12.21: A Novel

by Dustin Thomason

  Stanton pointed this out to the team. “Within a month of when the human meat is introduced into the food supply for everyone else,” he said, “it makes everyone—including the king and his men—sick.”

  “What happened?” Rolando asked.

  “Something changed.”

  “Like what?” Chel asked.

  “The ancients believed bad things happened when the gods weren’t honored,” Rolando said, invoking Paktul’s claim that whatever once protected the king did no longer. “Many indígenas would still tell you disease is a result of the gods’ anger.”

  “Well, I would tell you disease is the result of mutated proteins,” Stanton said. “And I don’t believe in scientific coincidences. The king and his men must have eaten a lot more brains in that year than the commoners could have in a couple of weeks, right? The disease suddenly became destructive, and there had to be a reason.”

  “You think it got stronger,” Chel said.

  Stanton considered. “Or what if their defense mechanisms got weaker?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think of an AIDS patient,” he said. “HIV weakens the immune system and makes it much easier to get sick.”

  Victor glanced at his watch. There was something detached about him. Stanton had to wonder where else the man’s mind could be at a time like this.

  “So you think something lowered the defenses of the king and his men?” Rolando asked. “Their immune systems got messed up?”

  “Or maybe it was the exact opposite,” Stanton said, connections forming. “They’re in the middle of a societal collapse, right? They were destroying all of their resources, burning down the last of their trees, and running out of everything from food to spices to paper to medicine. Maybe something was artificially raising their defense mechanisms before, and then it stopped.”

  “Like a vaccine?” asked Chel.

  “More like how quinine prevents malaria, or vitamin C prevents scurvy,” Stanton said. “Something holding the disease back without them even knowing. The king says they consumed the flesh of men for almost a year without being cursed. And Paktul thinks it’s because they stopped making offerings to the gods. But what if they actually lost or stopped consuming whatever was protecting them?”

  “Where would they have been exposed to this … prevention?” Victor asked, returning to the conversation.

  “It could’ve been something they were eating or drinking. Something plant-based, probably. Quinine was protecting people from malaria long before they knew what it was. Penicillium fungi in soil were probably preventing all kinds of bacterial infections before anyone knew about antibiotics.”

  They reexamined every word of the translation, scrutinizing each reference to plants, trees, foods, or drinks—anything the Maya consumed before the widespread cannibalism began. Corn breakfast mixtures, alcohol, chocolate, tortillas, peppers, limes, spices. They searched for every reference to anything used medicinally. Anything that could have been protecting them.

  “We need samples of all of these to test,” Stanton said. “The exact species the ancient people used to eat.”

  “Where would we get that?” asked Rolando. “Even if you could find them in the forest, how would we know it was the same species?”

  “Archaeologists have extracted residues from pottery,” Chel interjected. “They’ve found trace evidence of dozens of different plant species on a single bowl.”

  “Inside tombs?” Stanton asked.

  Victor stood up and walked toward the door to the lab. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m going to the washroom.”

  “Use the one in my office,” Chel suggested.

  He left without a word, seeming not to have heard her. He was acting strangely. A sad possibility suddenly occurred to Stanton; he would have to check the old professor’s eyes for signs of VFI.

  Chel said, “We have to go down there.”

  “Where exactly?” Rolando asked.

  “The opposite direction of Lake Izabal,” she said. “From Kiaqix.”

  Paktul wrote that he would lead the children in the direction of his ancestors, and elsewhere in the codex, he’d written that his father hailed from a great lake beside the ocean. Lake Izabal in east Guatemala was the only one fitting that description anywhere in the vicinity.

  “If he led them toward Izabal,” Chel said, “and they ended up at Kiaqix, we have to assume the lost city’s less than three days’ walk in the opposite direction.”

  “Izabal is enormous,” Rolando said. “Hundreds of square miles. The range of that trajectory could be huge.”

  “It has to be somewhere in there,” Stanton said.

  The lab door opened again. It was Victor. He wasn’t alone.

  TWENTY-NINE

  IN THE SECONDS THAT FOLLOWED, CHEL CAME TO A SERIES OF terrible realizations. First, that one of the men with Victor was his friend from the Museum of Jurassic Technology, who’d once advised the ladino military. Then, that the two men trailing Colton Shetter—dressed identically to him, in white shirts, black pants, and boots—were dragging a rolling metal warehouse cart between them.

  So when Rolando asked, “What’s going on, Victor?” Chel already knew.

  They were here to take the codex from her.

  Victor had let these people in. He had picked up the phone, called security down the hill, and gotten them waved by.

  Chel circled to the front of the light tables, putting herself between the men and the codex. Through her jeans, the cold edges of the metal table pressed into the backs of her legs.

  Taking a step into the room, Shetter turned to Victor. “I assume those plates behind her are what we’ve come for.”

  Victor nodded.

  “Who the fuck are these people?” Rolando demanded. He and Stanton were still behind Chel on the other side of the boards.

  “Dr. Manu,” Shetter said, “we will appreciate your and your colleagues’ cooperation. Mark and David have to pack up the plates. I know how fragile they are, so we want to be as careful as possible. I need you to go back and stand with your team.” Reaching into his waistband, Shetter pulled out a gun, then casually held it at his side. It was so small that it looked like a toy.

  “What are you doing?” Victor asked him.

  “Making sure we get what we came for,” Shetter said. “I’m sorry, Daykeeper, but I can tell it’s necessary.”

  Chel glanced at the intercom panel. There were fifteen feet between where she stood and that wall, but to get there she’d have to make it past Shetter’s men. They started to walk toward her, pulling the warehouse cart behind them like little boys with a sled. She stayed where she was.

  She would die here before she would move.

  “Why are you doing this, Victor?” Stanton asked from behind her. “What the hell is going on?”

  Victor ignored him. When he finally spoke, it was only to his protégée. “Listen to me, Chel. You can come with us. We’re going to the land of the ancients. To your true home. But we must have the book. All we can do now is run, Chel.”

  She felt tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’re gonna have to kill me, Victor.”

  She was wiping her tears on her sleeve when Rolando made his move. She didn’t see him dart across the room toward the intercom. She only heard the noise that brought him down before he got there.

  And the silence after.

  Chel ran to him. It seemed to take forever to cross the room. No one tried to stop her.

  She didn’t see the blood until she was holding his head in her lap. His hand clutched his belly. Chel covered it with her own.

  Shetter’s gun was still pointed in their direction. The look on his face belied the steadiness of his arm. Even he seemed surprised by what he’d done.

  “I’m a doctor,” Stanton said, starting to move. “Let me help him!”

  “Stay where you are,” Shetter commanded.

  “Take what you want and go,” Stanton said. “But let me help him.” He starte
d to inch over, and, when Shetter didn’t stop him, he moved faster. Shetter kept the gun trained on the three of them.

  Chel pressed down on Rolando’s wound. The blood continued to gush. She whispered to him. Trying to keep him conscious.

  Victor stood frozen behind Shetter. Silent.

  “Get the plates,” Shetter commanded his men.

  It took them less than a minute to load up the codex plates and get them out of the room. The two silent men left first, then Shetter.

  He turned at the door. “Coming, Daykeeper?” He was confident enough in the answer that he didn’t stay to find out.

  Victor stood there, watching Stanton hold pressure on Rolando’s wound with one hand and deliver chest compressions with the other.

  Chel held Rolando’s head in her lap. She’d streaked blood from his wound into his hair, and she tried not to stare at the pool spreading beneath them.

  “Chel …” Victor finally said. “I didn’t know he had a gun. I’m so sorry. I—”

  “You did this, Victor. You did this. Get out!”

  He turned to leave the room. At the doorway he stopped to whisper back to her, “In Lak’ech.” Then he was gone.

  A minute later, from her place on the floor with Rolando, Chel saw a flash of the truck’s headlights playing against the lab windows as it vanished into the night.

  She knew she would never see Victor or the codex again. And those would be the last words he ever spoke to her.

  I am you, and you are me.

  THIRTY

  THROUGH CLOUDS OF ASH FROM THE WILDFIRES IN THE SANTA MONICA Mountains, a trio of F-15s in formation roared, leaving contrails in the gray night sky.

  Two hours after Victor quietly escorted Shetter and his men past Getty security, Chel stared out the car window in silence. The Pacific Coast Highway looked like a run-down used-car lot—hundreds of vehicles wrecked or out of gas and abandoned, barely allowing a path through.

  There’d been nothing she or Stanton could do to save Rolando. They were all covered in blood by the time Stanton had given up trying to revive him. Chel cradled Rolando’s head for nearly twenty minutes, saying a Qu’iche prayer for safe delivery to the overworld into his ear.

  She and Stanton still hadn’t spoken a word about what had happened. But they both knew what they had to do.

  Stanton pulled his Audi off the highway toward Santa Monica State Beach. The sand was empty. Only a single vehicle sat in the parking lot: He’d called Davies and arranged to meet him here.

  Stanton was surprised when he saw another man step out of the car with his partner. “What’s up, Doc?” Monster said.

  “I was worried about you, man,” Stanton said. “Where’d you go?”

  “Cops kicked us out of the Show, so the little Electric Lady and I found ourselves a hideout in the tunnel beneath the Santa Monica Pier. You have no idea how useful a woman who can make her own light is down there.”

  If Chel was surprised to encounter Venice’s finest example of a human freak, she didn’t show it. She remained silent, her mind still back at the Getty.

  “How’d you two find each other?” Stanton asked as they started unloading equipment from Davies’s vehicle.

  “I knocked on your door in Venice,” Monster said. “No one answered, so I let myself in. Brother, your place looks like one fucked-up science experiment, all those mice in there. When you didn’t come back, thought I’d call over to your lab and see if you were all right.”

  “Good thing it was me who picked up the phone,” Davies said, “and not one of Cavanagh’s lackeys. She’s monitoring everything we do at the Prion Center. I couldn’t get a glass slide from there without getting caught. Much less a microscope.”

  Stanton looked at Monster. “So you got all this from my place?”

  “Electra helped me. She’s still there taking care of those mice.”

  “You two should stay there for now. Until it’s safe.”

  “Don’t know when that’ll be. But we’ll take you up on the offer.”

  “You really think you can find these ruins without the book?” Davies asked.

  “We have the digital copy, the translation, and a map,” Chel said. They were the first words she’d spoken.

  “I’d tell you you’ve gone mad, but you already know that,” Davies told Stanton.

  “You got a better idea?” Stanton asked. “Radio says they crossed the five-thousand mark in New York.”

  They transferred the biohazard suits, testing tools, a battery-powered microscope, and other equipment needed for a mobile lab into Stanton’s Audi. Finally Davies pulled the last bag from the trunk. “Twenty-three thousand in cash,” he said. “Everyone in the lab got whatever they could. And this.” He opened the bag wider, revealing the gun from Stanton’s safe at the bottom.

  “Thank you,” Stanton told the men. “Both of you.”

  “How you gonna get out, Doc?” Monster asked. “They just sent in another fifty thousand troops to patrol the border. They’ve got men at every mile, and you’ll never find a private plane or a chopper now.”

  Stanton glanced out over the Pacific.

  THE CAMPUS OF Pepperdine University came into view at the stretch of coastline just south of Kanan Beach. Stanton took a hard left onto a long dirt road and followed it until there was nowhere else to go. It took half a dozen trips by foot up and down the rocky embankment to get all the gear onto the beach. Then they waited. This was one of the most uneven sea terrains in Malibu, making it dangerous for anyone sailing at night, unless they knew every outcropping. And they could only assume the coast guard was still patrolling parts of it.

  Finally they saw the beam of a flashlight a few hundred yards out. Minutes later Nina approached the shore in a small dinghy. Her hair was wild, and salt caked her skin.

  “You made it,” Stanton said as she beached the boat.

  They hugged in the darkness and Nina said, “Lucky for you, I’ve been hiding from harbormasters my whole life.”

  Even under the circumstances, it was strange for Stanton to be in the company of both these women. “Chel, this is Nina.”

  But the two of them seemed immediately at ease around each other. “Thank you for this,” Chel said.

  Nina smiled. “Couldn’t pass up the chance to have my ex-husband be forever in my debt.”

  They loaded the equipment onto the dinghy and headed off to Plan A, anchored about two hundred yards out. As they climbed onto the big boat, Stanton heard a comforting chuff. He bent down and hugged Dogma’s soft, wet coat close to his chest.

  Their destination was Ensenada, Mexico, two hundred forty miles south. Nina had contacted the captain of a larger boat, who’d agreed to meet them in a secluded part of the resort town. From there they’d travel past the Baja peninsula, where they’d have a better chance of chartering a plane to Guatemala. The McGray had a top speed of forty-two knots, which put the trip to Ensenada at about eight hours with refueling.

  In the bight that took them to the North Pacific Gyre, Stanton searched the horizon for the coast guard. On her way in, Nina had deciphered the patrol pattern through the bay and navigated several miles out for the safest passage. The only chatter on the radio was from a few others trying to get away, speaking in code.

  Out on the ocean, Nina and Stanton alternated at the wheel, with Nina taking on the more difficult stretches. Chel stayed below, sleeping or staring off in silence.

  JUST BEFORE SUNRISE, they ran into an offshoot of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the hull of the boat gathered tiny fragments of discarded plastic at the bottom, causing it to drag and bump wildly. Only a captain as good as Nina could have gotten them through it, and as Stanton watched her steer them into calmer waters, he marveled at the skills she had honed over so many years at sea.

  Comfortable as she clearly was, things had to have been really weird for her all alone out here for the last week. It was one thing to escape from the world, another thing entirely to imagine there might not be a wo
rld left to return to.

  “You all right?” he asked her once they were past the gyre.

  Nina held the wheel, glancing over at him. “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “We were married for three years,” she said. “So we spent about a thousand nights together, minus the third of them you spent in the lab. And the fifteen or so you spent out on the couch when you pissed me off.”

  “Practically a rounding error.”

  “Well, I was thinking,” she continued, ignoring him. “We sleep eight hours every night. But during the week we spent only a few hours a day together, right? So we’ve spent more time together asleep than we ever have awake.”

  “I guess so.”

  They listened to the gentle rhythms of the ocean. Nina shifted the wheel, changing their course slightly. Stanton sensed something still lingering in the look on her face. “What?”

  She nodded down at the hold, where Chel was. “You know it’s pretty strange to see you look at someone else that way,” she whispered.

  “You haven’t seen us exchange a dozen words.”

  “Don’t need to,” Nina said. “I know better than anyone what it looks like when you want something.”

  Stanton shrugged it off. “I just met her.”

  As Stanton finished the words, Chel emerged; it was the first time she’d come on deck in hours. She moved slowly, pulling herself up by the railing. The strangeness of Stanton and Nina’s conversation lingered, and Chel seemed to sense a slight shift in the emotional weather.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “You have to eat something,” Nina said, changing the subject. “There’s a year’s worth of junk food down there.”

  “I will. Thank you.” She turned to Stanton. “We should go over the maps and the trajectories together soon. I started projecting the different paths from Lake Izabal and identifying possible places where the city might plausibly have stood, based on what we know.”