Unburdened and strangely energized by Sam’s words, Maggie increased her pace. They ran side by side, matching stride. Soon they were out of the village and onto the jungle path. Trees and whipping branches strove to slow them down, but they pushed onward, scratched and bloodied.
Denal was a few meters ahead of them, leaping and running naked through the woods.
“Make for the tunnel!” Sam called ahead.
“What tunnel?” Denal called back, almost tripping.
Maggie realized Denal had no memory of getting here. She yelled. “Just stick to the trail, Denal. It leads right to it!”
The boy increased his stride. Sam and Maggie struggled to follow. Behind them, they could hear the snap of branches and the yipping barks of the hunters.
Gasping, neither tried to speak any longer. Maggie’s vision narrowed to a pinpoint and, as she ran, her legs spasmed and cramped. She began to slow.
Sam’s arm was suddenly under her, pulling her along.
“No… Sam… go on.” But she was too weak even to fight him.
“Like hell I will.” He hauled her with him. The chase seemed endless. Maggie did not remember the trail being this long.
Then finally sunlight returned. The jungle fell behind them. Ahead, the black eye of the tunnel lay only a handful of meters ahead. Denal was already there, hovering at the entrance.
Sam half carried her up the short slope to the entrance. “Get inside!” he called to the boy.
Maggie glanced over her shoulder. Pale forms burst through the jungle foliage, ripping away clinging vines. Some loped on two legs, some ran on all fours.
“Get inside! Now, Denal!”
“I… I can’t!” the boy whined.
Maggie swung forward. Denal still crouched by the entrance. He would take a step toward the shadowed interior, then back away.
Sam and Maggie joined him. The Texan pushed her toward the tunnel. “Go!”
Maggie stumbled into the entrance, her vision so dimmed that the gloom of the tunnel was blinding. She twisted around to see Sam pull Denal into his arms.
The boy screeched like a butchered pig as Sam leaped into the tunnel beside her. Denal writhed and contorted in the man’s arms.
“What’s wrong with him?” Maggie asked, as she and Sam limped deeper down the throat of the tunnel.
Denal’s back arched in a tremored convulsion. “I think he’s having a seizure,” Sam said, holding the boy tight.
Behind them, the screeches of the beasts echoed up the passage. Maggie glanced over her shoulder. The beasts piled up at the entrance, twisted forms limned in the sunlight. But none entered. None dared pursue their escaping prey into the tunnel. “They won’t come in here,” Maggie muttered. She frowned as she swung around. Like Denal, she added silently.
Sam finally fell to his knees, exhausted, legs trembling. He laid Denal down. The boy’s eyes were rolled white, and a frothing saliva clung to his lips. He gurgled and choked.
“I don’t understand what’s the matter with him,” Sam said.
Maggie glanced back to the writhing mass of beasts at the tunnel’s opening. She slowly shook her head.
Finally, Denal coughed loudly. His body relaxed. Maggie reached toward the boy, thinking he was expiring. But when she touched him, Denal’s eyes rolled back. He stared at her, then sat up quickly, like coming out of a bad dream. “Que paso?” he asked in Spanish.
“I had to drag you inside,” Sam said. “What was wrong?”
Denal’s brows pinched together as he struggled back to English. “It would not let me come inside.”
“What wouldn’t?”
Denal pressed a finger against his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t know.”
Maggie suspected the answer. “It was the temple.”
Sam glanced over the boy’s head at her. “What?”
Maggie stood. “Let’s get out of here.”
Sam helped the boy up. They followed her as she slowly trudged back toward the distant exit. Ahead, the two torches that framed the golden alcove, the Incan’s Temple of the Sun, could be seen flickering from their notches in the wall.
As Maggie drew abreast of the cave, she slowed and stopped, studying the golden altar and the webbed mass of golden filaments above it.
Sam drew up to her, but his eyes were still cautiously watching their backtrail for any renewed sign of pursuit. He mumbled as he joined her, “If that was Incan Heaven back there, I hate to see their idea of Hell.”
Maggie nodded toward the golden temple. “I think it’s right here.”
Denal hung back, keeping as far from the shining room as possible.
Sam stepped beside her. “I know. It’s hard to believe the Incas would feed their children to those monsters.”
“No, Sam. You don’t understand. Those monsters are their children.” Maggie turned toward Sam. She ignored his incredulous look. She needed to voice her theory aloud. “They told us the temple takes their children, turns them into gods, and sends them to janan pacha.” Maggie pointed back toward where the last of the beasts still cavorted and whined at the entrance. “Those are the missing children.”
“How… why…?”
Maggie touched Sam’s shoulder. “As I tried to tell you before, I saw Pachacutec without his king’s robes. His body was hairless, pale, with no genitalia. His body looked just like one of those beasts. Like that big creature I shot. One of the pack’s leaders.”
Sam’s brows bunched; his eyes shone with disbelief. He glanced to the temple. “You’re saying that thing actually grew him a new body?”
“As well as it was able. As Sapa Inca or king, it gave him the body of a pack leader.”
“But that’s impossible.”
Maggie frowned. “As impossible as Norman’s healed knee?” she asked. “Or his repaired eyesight? Or his ability to suddenly communicate with the Incas? Think about it, Sam!” She nodded to the temple. “This thing is some biological regenerator. It’s kept the Incas alive for hundreds of years… it grew their leader a new body. But why? Why does it do that?”
Sam shook his head.
Maggie pointed once again toward the beastly caldera. “That’s the price for eternal life here. The children! It takes their offspring and… and I don’t know… maybe experiments with them. Who knows? But whatever the purpose, the temple is using the Incas’ children as biologic fodder. The villagers are no more than cattle in a reproductive experiment.”
“But what about Denal?” Sam asked.
She glanced to the boy. He was unchanged… mostly. She remembered his reluctance to enter the tunnel. “I think the temple needs more malleable material, earlier genetic cells, like from newborns. Denal was too old. So it did to him like it does to all its experiments. Once finished, it instilled some mental imperative to cross to the next caldera and implanted phobic blocks on returning. You saw Denal’s inability to enter here, just like the creatures’. I suspect those beasts we found at the necropolis two days ago had migrated from the caldera through other tunnels, perhaps looking for another way out, and became trapped down there. I think the beasts are allowed to go anywhere except into the villagers’ valley. That is forbidden.”
“But why?”
“Because the temple is protecting its investment from its own biologic waste products. It can’t risk some harm coming to its future source of raw genetic material. So it protects the villagers.”
“But if these creatures are a risk, why doesn’t it just destroy the experiments once it’s done with them? Why let them live?”
Maggie shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe the neighboring caldera is a part of the experiment, some natural testing ground for its creations. It monitors how they adapt and function in a real environment.”
“And what about the way they burn up when I stabbed them?”
“Spontaneous combustion. A fail-safe mechanism. Did you notice how Denal’s guards had spears made of the same gold? A blow from one of these weapons, even a scratch, must set off some energy cascade. It’s just another level of protection for the villagers.”
Sam stared at the temple, horror growing in his eyes. “It still sounds crazy. But considering what happened to Norman, I can’t deny that you might be right.” He turned to Maggie. “But, if so, why is the temple doing all this? What is its ultimate goal? Who built it?”
Maggie frowned. She had no answer. She began to shake her head when a new noise intruded into the tunnel.
… whump, whump, whump…
Sam and Maggie both turned toward the tunnel’s other end. It was coming from the valley beyond.
“C’mon,” Sam said excitedly. He led them at a fast clip toward the bright sunlight.
As they reached the end, squinting at the late morning’s glare, Sam pointed. “Look! It’s the cavalry!” Circling through the mists overhead was a dark shadow. As it descended farther, the green-black body of a military transport helicopter came into sight. “It’s Uncle Hank! Thank God!”
Maggie also sighed with relief. “I’ll be glad to get the professor’s take on all this.”
Sam put his arm around her. She didn’t resist.
Then deeper down in the valley, a new sound challenged the beat of the rotors. A more rapid thumping: drums! It seemed the Incas had also spotted the strange bird entering their valley. The sharp clangs of beaten gongs began to ring through the valley, strident and angry.
Maggie glanced at Sam. “War drums.”
Sam’s arm dropped from her shoulder; his grin faded. “I don’t understand. Norman should’ve warned the Incas not to fear the professor or the others.”
“Something must’ve gone wrong.”
Sam now wore a deep frown. “I’ve got to reach my uncle and warn him.” He began to lead the way down the steep switchbacks.
Below in the valley, the helicopter descended toward the flat field of quinoa planted at the jungle’s edge. The shafts of the plants were beaten flat by the rotor’s wash.