely fascinated by the carnage. What had attacked these people?
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Jefe asked, placid calm back in place.
“No, not without a real autopsy. That’s not something I’m qualified to perform, anyway.”
“Very well,” Jefe said, moving to the far side of the grave. He squatted near the base of an enormous sycamore tree, its wide canopy providing the only shelter from the sweltering sun. “Come and take a look at this. I have never seen the like.”
Liz followed Jefe, picking a trail through the thick mud. She knelt next to the area he’d indicated, understanding immediately why he wanted her opinion. The track was far too large to be that of a wolf or a dog. It might even be too large to have been a bear, but she suspected the markings might be around the right size for a grizzly. The shape was all wrong, though.
“What do you think?” Jefe asked after allowing her to study the track.
“From the size, I want to say it’s a bear, but the track is too long. It’s more what I’d expect to see of a primate, like a gorilla,” she mused, picking up a stick that had fallen from the sycamore. She used it to illustrate as she spoke. “But see the front end of the foot? It has four pads just like a dog. I have no idea what it is. Maybe we can take a picture and send it on to the university at Cajamarca?”
“I’ll get my camera from the jeep, but first we have business to attend to,” Jefe said, rising to his feet. “It’s time to wake the survivor and see what he knows.”
18
Not Dead
Blair returned to consciousness by degrees. His own deep, sure breaths were the first things he latched onto. They felt so different from the ragged gasps he last remembered. Then came his heartbeat, strong and steady. He shivered, eyes opening as he remembered his heart stopping. It was the last thing he remembered. Should have been the final thing he remembered. Dying.
He raised his head and examined his surroundings. That was something else he shouldn’t be able to do. Where were his glasses? He was all but blind without them, or at least he should have been. Yet he wasn’t blind. He could see with a clarity not even his glasses had afforded him. Details leapt out at him: the rust spots on the metal counter, the worn plastic of the four chairs arrayed near the door, the faded lettering on the stoppered bottles in the wooden cabinet across the room. Penicillin. This place must be a clinic.
A detached part of his mind guessed that the team had flown him to a hospital, but the rest was latching onto the obvious. Not only was he alive, but he’d also been changed. Changed by whatever had happened with the statue. The incident paralleled a number of bad movies, really. The mousy scholar inherits super powers from a long-dead alien race, or in this case, a vanished culture.
Blair looked down and realized that he was naked save for a thin white sheet. Well, not quite naked. There was a handcuff around his right wrist, and it was chained to the bed’s ancient metal frame. What the hell? That wasn’t all he noticed. His carefully cultivated wine gut was gone, replaced by abs Hugh Jackman would envy. Prehistoric Aliens—even better than the gym.
It is part of the change, Ka-Dun.
He froze, unable to process the voice that had just echoed in his own head. It was deep. Powerful. And it could hear his thoughts. Before he could answer, his neck whipped around, toward a new sound.
“He is inside. Doesn't seem hurt, but he won’t wake up,” a gruff voice said from outside the warped wooden door in the front of the small clinic. Footsteps were approaching, thundering in his ears. Three distinct sets—two heavier and one, either a woman or a child, lighter.
“It could be a concussion. Head wounds sometimes cause trauma, and if there’s swelling in the brain, it could prevent him from waking up,” came a muffled female voice. Was that a Californian accent?
The door groaned open, the top hinge very nearly pulling free from the wall as it did so. The breeze that accompanied it made Blair aware of just how stifling the room was. He was drenched in sweat. He relaxed, feigning sleep while watching the door’s warped reflection on the metal cabinets beneath the counter.
Two blurry figures entered the room while a third cast a shadow across the doorway from somewhere outside. The first wore a leather jacket and was definitely tall. His companion was a shorter woman with long copper hair. He couldn’t make out much from the reflection, but tan shorts exposed long, creamy legs.
“We think the killing happened last night. Gonzalez found the bodies this morning, and this man was unconscious, covered in blood. Gonzalez cuffed him to the bed in case he goes crazy when he wakes up,” the man explained. Who the hell were these people? And why were they worried he might go crazy?
“He’s already awake,” the woman said, circling the bed. She kept carefully out of his reach. “His back is too tense, and I can see him watching our reflection in that metal cabinet.”
Blair rolled over slowly. No sense in hiding anymore. He pulled his knees to the kind of chest he’d always envied, stifling questions as he took a better look at the pair. The woman’s hair fell just past her shoulders, and she wore the sort of large sunglasses Audrey Hepburn had made famous. She had a mud-spattered t-shirt and khakis that revealed shapely legs. Very shapely.
Her companion had slicked-back hair and eyes like flint. His gaze seized Blair, weighing him on some invisible scale as he took slow steps toward the bed. Blair could glean nothing from the man’s expression, but the way his hand rested on the gun belted to his side spoke volumes.
“Who are you?” the man asked, looming over the bed. His breath stank of tobacco.
“Who are you?” Blair growled back, taken aback by a surge of anger. His shoulders squared almost of their own accord, and he held the man’s gaze without flinching. “Where am I? Why am I cuffed to a bed? And why the hell am I naked?”<
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Silence grew. The man reached into his jacket and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to the woman, who seemed on the verge of taking one before finally shaking her head. The man turned back to Blair.
“Most interesting. You are angry and confused by your predicament. And why not? You awake naked and chained to a bed. Not a position to envy,” the man drawled, tapping the pack against his palm. “We, too, have a predicament. We are distraught over the slaughter of this entire village. Let us put emotions aside and try to reason this out. Why don’t we begin with names? I am called Jefe. This is Dr. Liz. The man you can’t see outside is Gonzalez. And now it is your turn.”
“All right, I can be reasonable. My name is Blair Smith. Professor Blair Smith,” he said. He emphasized the title Jordan had given him, thinking it might make him sound more legitimate than a teacher at a junior college. And right now, he needed any credibility he could muster. He was acutely aware of his nakedness. It was unsettling. It made him feel trapped. Anxious.
“Very well, Professor Blair Smith,” Jefe continued, dragging a plastic chair toward the bed and turning it to face Blair. He slouched down into it, slipping out of his leather jacket and allowing it to wrap over the back of the chair. The pack of cigarettes was still clutched in one hand. “Why don’t you tell me what you remember last?”
The woman he’d identified as Liz pulled up a chair of her own, though she kept it much further from the bed. He didn’t blame her for being cautious. Naked American teachers were probably a pretty rare sight.
“I was at a dig site up in the mountains, someplace called Cajamarca. There’s a pyramid there. A very old pyramid,” he said, fumbling through the fog in search of memories. “We found a way into the inner chamber, but the door was trapped. I was poisoned, I think. I thought I was dead.”
“You had companions with you? People that can verify this dig site?” Jefe asked, posture straightening as his gaze intensified. Blair got the sense that his next words were very important.
“I had a team with me, but I don’t know where they are. I guess it’s possible they could have brought me here for treatment,” Blair reasoned, glancing at the doctor. He couldn’t read her with those sunglasses on. “You know, you probably know more than I do. Why am I cuffed? And what was the point of taking my clothes?”
“You were naked when we found you,” Jefe said, finally tapping a cigarette out of the pack. He cupped the end with one hand and lit it with a lighter fished from another pocket. He took a long drag before continuing. “We cuffed you because everyone in this village is dead. Everyone except you.”
Blair collapsed against the bed, strength deserting him even faster than Steve and Bridget had. Everyone was dead? What about Bridget? Or Sheila? Were they dead too? If they were, how had he gotten here? And what had happened to these people?
“Look at his reaction,” Liz broke in, rising from her chair and taking a step closer to the bed. “You can see from his expression he’s as shocked as we are. He doesn’t know anything.”
“Maybe,” Jefe said, blowing a lungful of smoke in Blair’s direction. “Maybe not. He could be a good liar. Or he could be crazy. What if he doesn’t remember what he did?”
“Let’s give him a chance,” Liz demanded, staring hard at Jefe over the rim of her sunglasses. It was Blair’s first glimpse of her eyes, shockingly blue, like a patch of sky just after a storm. “Blair, we’re in the Cajamarca region of Peru. Can you describe this dig site? Where was it?”
“It was in a ravine between these two large mountains. One of them looked like an old man with big eyebrows,” he said, doing his best to recall any other significant features. “I know the closest town was supposed to be Villa Milagros.”
“See?” Liz said, tone challenging as she focused on Jefe. “His story checks out. He’s talking about Yanacocha. That’s just a few miles further up the mountain. There was that caravan of jeeps a few weeks back. Maybe he was with them.”
“He could be making it up,” Jefe growled, leaning forward in his chair and skewering Blair with his gaze. “Are you lying? If you are, the truth’s going to come out. We can verify your story about the dig. If that valley’s empty, we’ll know you killed these people. If that’s the case, I won’t hesitate to execute you.”
Sudden rage crashed over Blair. He was the one naked and chained for no reason he could see. What gave this bastard the right to sit in judgment over him?
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Blair roared, a wave of heat surging through him. Jefe’s eyes widened, and his hand fell to the pistol holstered at his side. “You’ve got me chained to a bed against my will even though I haven’t done anything. So let me make this very clear. You will release me and let me have my clothes back.” That last part came out as a growl.
“I will do nothing of the kind,” Jefe retorted. He’d recovered his composure, staring dispassionately at Blair. “First we will investigate your story, and then we will see what to do. Gonzalez will take the jeep up to Yanacocha. He can be back in just a few hours. That will give us plenty of time to discuss your story.”
“Can’t we at least get him some clothing?” Liz asked, drawing Jefe’s gaze. Blair could tell the man had a soft spot for her, and it wasn’t hard to understand why.
“I will find him something,” Jefe agreed, taking a step toward the door. “Do not get too close to him. Do not let your guard down. I know he seems innocent, but appearances can be deceiving. This man could be a killer.”
“I’ll be careful,” Liz agreed as Jefe left the clinic. She turned to face Blair, sinking into a plastic chair and pulling it a bit closer to the bed. She was still out of reach.
“Well, this is awkward,” Blair said after several moments of tense silence. “I’m sorry you have to be involved in this. Though, honestly, I’m not sure what ‘this’ is. I can’t even imagine how I ended up here.”
“You don’t remember anything? About coming here?” she asked, moving to one of the chrome drawers. She opened it and removed a wad of bandages. She moved to the bed, eyeing him warily as she began to roll it around his chest. He glanced down, noticing a six-inch slash that had already scabbed over. The edges were an angry red, though it didn’t hurt like any infection he’d ever had. Where had that come from?
“I…” Blair began, realizing that perhaps he did know something. Fragmented images danced just out of reach. Scenes from a nightmare. Screaming, people dying. “No, I don’t. You said those people are dead. How many? I mean I know that’s morbid, but I just…I need to know.”
“Almost thirty,” Liz answered, still wearing those dark sunglasses. Her voice was soft, subdued. “What were you digging for? There aren’t any ruins around here.”
“There are, actually. Ruins like you’ve never seen,” Blair said, repositioning himself on the bed in an attempt to get comfortable. The cuffs made that difficult. “The pyramid we found predates any culture on this continent by at least six thousand years. What’s more, the structure was built by an advanced civilization, one we’ve never encountered before.”
“Next you’re going to tell me about aliens,” Liz replied. He could sense the eye roll even if he couldn’t see it. She finished winding the gauze, applying a pair of butterfly clips to cinch it in place. “I hope, for your sake, you’re telling the truth. If you killed those people, the penalty here is death. Jefe won’t be shy about meting out justice. I doubt he’ll even wait to get you to Cajamarca. He’ll do it himself.”
“If I’m the killer, he’d be right to do it,” Blair said, unable to suppress a sigh. “I know you don’t believe me, but I honestly have no idea how I got here. I’m just a teacher trying to make ends meet.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Her tone was skeptical enough to alarm him. He had to do something.
“Think about it,” Blair said, hoping she’d see reason. He needed an ally, however flimsy that alliance might be. “If I killed these people, why would I have stuck around? Why lay here appar
ently naked and covered in blood?”
“Maybe Jefe’s right. You could be crazy.”
“Maybe, but he said you’re a doctor, right? Use Occam’s razor. What’s the simplest explanation? Let’s examine the facts. How were these people killed?”
“By some sort of animal,” Liz admitted, dropping back into her plastic chair now that her work was done. “I’ve never seen wounds quite like these.”
“That alone should clear me,” Blair continued, though somewhere in the recesses of his mind fangs flashed. He remembered the taste of raw flesh, hot and wonderful. “If it was me, I must have needed some sort of weapon, right? Where is that weapon? I bet you didn’t find one. So what’s the simplest explanation?”
“That the people here were killed by an animal. For some reason, it didn’t kill you.”
“Good, you can see reason. Listen, I don’t know what killed these people. I don’t even know how I got here. But that’s not the real question you should be asking.”
“What should I be asking?” Liz said, sarcasm not lost on him.
“Where is that animal now?”
19
Numb
Sheila was too numb to be terrified, emotions wrung out of her like so much dirty dishwater. She sat atop a rock, watching the flurry of activity engulf the camp around her. None of the soldiers scurrying about paid her any mind, though they had to be aware of her. There were over two dozen now, most erecting new tents around the large jeeps that had come in just before dawn.
A few more clustered around one of four new helicopters. Three were the larger types that had disgorged a seemingly endless supply of crates and men. The last was sleeker, smaller. It had a pair of deadly looking guns slung under short, stubby wings, and a cockpit designed to seat two.
