Rourke lifted his welding mask.
'If you're going to stay back there,' Rourke called out, 'turn your light on and take a look at the carvings. I know you have a fetish for them.'
Kline sighed. He knew I was here the entire time.
'I lost my flashlight back there somewhere.'
Rourke inspected his welding. 'It's at your feet.'
Kline glanced down, saw his flashlight near his boots and picked it up. He weighed the flashlight in his hand, irritated at Rourke’s silly games. 'It's little things like this that freak me out about you, Rourke. We're on the same side, remember? There's no need to sneak up on me in the dark and steal my stuff. That's just weird.'
'I heard a noise and checked it out. Not my fault you're deaf.'
'I was climbing through one of those stupid holes - give me a break. Wait - you heard me from all the way back here?'
Rourke shut down the welder and waved to the floor. 'Those grooves carry the sound somehow. Anyway, it's a good lesson. What would you have done without the goggles if you lost your flashlight?’
Kline tapped the flare tucked in his belt by answer. 'Better than a flashlight.'
Rourke smiled and pointed past Kline to the passageway carvings. 'Behind you is a scene of a man getting dragged backwards by his feet. It looks like he's trying to find purchase with his hands on the floor, right?'
Indulge him, Kline thought as he examined the carving. Rourke was right. The fine detail was amazing.
'Look at his body language,' Rourke pointed out. 'The curve of his elbow and the way his hip is turning. It's hard to believe this came from someone's imagination.'
'But what are they all running from?' asked Kline, not really expecting an answer. 'There must be thousands of these carvings, and everyone in them is getting torn apart or dismembered, but you never see what's doing the damage.'
'Now, that's the question, isn't it?' agreed Rourke enigmatically. 'Did you know that artwork was mostly used by early cultures for one of two reasons? Either to record history or predict the future. So I guess the real question is whether these carving are recording what has already happened, or predicting what is going to happen.'
'Or both,' suggested Kline.
The Security Chief seemed to like that answer. He broke off looking at the carving and got back to business. 'So what's the problem?'
Kline remembered the bag. 'I went into the jungle looking for Eli and Carmichael. They didn't come back from their perimeter patrol at 0600.'
Bored already, looking to return to work, Rourke headed back to his welding rig. 'Find them?'
'Not sure.'
Rourke stopped halfway through fitting his welding mask. 'How so?'
'Well, I found their trail. The ground was wet with all yesterday’s rain. Their boot tracks stood out clearly. I followed them about three kilometers until the tracks disappeared. Their boot prints just stopped in a clearing. I found no sign of how they left the clearing.'
'Any shooting?'
'Didn't hear any. I found no shells on the ground. No scuff marks. Nothing looked disturbed. It looks like they disappeared mid-step.'
'Maybe they pulled themselves into the canopy or walked onto harder ground? They might have thought they were being followed.'
Kline had thought of that. He opened the bag. 'No. Just like I explained it. I did find this though. Just outside the clearing balanced in the fork of a tree.'
Rourke looked into the bag, and then pulled out the object. 'A boot. One of ours. So what?'
'Look inside it.'
Rourke flipped over the boot. Inside was a foot, severed at the ankle, still wearing a sock. 'Hmmm... this definitely complicates things.'
Chapter 3
Human sacrifice.
The answer boiled down to people killing other people.
Ethan knew it.
Six hundred years ago, an unparalleled wave of human sacrifice swept across Mesoamerica. Extending for hundreds of years, it colored every part of post-classic Mesoamerican culture. It posed without doubt the biggest unanswered question to arise in Central American archaeology in years, if not ever. The archaeological record provided absolutely no explanation. The cause of the three-fold increase in human ritual killings remained a mystery.
What Ethan did know was the timing.
The wave of human sacrifices started when the Plaza was buried.
The killing spread like a pond ripple extending the breadth of a continent. Ethan couldn't help but feel he stood where the stone had hit the water. The Plaza represented the epicenter. Whatever had happened - something profound enough to change history - it had started here. Then it was buried. The explanation lay here somewhere. All around him. He just needed to coordinate the right intellect and tools to unlock the answers.
Ethan wasn't surprised the answers were so hard to find. To date, their traditional methods of archaeology simply identified which cultures the Plaza didn't belong to. Everything they found was both excitingly new and obscenely obscure.
He couldn't blame their science. He team incorporated cutting edge archaeological methods. Volunteers logged every artifact with a GPS before they left the ground. Abigail was working up a first class pollen analysis. Test pits and trenches riddled the site like an ant farm.
And it wasn't the quality of material they were finding. Ironically, the Plaza remained incredibly well-preserved because it had been hidden and protected from the elements.
The excavation just wasn't turning up the types of artifacts associated with large scale cultural abandonment. Ethan had taught graduate courses specializing in site abandonment, but nothing they found shed any light.
It wasn't famine or war. It wasn't disease or crop failure. It wasn't a natural disaster.
What on earth was left?
A site this large, the most astounding architectural feat of the day, needed a pretty compelling reason to be abandoned. And why take such extraordinary lengths to bury the place? What were they hiding?
Ethan had one other important clue. Subtle changes occurred in cultural relics after the Plaza’s concealment. Depictions of gods became more chaotic and less benevolent. More monstrous and less human. More feared and less worshipped. The pictograms throughout the Plaza were the perfect example.
Ethan pinned high hopes on Joanne's analysis of the east bunker pictograms.
That's why he needed to find her right away.
He had an online lecture to give at 9 am. Hopefully Joe had deciphered more pictograms in the last forty-eight hours. Maybe something fresh and exciting for the last lecture of the season. Unfortunately, Joe's self-confidence prevented her giving the lecture herself. Well, he was working on that too. The Plaza had a way of bringing out the best in people.
Ethan checked his watch and hurried towards the east bunker. No matter how much he planned, the end of season always caught him off-guard. He started jogging. He couldn't miss the lecture. Subscriptions to his online lectures helped fund the excavation. He lectured by live feed every Tuesday and Thursday.
Cripes, where’s my cap? Oh, I’m wearing it.
He’d agreed to wear the cap during the feeds. The cap branded him a sell-out to his fellow academic, but Ethan didn't care. He got the money he needed to do the research he wanted, and if his contemporaries didn't like his methods, they could sit on it and spin. Public relations were never something he’d thought much about before the Plaza, but he enjoyed lecturing to an ever-widening audience. Why shouldn't archaeology be part of popular culture? His research was exciting. Why should their discoveries be relegated to a twelve second gap-filler between the upcoming wedding of some celebrity and the next best way to lose weight fast!
His wife joked that she couldn't turn on the television without seeing him talking into a microphone. She also joked that he’d never taken so much care of his appearance before. That was a blatant tease, because he’d always tried to stay attractive for her. She was clearly the 'looks' of their partnership, but he didn't look s
o bad for a guy in his late forties. He'd avoided the bookish-look of his co-workers, took lots of exercise, jogging mostly, and did the best with what he'd been dealt. He wasn't Harrison Ford, but his features were not that dissimilar. Ethan's forehead was broader, his nose rounder, his chin more pronounced, but their overall coloring and physique were similar.
In truth, Ethan was glad the documentary makers were finished this season. They had packed up their cameras a fortnight ago. Now Ethan's cut-off camouflage pants and white high-collared sun shirt were competing for wrinkle honors. It was hard to tell which was dirtier. Probably the shirt. Thankfully the camera would never see the state of his socks and hiking boots.
I should really change clothes before the lecture.
He wouldn't have time if he wanted to catch Joanne. He didn't want to hold up the boat a second longer than he needed.
Jesus, he missed Maria and the kids.
The whole family thing just wasn't something he'd expected to happen in his life. And to think that it all started because of his dropped shopping list! It was so random. He'd dropped the list and Maria had found it. To save time, Ethan always wrote out the list in the exact order he would find the items if he walked his normal route through the supermarket. He'd dropped the list in aisle three, and Maria had picked it up. From the fresh creases in the paper, she later explained, she knew someone had just lost it.
She said that anyone who had such a well-organized and prioritized list had to depend on it. She noticed that every item was in the order that the person would find if they walked a particular route through the store. Judging from where the list was, she knew where the person would probably be next. Her analytical mind had worked it out perfectly. She had found him two aisles away, staring around at the floor and mentally cursing having lost the list.
She walked straight up to him and held out the folded note. 'Yours, right?'
Ethan asked how she knew. She explained.
He pointed to the list, clicked his fingers and took something off the shelf. 'You were just in time. I was about to walk past the mixed beans.'
'I couldn't help read it,' laughed Maria. 'Looks like you like Mexican food.'
'I do. And I'm Ethan.'
‘Maria.'
He asked her out on a date. They had Mexican food. They got married and had babies. Now their babies were two and five years old. Joshua and Grace.
He kept that shopping list with her old phone number in his wallet. Small things could turn into big things. Ethan had never forgotten that. Dropping that shopping list had led to the greatest treasures a person could find.
He quickened his pace across the dig. He couldn't wait to get home.
#
Libby slid her back down the huge tree truck, sucking down great gasping breaths.
What was going on! What had killed Perry? And Joel. What had happened to Joel? They had run in different directions. Whatever had killed Perry must have chased Joel. That particular one, anyway, because Libby was convinced there were several. In fact, more than several - dozens!
Every time she glanced over her shoulder, more appeared in the canopy behind her.
They moved practically invisible through the foliage. If she hadn't seen their devastating effect, she could have almost convinced herself it was the wind moving the canopy.
It wasn't the wind. The wind didn't tear people apart.
What should I do? There was no point circling back to reach the balloon-raft. They hadn't even secured the tethers. It was only a matter of time before the wind moved the raft. If she even managed to relocate where they’d landed, there was little chance the raft would still be there.
Subconsciously she must have already decided where she was heading. It came to her now.
The Plaza.
The Plaza had security guards. They were there all the time, even between seasons to guard against looters. The guards had machine guns. She'd noticed them four days ago.
She checked the tiny compass embedded in her watch-strap. One of her responsibilities had been navigation. She didn't have her GPS, but if she kept heading south-south-east, she should find the Plaza. It wasn't that far away.
There was no time to rest. Already the canopy movement was catching her up. She pushed herself up and stumbled on, head down, shoving the fronds from her path.
The Plaza was her only chance.
#
Ethan found Joanne listening to her iPod in the east bunker.
She hasn't packed yet. Typical.
She sat cross-legged on the stone floor in front of her laptop. A pair of tripod lights illuminated the section of wall she studied. Chin-in-hand, eyes alert, she stared over the laptop screen at the wall. She seemed tireless when it came to using her Sy-hack program.
Joanne's work involved decrypting the pictograms scattered all over the site.
He'd known she'd be here. The blocked lower sections of the east bunker were inaccessible, but there were plenty of pictograms in the antechamber for her to study. The carved pictograms formed what they were broadly calling a codex.
This was Joanne's expertise. Ethan wouldn't be surprised to see a sleeping bag shoved in one corner. She had pulled all-nighters in here before, not even bothering to walk back to her tent. She broke the rules because she knew he was fond of her. He'd come to see her less as a research assistant, and more like a favorite niece.
The kid would live here if I let her. She never wants to go home.
As usual, she would be the last person to reach the boat. She was always the first off when they arrived and the last person back onboard to go home. He gave her a few more seconds of deep thought before stepping into her peripheral vision.
'Sorry, Boss,' she said, jerking her earphones free. 'Have you been calling my radio?'
Ethan tapped the walkie-talkie on his hip. 'No. But don't let the Sheriff catch you out of radio contact. She'll skin you.'
Joanne winked like she had it all under control. 'Claire and I have reached an understanding. She lets me work my way and I stopped putting those giant cockroaches in her sleeping bag.'
Ethan chuckled, not completely sure that Joanne was joking. He liked that Joanne and Claire were friends. They were both people who habitually spent too much time on their own. Their friendship had been a good thing, if late in starting. Ethan asked, 'You didn't show up for her practical joke?'
Joanne leaned back with her palms flat on the cold stone behind her. She smirked up at him. 'Gold coins? She's been planning that for weeks. I think that everyone on the site knew about it a fortnight ago. I knew you wouldn't fall for it. I tried to convince her to use something better, like a gold mask or something. That would have made more sense.'
Ethan avoided mentioning how he had fallen for Claire's prank, instead asking, 'How's the decryption? I'd like to have something interesting for the last lecture of the season.'
'What time's the lecture?'
'Nine.'
'So let me get this straight - you'd like me to solve all the mysteries of the Plaza by nine am?'
'A little earlier if possible,' joked Ethan. 'It would be nice to rehearse a little. What are my chances?'
'Well, this baby is definitely speeding things up.' Joanne leant back and slapped where the rail camera was set up between the tripods. The camera could move slowly along the miniature rails and perform a three dimensional scan of the wall's surface. The data fed straight into Joanne's laptop. This was another of her high-tech gizmos. Expensive, but in Joanne's capable hands the camera was paying dividends.
Her hand lingered on the mounted camera. 'I just wish we could get deeper into the Gallery.'
'I was hoping you might have discovered how we could do that,' said Ethan.
'No such luck.' She waved at the wall. 'I do think I have this section of the codex decrypted though.'
'Really?'
'Well, kind of. I think that these are instructions. Or a set of rules. Rules for people called the ‘messengers’. The rules define how these
messengers should conduct themselves during the 'safe' period.’ Joanne used her fingers to put air quotes around the word safe.
'Safe period?' Ethan raised an eyebrow. 'You mean, as in the opposite of dangerous period?'
'I know,' agreed Joanne. 'Sounds ominous. There's lots more references to the wind deities too.'
'Give me an example of a rule,' asked Ethan.
Joanne walked around her laptop, tracing her hand on the carvings. 'This set defines what the messengers should wear and who they can speak with. These say what they should eat and drink. These ones next along indicate the proper length of rest cycles and how long they should stay underground. There's dozens more that I haven't cracked yet. It looks like a system of preparation and purification. All to please the wind deity.'
'Have you ever seen anything like it?' asked Ethan.
'I have, but the only analogy I have is modern. And it would sound stupid to you.'
'Try me,' prompted Ethan. 'Ambrose Rourke just reminded me I need to be a little less conservative in my thinking. Modern examples can be very enlightening.'
'OK, then. These rules make the bunkers sound like modern quarantine facilities.'
Ethan was taken aback. A medical quarantine facility? It sounded strange, but he couldn't fault the logic. The isolated location. Strictly controlled codes of conduct. Safe and unsafe periods.
He asked, 'An ancient quarantine station four hundred years before modern medicine?'
Joanne stared at the wall. 'I didn't say it made sense. It's the only analogy I can think of. We're missing something. Something fundamental that puts everything into context. And I don't think it's cultural. I think it came from outside their culture. The most important piece of the puzzle can't be any of the conventional things we're used to finding. It has to do with the sun. It has to do with human sacrifice. It has to do with anointment of the flower extract. It has to do with the Gallery. And there's violence. A lot of violence.'
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