Charlie Thorne and the Lost City

by Stuart Gibbs

  “That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Charlie replied. “I don’t want to go to war with these creatures. I just want to leave them alone.” She turned around and started for the canoe again.

  Dante held his ground. “You can’t leave by yourself! And I’m not going anywhere!”

  Charlie didn’t stop, though. She was done arguing.

  The wind was picking up ahead of the storm, pushing the clouds of steam off the lake. They now began to drift through the lost city like fog, quickly obscuring her from Dante’s sight.

  A great gust of air violently shook the trees throughout the surrounding forest, provoking a new round of primate shrieks in the distance.

  Charlie froze, paying more attention to them than she had before. This time the noise sent a chill up her spine. She spun back around and yelled to Dante through the fog. “Those aren’t monkeys! It’s them! We need to go!”

  Dante was about to yell back to her, when Milana clutched his arm.

  She was listening intently to the shrieks as well, warily studying the forest around them. “Charlie’s right. It’s not safe here.”

  Dante gave her a look of betrayal, but it quickly shifted to concern. He trusted Milana’s instincts better than Charlie’s—and realized with frustration that he probably needed to start trusting Charlie’s more as well. However, that didn’t make him any less angry at Charlie and her attitude. He started back toward the lake, muttering under his breath, “I hate that kid being right all the time.”

  “Wasn’t that why you wanted to recruit her in the first place?” Milana said.

  Ahead of them, Charlie had realized they were coming and paused by a stone building to wait. She dropped in beside them as they passed. “I’m glad one of you has some sense,” she said.

  Dante glared at her. “Our exercising caution here does not mean that we’re done with this discussion. The world still deserves to know about these creatures.”

  “The world will be just fine without knowing about them,” Charlie said.

  “What’s your plan, then?” Dante asked angrily. “You think you can just take your knowledge of them and run off and hide from the world again, the same way you did with Pandora?”

  “I’m trying to keep humanity from destroying itself!” Charlie exploded. “You think I like being stuck with Pandora? You think I want this responsibility? I was happy before you showed up and dragged me into all of this! Now I have the key to the destruction of all life on earth locked in my brain and I’m saddled with keeping it safe. You’re not the only one who wants it. There’s plenty of other jerks out there. That’s not exactly a recipe for a carefree life.”

  They had reached the shore of the lake. But before they could return to their canoe, Ivan and the Castellos emerged from the fog around them, guns pointed their way.

  “Where’s the treasure?” Esmerelda demanded.

  Charlie turned to Dante. “See what I mean?” she asked.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  There is no treasure,” Dante told the others. “We looked everywhere. If there was ever anything here, it’s long gone.”

  Ivan and the Castellos were forcing them back into the lost city at gunpoint, moving them away from the safety of the lake. The fog was everywhere now, cloaking the forest in a curtain of gray.

  Although Charlie, Dante, and Milana hadn’t been able to speak to one another, they were all of the same mind: It would be a mistake to allow Ivan and the Castellos to know about any of the treasures in the city, particularly the prehominids. They would certainly exploit whatever they discovered.

  “Don’t lie to us,” Esmerelda snapped. “We heard you arguing. We know you found something here. What is it?”

  “Maybe you haven’t noticed,” Charlie said. “But you’re smack in the middle of a lost Incan city. Most people would think that was pretty awesome.” She turned to Ivan, who stood the closest to her. “We haven’t met yet.…”

  “No, but I know exactly who you are, Charlie Thorne.” Although Ivan’s tone seemed friendly, it frightened Charlie. He was obviously telling her the truth, and in that single statement, he confirmed exactly what she had feared for so long: that despite all her efforts to hide from the world, there were people who knew all about her and Pandora.

  Still, she did her best to act like she wasn’t scared. “So who are you?”

  “His name’s Ivan Spetz,” Dante said. “He works for the Russians.”

  If Ivan was surprised that Dante knew his identity, he didn’t show it. “That’s true,” he admitted, never taking his eyes off Charlie. “My people are hoping that you will work for them too. They will see to it that you are extremely well compensated.”

  “And if I say no?” Charlie asked.

  Ivan shook his head and made a tsk-tsk-tsk with his tongue. “That would be a very bad career move.”

  Charlie noticed Esmerelda give Ivan a look of sudden understanding. Charlie figured Ivan hadn’t been honest about why he wanted Charlie, and Esmerelda was now realizing that she had been used as a pawn.

  Meanwhile, Gianni and Paolo didn’t seem to be concerned by any of this. They were still focused on the treasure. Gianni said, “Darwin’s clue told us to find the altar in the temple. So where’s the temple?”

  Milana started to answer, but before she could, Esmerelda interrupted. “And, just so we’re clear, if you lie to me, I’ll shoot the kid.”

  Milana recognized that Esmerelda wasn’t bluffing. So she told the truth. “It’s another fifty yards ahead.”

  She continued leading them back into the city.

  Charlie had noticed Ivan stiffen slightly when Esmerelda threatened her, like he was worried. He needs me alive, Charlie thought. Which made sense. There was no recovering Pandora if she was dead.

  However, that didn’t make her feel much safer. Once they reached the temple, it probably wouldn’t take long for the Castellos to realize how much gold there was inside—and once they did, there would no longer be any point in letting Dante and Milana live. Charlie had already learned that the Castellos didn’t like to share.

  She figured that Dante and Milana knew this too, but there was little they could do at the moment.

  And if that weren’t bad enough, she could hear the faint sounds of the hominids coming closer. Every so often, there was a soft call from the trees. The rain forest didn’t sound much different from usual, like maybe there was a troop of monkeys in the near distance, but Charlie now knew they were something else entirely. Once again, she had a feeling that she was being watched, although it was hard to see anything around her.

  The fog of steam had grown thicker, obscuring much of the city, while dark clouds were amassing above, casting the forest in a dark shadow. It was as though night had fallen in the middle of the day. Even the enormous temple had vanished in the gloom.

  But Charlie knew it was close. And she knew that she needed to act before she got there. Once they were inside the temple, Dante and Milana were as good as dead. There was only one way in or out of the temple, and Ivan and the Castellos would certainly keep it blocked off, meaning the others would be trapped inside.

  Luckily, Charlie had a plan. Although it involved getting into her backpack.

  They passed through the last ring of stone buildings into what had been the plaza in front of the temple.

  Charlie shrugged her backpack off her shoulders, trying to make it look casual.

  In an instant, all three of the Castellos were aiming their guns at her.

  “What are you doing?” Esmerelda demanded.

  “Getting a drink of water,” Charlie lied. “I’m thirsty.”

  “I don’t care,” Esmerelda said, then narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “In fact, give me your pack.”

  Charlie tried to hide her disappointment, but she didn’t do it quickly enough, which only convinced Esmerelda that she was up to something. Esmerelda had learned the hard way to never let her guard down around Charlie.

  She raised her gun slightly,
so it was now pointed at Charlie’s head. “The pack. Now.”

  “Okay.” Charlie stopped walking, extending the pack to Esmerelda.

  Which meant everyone else stopped walking for a moment as well.

  Charlie was suddenly aware of a change in the air. It felt as though every molecule around her had been charged.

  “Catch,” Charlie said suddenly, and made like she was going to throw her pack to Esmerelda.

  But she didn’t do it. She only faked it, starting the motion of throwing it while still keeping her hand clasped tightly around the straps, drawing the attention of everyone with the guns.

  A split second later, lightning struck. Just as Charlie had expected, given the charge in the atmosphere around her.

  It happened so close by that the thunderclap came simultaneously. It was as though a bomb had gone off, with a blinding flash of light and an intense concussion of sound.

  In that moment, Dante and Milana sprang into action.

  Both had extensive combat training and were waiting for the right opportunity to strike—and Charlie had given it to them.

  They targeted the Castellos first. Gianni and Paolo were amateurs. They were obviously strong, but sometimes that was a weakness in itself. Strong men often thought they didn’t need to learn how to fight; they figured they could simply overpower anyone.

  Dante and Milana made quick work of them.

  While pain didn’t linger in the Castellos’ bodies, they still felt the initial shock of it. It took only seconds for Dante and Milana to drop them and wrest their guns away.

  Ivan and Esmerelda both spun toward them, running and opening fire at once while Dante and Milana shot back.

  “Charlie, run!” Milana shouted.

  Charlie did what she was told. In this situation, she knew not to question the CIA agents. She raced back through the rain forest, toward the lake, leaving the others to handle the battle.

  The storm arrived in force. It was as though the clouds had been torn open. Sheets of rain poured through the canopy. It was the heaviest rain Charlie had ever experienced, coming down so hard that it nearly knocked her off her feet and so fast that she was drenched within seconds. The forest floor quickly turned to mud, making it difficult to run.

  Still, Charlie did her best. Between the fog, the darkness, and the rain, she could see only a few feet ahead of her, making it a struggle to even know what direction to run in. Behind her, she heard the pop of gunshots, muffled by the roar of the storm.

  Water coursed along the forest floor, forming puddles and streams. Charlie splashed through it, fumbling through her backpack as she ran, hoping the canoe wouldn’t be swamped and sunk by the time she reached it. Or that the Castellos hadn’t sunk it already out of spite. She staggered through the outermost ring of stone buildings, indicating that she was nearing the lake.

  She almost didn’t see the other men with guns. Not until she was only a few feet away from them. There were six of them, standing in a line between her and the lake, listening to the others fight, letting them waste their ammunition and their energy.

  Charlie tried to stop. Her feet went out from under her in the mud and she landed on her rear in a puddle.

  The men all laughed.

  Oz stood slightly in front of the other men, obviously their leader. “Hey there, girlie,” he said, giving her a cruel smile over the barrel of his gun. “Put your hands up where we can see them.”

  Charlie had no choice but to raise her hands in surrender. She was out in the open, with no cover.

  However, the new men who had arrived on the scene with guns weren’t her biggest concern at the moment.

  It was that, only five feet away from her, a living prehominid had emerged from the rain.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Genetically, humans and other primates are far more closely related than most people realize. Humans and chimpanzees are estimated to share almost 99 percent of their DNA, meaning that in an evolutionary sense, humans are more closely related to chimps than chimps are to gorillas.

  The gap between humans and monkeys was greater, but both species were still closely related enough to be placed on the same branch of the evolutionary tree: the primates. The first monkeys had arrived in South America approximately forty million years earlier, one hundred million years after that continent had split off from Africa. No one knew exactly how this had happened—scientists theorized that perhaps monkeys had accidentally floated across the Atlantic on rafts of vegetation—but the monkeys had certainly thrived in their new home, evolving into more than one hundred known new species.…

  As well as the one higher species that had never been documented.

  It must have been seen, Charlie figured, as she stared at the creature standing in the rain by her. The inhabitants of the ancient city must have known of them—and perhaps Segundo’s ancestors had as well, but then tried to keep people away by warning that the area was dangerous and calling it the Dark Lands. Certainly, this was what Darwin had encountered: He had etched a drawing of one of them into the altar. It definitely appeared to be a link between men and monkeys, undeniable proof of evolution.

  It wasn’t a direct link; it couldn’t have been, as humans were proven to have evolved in Africa. But as Charlie had suspected, convergent evolution had taken place. The creature still had much in common with monkeys, such as hair all over its body and large canine teeth—but it had developed some attributes in common with humans.

  It had begun the shift to walking upright, moving with the knuckle-walk of chimps and gorillas rather than the four-legged scurry of monkeys; its hands were dexterous; its tail was gone; and most significantly, its head was large for its body, indicating that it had a sizable brain. The prehominid was much smaller than an adult human, only about the size of a kindergartener, which made sense, as the monkeys it had evolved from weren’t that big. (Most previously discovered prehominid species had been considerably smaller than modern humans as well.) For a moment Charlie thought it might have been a youngster, only five or six years old. But then it looked directly at her and she saw the intelligence in its eyes. Which made her realize it was an adult.

  The creature had its guard up. The hair on the nape of its neck was raised and it was in a defensive crouch, the same way that a monkey or a dog would display agitation. It was also making a low, guttural growl, and its teeth were bared. But when Charlie met its eyes, she saw it regard her with curiosity, as though it wanted to understand what she was.

  Charlie was fascinated. Amazed. Astonished.

  And worried. Not because she felt threatened by the creature. But because of how Oz and his men were looking at it.

  They regarded it with horror and disgust. And fear. In the way that humans had so often regarded something they didn’t understand.

  The creature shifted its attention from Charlie to Oz.

  And Oz responded by turning his gun on it.

  “No!” Charlie screamed.

  But Oz opened fire anyway.

  The creature was on the alert for trouble—and Charlie’s scream had startled it into action. It leapt away at the last moment, so Oz’s shot only grazed its hip. The creature shrieked in pain and tumbled across the wet ground, then rolled back to its feet and scampered away into the cover of the rain, eluding a few more shots from Oz.

  Once it was safe again, the noise it was making changed. It became a howl. There was anger in it, but Charlie recognized something else.

  It sounded to her like communication.

  And then the other creatures, which had been hiding in the shadows, attacked.

  To Charlie, the way the creatures struck was further evidence of their intelligence.

  To begin with, they had arranged themselves in a semicircle around Oz and his men, which showed forethought. And they hadn’t blindly attacked, but had waited to see if the humans were a threat. Now that Oz had foolishly proven that he was dangerous, he and his men found themselves in a very bad position: with their backs to the la
ke and no escape route.

  Then the creatures’ assault was quick and well coordinated. And while their weapons were rudimentary, only rocks and sticks, they wielded them with terrifying skill.

  They moved so fast, Charlie wasn’t even sure how many there were. It might have been ten, but maybe it was as few as six. They were merely blurs in the rain.

  To Charlie’s surprise, they didn’t attack her, even though they could have. Maybe they had perceived that she meant them no harm. Or maybe they had recognized that she was young and therefore didn’t consider her a threat. Whatever the case, they focused their attack on Oz and his men.

  The creatures were ruthless and efficient. Two of Oz’s men went down before they even knew what was coming.

  Because Oz already had his gun ready, with his finger on the trigger, he was in a better position to defend himself. He opened fire as he ran toward the prehominids. He hit one as it lunged for him, and it crumpled into the mud, whimpering in pain. Having created a hole in the creatures’ line, Oz raced through it and fled into the city.

  Jose fell in behind him, laying down a spray of cover fire to keep the prehominids at bay.

  Some of the creatures went after them, while others took care of Oz’s two remaining men.

  While all that was happening, Charlie ran.

  Although the prehominids hadn’t attacked her, she was still frightened of them. They obviously now recognized that humans were dangerous, so it was possible that they still might come for her.

  The only place Charlie could imagine she might be safe was the canoe. Most monkeys and apes couldn’t swim; maybe these creatures couldn’t either. So she headed for the lake.

  Only, with the fog and the darkness and the pouring rain, she could barely see anything. All the landmarks around her had vanished, and she had become disoriented while escaping. She found water running along the ground and presumed it was running toward the lake, so she followed it.

  Charlie wasn’t used to being wrong, but this time she was. She was heading in the wrong direction.