The Mayan Apocalypse (2 page)

A
ndrew Morgan never rushed anywhere. Not anymore. In high school and college, he had been so impatient that he jogged across campus to whatever place he needed to be at next. When he drove, he drove fast, as if he didn't want to waste one moment of his life.

He read fast, he spoke fast, and once he became an executive in his father's oil business, he conducted meetings fast. He was a race car with only one pedal-to-the-metal speed.

The day he learned of the plane crash that took his wife and son, Morgan slowed. At first, he dawdled because he didn't want to face life. Why get out of bed? What reason was there to answer the phone? Morgan Natural Energy had the best executive team in the business, men and women smarter than he and more conscientious. If he never stepped foot in his CEO's office again, the firm would continue to grow and pay hefty dividends to investors and stockholders.

It took less than a day for him to realize he was unneeded: no wife to love and support and no son to guide. The rushing whitewater river that had been his life had declined to a slow-moving, muddy, polluted creek.

Morgan hadn't decided to slow his pace. His grief and confusion had shackled his legs and thickened the air around him so much that it pressed him down.

The Tinsel Town Theater displayed art deco on the outside, as was popular for theaters of this age.

Just as Morgan laid a hand on the angular door pulls, a woman
stepped to his side. Without thinking, he opened the glass doors and moved aside to let the woman in. She was rushing. Like Morgan, she was five minutes late.

“Thank you.” The words came without a smile.

“My pleasure.” He followed her through the doors.

The woman was, he judged, five-foot-six, slim, and well-dressed in a tan pantsuit with a bright, decorative scarf. She had shoulder-length auburn hair that bounced as she walked. She wore bone-colored flats. The shoes indicated she was a sensible woman who cared more about the condition of her feet than how shoes made her legs look.

The lobby was empty except for two beefy men with arms the size of redwoods who paced the worn carpet. Morgan recognized security when he saw it.

Pale colors accented the geometric shapes on the walls and ceiling. The carpet, which had to be decades old, proudly displayed its faded designs. At one time, the colors must have been bright. Now, they were difficult to distinguish from the beige background. Although the snack bar was closed, the place smelled like popcorn.

The woman fast-stepped to the doors. Morgan followed a few feet behind. Soft New Age music wafted from the theater.

Just over the threshold stood a teenage blonde holding a thin stack of folded paper. He saw her hand one to the impatient woman. Then, spying him, she held one out for Morgan to take. He took the program.

“You're just in time.” The blonde sounded as if she'd been taking in helium. “These are the last two seats.” She motioned to movie-style chairs in the last row and next to the aisle. “No one is allowed in once the program starts.”

The woman slipped into the first chair, saw Morgan sanding there, and moved over one spot. He smiled and lowered himself into a seat a thousand other fannies had used over the years. The cushion had lost the ability to cushion long ago. A chunk of plywood would have been more comfortable.

He glanced at the woman and saw a lovely face with bright, blue
eyes and a serious expression. He knew better than to ask, so he guessed: mid-thirties. Her face, her body, and her confidence were everything necessary to attract a man. The ring finger of her left hand was naked. So why didn't that matter to him? His marriage had been a happy one, and he had been a faithful husband: no dalliances, no flirtations, no liaisons, no affairs. Other women didn't tempt him. In those moments, when he was especially honest with himself, he'd admit to allowing his gaze to linger on the form and faces of other women, but he likened it to admiring art.

That was then. He was a widower now. He had the right to pursue romantic interest. And yet he never did. He felt no inclination to start.

He watched as the woman rifled through her purse until she found what she had been searching for: an identification badge hanging on the end of a neck strap. She slipped it over her head. First, Morgan noticed P
RESS
/M
EDIA
emblazoned in large red letters across the top of the plastic card. Just below that, he saw a photo of the woman and the name L
ISA
C
AMPBELL
.

“It looks like we just made it, Lisa.” Morgan paused a half second. “May I call you Lisa?”

“How do you know my…” She pursed her lips. “My press pass. Of course.”

“I'm Andrew Morgan.” He held out his hand, which she shook.

“As you've already surmised, I'm Lisa Campbell. I'm with—”

“The media.” The words came out harsher than Morgan intended.

“I take it you don't like the press.” She turned her eyes forward.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to…” He sighed, then smiled. “I've had a couple of bad experiences.”

“With reporters? So you've been in the news.” She returned her gaze to study his face. “Your name is familiar. Why?”

It was his turn to look away. “So you're covering the UFO festival?”

“An evasive change of subject. You
have
dealt with reporters before. To answer your question, yes and no.”

Morgan chuckled. “Now who's being evasive?”

“I'm not trying to be. I'm not covering the UFO junk. I'm here to cover this meeting.” A second later, she added, “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called it UFO junk.”

“Doesn't bother me. It is junk. At least most of it. Like you, I'm here to hear what Robert Quetzal has to say.”

She nodded and started to speak, but then the lights lowered. Morgan looked over the heads of several hundred people to the front of the theater. The movie screen had been raised so the area behind it could be used as a stage. Another screen—the rear projection, Morgan assumed—hung at the back of the platform. A pair of high-backed, red-leather chairs faced each other and had been angled so people in the theater would be able to see the faces of those who sat in the chairs. Next to the chairs were end tables, each with a glass and a pitcher of water.

The audience applauded as the lights grew low. Their wait was just about over.

The stage lights grew brighter, and a man in a three-piece suit stepped on the platform. Morgan had seen pictures of Robert Quetzal, and this man wasn't him. The man on the stage was painfully thin, his cheeks drawn. His suit hung on him as it would on a closet hanger.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Charles Balfour, executive assistant to Robert Quetzal, prophet and priest.” He paused to allow applause. “It is my daily pleasure to travel with Mr. Quetzal and help him share the ancient and contemporary message. It is a message at which many scoff, but we know the truth. The world as we know it is coming to an end.”

Morgan glanced at Lisa in time to see her shake her head in disgust. He concluded she wasn't a believer.

Balfour continued. “
You
know the world will end in 2012, and
I
know it. Because of that we know, we'll survive while others… don't. But enough of me. You came to hear wisdom from the one who carries the knowledge of ancient times.” Again he paused, this
time raising his left hand and pointing to the right side of the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Quetzal, final and exalted Mayan priest.”

The crowd shot to its feet. The applause was nearly deafening. Music poured from the wall-mounted speakers. It reminded Morgan of Native American songs. The drumbeat vibrated his bones.

Standing, Morgan looked over the heads of the others and watched as a man in a charcoal gray suit walked onstage. His hair was long, raven-black, and hung down his back in a ponytail. He had shoulders as wide as a linebacker's and stood six-foot-six. His skin was the color of pale leather. The references to Quetzal being the last Mayan priest made Morgan expect a serpent headdress. Instead, he was looking at a man who could have sat in one of the seats of his boardroom.

A video camera zoomed in on the man, and his image was projected on the screen behind him. Morgan saw a pin on the man's lapel: the snake god Quetzalcoatl and two feathers.

Quetzal placed an open hand over his chest and bowed deeply, an action he repeated several times. He did nothing to stop the applause. Morgan imagined the man enjoyed the adulation, and why not? If he was right, he deserved it.

“Welcome, my friends. Welcome.” Quetzal's rich baritone thundered from the speakers. “Welcome to the end of the world…Welcome to the
beginning
of the world.”

“Oh, brother,” Lisa said. Morgan looked at her. Lisa didn't look back.

Morgan had insisted. It went against every desire, severed every fiber of logic and reason. Still, he went.

The southern part of Utah was barren, desolate, devoid of important life. Just like Morgan. The Jeep pulled to a stop fifty yards from
the charred remains of what had once been a 2009 Falcon 200EX corporate jet. The once sleek-white aircraft rested in a crater of its own making. Jet fuel had fed the fire that turned the aircraft from a flying object of art to a scorched hulk of twisted, blackened metal. It had also reduced the bodies of his wife, son, and the plane's crew to burned bone. Authorities had removed the bodies the day before and sent them to the nearest coroner to determine the official cause of death. Not much work involved there.

Morgan had already made arrangements to have the remains moved to the cemetery where his mother and father were buried. Marybeth and Hunter would be entombed in the family mausoleum. When news of the death reached Morgan's town news service, friends and acquaintances began to call. Pastor Johansson of Berkley Street Baptist Church had been one of the callers. Berkley Baptist was the church Hunter had taken an interest in. For the last six months, he had been attending services and activities for youth.

“Are you sure about this?” Ranger Reid Tasker sat in the driver's seat of the Jeep. “I don't see how this can help you.”

“You say that as if it matters.” Morgan released his safety belt and popped open the passenger door. Tasker sighed and followed suit. Together, the men traversed the red soil and rocks of the desert area, Morgan's boots pressing rocks into the sandy soil. He kept his head down. As they neared the wreckage, Morgan could see signs of previous activities. The parched ground had held the images of boot prints and tire tracks in place as if waiting for his arrival.

He and Tasker walked over a circular area blown free of loose dirt and sand.
Helicopter landing area
.

Morgan continued forward, ignoring the nagging plea deep in his gut to turn around. He had already seen too much to be able to forget.

A yellow caution ribbon attached to wood stakes surrounded the aircraft carcass and the crater. Morgan stepped beneath it.

“Hey, Mr. Morgan, this is a crime scene. I can't let you walk around—”

“Try to stop me.”

Tasker didn't. He slipped beneath the legal barrier and joined Morgan as he stood by the airplane. The craft had hit with such force that the tail section had compressed in on the cabin area like an accordion. The sides of the cabin had split apart like the husk on an overripe watermelon.

Morgan had always been good at math. He wished that wasn't true. An image—garish, brutal, and impossible to scrub from his brain—rose to the surface of his consciousness: the faces of his wife and son as they watched the ground five miles below racing toward them. Dying was unfair; to know you're about to die and have time to think about it was soul-scorchingly cruel.

He closed his eyes. The tears burned.

His ears filled with the whine and roar of seizing engines—the banshee scream of wind rushing past metal hull.