Andy finished his drawing and looked up, brows raised. “Imagine, a snake fifty, seventy, feet long?” He dropped the stick. “They called the snake Titanoboa; the name says it all. And it wasn’t just long, but solid muscle that was as thick around as a small car.”
Fergus rubbed his face hard, and Ajax seemed to be brooding as he took it all in. The picture now showed a monstrous snake; thick, powerful, that made the stick figure look like a bite-sized toy.
“One more thing,” Emma said. “It wasn’t slow moving. It was quick, very quick. For something so big, it moved like lightning.”
“And thus ends the motivation session.” Drake checked his weapon and cradled it in his arms. “We need to do our jobs, and then work on getting the hell home. Any questions?”
Andy got to his feet and wiped his hands off. “I still want to see one.” He looked at Helen. “Just a glimpse… but from a distance.” He smiled crookedly.
“No,” Emma said. “Just forget it. If you see it, it means it’ll have already have seen you. And then you’re dead.”
“Well, maybe,” Andy said, and his eyes gleamed. “But just imagine a snake that big.”
“I don’t need to imagine,” Emma shot back.
Andy continued to beam, and Fergus nudged Drake with an elbow. “Jesus, look at this kid, will ya? He’s lovin’ being here.”
“Beats working in a museum.” Andy waggled his eyebrows.
Drake sighed. “Come on, move out.”
CHAPTER 27
Ben slithered through the undergrowth and stopped to rest as his head spun from dizziness. The wounds on his chest felt like they were on fire. Three deep gauges, and he was sure he had fractured ribs from that big bastard landing on him.
But just as big fish ate small fish, it was also true that big fish got eaten by even bigger fish. While Ben was being mauled, and he thought his number was finally up, something had burst from the jungle and scooped up the seven-foot-tall theropod standing on his chest like it weighed nothing. The others of its pack had fled screeching in panic back into the undergrowth.
Ben didn’t wait to hand out thank yous, but instead ignored the pain and ran between a pair of clawed feet that must have been six feet long. One thing he’d found out about being in the vicinity of a big carnivore was that everything else headed for the hills. So the jungle had been empty on his blind run.
But now, he had other priorities. Wounds festered, and even a minor cut could mean blood poisoning if not attended to.
He slithered on, finally seeing what he was looking for. He pulled himself into the patch of thick grasses, choosing the greenest stalks and carefully tugging them from the damp soil. He was careful not to dislodge the bulbs as they came up. He quickly shelled one the size of his thumb, and then stuck it in his mouth, grinding the bitter plant root down to pulp, and then spat the mush back onto his hand.
Maybe one day the plant would evolve into an onion or garlic. But as he hoped when he first found them, whatever it was, it was close enough to contain a potent chemical called allicin that was a powerful natural antibiotic.
With his vision blurring from pain, Ben smeared the salve into the chest wounds, feeling the agony as he rubbed the bitter mush into the torn flesh. The extra bonus was the odor of the root masked the smell of open wounds. He chewed some more, his jaw working slowly as he made sure to liberally coat all his wounds. He then finally tugged up some more bulbs and stuck them into a sack which was the last shred of his shirt that had long given up as a garment of wear.
Ben’s head swam, and he crawled and dragged himself under a huge palm frond, hoping he was concealed as he spun away into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 28
The trek was slow, arduous, and hampered by the thick tangle of vines, bracken-like fern fronds, and the occasional hooked thorn that punctured even their tough jungle clothing. It was also slowed by their caution, as Drake would ease through the tangle, rather than hack his way.
Fergus was taking his turn out at point and was first into the clearing. “Ho-oooly shit.” He turned and pointed out the obvious.
“This is bullshit.” Ajax’s lip curled as he also stared. “This doesn’t make sense; there were people back then? I thought that evolution stuff told us humans didn’t appear until only a few thousand years ago.”
“Millions actually. In fact, 4.4 millions,” Andy added.
Fergus turned to Emma. “This can’t be real.”
The building was ancient, massive stone blocks, columns and mighty carvings, but now eroded and beginning to crumble.
“I’m guessing it can and it can’t be,” Drake said. “Just like us being here can’t be real.”
“He’s right,” Emma agreed. “The way we climbed up originally began in a secret passage in a structure like this. The locals, perhaps the Pemon’s ancestors, knew about this place and the wettest season. We think they’d been coming up here for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years and feeding the creatures.”
“Magnificent,” Helen remarked. “Of course they’d feed them, by sacrificing themselves to them. But in their minds, they were honoring them. And if they built this, even the hardest of stones would weather down to nothing by the time it became our present time.”
Once again, on each side of the doorway was the coiled behemoth strangling another mighty creature.
“The gargoyles — the snake and the beast,” Andy said. “Their god of gods.”
“So where are they now?” Ajax asked. “The people, I mean.”
Emma snorted softly. “Ever heard that expression about feeding the crocodile, in the hope it’ll eat you last?” She turned to him. “I’m betting it finally got around to eating them.”
“Are they the same as the ones you encountered on the jungle floor?” Drake asked.
Emma nodded slowly. “The same basic form; the same Amerindian style, part Aztec, part Mayan, part Olmec. But there were also glyphs and carvings that were nothing like either.” She narrowed her eyes. “But these statues are a little more rough-hewn, and that might be because they were constructing them in an environment a million times more hostile, and so might have been a little rushed.”
Helen nodded. “It’s not really my field, but I’d bet money on them being the same.”
“Good,” Drake replied.
They peered out from behind their curtain of foliage across the clearing. Hidden insects buzzed, chirruped, and hummed in the undergrowth and also in the thick canopy overhead. Bars of sunshine threw down columns of light between the trees, and the occasional leathery-winged creature darted from tree branch to tree branch above them.
Drake and Fergus used their binoculars to get a close-up view of the temple structure, while Ajax watched their backs. Emma did the same, but Drake noticed she seemed to be more interested in scanning the treetops.
The Special Forces soldier looked for unusual shapes, colors, or anything out of the ordinary. The problem was, to his modern brain, everything in this place was out of the ordinary.
“I got nothing,” Fergus said, and he did another sweep.
“I don’t like it. Why don’t we just go around it?” Ajax said over his shoulder. “Stay low, stay in cover. We ain’t here for sightseeing anyway.”