Burial Ground

V

6:02 p.m.

One minute a murky gloaming had reigned, and the next, darkness had descended with the speed of the rain, forcing Jay to turn on the light mounted to his camera in order to see the slippery trail well enough to get a foothold on anything. They had kept up with the others for as long as they could, but he could no longer see them on the path ahead. Surely they were just around the next bend, and it was only a matter of time before he and Dahlia caught up. He was tired of falling, and drenched through and through. Somehow the mud had managed to find its way beneath his clothing, where it felt like mucus against his skin. The sludge even made it difficult for his socked feet to maintain traction inside his boots.

And then there was the fear. The images of what remained of the slain men rose to the forefront of his mind, stimulating his heart to beat faster and his breathing to grow shallow. Finding all of the ancient bones on the ground had been exhilarating, and would only enhance the documentary, but stumbling upon bloody carcasses that were only weeks old wasn't even remotely cool. Well, maybe at first. The lens did tend to sterilize everything viewed through it in the same fashion that the impact of certain atrocities was somehow lessened when watching them on television. Once he rationalized how the deaths related back to him on a personal level, the initial excitement had vanished in a nanosecond.

They were isolated from the rest of the world by forty-some miles and several days' travel. And there was something out there in the forest capable of ripping them to shreds.

A cricket chirped from somewhere off to his right. Or had it been a frog? He still couldn't tell the difference. He was a city boy at heart, and would happily give his left nut to be back in the States with a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other, living the American dream. A chorus of chirruping answered the call before immediately falling silent once again.

Jay's foot slipped. It was all he could do to hold the camera up out of the muck as he slid down the path on his chest. When his heels finally snagged on a root, he pushed himself to his feet and spat out a mouthful of filth.

"Jesus." He flung mud from his left hand and looked up just in time to see a dark shape hurtling downhill toward him. Lunging to the side, he narrowly avoided Dahlia, who careened into the underbrush behind him.

She struggled to all fours, but didn't even try to rise. Her long hair had pulled loose from her ponytail and hung in front of her face in muddy ropes. When she finally raised her head, her face brown, save the circles of white around her eyes, he noticed that she was crying.

"Hey..." He offered his hand. "We'll get through this. Don't you worry."

Dahlia was the strongest woman he had ever known. She never cracked under pressure and she was brutal in her ambition. Seeing her like this scared him. She wasn't the emotional type. He couldn't fathom anything inside of her ever snapping to the point of summoning tears. The only thing he ever imagined could break through her defenses was actual physical pain.

"I'm fine," she snapped, but she still accepted his help in returning to her feet.

Jay gasped. What he had at first thought were tears were lines of blood pouring over her eyebrows from a gash across her hairline.

"What?" She dabbed at her forehead, winced, and drew her fingertips away bloody. "Oh, great. This is absolutely perfect."

"Just a second." Jay shed his backpack and removed a tee-shirt from the main pouch. He raised it to her forehead and pressed it to the wound.

"You could have at least picked a clean one."

"Would you just hold still already?"

She rested her hand on his and held the shirt in place. Her blue eyes met his around the cloth.

"Thank you," she whispered. Her skin against his created an electric sensation that shot through his entire body. "You've always been there for me, haven't you? Every step of the way."

He could feel himself blushing and nervously retreated a step, slipping his hand out from beneath hers.

"Just keep pressure on that cut." Even his voice trembled. "We need to catch up with the others, and I don't think the path is the easiest route."

"Neither do I." She offered the bloody shirt as evidence before placing it back against the laceration. "I'll bet if we stay just to the side of the path and cut through the trees we'll find more solid footing."

"It couldn't be any worse."

"Besides, it can't be much farther to the top."

She struck off into the jungle, winding around massive trunks and using vines and branches to pull herself up the steep slope. Jay followed, shining the light over her shoulder, for all the good it did. The manly thing to do would have been to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to safety---or at least take the lead, for God's sake---but he wanted to capture as much of this moment on film as possible. She had let her guard down for just a moment, and only for him. Perhaps after all these years, his perseverance was finally about to pay off.

Twenty minutes of strenuous exertion passed before a shifting aura of light bloomed through the trees ahead.

"It's a fire," Dahlia called back to him. "It looks like they managed to light the torches."

Another few steps and Jay could see the small flames and the flickering glow on the wall beyond them. A swell of relief passed through him. He didn't think his legs had the strength to carry him much farther.

Movement drew his eye to the forest to his right, where the branches of a cluster of saplings swayed gently.

"Are you coming or what?"

He turned at the sound of her voice. She stared back over her shoulder at him, poised to step from the thicket into the clearing. Had something changed in the way she looked at him?

"Yeah," he said, spurring his aching feet toward the crest, where she waited for him at the tree line.

He panned the camera across the clearing. The entire area was awash with an amber glow from the row of torches, minus the darkened section where one of the stone columns had long ago collapsed, and the arches of shadows built into the fortifications.

"I don't know what you want to do with this," she said, proffering his shirt.

"You can keep that." He smirked. "Consider it a gift."

"You are far too generous."

A large, broad-leaved shrub shivered beside them. A handful of flies buzzed softly from beneath its protective branches.

Jay shined the beam toward the source of the motion, shoving aside shadows to reveal the slender trunk and the tangles of branches. Several black flies swirled in the light. To the left, a pair of almost milky, bluish spheres appeared behind the dripping leaves.

"It's another one of those weird butterflies," he said. "They must not be that rare out here after all."

He turned the camera toward the creature, and twin golden rings reflected the beam.

The pattern on the wings hadn't done that before. But he hadn't filmed the butterfly at night either.

Another bush shook to his right, diverting his attention.

When he looked back at the butterfly, its lower wings shifted to reveal---

They weren't wings at all.

The light reflected from interlocking rows of razor-honed teeth.

Jay barely had time to turn as vegetation was shredded and thrown into the air. A heavy object slammed into him from behind, driving him to the ground. Pain exploded between his shoulder blades and what felt like frozen spikes prodded through his muscles and between his ribs.

The camera fell from his hand and landed on its side. The beam glared blankly toward a snarl of underbrush, momentarily highlighting Dahlia's pale face. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened in surprise. A blur of brown and shimmering green, and she was thrown sideways beyond the light's reach.

Arcs of crimson trailed in her wake.

Something flailed at his back as more shadows raced in from the periphery. His whole body convulsed in agony. He threw back his head to scream, exposing his neck---

He heard a whistle of air and then a gurgle.

Scaled appendages flashed past.

Feathers.

Claws.

A rush of blood flooded across the mud into the camera's light as he was jerked with a crash into the bushes and the blackness waiting within them, which buzzed with the wings of flies.