Matthew Reilly: Temple

Thirty minutes later, thanks to a conveniently placed stretch of river nearby, Race was back on board the Goose with the others, soaring through the clear afternoon sky high above the rainforest. He rested his head against the cockpit window, stared vacantly through it as they flew. He was absolutely exhausted. Beside him, Doogie said, ‘You know what I think, Professor, I think it’s high time we got the hell out of this damned country. What do you think?’

“Race turned to face him. “No, Doogie. Not yet. There’s still one more thing we have to do before we go.’

SEVENTH MACHINATION

Wednesday, January 6, 1730 hours

The Goose touched down on the river next to Vilcafor shortly before sunset on January 6, 1999. After dousing themselves in monkey urine again, Race and Renée headed back to the upper village. They left Doogie and Gaby in the Goose, to allow Gaby to tend to the young Green Beret’s many wounds. As the two of them trudged through Vilcafor, tired and exhausted, Race saw that there were no bodies lying on the street. Despite the fact that about a dozen Navy and DARPA scientists plus Marty, Lauren, Nash and Van Lewen—had been killed here only a few hours previously, no bodies remained. Race looked at the empty street sadly. He had an idea where the bodies had gone. He and Renée entered the upper village just as dusk was beginning to settle over the Andean foothills.

The natives’ chieftain, Roa, and the anthropologist, Miguel Moros Marquez, met them at the moat at the edge of the village.

‘I think this belongs to you,’ Race said, holding the idol out in his hands.

Roa smiled at him. ‘You truly are the Chosen One,’ he said. ‘My people will sing songs about you one day. Thank you, thank you for returning our Spirit.’

Race bowed his head. He didn’t think he was any kind of Chosen One at all. He’d just done what he had thought was right. ‘Just promise me this,’ he said to Roa. ‘Promise me that when I am gone, you will leave this village and disappear into the forests. Men will come searching for this idol again, of that I am certain. Take this idol far away from here, where they will never find it.’

Roa nodded. ‘We will, Chosen One. We will.’ Race still hadn’t actually handed the idol to Roa yet.

‘If you will permit me, sir,’ he said, ‘there is one more thing I have to do here, and to do it, I will require the use of the idol.’

The tribe of natives assembled on the spiralling path that encircled the rock tower. Night had fallen and they were all thoroughly doused in monkey urine. The rapas, Marquez said, unable to return to their lair inside the temple, had spent the day hiding in the heavy shadows at the base of the crater. Race stood on the spiralling path, looking out across the ravine that had earlier been spanned by the rope bridge. The rope bridge still hung flat against the side of the tower, in the same place the Nazis had left it when they had unlooped it from its buttresses twenty-four hours ago. One of Roa’s nimblest climbers doubly soaked in monkey urine—was sent down to the base of the canyon where he embarked upon a skilful climb up the rock tower’s near vertical wall. After a while, he came to the long retrieval rope that dangled from the bottom of the rope bridge. He tied it to another rope that was held by natives standing on the spiralling path and they then pulled the retrieval rope over to their side of the ravine. The rope bridge was quickly secured back into place. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Renée said to Race as he gazed across at the tower top. ‘There’s a way out of that temple,’ he said. ‘Renco found it. I will, too.’ Then, with the idol in one hand and a torch in the other and a leather satchel slung over his shoulder, Race led the way across the swooping bridge. A team of ten of Roa’s strongest warriors followed him, bearing flaming torches of their own. Once they were all on the rock tower, Race led them up to the clearing in front of the temple. There he pulled a water bladder out of his leather satchel and used it to douse the thyrium idol. The idol hummed instantly. A pure, mesmerising sound that cut through the night air like a knife. Within minutes, the first rapa arrived at the clearing. Then a second, and a third. The massive black cats gathered around the clearing, forming a wide circle around him. Race counted twelve of them in total. He doused the idol again and it emitted its even harmonic tone with renewed vigour. Then he took a step backwards, entering the temple. Ten steps down and he was surrounded by blackness. The rapas—big, black and menacing—followed him inside, blocking the shafts of blue moonlight that entered the tunnel from without. Once all the cats were fully inside the temple, the ten Indian warriors outside began to heave on the boulder—as Race had instructed them to do. The massive stone groaned loudly as it was pushed slowly back into place. Race watched its movement from within the temple. Gradually, all the moonlight from outside was replaced by the shadow of the massive rock and then, with a final ominous thud, the boulder would move no more. It now filled the portal, sealing it shut, at the same time sealing William Race inside the temple with the pack of ferocious rapas. Darkness. Total darkness, save for the flickering orange glow of his torch. The walls of the tunnel around Race glistened with moisture. From somewhere deep within the temple, he heard a steady, echoing dripdripdrip. It was absolutely terrifying, but strangely Race felt no fear. After all he’d been through, he was beyond being afraid. The twelve rapas—visions of evil in the strobelike light of the torch—just stared at the humming idol in Race’s hand, entranced.

With his torch held high above his head, he made his way down the spiralling tunnel at the base of the stairs. It bent down and to the right in a slow, descending curve. Small alcoves lined its walls. Race passed the alcove that he’d seen the last time he had been inside the temple, saw the mangled skeleton with the cracked skull lying in it. The skeleton that he had assumed was Renco but which he now knew to be the wily old conquistador who had stolen Renco’s emerald pendant. He came to the bottom of the spiralling passageway and saw a long straight tunnel stretching ahead of him. It was the tunnel in which von Dirksen and his men had met their grisly end. The rapas emerged from the ramp behind him—silent, looming, ominous—barely even making a sound as they slunk along on their soft padded paws. At the end of the long straight tunnel, Race came across an enormous hole in the floor. It was roughly square in shape and at least fifteen feet wide, taking up the entire tunnel before him. Out of it came one of the most repulsive odours he had smelled in a long, long time. He winced at the smell as he evaluated the wide hole in the floor in front of him. On the far side of it he saw nothing but wall—solid, stone wall—and inside the hole itself he saw nothing but inky blackness. Just then, however, he saw a series of hand and footholds that had been cut into the hole’s right hand wall. They’d been carved in such a fashion—one on top of the other— that they created a ladder like mechanism which a person could use to climb down into the hole. After dousing the idol once again with his bladder full of water, Race put his flaming torch in his mouth and then, using the hand and footholds cut into the wall, slowly began to climb down into the dark stinking hole. The rapas followed him, but they didn’t bother using the footholds. They just used their scythe like claws to climb down the walls of the hole after him. About fifty feet later, Race’s feet touched solid ground again. The foul stench was stronger here, to the point of being overwhelming. It smelled like rotting meat. Race grabbed the flaming torch from his mouth and turned away from the wall he had just scaled. What he saw took his breath away. He was standing inside an enormous hall of some kind, a gigantic stonewalled cavern that had been carved out of the belly of the rock tower. It was absolutely spectacular. An enormous, rockwalled cathedral. Its high vaulted ceiling soared into the air at least fifty feet above the floor, disappearing into darkness. It was supported by a set of stone columns that had been fashioned out of the rock. A flat stone floor stretched away from Race. It also disappeared into shadow. The walls of the cathedral, however, were its most stunning feature. They were covered with primitive carvings—pictographs similar to those that adorned the portal up on the surface. There were pictures of rapas, pictures of people, pictures of rapas killing people. Tearing their limbs off, ripping their heads off. In some of the carvings, the screaming humans being mauled by the cats clutched piles of loot in their hands, even as they were being killed. Wanton greed, even at the moment of death. Interspersed among the carvings on the walls were a series of stone alcoves that had all been carved in the shape of rapas’ heads. Thick cobwebs covered each alcove, so that it looked as if see through grey curtains had been lowered over the carved rapas’ jaws. Race went over to one of the alcoves, sliced through the cobweb across the rapa’s mouth. His eyes widened. A small shelflike podium had been carved into the wall inside the rapa’s bared jaws, On it sat a lustrous golden statue that had been fashioned in the shape of a fat man with an enormous erection. ‘Good God…’ he breathed as he stared at the statue. He scanned the hall around him. There must have been forty such alcoves scattered around its walls. And if there was an artifact in each one, then it would be a treasure that was worth… It was Solon’s treasure. Race looked at the ornate alcove in front of him, looked at the carved rapa’s head, snarling viciously at him. It was as if the builder of this temple were daring the greedy adventurer to reach inside the cat’s mouth to grab its treasure. But Race didn’t want any treasure. He wanted to go home. He stepped away from the fearsome looking alcove, out into the centre of the enormous stone cathedral, holding his torch aloft. And then he saw the source of the foul odour that had assaulted his nose. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he breathed. It lay on the far side of the cathedral, and it was huge. It was a pile of corpses—a high, ugly mountain of bodies. Human bodies. There must have been at least a hundred of them, and they were all in various states of dismemberment. Blood slicked the walls all around them in such copious quantities that it seemed as if someone had painted them with it. Some of the bodies were naked, others were partially clothed—some had had their heads ripped off, others their arms, others still had had their entire torsos gnawed in two. Bloodied bones littered the area, some of which still had chunks of uneaten flesh clinging to them. To his horror, Race recognised a few of the bodies. Captain Scott—Chucky Wilson—Tex Reichart—the German general, Kolb. He even saw Buzz Cochrane’s body lying upside down on the pile. The entire lower half of his torso had been chewed off. More curiously, however, Race saw a large number of olives kinned corpses on the pile. Natives. And then suddenly he saw a small hole in the wall beyond the grisly pile of bodies. It was roughly circular in shape, about two and half feet in diameter, the width of a broad shouldered man. Race immediately recalled seeing a similarly shaped stone up on the surface earlier—on the balcony like path behind the temple—a peculiar round stone amid all the square shaped ones, a stone that appeared to have been slotted into a cylindrical hole of some sort. Oh, no, Race thought, realising. It wasn’t a hole… It was a chute. A chute that started up on the surface and ended here, in the enormous stone cathedral. And in an instant, the question as to how the rapas had survived for four hundred years inside the temple had an answer. In his mind’s eye, Race recalled Miguel Marquez’s words: ‘If you hadn’t survived your encounter with the caiman, your friends would have been sacrificed to the rapas.’ Sacrificed to the rapas. Race stared at the circular hole in the wall, his eyes widening in horror. It was a sacrificial well. A well into which the natives from the upper village threw offerings to the rapas.