Minutes passed and I just stood there sweating, my head aching from the heat and the news I just heard. Voices started calling for me, and Carey ran down the road, back toward the Jeep.
“Come on,” Magnus called. “Quit messing around; we have time to make up.”
I followed him back to the vehicle and got in, keeping my silence. The whole time I was wondering if I should tell the big man about the twins I just spoke with. Don’t tell anyone about us yet. I didn’t know why, but for some reason, I heeded their advice.
EIGHTEEN
“What would you like? We have dried meats; a jerky of some kind. Maybe alpaca?” Magnus shrugged. “It’s Peru. Variety of fruit, but you’ve had some of that today.”
I spotted some bread, butter, and cheese. It looked so good at that moment, but my stomach was feeling extra heavy after the conversation I’d just had. Hunger for some good food won the quick battle. I grabbed my pocket knife and went to town on a sandwich, whipping one up for the others too. There I ate what I claimed to be the best post-invasion sandwich the world had ever seen.
The terrain was beautiful here and we moved down what must have been a secondary road, with few cars sitting on it. We kicked up dust as we made for the southern part of Peru. Grass greener than any I’d seen before scoured the landscape for miles, and we laughed when we saw the alpaca roaming on the hills beside us.
“You were right, Magnus. Unless those are llama. Then you’re so far off it’s not even funny.” I even said it with a straight face. I glanced back to Natalia and got a scowl for my trouble. Not only did she not talk, apparently her funny bone was malfunctioning too. I instantly let it slide, knowing what horrors she must have been through. I gave her a soft smile and started to turn back. Carey was staring at his new friend in the back seat, and I saw her give him a piece of meat and a pet. She did have the ability to melt the ice on occasion. I wondered if she and Magnus were more than friends, and felt a moment of jealousy that they got to go through this quest with someone they knew before it all happened.
“You okay there?” Magnus asked, and I realized I was sitting staring out the window with a half-eaten sandwich in my hand.
“I’m good. Just a lot to think about,” I replied, wishing I could share the burden I just heard back in town.
“Why Machu Picchu? Kind of a messed-up place to put some crazy alien device, don’t you think?” he asked.
“It actually makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. It’s one of those bizarre phenomena. They think the Inca built it for some emperor or something. Maybe he was really one of those hybrid guys and his magic, or technology, made them think he was a god. Also makes sense to put it somewhere it’ll be protected. Do you think any group of fanatics could go up there unnoticed? Probably not. Not a busy tourist destination that you can’t desecrate. Although they claim to have put it there hundreds of years ago. If by ‘hundreds,’ they meant the fourteen hundreds, then that would put it spot on with the building of the mountaintop city,” I guessed.
“How do you know so much about it? All I knew was the picture I once saw on a calendar.”
“Bit of a History Channel buff.” He looked at me sideways. “I know. I haven’t got out much the past couple years.”
Natalia tapped Magnus on the shoulder and passed him the GPS unit she had in the back with her. She pointed to the map and he veered off after a few minutes.
“That should take us around the next valley and save us some time. Thanks, Nat.” He winked through the rear-view mirror at her.
“What do you figure, Magnus? We have about two hours of light left now. I know you guys have been going through the nights, but do you think it’s more dangerous now?” I asked, trying to see where his gut was at. I wanted to get there tonight to see if we had any sign of Mary, Ray, or Vanessa.
“I have yet to see a ship, and we’re making good time. Have about what, three-fifty to go here?” Natalia must have given him the nod from the back seat. “Thanks. Let’s do it. Should get there by nine. With any luck, your buddies will be there and we can do this thing. How do we get up to the top?”
“It’s so remote out there. Tourists usually take a train to this little town, Aguas Calientes; from there it’s up the mountain via switchbacks. We researched this… or Vanessa had researched this. If it’s raining there, they say the roads can be treacherous. Hence the trains are the most used way to get there.” I was surprised they didn’t have any of this information. “Didn’t you guys know where this thing was? I thought your buddies told you all of this.”
He looked a little ashamed. “They told Natalia and asked her not to tell me until it happened. Really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I guess they didn’t want anyone to go early, tamper with it, and maybe break something?”
A lot of things weren’t making sense to me. On one hand, Vanessa told us that they were brought here to save the world. That the bad aliens, who remained nameless, were going to whisk us all away, kill the majority, keeping a handful as slaves. Like her people. But if they trusted her people so much, how had they planted this device and then come here to warn us?
Then I had the lookalike aliens, who claimed the Kraskis couldn’t survive because of the device they’d planted here in Machu Picchu, of all places, known for its speculation of being tied to aliens. They also told me Janine was in on it. Was that why she chose me instead? She picked a battle side and thought maybe that I would figure it all out? Did she have that much faith in me? Why hadn’t she just outright told me all about it?
I had far too many questions and none of the answers. The way Vanessa so coldly shot the first one, and the fact they did nothing to harm me each time I saw them. I just needed us to get there before the others, if there were others still, so I could try to make the right decision. All of the military, mercenary, air force, and engineers, and the accountant was the one who had the fate of the world on his shoulders. My head hurt. It felt like tax season.
“They told Natalia, assuming she wouldn’t tell anyone, hey?” I felt suspicious of everyone at the moment. Maybe I was the only one who was really human. Mary felt human, but so had Janine. “We’re woven deep into this web of mystery. Natalia, I’ll take another chunk of emu jerky, please.”
Magnus and I laughed as we cruised down the road in the Jeep, the sun sinking on our right as we went.
For the first hour after the sun went down, Magnus accepted my suggestion of keeping the lights off, but as we got close to our destination, the terrain was terrifying at moments. The narrow roads often flirted with the edges of hills that turned into small mountains. It had recently rained, and everything was covered in a thick, gooey layer of mud. A few times, I had to ask that he slow down. “We need to make it there alive to do this,” I’d said.
At seven thirty, he put the lights on, and I was sure that it saved us a dozen times on the last stretch there. Natalia got him to change course a few times, and everything looked great. Then the storm hit. Flash floods hit fast down there, and in mere minutes, not only could we hardly see out the Jeep’s windows, but the roads were washed out completely. We fought it for a while and tried to find routes to get us to the little town at the base of Machu, but it was hopeless.