Burial Ground

V

2:57 p.m.

It was all Leo could do to keep from shouting for the others to clear out of his way and running blindly through the wreckage of the village. Somewhere inside these crumbling fortifications were the answers he required to piece together the final days of his son's life. He had to know why Hunter died, and he had to find someone to hold responsible for it. Someone needed to pay.

He followed behind Dahlia as they entered the ruins, staying close enough to Sam that he could hear her every word. His gaze darted over every minute detail. Nothing escaped his attention. He couldn't afford to miss anything.

It was apparent that they weren't entering the village from the main entrance, but rather from what appeared to be the rear. The layout reminded him of the village they had passed through in the valley, had it been struck by a hurricane and allowed to decompose over the span of centuries. Weeds and trees had grown up through the cracked cobblestone walkways, and the monstrous ceiba trees around which the buildings had been constructed had laid claim to their remains. Vines dangled from the branches, connecting the trees as completely as if woven into a web by some massive spider. Epiphytes bloomed from every surface in shades of pink and blue, and mosquitoes swarmed around the stagnant water trapped in the cups formed by the aloe-like leaves of bromeliads. Circular dwellings dominated this region, but their tall, thatch roofs had long since fallen. The rotted and broken beams that had once supported them stood from the huts at odd angles, barely visible beneath the creeping foliage that entwined the wood. Stacked stones had tumbled from the walls and were now heaped under soil and aggressive bushes. He peered through the crumbled sections and saw broken pottery and practical relics of all kinds.

"At a guess," Sam said, "I'd wager there are close to twenty of these round dwellings. If this village mirrors the modern one, as I suspect, there should be a matching number on the other side, which should place the population somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred. That's a rough, preliminary estimate, of course."

Leo scoured the area for any sign of Hunter's passage. There had to be something here.

They wound around tree trunks, ducked under vines and branches, and climbed over termite-infested trunks. Ants so large their pincers appeared capable of stealing chunks of flesh crawled across everything. Flies buzzed from out of sight. After several excruciatingly slow minutes, during which they paused a half-dozen times for Sam to point out interesting architectural nuances, decorative friezes covered in moss, and sculpted faces on the stone half-walls that lined the path, they reached the central courtyard. Here the forest had run rampant, tearing up the paving stones and filling nearly every available inch of growing space. Flowering shrubs had shot up in the gaps between them, leaving only thin passages reminiscent of animal trails.

"We could probably date the approximate time that this fortress was abandoned by the strata in the soil," Sam said. "Or if we can find a midden heap, we could use radiocarbon dating on the top layer of refuse."

Leo recognized a similar pair of round stages to the right, all but buried beneath dirt and vegetation, which covered the gap between them where the stairs would have been. The rectangular structure behind them was masked by a façade of vines and lianas. Trees grew through the roof. Dark holes marred its face where the cubes of stone had tumbled into piles that now sprouted thorny shrubs with brilliant orange and yellow blossoms. Several of the doorways had collapsed, but two still remained open to varying degrees in the center, guarded by screens of vines.

Sam approached the main building, scurried up onto the stage in front of it, and stood before the most accessible doorway with the cameraman leaning over her shoulder. Leo climbed up behind her. He noticed that much of the foliage covering the entrance was recent growth. Thinner sprouts had emerged from bluntly severed vines, their ends coiled with still-furled leaves. Someone had recently hacked their way through. His heart ached with the realization of who must have done it.

"We're going to need light," Sam said.

Colton held out his penlight, and Leo quickly commandeered it while Jay switched on the camera's spotlight.

Sam parted the curtain of vines, climbed over the rubble, and stepped into the darkness with Jay directly behind her, his light diffusing into a weak glow that swirled with motes of dust. Leo shoved through and found himself in an antechamber that appeared to be anything but structurally sound. The stone pillars that had once supported the ceiling lay in rubble throughout the room; in their place, broad trunks had grown from cracks in the upturned floor and filled the gaps in the stone roof. There were piles of broken rock everywhere, and the back wall, which must have once featured several doorways that led deeper into the building, had partially collapsed under the weight of the buckled ceiling.

The camera's beam swept from the left side of the room to the right in a slow, steady arc, highlighting spider webs large enough to snare a grown man and pale, withered plants that somehow managed to survive in the absence of light. Water dripped from the cracks above into broad pools that had eroded into the floor and stank of rotten eggs. Roots of all kinds dangled from the ceiling like cobwebs. There was no movement of air, only the trapped heat and humidity that caused the sweat to bloom from his pores.

A mound of crumbled bricks dominated the wall to the left. They appeared to have been forged from a combination of clay and metal, which glinted as the light swept across them.

"What's that over there?" Sam asked, pointing off to the right where the wall was stained black with soot.

Jay's beam flashed across it, then focused down to a shrinking circle as he walked closer. A ring of rocks surrounded a pit in the floor filled with charcoal-colored water, fed by the rainwater dripping from a hole in the ceiling. A tangle of thick roots snaked from the roof into the stagnant pool, which hummed with mosquitoes and surely teemed with larvae. Several dented and tarnished pots rested against the wall, one much thicker and caked with black metallic residue, like a smelting pot. Beside them was what at first looked like a jumble of sticks, but upon closer inspection, there was no denying what they truly were.

Bones.

Stacks of bleached bones.

Sam crouched before the cluttered heaps and carefully removed one of the long bones from the top. It was so smooth that despite its obvious age, it appeared polished beneath the coating of dust. The shape was unmistakably human. Rounded cup for articulation into the shoulder, broad distal end that expanded into protruding epicondyles and rounded condyles. A humerus.

"This can't be right," Sam whispered.

Leo had seen enough. They had screwed around for far too long already. He whirled and shoved through the others as they entered the chamber. There had to be some sign of his son around here, and he was going to find it.

They had found Hunter's body, but what about the rest of his party? There had been no sign of them on the trail leading here. Surely that would have been the same path they used to return to civilization, which meant that they still had to be up here somewhere. Or at least what was left of them.

He couldn't shake the mental image of the way Colton had described Rippeth's remains.

An involuntary shiver rippled through him.

He turned to the right, toward where he could barely see the steep cliff that served as the fourth wall of the fortress and followed the trail through the underbrush. It became more clearly delineated with each step, suggesting frequent use. He passed more deteriorating circular huts to either side. Raindrops assaulted him in waves through the occasional breaks in the canopy. Behind him, the others called his name, but he made no reply. He was focused solely on finding any indication that Hunter's group had been here. Nothing else mattered now.

The buzzing of flies grew louder, their ordinarily lazy drone frenetic.

Ahead, the trail terminated against a stone embankment draped with vines. The last row of huts was now at his back. To either side, wending, uneven stone staircases led upward to stepped levels with flat sections designed for agriculture. He remembered the topless women tending to the crops on the hillside at the back of the fortress down in the valley. Faded designs were painted on the stone, but he couldn't decipher them thanks to the overgrowth.

The buzzing sound still came from directly in front of him.

He walked closer to the granite escarpment and determined where the noise originated. A scraggly tree grew right up against the stone, weeping with vines. He could vaguely discern an area of deep shadows past it. A cut in the mountainside. Easing around the tented roots, he saw that the vines on the stone face had been hacked away to expose a dark, triangular opening formed by a wide fissure in the rock.

The excited buzz of the flies echoed from the darkness. The stale air reeked of death.

He pointed the penlight ahead of him and followed the beam into the mountain. Fat-bodied flies swarmed in the weak light, which did little to illuminate the blackness. The air was dramatically cooler, and heavy, as though acted upon by a separate gravity. He smelled rotten meat and the timeless scent of decomposition.

Colton's voice drifted to his ears as though from miles away.

The beam faded well before it encountered any resistance. He directed it up at the ceiling. It was barely a foot above his head, but felt far lower than that in the smothering darkness. The walls, which contained pools of shadows at regular intervals, were so close that he wouldn't have been able to raise his arms out to either side. He turned the light upon the wall to his left and let out an involuntary gasp. Arched recesses had been chiseled into the stone in columns three rows high, from floor to ceiling, and extended beyond the extent of the light's reach. Vacant-eyed skulls stared back at him from the front of the rock ledges, behind which decapitated, desiccated bodies had been stuffed into the hollows. They'd been folded into fetal position and lashed into place with frayed cords. Spiders had made themselves at home within the enclaves. Webs filled every available inch of space, thick with dust and the carcasses of age-old insects. Streaks of magnetite and quartz glinted from the curved stone.

Placers.

This was what Hunter had come to find. He must have stood in this very corridor as Leo did now.

This had to be some sort of primitive ossuary. Leo remembered Sam saying that not all of the dead were deemed worthy enough for burial in the purunmachus or the chullpas. This must be where all of the others were interred, not bundled with their prized possessions, but set out on display.

He flashed the beam from one to the next. Several of the skulls were fractured or bereft of entire sections of the cranium and teeth. The bodies behind them were in sorry shape as well. Some were missing extremities, others entire segments of their thoraces, while a few were simple piles of broken, brown bones.

Corpses surrounded him, but they weren't the source of the rotten stench that pulled him deeper into the tunnel.

Colton called Leo's name. It echoed ahead of him into the infinite blackness. He was about to answer when he noticed the distinctive prints of hiking boots on the dirt floor.

His heart pounded. This was the first verifiable sign that his son's party had been here.

Leo picked up his pace and breezed past the dead with the sound of buzzing growing louder with each step. Black dots filled the cone of light and tapped at his body. The flies crawled on his skin and through his hair. He had to fan his face to keep them out of his eyes and ears. A moment later, he stumbled upon what had summoned them into the mountain.

The walls and ceiling positively crawled with flies, their shimmering green eyes reflecting his beam. He swatted at the cloud surrounding him, and pointed the light at the ground. It reflected back at him from the broken blade of a machete, beside which were tatters of fabric. Hawaiian-patterned fabric.

Leo had to pull his shirt up over his mouth and nose to combat the odor, and even then he retched several times before having to turn away.

"It looks like Hunter was the lucky one," Colton whispered from behind him.

Leo could only nod. He straightened, bit his lip, and returned his attention to the carnage.

Chunks of cartilage and muscle still clung to the exposed ribcage, and maggots wriggled through the puddle of sludge around the severed spine. An arm, stripped to the bone, save the skin on the fingers, rested against the wall. Its disarticulated twin was another ten feet farther into the tunnel. There was a foot covered with black skin and even blacker flies. The fractured remnants of the pelvis were canted against the opposite wall. And at the very edge of the light, the head lay on its side, robbed of flesh, frontal bone torn away, eye sockets seething with flies. The mandible had been yanked out of the socket and rested askew to the maxillae.

His obsession with finding the truth about his son's death had blinded him to the signs all around him. The jaguar carcass. The alpaca bones scattered at the foot of the sacrificial tree. The way Colton had described what was left of Rippeth. They were isolated in the wilderness with a threat that Hunter's party hadn't seen coming until it was too late.

"Jesus," Leo whispered. "We're all going to die here."