Gods and Men- The Hank Boyd Omnibus, page 25
part #1 of Gods and Men Series
“I’m not sure, Hank seems to think so,” Nicole replies. “Ever since Algeria, all he does is think about the Yucatan. He’s become obsessed.”
“Why here?” Kane asks, chewing.
“A dream,” Nicole replies. “He said he saw the Atlantean king, Thoth, sitting on a throne of bones, dressed in the garb of a Mayan ruler. Ever since then it’s all he talks about.”
Silence follows until Kane starts again in a hushed tone. “Is he still having the night terrors?”
“Yes, but they’re not as violent as they were a few months ago,” she answers. “Although, he still wakes up sweating some nights. He even punched me in his sleep, once. I spooked him trying to shake him awake.”
“Is that why you had that black eye—”
“I’m fine!” I bark, cutting off Kane, snapping open my still golden-bronze eyes, glaring at the two of them.
Kane’s employers in Langley—yes, we now have proper clearance for him to indulge us—had their lead doctors and scientists run a gauntlet of tests on me. And of course, they all came back negative. The swirling orichalcum is permanent but isn’t causing any issues. Nicole said that I’m one of a kind. Sometimes, though, I just wish I was the same Hank from last year, except still having her as my knockout girlfriend.
The same “company” scientists have outfitted me with a new pair of specs too. These bad boys can camouflage my eye color, changing it back to my natural hazel. The gold color isn’t exactly a feature I’m ready for the whole world to see. Besides, I don’t think I could bullshit a logical reason for the visible mutation. I think the glasses are sporty and they make me look a little more distinguished…. Kane thinks I look like an idiot.
I recall the conversation we had when I picked them up after my final fitting. We sat in a bar, sipping a few drinks. I had my beloved—a Sam Adams Boston lager and Kane a Fat Tire Amber Ale—his new favorite.
“Dude, seriously, you look like a thirty-year-old college student,” he said mockingly, having a good chuckle at my expense. “All you’re missing is the tweed jacket with the elbow patches.”
I just sat there for a beat, stroking my short cropped beard. I tried my damnedest to come up with one of my witty comebacks but decided to go with something a little more straightforward. “Um, have you seen my girlfriend?” I eventually countered with a smirk.
Checkmate.
He sat there silently for a second and then answered with a smile of his own, “Touché.” He then tipped his beverage to me in a mock salute, conceding the point.
3
Hotel Dolores Alba Chichen
Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico
I look up from the memory, seeing the two of them just standing there, quiet as church mice. Realizing I may have just jumped down their throats, I look down into my empty coffee mug and whisper, “Sorry…but I’m fine…I just…haven’t been sleeping much.”
Not sleeping much would be a lie. Not sleeping at all, would be closer to the truth. Ever since our misadventures under the Sahara three months ago, I haven’t slept for more than a few hours a night. And that’s saying something considering I was known to occasionally sleep half the day away.
I guess I should give myself some credit, though. Not many people can get possessed by the spirit of an ancient, all-powerful king, fight a hoard of stone man-beasts, and then duke it out with a corrupted Atlantean priest and live to tell the tale. Or in my case—due to national security—NOT tell the tale.
My brain is utterly fried and is always awake, thinking. It’s like what happens if you stay up late playing video games or watching TV, your brain just doesn’t shut off, and it keeps you up. On the rare nights, I do get some decent sleep…I wake up scared out of my gourd, lying in a pool of sweat. Or like what happened with Nicole…
The exhaustion is also very evident on my body. Nicole says it looks like I’ve aged a couple years in the last couple months. Kane says I look forty. I’m pretty sure Nicole is closer to the truth on this one, and the big lug is just being an a-hole. But, in all honesty, I feel a little in between both.
My temperament hasn’t gotten much better either. The short fuse I was born with has increased even more now. I, unfortunately, tend to snap at people a lot easier than normal, but thankfully those closest to me know what I’ve been through and give me a free pass, especially Nicole. She’s been a saint—an angel even— through all this. How I was ever lucky enough to get together with her is beyond me.
Don’t think about it, you moron! I think, berating myself for even contemplating why. You have the hottest, most badass girl in the world. Just be happy!
The physical prowess and strength I gained from the supernatural gifts—the ones that made me feel like He-Man—are now gone too. Once I gave them back, my body returned to normal. And with that normalcy came the broken and beaten feeling I still feel to this day. My body, and to some degree my psyche, just won’t mend. It’s like the exertion from the ordeal has left my very existence on empty.
At one point, the Atlantean elixir I inherited when I ate my dream apple—mixed with the spiritual take over on an epic proportion—had me feeling like the Six Million Dollar Man. I’m still not exactly sure how that worked, but it did. I felt like the five-tool baseball prospect I was when I was eighteen and full of piss-and-vinegar before I hit a wall and destroyed my shoulder…and my dreams.
So now, instead of being a professional ballplayer, I’m a major league gravedigger. I’m basically a poor man’s Indiana Jones, only without the stunt double. I do, however, whole-heartedly believe in a famous quote from Raiders of the Lost Ark. When Marion, played by Karen Allen, tells Indy, “You’re not the man I knew ten years ago…” He then answers her by saying, “It’s not the years…it’s the mileage.”
I prove it when I stand, grunting and stretching, creaking and popping. Multiple joints release, audibly cracking.
It must be as loud as I think because even Kane winces. “Hey, Old Man Winter…keep that shit to yourself.”
I give him the finger and grab a bagel, “So, are we ready for tonight?”
“Ja,” Nicole answers, her Swedish laced accent tickling my ears. “We have the park to ourselves, along with a guide and security.”
“Security?” I ask.
“Your father called in a request,” she explains. “Plus, I didn’t think it would hurt.”
I unwillingly force my eyes away from the tall beauty, getting back to the task at hand, “Any trouble pulling this together?” I ask, looking at the oversized CIA agent.
Kane is a big bear of a man and as loyal and trustworthy as it gets. He also happens to be an ex-Army Ranger. An injury threw him into the spy-ops branch of the government and out of active duty, but he still does what he does best. Blow. Shit. Up. The guy is an absolute nightmare for anyone who gets in his way.
At six-foot-six and easily pushing 260lbs, Kane is quite literally a Kodiak. Whether it’s a standard issue sidearm or a freakin’ Claymore mine, the “Mountain from Montana” will get the job done. The nickname I bestowed on him, Mt. Kane, makes even more sense when you finally get to see him in action. The guy literally looks like an erupting volcanic mountain.
I met him in a hospital room after my first run in with Zero, The Beginning of All Things. They’re the group that attacked Dad and me in the Algiers airport. They hunted us through the behind-the-scenes baggage sorting area, nearly killing us, and then again in the underground necropolis in the desert. After the first attack, he was assigned to protect us, becoming our personal security force and our official government liaison.
Now, he’s permanently onboard with us until further notice and has helped procure a hush-hush, blank-check budget from his superiors in Washington. Apparently, they aren’t pleased about Zero’s involvement and want them shut down. We are basically helping them with that in a round-about way. If Dad finds something relating to Atlantis—something we know Zero would want to get a hold of—he sends us in first. So far, we haven’t been tried, but if we get into a little skirmish along the way, Kane is there to step in and quiet down the noise.
“Nope,” says the man through chews, answering my question. “Once they saw where the calls were coming from, they bent over. The people in charge of Chichen Itza were told that we are here for a possible security threat and need to conduct a thorough investigation. With all the rumors swirling around about Algeria, I’m not surprised they went along so willingly. They practically begged for us to come down and check it out.”
Technically, we didn’t lie to anyone. We are here for a possible security threat…we just don’t know what it is yet. We’re here on a hunch—a hunch that may not even turn up anything and honestly I hope it doesn’t.
The ancient, super race of Atlantis—or An’tala as they called it—was supposedly linked, or maybe even responsible, for all of humanity’s earliest and most dominant civilizations. We found evidence of this in tunnels under the Tassili National Park and proof of their connection to the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, and the Mayan people. That is why we are here in the Yucatan—the Mayan stomping grounds.
The last straw before we left was my dream about Thoth. Once I awoke from that doozy, we got everything moving within a couple of days.
I roll my neck, finishing my own brand of chiropractic work, turn and head for the bathroom, “Okay guys. Give me twenty to get ready. Then we hit the park for our daylight walk through.”
4
Isla de Jaina, Campeche, Mexico
Dr. Jason Keen drove the three-foot-long blade forward, piercing the other man’s back, punching it through his chest, burying it to its hilt. Dr. Weaver barely got out a gurgled whimper before Keen yanked the blade out, dropping it at his feet.
The older man fell to the ground, coughing up blood, his legs turning to Jell-O. Blood pooled everywhere in no time, drenching the area beneath him. Dr. Weaver just lay there, staring in shock-and-awe at the crimson stained hole in his chest.
Keen stepped over to the dying man. “Oh no, you tripped and fell. Is there anything I can do?” He said it in a deadpan tone, feigning an emergency. Dr. Weaver tried desperately to cry for help, but only got out another blood-filled hack, his right lung a ragged mess.
The Aussie’s eyes then narrowed and became filled with rage, yelling in savage bloodlust. “I can’t have you or that other bastard in D.C. take away this opportunity. This fortune—your job—will be mine!”
He then turned, quickly moving further into the chamber, dropping to his knees and began to dig. He hit something solid only a few inches beneath the layer of wealth.
Keen quickly cleared off the rest of what covered the find, including the plain, yet, unnerving skull. He grabbed it and hurled it behind him, smashing it to bits against the adjacent wall. “Death to the death god,” he said smiling with psychotic delight.
Once the now unburied object was revealed, he could now truly see it for what it was. “It’s…a coffin?” Then, he noticed something odd on the casket’s lid. There were symbols etched into the gold…Aztec symbols. What the hell are Aztecan hieroglyphs doing inside a Mayan tomb?
“Beware…” Keen spun at hearing the other man speak. “You know not…cough…” The dying man wheezed, spitting blood, but continued. “…what you seek. His wealth…cough…his wealth is tainted by...the death of his people.” With the last ounce of his strength, Dr. Weaver looked up at Keen, “He who finds the darkness…cough…so dies by it.”
Dr. Weaver’s eyes glazed over, his body slumping to the floor, lying in a pile of blood-stained riches, dead.
Keen looked away from his deceased superior, both in shock and also in confusion. He knew the man to be very superstitious, but he also understood that no one knew more about the local people and their beliefs than Dr. Weaver did.
He nervously turned his attention back to the coffin but wondered if the old man’s fear-filled fallacy had merit. “No, it’s just the delusions of an old man who belonged in the nut house.” He said it aloud trying hard to convince himself, but failed in the attempt. He was scared shitless.
Forgetting the historical relevance of his find, Keen grabbed the lid to the golden crypt and pushed. He was completely out of breath by the time the lid came free. As Keen slid the heavy covering off, he looked down into the dark innards of the casket and saw…nothing. He grabbed his flashlight and directed its beam into the dark space.
What he saw confused him. All that was in the beautifully crafted sarcophagus was an extremely decomposed corpse. The long dead person, who was missing his/her head, seemed to be holding a run-of-the-mill clay pot in their hands. Correction…hand. This person was missing the lower half of their left arm.
Okay… Why would they bury this down here with all this wealth? Keen thought, inspecting the one-armed native, who would have been huge by their standards.
Keen pried the pot free from the dead person’s grip. It fit perfectly in the palm of their hand, about the size of a large softball. There were a few carvings on the side of it too. Small Mayan glyphs, he deduced. In the hands of an Aztecan none-the-less. What the bloody hell is going on here?
He didn’t bother trying to decipher them like he probably should have and instead grabbed the pot’s lid and gave it a yank.
POP.
The lid came free, and with it, an awful smell.
It’s like a skunk ate some bad cheese and then died, he thought while briefly covering his nose with his shirt.
After having no luck exiling himself from the stench, Keen let go of his shirt collar, opting to breathe through his mouth…and then gagged.
Cough.
Oh God, it even tastes like something died!
He quickly abandoned the mouth-breathing technique. He’d rather smell it than taste it.
After calming and refocusing his attention back to the task at hand, he stood and pointed his light into the small container. He saw only blackness, it’s innards consumed by the room’s shadows. Keen shook the pot a little, only to get what looked like dark black soot on his hand.
He tried to brush it off, but it didn’t come free. Again, he shook his hand, and this time, it spread over his entire hand…then his wrist.
But the advancing blackness wasn’t the only thing that Keen watched. He also witnessed his fingers slowly shrivel up and fall off. His own screams filled the tomb as he turned to run, but tripped and fell over his former boss’ body.
The Aussie scrambled to his feet as he watched the darkness consume his forearm, stopping just below the elbow. Then all at once, his lower arm fell off, joining the rest of his appendage in a pile of ash on the chamber floor. Through tear-streaked eyes, he looked to the coffin, remembering the corpse’s missing arm.
Was this how it happened?
Now in shock, Keen quickly scurried through the tunnel back towards civilization. He finally emerged from the hole to the delight of the crew that he and Dr. Weaver left behind. Only, he wasn’t exactly ecstatic to see them. Keen stood, wailing in agony, completely missing his right arm from the shoulder down. Overcome with shock and pure terror, he fell into the arms of an alarmed digger.
By the time the confused and terrified crew member realized what was amiss, it was too late. The local lifted his hand up to signal for someone to call a paramedic. It’s then he noticed that he was missing two of his fingers. He froze in horror as a shadow-like darkness quickly crept up his arm.
He screeched in fright and jumped to his feet, dropping the now lifeless form of the younger man in the process. The digger ran through the throng of people, brushing by and unfortunately touching some of them. A domino effect occurred as at least a dozen men—all at once— cried out in alarm.
Like a flock of scared turkeys, they bolted in random directions. Some of the infected men collided into each other, knocking each other to the dirt. While others crashed into more of the innocent crew, spreading the deadly anomaly as the darkness consumed them.
* * *
“Fils de salope!” Cursed the woman in perfect French. She was beginning to get tired of the constant interruptions. The noise especially drove her fou—it drove her mad. All she wanted was peace-and-quiet, but in a camp full of men, she knew it wasn’t likely to happen.
Dr. Olivia Dubois was your average French-born woman—minus the tattoos and pink highlights. Her hair was cut into a perfectly messy bob-style, with unkempt spikes randomly protruding in places. She had been sick to death of being the typical science geek while in school, so she decided to spice up her image a little before her senior year of universite.
As for the tattoos… She had every single Disney villain you could think of beautifully portrayed across her arms, shoulders, and even parts of her upper chest and back. She called them her, memoire de sa jeunesse, the “memory of her youth.”
Olivia also tended to wear tank tops a lot because a) the intense heat the Yucatan offered was unbearable in anything more than that and b) because she liked to flaunt her skin art.
She was proud of her childhood and had no qualms about showing it. She especially loved her left shoulder tat. It pictured Gaston, the villain from Beauty and the Beast, flexing his “barge-sized” muscles. It was her first tattoo, and it paid homage to her French heritage. The winner of the 1992 “Oscar” in the Best Music, Original Score category was based in France.
Standing up from the examination table, Olivia stretched, popping her neck in two spots and her back in three. Sitting at the countertops for hours on end was starting to have its effect on her, so she opted to stand and work at times.
She used to go out for early morning jogs before the sun got too intense. Then, the days went by, then the weeks. Now, she didn’t even exercise in her free time.
It had been exactly six weeks since she last went for a run, but thankfully her naturally athletic build kept her looking fit. She glanced up, seeing the mirror that hung in the tent’s restroom. The workstation was positioned as such, that she could see herself in the reflection.
