Chapter 17 #2
“Well, whoever made it, I think it must be a sign we’re headed in the right direction.” Avril glanced at her Sync, then pointed. “Just twenty meters that way and we should see the cave entrance.”
Galen redirected his team, and Nik and Nera joined in, hacking away. Suddenly, with no warning, a sheer wall of rock appeared. There were excited shouts, and then Nik spotted it.
“Look.” He pointed with his machete.
The cave entrance wasn’t large, and it was mostly obscured with vines, but it was definitely a cave.
Avril quivered with excitement. “That’s it. Get the vines cleared away.”
Another few minutes of hacking, and they stood at the entrance. Inside was filled with impenetrable darkness.
“Ion lights,” Galen called out.
The bright lights were flicked on.
Nik and Nera followed the security agents in. At first, there was still vegetation, but that soon gave way to a simple rock tunnel. Nik brushed at cobwebs hanging from the roof.
“Niklas.”
Nera’s voice had him looking at her. She nodded at the walls. He shone his light on them, and his breath caught.
They were incredibly faint, worn away by time, but there were images etched into the walls. He dusted one with his gloved hand. “Oh, my God, these…these are definitely Inca.” Damn, maybe they were on the right track to discover the Lost Inca Gold.
Shouts from ahead reached them. Nik and Nera hurried on. The tunnel widened out into a sizable cavern, not huge, but there was room enough for all the team members.
Solomon kicked at something on the ground. “This is not treasure.”
The cavern was empty.
There was no glint of gold. No rows of fabulous artifacts. Nik shook his head. Treasure hunting took time and effort. Expecting to find something incredibly valuable the first time you tried to achieve it was a surefire path to disappointment.
But he also knew it paid to look beneath the surface.
He circled the cavern. Avril’s shoulders were slumped and she was studying her Sync again, muttering to herself.
On closer inspection, the cavern wasn’t entirely devoid of items. It was filled with bones.
He crouched and studied the yellowed remains. Some were very old. He touched a nearby pile. And some were fresher, with rotting flesh and tendons still stuck to the bone.
“Something lives in here,” Nera murmured. She was standing with her hand on her laser pistol at her hip.
He agreed. He was pretty sure they didn’t want to be here when whatever it was returned.
He spied a skeleton sitting up against the cave wall.
It still had the tattered remnants of clothing hanging off it.
As he got closer, he realized the skeleton’s legs were missing.
He winced. Whatever had dragged the man in here, it had eaten his legs and left the rest of him intact.
Gruesome way to go. Alive as something ate your legs.
Then Nik spotted something else. His pulse tripped. There was an old leather satchel beside the skeleton’s remains.
He crouched and opened the bag. He pulled out a very old-fashioned, leather-bound journal. He opened it.
He stared in disbelief at the sketches and notations. “Oh, my God.”
Nera peered over his shoulder. “Oh, my God is right.”
“What did you find?” Avril and the others crowded around him.
Nik stared at the name on the page. “This was George Edwin Chapman. He was Blake’s partner, the one who never returned from the mountains.”
Solomon whistled. “Guess we know why.”
“This journal is filled with sketches of the treasure.” Nik touched the fragile pages. “They found it. He talks about the gold. We need to get this preserved before the pages deteriorate.” He gently flipped through to the last few entries. “Jesus.”
“What?” Avril asked.
Nik looked up and caught Nera’s gaze. “He said he found the treasure in a cavern near here, but then was attacked by a giant beast. It dragged him to its lair and…” Nik shook his head. “The diary entry ends there.”
Avril made an excited noise. “The treasure’s close by, we need—”
A low howl echoed down the tunnel and into the cavern.
All the security team spun, pulling their weapons.
“Whatever killed Chapman can’t still be alive,” Avril said.
“Perhaps.” Nik stood, tucking the journal into his backpack. “But its descendants could be.”
“Its mutated descendants,” Nera added.
“Let’s get out of here.” Galen waved them out of the cavern.
Nik hurried down the tunnel. As soon as their group stepped out of the cave and back into the jungle, he knew something was wrong.
Nera drew her sword and was scanning the jungle, tension radiating off her body.
“What is it?” he asked.
“No animal noises. No insects. No birds.”
It clicked. There was an unnatural silence around them.
“We need to go,” he urged Avril and the others.
The astro-archeologist nodded. “All right, let’s—”
Howls echoed through the trees.
“Zombies?” Solomon clutched his laser pistol.
Nera shook her head. “No. Animals. Headed this way.” She glanced at the group. “Run.”
They took off, stumbling over vines, leaping rotting logs. They stayed close to the cliff face, where the vegetation was thinner and it was easier to run.
“Should we climb again?” Niklas shouted at Nera.
She leaped a log, her arms pumping as she ran. She shook her head. “Not until we know if what we’re dealing with can climb.”
Damn, she was right. If it was some sort of cat, they could live in the damn trees.
Behind them, someone screamed.
Nik spun, and Nera did the same. They both sucked in sharp breaths.
A pack of mutated…cats—or they could be dogs—raced out of the forest. They were smaller, faster and more agile than the giant cats they’d faced before.
The pack pounced on a fallen security team agent.
They tore into the woman viciously, lifting bloody muzzles, their gazes fixated on the rest of the team.
“Run!” Nera yelled. “As fast as you can.”
The team was firing at the animals. Nera’s pistol whined, and Nik fired his own over his shoulder as he ran. “Hurry!”
The pack had abandoned their downed prey and was loping after the rest of them. Nik thought they moved like cats, with an elegant kind of grace, but they were hunting like a pack of dogs. They just looked like beasts from hell. Tough, leathery skin, misshapen bodies, and wide, teeth-filled jaws.
Nik pushed for more speed. If they could get back to the ship…
The ground suddenly disappeared beneath him.
He plummeted down a steep slope, and a second later, Nera tumbled into him.
They slammed into the muddy ground, the air rushing out of his lungs.
Damn, it was a hard landing. Nera’s legs were tangled with his.
She sat up, looking a bit dazed. A second later, Galen fell in after them. Nik looked around.
They were in a deep, steep-sided hole.
A clearly man-made hole.
Nik pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn. It was some kind of trap.
Outside, he heard the shouts of the others, and realized they’d fallen into similar traps.
A long, drawn-out whistle sounded.
The creatures appeared above, sniffing the edge. They looked less crazed now, tongues lolling.
“They herded us into the traps,” Nera said.
Nik gave a short nod. “I think so.”
“What?” Galen said. “Who?”
Another sharp whistle and the beasts retreated.
What now? Nik stared upward.
A face appeared at the rim, peering over at them.
A man. His head was devoid of hair but covered in dark tattoos.
He wore some sort of leather top, and more primal tattoos twined around his muscled arms. He studied them for a moment, then looked back over his shoulder.
He called out something in a language Nik’s high-tech lingual implant didn’t recognize.
The man pulled back and disappeared.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say we’re well and truly fucked,” Galen said.
Nik kicked at the ground. “Yeah, you could say that.”