Burial Ground

III

10:50 a.m.

Over the course of the last hour, the temperature had dropped nearly ten degrees, while the humidity had steadily increased. The air grew thinner as they climbed toward the ceiling of clouds that hid the peak above. Perhaps it was only by degree, but the forest didn't appear as dense as it once had. They had only been walking for six hours now, and yet it felt as though days had passed since they broke camp.

Merritt shrugged the backpack up onto his shoulders. He was sure that it magically grew heavier with each step. He couldn't remember whose bag he carried, but the way the men struggled with the monstrous crate on the narrow, steep path, he figured it was the least he could do. Better this than being the downhill man bearing the brunt of the crate's weight.

A faint breeze penetrated the canopy as the trail wound around the northern slope of the mountain. He welcomed the cool movement of air across the skin beneath his clothes. The distant rumble of a waterfall filtered through the trees, in the upper reaches of which he could see wisps of white, a sight that set him momentarily at ease. He thought of his plane and the feeling of preparing to ascend into the thick cloud banks, where he would be flying blind, completely isolated from his worldly cares.

The birdman trailed him, scrutinizing a pair of feathers as he stumbled uphill. If the man thanked him for saving his life one more time, Merritt was going to throw him over the next cliff himself. The guy had barely been leaning over the edge, but the way he told it, he made it sound like he'd been dangling by a single fingertip. Whatever. At least the feathers kept him occupied for the time being.

Sam trudged ahead of him, eyeing everything they passed as though searching for something specific. He admired her passion, and wished that there was something in his life that mattered as much to him.

Her scent trailed on the breeze. He inhaled deeply. She smelled of mint and dragon fruit with an undercurrent of sweat. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, which showcased her slender neck. He imagined how it might feel to press his lips to the gentle curve under the collar of her flannel shirt...

She glanced over her shoulder and caught him staring. He offered a smile, which she returned easily enough. At least she hadn't turned around a minute ago when he'd been mesmerized by her swishing hips in those khaki shorts.

Sam faced ahead again as they wound around the northern slope. The ground fell away to the right to the point that they could have stepped from the path onto the treetops. To the left, the mountain became a vertical embankment covered in vines and lianas. The path appeared to narrow to a mere foot wide. It was hard to tell with the way the vines covered it and spilled over the edge in a cascade of flowering emerald ropes.

Colton and Leo were already scooting slowly out onto the thin ledge, testing their footing on the uneven ground while maintaining what little distance they could from the drop into the valley far below.

Sam stopped in her tracks directly ahead of him. He was about to ask if she was all right when he noticed the barely perceptible movement that had captured her interest.

The breeze ruffled the curtain of vines, behind which he saw deep shadows, not a smooth sheet of stone.

Sam eased forward and reached out with her left arm. Her hand passed through the deceptive screen. She glanced back at him with a glint in her eyes, smiled, then stepped from the path and vanished through the cascade of green.

Ahead, Leo similarly tested the invisible wall, then he and Colton ducked out of sight.

Merritt followed and crossed into muted darkness, which became complete when the vines fell back into place behind him. The sensation of claustrophobia closed around him like a fist. His heart began to pound and his breathing became labored. He couldn't bear the prospect of being underground for any length of time, and fought the surge of memories from the Afghan desert.

The thin beam of a penlight bloomed to his right. It provided too little illumination to truly gauge the size of the space beneath the rock overhang, and barely silhouetted the others.

A triangle of sunlight streamed in from behind as Galen joined them.

"I need more light," Sam snapped. Her voice positively trembled with excitement.

"This is all I have," Colton said. He flashed his beam from side to side to emphasize his point.

"Then we need to get rid of some of those vines. Who has the machete?"

"I do," Webber said as he passed into the inner sanctum.

The blade whistled through the air and struck the layers of vines with a thuck. The serpentine green vines fell away and slithered over the edge of the cliff. Light slanted through in their absence.

"More," Sam said.

Webber continued to whack through the screen as Sam slowly approached the rear wall of the broad cave, which was far larger than Merritt had initially suspected. It was perhaps a hundred feet long and twenty feet deep with a domed ceiling that arched a good ten feet over his head. He couldn't tell if it had been chiseled by human hands or eroded into the hillside by nature as the seas and rivers receded millions of years ago. Either way, someone had put the space to good use. As Webber welcomed more and more light into the alcove, the structures at the rear drew form. Six tall sculptures stood against the center of the back wall, nearly reaching the roof. They were all identical: four-foot-wide, appendage-less bodies painted with various designs in yellow and red ochre, supporting large, parabolic heads that must have looked like crescent moons in profile. A single thin line formed the mouths beneath sharp, triangular noses. The brows were straight and ridged, and created the impression that the statues wore headdresses low over their foreheads. Staked on short wooden posts to their heads were human skulls, their articulated jaws opened in soundless screams.

To either side of the unsettling statues, small adobe buildings had been constructed side by side against the cavern wall. They were multi-tiered, though each level was only tall enough to accommodate a man if he crouched. Their reddish walls had been painted with thick, horizontal white stripes, into which myriad shapes had been etched. Square windows lined each level, through which only darkness stared out at them. Their roofs were slanted in such a way that they reminded Merritt of Japanese pagodas. A single rectangular doorway set into the adobe to either side of the vaguely human statues serviced all of the dwellings. While they may have looked separate from the outside, apparently they were all interconnected.

Dust hung thickly in the air, stirred by the soft breeze that circulated the musty smells of age and decomposition.

They were all awed to silence.

Sam approached the strange statuary. All of the plaster figures were joined together three feet from the floor. Between the center two, what looked like a hearth had been carved into their union.

"Let me borrow your flashlight," Sam said, holding out her open palm without diverting her attention from the dark opening for a second.

Colton set the penlight in her hand and leaned over her shoulder as Sam shined it into the recess. A dull tawny glow reflected back.

Merritt eased closer and craned his neck to see around her head.

A golden skull rested on a deep shelf, situated so that it leered out at them from the shadows. It was roughly the height of a human skull, but that was where the similarities ended. It had an elongated snout filled with sharp teeth that laced together like those of a caiman, and twin ovular nostrils at the tip. The eye sockets were oblong and far too large proportionately. Fitted into each was a dusty, multi-faceted bluish-green stone that seemed to absorb the light into its core, where it radiated with what could have passed for sentience.

"What's all that stuff underneath it?" Merritt asked.

"I can't tell," Sam said. She leaned closer and blew away the coating of dust.

She coughed and recoiled as the gray cloud billowed around the skull.

"Feathers," Merritt said. He reached over Sam, withdrew one from the shelf, and held it up so he could better see. The sunlight caused it to shimmer with an emerald hue.

He turned and looked at Galen, who still held a nearly identical feather in his hand.