The Mayan Resurrection

Praise for
The Mayan Prophecy

‘From the opening page to the stunning climax, Steve Alten has done it again.
The Mayan Prophecy
is a chilling, deeply researched peek into our ancient past. Jarring, frightening, thrilling … What more could a reader ask?’

James Rollins, bestselling author of
The Doomsday Key

‘Alten draws clever parallels with Mayan myths in this rip-roaring space-age yarn equipped with a credible love story and Earthbound side plots’

Publishers Weekly

‘With the storytelling sensibilities of Crichton and Cussler, Alten sure knows how to write a thriller’

Kevin J. Anderson,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Dune: House Atreides

‘
The Mayan Prophecy
is an eye-bugging, white knuckle flight of a book that hurtles along with the velocity of an asteroid from the ancient world to the twenty-first century on an unforgettable doomsday mission’

Rocky Mountain News

‘Steve Alten has penned a rousing story. The research is phenomenal and artfully inserted into the plot. The way he eases factual info into fictional is beautiful’

Barbara Riefe,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Ravaged Heart

‘Every now and then a book comes along that totally knocks your socks off. Steve Alten’s
The Mayan Prophecy
is such a book’

Gauntlet

‘An exciting, well-written science fiction-fantasy that works because the key characters seem genuine and the magical elements appear real’

BookBrowser

Steve Alten is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror
,
The Loch
and
Goliath
. He is also the founder and director of America’s nationwide Adopt-An-Author reading initiative. Steve lives with his family in Boca Raton, Florida.

Also by Steve Alten

Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror

The Trench

Goliath

Meg: Primal Waters

The Loch

The Shell Game

Meg: Hell’s Aquarium

Grim Reaper: End of Days

The Mayan Prophecy

STEVE ALTEN

Dedicated with love and respect
to my literary agent and friend, Danny Baror.

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Quercus
21 Bloomsbury Square
London
WC1A 2NS

Copyright © 2004 by Steve Alten

The moral right of Steve Alten to be
identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

First published as
Resurrection
in 2004 by Tor,
Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, New York, USA

All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 85738 170 5

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, organizations, places and events are
either the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or
locales is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset by Ellipsis Digital Limited, Glasgow
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

For Kim …

… and to the courageous Men and Women of the 363rd
Expeditionary Airborne Air Control Squadron
and the Pacific Forces AEF 7

And there was war in heaven:
Michael and his angels fought against the dragon;
and the dragon fought and his angels,
And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more
in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out,
that old serpent called the Devil and Satan,
which deceiveth the whole world:
He was cast out into the earth,
and his angels were cast out with him.

—
REVELATION
12:7

None of those who were born in the light,
Begotten in the light
Will be yours …

—
THE HERO TWINS
,
TO THE LORDS OF THE UNDERWORLD
EXCERPT FROM THE MAYAN POPOL VUH

The Universe is not only stranger than we know, it is stranger than we can even imagine.

—
J.B.S. HALDANE

A wisp of thought, in the consciousness of existence.

I am anger.
A black hole of rage.
Lost in eternity.
God’s abandoned child.
Seething with the mortar of indignation,
    imprisoned within its invisible walls.
The confluence of bitterness ferments my soul.

I am the product of injustice, and self-servitude, and greed.
I am the void that tasted love and lost it forever.
Loathing existence.
Set adrift in my own ocean of hatred.

I am the end of humanity and its beginning.
I am One Hunahpu and the universe laughs at me.
I am … Michael Gabriel.

Excerpt taken from video recording at
Harvard symposium
*
AUGUST
24, 2001

‘The End of Humanity. Who has time to contemplate such folly? Job security, the falling Dow, overdue bills, our diminishing retirement funds—these are the daily burdens that occupy our minds, not humanity’s extinction.

‘My name is Julius Gabriel. I am an archaeologist, a scientist who hunts humanity’s past in search of the truth. For the last 32 years, my
family and I have been searching for the truth behind the Mayan calendar, a 2000-year-old instrument of time and space more accurate than its latter-day European counterpart. Believed to have been created by the mysterious Mayan wise man, Kukulcán, the calendar abruptly ends with humanity’s demise on a date equating to December 21 in the year 2012. As if to remind us of the event, the shadow of a giant serpent will again appear on Kukulcán’s pyramid in Chichén Itzá in 29 days, just as it has each autumn and spring equinox for over 1,000 years. Let me assure you, this baffling special effect was not intended as a tourist attraction.

‘Who was the great Kukulcán? The Mayans describe him as a tall, Caucasian man with long, flowing white hair and beard and blazing aqua-blue eyes. Quite the mystery, considering the first white men didn’t arrive in Mesoamerica until the early 1500s … 500 years after Kukulcán’s passing! Adding to this mystery is the fact that, in every successful ancient culture, there has been a great teacher whose description is almost identical to Kukulcán’s. In Giza, Egyptians worshiped this wise man as Osiris, at Stonehenge he was Merlin. In Nazca and Sacsayahuman, the Incas revered him as Virococha, and among the Aztecs he was Quetzalcoatl.

‘Mysterious wise men … each introducing science and civilization to their assigned peoples. The Bible describes them as giants, men of reknown. I’ve identified them as extraterrestrials, humans from another time, another place. And they came here to save us from the cataclysm that will arrive on the winter solstice of 2012.

‘I am not here to debate the existence of ETs and UFOs with Mr. Borgia. As archaeologists, we know real doomsday events have overwhelmed our planet’s inhabitants throughout its history. As scientists, we know our Earth lies within a cosmic shooting gallery of
asteroids and comets. We know that 65 million years ago, an asteroid, seven miles in diameter, struck our world at the same ground zero that would eventually become the Mayan homeland, ending the dinosaurs’ 200- million-year reign. Was it predestined or an accident? Could such an event happen again? It’s been estimated that 2,000 such civilization killers continue to cross Earth’s orbit, though to date, we’ve only accounted for one in ten.

‘The Mayan calendar was left to us 2,000 years ago as a warning. Should we heed it, then perhaps we can save ourselves from whatever cataclysm lies ahead.

‘Or, as is the nature of our species, we could simply ignore the warning signs until something terrible happens …’

Time is not at all what it seems.
It does not flow in only one direction,
and the future exists simultaneously with the past.

—
ALBERT EINSTEIN

We cannot change anything until we accept it.

—
CARL JUNG

JANUARY 21, 2013: 30 DAYS A.N.D.E. (AFTER NEARDOOMSDAY EVENT) WELLINGTON, FLORIDA

The
Dojo
is sixty feet long and thirty feet wide, its walls covered in mirrors, its floor made of polished wood. Master Gustafu Pope, fifth-degree black belt and former karate champion of Argentina, turns to his ‘Bushi’ warriors, all seated along one wall in a lotus position. ‘Richard Rappaport. Andrea Smith.’

Hearing her alias, thirty-one-year-old Dominique Vazquez jumps to her feet. Like the rest of Master Pope’s students, the ebony-haired, Hispanic beauty is dressed in full
Bogu
—protective armor. Her chest and stomach is covered by the
Do
, her waist in the
Tare
, her hands and wrists by the
Kote
gloves. She slips the headpiece known as the
Men
over her long ponytail, the heavily padded base protecting her face, throat, and the sides of her skull.

In her hand is the
Shinai
, a sword consisting of four staves of bamboo, joined together at the handle and tip by leather straps. Designed to flex as it strikes an object, the
Shinai
,
though infinitely safer than its predecessors, the
Fukurojinai
and
Bokuto
, is still a weapon that can kill.

She takes her place across from her opponent. Rich Rappaport is bigger, stronger, and more experienced than Dominique, but lacks her tenacity.

Master Pope calls out, ‘
Rei
.’

The two student combatants face each other and bow.

‘On your marks.’

Bracing their bamboo swords, each moves into a crouching posture.

‘Begin!’

Dominique attacks, shouting out, ‘
Men
!’ as she launches an overhead blow to her opponent’s head. Rappaport blocks the strike, but the woman’s furious barrage continues, her
Shinai
a blur as it lashes out at the man’s forearms and chest. Dominique calls out body-part names before each strike, her brown eyes focused intently on her fellow Kendo student through the bars of her headpiece.