Burial Ground

IV

8:38 p.m.

They raced the darkness. The setting sun had cast long shadows from the steep peaks over the river hours ago, but the ambient light that diffused through the canopy had provided a wan twilight aura. Now, even that was fading, and the night had begun to close in around them. With its descent, the forest had come to life with screeching, cawing, and howling, as dark forms knifed through the branches and darted between the trees. They had even heard the husky growl of a jaguar and glimpsed a flash of its golden fur from time to time as it mirrored their progress from the bank before it eventually lost interest. The sky continued to drizzle, yet the insects appeared unaffected, their numbers swelling in anticipation of their evening meal. Leather-winged bats shot out of the darkness, whistling between the passengers in the boats and just over their heads before vanishing back into the trees. The river had taken on a pale gray cast, and would soon be as black as the night.

The motors had been throttled down to give the guides extra time to maneuver around the obstacles in their way, yet still the resounding thuds of the hulls bouncing from unseen boulders echoed around them. Prudence suggested they should make camp for the night and finish the remaining leg in the morning, but they were so close now. Too close to simply give up.

The overgrowth of trees no longer merely towered over them. Instead, the forest rose above them, ascending the steep mountains to either side in tangles of vegetation that seemed to cling to the slopes by sheer will alone. Vertical basalt cliffs, formed by distinct volcanic columns and smoothed by eons of running water, crowded the river before finally relenting and falling away as they passed through the first wave of the Andes.

Leo felt the journey in a spiritual sense. His son was all around him here, as though his soul were preserved by the very jungle itself. He could feel the same excitement, the same sense of anticipation Hunter must have experienced, the same awe at the majesty of his surroundings and the secrets they kept. He had been in dozens of locations similar to this one over the course of a life spent in pursuit of both natural and manmade treasure. This time was different, though. This time it was intimately personal, not just because he was following in the footsteps that had led his son to a premature grave, but because he knew this would be his final expedition. In losing his son, he had lost a part of himself as well. Where once his lust for adventure had resided, there was now only rage. The life that had given him so much through the years had in the end stolen back more than it had ever offered, leaving the scales tipped in cruel life's favor. He was here to restore the balance.

Sheer limestone embankments pressed in from either side, narrowing the river by half and increasing the speed of the current. The outboards wailed and the bow rose and fell roughly on the choppy waves. For the first time, Santos had to hop down from his perch. He used his pole to keep the boat from slamming into the rock walls, which showed a watermark of discoloration a full five feet above its current level. Roots and lianas trailed down the smooth stone like so many serpents, their shifting shadows imitating movement.

After several minutes, during which Leo feared they might capsize, the cliffs fell aside and opened into a deep valley reminiscent of a volcanic crater. Lush green mountains rose on all sides and reached up into the clouds. Streams cascaded down their faces, alternately hidden behind dense vegetation and then revealed in series of waterfalls that stepped down from the mist and thundered into the lake onto which they now motored. It was as though they had passed into an Eden of sorts, a great bowl of virgin rainforest surrounding a seasonal lake perhaps two hundred yards wide, fed by streams from what appeared to be the entire Andes range.

The sight was positively breathtaking.

They skirted ceiba trees that grew miraculously from the middle of the lake on unseen crests of land on their way to the southwestern shore, where a dense fog was trapped in the thin passage separating two steep mountains. Groves of ceibas interspersed with the dominant Brazil nut behemoths encroached all the way to the edge of the water, and down the slope to where only their leafy canopies remained above the surface. Branches scraped against the underside of the hull as Santos again stood and steered them toward dry land. A riot of birds exploded from the trees with a near deafening cacophony of cries, black bodies against the night sky, swirling overhead before alighting deeper in the valley. A shimmer of scales traced a squiggle across the water and vanished into the night. The cough of a jaguar echoed in the distance.

Killing the motors, they slid silently to the muddy shore. Santos hopped down into the shallows with a splash and dragged the bow up onto solid ground. Leo rose and jumped out onto the earth for the first time in hours. His legs wobbled and the ground seemed to shift beneath his feet. He walked into the trees as his body adjusted, and found a little privacy behind the tented roots of a tree. With a prolonged sigh, he relieved the pressure in his bladder and was just about to rejoin the others when something on the trunk caught his eye. A series of marks scarred the gray wood. Not marks, but letters, and they appeared to have been recently carved. Leo traced the sap-crusted edges in the darkness. There were three rows: two letters on the top, two numbers in the middle, and two more letters on the bottom.

HG

10/7

SW

He flattened his palm over the carvings. A tentative smile spread across his lips and tears welled against his lashes.

Hunter Gearhardt had passed through here on October 7^th on his way to the southwest.

Just under three weeks ago, his son had stood in this very spot, preparing to head out into the great unknown, wide-eyed and naïve. Had he sensed somewhere, deep down, that he wouldn't be making the return trip?

Leo was inclined to think so, for with each passing mile, the feelings of impending doom intensified and he couldn't help but worry that he wouldn't be leaving this jungle alive, either.