Burial Ground

I

Pomacochas, Peru

October 14^th

8:38 a.m. PET

By the time Wes Merritt caught up with the children, they were giggling and prodding the corpse with sticks.

This certainly wasn't how he had envisioned starting his day.

He had been down on the rickety floating dock on Laguna Pomacochas, loading his 1953 DHC-2 #N68080 seaplane with supplies for a quick jaunt down to the City of Chachapoyas, capital of the Amazonas Province of Peru, when the three boys had raced up the wooden planks and begun chattering at him in Quechua. Far from fluent in the native tongue, he had captured just a handful of words here and there, but the few he understood told him he wouldn't be making the flight that morning. Two words had stood out specifically. The first, aya, meant "dead body." And the second, undoubtedly the reason they had come directly to him rather than the policía, was a word that he had been called on more than one occasion himself.

Mithmaq. The Quechua word for stranger.

As Merritt approached the bank of the river and the partially concealed body, he wondered if the children had been mistaken. What little skin he could see was mottled bluish black, and the hair was so thick with mud and scum that it was nearly impossible to determine the color. The Mayu Wañu, or, roughly translated, Resurrection River, rose and fell with the seasons, alternately climbing up the steep slope behind him in the spring into the primary rainforest, where the massive trunks of the kapok trees bore the gray discoloration of the water, and diminishing to a gentle trickle mere inches deep during dry spells. The body was tangled in vegetation, half-buried in the mud on the shore, half-floating in the brown river. Swirling eddies attempted to pry it loose to continue its journey along the rapids into the lagoon, but the earth held it fast.

"Sayana," he said in Quechua. Stop.

The boys looked up at him, then slowly backed away, their fun spoiled. One, a shaggy-haired boy of about twelve in a filthy polo shirt and corduroys that were far too short, peeked at Merritt from the corner of his eye and gave the corpse one final poke. All three whirled and sprinted back into the jungle, laughing.

Merritt eased down the slippery bank. The mud swallowed his feet to the ankles and he had to hold the limp yellow ferns to maintain his balance. A quick glance at the ground confirmed the only recent tracks belonged to the barefooted boys. He breathed a sigh of relief. There was a long list of creatures he didn't want to encounter in his current compromised position.

Merritt hauled himself up onto the snarl of branches that shielded the body from the brunt of the current and crouched to inspect the remains. Judging by the broad shoulders and short hair, the corpse belonged to a male, roughly six feet tall, which definitely marked him as a foreigner to this region of northern Peru. The man's shirt and cargo pants had both absorbed so much of the dirty river that it was impossible to tell what color they might once have been. Twin black straps arched around his shoulders. His left leg bobbed on the river, the laces from his boot squirming beneath the surface. His right foot was snared in the branches under Merritt, the bulk of the leg buried in mud. Both arms were pinned somewhere under the body.

Back home in the States, this was when the police would arrive and cordon off the scene so the forensics team could begin the investigation. But he wasn't back home. He was in a different world entirely. A world far less complicated than the one he had left behind, one that had initially welcomed him with overt suspicion, but had eventually introduced him to a culture that had made him its own. And although his white skin would always brand him a mithmaq in their midst, no place in the world had ever felt so much like home.

He looked to the sky, a thin channel of cobalt through the lush branches that nearly eclipsed it from either bank. Blue-capped tanagers darted through the canopy in flickers of turquoise and gold, and common woolly monkeys screeched out of sight. The omnipresent cloud of mosquitoes whined around his head, but showed little interest in the waterlogged corpse, which already seethed with black flies.

Merritt had seen more than his share of bodies during his years in the army, and approached this one with almost clinical detachment. That was the whole reason he had run halfway around the world to escape. There was only so much death one could experience before becoming numb to it.

With a sigh, he climbed down from the mound of sticks and rounded the body again.

"This is so not cool," he said, leaning over the man and grabbing one of the shoulder straps.

He braced himself and pulled. The body made a slurping sound as he pried it from the mire and dragged it higher onto the bank. Silver shapes darted away through the water, their meal interrupted.

The vile stench of decomposition made him gag, but he choked down his gorge. It wasn't as though this was the first corpse he had ever seen. A flash of his previous life assailed him. A dark, dry warren of caves. Smoke swirling all around him. Shadowed forms sprawled on the ground and against the rock walls. One of them, a young woman with piercing blue eyes---

Merritt shook away the memory and willed his heartbeat to slow.

He blew out a long, slow breath, then rolled the corpse onto its back. The angry cloud of flies buzzed its displeasure.

"For the love of God..." he sputtered, and drew his shirt up over his mouth and nose.

The man's face was a mask of mud, alive with wriggling larvae, the abdomen a gaping, macerated maw only partially obscured by the tattered remnants of the shirt. Merritt had obviously dislocated the man's right shoulder when he wrenched it out of the mud. The entire arm hung awkwardly askew, while the left remained wrapped around a rucksack worn backward against his chest, the fingers curled tightly into the fabric as though afraid to release it even in death.

Merritt groaned and knelt above the man's head. He really wished he'd brought his gloves. Cupping his hands, he scooped the mud from the forehead, out of the eye sockets, and from around the nose and mouth. The skin beneath was so bloated it felt like rubber.

Even with the brown smears and discolored flesh, Merritt recognized the man immediately. He had flown him and his entire group into Pomacochas from Chiclayo roughly three weeks ago. So where were the rest of them?

His gaze fell upon the rucksack. If it was still here when the policía arrived, nothing inside would ever be seen again. Corruption was a way of life down here.

Merritt unhooked the man's claw from the fabric, pulled it away from the bag, and set it on the ground. He unlatched the clasp and drew back the flap. At first all he saw was a clump of soggy plants. He moved them aside and blinked in astonishment.

"Son of a bitch."