“The lost city, Dad … Francisco told me what you’re looking for. He told me about the advanced culture that’s supposed to live there. It’s simply not possible that there has been an undiscovered civilization living for thousands of years underground. At some point they would have come into contact with the outside world.”
Randall nodded. It wasn’t the first time he had heard this line of reasoning.
“Francisco also told me about their advanced technology. They have electricity? Really?”
Randall smiled. “I know it sounds crazy, kiddo, but I’ve found too much proof to think that this is just a legend. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t entirely convinced until we found the medallion.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. The medallion is an amazing artifact, and the tablets seem to confirm what you’re saying. I can understand how you could believe this, to a point, but Dad, we’re scientists. The idea that there’s an underground city with advanced technology that is somehow related to the tribe in the jungle … that’s a bit hard to swallow. If it’s true, why don’t the jungle people possess the same technology?”
“How much did Francisco tell you?”
“Pretty much what I’ve told you. Why?”
“There’s more to the story. Are you familiar with the creation story of the tribe?”
“No.”
“Yupanqui is the descendent of Ayar Manco, a figure most historians believe is only a legend. He’s the last great leader of a tribe that is waiting for the great reunification with the people of the underground city, Vilcabamba. The thing is, the historians got the story wrong. Backwards actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“Their theory talks about the way Ayar Manco tricked his brother Ayar Cachi into returning to the sacred cave to retrieve an important artifact. In the process, Ayar Cachi was trapped inside the cave, while Ayar Manco and his siblings founded the civilization in the valley. But that’s not the true story. What actually happened was that Ayar Manco and his supporters were kicked out of the Vilcabamba for defying Ayar Cachi and trying to rebel.”
Randall went on to explain, in detail, the legend that Yupanqui had shared with him including how the ancient ancestors of the tribe were, in fact, descendants of humans who had interbred with visitors from the sky. He explained that these ancient travelers had landed in Peru thousands of years ago as part of an interstellar research project sent to earth, because of the relative similarities in our anatomies and the trajectory of our history. Due to the distance and time taken to travel to Earth, the alien civilization had sent visitors who stayed on the planet semi-permanently and created a hidden civilization. They used Vilcabamba as a base from which they could monitor human development.
Sam listened with rapt attention. A few days earlier, her father’s story would have seemed like a child’s fantasy run amok, but now, she wasn’t so sure. “What about the tribe in the jungle? Why don’t they have the same technology as the underground dwellers?”
“Remember the legend I just told you about? The group you met in the jungle is comprised of the ancestors of the group that was kicked out of Vilcabamba for rebelling against their leaders. Since they were related, the leaders of Vilcabamba still protected and looked after them and even helped them build their city.”
“But they didn’t share all of their knowledge,” Sam said.
“Right. Then, over time, the jungle dwellers came into contact with more humans, and there was more interbreeding as the tribe continued to grow. Fast forward to modern times, and now these two groups are waiting to be reunited, but they’re missing something they need.”
“The medallion!” Sam said.
“Yep, the medallion. I had planned to travel to Vilcabamba, speak to the inhabitants, and then bring the medallion back to them, later.”
“Why didn’t you just bring the medallion with you on this trip?”
Randall shrugged. “Self-preservation, I guess. I figured that if these legends were all true, and I ran into trouble with the residents of Vilcabamba, having the medallion stored somewhere else would give me a bargaining chip.”
Sam sat back and shook her head. It was too much for her to process, but now some of the missing information on the tablets made sense. The Silver Eagle might have been a reference to the craft that the Great One traveled in when he visited the people in the jungle, and now she understood the relationship between Paititi and Vilcabamba.
After a moment of silence, Randall said, “I’ve seen it, Sam, I think.”
“Seen what?”
“Vilcabamba.”
“What? How?”
“After Phil, Mike and I fell into the chamber, I walked ahead trying to find a way out and get some help for Mike. I walked for hours and felt like I was just moving in circles.”
“And?”
“I walked into a gigantic cavern. I mean, this was an enormous opening. Remember Paititi, where you saw the temple with the tablets?”
“Yeah.”
“Vilcabamba is twice as large.”
“That’s impossible.”
Randall was looking directly at her now. “And there was some sort of artificial sun illuminating the cavern. I walked down a long staircase that led me straight into the heart of the city, but I didn’t see anyone there. I felt like I was in a dream. I kept walking and looking, but the city was empty.”
A shiver ran down Sam’s spine. “What happened?”
“I had the weirdest feeling that I was being watched, and I turned around to look back at the tunnel I had come from, and then it happened.”
“What?”
“I met them. I met some of the inhabitants of Vilcabamba. They were … different, I guess you’d say. They didn’t look like Yupanqui’s people.”
“What did they look like?”
“Long narrow faces with large eyes. Barely a hint of a nose and no mouths I could see. And their skin seemed to be almost translucent, but milky in color, and it seemed like they glowed. They didn’t have any body hair, either. They were completely smooth. They were about the same size as Yupanqui’s tribesman, but I guess the interbreeding of the jungle tribe caused Paititi tribe to take on more human characteristics.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“We didn’t speak, but it seemed like they could read my thoughts, and I could read theirs. Telepathy, I guess. They told me that you were in trouble. Then, one of them put their hand on my cheek, and I fell into a dreamlike state. It was like my mind was free of my body and floating above the Earth. I saw a compound in the jungle. It was under attack by men in uniform. I saw you and knew you needed my help.”
Sam watched her father’s face carefully, looking for signs that he might be joking or misremembering the events that had transpired. She saw no signs of either. “What happened after that?”
“I woke up. I was lying on the ground across the chasm where we were when that firefight broke out. I had a pretty bad cut on my face and a big bump on the back of my head.”
“So, you didn’t actually find Vilcabamba. You landed on your head, were knocked unconscious, and your subconscious mind dreamt about these creatures and the underground city because you have been pre-occupied about this theory for years.”
“Maybe, but it seemed real, and the memories are so clear and they followed a logical sequence. I think it really happened. Besides, how do you explain that I knew about you being in trouble?”
“Well, you might have logically theorized that once you were lost, Francisco would contact me and ask me to go looking for you. Given what you went through in the chamber room, it wouldn’t be a stretch for you to have believed that the same people who were after you would also pose a threat to me.”
“Your logic is sound, Dr. Randall, but I know what I saw, and I feel like the experience was far too vivid to have been a dream or hallucination.” Randall stood, grinning and dusted himself off.
With a suddenness that took them both by surprise, the cavern began shaking
, violently. Dust and rock began crumbling from the walls and ceiling. A boulder jarred loose from the wall above, and Randall instinctively moved to protect his daughter, knocking her to the ground and out of the way of the falling rock. In a moment’s time, the shaking stopped, and the two professors huddled on the floor of the cavern, heads covered in a protective stance.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, no damage.”
“Phil …”
The elder Randall searched the dust-filled tunnel, looking in vain for his assistant. The cavern resembled a burning building, dust choking the air and reducing visibility to a few feet.
“I can’t find him, he was right here.”
“Dad, where are you?” Sam moved carefully through the smoke-filled cavern, following the light from her father’s flashlight. Appearing at her father’s side, in the area where he had set Phil down, Sam saw nothing but open floor.
“He’s gone Sam. Phil’s gone.”
Chapter twenty-two
Ackers stood next to Dumond in the tunnel system, clearly perplexed at the turn of events.
“There’s no sign of them, Mr. Dumond.”
“This is most disappointing, Colonel. Once again, two professors and a student have eluded you and your men. I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake to hire you for this job.”
“Mr. Dumond, we’ve completed a sweep of the tunnels in such a fashion that if Randall, his daughter and his helper were here, we would have found them. They are not in this tunnel complex.”
“You sound so sure. Have your men discovered the underground city then?”
“No.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if Kristoph was right in his assessment of you and your team, Colonel. Fortunately for me, I have something that Randall is looking for,” Dumond said, grasping the medallion. “Sooner or later, they will need this item. Tell your men we are returning to our base. I need time to plan my next move.”
The flight back to the base was short, but exceptionally tense, with Ackers emoting the mood of an angry teenager who had just been scolded by his father. When the helicopter finally touched down at the base, Ackers’s fury was evident as he grabbed his Sargent’s collar.
“Post a man on the perimeter and have the others assemble for debriefing in five minutes!” Ackers screamed into his ear.
“Affirmative, Colonel.”
Dumond exited the chopper and made a beeline for his office, closing and locking the door as he entered. To say he was confounded by Randall’s ability to once again elude Ackers and his men, was an understatement. Not accustomed to facing the sort of difficulties Randall had dealt to him, Dumond needed to focus and regain his edge. He sat down at his desk and removed a small photo he kept hidden there for moments such as this. The photo was of a small, sad boy standing in front of a dilapidated shack. Looking at the picture of himself as a young child immediately took him back to the chapter in his life which served as the very nexus of this project.
As a boy of eleven, Francis Dumond had been abducted, and the experience forever changed him. He was a skinny, painfully shy boy, the result of years of physical abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father. His family was also poor, living in the shantytowns in Villeurbanne, northeast of Lyon, France. The neighborhood was rough, and young Francis was the frequent recipient of beatings at the hands of local bullies. These beatings were mild, however, compared to the punishment meted out by his father. He still recalled being very small and hearing his mother and father arguing loudly in the adjacent room. The small, fragile child popped his head out of his room just in time to see his father strike his mother in anger, knocking her to the ground. Francis, a child of seven at the time, ran to his mother’s side, trying to comfort her as she lay sobbing on the floor, a large welt forming on her left eye. His compassion for his mother was met with a brutal beating from his enraged father, who struck him with such ferocity that Francis thought he would surely die.
He didn’t, and sadly this would be the first of repeated beatings Francis would receive at the cruel hands of his father. Beatings that continued until that fateful night so many years ago. He could still remember the details with such incredible clarity that the events of that September evening seemed like yesterday. It was very late in the evening, and Francis in his bed, the cool night air drifting over his body, as he lay there, unable to sleep. It was a rare moment of quiet for the young boy, and he was almost in tears, contemplating the shabby condition of his life. The stillness of that evening was almost tomblike as the sounds of the world outside were quiet at that late hour, and Francis remembered feeling like he was the only person alive.
It was 2:07 a.m. when the low humming sound started. At first, he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it. After all, the mind of an eleven year old can certainly create flights of fancy, especially at night. The sound persisted, however, and grew stronger. As he lay there, young Francis realized that the cool breeze had stopped and the air was suddenly and completely still. The humming noise stopped, too, and there was complete silence, again, but Francis felt that he was not alone in his darkened room. The young boy was suddenly filled with such terror that he lay in his bed motionless, unable to open his eyes. He could sense the entity there in his shanty room, standing over him, watching him. His heart beat furiously, and tiny beads of sweat began forming all over his body. Finally, the anticipation became too much and Francis opened his eyes to see …nothing. He was alone in his room.
Or was he? Out of the corner of his right eye, Francis detected very faint movement. The young boy, his heartbeat pounding in his chest, slowly turned his head in the direction of the movement. A sight that would forever change him met his glance. The face of the creature was slender and long, its skin a strange bluish-gray hue that almost seemed to make it glow. Its face lacked normal human features, its nose simply being small slits in the front of its head. The creature stared at him with dead, black eyes that seemed to pierce right through the eleven-year-old boy. Mixed with a combination of terror and awe, Francis realized that he couldn’t move. He felt drugged, as if heavy lead weights were attached to his extremities.
Then the creature lifted its hand into view. The long slender fingers reached out of the darkness toward him. Francis wanted to scream, but he could only manage a muffled cry reminiscent of the all too familiar nightmare known to everyone. But this was no nightmare. This was really happening, and he lay there unable to defend himself, as the long slender finger reached out for him, slowly coming to rest between his eyes. The boy immediately fell into a deep trance.
When his eyes opened again, his vision was blurred as if he were viewing the world through a gauzy veil. He could hear the muffled sounds of talking but couldn’t make out what was being said. Blurry shadows danced at the periphery of his vision; Francis felt completely and utterly vulnerable. Trying with all of his might, he struggled against the unseen shackles holding down his body, but he still couldn’t move. He let out a weak whimpering sound and felt absolute and complete terror. He would most likely die here, disappearing forever from the squalid hellhole he called his home. Would anyone even notice he was gone? Surely his mother would, and she would shed a tear for him, but she may also think that he finally decided he had enough of his father’s abuse and run away. Aside from her, no one gave a damn about him and, most likely, any memory that anyone had of Francis Dumond would fade away amongst the backdrop of the noisy, brutal neighborhood in which he lived.
This thought of the total futility of his life, the complete lack of importance of his existence, strangely gave Francis a previously unknown sense of strength. Lying on that table in that distant, dreamy place, Francis Dumond decided that, if he survived this ordeal, his life would be very different going forward. The next few hours were difficult to say the least. His unknown captors poked and prodded him in all manners imaginable. Francis lay there naked to these cold and heartless creatures that didn’t care how terribly small and afraid he was. They simply carried on the
ir studies until at last, mercifully, Francis once again saw a long slender finger touch him between his eyes, and he fell back to sleep.
Upon waking back in his bed, Francis was a changed person. After the terrifying experience, Francis was no longer afraid of any earthly person or situation. He decided that dealing with his father was the first order of business. On most mornings, his father, still in a half-drunken stupor, would come into his room for a morning session of cursing and hitting. Using a pipe he found at an abandoned lot near his house, Francis waited for his father who came in as he normally did. This time, however, was different. Francis beat the abuser to a bloody pulp, leaving him dead on the floor of his room.
His mother, having heard the commotion coming from her son’s room, approached the door slowly and opened it in fear of angering her husband. She found her son sitting on the floor next to his father’s body, lying in a crimson pool of blood. The boy held his face in his hands, the bloody murder weapon lying next to him on the floor. She slowly walked over to Francis and put her arm around her son. He immediately turned to her and melted into her arms, softly sobbing.
They disposed of the body in a nearby field under the cover of night. The next day, the gendarme arrived at their front door with news of the fate of Mr. Dumond. Asking to come in, one of the two officers couldn’t help but notice the reticent little boy, thinking it must be difficult for such a young boy to learn that his father was brutally murdered. However, this neighborhood was known for its violence, and Mr. Dumond had a reputation of having a terrible temper. The list of people who wanted to see him dead was as long as the day. The gendarme made no promise of finding the killer, but the widow Dumond seemed appreciative of their attempts.
From that day forward, Francis was a changed boy. Upon returning to school, he no longer ran from the bullies, but stood up to them. After one such encounter, the boy came home with his shirt torn, his lip bloodied, but with a big smile on his face. “What happened to you Francis?” his mother asked.
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