Silently, as Guatemotzi trotted along a narrow jungle trail to the secret spring, he prayed the warriors in orange would not come to kill him tonight for what he’d done with the dead monkey’s collar he took from the sacred temple. It had seemed a small thing at the time, to take the collar from the dead monkey, hoping later to sell it for a few pesos to buy food with. The little collar was very old and it held only a few of the pretty green and red stones and some hammered silver.
What harm was done? The monkey would surely not miss it and the money the traveler in the jungle had given him would be put to good use in his village, making sure there was plenty of food for all of his people.
Perhaps, while Los Oráculos were busy within the metal box, he could sneak up without being noticed and see for himself what they were doing inside. After all, was he not known to be the best tracker in his village, able to creep up on deer and javelina and move through the jungle without making a sound?
He turned around and started back toward the clearing and its unearthly inhabitants. Moving silently through thick jungle vines and undergrowth, Guatemotzi slipped up to the edge of the forest and then crept to a wall of the iron box to peer carefully through a window.
“Madre de Dios,” Guatemotzi whispered, unconsciously mimicking the black-robed priest who taught him Spanish. Los Oráculos had shed their orange skins and had taken the form of ordinary humans, both men and women. Perhaps they were like el coyote, known as the trickster among his people, and could shape-shift at will. If so, their magic was indeed strong.
Though he couldn’t hear their voices, Los Oráculos appeared happy, laughing and joking among themselves much as the people of his village did when the rains came and the crops grew green and thick and food was plentiful.
And they were eating from the same green pouches Los Americanos had given to Guatemotzi. Were they saving the trophies and body parts they had taken from the dead bodies to eat later, or had they already consumed the souls and courage of the dead Americanos?
As Guatemotzi crouched outside the window, clouds parted and a full moon appeared overhead, bathing the clearing in ghostly white light. One of the females inside, the one with long hair like his mother’s (only a red-brown color instead of black) turned to gaze out the glass, her eyes locking on Guatemotzi’s. As she opened her mouth and pointed to him, Guatemotzi realized he had been seen.
With hammering heart and a dry mouth, he turned and sprinted through the jungle, thin legs pumping as fast as he had ever run in his life.
Lauren’s exclamation of surprise stopped all conversation in the lab as she pointed at an empty window. “There, outside that window! I saw a face staring in at us, a boy! I know I didn’t imagine it!”
Mason ran to the window and peered out. All he could see in the moonlight was branches of nearby bushes shaking as if someone had run through them. It had to be the same boy he’d seen earlier in the day.
Who was he, Mason wondered, and how had he escaped the plague? He knew the answer to those questions could very well be just what they needed to defeat this damned bug and possibly prevent many more deaths in the future.
Finding him would have to be a priority once daylight arrived.
Chapter 11
Eduardo’s face looked pale behind his Plexiglas face mask in the light from a flashlight he carried and his voice sounded different to Lauren when he spoke to her as they walked toward the temple. There was an animation and excitement in it that was normally absent from the taciturn professor’s usual rather formal demeanor. She knew that in spite of the deaths that had resulted, this would be the crowning glory of Matos’s career. He would be forever known as the man who’d made possible the discovery of Emperor Montezuma’s tomb.
“This does not seem possible,” Matos said, looking down and shining the light where he placed his feet so that he wouldn’t stumble. “All of them dead, and their blood appears to have left their bodies entirely. I have never seen or heard of such a thing. Of course, I am not a medical doctor; however it would seem logical to have something in the newspapers or on television reporting a disease in which every drop of blood drains from the human body. I wonder if this has ever happened before. I will ask Dr. Williams what it is, and if he has ever encountered so many people dying like this.”
Lauren realized he was babbling on because he was still nervous about the cause of so many deaths and was, in spite of his excitement over the archaeological discoveries, terrified that he would somehow become infected. Matos might once have been an intrepid explorer, but he was certainly not a brave man anymore. Perhaps he’d spent too many years behind a desk in the ministry and had forgotten what it was like to be in the field where death and danger were never far away.
Lauren quickly passed her flashlight beam over a body with a black plastic covering. She wanted to cry and couldn’t, as if no more tears were possible after what she’d seen today.
“They are calling the disease hemorrhagic shock,” she said, answering his earlier question. “I have no idea what that means. I think it’s a general term and is a condition caused by many different illnesses. Dr. Williams says they still have no firm knowledge as to what killed Charlie and the students, though they have some suspicions… they haven’t given the disease any kind of name yet.”
She glanced at Matos and tried to put it in terms the archaeologist would understand. “It is reminiscent of Dr. Howard Carter’s team after opening Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt, when so many died from a long-dormant fungus.”
“Aspergillus,” Eduardo remembered, nodding his head. “Though these symptoms are very different. That disease took many weeks to develop and the victims took even longer to die. Here,” he hesitated as if overcome for a moment, “they became ill and died within a matter of a few days.”
He paused to collect himself, and then he continued, “My heart is heavy over the loss of my friend, Charles, for it was I who arranged his permit to dig in Tlateloco. How could I have known I was giving him a death sentence? This was an archaeologist’s dream, to find the burial place of Chief Montezuma. I felt I had no choice but to arrange things for him since it was his work leading to the discovery of the chronicles of Díaz in a Madrid cathedral that led him here. And now my dear friend is dead, because I begged the Ministry of Antiquities to grant him special permission to excavate. I have not truly wept in many years, but now my heart weeps for my professional colleague whose death is forever on my conscience.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Lauren replied woodenly. “How could anyone know this was going to happen?” She directed the beam of her flashlight to the tunnel opening. “Charlie’s lying in there. I asked Dr. Williams to cover his body so I wouldn’t have to look at him. They put him in some sort of plastic bag like the ones outside.”
She stepped around a tangle of vines to continue toward the shaft running beneath the temple. “In the morning, as soon as I’ve identified the others, I’m going back to Austin. I can’t stand to be here. There are too many memories of my association with Charlie and these students.”
“It must be a terrible thing,” Eduardo said, “to be asked to identify the bodies of so many friends. I do understand why you wish to leave.”