Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God Read online

  “We can push it under,” Pan insisted. “Dad, come this side with me. Mum, you push with Jake. Everyone, now!”

  We all heaved, forcing the coffin underwater against its will. We dived down with it and saw daylight glimmering from the entrance to a tunnel. The end of the coffin thumped against rocks, but we managed to redirect it through the narrow opening. Now we had to push and hope.

  Enough daylight filtered from the other end of the tunnel for me to see the outline of the body inside the coffin, and the emerald tablet in its hands. Maybe the others saw it too, because we all found extra strength to push the casket harder underwater. Then, suddenly, the whole tunnel jolted.

  I turned in time to see darkness rushing at me. Behind us, the slab of the chasm wall had crashed into the pit, sending a surge of rubble and water shooting along the tunnel. The force of it slammed me against the coffin and then swept me along the tunnel and out into the daylight.

  I burst to the surface, gasping. There was a cut on my head, and blood ran into my eyes, so the outside world appeared through a crimson haze. The tunnel had spat me out into the river that ran between the Storm Peaks, with a ringside view of the end of the world – or the Aztecs’ world, at least.

  More and more of the mountain collapsed and fell into the jungle, sending great plumes of dust rushing up over the trees. Other slabs splashed into the river. What remained of the Storm Peak seemed to wobble like a jelly as brightly coloured birds flapped from its ledges, and monkeys leapt from cliffs, all fleeing for their lives. The whole mountain was about to come down.

  “Jake! Over here!”

  Mum, Dad and Pan clung onto the crystal coffin as the river swept them away from the destruction, deeper into the jungle. I swam after them, struggling against the current to get across the river. Another chunk of rock splashed into the water close by, sending me into a spin. I sank under, swallowed water, and screamed bubbles and blood. The current was so fierce, and I was so disorientated, that I think I would have drowned had a hand not yanked me back to the surface.

  “I’ve got you,” Dad grunted. “Just hold on.”

  I don’t know where he got the strength. Even with me clinging onto him, Dad managed to swim against the current, and carry me back to my mum and sister. They all looked as banged up as me, their faces covered in cuts and bruises, their eyes wild with fright.

  “Are you all right?” Mum gasped.

  I nodded vaguely and clung on to the coffin like a life raft. From somewhere I managed something like a smile. Somehow, we’d done it. We’d escaped the mountain and we’d got the coffin. If we could get it open, and get the emerald tablet back to Britain in time, we still had a chance of saving Sami. At least we were out of danger.

  “Everybody, look out!” Mum screamed.

  Something struck the river close to us – not a rock, but something smaller and faster, spraying up water. I turned, blurrily aware of a dark shape rushing from downstream. Another object hit the side of the crystal coffin, so loud and close that it snapped my mind back into focus, and I realized what was happening. It was Alpha Squad – they were coming after us in a motorboat!

  “They’re shooting at us,” Pan said.

  “Get under the coffin!” Dad yelled.

  We dived underwater, using the coffin as a shield. A bullet pinged off the side of the casket, and another shot past us underwater in a trail of bubbles. But the river was getting shallower; we couldn’t stay under the coffin much longer.

  I hit the riverbed, scraped through mud and stones, and burst to the surface. Alpha Squad’s boat was only fifty metres downstream, and catching up fast. Veronika Flutes stood at the front, taking pot shots at us with her crab claw gun. She looked more like a pirate than ever, with one eye patched, the other gleaming wildly and her flame-red hair lashing in the wind and spray. A crazed grin spread across her face as she raised her weapon for another shot.

  “Oh, my God,” Pan breathed. “Look!”

  She wasn’t looking at Alpha Squad. She was looking past Alpha Squad, where what was left of the Storm Peak was finally collapsing, like a building being demolished. An entire cliff face sheered away from the mountain and fell towards the river – a towering wall of blackness coming right for us.

  “Swim!” Dad roared. “Swim for your lives!”

  35

  I didn’t look back, and nor did any of my family. We just swam, splashing and gasping, frantic to get as far as possible from the great wall of darkness that had broken from the mountain. We were far enough away to escape being crushed, but we weren’t out of danger. When that cliff crashed down it would do more than just crush what was beneath it.

  “Keep moving!” Mum screamed. “Don’t look back!”

  Of course I looked back then, and I stopped swimming. I knew I had to keep going, but I just couldn’t. I was transfixed by what I saw, partly out of terror, but also just plain astonishment.

  The entire cliff slammed down on the river and the banks, sending up a ten-metre tidal wave of mud and water. It happened so fast that there was nothing we could do to escape it. The wave swept us up and hurled us into the jungle. I crashed against a tree and looked up just in time to see something flying towards me like a missile. The crystal coffin! I rolled away a second before it slammed into the tree so hard it snapped the trunk in half.

  I lay on the jungle floor, staring. It wasn’t the whole crystal coffin.

  “It’s just the lid…” I gasped.

  The falling cliff had smashed the coffin open!

  I scrambled up, wiping wet hair and blood from my eyes to gaze around the flooded riverbank. I saw Kyle Flutes leaning against a tree, tearing off his mud-soaked jungle shirt, struggling to gather his senses. I saw Mum and Dad helping each other up, calling out for Pan and me. I saw Pan farther along the riverbank, climbing down from a tree that the wave had thrown her into. I turned, scanning the rest of the riverbank. Was it there? Could I see it? My breath quickened and my heart picked up speed…

  “There!”

  The rest of the coffin lay on the edge of the bank, half in and half out of the water. The body that had been inside it lay a few metres away, face down in the flood water. Was it still holding the emerald tablet?

  I ran for it, dodging between trees, slipping over, staggering up. I heard a cry, but didn’t look back. I could see the body better now; a slim figure partly wrapped in cloth. One of its legs had torn free and was twisted at a horrible angle. The limb was thin and dark, like a stick of charcoal.

  I heard a cry but kept running. There was absolutely no way I was stopping until I reached that mummy.

  Then I stopped.

  “Oh, God…”

  I stood, staring, unable to believe my bad luck. Dark red ants surrounded the body, swimming frantically where their nest had been washed over by the floodwater. Bullet ants. I’d felt the sting of just one of those things; there was no way I could wade through a puddle of thousands. There were several other nests too, all along the riverbank…

  I spotted a fallen branch and picked it up. Leaning over the puddle, I dug the end of the branch under the mummy and tried to flip the corpse over. Almost immediately, dozens of ants scrambled onto the wood and rushed towards my hands.

  Behind me, Kyle Flutes limped closer along the bank. I heard another cry, like a tiger’s growl, as Veronika charged from the other direction. She’d lost her gun, but the crazed look in her eyes suggested she’d rather beat me to death with her fists anyway.

  I gripped the branch tighter, ignoring the army of ants rushing closer to my hands. “Come on.”

  The mummy finally flipped over, and I dropped the branch and staggered back. Its face was even more gross than the ancient corpse I’d seen in Egypt: it was dark and frazzled, with peeled-back lips and hollow black eyes. Its spindly hands were twisted over its cloth-wrapped chest, but the emerald tablet they’d once held was gone.

  I turned and scanned further along the river – and there it was, glinting in the sunlight on
the bank fifty metres downstream, beside Alpha Squad’s upturned motorboat.

  I started running again, but Veronika had seen it too, and she was closer. Reaching it first, she picked the emerald tablet up and raised it triumphantly.

  “I got it, Kyle!” she hollered.

  She saw Pan running towards her, and the grin spread even wider across her mud-splattered face. She had the tablet and she’d get to hurt someone. Pan must have seen the look in her eyes, but she didn’t slow down. I’d never seen my sister look so determined. She’d always insisted that she didn’t “do action” but now she was charging straight into a fight with a psychopath. It seemed like suicide – she couldn’t beat Veronika!

  “Pan!” I cried. “Don’t!”

  Then, just at the last moment, Pan seemed to chicken out. Instead of attacking Veronika she dived to the ground and slid under the upturned motorboat.

  Veronika laughed, a proper witch’s cackle. “Smart girl. You stay under there.”

  But her grin faltered as the boat’s motor spluttered to life. Pan had turned its engine on. The outboard motor began to whirl like a lazy electric fan.

  Veronika snorted. “Is that meant to be scary?”

  “No!” Pan shouted. “But this is.”

  She jammed the boat’s throttle, revving the motor so it started to spin in a blur. The rush of air sprayed anything close to it on the riverbank up at Veronika Flutes: mud, water – and thousands of bullet ants.

  “Yeah, Pan!” I yelled.

  You should have heard Veronika’s cry! I swear it was even louder than the mountain collapsing. She sank to her knees, wailing and thrashing, frantic to shake the stinging creatures off her limbs. The tablet dropped from her hands and fell into the river. The current instantly swept it away.

  I didn’t stop to think – I just let instinct take over. I took two steps and leapt into the water. I heard another splash behind me as Kyle Flutes dived in too. He was coming after the tablet, and me.

  I swam harder, keeping my eyes on the relic as it sank under and bobbed back up, again and again. Kyle was a much stronger swimmer than me, and he was catching up fast. I guessed that he planned to take me out first, and then go after the tablet alone.

  The tablet shot over churning water, caught in a current that swept it towards the opposite bank. It hit the side of a tree that had toppled from the bank, and it stayed there – trapped against the trunk as the river rushed against it.

  Reaching out, I just managed to grab the end of the tree, and pulled myself along it to the tablet. I screamed – a mix of delight and distress. For the first time I actually had the tablet, but Kyle was getting closer, and he looked like he wanted to change that situation very quickly and very painfully.

  I glimpsed Mum and Dad and Pan charging along the opposite bank. They were trying to keep up, but they wouldn’t make it in time to stop Kyle.

  I was only about ten metres from the riverbank, but doubted I’d be able to scramble up the muddy slope before Kyle grabbed me. This fallen tree was my best escape route. It rose at a steep angle up and over the bank to where it had snapped from the lower part of the trunk. If I could climb to the top, I hoped, I should be able to scramble down to the bank.

  Gripping the tablet under my arm, I used my other hand to pull myself up onto the slippery trunk. The wood felt dead and rotten. It would struggle to hold Kyle too, if he came after me.

  I wanted to run up the slope, but the trunk was wet and I feared I’d slip back into the water. More than ever I needed to remember my parents’ lessons: stay calm, think. I kept moving, placing each step carefully on the trunk as I edged my way higher over the river and then over the bank. I was close to the top now, from where I could hopefully get down and flee. I looked for a good place to jump to, but spotted something else, something moving on the forest floor.

  The shock of what I saw caused me to shriek and slip. I landed on the trunk and almost let go of the tablet, but managed to clutch it to my chest. My other arm hugged the trunk as I stared down at the creature pacing beneath me on the forest floor.

  “Please tell me this is a joke,” I gasped.

  The jaguar glared up at me, its amber eyes flashing in the sunlight. It was the same jaguar – I was somehow certain – that we’d escaped in the mountain. I shrieked even louder as it leapt at me, swiping its claws, but it missed and dropped back to the bank with a snarl.

  Behind me, Kyle climbed up onto the tree trunk. He’d torn off his jungle shirt; bulky muscles rippled along his arms and under his vest. He saw the jaguar directly below, and a grin spread across his stubbled cheeks as he edged closer up the trunk.

  “Bad luck, kid,” he growled.

  “Bad luck?” I pulled myself carefully up, so I stood again on the trunk, now facing Kyle. “Bad luck is a mountain falling on you, Kyle. This is just ridiculous. A jaguar? Seriously?”

  “Maybe you angered the Aztec gods, kid.”

  “Oh, shut up, you idiot.”

  Kyle’s grin spread even wider as he came closer. The guy’s wrists were thicker than my thighs. He’d snap my spine if he got his hands on me…

  “Give me the tablet,” he called.

  I reached the top of the slope, where the trunk had snapped and fallen. I couldn’t climb down, and there were no other trees close enough for me to jump to.

  “This trunk won’t hold us for long,” Kyle said. “That cat won’t be happy if we come crashing down on it, and I fancy my chances against it better than yours. Hand me the tablet and I’ll let you back down to the river. We’ll call it even, how about that?”

  “You’re not having it, Kyle,” I insisted.

  “Listen, kid, I’m impressed. You put up a good fight. But you’re not going to win this one. The smart play here is to know you’re beaten. Live to fight another day, eh?”

  I looked down again at the jaguar snarling and pacing below us, then back to Kyle. My mind raced. Half a dozen different plans came to me, but they all ended up with Kyle getting the tablet, and me getting dead. There was only one plan that ended differently, but it was the craziest of the lot.

  I gripped the tablet to my chest.

  “Don’t come any closer,” I warned.

  “Son, just give me the tablet. This tree doesn’t have long before it breaks and that jaguar’s getting angry.”

  The tree groaned from our combined weight. Kyle was right; the rotten trunk wouldn’t hold us much longer.

  I looked beyond him, to my mum on the opposite bank. I’d expected her to leap into the water, to swim across to help. Instead she stood totally still, watching me. She knew what I planned; somehow I just knew that she did. Our eyes locked, and Mum nodded.

  Do it.

  “You know the number one killer in the jungle, Kyle?” I said.

  Kyle stopped, confused. “No, kid, why don’t you tell me after you give me that tablet.”

  “I’ll tell you first.”

  “OK, then, what is it?”

  “Not wearing a jungle suit when you fight a wild cat.”

  Pedro had told us that these suits would withstand a crocodile bite. I hoped they’d protect me against a jaguar’s, too, because I was wearing mine, and Kyle was not wearing his.

  I think Kyle realized at the last minute what I was going to do, but he was too surprised to react. He just watched, eyes bulging, as I lifted my foot … and stamped on the trunk. That was all it took, just one hard stamp and the whole tree trunk broke in half. I heard the jaguar snarl, and my family call out, as I dropped with Kyle and the emerald tablet, down to the jungle.

  36

  EAST SUSSEX, ENGLAND

  TWO DAYS LATER

  The Snake Lady turned up the volume on the record player, closing her eyes as the singer’s bittersweet aria filled the room. It felt somehow as if the music was inside her too, rushing through her veins and swelling her heart.

  She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and held the breath. It was a calming technique she’d picked up from one of he
r clients, the child from the Atlas family with all the behavioural issues. Where was that boy, she wondered? Most likely dead in a ditch with the rest of his family, which was such a disappointment. Now she would have to arrange for another team to—

  No. Do not think about work right now.

  The Snake Lady breathed in again, held the breath again. Her head was such a mess at times – so many things to plan. Her therapist had urged her to clear her mind for a few minutes each day, to relax and forget about work.

  She turned the volume to its maximum level. How she loved this opera. Puccini’s La Bohème, the tragic tale of the poet and a seamstress in Paris. The seamstress’s love felt so pure and perfect. Sometimes the Snake Lady dreamed of Paris and poetry, a simple life away from the burden of her work. An attic flat, a record player, a pile of books. Far from the hassle of the missing Chinese tombs, the funding issues over her organization’s new headquarters in Mongolia, or the nightmare of the Honduras hunt that had her superiors in such a twist. If only they had let her run the organization as she wished, without all the form- filling. They would have all the emerald tablets by now, and be well on the way to solving their mysteries.

  No, do not think about work.

  Breathe.

  She left the living room and sat with her supper at the dining-room table. As she ate, she imagined herself in that Paris flat, listening as the long-haired poet read to her—

  The needle slipped and the opera stopped.

  The Snake Lady sighed. She loved the record player, but it was frustratingly old-fashioned. She walked back into the living room and set the needle back on the record. The seamstress’s love song continued.

  This was the moment in La Bohème that she most loved, when the poet finally declares his feelings for the seamstress.

  The music stopped again.

  The Snake Lady cursed.

  Relax.

  Breathe.

  She returned to the living room, but stopped in the doorway.