Burial Ground (48 page)

She held her breath and prayed to any god
that might be listening.

Feathers rustled and a toe brushed against
her cheek. The raptor stood nearly directly on top of her.

A whistle of air preceded the strike. Its
foot slashed at her chest. Clothing and skin ripped. She felt the
sting of the wound and a trickle of blood rolling down her side
from the laceration beneath her left clavicle.

It took every ounce of her concentration to
keep from screaming. She squeezed Merritt's hand so hard her
fingernails gouged into his skin.

The creature leaned in again and huffed a
gust of foul breath onto her face that blew away most of the
feathers. Its jaws snapped wide and it cried out again. A wash of
saliva slapped onto her closed eyes and trailed over her cheeks,
thick with chewed meat that slid through the fluid like slugs.

It recoiled and slashed at her again with
its hind leg. The nails sliced through her upper arm over the
biceps. Another unheralded strike, and blood flowed from her chest,
just above her right breast.

The pain was more than she could bear.

More and more footsteps approached. She felt
weight on her right arm before another talon clawed into her
shoulder.

Merritt's hand tightened over hers. His
blood spiraled around his wrist and into the union of their
palms.

Another wicked slash, and pain bloomed from
a gash on her right thigh.

Her thoughts turned to the extant Chachapoya
in the valley below. The black-painted men whose bodies were so
heavily scarred, as though they'd been attacked with straight
razors. She had thought the scarring was ritualistic, but it
wasn't, was it?

This was how they survived.

Another slice across her lower left leg.

Tears flowed freely from her eyes, and
somehow she managed to bite back a whimper of agony.

The creatures shrieked all around them now.
They appeared to be feeding upon one another, growing louder and
more frantic.

Claws slashed, filling the air with a mist
of blood.

She no longer prayed for escape, but for an
end to the mounting pain, knowing that all she had to do to make it
stop was scream.

11:00 p.m.

Tasker swayed on his feet, trying to
maintain his equilibrium. Every inch of his body hurt. He felt like
a porcupine with the sheer amount of shrapnel standing from his
back. Fractured ribs prodded at his innards, and he was certain
that his left wrist was shattered. It was barely functional enough
to balance the barrel of his rifle on it. So far, he had already
spit out two teeth, and blood dripped through the tatter of his
lower lip and over his chin.

He sloshed through the mud, out of the wash
of blazing light and into the darkness that clung to the ruins.

Where the hell had they all gone? There had
been dozens of the creatures surrounding that small clearing, and
now there was no sign of them anywhere. Not a single shivering
branch or the sound of stealthy tread. No sucking sound of
footsteps in the mud or rustling from the underbrush. Only the
patter of rain on the canopy and the standing water. And the
occasional distant cry of a hawk.

He had felt the ground tremble and heard the
muffled
whump
of an explosion inside the mountain several
minutes ago. Had that taken care of the creatures for him? Was his
prey now entombed under tons of rock right along with them? Did he
now have the ruins all to himself? He couldn't be so naïve as to
assume that was the case, but for the time being, he did appear to
be completely alone. Perhaps his best option for now was to simply
gather as much treasure as he could carry and get his ass out of
there in case the predators returned. Granted, the nature of his
injuries would limit the amount he could haul out of here, but
since there was no longer anyone with whom to divide his take, he
wouldn't need that much anyway. A couple more headdresses like the
first in conjunction with the massive golden skull in the cave on
the cliff would make him a very rich man.

Right now, the priority had to be saving his
own skin, but he'd be damned if he came all this way for
nothing.

Limping around trees and stumbling through
shrubs and curtains of vines, he scoured the crumbled stone
dwellings for the glimmer of precious metals. There were plenty of
ancient utensils, potsherds, and common tattered textiles.
Skeletons were strewn everywhere, partially reclaimed by the earth,
left to rot where they fell. He encountered broken bows and spears,
even a few rusted machetes and outdated firearms that had no
business here, but thus far no---

"Gold," he whispered. A flash of lightning
glinted from an arch of metal that peeked out of a mound of mud. He
sloshed toward it and carefully exhumed it from the sludge. A brown
skull stared back up at him, jaw unhinged, teeth broken. The man
had been wearing the headdress when he was killed. The remnants of
the torn leather bindings curled away from his cracked temporal
bones.

It was about freaking time.

Tasker slipped out of his pack and tied the
relic to one of its straps. When he shouldered it again, the
treasure hung against his rear end. The added weight of a million
dollars somehow made his burden seem lighter.

The thunderous sound of the waterfall grew
louder as he trudged northward, inspecting the rubble of the huts
for more loot. If everything fell into place, he would have enough
treasure by the time he reached the fallen fortification, and he
would simply be able to find the path and leave the ruins behind.
Unlike the others, he was willing to take his chances with fording
the rapids.

All that he had to do from there was keep
himself alive long enough to reach civilization and the future of
luxury that awaited him.

A rustling sound was swallowed by a peal of
thunder.

He turned to his right toward the source.
The trees were still. Swollen raindrops dripped from the upper
canopy. He scrutinized the area for several moments, waiting for a
repeat occurrence, before finally resuming his task, wary of even
the slightest sound. For a second, he had allowed himself to be
distracted by the gold.

The clapping sound of the rain and his
slapping footsteps were too loud in his own ears.

A silhouette darted through the trees at the
edge of his peripheral vision. When he turned, nothing was there.
No vines jostled or branches swayed, but he was certain he had seen
something.

Through the jungle and the mist, he could
barely discern the black lip of the outer wall and the white spray
of the waterfall beyond. He was nearing the point where he would
have to make a decision. The last thing he wanted was to have to
double back into the fortress. The sooner he was safely descending
the mountain, the better.

His toe snagged on something under the mud
and he fell to all fours. He expected to look back and see a snarl
of roots, but instead, discovered something metallic with long,
bent appendages shaped like feathers. With a smile, he smeared the
mud from another golden headdress. A bent knee stood from the
ground to the side to mark where its former owner decomposed. He
tied the second headdress to his pack with the first. That was
going to have to be enough. Add in the golden skull and the money
from his Asian buyer, and he was looking at four million dollars
minimum, several times what he would make in his lifetime in the
service, and more than enough to disappear forever.

Shadows shifted on the opposite side of the
path.

Again, when he focused on that section of
the forest, there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

Time to move.

He no longer actively searched for priceless
artifacts as he strode forward, sighting the jungle and the path
ahead down the barrel of his rifle, finger poised on the trigger.
The clip was nearly full, and he had three more in his bag.

The overgrowth abruptly ended at the
obsidian wall. Only the most ambitious lianas and roots had found a
way over and climbed down the sheer face of stacked rocks.

While he picked his way over the rubble, he
would be uncomfortably exposed. The cloud trapped in the valley
would obscure his progress to some degree, but there was no cover
behind which to hide. He was going to have to move quickly and
cautiously.

11:03 p.m.

The pain was excruciating. Galen felt as
though he were being flayed alive. Talons struck from every
conceivable angle, slashing his arms, legs, chest, and face. His
skin was wet with blood, but so far most of the cuts were
superficial. There was one on his thigh he suspected might be half
an inch deep, and another on the top of his head where a section of
the scalp had surely peeled away, yet he was still alive. And that
was the only thing that mattered. As long as he didn't bleed to
death first, the wounds would eventually heal. Surely the creatures
would tire or lose interest soon enough.

He tried to distract his mind from the
exquisite agony. They were truly an amazing species, the primitive
ancestors of modern birds of prey as the evolutionary scholars
believed. Feet similar to those of a vulture, with a massive hooked
claw, not for tearing, but for impaling, to hold its prey still
while it attacked with powerful jaws and sharp teeth. A long tail
with what he assumed to be a rudimentary system of vertebrae from
which retrices, the feathers that served the function of rudders in
modern birds, grew to stabilize the body so it could run low to the
ground. Vestigial wings with essentially useless fingers like those
of a bat that appeared incapable of grasping anything with
sufficient force nor strong enough to bear the disproportionately
large body aloft. A combination of reptilian scales and avian
feathers, which one day would supersede their less elaborate
forebears. A slender, serpentine neck that offered the lateral
motion of a sidewinder. The night vision and acuity of an owl. Even
the way it ate intimated an avian digestive tract and gullet. They
were astounding, but what surprised him most was their startling
level of intelligence. No predatory birds hunted in packs, nor did
they understand the potential for their prey to play possum, let
alone to test them in such a vicious way that encouraged movement.
Perhaps the subtle rise and fall of their chests had betrayed them,
and the creatures, these neuquenraptors, weren't about to eat
anything that they feared might be dying by some means other than
by their teeth. It was the natural order of the wild.

His leg began to tremble with the pain. Or
was he shivering because of blood loss?

He wasn't going to be able to hold out much
longer. If he allowed them to continue to carve him up, it wouldn't
matter if he survived this initial assault. He would be
exsanguinated long before he reached medical attention.

A scream threatened to explode from his
chest. It felt like each individual layer of his skin was being
slowly peeled away. He was cold. He was terrified. And the torture
was just too great.

His mouth opened in anticipation of the cry
he could no longer contain.

Tasker had just crested the precipice of the
fortification when he heard the
shush
of wet branches behind
him. Whirling, gun at his shoulder, he saw a silhouette beside the
wide trunk of a kapok, partially hidden by the buttress roots. He
squeezed off a shot just as the shadow ducked behind the trunk. The
bullet tore out a chunk of wood and sent splinters flying. Whatever
was out there was faster than he was.

More rustling noises from the other side of
the path. They were growing increasingly aggressive.

The time had come to put the fear of God
into them.

He swung the barrel across the wall of
foliage, peppering it with a barrage of bullets that shredded
leaves and pounded trunks.

Hopefully, that would buy him a decent head
start.

A cracking sound echoed from the outside
world, drowning out the scream that erupted from Galen's lips. It
wasn't thunder, but rather what sounded like a boulder breaking
loose from the granite cliff above them.

The creatures around him stiffened and
craned their heads toward the tunnel and the waterfall beyond.

More cracking. Louder. Faster. A rhythmic
rata-tat-tat
.

Automatic rifle fire.

Galen risked a slight tilt of his head to
glance behind him. None of the creatures so much as looked in his
direction. All eyes were focused away from him, toward the stone
passage.

Without the slightest sound of
communication, the raptors all bolted as one. Bodies collided. They
snapped and kicked at each other. Long legs churned up feathers
from the floor, which the scrum refreshed with new ones. They
trampled the diminished flames, leaving Galen with just one final,
fleeting impression of their long feathered tails before the
darkness became complete once again.

Tasker had just turned to lunge down the
slope of broken bricks when more movement caught his attention.

Shadows. Several of them.

Emerging from a black orifice behind the
waterfall at a rapid click.

Galen held his breath and listened. All he
could hear was their labored breathing. No tread on feathers. Not a
single shriek.

The creatures were gone.

The relief was so great that he moaned
aloud. His shoulders shook as the sobs he had held at bay for so
long racked through him. He whimpered and ran his shaking palms
over the tatters of his clothes and the stinging lacerations
beneath them.

He tried to sit up and a warm rush of blood
seeped to the surface from what felt like every inch of his
body.

A hand closed around his wrist and jerked
him to his feet. He cried out and stumbled forward. His legs were
so weak he could barely stand and his head swam from the loss of
blood.