The Snake

by J A Kellman

  It sounded like a jet engine—something huge, howling, grinding, pitiless—tearing its way through the cave toward us.

  “Run!” Bill yelled. “Run like hell!”

  Thirty

  Tikal National Park, Guatemala, the Collapse

  Terror washed over me in a wave as the world unmade itself. Water smelling of something ancient and long-buried churned and rose around my legs as the cave roof collapsed, crumbling its way toward the tunnel opening. By the time the full flood hit me, it was up to my shoulders, a solid wall of bone-chilling icy water swirling with rocks and nameless debris. Bill slammed into me, grabbing my arm to keep us both from being knocked down; then we smashed into Zoila.

  I lost my footing in the roiling flood, flailing my arms as I sank under the surging water. Bill dragged me to the surface by my collar. If chaos has a smell this is it: water and rock and icy air, I thought, choking and coughing as he steadied me in the buffeting river.

  Zoila was screaming for Luis somewhere in the dark and I could hear Ochoa yelling further toward the entrance. Esteban and Francisco shouted to one another as they struggled to maintain their footing and keep the Nuevos’ heads above water at the same time.

  At least Luis’s sled floats, I thought as another wave from deep in the cavern roared into the tunnel. I was sucked down this time and carried toward the entrance, rolled like a stone along with the rubble that poured toward the opening, heading for the rock pile, the reservoir, the open air.

  It was impossible to orient myself in the churning water. Unable to avoid the boulders at the cave’s mouth, I slammed into them like a runner taking a fall on cement, then was scraped up and over their rough surfaces as the racing current swept me out into the reservoir. Lungs exploding, ears ringing, choking, I finally broke the surface on the far side of the pool; an elastic band had kept my glasses on, but trying to see through the film of water on the lenses was difficult. It was raining too, making it hard to recognize details in the half-light of approaching evening, but I thought I spotted several dark shapes bobbing on the surface nearby.

  Once my glasses cleared, I could see Zoila hanging on the end of Luis’s sled as it floated on one side of the reservoir. In the middle of the pool, two men were dragging two others out of the full force of the flood, and I could make out three heads below the outcrop pathway we had used to reach the cave. Relief swept over me. We were all going to get out.

  I had relaxed too soon. A deep groaning noise came from the direction of the cave opening, and the earth itself seemed to tremble and rock. The reservoir water rose and fell, climbing almost to the rim as it sloshed from side to side, gaining speed and height with each undulation, as the wall containing the cave entrance collapsed forward into the water with a roar. The force of a growing sinkhole sent a churning geyser far into the darkening sky and ten-foot waves across the reservoir.

  I could hear Ochoa shouting over the tumult as I swam toward the trail that led upward to the rim. Getting to the pathway from the surging water proved to be excruciating. There were no convenient protruding rocks large enough on which to stand. I was forced to claw my way up the slippery surface, like a cat up a curtain, by using the smallest protrusions as means to steady myself as I inched toward the ledge, water thundering below, hurling spray into the air as the chaotic subsidence gnawed its way around the rim.

  Exhausted from caving, my struggles in the surging water, the climb, I could barely haul myself over the edge of the outcrop. I rolled away from its rough edge and lay against the reservoir’s steep side, panting, resting for a moment till I could begin the climb upward. I had to get out of there. Who knew how much longer the earth’s sinking would continue? Maybe the entire area would fall in on itself. The only safe place was somewhere as far as possible from the reservoir and its collapsing geology.

  It was pitch black and the rain had settled into a steady downpour by the time I climbed over the rim. I’d kicked off my boots escaping the pool; I’d lost my hardhat and my headlamp then, too, and as far as I could tell, I was alone. I staggered toward the service road that led to ranger headquarters. I had to find help for anyone still trapped in the reservoir.

  ~ * ~

  By the time Ochoa, Bill, and Jaime hauled themselves up the path to the rim of the reservoir, Zoila had grounded Luis’s sled on a small limestone outcrop near the bottom of the ledge. Esteban and Francisco had dragged the Nuevos onto a rocky protrusion across the pool from what remained of the cave opening.

  “I can see everyone but Ann.” Ochoa scanned the still heaving water.

  “I saw her swimming toward the ledge after we left the cave, but then I lost sight of her as the rim started to collapse,” Bill said.

  “I didn’t see her after that, either.”

  “Jesus,” Bill said. “I hope she made it out.”

  “We’ve got to get everyone out and keep an eye out for Ann at the same time,” Ochoa said between coughs. “I’ve got extra rope in the Range Rover, blankets, coffee, our clothes, the radio. Let me call headquarters first, tell them what’s happened, that we need folks out here, let them know about Ann; then let’s get Zoila and Luis out of the water. We’re going to need help and more equipment for the guys and our captives.”

  ~ * ~

  As I stumbled through the sucking mud, the feeling I’d had off and on since we first entered the cave—that we were an essential part of the story of the reservoir and the cavern—returned, along with the idea that we were living out something that began long ago. It was eerie.

  First the Vulture Lord and K’in Kan, then the classic Maya and their cave, and now us, beginning with Ruston’s murder.

  It were as if—

  Several sets of headlights suddenly caught my eye as they dipped and rose, heading toward me on the saturated trail through the dark needling rain. I hope to hell it’s the rangers, I thought, slipping into the thick understory at the side of the road, not the Nuevo, not Los Zetas.

  When I spotted the ranger’s insignia on the door of the lead Land Cruiser, I plunged out of the undergrowth waving my arms.

  “Stop! Help! We’ve got to go to the reservoir. Now! The walls are falling in. Everyone’s trapped,” I yelled as I lunged into the road.

  The car jerked to a stop. The ranger in the passenger’s seat rolled down his window. “Ann?”

  I nodded.

  “Get in. The others are okay, but they’re having trouble getting everyone out of the reservoir. We’re headed there now. Here,” he said, opening his door, “get in front with the heat. I’ll sit in back.”

  I crawled into the seat directly in the blast of the Land Cruiser’s roaring heater. The ranger whose seat I’d taken dropped his jacket around my shoulders and handed me a cup of coffee from his thermos. Between sips I tried to explain what had happened—the roaring water, the grinding, spreading collapse of the cave, the sinking walls of the reservoir near the cavern’s opening, my separation from everyone in the chaos of the expanding sinkhole and rising water.

  “Horrible,” the driver said, shifting into second gear. “At least everyone’s alive. It sounds as if they’re just cold and wet. Ochoa radioed headquarters to let us know what happened.” He swerved to avoid a washed-out spot in the road. “They’re worried about you.”

  Thirty-one

  Tikal National Park, Guatemala, Later That Day

  By the time the entire caving party and the captives arrived at the Tikal Park Rangers’ headquarters a couple of hours later, Hurakan had moved off muttering, probably disappointed we’d gotten out. We could hear him complaining in the distance as we sipped mugs of steaming coffee in the break room.

  After Dr. Gomez gave Luis a proper bandage, as well as a sling, and inspected the rest of us, we were given dry clothes. We were tired, but nothing a night’s sleep wouldn’t mend. Even the Nuevos in the holding cell at the back of the building had made it through the sinkhole collapse with nothing more than a few contusions and raw spots.

  “Do you think
there will be any way to get back into the cave?” Zoila asked Luis stirring sugar into his coffee. “I mean all the structures, the artifacts.” She paused. “They’re priceless.”

  “We’ll have to see what is left of the cave itself, once we can get somebody out there to check,” Ochoa said, “a caving expert, someone who is familiar with karst typography. We have to make certain the entire area is stable before we start a dig. All this rain, the water’s weight on the cave system, the underground erosion eating away the rock over the years—the entire cave may have turned into a giant sinkhole or may be about to become one.”

  I shuddered and wondered if not being able to go back into the cave was such a bad thing after all.

  “At least we’ll have some images of the platforms and galleries. My camera didn’t get wet and it’s in one piece, gracias a Dios,” Ochoa said.

  Santa Elena, Guatemala

  Later that night, back in our room at Esperanza’s mother’s place, I was less concerned about the cave and artifacts than I was about having killed two people. I could hear Pat turning restlessly on her narrow bed, apparently mirroring my own miserable attempts at sleep.

  “Pat? You awake?”

  “I can’t turn my mind off. I’m still trying to digest everything. What hell. And your awful experience taking care of Luis—”

  It was kind to put it that way. Taking care of Luis, not killing.

  I sniffled, blew my nose. “It’s as if something broke—or a shift occurred deep inside. Who am I now? I don’t know.”

  “Try not to worry about it tonight,” Pat said. “You can think about it later.” She switched on her flashlight and got out of bed. “Benadryl might help.” She found a bottle of water, dug a container from her travel bag, and shook out two bright pink tablets.

  I obediently swallowed the pills she handed me. I felt like I did when I was a kid sick at home from school and my mother was giving me medicine.

  “Thanks.”

  “That should do something,” Pat said, switching off her light and getting back in bed.

  She was right, after a few minutes the Benadryl took effect.

  I slept, dreamless, until sunrise.

  ~ * ~

  Bill, as usual, was the first one up; we passed his room’s half-open door on the way to the kitchen. Esperanza’s mother was busy adding wood to the hearth and making coffee when we settled at the table. Esperanza’s sister was mixing dough in a bowl on the worktable nearby.

  On the far side of the little room, the old dog slept under a bench curled in a ball, feet twitching in a doggy dream. The chickens fussed and clucked near the porch, scratching at the corn that littered the ground.

  “Buenos días señoras. How are you this morning?” Pat asked.

  “Buenos días. We are fine and you?” our hostess answered, smoothing her apron over her corte with one hand as she deposited a basket of rolls on the table with the other. She returned with two cups of steaming coffee.

  The warmth from the fire felt good. Maybe breakfast will help my fragile state, I thought, taking a roll, though food had all the appeal of a piece of wallboard.

  Pat and I were drinking a second cup of coffee, and I’d managed to eat a piece of roll when Bill joined us, bringing the scent of early morning into the kitchen with him... moisture, jungle, farmstead. Esperanza’s mother handed him a cup of coffee as he sat down across the table.

  Bill peered over the rim of his cup at the fragments of bread piled in front of me.

  “It isn’t easy,” he said. “But the important thing is you saved Luis’s life. Without you, the story would have a different ending; you and Zoila probably wouldn’t be alive, either.”

  I shredded the remains of my breakfast while he was talking, then looked up.

  “I feel horrible. I can hardly stand to dispatch an insect, but I shot two men and one was Kan himself. It’s a nightmare.”

  Bill placed his hand over mine.

  Suddenly I was crying, silently, painfully. Pat and Bill drew closer and did their best to comfort me.

  Thirty-two

  Santa Elena, Guatemala

  Several days after our arrival at Esperanza’s mother’s farm, as the sun began to slip behind the fringe of communities that ringed Lake Itza’s far shore, four of us gathered in the kitchen. In the jungle to the north, a howler called, another answered from farther east just as Bill stepped into the kitchen after his latest trip to headquarters.

  “According to Ríos, the situation has finally turned a corner. The park is cleared of Nuevos, and the Kaibiles have returned to their base,” Bill said.

  “It didn’t take long once the Kaibiles got here. Kan’s followers had a camp, almost a little pueblo, in the middle of Tikal Reserve. It wasn’t hard to find once we started looking. There were thirty men plus wives and girlfriends.” Bill poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. “The few that remained have been taken to prison in Guatemala City. The women are in jail too, till someone can figure out what to do with them.”

  “How about the cartels?” Luis asked.

  “The Mexican army completely demolished the Maya Gold transfer point to the north. Now they’re mopping up Los Zetas in the Lacandon Reserve. From now on, the cartels will be Mexico’s problem, and they aren’t going to fool around.”

  Pat, who had been nibbling on a salted tortilla, had more personal news. “I got tickets for us to fly out on Saturday,” she said. “The airline personnel assured me now the Nuevos have been rounded up and the cartels contained, the airfield is safe.”

  We all cheered.

  The sound of an approaching truck broke into our excitement.

  “Looks like company has arrived,” Bill said as Esperanza’s brother-in-law parked in front of the porch.

  Company? What didn’t I know?

  The dog barked wildly; the chickens fled as another vehicle entered the farmyard, then another.

  Bill stepped outside. “It’s Esperanza and Ochoa and Jaime and his wife.”

  A fourth pickup could be heard working its way past the gate and into the crowded yard.

  “Esperanza’s oldest brother and his wife just showed up,” Bill called over his shoulder.

  “Will someone tell me what is going on?” I asked no one in particular.

  The women, carrying platters covered with dishtowels, began to file into the kitchen.

  “What’s that?” Bill asked, indicating the platter Esperanza carried as she slipped through the door.

  “Tamales, for afterward,” Esperanza said. “Where do you want them, Mom?”

  “Over here,” her mother said, waving her hand at the shelf running along the back wall of the kitchen. “They’ll be fine until we need them.”

  Captain Ríos, Francisco, and Esteban exited Ríos’s Land Cruiser at the gate and joined the group in the farmyard.

  “Will someone tell me what is happening?” I said as I joined the growing crowd outside the kitchen.

  “’Listen up,” Bill shouted over the din.

  Luis, dressed in a Guatemalan shirt and hand-woven shawl with images of spread-winged vulture-like birds draped around his neck, waved his good arm for silence. Once he had everyone’s attention, he began.

  “We’ve been attacked, injured, and forced to do things we would never have considered possible in order to thwart the Nuevos and to return the vulture pendant to the ancestors. Since we’ve all been affected by recent terrible events, we must have a ritual to restore balance and order to our lives and the world.

  “Ann, Bill, and Jaime had the most difficult roles and are in special need of healing.

  “I didn’t say anything about this earlier because the ceremony didn’t come together until the last minute. I didn’t want to let you down if it didn’t work out.”

  I guess that makes sense, I thought. I was so prone to weeping at odd moments, who knew how I’d respond to disappointment? I wasn’t certain myself.

  “There is a holy spot, a spring with an altar, at the edge of the j
ungle near the site of an ancient pueblo. We’ll hold the ceremony there,” he said, as Zoila began pushing his chair toward the nearest vehicle.

  Luis was tucked between Esperanza’s mother and her son in the lead pickup. Zoila, Esperanza, and I rode behind them in the bed of the truck; the walker, travel chair, two bags of fertilizer, and a large box of copal took up the rest of the space.

  Everyone else fanned out into the remaining pickups, crowding into the cabs or taking seats in the beds, trying to make themselves comfortable on bags of seeds or farm chemicals. It felt like a hayride, except no one was giggling or tossing straw.

  The muddy track toward the jungle was miserable—rough clumps of weeds and portions of crumbling bank filled the old ruts that were barely visible from the pitching vehicle; only the high walls of the ancient roadway clearly marked the path’s location. We were thrown from side to side, along with the other cargo, as the pickup lurched its way toward the jungle’s edge. No one talked; we’d bite our tongues.

  An hour from the farm, as the rose-gold light faded and streaks of lemon and pale blue edged the western sky, we stopped at the edge of a still empty cornfield near the tree line. With the trucks silenced, the metallic songs of insects deep in the nearby jungle closed around us.

  “This is it,” Esperanza’s mother said as she eased her way from the cab.

  I crawled over the tailgate with my two companions.

  We had parked as close as possible to a tumbled pile of rocks that backed up to an upturned ledge of limestone protruding from the weedy margin of the field.

  My legs felt like rubber as I wobbled closer to the outcrop. I wasn’t the only one that felt shaky from jostling down a dirt track in the back of a pickup. Everyone else looked unsteady, too.

  A thin thread of water flowed from under the rock pile and formed a small pool at the base. It drained into a slender rivulet, disappearing in the direction from which we’d come. A flat stone altar, the size of a kitchen table, lay near the spring surrounded by piles of broken pottery.