“I believe the body in the temple entered Mayan mythology as Seven Macaw. And these animals, as the Zipacna. In the legend, only the wooden people were present for the deluge, but they both came from the same place—or time.” He glanced at Danielle. “And the rain—our rain—will do the same thing to these Zipacna that it did to the wooden people three thousand years ago.”
Danielle had one more question. “And the natives?” she asked. “You think they know this.”
“They know,” McCarter insisted. “They’ve always known.” He jutted his chin toward the forest. “For three thousand years they’ve been coming here in their wanderings. Always to this place, always in the dry season, guarding it, waiting for the rains to come and grant them absolution for the rest of the year. Eighty years ago, when Blackjack Martin took those crystals from them, they were waiting for the rain to come, praying for it out of spiritual dogma, out of sheer habit. Now, somewhere out there, they’re doing the same thing, only this time out of a desperate need. If we want to survive, we have to find them, we have to show them that we know, and beg for their help.”
CHAPTER 44
McCarter’s explanation struck a cord with Danielle. And twenty minutes later, she found herself in the rainforest, hiking with Hawker, McCarter and Devers, following a trail to the Chollokwan camp.
Verhoven had volunteered to go in her place, both because the Chollokwan were a strict patriarchy and because her leg was injured, but Danielle had overruled him. To begin with, Verhoven’s hand was worse than her leg, and the jungle hike required almost as much hand work as walking. But more importantly, she had a feeling that this might be their best and possibly last chance to get out of the jungle alive. She wasn’t about to leave a moment like that to anyone else.
McCarter would have preferred it otherwise, and said so. But with little choice in the matter, he could only beg her not to talk unless spoken to. The male-dominated Chollokwan society would not respond to it, he insisted. She’d agreed to let him do the talking, but this was still her show and there was no way was she staying behind.
As they traveled along, the jungle thickened around them. They hiked through the rainforest proper now, not the edge of the clearing, where McCarter and Hawker had been before. Massive trees with overarching branches created the feeling of walking through a tunnel, while the tangled undergrowth hid scurrying things. It all seemed foreign to her now, as dark and sinister as the cave beneath the temple, and similar in many respects. And it created in her a low-level anxiety that seemed to grow stronger the farther they traveled from the clearing and its relative measure of safety, like the old sailor’s fear of losing touch with the shoreline.
With great effort she forced the thought aside. The animals, McCarter’s Zipacna, were out there somewhere. And while Hawker had guessed them to be nocturnal, they knew from the attack on Kaufman, which had occurred just before sunset, that such was not entirely the case.
After observing the grub in the ammunition box, Danielle concluded that it was not the daytime that the Zipacna avoided, but the daylight itself. The grub had cowered in the one corner that offered shade and when she’d covered half of the box with a rag, the thing had chosen the shadowed side no matter how many times she switched it. If she was right, then the animals could hunt in the forest twenty-four hours a day, for beneath the triple canopy, where the group now trod, less than ten percent of the sunlight made it through to the ground.
Knowing this, Danielle kept her eyes on the move. She walked beside McCarter in a loose formation, her eyes flicking between the jungle, McCarter and the traitorous William Devers, who traveled a few yards ahead, unencumbered but unarmed. She half expected him to try something, but he seemed to know it would be suicide for him to run off into the jungle alone.
A few yards in front of Devers, Hawker strode with a purpose. There was a strange rhythm to the pace he kept, moving briskly for many minutes, then stopping suddenly, before resuming the rapid walk. At each stop he scanned the jungle ahead and behind, sometimes pausing for agonizing minutes in complete silence and stillness, as if waiting for some spirit to pass over. At other times, he pointed out the marks that enabled him to track the natives—crushed plants, disturbed moss, churned ground. “A hundred
Two hours of tracking and hiking brought them to an area where Danielle noticed a slight smell of smoke. As they continued, the leaves around them began to appear white, carrying a thin layer of fine ash, like dust on the furniture in an empty house.
And then the natives were there.
She grabbed McCarter and stopped him. There were two darkly tanned men directly ahead and three more off to one side. She guessed there were others still hidden in the brush, but she couldn’t see any. The stone axes in their hands were held high and their faces appeared harsh, their eyes seething with anger.
One of them shouted something, which Devers did not translate, though perhaps he didn’t need to—it was spoken so violently it had to be a threat or a curse. Several others appeared from the forest and in a moment they were surrounded by a dozen Chollokwan men.
It was now or never. “Talk to them, Devers,” she said. “Tell them we come in peace.”
Devers took a deep breath and then managed a few words. But there was no reaction from the natives. Beside her McCarter began to lower his rifle in a gesture of benevolence.
Hawker shook his head.
“Not yet,” Danielle said. “They’ll rush us.”
Devers tried again, explaining that the people from the NRI only wanted to help the Chollokwan, not to fight with them. That they were waiting for the rains to return just as the Chollokwan were, and to help the rains along, they’d brought the crystals that had been taken from the Chollokwan so long ago. They would return them in exchange for help.
Initially, the Chollokwan said nothing, staring blankly at the foreigners as if confused. Finally, the one who’d shouted began to speak. His words had an acerbic tone, and Danielle felt quite sure that the offer was being declined.
Finally Devers translated. “His name is Putock,” Devers said. “He insists that he is not afraid of us, or of Western men. He says he has killed many before.”
“That’s comforting,” Danielle said.
“He says this question is not for him to answer and that—”
Putock interrupted Devers with another shout, and then he and the other Chollokwan turned back into the forest.
“He says the others will decide.”
“What others?” Danielle asked.
“The elders,” Devers explained. “The council.”
She looked at Hawker and then at McCarter. This was what they wanted. They moved off, heading deeper into Chollokwan territory.
CHAPTER 45
Professor McCarter had been caught off guard by the native’s sudden disappearance into the bush. He rushed to catch up, reaching the others just as they arrived at the outskirts of the native encampment.
The village itself sat beside the long curve of a broad stream, one wide enough to part the jungle and let the sun shine down over its waters. McCarter guessed the location to be a deliberate one. Not only did it put the Chollokwan in close proximity to a source of freshwater and fish, but it protected them from attack on two-thirds of their perimeter. The remaining section was guarded by sentries, groups of them on the forest floor and others perched in the trees. Seeing this, McCarter began to wonder if the Chollokwan had indeed stood guard on the ramparts at the Wall of Skulls.
Between the sentries burned a long line of small fires, fifty or more spaced evenly in a long, curving arc that stretched to the water’s edge on both sides of the village, a barrier on the land, forming the front line of defense.
