Burial Ground (22 page)

She thought of the man she had seen with the
lone alpaca. Had he taken it out of this very pen in order to allow
it to stretch its legs and graze?

And why had the alpacas reacted as they had
at the sound of her approach?

She withdrew her arm from the hole, and in
doing so noticed that the edges of the stones around it weren't
smooth and even. They were carved with notches as though poorly
chiseled, or deliberately scraped with sharp objects.

"There's a gate over here," Dahlia said.

Sam walked along the face of the structure
to where the blonde woman held back the curtain of vines so Jay
could film the interior. A foul gust that reeked of dust and feces
passed through an iron grate that was moored by iron rungs to
stones set into the earth. Through the slots she could see a short
stone corridor that branched at a ninety-degree angle to the right
to prohibit visibility directly into the chamber. Was there another
gate at the far end of it? Why else wouldn't the alpacas have
approached the gate if she was right and the man came here to take
them out for exercise?

The rock edges around the gate had been
carved as well, and all of the rust had been scraped from the iron
rails. Some even appeared to have been scored down to the virgin
metal that had only recently been exposed to the elements.

Galen crouched beside her and sifted through
the dirt. He pulled out a filthy brown feather. He blew off the
dust and spun it between his fingers by the quill. Sam only now
noticed that there were feathers all over the ground. They blended
perfectly into the mat of dead leaves and sticks. Galen tucked the
feather into the breast pocket of his khaki cargo vest, looked up
at the sky, and then back to the ground.

He shook his head and furrowed his brow.

"What is it?" Sam asked.

Galen seemed to puzzle over her question
before finally speaking.

"The walls make sense, but why would they
need to build a roof over the animals?"

"To protect them from above," Jay said,
retreating from the bars to capture better footage of the entire
building.

"Possibly," Galen said. "But if that were
the case, then why wouldn't they have done the same thing for their
village?"

"You think it's possible that they're
shielding their livestock from some sort of birds?" Sam asked.

Galen just chewed on the inside of his lip
as he appraised the structure.

"I'm beginning to wonder...," he finally
said.

Sam followed his gaze to the threshold,
where the stone edges had been chiseled away.

It almost looked as though the rock had been
carved in an effort to pry the iron gate loose.

6:36 p.m.

Leo didn't care if Sam believed that the
tribe wasn't hostile. The more he thought about it, the more it
made sense. The natives had killed his son. They had allowed Hunter
to reach his destination, and then they had stalked and murdered
him. When he ultimately found the source of the placers and
concluded that his son's party hadn't mutinied against him, he
would have all of the proof he needed. And then he could return to
the village and let them know how he felt about the cowardly act of
stabbing a man in the back.

He glanced back at Sorenson and Webber, who
ferried the crate affixed to long wooden dowels on their
shoulders.

Oh yes, he would show these natives exactly
how he felt.

Darkness descended upon the forest. The heat
began to dissipate by degree, which only served to amplify the
humidity, and welcome more mosquitoes to the ranks swarming around
them. They were still more than an hour from the formal time listed
for the setting of the sun, but the high mountains bathed them in
premature shadows. Soon they would need to pitch camp for the night
if they were to rest up for the final push during the coming day.
He had compared the maps to their current position on the GPS unit.
Tomorrow they would reach their goal, he could feel it.

Leo's heart raced at the prospect. Within
twenty-four hours, he would learn the answers to the questions that
plagued him about his son's death.

Twenty-four hours and he'd finally be able
to determine what he needed to do about it.

Few vines eclipsed the trail and the
branches were easily enough shoved aside, which allowed them to
advance at a rapid pace. Unlike the path leading into the jungle
from the river, this one appeared frequently used. Rippeth scouted
ahead, often disappearing entirely. He held his gun in his left
hand, and cradled his bloody right against his gut. The man had
barely spoken since leaving the fortified city. Flames burned
behind his eyes. He was obviously itching to extract a measure of
revenge, and soon enough Leo would give him the opportunity.

A glimmer of red sparkled through the
branches of the trees. It grew brighter and brighter until they
pressed through the final stand of trees and stepped out onto the
bank of a small lake, upon which the reflected brilliance of the
setting sun shimmered. The water was still and crystalline. A
startled school of fish darted from the shallows, leaving a cloud
of silt in their wake.

"It's beautiful," Galen said.

Leo nodded his agreement. It truly was a
breathtaking sight. The lake was circular, and perhaps a hundred
yards across. Waterfowl appeared as dark dots in the very center.
The jungle encroached to the edge of the water on all sides. Sheer,
tree-covered mountains rose up into the low-lying clouds ahead and
to both sides, forming a bowl to cradle the lake.

"This is their
pacarisca
," Sam said.
"The Chachapoya always built their villages near one. It's
generally a lake or river, sometimes a mountaintop. They regard it
as their point of origin, the sacred place where their souls---for
lack of a better term---were born. Somewhere nearby we'll find their
chullpa
, their tribal burial site. The dead are always
interred close to the metaphorical point where their lives began,
the completion of the circle of life, if you will."

Leo wondered what Hunter must have thought
when he came upon this incredible sight. Had he camped here as well
before beginning what might have been the last day of his life?

Rippeth emerged from the forest twenty yards
up the bank, strode directly to Colton, and whispered something
into his ear. Leo watched Colton closely. His old friend's stare
darted to the point where Rippeth had appeared, and then back.

Leo sauntered over to join them, but by then
they were already done speaking.

"Why don't you guys start setting up the
tents," Leo said, and, without a backward glance, joined Colton as
he walked northwest along the muddy bank, which was choppy with
alpaca hoof prints.

Rippeth vanished into the trees, with Leo
and Colton directly behind him. They followed the shivering bushes
that trailed Rippeth deeper into the jungle. The smell hit them
first, the awful stench of decomposing flesh. Leo had to cup his
hand over his mouth and nose until he adapted to it. Another dozen
paces and the sound of buzzing flies reached them.

"Jesus," Leo gasped as they stumbled into a
circular clearing. The largest kapok tree he had ever seen stood in
the center. Its trunk was so wide that even if all three of them
joined hands, they wouldn't be able to encircle it. All of the
shrubs and undergrowth had been torn out to expose the rich loam in
a fifteen foot radius around the behemoth. The massive branches
formed a leafy roof five feet over their heads. Lianas coiled in
serpentine fashion around the trunk. The smooth gray bark looked as
though it had been assaulted by an angry group of ax-wielding
lumberjacks. There were cuts and gouges from the ground clear up to
the first row of branches. Amber sap bled down the surface like wax
on a candlestick. Several ropes had been tied around the tree,
their frayed ends dangling toward the dirt.

Bones were scattered everywhere throughout
the clearing. Some were still tacky with rust-colored blood, while
others had yellowed with age and started to deteriorate.
Bloodstains decorated everything in arcs and spatters, upon which
the flies swarmed like seething black scabs.

"I told you it was a mess," Rippeth said to
Colton, who had crouched to inspect the remains.

Leo didn't have to study the bones to
recognize to which species they had once belonged. Wiry wool clung
to the surrounding bushes, against which it had been blown into
small drifts at the edges of the clearing.

A light flashed from his left. Colton had
turned on his penlight and now used it to scrutinize the sloppy
earth. It was growing darker by the minute as the lingering residue
of the sun faded from the sky.

Colton shoved aside a pile of broken bones
and inspected the mud. His beam fell upon a clear set of tracks in
a V-shape that appeared to have been made by some sort of deer,
only the impressions didn't have the sharply defined edges to
delineate them as hooves.

Leo turned his attention again to the tree.
Designs had been carved into the bark at the level of the lower
canopy. The sun, the moon, and stars of various shapes and sizes
were framed by twin zigzagging lines.

"They brought them out here and tied them to
the tree," Colton said. He stood, approached the end of one of the
tattered ropes, and pulled it taut. At his feet lay the cracked
remains of a camelid skull. He lifted it and held it up for them to
see. The occipital bone had been broken away from the hollow hole
where the brain had once been, and the elongated snout had been
snapped in half so that only the worn rear molars remained. He
tossed it aside and pointed his light at the dirt, which had
obviously been scuffed and gouged by alpaca hooves.

"Why would they do that?" Rippeth asked. He
kicked a femur that shattered into chunks of calcium.

"They were sacrifices. But to what?" Colton
turned in a slow circle. Leo noticed the man had drawn his pistol.
This was the first time he had seen Colton act in a manner that was
anything other than calm and collected, which unnerved him even
more than all of the death surrounding him.

"Jaguars?"

"No," Leo said. "Remember the jaguar carcass
we found in the light gap? This looks like it was done by the same
animals. Jaguars don't hunt in packs like lions. They're
territorial, and they don't slaughter their own kind."

"They could have done this to those alpacas
though."

"This isn't the work of jaguars," Colton
said. "We're dealing with something else entirely."

"What do you propose then?"

"I haven't got a clue." Colton bent over and
held up a trio of dark feathers. "But we do know that the buzzards
had their way with the leftovers as well."

"So we can assume that the natives have been
bringing the alpacas out here from that stone pen as part of some
sort of sacrificial ritual, where they tether them to this
tree---"

"
Waka
," Sam said from where she'd
been watching them from behind a stand of ferns. She stepped out
into the open. "The tree is a
waka
, a sacred object the
Chachapoya believe holds great power, but they didn't perform any
kind of sacrifice here. Life was the most valuable commodity to
these people. They respected and revered it like few others.
Animals served an important function in their everyday lives and in
the way they perceived the world around them. They weren't
sacrificing them." She stooped and picked up a sharply-fractured
rib. The broken end appeared serrated. "They were feeding them to
something."

10:45 p.m.

Merritt stood at the edge of the placid
lake, basking in its serenity. The moon was nearly full now, and
reflected from the surface of the water amid a smattering of white
stars. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves on the trees and stirred
the whining cloud of mosquitoes. All of the others were asleep in
their tents, minus Morton and Sorenson, who patrolled the perimeter
of camp. The men were definitely more alert than they had been
during the previous night, and reacted to the slightest sound or
any shift in the shadows. He couldn't fault them for it, not after
seeing the alpaca remains in that clearing. Had they not already
burned through the last of the daylight and their waning energy,
they would have pressed on, if only to distance themselves from the
carnage. The decision had been made to rest while they could with
their guards standing at heightened awareness, and get the hell out
of there at the first hint of the rising sun.

As far as Merritt was concerned, dawn
couldn't come soon enough. Not because he was terrified that
whatever had slaughtered the alpacas would steal into their camp
while they were dozing, but because even though he was physically
exhausted, he couldn't force his brain to shut down long enough to
fall asleep. This was now his second night without his medication,
and already the dreams had returned with a vengeance. They were
right there waiting for him every time he so much as blinked. The
combination of the drugs and the excision of caffeine from his diet
had held them at bay for so long now that he couldn't remember how
he had ever dealt with them on his own. So many years had passed
that he would have expected the nightmares to have lost some of
their power over him. Instead, the years of suppressing them only
seemed to have magnified their urgency and intensity. He had only
been able to lie on his back under the mosquito netting, which
positively crawled with little black bodies of all ilk, for so long
before he had needed to escape the humming and buzzing, and the
images that assaulted him.

He turned away from the lake and returned to
the bonfire in the center of the circle of tents. With a scorched
stick, he stoked the blaze until it was several feet tall, then
threw on more logs from the pile. Rich ebon smoke plumed from the
wood until it was dry enough to burn.