Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (41 page)

When they got to the small hollow they had created, Richard picked up the ax again while James and Mary made do with a shovel and a rake respectively. Just as Richard started to dig at the rock, somebody dealt a violent blow to his head, leaving him unconscious on the floor. The blood oozed slowly from his head, but nevertheless wasted no time in forming a huge round puddle on the ancient stone. Mary stood paralyzed looking at his unconscious body and staggered back, turning her head to see an image which deeply disturbed her. Shaking, James was holding a shovel above his head. It was covered in blood and even a little dented from the really strong blow he had delivered. Then he threw it on the ground, completely horrified at what he had just done.

“What have you done? You’ve almost killed him!”

James stood rooted to the spot as he looked at his friend’s body. His arms were trembling and a cold sweat dripped down his forehead. He was incapable of moving. Mary’s words were like a faint whisper coming from hundreds of feet away. Eventually she grabbed him by the arms and started shaking him, trying to bring him out of his state of shock.

“Why did you hit him? Are you crazy? Now they’re going to kill us.”

With great difficulty and practically stammering, he took a triangular object out of his jacket pocket. Mary’s face dropped immediately, understanding the move that James Oldrich had just played.

They dragged Richard, still unconscious, to a recess in one of the corners. They couldn’t avoid a channel of blood forming between the area he had been hit and his new resting place.

“That bastard… he wanted us to…’ he was barely able to make a coherent sentence. Nerves gripped his body. “He was going to kill us. We should do the same to him.”

Mary watched as he took out a small but very sharp knife from the back pocket of his pants. Before she could stop him, he placed the blade against his neck and squeezed it hard, exerting more and more pressure. A small trickle of blood flowed from his throat. His hands trembled even more when he saw it and he started to become aware of what he was about to do and, honestly… he was unable to do it.

Furious, he put the knife back in his pocket and grabbed the girl by the hand. “I can’t do it!” he cried between sobs. “I hope you get what you deserve one day, you bastard!”

Mary was still frozen. “Let’s get out of here before his accomplices arrive!”

They quickly left the strange kind of mausoleum, dedicated to the four kings of Teotihuacan. Although they were walking together, it seemed as if the professor was pulling her forwards. The cavern housing all the computer equipment was just the same as an hour ago. They crossed it diagonally, heading for the entrance to the tunnel as quickly as possible.

“Wait!” shouted James just as they were in front of the door which led to the long passageway. “Look!”

The ground was covered with little drops of blood which looked like it had been splashed by somebody trying to escape. Although they were spread out, they seemed to form a narrow line that quickly dripped on until it disappeared beneath one of the tables. James followed them and couldn’t help but scream when he saw that there was a body of a scientist under one of the tables, dressed in a white lab coat that was completely covered in blood. He had been shot at pointblank range in the heart.

“We have to go! They’ve been here!”

“O
ver here!” whispered Mary, taking him by the hand and forcing him to follow her.

They practically crawled around the whole rear face of the Pyramid of the Sun, following the old path that surrounded it. However, the presence of three men in military gear threw them off slightly, forcing them to move into the forest next to the ruins.

It was a large and arid expanse of land. Vegetation was rather scarce, with just a few trees which were dotted about around seven feet from each other. The ground consisted of lumps of earth, toasted by the relentless Mexican sun and which dissolved into powder when the least bit of pressure was applied to them.

With no route in mind and only the Pyramid of the Moon looming on the horizon, they wandered through the undergrowth using the stout trunks of some trees to hide.

When he couldn’t take any more, James stopped in the shade of a leafy tree where he caught his breath. “Are you sure? Are we on the right path?”

Mary looked back at their tracks, trying to make out if anybody was following their footsteps in the distance. “Nobody’s following us. Come on James, one last push,” said Mary, trying to encourage him. “We have to get to that city, and we’ll think of what to do when we get there.”

Mary radiated with an astonishing energy that James hadn’t noticed up until then, when their strength was starting to desert them and they had gone days without sleeping and eating well. If it were up to James, he would lie down under a tree, pray that everything was a dream and suddenly wake up in his seven foot bed with his soft feather pillow.

“Look!” cried Mary with joy. “We’re getting there.”

By squinting slightly, they could see a large number of buildings which fused together to make a beautiful city called “San Martin de las Piramides”, the city chosen by the girl as their escape destination. It was no more than two-thirds of a mile from the rear face of the Pyramid of the Moon.

“Mary!” he shouted after seeing that she was walking slowly towards it. “There are houses over there, too.”

James looked towards what seemed to be another small city around 430 yards away, this time behind the rear side Pyramid of the Sun.

“That’s San Francisco Mazapa. It’s a much smaller town and they would be able to find us easily. The best thing for us to do would be to blend in with the hustle and bustle.”

Although the temptation to get away from that plain as soon as possible was enormous, Mary was right. They couldn’t rush, they had to be cautious.

When the Pyramid of the Sun hid them no longer, they decided to drag themselves along the stony ground on their stomachs like snakes. Now covering even a few feet was extremely complicated. Furthermore, for the last couple of minutes a light wind had picked up which was whipping up the clods of loose earth and dust that whirled about in the air until they landed in their eyes.

They continued side by side, one next to the other, taking advantage of the smallest trunk to hide behind it. The professor’s energy was draining by the second, but when faced with the idea that Mary might have thought he was a wuss, James gathered all his courage and pride, summoning strength where there was none before.

“Quiet!” shouted Mary when she heard a group of dogs barking in the distance.

When James turned around, he immediately recovered all his strength. Two men dressed in military gear had just appeared on the plateau from the same direction they had. They had two muscular hunting dogs tied with a leather lead and, judging by how they were pulling on it, they had picked up their scent. They weren’t the usual pursuers, those that normally called themselves Alpha 1 and Alpha 2. James remembered the opening of the e-mail he had read that very morning in Richard’s inbox:
They’re starting to suspect…
For a moment he considered the possibility of them having hired two other assassins so that they wouldn’t recognize them and catch them unawares. They could have been right next to them without them knowing!

They were relatively far away, about 430 yards, but the houses were even further.

“Look!” shouted James. “There’s a small slope that looks as if it leads to a higher land level, maybe about seven feet. There’s a lot of vegetation, we’ll be able to run without being seen.”

Mary thought about all the options. It was obvious that if they kept crawling along, they would get there in less than two minutes. And although the entrance consisted of a very narrow path with a pile of undergrowth that practically prevented them from walking upright, they could easily cross it by staying close to the ground.

James took the initiative and slipped through one of the few holes which opened up before him. Mary followed. On the way, several cacti caught their sharp spines on her bare arms, causing grazes that barely bled.

The dogs’ barks were inching closer. James felt the animals’ breath on the nape of his neck while their saliva, dying to taste fresh meat, dripped down their mouths. 380 yards, 350 yards, 320 yards… they were too close.

“Don’t move!” whispered James suddenly. From his tone of voice, he sounded startled, nervous.

In front of them and right at the end of the slope was a snake about seven feet long. It was coiled up, forming a big ball on several handfuls of dry leaves which had fallen from the trees. As he had been in such a hurry, James had been more worried about the distance between them and their pursuers than looking ahead, and now it was too late. The large snake with diagonal stripes and diamonds in different shades of brown slithered about just over a foot away from his face. Its head was massive. James had the impression that his whole body could fit into its mouth with no trouble at all whenever it chose to do so.

With slow and controlled movements, it moved closer towards its prey. Its tongue vibrated in the air while it moved its head up and down, analyzing him. It was all a declaration of intent. Its eyes had a vertical pupil similar to that of a feline, while its skin was shiny and similar to plastic - definite indications that this snake was extremely dangerous.

Mary was just at his side and had realized something very important that James had overlooked. The snake was agitated because it had over twenty babies behind her, and she was defending them.

“We have to go back, it has young,” cried Mary.

But it was too late. The snake obeyed its killer instinct and launched itself at James’ jugular, while he miraculously managed to get his right arm in the way in the nick of time.

The young man couldn’t help but cry out in pain when he felt the snake coil itself around his arm and inject him with a generous dose of venom. He grabbed its head with his left arm and yanked it sharply, causing its fangs to open the wound even more as he ripped it off. Even though he had a tight hold of it, it didn’t stop writhing in the air - it had become much more nervous. It was an enormous specimen, weighing about 13 pounds.

“Quick! Go through now!” he shouted as he threw the snake as far as he could in the direction of their stalkers.

Mary dragged herself through the nest of recently-hatched snakes with her eyes practically squeezed shut, with some of them insisting on working their way into her clothes. She eventually got out into the open air. James followed a few seconds later, angry and cursing the snake with a string of expletives.

“What’s up? Did it bite you? Let me see the wound.”

James was devastated. A couple of tears of helplessness slipped down his nose and eventually fell on the ground. There were 200 yards between them and their pursuers, more or less the same distance they needed to cover to get to the highway.

He ripped the shirt he was wearing and tore off one of the arms.

“What are you doing? Are you going to use it as a tourniquet?”

James ignored her. He reached into his pocket and took out the knife he had intended to use to finish off Richard, and he made a tiny incision just where the snake had bitten him. The wound started to bleed heavily and, without thinking twice, he clamped his mouth on it and sucked it hard, spitting out everything he had in his mouth. He managed to get out some of the venom, but it was too late.

While they were trying desperately to reach the highway, James gave himself first aid. He walked slowly so as not to increase his pulse and cause his heart to beat faster; if it did, then the venom would spread around his body much quicker.

“I saw a documentary on National Geographic about that snake a few months ago. There are a lot of them in Mexico.” He sucked furiously at the wound again and spit the blood onto the floor, disgusted. “It’s called the ‘Bothrops asper’ and its venom acts in a special way.”

Mary barely turned to look at him, she remained quiet.

“This snake has a potent venom which causes muscular necrosis. If I made a tourniquet it would stop the flow of venom, causing it to remain stagnant in one part of my body. It would quickly destroy my arm, turning it gangrene and the only solution left would be to amputate it. It’s better to give the body a chance to fight it and get the antidote in the meantime.”

They were around a hundred yards from the highway when they heard the dogs barking as they caught the scent being lost among the thicket. One of them seemed to whine and pull back to the route that James and Mary had taken. Its cries were probably thanks to the snake that had returned to protect its young.

“Let’s go! I can see the highway!”

James gave faint smile. The only solution was to get to a medical center as soon as possible, but his face changed dramatically when he saw the two assassins standing in the middle of the highway. They seemed to be waiting for them. “Get down!” he whispered, but Mary seemed not to hear him. “Mary, get down!”

“What? Can’t you see the road? Run, there’s only three hundred feet left.”

Suddenly Mary’s eyes met with those of one of the assassins. Her first reflex was to lie down on the ground, but it was too late. They’d just found them.

“Fuck! Shit! I hadn’t seen them. But… how many people are after us?!”

“They must have received a tipoff. They knew we were trying to cross the forest and they were waiting for us on the other side.”

One of the assassins took out a pistol from his pocket and leapt over the wire fencing that restricted access to the compound. The other opened a briefcase and started to assemble what appeared to be a long-range rifle.

“What will we do?” asked James, completely heartbroken. The aggravation to which he was subjecting his body was causing his heart rate to speed up and he was starting to feel the first signs of dizziness brought on by the venom. The early stages of suffering had begun.

They were trapped. Behind the, a group of several men with dogs were preventing their retreat and the two assassins in front stopped them from continuing on. Fields stretching for 1300 feet sat to their right, but it would be crazy to head off in that direction and even more so in the state James was in. They would catch up with them too quickly.