Dustin Thomason - 12.21

There would be no more argument. Jaguar Imix’s power emanates from his ability to communicate with the gods, and each member of the council enjoys rank according to their own abilities to summon the voices of these gods. This we call the hierarchy of divinity. If Jaguar Imix should hear the voice of a god decree that something is most true, and one of his minions should not hear this voice, he shall be considered a man who cannot speak with the gods. His rank in the hierarchy of divinity shall be lowered or stripped from him altogether.

But where will enough water and wood and plumage come from to build a pyramid thirty men high, as it is ordained?

His holiness claims the rain will come in five periods of thirteen days, when the evening star falls nearer to the moon. But will it?

Jaguar Imix would drink the entirety of the water stores if so much water could flow through him and sanctify him, for he believes that his sanctification is the route to our salvation. No royal king of Kanuataba divined by the gods can be evil—I have seen it myself on the stone inscriptions. But his holiness is incapable of admitting to fault. Jaguar Imix believes his power is as strong as the fear he can instill in the hearts of men.

How I wish I could still worship him as I did when I was a boy!

We of the council left the gallery and walked to the great steps atop the royal palace, where I stood and witnessed something to forever change what I believe.

The people outside the palace were chanting, and the blue-painted executioners were standing atop the south twin tower, beginning their rituals. The noise came and went, up and down, high and low. The voices of the royal executioners rose to a near-deafening pitch as the plaza came into my sights.

A small, aristocratic crowd stood at the base of the twin pyramid of white, along the north face, and clapping echoed throughout the plaza. The yellow, red, and gold paints that adorn the face of the great pyramid shimmered like the sun on a sea of blue, undulating as if the great beast that lives on the ocean floor had risen. The blue-painted men were at the top of the three hundred sixty-five steps, some holding censers bubbling with smoke.

The grand executioner spoke:

—This soul is commanded to the overworld by the Lord Akabalam!—

Akabalam, once more. The unknown god has demanded sacrifice again, this time in the form of a man’s soul!

When the grand executioner plunged his glistening flint knife into the man’s chest and ripped open his ribs, the man on the altar let out a wail that will forever ring in my ears. Through the cry that the man exhaled, the grand executioner reached into his body to pull out his heart. And the dying man’s words were heard by those of us above the fray, and they were an omen of things to come, as black as the end of the thirteenth cycle:

—Akabalam is falsehood!—

I knew whose voice it was. Auxila, my friend, trusted adviser to the king for three thousand suns, had been sacrificed. Ringing filled my ears. I watched his corpse go lifeless, and everywhere I saw omens in the clouds.

The gods called for such a sacrifi ce of a high noble not more than once in fifteen thousand suns. What chance was there the gods had ordained such a sacrifice five days after Auxila spoke out against the plans of the king?

Beyond the reaches of the noisy crowd I saw Auxila’s wife, Haniba, standing without tears and watching the executioners encircle the corpse once more, and my heart wept for her and for their children, Flamed Plume and One Butterfl y, who stood beside her, weeping.

The bloody priests brought Auxila’s corpse back into the recesses of the temple, an unusual handling of a body. It is honorable to throw it down the steps of the great pyramid, but they would not even do Auxila this small justice. They took the body from sight, and I knew they would not emerge again until the blackest of night, as the evening star reached the perfect angle with the temple.

Atop the steps of the royal palace, the perch from which I took in this madness, I felt a hand grasp the back of my knee. I turned and found the dwarf Jacomo, who had crept up beside me, chewing on the same mangled bark piece and smiling.

He spoke:

—Exalted is the name of Jaguar Imix, holy ruler of Kanuataba, whose wisdom guides us through this life. Do you exalt him, Paktul?—

I wanted so much to strike the dwarf right there, but I am not a man of violence. I merely echoed his praise:

—Exalted is the name of Jaguar Imix, holy ruler of Kanuataba, whose wisdom guides us through this life.—

Not until I returned to this cave to begin painting the pages of this secret book did I let go of the scream inside me. It was a scream for none but the gods to hear.

What am I to understand of a god who’d come with no blessings, who would ordain a temple we cannot build and command the death of a man most loyal to the king! Who is this mighty and mysterious new god called Akabalam?

THE 10 FREEWAY WAS SHUT DOWN NEAR CLOVERFIELD SO THAT the National Guard could transport shipments of supplies and food to the west side. Stanton took the side streets, passing abandoned strip malls, elementary schools, and auto-body shops. Traffic moved slowly despite the few cars on the road, with National Guard checkpoints almost every mile. The governor of California had accepted Cavanagh and Stanton’s controversial plan and signed an emergency-powers act, enacting the first citywide quarantine in U.S. history.

The boundaries had been secured by the National Guard: from the San Fernando Valley in the north, east into the San Gabriel, south into Orange County, and west to the ocean. No planes were allowed out of the airports, and the coast guard had deployed nearly two hundred boats to secure the port and coastline. So far most Angelenos had reacted to the quarantine with a calm and cooperation that surprised even the most optimistic in Sacramento and Washington.

Beyond the quarantine, the CDC was testing people who’d visited L.A. or residents who’d traveled out in the last week. They checked manifestos for every plane that left any L.A. airport recently, hunted down Amtrak travelers through credit-card receipts, and tracked many of those who went by road by toll-booth passes and license-plate snapshots. Thus far they’d found eight cases in New York, four in Chicago, and three in Detroit, in addition to the nearly eleven hundred people now sick with VFI inside the Southland.

Stanton saw devastating patterns as the number of infected grew. All he and the other doctors could do was try to keep patients comfortable. For most victims, partial insomnia and sweating began after a brief latent period, then seizures and fevers and total insomnia followed. Those who’d been awake for three days or more were hardest to watch. They began to have delusions and panic attacks, then the hallucinations and violent outbursts Volcy and Gutierrez had shown. Death was likely within a week. Nearly twenty of the infected had already succumbed.

The sight of camouflage Humvees, and men and women in tan uniforms carrying machine guns on Lincoln Boulevard, was deeply unsettling. Stanton waited to show his ID in a line of cars on his way back to Venice. He glanced down at his phone, to the newest list of names of infected patients. The victims spanned every ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and nearly every age. Glasses had protected some, but plenty who wore them had been infected. The only groups immune to VFI seemed to be blind people, whose optic nerves were severed from their brains, and newborns. The optic nerves were undeveloped in babies, and until the sheath surrounding them matured, the disease couldn’t make its way into the brain. That protection wouldn’t last beyond six months, so it gave him little solace.