Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God Page 20

“Jake? Jake, get out of there!” Dad warned.

  I didn’t need to panic. The slab was closing slowly; I still had time. I scrabbled at the bones, pulled myself back up to the top and crawled over the surface to the exit. I managed another couple of metres before I sank back under, as if the skeleton arms had dragged me down.

  “Jake, get out!”

  I kicked and thrashed. Only my head was above the surface now. The door slab was barely a metre from the ground… I knew I wasn’t going to make it. It was hopeless. Any second now I would be trapped in here, alone.

  Then, just at the last moment, I saw something else.

  Mum!

  She slid feet first through the tiny gap under the door slab. But the gap was too small, and closing too fast. The slab was going to crush her head! I tried to move closer, but sank even deeper into dusty bones, losing sight of Mum as the slab sealed the chamber with a hollow thud.

  32

  “Mum? Mum!”

  I called louder, above the cries from my Dad and Pan on the other side of the stone slab. I’d seen Mum slide towards the burial chamber seconds before the entrance sealed. Had she made it through, or had she been crushed beneath the door?

  I managed to shove aside piles of skeletons and force a path back towards the exit.

  “Thermal,” I gasped.

  My smart-goggles’ torch cut out and my view changed to the dull grey fuzz of a geothermal map. As I scrabbled around, two orange heat signatures appeared in my view, beside one another. They were Dad and Pan, yelling at us from the other side of the slab. I kept turning…

  There!

  “Mum!” I yelled. “Torch!”

  The beam guided me to her, and I forced my way to where she lay. She had sunken into the bone pit, right down to the chamber floor. The bones around her were spattered crimson; blood flowed from the side of her head.

  “Mum…”

  I scooped her up so her head rested on my lap, and tried to push the bones away to clear space. It was hopeless; even more toppled onto us in their place. I leaned over Mum, shielding her as best I could.

  Dad called out again. I’d never heard him sound so desperate.

  “I’m here,” I replied. “I’ve got Mum.”

  “Is she alive?” Pan screamed.

  “I–I don’t know. The door hit her head. She’s bleeding. She’s—”

  “She’s alive,” a voice groaned.

  I cried out with delight as Mum’s eyes fluttered open. She was barely conscious, her breathing shallow and forced.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  She was asking me? I nodded.

  “Then … get … that light … out of my face,” she said.

  I hadn’t realized I was shining the goggles’ torch in her eyes. I yanked them off and slid them back into my belt. My eyes began to adjust to the darkness, so I could still just see Mum on my lap.

  “Stay calm!” Dad hollered. “We’re going to find a way to get you out.”

  Mum rasped a reply. “No way out.”

  “What do you mean?” Pan called.

  “The Aztecs meant to lock us in here,” I said. “They trapped us in here, to serve the gods. They’d have made sure there’s no way out.”

  “Well, we’re going to damn well find one!” Dad shouted.

  I heard them tossing aside the treasures in the room, searching for a catch or lever to open the door. Dad swore, which he almost never does, and I heard something crash to the ground; I guessed he’d yanked away another item of Quetzalcoatl’s grave goods in his search.

  Mum heard too.

  “John?” she asked, weakly.

  “Dad!” I yelled. “Mum’s talking to you.”

  Dad rushed back to the slab. “What is it, darling?”

  “If you damage one more item in that room, then I’m going to haunt you for the rest of your life.”

  “Dad, she said—”

  “I heard,” Dad said. “But you are not going to die in there. Jake, can you find the stone that triggered the seal? See if you can lift it back up.”

  Mum smiled at me, as I laid her head back on the ground. I turned and burrowed back through the skeletons towards the coffin plinth. I scrabbled around the ground, shoving aside bones as I looked for the trigger stone. I found it, eventually, but it was no use to us. About the size of a dinner tray, it had only sunk a few inches into the ground but there was no way to force it back up. I wondered whether the seal would open even if I did manage to raise the stone. The Aztecs had designed this trap to lock us in here; I doubted they would have added an escape route.

  “Jake, what about your utility belt?” Pan suggested.

  We pretended to be hopeful as I forced my way back through the bones and used the belt’s few remaining gadgets on the door slab. But I knew none of them would work, and I suspected Pan and Dad did too. The seal was at least half a metre thick. The compact drill ran out of power thirty centimetres in, and even if it had got through, it would only have drilled a tiny hole through the slab. The laser stonecutter might have helped, but I’d dropped it on the rope swing.

  “What about the bungee cord?” Pan asked.

  “What about it?” I said.

  “I don’t know! Do something clever with it!”

  “Dad,” I called, “I still have Pedro’s sonic force field.”

  I heard Dad’s boots stomping over stone. He was still charging around, searching for any other way into this chamber.

  “I hear you, Jake,” he said. “It’s worth a try.”

  “No, it’s not,” Mum rasped.

  I took her arm and helped her climb the steps, pushing away skeletons until she sat with me on top of the bones, her back against the door slab. Blood covered the side of her face and had soaked her jungle shirt, but her eyes looked a little sharper than they had a few minutes ago.

  “The force field will repel animals,” she said, “but it won’t smash through a two-foot stone block. It will just knock us out.”

  “Both of you just wait there,” Dad said. “I’ll get out of here and find Alpha Squad. They’ll be looking for us. They can have the emerald tablet, have whatever they like, if they help us get this slab open.”

  “They’ll kill you as soon as they see you, John.”

  Dad knew that too. And anyway, I doubted he’d find a way out of this mountain. No one was meant to leave this place alive. That was the Aztecs’ plan.

  “So what do we do, then?” Pan asked.

  “Nothing,” Mum said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Sometimes that’s the best plan. Just breathe and think.”

  Mum shifted down a little, rested her head on my lap again and closed her eyes. I stared at her face – a mess of blood and bruises and sheer exhaustion – and then gazed across the bone pit to the crystal coffin. That casket, and what it contained, had meant everything to me, for so long. But right then I’d gladly have given it all up to get my mum out of that chamber. I’d messed up so badly. I’d been so blinded by the hope of reaching this tomb, of proving that I could reach it, that I’d forgotten even the most basic treasure-hunting lessons.

  “This is my fault,” I said.

  “You’re damn right it is,” Dad barked. “What were you thinking, Jake? You just charged right in there. It was as if we’d taught you nothing.”

  “I just wanted to get the tablet,” I said.

  “We all wanted to,” Pan said. “We all care about Sami, Jake. But you stopped thinking. Of course there was going to be a trap in there! It’s the burial chamber. That’s the trappiest bit!”

  “I know…”

  “Damn it, Jake,” Dad said. “This is exactly why we wanted to stop. Because you weren’t ready.”

  “I know, Dad, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry is not good enough. It was just a matter of time until you—”

  “Why are you trying to teach me a lesson after I’ve already doomed myself and Mum to die?” I shouted. “You can stop now, Dad. I get it. I’m not
good enough. I’m not you or Mum or Pan. I’m reckless, and now it’s going to get me killed, as well as Mum and Sami. So, yes, you were right, you were both right the whole time. I never had the brain for this, like you three. I realize that, OK?”

  I scrunched my eyes to stop the tears, but they found a way out anyway and dripped onto Mum’s head. I pictured Sami looking weak and desperate on that bed, imagined him reaching for help, but finding only the Snake Lady. I saw her smug smile and her black eyes. I pictured Mum, Dad and Pan hunting for this chamber without me. Making it, getting the emerald tablet, getting out. Doing it properly.

  “I should never have been part of this team,” I said. “I screwed up.”

  “Screwed up?” Mum said, softly. She opened her eyes again and looked up at me. “That’s funny, Jake.”

  I sniffed back tears, stared at her through watery eyes. “Funny?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s true, Jake, you made mistakes. At the Snake Lady’s house, and here in this chamber. In those moments, you forgot your training and let your emotions take control. That was always our concern about you.”

  “I know…”

  “But what about the rest of the time? Jake, darling, it was you who caught the motorcyclist in Trujillo. It was you who saved us from the plane crash by acting the fastest. You found the Place of the Jaguar, and recovered both of the markers. You saved your sister’s life in the mudslide by putting your breathing tube in her mouth. You chose to climb the skull wall when we were under attack from arrows, and we survived when we might not have had we stayed still. You got through the obsidian blades, and you found this burial chamber. That was all you, Jake. Without you on our team, we would still be scratching our heads in the jungle camp, at best, and Sami would almost certainly be dead.”

  “I…”

  Words stuck at the back of my throat. I’d never heard Mum talk that way about me, or anyone. I was so used to her criticism that I didn’t know how to reply. More tears dripped down on her.

  “I just wanted to impress you,” I said.

  “And you have, darling, so many times. I’ve never known anyone to think so fast under pressure. Jake, you are a born treasure hunter, but that doesn’t mean you know everything. You hurl yourself into danger, and a lot of the time you find a way out, but not always. Those few times when you lose control, those are the moments we worry about. It just takes one of those, one step on the wrong stone, and it’s all over.”

  “I know, Mum…”

  “Your father and I did this for twenty years before you were born. That experience is something you should learn from. You say we should trust you, but we can’t until you trust us. If we tell you to stop, it’s because there’s a reason to stop. We’re not just being annoying parents. We’re looking out for you, with all the experience that we have. We needed to know you trusted us enough to listen.”

  She smiled at me. “First rule of treasuring hunting: always trust your parents.”

  That sounded like a pretty good first rule to me. “I wish I had,” I said. “We wouldn’t be stuck here now.”

  I gazed around the chamber, noticing for the first time the decoration on the walls – brightly painted scenes of Aztec people carrying the crystal coffin, and grisly images of victims having their hearts torn out to honour the god.

  “I really don’t like the Aztecs,” I muttered.

  “It’s not your place to like them or not like them,” Mum said.

  “You’re still defending them, after everything they’ve done to us?”

  “No,” Mum said, “I’m choosing not to judge them. You look across this room and see murder. That’s not what the Aztecs saw. Killing these people was their religious duty. It served a greater purpose.”

  “Because they thought sacrifices would stop the world from ending,” I said.

  “That’s right. When you look at an ancient people, look from their eyes, not yours. You might see things differently.”

  “Why are you giving Jake a history lesson in there?” Pan called.

  “Because that history lesson might save our lives,” Mum replied.

  I eyed her curiously. “Mum, do you know a way out of here?”

  “I have an idea. Just an idea.”

  She sat up and rubbed her bleary eyes to see better around the chamber. “John,” she said. “I know you’ve been thinking it too.”

  “The fifth world?” Dad replied.

  “The fifth world,” Mum agreed.

  “Oh, man, you’re doing it again!”

  “Doing what?”

  “That thing when you have a discovery, but draw it out for the drama.”

  “I do that?” Mum asked.

  “You all do,” I said.

  “I definitely do,” Pan confessed. “It’s fun. Really annoys Jake.”

  “Actually, we do too, Jane,” Dad admitted.

  “You’re doing it now!” I protested. “What’s this about a ‘fifth world’? Wait, I remember that. The Aztecs thought there had been four worlds before this one, and each was destroyed. These sacrifices were meant to stop that happening again, right?”

  “Right,” Pan agreed. “If the gods weren’t happy, then the fifth world would be destroyed by an earthquake.”

  “What destroyed the other four worlds?” I asked.

  “Good again, Jake,” Mum said. “That’s the right question. Pandora?”

  “I … I can’t remember.”

  “That’s all right,” Mum said, “it was a lot to take in. But you should know the answer because you’ve been thinking about it a lot since we’ve been on this mission. One of the worlds was destroyed by a jaguar, another by fire, the third by wind and the fourth by floods.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Jaguar, fire, wind, flood… Those are the markers!”

  “Good, Jake,” Dad said.

  “How long have you known about this?” Pan asked.

  “Your father and I had our suspicions after Jake found the second marker, but we were only certain once you described the last one to us.”

  “The Aztecs were fleeing the Spanish invaders,” Dad explained. “Their markers weren’t just intended to lead us here, they were also a document of history. They led us through the four old worlds, to this place – the last refuge of their own world, the fifth world. In the Aztecs’ eyes, this mountain was all that was left of their empire.”

  “But how does that help us?” I asked.

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” Mum said, “but once you see the world through their eyes, new possibilities appear. We need to keep thinking. What might this mean?”

  “The Aztecs wanted us to become sacrificial victims,” Pan said. “To keep Quetzalcoatl happy. But what if we didn’t die? What if the god was unhappy?”

  “Their world would be destroyed,” Mum said. “By an earthquake.”

  “Dad,” Pan said, “you said the Aztecs saw everything literally. Do you think they might have planned a way to destroy this mountain if we didn’t die, so it seemed like an earthquake? If we can trigger that, then maybe there is a way out of here. Maybe we can make this whole tomb collapse.”

  “That is how they thought,” Dad agreed, “but there would have been no way for them to know if we did or didn’t die in these traps.”

  We’d run out of ideas. The Aztecs had led us to this place, the final stand of their world, and they needed us to die to keep it from being destroyed. But they couldn’t have known if we did actually die. So there was no way for them to tell if the god was or wasn’t happy.

  Unless…

  I rose from our bed of bones, staring at the coffin in the centre of the chamber. Maybe there was a way of telling if Quetzalcoatl was unhappy.

  “The Aztecs wanted to protect that coffin, right?” I asked.

  “Right,” Mum replied.

  “Agreed,” Dad said. “Disturbing it would have been a sure way to anger Quetzalcoatl and bring about the end of their world.”
<
br />   “But how would they know if we had disturbed it?” Pan asked.

  “Because it was moved,” I said.

  Mum looked at me, and a small smile curled the corners of her mouth.

  “Because it was moved,” she repeated.

  Dad’s voice came back, suddenly full of hope. “Jake, can you get to the coffin?”

  “I think so.”

  “Not without me,” Mum insisted.

  I helped her up, and we moved together over the top of the bone pit. This time I spread my weight out by crawling, so I didn’t sink down into the skeletons. I should have done that before, but I hadn’t been thinking clearly. Now, though, I was focused, ready to get this right. If I still could…

  By the time we reached the coffin, all the pain and worry had vanished from Mum’s eyes; they were sparkling as brightly as the casket’s crystal lid. She traced the snake symbol’s circular shape with a finger, and leaned over to examine the markings on the side of the casket.

  I remembered that she had never seen one of these crystal coffins. In Egypt, it was Pan and I who had found one in the tomb of Osiris and seen others inside the headquarters of the People of the Snake.

  “This is beautiful,” Mum said. “But it isn’t Aztec.”

  “Pan said the one in Egypt wasn’t Egyptian either,” I replied. “Whoever is buried in here is from some sort of lost civilization, from way before ancient times. The Snake Lady and her organization are trying to wipe out that history.”

  Mum looked up at the chamber ceiling, and the carving of the snake eating its own tail – the symbol of that lost civilization and of the Snake Lady’s organization.

  “We won’t let them,” she said.

  I know we were in a dangerous situation, but I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. I’d wanted to hear Mum say that for so long. Being here, seeing this, it had relit a fire in her. She’d stopped being a worried mum and she’d become a treasure hunter again.

  “What can you see?” Pan yelled.

  “We’re at the coffin,” I replied. “It’s on a stone plinth.”

  “Can you see the base?” Dad shouted.

  We dug deeper, clearing away just enough bones to see the chamber floor. There was a groove around the base of the plinth where it seemed to go deeper into the ground.