Burial Ground

I

Andes Mountains, Peru

October 30^th

6:41 p.m. PET

Sam had been so focused on the tedious ascent and her own frustrations that she hadn't noticed when Dahlia and Jay fell behind. Galen had run ahead to relay the news that the river was impassable to the rest of their party in the camp. She and Merritt had already been waiting at the trailhead for more than fifteen minutes, during which they thought they'd heard a scream in the distance before it was silenced by a clap of thunder. It felt as though the entire world was crashing down around her. There was no place left to run. The aura of death hung over the mountain in a palpable cloud that promised only pain and suffering. Hunter and the rest of his party had been killed here, the most recent casualties in a chain that spanned centuries.

"The path leads straight here." Merritt nearly had to shout to be heard over the storm. "There's no way they could have gotten lost."

"We need to go back for them. What if one of them fell and is lying there in the mud, injured and in need of help?"

The expression on Merritt's face suggested he feared as much, but at the same time, she too could feel the oppressiveness of the situation, the dire inevitability of what was to come. It was an electrical sensation in the air, like the tingling potential that raised the hairs on one's arms before a lightning strike.

"I'll go back for them," Merritt said. "You find the others and try to figure out some other way to get us off this mountain."

"We can't split up. I'm staying with you."

"The hell you are. I need to know that you're safe."

The look in his eyes startled her. For the first time, all pretense of cockiness was gone and she recognized genuine fear.

She took his hand and repeated the same words, more softly this time. "I'm staying with you."

He looked down at the union of their hands and then back into her eyes.

"Then stay behind me at all times. We're going no more than half a mile. We can't afford to waste any more time if we're---"

A blinding light flared from the north. They both whirled toward where one of the torches burned so brightly it appeared as though the sun itself had been captured inside that iron cage. A shape advanced in their direction, made shadow by the brilliant glare behind it. Based on the figure's size and stature, there was only one man it could have been.

"What are you guys doing out here?" Sorenson shouted. "You should be back inside the walls with the others."

"We lost Dahlia and Jay," Sam called over the deluge.

"I'll send them along when I see them." He crumbled something in his hands and threw it onto the next torch in the series. The low flames expanded with a dazzling white light. He slid the remainder of what looked like a rusted chunk of metal through the grate. "They won't stay lost long. You can probably see these fires from space."

Sorenson smiled briefly before he lowered his brow in an expression of confusion. He turned and struck off toward the edge of the forest. As he walked, he shouldered an automatic rifle.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked.

"I thought I saw something---" Sorenson said, but the storm drowned out the rest of his words.

Raindrops the size of marbles pounded down on them with increasing force. Even the branches above no longer provided adequate protection. They were going to have to seek shelter, and soon.

Sam trailed Merritt as they followed Sorenson toward the line of shrubbery. He crouched and surveyed the shadowed jungle before returning his attention to the ground in front of him. They were nearly at his side when they caught a circular flash of reflected light. The tiny red light beside the lens on Jay's digital recorder diffused into the standing water.

Sorenson's stare never left the jungle as he lifted the video camera out of the mud.

"It's still recording," he said, passing it back to her over his shoulder. He rose and scrutinized the dense vegetation down the barrel of his rifle.

Leaves and twigs littered the area as though torn from their moorings by a tornado. The ground was choppy with a riot of footsteps. When Sorenson took his first step into the brush, the absence of his shadow revealed that the mud here was a deeper shade of black than the rest.

Sam stared at the camera. There was no denying to whom it belonged. The spotlight mounted to it was shattered and the lens cracked, and yet still it vibrated softly as the digital feed continued to record. She wanted to call for Jay, but something stopped her. There was no way he would have willingly abandoned his camera, his very lifeblood. Not unless something horrible had happened.

Sorenson's footsteps slurped and crunched on the mud and detritus.

"We should get out of here," Merritt said. "I don't like this. Something's not right here."

Leaves rustled and branches snapped as Sorenson shoved through the underbrush.

"We were just standing thirty feet from here," Sam said.

That thought chilled her. Something had happened on this spot, a mere ten yards from where they had waited at the trailhead, something awful, and they had been completely oblivious.

"Jesus Christ," Sorenson gasped. He held back the leathery leaves of a heliconia plant. The mud beneath it was gouged, and there was a trench as though something heavy had been dragged---

A hand. There was a hand on the ground, collecting rain in the palm. The fingers curled inward, minus the middle finger, which was a blunt, ragged stub. Skin muddy and torn, the wrist a collection of jagged bones and severed tendons where it had been torn from the forearm. What could have been an upper arm or a lower leg lay past it, a bloody long bone missing large chunks of muscle and flesh.

Sam clapped her hand over her mouth and turned away, only to see a large clump of blonde hair, still attached to a swatch of scalp, tangled in the branches.

"We're out of here," Merritt said. "Make no sudden movements. Slowly back away."

Sam could hear herself crying as though from miles away, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She clung to the camera, its whirring mechanical heartbeat against her chest.

Her eyes darted from one shadow to the next. Even the gentle bowing of branches under the weight of the rain and the shifting of saplings brought the forest to life with menace. The flickering glow of the flames along the obsidian wall made her feel like there was someone behind her, but she couldn't force herself to so much as glance over her shoulder.

"As soon as we're clear of the jungle, I want you two to make a run for the collapsed section of the northern wall," Sorenson said. "I'll cover you from behind. Head for the main building at the center of the courtyard."

"What about you?" Merritt asked.

"You'd better believe I'll be right on your heels."

Merritt reached back and took Sam's free hand. She squeezed for dear life.

"You ready?" he asked. Sam couldn't summon the voice to respond. "On my mark." The tension on her arm increased. "Now!"

She spun around and sprinted toward the sheer, vine-shrouded fortification, careful not to look directly into the flames for fear of creating blind spots in her vision. Her legs churned and her feet slipped in the muck, but Merritt pulled her onward. They rounded the corner and sprinted toward the crumbled mound of stones.

Behind her, the savage light faded, allowing the darkness to again enfold them.

She risked a glance back as they ascended the rubble.

There was no sign of Sorenson.

She hadn't heard any shots fired, but she didn't find that comforting in the slightest.