“Keep looking,” he said, handing Miranda his machete. “Bones and I will head back to the LZ and break camp.”
No one registered an objection to the decision, but as he and Bones hiked back down the trail they had cut along the floor of the ball court, Bones voiced a concern Maddock had not previously considered. “Are you sure you want to spend the night in a place called City of Shadow?”
Maddock looked at him sidelong, trying to decide if his friend was seriously spooked or just teasing. “I know. It sounds like the set up for a found footage movie.”
“Dude, you think I’m kidding? City of Shadow? Lords of Death? The Maya who built this place vanished without a trace. Like… ” He made a little explosion with his fingers. “Poof. Whisked away. What if the Lords of Death were aliens? Or trans-dimensional beings? This could have been their… I don’t know, spaceport or portal to the home dimension.”
“You’re just bringing this up now? If Bell is right, we’ve been in the city for the last few hours.”
“Daytime is fine. Bad stuff only happens at night.”
“Who’d have thought you’d be scared of the dark?” Maddock said. “Frankly, I’m more worried about ordinary terrestrial creatures.”
“You mean the Serpent Brothers? You think they know about this place?”
Maddock had not meant that at all, but decided to address the question. “I don’t think anyone’s been here in at least five hundred years. If they know about it, they don’t visit. It’s more likely that they’re just protecting the legend. I think they’re looking for it, too.”
“Which means they could show up anytime.”
Maddock shrugged. Kasey had supplied them with two SIG Sauer P226 TacOps semi-automatic 9-mm pistols, six twenty-round magazines, and a box of spare ammunition. It was more than enough to handle a jungle predator — provided they had sufficient warning — but far from ideal for repelling an assault by a team of gunmen armed with assault weapons. But like it or not, that was the situation. They would deal with whatever happened because that was what they did.
And if they did have to fight, the stone walls of the lost city would offer a lot more protection than the thin nylon panels of their tents.
They packed up the equipment and started the trek, acutely aware of the fact that the sun was now below the treetops. Down in the trough-like ball court, the darkness deepened to the point that Maddock and Bones had to break out their LED flashlights, though this decision had more to do with keeping nocturnal predators at bay than actually illuminating their way. It also served to alert the others to their approach. An answering light from further up the trail guided them in. When they reached the wall, they found Angel and Miranda grinning in triumph,
“The girls look way too happy, Maddock,” Bones said in a stage whisper. “Maybe we should have split them up.”
If either woman heard, they chose to ignore the none-too-subtle jab.
“It is a pyramid,” Angel said, unable to contain her excitement. “And we found a way inside.”
CHAPTER 16
Maria stared at the opaque plastic wall, wondering if she should try to smash through it. She desperately needed to get past the obstacle, to get moving, even though she had no idea where she needed to go or why.
Except that wasn’t actually true. She did know why.
First, they wander.
She had known this was coming, even before realizing that the old woman she had met on the mountain road was infected. When she had gone into the house to assess the four critically ill patients, she had done so with the full knowledge that, no matter how careful she was, she might also contract the illness, but that was a risk she had willingly undertaken. She saw herself as a soldier, fighting microscopic enemies rather than human ones, but no less willing to sacrifice herself to save others.
And sacrifice herself, she had.
She felt chilled, a sure sign of the fever rising in her blood, but the tell-tale symptom was the perverse compulsion to move. Not aimless wandering as the villagers had suggested, but an overpowering urge to walk in a specific direction, like the homing instinct of a migrating bird.
But overpowering urge or no, three steps was as far as she got. That was where she encountered the sterile polycarbonate walls of her prison cell. Although she had never actually seen a room like it outside of the movies, she recognized the small enclosure for what it was: a Bio-Safety Level IV isolation room.
The soldiers — she assumed they were soldiers — had taken her along with the other visibly infected patients, about a dozen people including the three Maria had been monitoring. They had all been put in a makeshift isolation ward, nothing more than plastic sheeting held together with strong tape, aboard one of the helicopters. Maria guessed that about a full day had passed, but it was impossible to say with certainty. She had not seen the sun since taking off in the helicopter. After a short flight, they had disembarked in a closed hangar. She didn’t think they could have gone very far. No more than a few hundred kilometers, but aside from knowing that she was in a BSL–IV facility, she had no idea where she was now.
Yet somehow, she knew which direction she need to go.
And she knew how it would end.
A buzzing sound distracted her, breaking the strange spell, momentarily at least. She turned and saw the light above the sealed door blinking on and off. This, she knew, was the signal that someone was about to come through the door, and that she was to lay down on the bed in a non-threatening manner. Failure to comply, she had been told, would result in her being placed in five-point restraints.
She turned away from the wall and stretched out in a supine position, but almost immediately felt herself sitting up again, swinging her feet off the hospital-style bed, turning in the direction of the wall.
“No,” she whispered, gripping the side rails forcefully to hold herself back.
The door opened with a hiss and someone entered. She didn’t immediately see the person’s face, not until he finished connecting the air hose from his environment suit to the supply valve near the door. It was the young man who had come in earlier to draw blood and check her vitals. Then he had spoken only a few words to her in halting Spanish — probably not his native tongue — and refused to look her in the eye or answer her questions.
That had been several hours earlier, before the urge to walk had come over her.
“Are you American?” she asked in English.
The young man stiffened a little at the question. “You speak English?”
“Si. I mean, yes. My name is Maria.”
“Please stay on the bed. I need to check your vitals and take more blood.”
“I have it,” she blurted. “The sickness. I am showing first stage symptoms.”
The young man in the space-suit did not appear surprised by this news, but he kept his head tilted down, hiding his face as he began wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her right bicep.
“I can help you,” she went on.
He secured the cuff and activated the stand-mounted electronic sphygmomanometer. For a few seconds, the only noise in the room was the low hum of the device cycling. Maria did not move or speak, knowing that doing so might affect the accuracy of the readings. When the machine finished, she took note of the results.
Her systolic was slightly higher than normal. So was her heart rate.
The young man began loosening the cuff.