Chapter Eighteen
Bats!
Thousands of them, she says.
Yikes.
I know that bats are good little bug eaters and beneficial for the environment, helping to pollinate plants and spreading seeds here, there, and everywhere, keeping the jungle healthy and all that.
But thousands of them?
All hanging upside down somewhere inside that dark tomb, or jail, or guard shack—whatever the damned ruin is?
That’s a shitload of guano!
“ ‘A shitload of guano,’ ” Daisy read aloud from over Quint’s shoulder. She chuckled and parked next to him on the rock he was currently helping gravity keep in place.
Structure I in all its rubble-littered glory sat behind him, half-shaded under the jungle canopy.
Across the old Maya road in front of him and up a short ways, the pile of skulls were being warmed by a ray of sunshine.
The empty eye sockets and missing jaws left them unable to see or speak any evil as they waited for Mother Nature to knock them asunder or Father Time to crush them under the weight of centuries.
There were still no clues to their origin. No explanation for their present placement. No evidence to help form educated guesses about their owners’ lives or deaths.
Were they the remains of sacrificial victims?
Trophies taken from losers of a battle? Multiple battles?
The leftovers of plundered graves?
Who in the hell had stacked them there? A vindictive enemy? A macabre zealot? A weary survivor of a catastrophic plague?
Or had the stack been built later by looters who were just being assholes?
Maybe the thieves wanted to scare off any others who might come looking for jade artifacts.
To keep them from finding a hoard tucked away behind the wall.
Had they missed the weapons caches and the conch-shell trumpets in their haste?
The dagger KuTu claimed had been used for reincarnation?
“I’m so glad you’re here to help,” Daisy said, bringing him back to the moment at hand—a hot rock, biting flies and buzzy gnats, and barking spider monkeys in the nearby trees.
“That makes one of us,” he joked with a wink. “Should we take a vote from the loudmouths overhead to see if they feel the same?”
Her laughter was mostly drowned out by the shrill call of a bird somewhere close by.
“You’re a good egg, Quint, and you carry smiles in your pocket to share all around.” She pointed up at the dark clouds that seemed to be waiting for the right moment to rain down havoc. “Even when it looks like the sky might fall on our heads.”
He closed his notebook and set it aside. “Well, Chicken Little, they were out of lollipops at the store and smiles were half off, so I bought the whole kit and cock-a-doodle.”
Her grin widened. “I say, I say, boy,” she said with a Southern drawl, imitating the old blustery cartoon rooster, Foghorn Leghorn. “That is certainly something worth crowing about.”
He grinned back. “I sort of feel like you’re egging me on here, my fowl friend.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh? Am I ruffling your tail feathers?”
“Not this morning. I’m way too hot and sweaty to be cock of the walk, especially since there’s nobody here but us chickens.”
Daisy snorted and then squawked with laughter, covering her mouth, making Quint chuckle along with her.
“Knock off the laughing, you two!” Pedro called from where he and Fernando were clearing the vegetation on the other side of Structure I, in between sorting through the rubble remains.
He tossed a handful of branches on the growing pile of scrub brush, saplings, and other forest detritus that Raul said the local rangers would burn during the rainy season—or smolder would be more like it.
“Stop having fun while I’m sweating over here, watching Fernando work so hard. ”
Quint waved at him. “How about you flap your wings back to Cancun and bring us some cold cervezas for supper, flyboy?”
“No drinks for you, blue Bunyan.” Pedro picked up several more branches.
“Not until you find some big treasure that wins us a trip out of here.” He tossed those branches on the pile, too.
“Now come over here and lift some rocks for us, show off your big muscles to the scorpions and cockroaches hiding underneath.”
Quint shook his head. “No can do. I’m saving my big muscles to show off to the boss lady when she gets here.”
He bent forward and peered up the old road, looking for Angélica’s auburn hair or Juan’s sunhat, but there was still no sign of either García. What was taking them so long?
After breakfast, Angélica and her father had left with Teodoro to check on Fernel and get some pain medicine for Juan—his ankle remained a little swollen this morning.
Angélica had tried to convince her father to stay back at camp today and rest, but he’d refused, saying that he would not let his daughter go inside any ruins without him.
“I sure wish Pedro and Fernando were going to be joining us on the other side of the wall today,” Daisy said, watching the two men work.
“Why is that?”
She shrugged. “The more the merrier, especially when it comes to going over that wall.”
Quint agreed, but with Fernel recovering from yesterday’s bite-fest, Pedro needed to stay close to camp in case he had to fly the archaeologist to the hospital in Cancun.
Per Teodoro’s latest report on Fernel, the geoarchaeologist was improving, but it was best to keep him at camp under the shaman’s watch for the day.
With Pedro and Fernando staying busy on the outside of the wall, that left Bronko, KuTu, and Raul to join the rest of them near the center of Site 5. Oh, and Esteban, of course, whom Angélica planned on having work on stone rubbings outside of the bat-hotel while she dug deeper on the inside.
“Are you helping Esteban today with his charcoal masterpieces?” Quint asked Daisy. “Or will you be going inside to hang with the bats, same as the rest of us?”
“I don’t know for sure. Angélica told me that she wants me there today with you all, but she didn’t specify what I’d be doing.”
“Well, you are the best finder at the site, so maybe she’s hoping you’ll work your magic and pull another glyph-covered artifact out of thin air.”
Or it could be that Angélica wanted Daisy to be there as a channeler, in case her mom needed to come forth and warn her about anything.
Either way, Quint was glad to have Daisy along. Something about having her near felt comforting in a way he couldn’t explain. Like a good luck charm.
He glanced down at the ring he was wearing, the one his aunt Zoe had sent to help him. Might as well try to stack the odds in their favor before they crossed to the other side of that wall. Maybe there was a patch of four-leaf clovers nearby he could roll around in.
“The jungle speaks to me,” Daisy said. “Because I know how to listen.”
Something about those words sounded familiar. “Where have I heard that before?”
“It’s a Rudyard Kipling quote. My kids were big fans of The Jungle Book.”
“The actual book or movie?”
“Both, but mostly the old cartoon movie. Baloo was one of their favorites.”
He grinned. “Mine, too.”
“I was a fan of King Louie, even though he wasn’t in the actual book.
Louis Prima’s singing makes me want to jump up and dance around.
” She stood and pretended to walk and bounce about like King Louie had in the movie, making monkey noises while hopping and clapping.
“Bring me that red flower, Man-cub,” she said in a deeper voice.
Quint laughed. “You are definitely the jungle VIP.”
The spider monkeys in the trees overhead barked and shook the branches, showering them with leaves.
“Hey, King Louie,” Pedro called when the commotion died down, looking their way with a banana-sized grin. “Stop monkeyin’ around. You’re riling up your followers.” He pointed up at the canopy.
Daisy returned to their rock, winded. “Whew! Being a monkey is hard work.” She pulled a handkerchief from her back pocket. “What do you think is in store for us today?”
He shrugged. “Knowing Angélica, she’s going to want to go inside the structure full of all those bats.”
“Right, the one Juan was telling us about at supper,” Daisy said, nodding with a smile. “He’s pretty excited about it, too. When he walked me to my tent last night, he said he’d have gone inside if Angélica hadn’t made a promise to you to stay out until you were there with them.”
Quint shrugged. “Lucky for him I did, or he’d have been front and center for bat-a-palooza.”
Even though Angélica had told him about not going inside in spite of her dad’s insistence, this additional confirmation that she’d followed through on her promise to wait for him had Quint’s heart bebopping like King Louie and his primate pals.
Not exploring the ruin had to have been tough, what with her curiosity about this site keeping her up at night, not to mention the added pressure since talking with her mom.
The need to find something soon that would let them all go home early while keeping her job safe from poachers undoubtedly henpecked her waking moments.
Daisy dabbed at her neck. “Did you take a peek inside yesterday when you were there?”
“There was no time for that. Fernel was attacked by the local buzz crowd almost instantly.”
She stopped mid-dab. “Does that seem weird to you? The bugs attacking only him?”
“About as weird as the huge wall built around this site.”
“Right. And the stack of skulls piled neatly next to it.”
Quint shuddered. “Watching Fernel swell up by the minute yesterday as Pedro and I rushed him back to camp had me slathering on Teodoro’s anti-bug goop extra thick this morning.
” He sniffed in her direction, picking up the scent of lemons and eucalyptus oil.
“I smell your patented bug repellent, too.”