Burial Ground

IV

10:07 p.m.

The sun had nearly set by the time they reached a suitable spot to pitch camp, although under the nearly impenetrable canopy, darkness had settled over them long before. Had there been enough light to continue stumbling through the snarls of shrubbery and vines, even at a snail's pace, they would have gladly done so. An uneasy pall had descended over the lot of them. They could all feel it. Merritt was out of his element here, but even he had quickly recognized it, and once he had, the feeling became impossible to shake. The entire tropical rainforest had grown silent. No longer did strikingly-colored birds dart from tree to tree. No monkeys cavorted in the upper reaches of the branches. Even the occasional white-tailed deer failed to bound across their path. Eyelash vipers still dangled like vines from above them, and tegus and whiptails still popped up from time to time, though in nowhere near the same numbers. Only the mosquitoes and flies appeared unfazed, their ranks swelling with each passing mile.

Merritt was not one to be swayed by superstition, despite the genuine fear he could see in the eyes of their guides, but he trusted his instincts. And right now they were telling him that something definitely was not right.

They had found another light gap, though this one was only a fraction of the size of the last. The tree that created it must have fallen quite some time ago. The saplings were already taller than he was. Soon enough, they would close off the welcome view of the waxing moon and constellations. There was a small section where the trees had been hacked away to make room for a campfire. The trunk of a ceiba tree had been carved with Hunter's initials and the date that Leo had last spoken to him, which meant that they were only a few days away from their ultimate destination.

Merritt wondered if Gearhardt's son had felt a similar preternatural disquiet when he camped here.

Gearhardt and Colton sat apart from the others, conspiring in whispers. They scrutinized their maps, compared their current position to the GPS data on the handheld unit, and plotted the course ahead. Their four associates patrolled the overgrown perimeter, no longer maintaining the charade of being simply the hired excavation help. They didn't carry their weapons out in the open, but neither did they allow their hands to stray far from their holsters. He had seen one of the automatic pistols they carried. They weren't the kind one could pick up at a sporting goods store. SIG Sauer only dealt such heavy artillery to law enforcement agencies and the military. Considering he was armed with nothing more threatening than a Swiss Army knife, he drew a measure of comfort from the fact that someone had his back, even if he didn't trust them in the slightest. There was definitely more to the situation than any of them was willing to admit. Merritt sensed there were ulterior motives in play here. He had a pretty good grasp on the force driving Leo, but what was in it for Colton and his men beyond a simple paycheck? There had to be something else up there in those peaks, more than just the missing members of Hunter's party. What had that expedition originally been dispatched to find?

The wind shifted directions and assaulted him with smoke from the fire. He coughed and scooted down the fallen log toward the fresh air. Twenty-four hours ago, he would have reveled in the smoke, regardless of how badly it burned in his chest, but now that he had smeared Sam's concoction over every uncovered inch of his skin, he no longer had anything to fear from the mosquitoes. He smelled like he'd rolled in his grandmother's herb garden and the tackiness on his flesh took some getting used to, yet it was a small price to pay for a respite from the pain.

The birdman sat beside him, twirling a feather by the quill. All of his concentration was focused on the feather and his lips moved along with his unvoiced thoughts. His brow furrowed and he gnawed unconsciously on the inside of his lower lip. The campfire reflected from his glasses.

"Aren't you going to name the species for me?" Merritt asked.

Galen obviously didn't pick up on the sarcasm.

"I wish I could," he whispered, still turning it over and over as though the answer could be ascertained from motion.

"I was beginning to think you knew everything there was to know about every bird in the rainforest."

"No chance of that. I could probably identify just about every genera, and half of the thousands of species. Except this one. And raptors are my specialty."

"What makes this one so unique then?" Merrit asked. Not that he was genuinely intrigued, but he figured the opportunity to razz the birdman might momentarily amuse him.

"Everything about it. The background color, the strange iridescence. Even the calamus has an unusual tapered shape. There are no downy barbs, and one would expect to see a small amount of skin surrounding the proximal umbilicus where the feather plugs into the wing, but in this case, there isn't any."

"All feathers look alike to me. Some are obviously longer and more colorful than others. I don't understand why you're beating yourself up over this. It's just a feather after all."

"Just a feather? I found this near the remains of the jaguar. It's from the exact same species as the feathers that were in Hunter Gearhardt's possession when he died. This bird had been standing precisely where I stood, and I'm still no closer to identifying it than I was when we left."

"I'm sure you'll get it," Merritt said. He rose and clapped the man on the shoulder. The pudgy little guy was getting himself way too worked up. It was starting to make Merritt uncomfortable.

He walked away from the fire and toward his tent. The exhaustion set in with a dull ache that he could feel all the way into his bones. Perhaps it was time to call it a day. He'd just slip off behind a tree, drain his bladder, and pass out for a few hours until they roused him before sunrise to put him to work again.

On the other side of a tree with roots that formed a skeletal teepee around the trunk, he unzipped and sighed. Fluid trickled through the leaves. He leaned his head back and looked up toward the night sky. A single star twinkled through a tiny gap between the rustling branches. Something skittered over his right shoe. He flinched and hosed down his left shin in his hurry to flick it away.

"Son of a---" he started, but his words died when he caught a hint of movement through the trees.

He could clearly see the silhouette of a man against the foliage.

Merritt held perfectly still while he weighed his options. If the man had wanted to kill him, he'd be dead already. So what did that mean? He slowly zipped up his pants and continued to face straight ahead while he monitored the shadow from the corner of his eye. Was it the same native Jay had captured on film earlier? If so, and they had nothing to fear from this silent watcher, then perhaps the time had come to make contact.

Cautiously, he turned until he faced the man, raised his hand in greeting, and took a step toward the silhouette.

The man retreated deeper into the darkness. Merritt caught the faint reflection of firelight from the whites of two narrowed eyes.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Merritt said. He walked forward, both hands where they could be easily seen.

Another step and he was nearly close enough to reach out and grab the man, who shrunk back into a cluster of shrubs. The outline of a bow protruded from behind the man's right shoulder like the broken wing of an angel. He could barely discern the feathered ends of the arrows in the quiver over the opposite shoulder.

In one swift motion, the native sprinted toward the jungle to Merritt's right.

Instinctively, Merritt lunged for the man, but only managed to grab a handful of wool from his skirt.

A rustle of leaves and a few soft footsteps on the detritus, and the native was gone, a ghost vanishing into the ether.

No, definitely not a ghost.

Merritt brushed the wiry wool from his right palm and walked toward the clump of saplings through which the man had disappeared. His left foot kicked something on the ground. With one final glance at the jungle, he stooped, picked up the object, and headed back toward the campfire.

As he neared, he studied what appeared to be a leather satchel cinched closed by a drawstring. He opened it and fished around in the contents until his fingers settled over something hard and metallic.

He stepped from the forest into the firelight and held up what looked like a miniature pickaxe. One end was sharp, the other blunted.

A rock hammer.

He caught Leo's stare from where the older man sat on a log by the flames in time to see the expression of pain wash over his face.