Curse of the Mummy's Uncle (9 page)

“Maybe the tests were wrong,” Nick said.

Angelo sighed from his cot. They'd spent the four hours since his test cutting weeds, and he still seemed as depressed as when the results had come back negative. “The tests aren't wrong. The machine found several traces of DNA. All human.”

“What if it's not working right?” Nick said. “Try it on us. We can be one of those—what do you call the people scientists use to compare to?”

“A control group.” Angelo rolled off his cot. “I guess it couldn't hurt.” He took out four swabs, wiping one inside Nick's mouth, another in Carter's, and a third on his hard hat. “See if you can find a hair or
something of your mom's.”

Nick went into the other side of the tent and came back with a strand of hair too long to be his dad's. “I found it on her brush.”

Angelo put each of the swabs and hair samples into test tubes and put them in the machine. The three boys watched anxiously as the machine buzzed and whirred. Several minutes later, it beeped.

Angelo pulled out the strip of paper and shook his head. “It's working fine. See, it even knows you and your mom are related.”

Carter sat on his cot, adding pockets to his serape. “Maybe you're just a lousy detective. I saw this TV show where the cop totally checked in the wrong places for DNA. His boss was like, ‘That's it, dude! You're back on crosswalk duty.'”

“Stop it,” Nick hissed. “You're not helping.”

“What? I'm saying maybe he didn't, you know, test for DNA in the right places. There could be tons of alien DNA. You have to find out where they brushed their teeth or took a—”

“Stop.” Angelo rubbed his eyes. “I guess I can try a few more swabs once this batch of testing is complete. It's just, I was so sure that if I rubbed the altar and the places you would have touched walking up and
down the tunnels, I'd find at least a trace of alien DNA.” He kicked his backpack. “I have to admit I might have been wrong. It's possible aliens didn't build the pyramids after all. I guess after this trip you guys will have to hunt monsters without me. You can have my notebook if you want.”

Nick hated seeing Angelo so depressed. “You know,” he said, “there's one thing we haven't tested.”

“The outhouses?” Carter asked. “Because if I was an alien, that's totally where—”

“No,” Nick said. “We're not going on a search for alien poop. I don't care how famous it would make us. The thing we haven't checked is whatever those men were carrying out of the pyramid last night.”

For the first time since his results had come back negative, Angelo looked interested.

“We have no idea what was in the boxes,” Carter said.

“No. But we know someone who might.” Nick pulled on the shoes that he'd kicked off earlier. “My mom and dad have been indexing everything that came from the site. All we have to do is see what has shown up in the last twelve hours.”

Angelo grabbed his notebook and a pack of swabs. “Great idea. Let's go.”

Outside, the sun was beginning to set and people were finishing their work and putting things away. The rain forest was as noisy as ever, and Nick could almost imagine they were walking past cages at some tropical zoo.

“What if nothing new has shown up?” Carter asked as the boys walked through the camp.

“Then we'll know they're hiding something,” Angelo said.

As soon as Nick smelled the aroma of roasted corn and grilled meat, he knew where he'd find his dad. Sure enough, as soon as he stuck his head inside the meal tent, he saw his parents. Mom was sitting at a table, reading a paperback book by the light of a sputtering gas lantern while she ate.

Dad was back in line getting a second helping of everything. Spotting the boys, he waved. “Better hurry and get some food. We working folk build up a hearty appetite.”

Carter snorted. “Put him on weed patrol for a couple of hours and let him see what real work is like.”

“Look who's talking.” Angelo pointed at Carter's yarn. “You spent most of your time knitting.”

“Hey,” Carter said, holding up his finished serape. “At least I've got something to show for my work. And
soon I'll have a hat to go with it.”

Nick approached his mom and waited for her to look up from her book. “How's the indexing going?” he asked.

“Good.” She smiled. “You boys aren't still mad about being sent up to cut weeds, are you? That's important work too.”

“It's okay. We actually got to help translate some Mayan writing.” Carter and Angelo were watching him closely from the entrance, and he tried to wave them away. His mom was very good at realizing when he was up to something. “So, um, how often do they bring new stuff for you to look at?” he asked.

Mom took a bite of her meat. “I'm not sure. There hasn't been anything new since we started this morning. I think they're working on opening up some new rooms.”

“Nothing?” Nick asked, his heart pounding. “Maybe they brought in some stuff last night before you started?”

“No. Everything has a tag with where it was found and when. It helps them keep track. One of the other catalogers was commenting on the fact that there hasn't been anything new for almost two days.” She set her book down on the table and looked from Nick to his friends. A line formed above the bridge of her nose
that Nick recognized all too well. “Why are you asking these questions?”

“No reason.” Nick kissed her on the cheek and backed quickly away. “Just wanted to make sure you're having a good time. Well, gotta go.”

“Are you going to have dinner?” Dad asked, carrying an overloaded plate to the table.

“In just a minute,” Nick said. “Dr. Canul asked us, to, uh, finish cutting a few more bushes.”

Mom looked outside. “This late? It's nearly dark.”

“That's why we have to hurry.” Nick waved. “Gotta get it done while we can.”

“That's the spirit,” Dad said, digging into his meat. “Put in a good day's work and next thing you know, you'll be running the place.”

“Do you think she believed you?” Angelo asked as Nick came out of the tent.

“Not a chance. She knows we're up to something. She just doesn't know what. But trust me, she'll be watching us close. So let's get out of here while we can.” He started toward the pyramid of the sun.

“Hang on,” Carter said, sniffing the cooking meat. “Aren't we going to have dinner?”

“No time,” Nick said. “The best chance we have of getting away with this is sneaking in and out while everyone's eating.”

Angelo pulled his monster notebook out of his pack. “Sneaking in and out of where?”

Nick broke into a jog. “Wherever they're hiding the stuff they took out of the pyramid.”

“Where exactly are we going?” Carter asked, looking longingly over his shoulder at the camp that was quickly disappearing.

“No clue,” Nick said.

To the west, the sun had finally set behind the forested hills and it was getting dark enough that it was hard to see where they were going. Angelo reached for his flashlight, but Nick held out a hand. “No lights.”

Carter stopped so fast that Angelo bumped into him. “Hang on. Hang on. I don't like that we have to miss dinner. But I get that it's the best time to sneak out of camp without anyone noticing. I'm a little freaked out that you don't know where we're going. But hey, I'm not the one in charge of this adventure. But now you tell me we're heading randomly into the jungle with no one knowing where we are,
and
no light?”

Nick squatted on the ground and dug a couple of baseball-size rocks out of the soft dirt. He placed two of the rocks near each other. “Okay, let's say these are the pyramid of the sun and the pyramid of the moon.”

“They don't look pointy enough to be pyramids,”
Carter said. “And the sides aren't nearly steep enough. Trust me, my legs still hurt.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Just imagine they're pointy and steep.” He placed a third rock slightly away from the first two. “This is our camp. And this,” he said, drawing a line in the grass, “is the road coming to our camp. Now, last night, what direction were the men carrying the boxes?”

Angelo thought for a minute. “Down the back side of the pyramid. Away from camp.”

“Right.” Nick tapped the far side of the two rocks. “Somewhere over here. They didn't bring the boxes back to camp or someone would have noticed. And they didn't take them away in any of the cars or someone would have heard it. If you're Dr. Canul and you want to hide alien artifacts, where would you keep them?”

Angelo tapped the ground on the opposite side of the pyramid of the sun. “Somewhere around here.”

Nick nodded. “Which means a second camp. Which probably means more generators. All we have to do is hike around the pyramid and listen for the sound of generators.”

“Why not just go over the top of the pyramid and down the other side?” Carter asked. “The same way the guys carrying the boxes went?”

Angelo took off his glasses, rubbing the lenses on his shirt. “We don't want the guards to see us.”

“Guards?” Carter yelped. “You mean like big-muscled guys with guns and special forces training? No one said anything about guards.”

Nick opened his mouth to say that the guards probably didn't have guns, and even if they did, they wouldn't shoot a bunch of defenseless kids. All the boys had to do was explain that they went for a walk before dinner and had gotten lost.

But he didn't need his speech. Carter jumped up and jogged toward the back of the pyramid, back bent and hands out to his sides. “Look out, forces of evil. You are no match for the cunning of Indiana Carter.”

Nick looked at Angelo and the two of them grinned at each other in the dark. “Let's go kick some evil booty and recover the alien crystal skull,” Nick said.

It turned out finding the hidden boxes wasn't quite as easy as listening for a generator. By the time the boys had gone around the pyramid and across the back twice, they were all exhausted.

“Let's take a break,” Nick said, collapsing onto one of the pyramid's stone steps.

Angelo stared into the forest. “We'll never be able to hear the generators with all the noise coming from the animals out there.”

Carter plopped down beside them. “I don't think I could hear anything over the growling of my stomach.”

Angelo unzipped his pack and pulled out a bag of beef jerky. “Maybe this will help.”

Carter's mouth dropped open like a ventriloquist puppet whose shoestring had just been pulled. “You've had beef jerky all this time and you didn't tell me? What kind of friend are you? That's like not telling a man dying of thirst in the middle of the desert that you have an ice-cold pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid.”

Angelo dangled the bag in front of his friend's face. “Do you want it or not?”

Carter grabbed the bag, ripped it open, and shoved pieces of jerky into his mouth, making disgusting chewing noises.

Nick tilted his head to see if he could hear the voices he assumed must be ghostly spirits inside the pyramid. Fortunately, they seemed to be able to contact him only when he was inside too.

“Hearing the voices again?” Angelo asked.

Nick started. “I didn't tell you guys about the voices. How did you know?”

“It was either that or you were going crazy from jungle fever.” Carter tilted his head. “Dude, you've been hearing dead people ever since you got turned into a zombie. It only makes sense you'd hear dead people around a pyramid, doesn't it?”

Nick gave an embarrassed smile. His friends knew him so well. “Yeah, but I've only heard them in
graveyards. And even then, only when I could see the ghosts. I was thinking maybe I was . . .” He shrugged. “Imagining things. This place creeps me out.”

Carter punched him lightly on the shoulder. “We believe you. Even if you are crazy.”

“You heard them inside the pyramid of the moon today, didn't you?” Angelo asked. “That's how you knew what it said on the door.”

Nick heaved a heavy sigh. “And last night in the pyramid of the sun. I was kind of hoping I'd imagined them. But then this morning . . .” He flapped his hands.

“Do you think they're . . . dead people? Inside the pyramids?” Carter asked around a mouthful of jerky.

Nick snorted. “If they're stuck inside there, I'm pretty sure they couldn't still be alive.”

The boys sat and considered the idea of ghosts that were hundreds or thousands of years old speaking to Nick from inside an ancient Mayan pyramid. Nick had thought it was kind of cool talking to ghosts back in the graveyard near his home. But here in the middle of a jungle, far from anything familiar, it was so creepy it gave him chills.

“Could you understand them?” Angelo asked. “Or were they speaking Mayan?”

Nick scratched his cheek. “I don't think the dead
speak any specific language. I've been able to understand all the ghosts I've met.”

“What did they say?”

Nick tried to remember. It was hard to pay attention when you were trying not to scream like a kindergartner. “Last night it was something about time. It's almost time or something like that.”

Carter gulped down his jerky. “Time for what?”

“No clue. Today she said, ‘Death is the start. And the time is close at hand.'”

“She?” Carter asked. “It was a girl?”

Nick bit the inside of his cheek. “I think so. It's kind of hard to tell. The voice was all whispery.”

“‘The time is close at hand,'” Angelo repeated. “The time for what?”

None of them had an answer. For all Nick knew, it could be time for the mummies to roll over in their coffins or rewrap their bandages or something.

“They could be people who were buried there,” Angelo said. “Or maybe people who were sacrificed.”

Nick shivered even though it wasn't all that cold.

“Or maybe,” Carter said, “it's the ghosts of the first archaeologists. The ones who disappeared.”

Nick stared at him. “
Seriously?
”

Carter coughed into his hand. “It was just a thought.”

“Quiet, everybody.” Angelo dropped to the ground.

For a moment Nick was sure Angelo had seen the very ghosts they'd been talking about. Then he spotted what Angelo had already seen. A line of men carrying more boxes down the back of the pyramid.

“It's them,” Carter whispered.

“And they have more alien artifacts,” Angelo said, his hands reaching down to touch the swabs tucked into the side of his pack.

Silently the boys watched the men hike down the side of the pyramid. When the men reached the bottom and walked into the jungle, Angelo jumped to his feet. “Come on,” he whispered. “Let's follow them.”

Heart racing, Nick followed Angelo through the tall grass and into the trees.

“You think we should split up?” Carter whispered. “Take them from three sides?”

“Are you crazy?” Nick gripped his arm. “We'd never find our way out.”

As they stepped into the jungle, it was like someone had turned off a light. The moonlight and stars that had lit their way were blocked by the roof of leaves and branches above their heads. The boys froze and looked around. With dark shadows everywhere and a chorus of hoots, howls, and growls, surrounding them, it would
be all too easy to get completely disoriented.

Nick was about to suggest they leave and try again in the morning, when Carter pointed to the right. “Look! Isn't that lights?”

Nick squinted into the darkness, wondering if Carter had imagined it.

“There.” Angelo pointed to a flickering light that appeared, moved down, and then disappeared.

“This way,” he said, leading into the darkness.

Nick tried to follow, but he kept tripping over branches and catching his feet on roots. He tried not to think about the possibility that a jaguar might be tracking them or that a poisonous snake could be dangling just above their heads.

“Where did the lights go?” Carter said.

Nick had no idea. One minute they'd been bobbing around like fireflies, and the next minute they disappeared like birthday candles blown out on a kid's cake.

Cautiously the boys crept forward. “I can't see a thing,” Nick whispered.

“Me either,” Angelo said. “But they have to be around here somewhere.”

Suddenly Carter stopped. “Do you smell that?”

Nick sniffed. He could smell something—sweet, and so strong it made his eyes water. It definitely wasn't a
flower. He took a step forward, and his foot came down on something that gave a hollow
clang
under his shoe.

All three boys froze in place.

“What was that?” Angelo said.

“I don't know,” Nick whispered. He moved his foot back, knelt down, and was reaching to see what he had stepped on, when a metal door flew open, revealing a square of bright light. A man climbed out of the hole and called something in Spanish.

So close he could have reached out and touched the man's shoe, Nick froze. He didn't dare move an inch for fear the worker would look down and see him cowering on the ground. Without moving, he scanned his eyes left and right, looking for Carter and Angelo. But neither of them was anywhere in sight.

Another voice said something from inside the hole, and the first man looked down. As soon as he did, two sets of hands grabbed Nick and yanked him into the darkness. He nearly screamed before realizing it was Carter and Angelo. Silently, the three of them edged a safe distance into the trees.

“There's some kind of room down there,” Carter whispered.

“No kidding,” Nick said. “I was standing right on top of it when the door opened.”

“It has to be where they keep the alien artifacts,” Angelo said. “It looks like they're getting ready to leave. Once they do, we'll check it out.”

One by one the workers emerged from the hole and headed back to the camp. Crouched in the bushes, the three boys waited. Nick kept glancing around behind him, sure a snake or a jaguar was about to attack.

When the generator shut off and the last man came out, Angelo stood up. “Let's go inside.”

Cupping their flashlights to keep from being seen, the boys hurried back to the metal door. Nick was afraid it might be locked, but when Carter tugged on the plate it lifted silently.

“Keep an eye out for alarms or traps,” Nick said.

“All over it,” Carter said. “I'm like James Bond.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “More like Mr. Bean.”

Carter climbed down a ladder into the hole, and a moment later, his voice floated up. “Dude, this is awesome!”

Angelo hurried inside with Nick close behind. As soon as he stepped off the ladder and saw what was in the room, Nick gasped. The space was about the size of a railroad car. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and every shelf was jammed full of vases, statues, cups, and jewelry of all shapes and sizes. There had to
be millions of dollars' worth of treasure down there.

Carter grabbed a heavy gold necklace and started to jam it into his pocket.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked, stopping him.

“What? They stole it from the pyramid. Which means stealing it from them isn't a crime.”

Nick held out his wrists as if they were handcuffed together. “Try telling that to the Mexican authorities when they discover you trying to sneak it past the airport customs.”

Carter frowned, but he put the necklace back.

Angelo was in the corner examining a metal bowl. He touched something in the bowl and sniffed his fingers. “I don't think they're stealing things. It looks like they've been testing the treasures for something. The smell is from incense—a key piece of many Mayan religious rituals.” He pointed his flashlight to a small book next to the bowl. “See how they're checking items in and out? It looks like they bring them here first, perform the ritual, then return them to camp.”

“The item of power?” Nick said.

“That would be my guess.” Angelo shined his light around the shelves. “I don't see any obvious alien artifacts. But some of this stuff clearly belonged to royalty. Look at this scepter, for example. If there
were
aliens,
their DNA has to be all over it.” He gave Nick a handful of swabs and small plastic bags. “Help me get these things swabbed. Do the most royal-looking ones first. Like that crown over there. I'll test this scepter. Make sure and write down what you tested on each bag before you put the swabs in.”

Carter picked up a long metal spear adorned with colorful feathers that were now mostly rotted away. “Me great hunter!”

“Don't touch that stuff,” Angelo said. “We don't want to contaminate the DNA any more than it already has been.”

By the time they were out of swabs, they had covered only a fraction of the items. “Should we go back and get more?” Nick asked.

Angelo tucked the baggies into his tester. “This is all I have. But there has to be some alien DNA on what we got.”

“Check this out,” Carter said, his voice echoing as if he had his head inside a metal pot. He stepped into the beam of Angelo's flashlight, his face hidden by a grotesque-looking demon mask. “How do I look?”

“Not much of a difference if you ask me,” Nick said.

“Shh,” Angelo hissed. He tilted his head, body tense. “Did you hear something?”

“You mean besides Carter?” Nick asked.

They waited for a moment before Angelo exhaled. “I thought I heard someone walking around out there. It was probably just the wind.”

At that second there was an audible click and Nick froze. Slowly, the handle under the door turned. Before any of the boys could react, the metal plate swung open and a beam of light shined down inside.