Bell clenched his teeth. “I said, drop it!”
Maddock inclined his head and then slowly bent his knees and lowered his arm, placing the SIG on the floor rather than actually letting it fall. He was stalling, waiting for his chance to act. He did not believe for a second that Bell really wanted to shoot anyone, and it looked like Scano and the snake warriors were adopting a wait-and-see mentality, but eventually someone would do something to escalate the situation.
For a few seconds, the only sound in Xibalba was the noise of the ball court — skull-balls bouncing, walls and stelae swatting them away. Maddock risked a glance back and saw Alex and Carina advancing, with six Serpent Brothers spread out in a half-circle behind them. Some had blowguns raised, others were hefting war clubs studded with obsidian blades. The warriors looked about uncertainly, clearly as concerned with what was going on behind them as they were with the confrontation.
“Dad,” Miranda said again. Her voice sounded hollow, desolate with disbelief. “Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me that you didn’t know what he was planning. This is just a mistake, right?”
“Unleashing the apocalypse?” Bones said. “Yeah, definitely a mistake.”
“There isn’t going to be an apocalypse,” Bell said. “The Shadow will be just another doomsday weapon that nobody will ever dare use. But the cure. The knowledge that studying it will reveal? That will change the world. New antibiotics. Cures for cancer, and other diseases we don’t even know about yet.”
Maddock nodded in understanding. “Maybe even a cure for your COPD.”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Were you dropped on your head as a kid, Doc?” Bones snarled. “You can’t believe anything he says.”
“ScanoGen is not the same company it was under my father,” Alex said, taking a step forward. “Whether you believe it or not, I just want to help people. Save the world. And men like Dr. Bell share my vision of looking to the past for the cures that will save the future.”
“You’re going to save the world with bioweapons.” Maddock shook his head. “Sorry, I just don’t buy it.”
“You’ve been misled, I’m afraid,” Alex said, smiling. Maddock guessed the man had no idea how arrogant it made him look. Or maybe he did and he just didn’t care. “We’re only trying to develop a cure for a terrible disease.”
“Sure you are.”
Another ball bounced into view, most of its energy spent. The warriors shifted a few steps out of the way, though they were never in much danger to start with, and the ball rolled past them, into the slot at the base of the wall.
As ancient stone machinery rumbled to life again, Maddock started a mental countdown. He glanced past Bell, meeting Bones’ stare for a second, telegraphing his intention with his eyes. Then he looked up, ever so slightly to Kasey, still perched on Bones’ shoulders, a good ten feet from the top of the wall where Angel, Isabella and Miranda waited. He flicked his eyes up, hoping she would get the message.
“You are a fool!” Isabella shouted from the wall, an accusatory finger pointing at Scano. She spat the words out with a contemptuous laugh. “You are dead already. The Shadow has touched you.”
Scano stiffened at the odd accusation, and then looked at Carina. “What the hell is she talking about?”
“I know the signs,” Isabella said. “Eyes as red as blood. I saw it earlier. Now I am sure. Did you do this to him, Carina? When you found el Guia?”
Carina looked back at her wide-eyed. “No. She’s lying. Trying to divide us.” But she nevertheless took a step back, as if trying to distance herself from him.
“Damn it,” Alex snarled. “That worm, Doug. He did this. Don’t worry. I’m probably not contagious yet.”
Isabella’s pointing finger now shifted to Bell. “You have also been touched.”
Bell’s eyes went wide, wide enough for Maddock to see that the whites of his eyes were indeed blood red. After all they had been exposed to — from smoke to ammonia fumes — that was hardly a surprise, but Bell sagged a little under the weight of the revelation.
“The scorpion sting,” he whispered. “In the City of Shadow. I was infected.”
Scano shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here now. And so it the cure.”
“Fool,” Isabella said again. “There is no cure.”
Her revelation could not have come at a better moment.
With another loud crack, the skull-ball was launched into play, startling everyone.
Everyone except Maddock, Bones and Kasey.
“Now!” Maddock shouted.
Right on cue, Bones reached up to grab Kasey’s ankles, and then thrust her straight up. She flew like a rocket, rising as high as the top of the wall, but her back was turned to it, and even though she tried to twist around to face it, there was no way she was going to be able to grab the edge.
Fortunately, Angel saw what was going on and reacted immediately. As Kasey reached the top of her vertical journey, Angel reached out with both hands and snagged the strap of Kasey’s backpack. The sudden transfer of weight pulled Angel down, slamming her against the edge of the wall. Kasey swung back and hit the stone with an audible grunt, but within seconds, Miranda and Isabella joined the effort and, working together, easily hauled Kasey up.
On the floor of the ball court, Bell was slow to react. He jerked the gun around toward Bones, giving Maddock the opening he’d been waiting for. He sprang at the archaeologist, tackling him.
The gun flew from Bell’s hands and went skittering across the floor. Maddock heard a faint huffing sound as some of the Serpent Brothers launched darts at them, but didn’t feel any stings. Pushing away from Bell, he dove after the gun, sliding on his belly across the floor, caught it and brought it up ready to fire from a prone position, even as one of the warriors charged toward him, war club held high.
Maddock squeezed the trigger twice and the warrior went down.
The rest of the warriors, along with Scano and Carina, were scattering, but Maddock knew the pandemonium would not last. Eventually, the warriors would launch another volley of darts which were almost certainly tipped with poison. He spun around without rising, and scrambled on all fours toward the ball return gutter.
While he had been going for the gun, Bones had gone after Bell, scooping the treacherous archaeologist up, carrying him under one arm like a sack of dog food. He hesitated though as he stared into the dark gap at the bottom of the wall. “You sure about this?”
Maddock wasn’t at all sure. He knew that there was room enough for the skull-balls, which were a bit larger than the size of an actual human head, and that somewhere inside, under the pyramid, there was some sort of mechanical system for lifting the balls up to the launcher, but whether there was room enough for a person was anyone’s guess.
If he was wrong, instead of lifting them to safety, the stone machinery might very well grind them to hamburger.
“If you’ve got a better idea, let’s hear it.” Maddock didn’t wait for an answer, but plunged headlong into the gap.
He crawled a few yards through a claustrophobic gap before falling out into a trough that looked remarkably like a gutter at a bowling alley, except for the fact that it was tilted down at sharp angle. The stone was smooth, but provided enough resistance that he did not slide down to the end of the trough where something that looked sort of like an enormous upright stone screw was slowly turning. There were two more troughs leading away from the sloping floor, and similar screw-elevators at the end of each. Maddock assumed that the screws would lift a recovered ball — or anything else they picked up — up to one of the three launchers, but there would be no need for them to follow that route because there was also a raised walkway behind the screws, and a passage leading out.