Page 2 of Monstrous Heat
“I don’t know the name of the city,” Tomas said gravely, tipping his head toward the stone carvings. “But I know this.”
“You do? What is it?”
He touched the stone fangs carved in the wall and then shared a dark look with the other man. “Monster.”
2
NATALIE
Wincing, I slowly climbed to my feet. My knees throbbed and my toes burned with pins and needles. How long had I been kneeling on the ground? The pile of what looked like a thousand years of dead leaves had ended up revealing a magnificent stelae, fallen but intact. It weighed a ton, so I couldn’t examine the back of it, but it looked as though every inch of stone had been painstakingly carved with glyphs. I could pick out a few here and there, but I was far from an expert. Each section would be carefully photographed and sent to the best cryptologist the university could find.
The name of this once-great city would be on that stelae. Or at least the founding king’s name. All in all, we’d managed to find twenty structures or man-made stonework scattered through the jungle. Nothing as grand as Tikal or the famous pyramid at Chich’en Itza, but still an important and yet undocumented find.
Turning around, I looked for Tomas but didn’t see the guides anywhere. “Hello?”
I listened, straining to hear anything. The bird calls and monkey screeches had been loud all day, but now I couldn’t hear a thing but the constant drone of insects. “Tomas? Where are you?”
I retraced my steps toward the stone wall that had once marked the entrance to the city. It took me thirty minutes—which surprised me. Surely I hadn’t wandered that far out into the jungle. We’d split up after lunch, hoping to cover more ground. I tried to remember what time that’d been. Late. Two? Three? It was nearly dark now.
“Hello? Anyone here?”
At the wall lined with stone teeth, I found a piece of paper stuck beneath a rock.
Emergency. My wife is expecting our first baby. Be back as soon as we can. Sorry.
Greeeeeaaaaat. So not only had the professor abandoned me, but also my guides as well.
My stomach pitched queasily but I made myself take a deep breath. Think. I had to be smart about this.
Hydrate. I hadn’t taken a single drink for hours.
I pulled a water bottle from my pack and took a long drink, making a mental list of options. I could wait here for the guides. They knew exactly where I was and would surely come back for me as soon as they could. Probably tomorrow. I’d be alone at night in the jungle with no shelter, no food, and no protection from the animals.
Or I could hike down to the camp. It’d taken us two hours to discover the stone wall this morning, but we’d been painstakingly combing every suspicious-looking pile of leaves and earth, hoping to find a man-made structure. I could probably make it back to camp in under an hour. All I had to do was follow the trail.
It wouldn’t be easy in the dark. We’d traveled up and down through some pretty rough ground and the undergrowth had been nearly impenetrable in places. But that would be to my advantage.
All I need to do is follow the hacked-up bushes back to camp. Easy peasy.
I folded the map up neatly and tucked it into my backpack. On the off chance that Dr. Snyder had second thoughts, I checked my phone, but found no flowery messages inviting me to come down to the hotel. I still had a good charge, since I hadn’t used it all day. I even had a bar if I held it over my head.
For the barest moment, I considered calling him for help, but quickly rejected it. Would he really skip out on his expensive business meetings and hot date with Holly to come rescue the stupid assistant he’d duped into doing all his research?
Of course not.
Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was call him and beg for help.
Follow the trail, Nat. That’s all you have to do.
3
NATALIE
One moment I could see the ground in front of me, and the next, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Luckily, I’d come prepared. I had not one, but two spare sets of flashlight batteries in my backpack. I refused to be stuck with dead batteries at the worst possible moment. Along with an extra battery for my phone, in case I couldn’t make it back to camp as planned, bug spray, a small roll of bandages, a couple of bags of trail mix, and a chocolate bar. Okay, three candy bars. You never knew when you were going to have a chocolate emergency.
After I fell the first time and bloodied my knee, I was thankful for the bandage. After the second, it was definitely time for chocolate.
“Way to go, Nat,” I muttered under my breath, swiping away tears. “You just had to study archeology. Look where eight years of college has gotten you. Stranded in the middle of a Guatemalan jungle.”
