by Hep Aldridge
An hour and a half passed, and we had come up empty-handed when O’Reilly, who was intently staring at the video feed from the drone, said, “Is that something down there, between those big boulders? That looks like a trail.” Joe stopped the drone’s forward motion and hovered, then dropped down for a closer look.
“It looks like there might be some wear on the rock surfaces, a little smoother going between those boulders,” Joe said as we all stared at the screen.
He was right; there was a slight even discoloration of the rock surface that wound between some huge boulders and then disappeared under the rugged canopy below.
“Okay, Joe, take her in, low and slow. Let’s get a better look.”
Sure enough, when he got the drone lower, we could see a narrow track had been worn smooth between the huge boulders, and it was heading in the right direction… up. I think I let out a whoop as Joe locked in the GPS coordinates of our discovery.
“That could be our trail,” O’Reilly said.
“Could be,” I said, “at the very least, it’s a good starting point. Nothing else has presented itself, so unless the others find another one, then that’s the path we start on. But let’s check it further. Joe, take the drone back up, start at the path down there, and fly straight ahead and see if we can find any more indications that the path continues ahead. Do a visual and continue the LIDAR scan; if we can’t see it, maybe the scan will pick it up.
After ten minutes more, he said, “Sorry, Colt, the canopy gets too thick. I can’t really get a good visual of the ground, but the LIDAR scan is processing, and we should have something in a few minutes.”
“Continue the scan all the way back here; maybe we can find something that will give us a starting point close by.”
While Joe was doing the scan, I had been on our Comms and recalled everyone. I was anxious to move out.
“O’Reilly, let’s start breaking camp. When everyone gets back, I want to be able to move out quickly.” No one else had indicated they had found a path headed in the right direction, so our discovery was it.
An hour later, we were moving out. Joe’s LIDAR pass had borne fruit. We spotted what looked like a faint trail once the computer processed the scan, and it linked up with the one we had gotten a visual on earlier. That was the good news. The bad news was we were about six miles away from the path through the mountainous terrain—in our favorite direction, up.
We had packed supplies for four days and stashed the rest of our provisions and belongings in the wooded area not far from the village. We tethered the mules in what was left of a hut and left them food and water. If by some chance, we were tracked, the only indication of our presence would be the mules. We had armed ourselves, and I finally got to see what Uncle Harold had gotten for Dimitri. Yep, a Barrett fifty caliber sniper rifle. You know Dimitri and his damn zombies… We had procured a pair of AK-47s, carried by O’Reilly and Eduardo. Doc and I carried our M-16’s; Joe had his MP-90, and Reggie had her M-24 Remington, so I guess you could say we were “loaded for bear.” Joe was also carrying the carefully wrapped crystal artifact Father Gonzalez had given us.
Before we left, I had Joe hide two more of our trail cams, one with a panoramic view of our old campsite in the village and one on the trail we took when we left. If by some chance, we were followed, I wanted to know about it.
We found the trailhead an hour and a half later. We could easily have missed it if we didn’t have the LIDAR image and GPS coordinates it provided. It was obvious the trail had not been used in quite some time. But you could still make out where the rock surface had been worn smooth by years of foot traffic—a well-traveled trail of bygone times.
After four hours, we had broken out of the high-altitude jungle into the rocky area we had seen from the drone. Another hour and we re-entered the jungle but were still able to discern the trail. The climb and altitude were taking their toll. We slowed our pace, trying to conserve energy as twilight approached. We took a break and discussed setting camp for the night, but we decided to push on a little further before doing so.
We were all feeling the altitude and exertion; the torturous uphill climb was taking its toll. Muscles were screaming, and our lungs were burning from lack of oxygen. Damn, I had sort of sublimated this part or our previous explorations. Breathing the cold, dry air was like inhaling a lungful of razor blades, but we pressed on. Dimitri had point; I was next, followed by Doc Greene, Eduardo, O’Reilly, Reggie, and Joe was bringing up the rear.
We usually stopped as dusk approached and made camp, doing so while there was still light, considering our track too dangerous to be attempted at night. But today was different. Something seemed to be driving us onward. We had no idea how much further we had to go, only the vague descriptions of distance given to us by the Shuar elders and what info we had from the drone. The jungle had gotten thick, and we had to hack our way through much of it. It was full-on dark now; we had tied chem lights to our packs, and their ethereal yellow glow hanging from our backpacks kept us in line and guided us ever forward.
We cautiously made our way upward as if some unseen force was pulling us. For some reason, our surroundings sent a chill up my spine as I peered into the blackness, listening to the night sounds—real or imagined, I couldn’t tell. Spooky, I thought, not the ghost kind but just… spooky. I was lost in thought and mind-numbing pain when I ran into the back of Dimitri, who had stopped.
“What’s going on? Why did you stop?” I asked in a hushed voice.
He said, “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Be quiet.”
Chapter Fifteen
Book 2 Epilogue: … Redux…
I obliged as word was spread backward to halt. The only things audible were some nighttime jungle sounds, almost covered up by my labored breathing and pounding heart. The chilled air, filled with a variety of unidentifiable odors, only added to the eeriness of the moment.
“I don’t know; my gut just lurched, and the hair on the back of my neck is standing straight up!” he almost whispered.
I was about to admonish him when I realized I was getting goosebumps on my arms and the hair on the back of my neck decided to come to attention… What the bloody hell…?
I turned back to Doc, “Do you feel anything?”
To my surprise, his voice coming from the dark said, “Yeah, I do; it’s like a tingling sensation.”
O’Reilly chimed in, “I got a weird feeling going on, all tingly too—almost like static electricity.”
There was an almost palpable sensation gripping us that had not been there a few minutes ago. Altitude, exhaustion, whatever it was, we all felt it. That’s not natural, I thought. This was the first time we had pressed on after dark, and I couldn’t tell you why. Was it possible we were being propelled forward by some unseen force?
We were all whispering when Eduardo quietly asked, “Senor Colt, what is happening to us?”
Joe’s voice came out of the darkness, “It’s cool, Eduardo, no problem,” and then, “Colt, what the hell?”
Dimitri started moving slowly forward again, inching his way upward. In a couple of minutes, he stopped and said, “What the hell is that?”
As I moved next to him, peering into the pitch black, I asked, “What?”
“Look ahead about twenty feet on the jungle floor.” As I did, I could see in the darkness an ever so faint blue glow in two small irregular splotches. Each was no larger than a silver dollar.
“What’s going on?” Doc exclaimed in a hushed voice.
By now, we had all bunched up and were peering through the stygian darkness at the glowing spots ahead.
Joe said, “Some kind of luminescence, maybe lichen or fungus.”
Dimitri had started moving forward again. “This is really weird; I can see more of them further ahead,” he whispered. As we approached the first of the spots, he turned on his flashlight, and the blue glow was lost in the red glow of its light. Dimitri said, “The brush i
s thinning out ahead.” He turned off his light, and the blue glow became visible again.
We had been walking, relying on our night vision since artificial light can be as distracting as it is beneficial in the jungle. The shadows it creates can hide a multitude of dangers, so we try to use it sparingly and only with a red filter over the light not to disrupt our natural night vision. Thus, we were able to see the blue glow. We were now standing in a group with small spots of blue extending to our left and right five to six feet apart. They seemed to be marking the outer perimeter of the path that had opened in front of us.
Ahead, I could see a few blue patches in irregular shapes until they were swallowed by the night. Dimitri had dropped down to one knee and was scraping the ground with his knife, removing the growth and debris around one of the patches. As he did, the blue patch grew larger, and soon, he had cleared a rectangular-shaped area. The entire rectangle was clearly emanating a faint blue glow.
Still on one knee, now with the red glow of his flashlight lighting the area, he said, “Guys, this flat stone is not natural; it’s been worked smooth.” Our trail or path had turned into something completely different. He continued clearing the dirt until he uncovered another stone. There were more stones set next to it. Rubbing his hand across them, he said, “I mean, this is really smooth, almost like glass, and the stones are so tightly placed, I can hardly feel a joint between them.” He rose, shone his light forward, and said, “This is a manmade road, but it’s not like the Inca Road.”
O’Reilly said, “None of the other stones around it are glowing.” She was right. The next spot of glowing blue was a good 15 to 20 feet ahead. We continued to it, cleared the dirt and undergrowth away, and uncovered another glowing stone the same size as the first one. Looking further ahead, two small blue spots were visible. They were across from each other, separated by about five or six feet. When we got to them, we found them to be directly opposite each other and on the sides of the roadway. We turned and looked behind us and were amazed when we saw the two stones we had cleared were in the middle of the road, marking the outside edge of the road.
The blue stones in the center of the roadway all seemed to be equally spaced. Before anyone else could say anything, O’Reilly piped up and said, “These are markers just like the ones used to show pilots the runways and taxiways at night.”
“Son of a bitch” Doc breathed out. “Roadway markers, how the hell is that possible?”
Dimitri had walked ahead and, in a low voice, called back, “Everything smooths out up here, and I can see more spots of light. Hey… look behind us; the lights are gone!”
We turned and looked; sure enough, the blue lights were gone. Reggie had started retracing our steps when suddenly, a blue stone slowly glowed into existence, and then another. She stopped and started backing up; after a few feet, the lights went out.
O’Reilly said, “Damn, that’s some pretty cool high-tech stuff for a stone road in the middle of the Andes.”
“No kidding… this isn’t the yellow brick road, but I think we’re being shown the way to go.”
Eduardo spoke again; he sounded nervous, “Senor Colt, what kind of magic is this?”
“It’s not magic, and I’m pretty sure we’ve got nothing to worry about,” I said in my best reassuring voice. Shit, if only I believed it!
“Well, that’s reassuring as hell, Colt,” Joe said under his breath. “Don’t worry, Eduardo; it’s cool, compadre,” and he patted the lad on the shoulder.
“Bien, Senor Joe,” Eduardo replied.
We slowly continued up the road, finding the glowing blue stones at regular intervals. When we got to an area where none were visible, it didn’t take us long to kick around the dirt and sparse vegetation cover on the roadway before we uncovered another one. It was at one of these stopping points that Doc said, “Hey, that weird tingling I had before is gone.”
Dimitri chimed in, “Mine too.” As it turned out, we all agreed that the feelings we had gotten as we first approached the road were gone. Joe was the first to offer a hypothesis, “You don’t think that whoever built this thing had devised some way to let people know when they were getting close to the road?”
“Like a signal or something,” O’Reilly added.
“Or maybe an early warning system that lets them know when someone is on the road,” Reggie said, “Whoever ‘they’ are,” she added.
“Damn…” I said, “With what we have seen so far, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if both those things were true.”
“Well,” Dimitri said, “If that’s the case, then whatever is at the end of this road is probably going to be pretty freakin’ cool!”
Chapter Sixteen
We set up camp on the road that night—easily cleared and a smooth surface, real pluses as tired as we were. It was funny; I think the thrill of our discovery and the amazing technology associated with it had kept us energized and moving for the last hour or so. It wasn’t until we decided to stop for the night that the toll of today’s trek on our bodies kicked in. We sat around the fire, built in the middle of the road/path, which provided us with some much-needed warmth. Its flickering light added a peaceful quality to our surroundings. Dinner conversation was dominated by speculation about the road, its construction, and who built it. There was no doubt in our minds that this track would lead us to the lost city. However, the distance to our destination was still unknown.
According to the priest’s journal, it was a day’s travel from the village to the city. That was under different circumstances. The chief knew the way, and the route probably had been much clearer and easier to negotiate. Our optimism kicked in, and we agreed that by following the road, we should reach our destination sometime tomorrow. This likely outcome was arrived at after Dimitri had broken out his bottle of vodka and passed it around.
One swig to knock the chill off and one to celebrate our discovery.
Sitting there, we were able to study the road closely. Brushing away the dirt and debris, we saw that the blocks, making up its construction, were perfectly formed and fitted tightly together. It reminded me of the joints of Inca megalithic structures. The road surface was unbelievably level from side to side—no elevations, bumps, or raised stone corners, nothing. Completely flat, an impressive feat of engineering, I thought. And the stones themselves bore no resemblance to any that I had seen before. They were smooth as glass but not slick. I have no idea how that was accomplished, but then, I had no idea how this road could be here either.
As I gazed down its straight as an arrow track, it reminded me of the sacbes of Mesoamerica, sacred roads, or causeways that the Maya and others had built. The sacbes are raised three to four feet off the jungle floor with rock and fill, then covered in a thick coating of white plaster—very smooth and even. And they were built solely for foot traffic since the early Meso-American civilizations had no beasts of burden or the wheel. They were so well made; many of them still exist today, and more are being discovered every archaeological season.
Doc’s voice broke me out of my reverie as he asked, “So, what do you make of all this?” he asked with a sweeping arm gesture.
“Impressive, very impressive,” I said, “now we just have to find out where it leads.”
“Hopefully to the lost city,” Dimitri said.
“I believe it just might,” I replied, “It just might.”
So many questions to be answered, but for now, the exertion of the day hit us all as sleeping bags were rolled out and more wood put on the fire. Joe did a quick check on the trail cameras we had set—nothing new. We set guard rotation, even though I wasn’t as concerned about visitors as I had been earlier. I had every confidence in the early warning camera system we had in place.
The conversation at breakfast the next morning centered around more speculation about the road, its builders, the construction material, and the technology needed to accomplish such a task—much speculation and no real answers. We broke camp after covering our presence a
s best we could. A notable fact, when we cleared the fire debris, there was no indication of it left. The heat had no impact on the stone surface, and there was no discoloration of the stones whatsoever. Another mystery we hoped to answer.
The roadway, I’ll call it, was leading us into more rugged and rocky terrain. We were led into a canyon with sides that increased in height with every mile we covered. The canyon had been about seventy-five yards wide in the beginning but was now choked down to maybe thirty or forty and getting narrower.
The roadway curved and twisted through the canyon as it continued its upward track. We came around one turn to find a massive boulder the size of a house on the roadway. It was so large it practically spanned the width of the canyon. Other rocks filled in the space from the boulder to the canyon wall. It would have completely blocked off the canyon, except the center of it had been removed, and the roadway continued right through it. The rock did not interfere with passage along the road at all.
When I was a kid, my grandmother used to set out a stick of butter in a butter tray at breakfast, and it never was put back into the fridge until after supper, if then. By the end of the day, it had been at room temperature for hours, and you could take a butter knife and easily slice through it. Okay, here’s the reason for this story. Imagine you slice through the stick of butter and then slide the two pieces apart with the blade leaving an inch gap in between. You remove the knife, and you have two pieces of butter with perfectly smooth sides where you cut it and two pieces still in the shape of the butter stick.
That was our boulder. It was as if someone had sliced it, removed the center, and left the outer sides of the rock in place. This boulder was some sixty feet high, and at least eighty feet wide, with sides sliced as smooth as a hot knife through butter, and our seven- to eight-foot-wide roadway went right through its middle. No, this was not normal. There had to be hundreds of cubic yards of rock removed, and there were no debris piles or extra rock piles visible anywhere.
