This was how the survivors before them had held the darkness at bay.
He lifted one of the jagged bricks and appreciated its weight.
Thermite.
They weren't just going to light up the night. They were going to set it on fire.
V
6:02 p.m.
One minute a murky gloaming had reigned, and the next, darkness had descended with the speed of the rain, forcing Jay to turn on the light mounted to his camera in order to see the slippery trail well enough to get a foothold on anything. They had kept up with the others for as long as they could, but he could no longer see them on the path ahead. Surely they were just around the next bend, and it was only a matter of time before he and Dahlia caught up. He was tired of falling, and drenched through and through. Somehow the mud had managed to find its way beneath his clothing, where it felt like mucus against his skin. The sludge even made it difficult for his socked feet to maintain traction inside his boots.
And then there was the fear. The images of what remained of the slain men rose to the forefront of his mind, stimulating his heart to beat faster and his breathing to grow shallow. Finding all of the ancient bones on the ground had been exhilarating, and would only enhance the documentary, but stumbling upon bloody carcasses that were only weeks old wasn't even remotely cool. Well, maybe at first. The lens did tend to sterilize everything viewed through it in the same fashion that the impact of certain atrocities was somehow lessened when watching them on television. Once he rationalized how the deaths related back to him on a personal level, the initial excitement had vanished in a nanosecond.
They were isolated from the rest of the world by forty-some miles and several days' travel. And there was something out there in the forest capable of ripping them to shreds.
A cricket chirped from somewhere off to his right. Or had it been a frog? He still couldn't tell the difference. He was a city boy at heart, and would happily give his left nut to be back in the States with a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other, living the American dream. A chorus of chirruping answered the call before immediately falling silent once again.
Jay's foot slipped. It was all he could do to hold the camera up out of the muck as he slid down the path on his chest. When his heels finally snagged on a root, he pushed himself to his feet and spat out a mouthful of filth.
"Jesus." He flung mud from his left hand and looked up just in time to see a dark shape hurtling downhill toward him. Lunging to the side, he narrowly avoided Dahlia, who careened into the underbrush behind him.
She struggled to all fours, but didn't even try to rise. Her long hair had pulled loose from her ponytail and hung in front of her face in muddy ropes. When she finally raised her head, her face brown, save the circles of white around her eyes, he noticed that she was crying.
"Hey..." He offered his hand. "We'll get through this. Don't you worry."
Dahlia was the strongest woman he had ever known. She never cracked under pressure and she was brutal in her ambition. Seeing her like this scared him. She wasn't the emotional type. He couldn't fathom anything inside of her ever snapping to the point of summoning tears. The only thing he ever imagined could break through her defenses was actual physical pain.
"I'm fine," she snapped, but she still accepted his help in returning to her feet.
Jay gasped. What he had at first thought were tears were lines of blood pouring over her eyebrows from a gash across her hairline.
"What?" She dabbed at her forehead, winced, and drew her fingertips away bloody. "Oh, great. This is absolutely perfect."
"Just a second." Jay shed his backpack and removed a tee-shirt from the main pouch. He raised it to her forehead and pressed it to the wound.
"You could have at least picked a clean one."
"Would you just hold still already?"
She rested her hand on his and held the shirt in place. Her blue eyes met his around the cloth.
"Thank you," she whispered. Her skin against his created an electric sensation that shot through his entire body. "You've always been there for me, haven't you? Every step of the way."
He could feel himself blushing and nervously retreated a step, slipping his hand out from beneath hers.
"Just keep pressure on that cut." Even his voice trembled. "We need to catch up with the others, and I don't think the path is the easiest route."
"Neither do I." She offered the bloody shirt as evidence before placing it back against the laceration. "I'll bet if we stay just to the side of the path and cut through the trees we'll find more solid footing."
"It couldn't be any worse."
"Besides, it can't be much farther to the top."
She struck off into the jungle, winding around massive trunks and using vines and branches to pull herself up the steep slope. Jay followed, shining the light over her shoulder, for all the good it did. The manly thing to do would have been to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to safety---or at least take the lead, for God's sake---but he wanted to capture as much of this moment on film as possible. She had let her guard down for just a moment, and only for him. Perhaps after all these years, his perseverance was finally about to pay off.
Twenty minutes of strenuous exertion passed before a shifting aura of light bloomed through the trees ahead.
"It's a fire," Dahlia called back to him. "It looks like they managed to light the torches."
Another few steps and Jay could see the small flames and the flickering glow on the wall beyond them. A swell of relief passed through him. He didn't think his legs had the strength to carry him much farther.
Movement drew his eye to the forest to his right, where the branches of a cluster of saplings swayed gently.
"Are you coming or what?"
He turned at the sound of her voice. She stared back over her shoulder at him, poised to step from the thicket into the clearing. Had something changed in the way she looked at him?
"Yeah," he said, spurring his aching feet toward the crest, where she waited for him at the tree line.
He panned the camera across the clearing. The entire area was awash with an amber glow from the row of torches, minus the darkened section where one of the stone columns had long ago collapsed, and the arches of shadows built into the fortifications.
"I don't know what you want to do with this," she said, proffering his shirt.
"You can keep that." He smirked. "Consider it a gift."
"You are far too generous."
A large, broad-leaved shrub shivered beside them. A handful of flies buzzed softly from beneath its protective branches.
Jay shined the beam toward the source of the motion, shoving aside shadows to reveal the slender trunk and the tangles of branches. Several black flies swirled in the light. To the left, a pair of almost milky, bluish spheres appeared behind the dripping leaves.
"It's another one of those weird butterflies," he said. "They must not be that rare out here after all."
He turned the camera toward the creature, and twin golden rings reflected the beam.
The pattern on the wings hadn't done that before. But he hadn't filmed the butterfly at night either.
Another bush shook to his right, diverting his attention.
When he looked back at the butterfly, its lower wings shifted to reveal---
They weren't wings at all.
The light reflected from interlocking rows of razor-honed teeth.
Jay barely had time to turn as vegetation was shredded and thrown into the air. A heavy object slammed into him from behind, driving him to the ground. Pain exploded between his shoulder blades and what felt like frozen spikes prodded through his muscles and between his ribs.
The camera fell from his hand and landed on its side. The beam glared blankly toward a snarl of underbrush, momentarily highlighting Dahlia's pale face. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened in surprise. A blur of brown and shimmering green, and she was thrown sideways beyond the light's reach.
A
rcs of crimson trailed in her wake.
Something flailed at his back as more shadows raced in from the periphery. His whole body convulsed in agony. He threw back his head to scream, exposing his neck---
He heard a whistle of air and then a gurgle.
Scaled appendages flashed past.
Feathers.
Claws.
A rush of blood flooded across the mud into the camera's light as he was jerked with a crash into the bushes and the blackness waiting within them, which buzzed with the wings of flies.
Chapter Ten
I
Andes Mountains, Peru
October 30th
6:41 p.m. PET
Sam had been so focused on the tedious ascent and her own frustrations that she hadn't noticed when Dahlia and Jay fell behind. Galen had run ahead to relay the news that the river was impassable to the rest of their party in the camp. She and Merritt had already been waiting at the trailhead for more than fifteen minutes, during which they thought they'd heard a scream in the distance before it was silenced by a clap of thunder. It felt as though the entire world was crashing down around her. There was no place left to run. The aura of death hung over the mountain in a palpable cloud that promised only pain and suffering. Hunter and the rest of his party had been killed here, the most recent casualties in a chain that spanned centuries.
"The path leads straight here." Merritt nearly had to shout to be heard over the storm. "There's no way they could have gotten lost."
"We need to go back for them. What if one of them fell and is lying there in the mud, injured and in need of help?"
The expression on Merritt's face suggested he feared as much, but at the same time, she too could feel the oppressiveness of the situation, the dire inevitability of what was to come. It was an electrical sensation in the air, like the tingling potential that raised the hairs on one's arms before a lightning strike.
"I'll go back for them," Merritt said. "You find the others and try to figure out some other way to get us off this mountain."
"We can't split up. I'm staying with you."
"The hell you are. I need to know that you're safe."
The look in his eyes startled her. For the first time, all pretense of cockiness was gone and she recognized genuine fear.
She took his hand and repeated the same words, more softly this time. "I'm staying with you."
He looked down at the union of their hands and then back into her eyes.
"Then stay behind me at all times. We're going no more than half a mile. We can't afford to waste any more time if we're---"
A blinding light flared from the north. They both whirled toward where one of the torches burned so brightly it appeared as though the sun itself had been captured inside that iron cage. A shape advanced in their direction, made shadow by the brilliant glare behind it. Based on the figure's size and stature, there was only one man it could have been.
"What are you guys doing out here?" Sorenson shouted. "You should be back inside the walls with the others."
"We lost Dahlia and Jay," Sam called over the deluge.
"I'll send them along when I see them." He crumbled something in his hands and threw it onto the next torch in the series. The low flames expanded with a dazzling white light. He slid the remainder of what looked like a rusted chunk of metal through the grate. "They won't stay lost long. You can probably see these fires from space."
Sorenson smiled briefly before he lowered his brow in an expression of confusion. He turned and struck off toward the edge of the forest. As he walked, he shouldered an automatic rifle.
"Where are you going?" Sam asked.
"I thought I saw something---" Sorenson said, but the storm drowned out the rest of his words.
Raindrops the size of marbles pounded down on them with increasing force. Even the branches above no longer provided adequate protection. They were going to have to seek shelter, and soon.
Sam trailed Merritt as they followed Sorenson toward the line of shrubbery. He crouched and surveyed the shadowed jungle before returning his attention to the ground in front of him. They were nearly at his side when they caught a circular flash of reflected light. The tiny red light beside the lens on Jay's digital recorder diffused into the standing water.
Sorenson's stare never left the jungle as he lifted the video camera out of the mud.
"It's still recording," he said, passing it back to her over his shoulder. He rose and scrutinized the dense vegetation down the barrel of his rifle.
Leaves and twigs littered the area as though torn from their moorings by a tornado. The ground was choppy with a riot of footsteps. When Sorenson took his first step into the brush, the absence of his shadow revealed that the mud here was a deeper shade of black than the rest.
Sam stared at the camera. There was no denying to whom it belonged. The spotlight mounted to it was shattered and the lens cracked, and yet still it vibrated softly as the digital feed continued to record. She wanted to call for Jay, but something stopped her. There was no way he would have willingly abandoned his camera, his very lifeblood. Not unless something horrible had happened.
Sorenson's footsteps slurped and crunched on the mud and detritus.
"We should get out of here," Merritt said. "I don't like this. Something's not right here."
Leaves rustled and branches snapped as Sorenson shoved through the underbrush.
"We were just standing thirty feet from here," Sam said.
That thought chilled her. Something had happened on this spot, a mere ten yards from where they had waited at the trailhead, something awful, and they had been completely oblivious.
"Jesus Christ," Sorenson gasped. He held back the leathery leaves of a heliconia plant. The mud beneath it was gouged, and there was a trench as though something heavy had been dragged---
A hand. There was a hand on the ground, collecting rain in the palm. The fingers curled inward, minus the middle finger, which was a blunt, ragged stub. Skin muddy and torn, the wrist a collection of jagged bones and severed tendons where it had been torn from the forearm. What could have been an upper arm or a lower leg lay past it, a bloody long bone missing large chunks of muscle and flesh.
Sam clapped her hand over her mouth and turned away, only to see a large clump of blonde hair, still attached to a swatch of scalp, tangled in the branches.
"We're out of here," Merritt said. "Make no sudden movements. Slowly back away."
Sam could hear herself crying as though from miles away, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She clung to the camera, its whirring mechanical heartbeat against her chest.
Her eyes darted from one shadow to the next. Even the gentle bowing of branches under the weight of the rain and the shifting of saplings brought the forest to life with menace. The flickering glow of the flames along the obsidian wall made her feel like there was someone behind her, but she couldn't force herself to so much as glance over her shoulder.
"As soon as we're clear of the jungle, I want you two to make a run for the collapsed section of the northern wall," Sorenson said. "I'll cover you from behind. Head for the main building at the center of the courtyard."
"What about you?" Merritt asked.
"You'd better believe I'll be right on your heels."
Merritt reached back and took Sam's free hand. She squeezed for dear life.
"You ready?" he asked. Sam couldn't summon the voice to respond. "On my mark." The tension on her arm increased. "Now!"
She spun around and sprinted toward the sheer, vine-shrouded fortification, careful not to look directly into the flames for fear of creating blind spots in her vision. Her legs churned and her feet slipped in the muck, but Merritt pulled her onward. They rounded the corner and sprinted toward the crumbled mound of stones.
Behind her, the savage light faded, allowing the darkness to again enfold them.
She risked a glance back as they ascended the rubble.
There was no sign of Sorenson.
She hadn't heard any shots fired, but she didn't find that comforting in the slightest.
II
7:00 p.m.
Leo shielded his eyes from the rain and surveyed their work. The entire front half of the structure glowed as though struck by the midday sun. Colton had just finished crumbling the edges of the thermite onto the once-diminutive flames to make them flare with blinding intensity, and had laid the bricks in the heart of the iron chambers. They had yet to determine how long the thermite would burn with such force, but surely they had more than enough stacked in the main chamber to get them through the night. At least that should buy them enough time to figure out what they were going to do next.
Once the storm abated, they would merely have to get far enough away from the mountain to escape the magnetic interference. With just a few precisely placed phone calls, Leo could have them airlifted out of there in no time. It would cost him an arm and a leg, but once he returned with the properly outfitted group and the necessary supplies, he would easily be able to recoup his loss with the sheer amount of gold under his feet. Maybe he'd have the entire mountainside napalmed first. That would take care of whatever stalked the ruins once and for all. He just hoped he would have the opportunity to see the expressions cooked onto the charred faces of the creatures that had slaughtered his son's men, and had cost him the one thing in his life that had ever truly mattered.
"What's the plan from here?" he asked Colton, who, having finished his task, strode back toward the entrance to the building.
"We bolster our defenses. Fill the gaps where the structure has crumbled over time and clear some of this godforsaken jungle. We'll run two-man patrols at the perimeter, and station another two at the lone remaining doorway. We can't trust the civilians with the weapons or our lives, so they'll be penned inside the main chamber. You too, Leo."
Leo didn't even consider arguing. He recognized his shortcomings. And, after all, this was what he was paying them for.
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