Chase gave her a sarcastic look, then climbed on to the log. He began to walk across, arms outstretched for balance, then thought better of it and dropped to all fours, progressing at a slower - but safer - crawl. ‘You were right,’ he called from the other side. ‘It is a bit slippy. Come on over.’
Nina still didn’t like the look of it. ‘Y’know, I might see if there’s a longer way round instead.’
‘It’s fine. Trust me.’
Nina unwillingly got on to the log. The wood was damp, the bark squishing under her hands. But if it could support Chase’s weight, then . . . ‘Okay,’ she said to herself, eyes fixed on the trunk ahead rather than the vertiginous drop to either side. ‘It’s safe. It’s just like a bridge.’ She started across. ‘A wet, rotten, really narrow bridge . . .’
She edged along, dislodging patches of moss as she went - and trying not to watch them tumble into the darkness below. Instead she concentrated on the log, and Chase’s encouraging face at its far end. She could feel the wood bowing beneath her, but kept moving, advancing inch by inch, until she reached the other side.
‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, hopping back on to solid ground with relief.
Chase patted her shoulder. ‘Told you it’d be fine. Okay, Soph?’
Nina looked round as Sophia began to cross the log. As well as the constant splash of the waterfall, she heard another sound, a rustling in the treetops. Birds, she realised, flitting through the foliage. She saw one circling near the ceiling, soaring through a hole into the sunlight before swooping back down into another. ‘Look at those birds,’ she said to Chase. ‘I wonder if they live here permanently, or found it while they were migrating?’
‘So long as they don’t crap on my head, I’m not that bothered,’ Chase replied. ‘How you doing, Soph?’
‘Fine,’ Sophia replied. ‘I don’t know why Nina was so scared.’ She put one hand on the stump of a broken branch for support - and it snapped with a wet crack.
She lurched sideways. Her leg slithered off the log in a shower of mouldering bark, other hand clawing for grip as she fell—
Her fingers caught a knot of creepers, the thinner vines stretching and snapping as she swung from the makeshift bridge.
Chase ran to the edge of the chasm, gripping one of the log’s exposed roots and stretching an arm towards her. She struggled to bring up her free hand, but couldn’t quite reach. ‘Eddie!’ she cried. ‘I’m slipping!’
‘Hang on!’ Chase climbed on to the log. He gripped her wrist and tried to pull her up, but in his kneeling position couldn’t get enough leverage. ‘Nina, help me!’
She hesitated, then ran to him. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Hold that root,’ he said. ‘Then grab my arm so I can pull her up!’
Nina did so. The root creaked unsettlingly when she pulled it. Rotten. ‘I don’t think it’ll hold!’
‘It’ll have to! Come on!’
She gripped it, reaching out with her other arm to Chase. Their hands closed tightly. Chase took Sophia’s weight, Nina his as he strained to lift her. More of the knotted vines snapped, Sophia’s handhold breaking away—
Nina pulled, groaning at the strain on her shoulder muscles. The root groaned too - but held. Chase got to his feet, hauling Sophia up with him. She found purchase with one boot and leapt to the safety of the cliff edge, Chase jumping after her. ‘Oh, God!’ she gasped, holding him tightly as she fought for breath. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you . . .’
‘Ahem,’ said Nina, deciding their clinch had gone on long enough. Chase got the hint and pushed Sophia away.
‘And thank you too. I suppose,’ Sophia said to Nina, the words sticking distastefully in her mouth.
‘You’re
She set off in the direction of the statue. Chase caught up. ‘Can’t
‘I can,’ said Chase. ‘Because you’re not her.’
‘Y’know, that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
Chase let out a muted laugh, then picked up a stick and swatted aside plants as they moved deeper into the strange little jungle. After walking for some time, at one point splashing across a stream, they were directly beneath one of the largest openings in the ceiling. The varieties and colours of the vegetation multiplied in the daylight, various fruits and berries ripening on the trees. ‘It really is beautiful, isn’t it?’ Nina said, pausing to smell an unfamiliar purple flower. ‘I can see why it was passed down through memory as a paradise.’
‘Prefer something a bit more open, myself,’ said Chase. ‘You know, with actual sky rather than just little patches of it overhead . . .’ He tailed off.
Nina picked up on his suddenly cautious stance. ‘What is it?’
Chase used the stick to bend back the branches of a bush. ‘There’s something here.’
Beyond the bush were the remains of a building, a tumbledown ruin barely standing beneath layers of vines and lichen. ‘It’s brick,’ she said. ‘Like the other Veteres structures.’
‘It’s the wrong shape,’ said Sophia. ‘It’s not round, it’s square.’ Nina saw she was right; what was left of the walls displayed right-angled corners. ‘And the bricks have just been stacked on top of each other - they’re barely even straight.’
‘Cowboys,’ joked Chase.
Nina moved past the crumbled walls, seeing more ruins amongst the plants. ‘There’s a curved wall, though - or what’s left of one.’ The reason struck her. ‘Of course! It’s like the site we found in Indonesia - the original Veteres structures were scavenged for materials by later settlers. They didn’t have the skills to build something as complex as a dome, so they used the bricks to make something simpler. That means someone was here
‘Who was in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve?’ asked Chase.
‘Nobody,’ Nina told him. ‘They were banished - and God made sure they wouldn’t come back by setting cherubim armed with flaming swords to guard it.’
Chase raised an eyebrow. ‘Flaming swords? Sounds familiar.’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘Flaming swords?’ Sophia asked. ‘Am I missing something?’
‘Excalibur glowed under certain conditions because of earth energy,’ Nina explained. ‘An early culture could easily have interpreted it as a kind of fire.’ She gazed at the ruins. ‘This must have been part of the Veteres settlement - where they lived. Where their civilisation started.’
‘So why did they leave?’ asked Chase. ‘They didn’t just expand across the world - they upped sticks and completely left this place behind.’
‘They were driven out,’ Nina remembered. ‘By “beasts”.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t get it. They must have been pretty advanced to have built all the stuff we’ve seen - so why couldn’t they master pointy stick technology and just kill these beasts? I mean, lions and tigers and bears—’
‘Oh, my.’
‘—are nasty predators, but they didn’t have a chance in the long run ’cause of the whole “opposable thumbs, motherfuckers!” thing.’ He raised his hands, thumbs aloft.
‘Charmingly put, as ever,’ said Sophia. ‘But you have a point - tools and weapons are great equalisers. Unless the beasts also had opposable thumbs, of course.’
‘The inscriptions did say that the Veteres tried to train the beasts, though,’ said Nina. ‘To give them the gift of knowledge. Maybe not a great idea to teach a gorilla how to use a spear.’
‘Gorillas didn’t build this,’ Sophia said, pointing at the wall. ‘And they didn’t build that giant statue, either.’
‘You’re right.’ Nina looked to the eastern wall. ‘If the answers are anywhere, that’s where they’ll be.’
The three Humvees, their black flanks pock-marked by bullet impacts, stopped near the base of the mesa.
Callum, riding in the lead vehicle with Vogler, checked the truck’s GPS. ‘We’re at the position where the missiles hit.’
