Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God

by Rob Lloyd Jones

“Stop!” Mum cried. “My children are in here!”

  “You shouldn’t have brought them, then,” Veronika replied.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Mum screamed. “You can have the emerald tablet.”

  “No, you can’t!” I shouted.

  “We can make a deal,” Dad hollered.

  “Too late for that now,” Veronika snarled.

  She fired again at the temple. Dad shielded me and Pan, and a flying stone shard cut through his jungle suit and sliced his shoulder. He grasped the wound to stop blood flowing.

  “Jane, we have to get out of here,” he said.

  Mum’s fists clenched at her sides as she watched our attackers through a crack in the temple wall.

  “I can take them,” she hissed.

  Dad put a hand on her shoulder. “Not these two, Jane.”

  Mum slapped the hand away. “I can, John!”

  I groped my belt, feeling the holstered gadgets. “There’s one UED left,” I said. “We could use it as a distraction to reach the helicopter. Can either of you fly one?”

  Dad nodded, then cursed under his breath. “Maybe we could reach it, but they’d shoot us down before we were ten feet off the mountain.”

  “Then we have to take the waterfall,” I said. “It’s our only escape route. We jump into the lake, and let it spit us out with the waterfall, like the Aztecs wanted.”

  Mum shook her head, refusing to listen.

  “Jane,” Dad said. “Jake could be right.”

  Another shot hit the outside of the temple. Alpha Squad were stalking closer.

  Mum glared at Dad with a rage I’d never seen before, and I’ve seen Mum angry a lot. I wondered if really she was furious at herself, for letting us get into this situation. She gazed around the ruined temple, desperate for any escape.

  “There’s no other way out, Jane,” Dad insisted. “You know what the marker is telling us to do. We have to trust the Aztecs.”

  “John…”

  “Jane, we can do this.”

  “They’re our children, John.”

  “That’s why we have to go. If we stay here we’ll die.”

  “How did this happen, John? We were retired. We were safe from this.”

  “You’re not retired,” Pan said. “You’re here now. Dad’s right, we have to follow the marker.”

  Mum stared at her, and then Dad. She clutched her amulet – Isis, the mother and protector goddess – and whispered something that none of us heard.

  “All right. But we do it together.”

  Mum snatched the UED from my belt before I had a chance, and set the timer for five seconds. She gripped the device, ready to press the activation button.

  “Run straight for the lake,” she said. “Stay calm, let the water take you. Trust the Aztecs. Remember your training.”

  I nodded, praying there was no actual training for jumping off a waterfall that I’d somehow missed. I’d never seen Pan’s face so pale. I knew what she was thinking – that she couldn’t do this, that she didn’t do “action” things, like she kept insisting. That was crazy, and anyway, she had no choice. She had to do this.

  I gave her shoulder three quick taps, our training signal to turn. “Race you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Race you to the tomb. Last one in has to call the other ‘lord’ for the rest of the mission.”

  She stared at me, but couldn’t resist the challenge. Almost immediately some of the colour came back into her cheeks.

  “Get ready to be humiliated, brother.”

  “Everyone get ready,” Mum whispered.

  “Good luck, everyone,” Dad said.

  Mum pressed the activation button on the UED. I glimpsed the five-second countdown begin as she hurled the bomb out over the temple wall.

  “Go!” she cried.

  28

  I started spinning the moment I hit the water.

  The blast from the UED was still loud in my ears as I sank into a world of bubbles and panic, and firelight from the explosion. At first the shock of the cold overrode all other senses. Hitting the lake felt like jumping into an icebox, and I screamed bubbles, wasting precious air. By the time I was aware of anything other than the cold, the whirlpool already had me in its grip.

  I remembered Mum’s instruction – let the water take you. But instinct caused my legs to kick, and I struggled against the swirling current. I was moving too fast to see any of my family. Had they even survived the dash from the temple? I struck the side of the lake basin and screamed more bubbles, wasting more air. The whirlpool spun me faster and sucked me deeper, down into the cold darkness.

  Let the water take you.

  The water was taking me. I was too disorientated to stop it. The whirlpool whisked me like a sock in a washing machine, so I hit the side of the lake again and then again. I was near the bottom, about to be sucked down the sinkhole.

  And then I dropped.

  Have you ever been on a waterslide? You know the moment when the slide spits you from its end? This felt the same, except that I was screaming and thought I was about to die, and that my family was also probably dead.

  I fell maybe ten metres in darkness, and splash-landed in a shallow pool. Water gushed onto my head from the sinkhole. I thought I heard someone shout, but it was hard to tell beyond the roar of pouring water. I tried to call out but I was on the move again, rushing on my back down a surface that felt like it had been deliberately smoothed into a slide. Water splashed up my face, and I was desperate for light; the darkness was so disorientating. Then I glimpsed some, and I wished I hadn’t.

  Daylight.

  The slide was about to spit me straight out of the side of the mountain. I was about to become part of the waterfall.

  Let it take you!

  No, don’t, stop it from taking you!

  One moment I was sliding on stone on my back, and the next there was nothing beneath me but sky. The chute fired me from the cliff face amidst the spray of the waterfall. It must have been a hundred metre drop, but there was no time to make a plan, no time to do anything but fall, kicking my legs and flailing my arms, as if I might somehow be able to control the drop.

  At the last moment I tucked my arms into my sides and locked my legs together, so I hit the plunge pool like a harpoon and shot down deep. I had to get to the surface to breathe, but it was hard to tell which way was up – the force of the waterfall hitting the pool turned everything into bubbles, flipping me like a bath toy and driving me deeper underwater. At the same time, another force pulled me down, as if I was being sucked to my death.

  Let it take you.

  I had no choice now, anyway. I was too weak to get to the surface. I’d drown here in the plunge pool if I kept trying. Fighting every instinct, I stopped swimming and finally let the water take me.

  I shot through another sinkhole at the bottom of the pool, and slid along a pitch-black tunnel, snatching frantic breaths between waves of water that slapped my face.

  Get control! Remember your training!

  There was no light anywhere, not even a sliver. I reached up and my fingertips scraped against the rough tunnel ceiling as I slid down a tunnel that grew even steeper, taking me deeper underground. It’s not easy to stay calm when you’re rushing downhill in total darkness with no idea where you’re going to end up, but I tried to remember that this was all part of the Aztecs’ plan…

  I splashed into another pool, a build-up of water at what felt like the entrance to a narrower tunnel, forced myself through and slid again. This passage was half the size of the last, so the water was now all around me, with just a slim space to breathe.

  I slid for a few seconds before I hit another pool, another rock wall and another opening. The rushing water tried to force me through, but the hole was too tight. I could just fit, but there would be no space to breathe. But what choice did I have? There was no chance I’d be able to get back to the waterfall. I could either stay here or go on.

  I sc
reamed, slapped the cave wall and called for my family. I was desperate to know I wasn’t alone down here in the darkness. Something hit me hard on the side of my head. I sank under the water and came up dazed.

  “Jake! Jake, is that you?”

  “Pan!” I cried.

  We gripped each other’s arms, so relieved not to be alone. I could feel her shaking as hard as I was, from cold and fear and exhaustion.

  “Where are we, Jake?”

  “Underground. The tunnel gets narrower here, but it’s the only way through.”

  “Where are Mum and Dad?”

  “I don’t know, Pan, but we have to go on.”

  “We could drown in there.”

  “No, this is what the Aztecs meant for us. Mum told us to trust them, remember?”

  “But what if there’s no way out?”

  “There will be. You have to come after me. You can’t stay here. Are you ready?”

  She wasn’t, and neither was I. I was trying to sound confident, to give her the courage she needed to go through, but I knew there was a chance Mum and Dad hadn’t made it, and that we might not either if we entered this tunnel. But we’d die if we stayed here, too; we didn’t really have a choice.

  “OK,” Pan gasped. “I’m ready.”

  I took as deep a breath as I could, and went feet first through the opening. This tunnel was less steep than the last, but the water was fiercer, forcing me along the tight passage. I couldn’t even reach up – the rock ceiling was an inch above my nose and the passage was entirely full of rushing water. I was running out of air. Pressure grew in my chest like someone was sitting on me, crushing my ribs.

  Then, suddenly, I jolted to a stop. Some sort of creature grabbed me by the chest. I wriggled to pull free. As it gripped harder I realized that it wasn’t a creature at all; it was a hand. I saw the blurry outline of a person in a hole in the tunnel ceiling.

  Dad!

  I gripped his wrist, but Pan crashed into me from behind, tearing me away. I slid further down the tunnel and hit another rock wall. The force of the water pinned me there as it rushed through an opening that was too tight for me to fit into. I was trapped – unable to go on, unable to swim back, unable to breathe.

  Something slapped against my face. It felt like a sheet pressed against me by the force of water. I grasped it weakly and it pulled away. I realized I was holding a pair of trousers from a jungle suit. They were tied to a shirt, and then more trousers – my family had stripped off their clothes to make a lifeline to drag me back.

  I clung on tighter as they pulled the line against the rushing water. I kicked my legs in an effort to help, fighting my way inch by inch back up the tunnel. It felt now like a whole herd of elephants was stamping on my chest. I had no breath left at all. My grip began to slip.

  Dad snatched hold of my shirt and this time he didn’t let go. He yanked me up through the hole and out of the tunnel. I was too weak to help; I just let myself be saved.

  “Jake? Jake!”

  I coughed out some water, and then leaned over and threw up what felt like half of the waterfall.

  “I’m OK…” I spluttered.

  I’m not sure that was true, but it seemed to reassure Mum, who grabbed me in a quick hug before plonking me back down on the rock.

  “We made it, Jake!” Pan said.

  Dad wrung water from their jungle suits and they pulled them back on, preferring a wet shirt and trousers to exploring a lost tomb in their underpants. My suit was soaked too, but the water actually felt nice, cooling my skin against the heat of … wherever we now were.

  I sat up and tried to make sense of my surroundings. We were in an underground chamber, with carved walls that were covered in painted Aztec scenes. A square exit in one led to stone steps, and more darkness.

  “I think we’re inside the second Storm Peak,” Dad said, squeezing more water from his shirt before he slid it back on. “The tunnels carried us underneath it.”

  Mum took the smart-goggles from my belt, and used their torch to study the paintings on the walls. “These scenes show Quetzalcoatl,” she said.

  She moved along the wall, muttering to herself as she read the paintings.

  “What does it say, Mum?” Pan asked. “Is this the tomb?”

  “These are written to us,” she said.

  “Us?”

  “To whomever followed the markers to get here.”

  “So what does it say?”

  Mum reached to the wall, running fingertips over the painted glyphs as she translated the Aztec writing. “You are the chosen one. You have found the three markers that have led you to the tomb of the Feathered Serpent.”

  “So this is the tomb,” Pan said.

  Mum kept moving, kept reading. “You are the great chosen one. Servant of Quetzalcoatl. Yours is the great duty, for you shall … you shall…”

  She trailed off, still staring at the ancient writing. When she finally turned, she looked like someone had just slapped her round the face. Dazed, confused, pained.

  “My God, John,” she said, “what have we done?”

  “What is it, Jane? What does it say?”

  She didn’t look at the writing again – she just stared at us as she recited the rest of the wall inscription: “You shall now be sacrificed to feed the god with your blood, so that he may live for eternity.”

  She clutched her necklace symbol so tightly that it cut her hand. A line of blood slid down her wrist.

  “This whole time we’ve thought the Aztecs wanted their people to find the tomb,” she said, “but that wasn’t it at all. The markers weren’t meant to lead us to the tomb. They were meant to lure us here. The Aztecs wanted us to become sacrifices to the god. They led us here for one reason. To die.”

  29

  I wanted to go first, but Pan went for the opening before me. Mum grabbed her arm and pulled her back, so she could go first. But Dad grabbed Mum’s arm and pushed his way in before everyone. By the time we entered the secret tunnel I was somehow at the back, and we were all annoyed with each other.

  “Night vision,” Dad said.

  He used the smart-goggles to lead us deeper into the darkness of the mountain. We climbed stone steps, and then shuffled along a tunnel that was so narrow I could touch the arched walls on either side. The stone was hot, as if we were walking into a pizza oven. The air was thick and stifling, and smelled of damp.

  The Aztecs had led us here as victims, to be sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl. That meant there would be traps, maybe lots of traps. We kept bumping into Dad as he stopped and used the goggles to scan the walls and ceiling, ordering them to switch to thermal, torch, and then back to night vision. He was being sensible, but I kept thinking of Sami in that bed, relying on us here and now to save him. The deeper we moved into the mountain, the tighter my insides twisted with impatience and frustration. Did we really have to go this slowly?

  “We need to move faster!” I called.

  “Jake,” Mum snapped. “Your father knows what he is doing.”

  I bit my lip; arguing with them wouldn’t help.

  Squelches from our sodden jungle suits echoed along the narrow passage, but the shirts and trousers didn’t take long to dry in the intense heat of this place, so we soon walked in silence. The path rose and twisted, as if we were climbing a helter-skelter inside the mountain. It grew even steeper, turning again and again – and then it ended, and we all stood and stared in the light of Dad’s torch.

  We’d come out at a crack inside the mountain, ten metres wide and at least fifty high. One wall was sheer rock. The other was covered with skulls. Human skulls – thousands, packed so tight I could barely see a sliver of rock between them. Empty eyes glared down at us. Jaws hung open, as if the skulls were laughing, like an audience of skeletons at a comedy show.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  Mum stroked one of the skulls at the bottom of the wall. Her hand trembled a little, as if the brittle jaw might snap at her fingers. “It’s a tzomp
antli,” she said.

  “A what?”

  “A skull wall,” Dad explained. “The skulls of sacrificial victims put on display for the gods. These were common on Aztec temples and tombs.”

  “This was common?” I asked. “There must be ten thousand skulls here.”

  Mum moved along the base of the wall, scanning the grotesque decoration. “I’d say thirty thousand.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “So as well as the coffin of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztecs dragged thirty thousand skulls with them here? But why?”

  “They needed them to survive,” Mum replied.

  “Survive?”

  “Human sacrifices kept the gods happy,” Dad said. “The Aztecs believed the world had been destroyed four times because the gods hadn’t been fed enough human sacrifices. These skulls were a sign to those gods that they were behaving.”

  “So if they were put here for Quetzalcoatl to see, then his tomb must be close, right?” Pan said.

  Dad turned to Mum, and light from his goggles caught her worried glance back at him. She was stroking her Isis amulet again, which was not a good sign. I remembered their lesson: the closer you got to a tomb, the more dangerous things usually became.

  Dad turned and looked up, so the torch beam shone up the crevasse wall opposite the skulls. Tiny holes pockmarked the sheer rock face, but they were too far apart to use as handholds and there were no other cracks or ridges. The cliff looked like it had been deliberately smoothed to prevent anyone from climbing. There was only one way up.

  “We have to climb the skulls,” I said.

  “Looks like there’s a ledge at the top,” Pan added.

  Dad grasped one of the skulls, seeing if he could pull it from the wall, and then prodded its eye sockets. “They seem sturdy. You couldn’t really ask for a better climbing wall, with all these hand grips and footholds.”

  Mum tested the skulls too, mumbling disapprovingly, but finally sighed and nodded. “Pan and Jake, you go first,” she said.

  I looked at her, surprised. She trusted us to lead?

  “So we can catch you if you fall,” she explained.

  I’m guessing you’ve never scaled a wall of human skulls. I don’t know how the Aztecs fixed them so firmly to the cliff, but they didn’t slip as they took our weight. It was as if they had been carved straight from the rock. It wasn’t as good a climbing wall as we’d hoped, though. We could get our fingers into eye sockets, but our boots wouldn’t fit into the jaws. We’d have to widen them.