Black Rain: A Thriller (47 page)

But others still moved toward the temple, latecomers perhaps, beasts that had avoided the slaughter by mere chance. These survivors moved across the field at a much slower pace, as if dragging heavy weights.

The rain
was
harming them. Even if it wasn’t killing them in the dramatic fashion they’d seen with the grub, it was doing substantial damage. It might still destroy them given enough time, but Hawker doubted anyone on the temple would live to see it.

As the lightning flashed again, he counted six Zipacna approaching. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of a way to kill even one. He checked his pistol: it had only three shells left, and in all likelihood the soft lead bullets would splatter on the creatures’ bony armor like so many paintballs.

As the first of the remaining Zipacna drew near the
temple’s base, Hawker clenched his teeth and tightened his grip on the pry bar. He shouted through the wind and rain, “Get ready!”

Behind him the others picked up various weapons to use as clubs, metal bars like Hawker’s or the rifles they’d exhausted.

One of the Zipacna had reached the stairs now, followed a moment later by a second one—but a few steps up, the two animals stopped. The Zipacna in the clearing halted as well, their heads turned back toward the forest.

Danielle moved up beside Hawker. “What are they waiting for?”

The animals remained still, gazing warily at the forest, their raised tails snaking back and forth, their heads tilting oddly.

One of the German shepherds began howling, and soon the humans heard it too, barely audible above the storm, a resonance closing in from the forest.

Seconds later, the Chollokwan burst from the tree line, howling and raging, pouring into the clearing from all directions, charging with spears and axes hoisted up above their heads.

They swarmed over the Zipacna that remained in the clearing, drowning them with sheer numbers, covering them like ants on fallen fruit.

The two animals on the stairway turned and pressed their attack.

One of them was injured and could not take the stairs with any speed, and the natives caught it halfway up. But the other beast raced forward, charging up the
stairs, rushing toward the safety that lay inside the temple.

As it reached the top, Hawker aimed at its head, firing the last shots from his pistol and swinging the pry bar with his other arm.

The animal jumped to the left at the sting of the pistol shells; as the metal bar clanged off of its back, it swung its head sideways and up like a bull, sending Hawker flying over the front of the temple and tumbling down the stairs.

Farther back on the temple’s roof, the other NRI survivors were trapped against the gaping hole of the open stairway. Danielle flung her rifle at the beast and it bounced off the animal’s head, distracting it long enough for one of the Chollokwan warriors to jump up on its back, swinging his stone axe.

The Zipacna flipped the tribesman off and lunged for him, grabbing the man in its jaws and whipping him aside, but other natives rushed in undaunted.

One of them went for the beast’s legs with an axe, only to be crushed under a bloody claw. Another jabbed toward its eye, but the animal swung its head away and its flying tail whipped around, decapitating the man. A third swung his axe in a great arc, smashed it into the plating, cracking both the shell and the stone of the man’s weapon.

The Zipacna lurched to the side, then spun and snapped its jaws on the warrior’s neck, flinging him over the edge of the temple.

It was free for a second, but then a new surge of Chollokwan warriors threw themselves at it. One native
drew blood, jamming a spear into the beast’s side, finding the notch between the shoulder and the breastplate.

The pain sent the creature into a howling rage, which seemed to restore all the strength and speed that the rain had taken away. It slashed the man lethally across the throat and face. It snapped its jaws on a second man and plunged its claws into the ribs of a third. The tail whipped around like a flying blade, slashing yet another man, who fell backward, clutching at his abdomen, trying desperately to hold his intestines in.

In its frenzy the animal was fearsome, howling as it lashed out. But the Chollokwan matched its intensity, and though they were dying on all sides, they pressed the attack.

Putock, the warrior who’d led them to the Chollokwan council, was with the attacking force. Covered in blood from head to toe, he somehow managed to survive the hail of teeth and claws. He lunged forward just as the animal turned, the joint between its neck and body exposed for a second. He drove his spear downward and into it with all the strength and weight he had. The surface erupted in a geyser of black blood; the Zipacna’s head tilted back and upward with the blow, and it released a hideous, inhuman scream, a sound that echoed across the forest.

As the creature came back down it lashed out at Putock, and he stumbled back with a vertical gash from his shoulder to his waist. But even as he fell and his life poured out onto the stone of the temple roof, Putock saw the damage he’d done.

The animal grabbed frantically at the embedded spear, splintering the shaft into kindling in an attempt to
pull it free. And then, as it realized it couldn’t overcome the wave of attackers, the beast turned toward the dark hole in the temple’s roof.

It stumbled forward, no longer interested in the fight. But the main body of the Chollokwan force had reached it now and they overran the beast, bringing it down with heavy blows and the weight of their own bodies.

It tried to throw them off, rearing up one more time and howling thunderously, as if the titanic sound of its own voice might somehow set it free, but as the last spear was driven home, the Zipacna buckled and collapsed under the weight. Its head hit the stone with a heavy thud.

For a minute or two longer, the Chollokwan continued to hack at it. But as they exhausted the fury in their hearts, they began to step away. One by one they turned from the hideous creature, moving to their wounded and cleansing themselves in the falling rain.

At first, no one in the NRI group stirred. They looked on in disbelief, unsure of what to do. Danielle gazed through the storm, but not a single beast could be seen alive. The only things moving in the clearing were the native warriors and the wind-driven sheets of rain. It was hard for her to believe, but the madness had finally come to an end.

As her sense of balance returned, she asked McCarter and Devers to speak with the Chollokwan, and then began to pick her way across the temple’s roof, looking for Hawker. As she approached the stairs, he reappeared.

He struggled to the top, looked over the carnage and then glanced at her and the others. Seeing that they were
safe, he turned around and sat down on the top step, looking out over the rain-soaked clearing.

Danielle made her way to where he was and sat down beside him just as the thunder crashed again. “You okay?” she asked, half shouting to be heard above the storm.

He looked at her and nodded, appearing too exhausted to speak.

She looked across the clearing at another flash of lightning and then pulled her wet hair back from her face. The rain was still pouring, but the wind was at their backs. “I can hardly believe it’s over,” she said. “I can hardly believe we’re still alive.”

As he managed another exhausted nod, she turned her eyes skyward, squinting as she looked up through the rain, laughing at the sudden joy that it brought to her. “It’s a beautiful feeling, being alive.”

He turned to her and smiled, a satisfied look creeping onto his face. “They have a saying in Africa: the rain is life.” He looked around and then back into her eyes, staring at her for a long moment. “The rain is life,” he repeated. “The rain
is
life.”

The thunder crashed above them and he closed his eyes and leaned back against the temple’s wet stone roof.

She smiled and then reached out to touch his face. Without a word, she lay down beside him, both of them alive and reveling in the glorious, pouring rain.

T
he weather pattern had changed across Brazil. The feared El Niño and the high-pressure ridge that had been funneling dry air into the Amazon were gone, replaced by a steady flow from the north, which pumped massive quantities of moisture from the Caribbean out over the heart of the rainforest, bringing clouds and rain that stretched unbroken from central Brazil to the coast. At the clearing where the temple stood, it would rain without end for nine solid days.

Amid the sheets of pouring rain, the Chollokwan began the somber after-tasks of war. As they swept their dead from the field, they came upon the body of Pik Verhoven and carried it off without a word. In time they would place his body beside the other warriors, and the cremation ceremony would begin. Around the great fires there would be sorrow, but also chanting and singing as the smoke carried brave spirits to the sky.

The NRI team’s survivors would not witness the ceremony, as they remained in the clearing with a group of Chollokwan warriors.

Under partially reconstructed tents they waited out
the rains. On the second day the Chollokwan brought them food. With game in short supply, it was a powerful gesture.

As he finished a small bite of some type of fish, Hawker turned to Danielle and McCarter. “How long do you think it will take them to cut a new stone for the temple’s roof?”

“They said it would be done,” McCarter replied. “But I didn’t see any stonework at their village. Truthfully, I doubt they have the skills.”

“That’s what I thought,” Hawker said. He put down his plate, slipped out of the makeshift tent and hiked toward the temple through the misty rain. McCarter and Danielle followed him, crossing the clearing, climbing up the stairs of the temple and then down into its interior.

Cautiously, Hawker disconnected the trip-wired explosives and removed them. A moment later he was raising a sledgehammer and smashing it into the curved wall around the well. The rock cracked and split and shards flew in all directions. Another blow sent huge chunks over the edge, crashing down into the water below.

Alerted by the noise, several of the Chollokwan came into the temple. At first, they appeared surprised by the commotion, but they quickly realized what was being done. They grouped together to assist, turning their attention to the massive chunks of rock lying about, pieces of the stone that had once sealed the building. They slid the jagged sections toward the well, lifting them up and dumping them into the pit one by one.

As they worked Hawker continued his assault on the
well’s surrounding wall, and when that was finished, he turned his attention to the altar. The natives shouted to their brethren up the stairs, and soon a daisy chain of sorts had begun, with the Chollokwan bringing in baskets full of rock and wood and even small boulders, all to be poured into the well.

Exhausted, Hawker relinquished the hammer to McCarter, and after a few minutes he turned it over to Danielle, as they took turns destroying the altar. In thirty minutes the job was all but finished, the bulk of the Mayan altar broken up and shoved over the edge, a massive pile of stone jamming up the hollow well.

The Chollokwan continued to add to the pile, promising to fill the well right up to the top. The plug of rubble would weigh ten tons or more, making it impossible for any more Zipacna to escape from the underworld.

As the Chollokwan men left to get more stone, Danielle rested against the wall, the sledgehammer heavy in her hands. Her gaze drifted around the room and then back to the ruined altar, where a trace of light caught her eye.

“What is that?” she said, gazing at a soft glow amid the debris.

As Hawker and McCarter looked on, she leaned the sledgehammer against the wall and stepped toward the object. Crouching amid the dust and pulverized rock, she cleared some of debris aside and the glow brightened marginally. She reached down and pulled a glowing object from the mess. It was a triangular-shaped stone, the size of a large dictionary.

She gazed at it, wiping the dirt and dust from its surface,
running her fingers over its smoothed corners and beveled edges. It seemed to be made of a clear substance, and it felt like some type of heavy acrylic.

“It’s warm,” she said, carefully feeling the object.

“What is it?” Hawker asked.

She shook her head. “I have no idea. Unless it’s from …” She considered the fact that the Martin’s crystals and the small radioactive cubes had sat in revered positions on the altar. It made her wonder if she might have found what she was looking for after all.

Upon rescuing Susan and finding the cave to be barren, she’d concluded there was nothing there to be found. But after Kaufman’s explanation of the electromagnetic radiation, she’d begun to doubt that assessment. The electro-magnetic pulse had to come from somewhere.

“Remember the Tulan Zuyua story,” McCarter said. “The parsing out of the gods, their essence given in special stones.”

Danielle nodded and as she stared at the stone once again, a presence appeared in the foyer to the altar room. She turned to see the Old One standing there, another native supporting him. He looked as frail as ever, but his eyes were bright. He walked slowly toward Danielle, regarding the glowing stone as he went. He did not seem to be surprised.

“Garon Zipacna,”
he said.

Without Devers there to translate, they did not understand him.

“Garon Zipacna,”
he repeated, thumping lightly on the center of his chest.

“I think he says it’s the heart of Zipacna,” McCarter guessed.

She looked down at the stone and then tried to hand it to the Old One, but he refused, holding a hand out and pushing it gently back toward her. He looked into the pit, logjammed by the growing pile of rubble. Seeming pleased, he turned and walked over to McCarter. He opened the palm of his hand and displayed a small object.

McCarter looked closely. It was a compass, one that looked to be a hundred years old. It had to have been Blackjack Martin’s.