Matt Reilly Stories (15 page)

MATCHES
3 PREVIOUSLY MAPPED IMAGES:

1.
WARRIOR'S NOSE ORNAMENT (62.3%)

2.
TREE (41.0%)

3.
WATER BUFFALO (34.9%)

'Warrior's
nose ornament,' Chase thought aloud. She turned to Kenny. 'Could be a societal
hierarchy.'

She
arranged the tablets based on the faces they represented-warriors, laymen, children
sliding them into the slots in the shiny black floor. The raised + sign in each
slot fitted into each tablet perfectly, like keys.

The
only problem was, Chase was wrong.

THE
PRICE OF FAILURE

The
last tablet slid into place and, instantly, Chase saw movement out of the
corner of her eye.              She leapt backwards, away from the doorway.

It
was lucky she did so.

In
a flashing nanosecond, two large square slabs of shiny black obsidian came
shooting
inwards from the walls on either side of her-twin piledrivers-and
banged
together like a pair of gigantic cymbals in precisely the spot where
her head had just been!

But
it wasn't over yet.

The
black stone floor beneath Chase dropped away-a trap door-and she fe ll,
screaming, into blackness.

She
fell fast, before--
whack!
--her buddy rope to Kenny snapped taut. Kenny
was almost yanked into the square hole after her but he just managed to garner
a foothold, bringing Chase to an abrupt jolting halt.

An
inch in time.

In
the dim lamp-light that filtered in from the trap door above her, she saw a
glistening forest of golden spikes just below her feet.

And
impaled on them: a bloodied broken body, shot through with spikes. Chase saw
the wide-eyed look of horror on the victim's face--And then she recognised the
face.

It
was Hans Ziegler.

Professor
Hans Ziegler. Her old heiroglyphics professor from the University of WA. The man
who had taught her everything she knew.

The
man Haynes had asked her about before…

The
realisation hit Chase like a hammer blow.

Haynes
had brought Ziegler here before her
.

And
it appeared that Ziegler, the esteemed professor, hadn't been able to decipher
the tablets either.

And
then a stark image entered Jessica Chase's mind. An image of something she had
seen earlier, a sentence scrawled on the whiteboard upstairs.

'7
MEN LOST: 4 WOUNDED, 3 DEAD…1 BEING A CIVILIAN.'

One
being a civilian
.

Jesus.

THE
SECOND TRY

The
Delta men hauled Chase out of the square hole a moment before it reset itself.

'Are
you okay?' Kenny asked.

But
Chase was already striding back over to the tablets in the floor.

'
Damn it
,' she said to herself. '
Stupid. It isn't a face at all
.'

She
set the tablets in a new order before anybody could even think to stop her. If
she was wrong this time, she was dead. She lay the tablets in the following
order:

The
last tablet slotted into place.

There
was no cymbal-clash this time.

No
dropping of the trap door beneath her.

Chase
smiled.

It
hadn't been a face.

It
had been far simpler than that. It had been a glimpse of nature, a glimpse of
life
: the horizon underneath the sun and the moon; then the planting of a
seed; then the seed being affected by changing weather, the sun and the rain;
then the growth of a tree amid that changing weather; then finally, in the
fifth and last tablet, the finished tree, standing in the original constant environment.

Life.

There
came a low rumbling from within the pyramid, and then, with grave slowness, the
obsidian doorstone slid smoothly and gently down into the floor, revealing a
wall of murky blackness beyond it.

A
GLIMPSE OF THE PRIZE

Chase
just stared into the darkness beyond the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the low
light.

And
then, like a veil being lifted, she saw it.

'Holy
sh--' she breathed, at exactly the same moment as someone grabbed her roughly
from behind and tore her eyes away from the sight.

EXPELLED
FROM THE GARDEN

Haynes'
demeanour changed instantly.

'Coleman,
Reiger,' he said to two of his men. 'Take Doctors Chase and George Opoulous back
to that spiked pit upstairs and throw them in. We won't be needing them
anymore.'

'
What!
' Chase said as a pair of flex cuffs--a thick plastic strip not
unlike the plastic tie one puts around a garbage bag--were snapped into place
around her wrists. Kenny was similarly cuffed.

Chase
turned to Breslin. He just shrugged.

'I'm
sorry, Jessica, but my bargain with General Haynes requires secrecy--absolute
secrecy.

Which
unfortunately means that you and Doctor Georgeopoulous can never be allowed to leave
this mine alive.'

Chase
was speechless.

Kenny's
mouth just hung open.

They
were marched down the steps of the pyramid, flanked by two armed Delta commandos.

'What
the hell did you see in there?' Kenny asked.

Chase
recalled the image she had seen. She'd never forget it.

She'd
seen a pedestal in a dark stone room. And on that pedestal stood a glorious
silver ornament cut in the shape of an isosceles triangle.

'It
was the Visitor's Stone,' she said.

THE
BEGINNING OF THE END

Suddenly,
things began to make sense.

Leonard
Breslin--multi-billionaire, close friend to the President, sponsor of
archaeological digs all over the globe. What would someone like Breslin want
more than anything?

The
ability to stay alive indefinitely.

And
the US Go vernment?

No
doubt, only a small elite knew about the discovery of this mine. A small elite—including
Breslin, the President, Haynes, and maybe a few others--who would share the
power of the Stone, and make a killing doing so.

As
Chase was led back over the moat, she turned to look at the enormous
underground pyramid.

She
saw the military men up on the obsidian tier--saw four of the Delta soldiers,
led by Kowalski, enter the pyramid.

'Greedy
bastards.'

She
reached the archway, beheld the square floorstones of the tunnel beyond it--the
tunnel featuring the shadowed honeycombed ceiling.

She
remembered the key to this tunnel. Don't step on the front edge of the square floorstones.

The
front edge
…

And
then it hit her.

NOT
A MINE

Memories
of the mine and its booby traps shot through her brain at high speed.           The
well-shaft near the surface--perfectly sheer, with no fingerholds. Odd for a
mine.

The
piledriver near the well-shaft--it came down only when you stepped
on
the wide trigger stone.

The
trap-door in the ultra-narrow passageway--it had only operated, after a
momentary delay, when Kowalski had touched a floor panel at it
innermost
end.

And
this tunnel--its traps went off only when you touched the edge of the
floorstones that was nearer to the main cavern.

'Oh
no…'

Chase
turned to see one of the Delta men emerge from the pyramid, holding the
Visitor's Stone in a clear-plastic specimen jar. He handed it over to Breslin.

'Kenny,
get ready to run.'

'What?
Why?'

'Because
this mine isn't a mine. It's a vault. My guess, a converted prison--Xutu
prison, most likely--that was converted into a resting place for the Stone. And
remember what guarded Xutu's lower levels--'

'How
do you know?'

'Because
the booby traps have been going off
behind
us as we've moved inward.
Kenny, those traps aren't designed to keep intruders
out
. They're
designed to keep someone—or something--
in
.'

Just
then, as if right on cue, there came a shrill, ear-piercing scream from the
obsidian tier.

It
came from inside the open doorway, and was followed by a short burst of
automatic gunfire which stopped almost as soon as it had begun.

Then
suddenly--
shockingly
--a ragged round object came tumbling out of the
pyramid's doorway, bouncing end-over-end like a soccer ball.

It
rolled right past Haynes and Breslin before it thudded clumsily down the stairs
behind them.

Chase
and Kenny saw it clearly, and their blood went cold.

It
was a severed human head.

It
was Tank Kowalski's head.

'I
think this is going to be painful,' Chase said.

She
was right.

WHEN
ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE

The
creatures came storming out of the pyramid's dark obsidian entryway like bats
out of hell.

They
moved like lightning, propelling themselves forward off powerful hind limbs
while grabbing onto the floor in front of them with clawed forelimbs-a method
of movement that was part-kangaroo, part-gorilla.

They
were big, too--man-sized--and hairy, covered in black-brown fur, that spiky
brackish fur of rodents the world over.

But
it was their heads that provided the most frightening image. Evil black eyes
glared down sneering weasel-like noses. And their teeth--all canines and
carnassials—betrayed seriously carnivorous intentions.

They
honestly looked like a cross between rats and velociraptors.

Rodentus
carnifex
.

The
Central American giant rodent.

And
the guardians of the lower levels of the legendary Xutu prison.

The
first creature to emerge from the obsidian entryway launched itself at Haynes.
It clasped its thumbed foreclaws around his skull and sank its teeth deep into
his throat, cracking his neck with one horrific bite.

Blood
sprayed everywhere.

RUN
FOR YOUR LIFE

From
their position over by the archway, Chase and Kenny didn't have time to ask
stupid        questions like
how the hell does something like that survive
for over a thousand years inside a subterranean pyramid
?

They
just stared in stunned silence as the creatures--dozens of them, hordes of them—burst
forth from the ancient structure en masse, like demons set free from the bowels
of the earth.

They
could see Leonard Breslin and the three Delta soldiers who had been up on the obsidian
tier dashing down the stairs on the side of the pyramid, heading for the bridge
over the moat, closely followed by the army of hairy black monsters.

One
of the Delta men tripped and fell, and a cluster of the creatures fell upon
him. He screamed, but only briefly.

Two
creatures, however, actually
overtook
Breslin's group.

They
had seen Chase's gang standing in the archway, and had taken it upon themselves
to go after them.