Then Ramirez bolted zigzag up the path through the frames of violet light. His weapon was angled low, practically to the ground. He was yelling, ‘Get the fuck away from me, you motherfuckers!’
Hazo leaned over the platform’s safety rail, trying to discern what he was shooting at. At first, he couldn’t spot the enemy.
Then the threat became all too clear.
An undulating black wave spilled out from the rear of the cave, curling, twisting, spreading fast over the ground, as if a colossal oil drum had been tipped over to flood the space. With it came unearthly squealing that filled the cave. In the darkness the pulsing crests twinkled with countless ruby specks that shimmered like sequins.
Screaming bloody murder, Ramirez kept firing indiscriminately at the swell, but the bullets did nothing to hinder its advance. As the marine’s light traced wide arcs over the mass, Hazo’s skin crawled at what he was seeing from the top of the platform: a churning sea of eyes protruding from wedge-shaped heads; whiskered snouts; slithering, fleshy tails; rubbery bodies covered in black hair. Layers upon layers of them, fighting to the top, swallowed beneath, rising again.
Rats.
Hazo gasped. Thousands upon thousands of black rats. Their incalculable numbers were increasing by the second.
Hazo had seen plenty of vermin scavenging the waste dumps on the outskirts of his hometown, but none as large or aggressive as these. These rats seemed to be attacking Ramirez — mobilizing against him like an army.
‘Up here!’ Hazo screamed down to him. ‘Come!’ He coughed up more blood. ‘There is a ladder!’ But his weak scream was lost to the brood’s high-pitched squealing.
In less than fifteen seconds, Ramirez’s ammo clip ran dry. Wasting no time with a pointless reload, he unclipped the light from the weapon’s muzzle and whipped the M-16 like a boomerang at the advancing horde. Then he broke into a sprint, whisked below Hazo, and headed for the entry tunnel. The determined rats weren’t far behind him. Hazo watched Ramirez’s light moving swiftly through the darkness. It looked as if Ramirez might outrun them.
More screams came from the rear of the cave. Hazo hunted the darkness with his flashlight and spotted Holt knee-deep in the squirming black mass.
74
‘Stop snooping around,’ a gruff voice whispered over Brooke’s shoulder.
Caught red-handed, Brooke flinched. Her fingers lost their grip and the jar’s lid clattered back in place, fortunately not with enough force to cause any damage. Spinning around, she was face to face with Flaherty. He’d silently entered the room and was standing directly behind her.
‘Caught ya,’ he said, pointing a finger like a gun. ‘Hands up.’ He winked and flashed a mischievous smile.
‘Jesus, Tommy,’ she said, clutching her chest and letting out an anxious breath. She eyed his swollen nose, the bloodstains on his shirt collar. ‘You nearly scared me to death!’
‘You’re alone in a vault with a demon’s severed head, and I scare you?’
She bared her teeth and curled her fingers like talons. ‘Oh, you are such a—’
‘Whoa, slow down.’ He held up his hands in surrender, saying, ‘Just thought I’d tell you that we can’t leave here until the infectious-disease folks come and scrub us down, prep Stokes for transport. We’ll all need to be quarantined. Then the FBI drones will swing by and have their way with us. So best get comfy.’
‘Great.’ Rolling her eyes, she huffed and turned her attention back to the jar.
‘What are you looking at?’ he said, stepping up beside her.
‘This. It’s the jar Lilith was carrying just before she was executed. It’s supposed to have some kind of magical power.’
‘Spooky.’
‘I just thought I’d take a look … see what’s inside it,’ she confessed.
‘And?’
‘I haven’t gotten that far yet, thanks to you.’
‘So what are you waiting for? Let’s see if there’s a rabbit in the hat.’
She shook her head. ‘This isn’t tampering with evidence, right?’
‘I’d say it’s gone through plenty of tampering already. I’m sure it’ll be okay if we take a peek.’
‘All right.’ She rubbed her fingertips together, then reached into the case for a second attempt at unveiling the jar’s interior.
With utmost finesse, Brooke curled her fingertips around the lid’s thick rim. She lifted away the plate-like clay disc and gave it to Flaherty. ‘Hold this.’
Hesitant, he said, ‘What if it’s cursed or something?’
She shot him a chastising look. ‘For real? You’re a Catholic, not an occult freak.’
‘Fine.’ He begrudgingly took the lid from her and held it at his side like a discus.
Brooke and Flaherty peered down at the uncovered jar.
‘Looks like one of those jumbo candles from Pottery Barn … without the wick,’ said Flaherty.
‘Kinda does,’ she agreed. Brooke tapped a fingernail on the solid glossy layer that levelled off just below the jar’s rim, and it made the clink-clink sound of glass.
‘I’m not seeing anything inside it,’ Flaherty said. ‘You?’
‘No.’ But her hopes weren’t dashed, because if the ancient Mesopotamians had preserved the jar’s contents employing the same method used on Lilith’s head, then deep inside the jar, something had been trapped inside a viscous substance that over the centuries had hardened like glass. They just couldn’t see it yet.
‘Maybe we can shine a light in there, or something,’ he suggested.
‘I’ve got a better idea.’ Closely studying the cut lines that split the circular rim into two equal arcs, Brooke could see paper-thin slivers of light squeezing through the fine gaps. ‘I don’t think this is glued.’
‘Oh. Well maybe we could …’
Reaching in with both hands, she pinched the top of the rim at the middle of each half and applied gentle outward pressure on the opposing sides.
‘… crack it open, or something.’
It was sticky at first. She bit her lip and put some more push behind her fingers. The pottery yielded with a gritty creak, yawned open along its front side from top to bottom like a giant pistachio. ‘Hah … there we go.’
Flaherty tilted his head sideways for a better look, but refused to get any closer to the relic. With the bulbous core still masked in the jar’s shadows, he couldn’t yet decipher the contents.
Thrilled, Brooke was grinning ear to ear. ‘Oh, this is amazing.’
Flaherty’s eyes twinkled with admiration as he watched how she worked the pieces apart with patient dexterity. There was an endearing childlike innocence lurking beneath Brooke Thompson’s sophisticated exterior; that wide-eyed wonderment that seemed to exist only on Christmas morning. And in this intimate moment, her passion for archaeology and discovery burned like the sun.
Brooke spread the pottery halves so that their crescent-shaped bottom surfaces slid out from under the solidified inner mass. The liberated core clunked down against the bottom of the display case. ‘My God, Tommy … look at this!’ she gasped
Setting aside his irrational superstitions, he stepped up to the case and peered in at what she’d found. He cringed at the frightful sight. ‘Mother Mary.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘Beautiful?’ Flaherty said. What had been inside the jar resembled a solid, honey-coloured crystal ball, much the same as the one containing Lilith’s ghastly head. And coiled up inside the opaque mass was a considerably large snake whose jaws were hinged open and frozen in place, as if it had been drowned. Like its beheaded charmer, the snake’s malevolent eyes were wide open in a threatening glare. Its hooked fangs were easily five centimetres long. The black, ropey body — thick as a beer can — was covered in scales the size of his thumbnail. He guessed that if he could stretch the thing out, it would be nearly two metres. ‘That’s a bizarre choice for a pet.’