FORTY-NINE

SARA’S FOOTSTEPS ECHOED on the cobblestone street, bouncing off tall stone buildings and the mountain ceiling high above. Weston, being barefoot, walked in silence. His stride was confident and calm, the way a kid walks in his own house; every turn known, every contour familiar.

He really does belong here, Sara thought. She would have been happy to let Weston and his little clan live out their lives here, too, but she knew without a doubt that he could never be convinced of that.

Seeing the city up close, the architecture took on a new shape. Asian meets ancient Rome. Elegance amalgamated with power. Beautiful and chilling. The curved roofs sported long corner beams. The walls of the buildings were constructed from thick stones, perhaps once polished, but now rough. The larger buildings, with overhanging platforms, were supported by rows of columns that smacked of Rome’s early Doric order. They had already passed through four of the five galleries, each one separated from the next by a large, gated stone wall.

Light shifted and rolled through the chamber, climbing buildings and sliding across streets. Weston had explained that clouds were moving by the mountain, shifting the sun’s beams on the giant crystals. Sara’s mother had hung crystals in the windows of her childhood home and the effect had been marvelous, but they were a joke compared to this. The cool, crisp air filled the nose like New England in the fall.

The walk had been long, yet after days of unsure footing in the jungle, Sara found the hard, smooth stone beneath her feet a welcome change. If not for the circumstances of her visit to Mount Meru she would have loved to explore. As it was, she was totally tuning out Weston’s ongoing history lesson about the decline of the Neanderthal civilization. Apparently, the entire history of the species was recorded in another chamber, going back to a time before Homo sapiens existed. The temptation to become enraptured with the place was intense. The history, the mystery of it all. But Sara’s mind remained preoccupied with something even more glorious—escape.

So far, she hadn’t gotten beyond, “Take off my boots so he can’t hear me running.” The rest of her mental energy focused on learning the layout of the city. There could be no hesitation when she made her move, no delay in choosing a path. She felt confident she could find her way out through the gates, working through back alleys and avoiding open space, but once out of the city her plan fell flat. Climbing the stairs again wasn’t an option. She’d be exposed. Weston could easily catch her. And she’d be headed straight back into the den of her enemies. The only other option she’d come up with had her jumping in the subterranean river and letting it sweep her away . . . wherever it went.

A sudden tap on her shoulder jolted her from her thoughts.

“Lost in thought, are we?” Weston asked, pushing the handgun against her shoulder. He could tell she wasn’t listening to everything he said. Who could blame her? She had to be overwhelmed by the place, just as he was when he’d first stumbled upon it. And years of constant work had nearly returned Meru to its former glory—a city fit for gods. He pointed up. “We’re almost there.”

Sara looked up. She’d been so distracted by the buildings around her and plans of escape that she’d failed to notice the temple rising high above them. The fifth and final gate stood before them, open like the others. Sara took a step back. She had no desire to enter the temple. She knew it was the end of their trip and the beginning of her nightmare. But with the gun to her back, what choice did she have?

She walked through the open thirty-foot-tall arched gate, noticing the restoration work on its two massive doors had yet to be completed. No longer blocked by the fifth gallery wall, the temple stood boldly before her. Rows of balustrades surrounded the outer perimeter of the structure proper. Each vertical column featured a serpent wrapped around it, each different from the next. An entrance lay just beyond the balustrades. They walked through it, into a long courtyard featuring palm trees and flowering bushes. Lit by the colorful crystals above, the lush inner court erased the dire emotions brought on by the rows of snakes outside.

But Sara’s sense of dread remained regardless of the inner temple’s beauty. Weston had fallen silent when he should be talking the most. This place was no doubt home to a thousand stories worth telling. Yet, Weston simply pointed the way and kept his jaw clenched tight. Now he was distracted by his thoughts . . . by his plans. Was he simply hoping to change her heart by the power of the place, or was he taking her to a cell? There was no way to know.

She decided to see if the man could be softened, or at least understood. As they walked across the courtyard, she said, “Tell me about your family.”

“They’re here, with me.”

“I mean before . . .” She waved her hands around at the city. “. . . all this. Before Vietnam. What were your parents like?”

Weston glanced at her, suspicion filling his eyes. He forced a grin. “My father was an alcoholic, abusive prick.”

Strike one, Sara thought.

At the end of the courtyard, a steep staircase rose fifty feet up to where a massive rectangular entryway beckoned them into the temple’s innards. Above the entryway, the five towers—arranged in a quincunx, like five dots on a die—jutted toward the chamber’s ceiling, now only one hundred feet above. The five layers of each tower curved up and in, coming to a point. They looked more like serrated spear tips now than they had from above. The place screamed of danger. Stunning to look at, but hiding an inner darkness. Perhaps there was a reason humans had turned on their Neanderthal counterparts?

“Up,” Weston instructed when they reached the stairs. Each step was a foot tall and a half foot deep. She took the stairs slowly, using her hands and feet to keep from falling back.

“What about a wife? You’re wearing a wedding ring.”

Weston stopped. She looked back at him. His frown said it all: this topic was off-limits.

She quickly switched gears. “What about your mother?”

Weston’s voice sounded lighter when he spoke. “My mother . . . was an angel. And a good cook. Not at all concerned with health, though. Her cure-all for anything from the common cold to the nastiest flu was apple pie, vanilla ice cream, and a chocolate frappe. It’s a wonder all that sugar fueling the virus or killing my immune system didn’t land me in the hospital.”

“Was she a stay-at-home mom?”

“At first, until my father left. Then she put her biology degree to good use and became a zoo caretaker. She fostered my love of the natural world.”

At the top of the stairs Sara looked into the open maw of the temple. The hallway stretched forward for fifty feet, where it stopped under the central tower. Several skylights lit the hall with cubes of light. She turned toward Weston as he finished ascending the stairs. “What species did she care for?”

“Gorillas, actually. Magnificent creatures.”

“Huh,” Sara said. “Ironic.”

As soon as the word hit her own ears she realized the implication and closed her eyes.

Strike two.

“What?” Weston blinked like he’d been slapped. His voice rose. “What did you just say?”

He stepped toward her, his face flushing. “Ironic? Ironic! You take my children for apes? They can speak. They can think. They have a moral code. That’s more than you can say for most of the human race!”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes . . .” He took her shoulder in his meaty hand and pushed her around. “You did.”

With one more shove they entered the hallway. Two doors on either side of the hall led to square rooms arranged in a cruciform. Three steps staggered down the sides of each room’s walls, plummeting into deep fishponds stocked with very large fish of a multitude of species.

Past the cruciform of rooms, at the end of the hallway, rose another set of stairs, this one leading out of the temple roof, into open air and the central tower itself. Again, Weston’s instructions were simple but now punctuated with a shove. “Up.”

Each step displayed a line of ancient pictorial text scrolling from one end to the other as though they were meant to be read as the steps were climbed. The Asian-style script was plain but artistic. Sara stopped on the fifth step up and traced the lines of the script with her finger. “Do you know what it means?”

Weston stopped next to her. “They’re curses.”

Sara looked up the stairs. The script seemed endless. “Curses on who?”

“On you. On me. On all of humanity.” Weston waved the gun at her. “Keep moving.”

A sick feeling burrowed into her stomach and made a home for itself. This whole temple, this whole city, had been founded on a hatred for humanity. And she was being led to its core. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but she’d sensed the spirit of the place since passing through the first gallery gate. It wasn’t just Weston that had her spooked. It was the entire city.

Homo sapiens were never meant to tread here.

They were not welcome.

Sara moved quickly up the stairs, not wanting to look at the script anymore and fearing the city might suddenly come to life and fling her down the steep incline. Reaching the top, she found herself out of breath and facing an average-sized wooden door. A relief had been carved into the wood, similar to the ones worn by many of the city’s buildings and shrines. Yet this one was a recent addition. The wood of the door, like that of the newer roofs, shone brightly against the dull gray stone of the temple. The relief featured a single face—Weston’s.

He stopped next to her, looking at the relief. “A bit crude, but effective, don’t you think? They’ve only just begun to re-form their culture, yet their artistic skills—” Weston looked her in the eyes. “Their artistic skills seem to be intrinsic.” Weston opened the door, motioned with the gun, and said, “In.”

Sara complied.

The circular room she found herself in was one part holy temple and one part caveman bachelor pad—no doubt Weston’s home away from home. Light poured in through circular holes that vented the ceiling. She realized this inner chamber was a miniature-sized version of the mountain above. It even had a crystal chandelier that reflected and amplified the light throughout the room.

At the center of the room, below the crystal lamp, was a fire pit. The surrounding walls were covered with several ancient carvings depicting scenes of human sacrifice, spirits, and strange rituals. Sara’s eyes froze on a relief of several Neanderthal men holding a human woman down upon an altar. It became clear in that moment what the Neanderthals had done to offend the humans. Thousands of years ago, the Neanderthals would have been much more “human” than the group she’d seen. More hairy, maybe, but not nearly as strong. A hyperevolutionary leap had done that during their time in isolation. But they had been wicked, practicing what appeared to be magic of some kind, sacrificing humans, performing rituals. Perhaps in secret at first, she thought, but they must have been found out. And the Homo sapiens, horrified, did what they did best—exterminated.

She turned away from the relief and saw a modern-looking bed. Fashioned from wood and covered with a homemade mattress. Weston removed the belt holding his holster and knife and placed it on the bed. The red band of flesh on his waist revealed the belt was a smidge too snug. He sat next to the belt and scanned the walls of the room. “Before I got here, I thought the Neanderthals were victims of human ignorance and violence. But this room opened my eyes. They did awful things to humanity. True crimes. And they paid for it.”

“Then why are you protecting them?”

“At the end of World War Two, did we kill all the Nazis? Did we continue dropping nukes on Japan? Of course not. We helped them rebuild. They were wrong and they got trounced. But the Neanderthals have never had a chance to make up for what they did wrong.”

“And now they do, right? By allowing the human race to go extinct?”

“That’s not my fault!” Weston was back on his feet, pacing and agitated. “Humanity is doing that to itself.”

“How convenient for you.” She shook her hands at him. “Just give me the damn cure and let me go!”

Weston paused his pacing, surprised by the tone and volume of her voice. For a moment he looked at her with different eyes, the same way he looked at King. Like a threat. “I’m afraid you would not enjoy receiving the cure the way I did.”

Sara thought about the implications. About what she knew of Weston’s time in the jungle. “From the old mothers . . .” Her hand went to her mouth as she realized the truth. “It’s an STD?”

“A filthy way of saying it is transmitted through the blood, but essentially correct. That is one way it can be transferred. I have not, clearly, been able to study how it works in detail, but that is my best theory.”

“Something is transferred,” Sara said, her mind on the hunt for Brugada’s cure and not on the rancid-smelling man beside her. “A virus, most likely, that modifies the DNA and disables whatever gene allows Brugada to become a killer. It’s eloquent, really. An avian flu virus delivers the active gene and a second shuts it off. Viral competition.”

“Interesting. The male Nguoi Rung population died off quite quickly. But the females survived. At some point, they contracted a virus—your competing virus—and it altered their genes, protecting them and future generations from Brugada. If not, the Neanderthal race would have ended with the deaths of the old mothers.”

Sara’s face brightened as she understood. “It makes sense. What were your symptoms?”

He thought for a moment. “Swollen glands. A slight fever. And a rash that eventually blistered, crusted over, scabbed, and healed. Really quite minor.”

Sarah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It wasn’t just like an STD, it was an STD. Weston had just described a classic case of herpes; granted, most likely a new strain, but herpes nonetheless. What made this even more believable was that herpes was frequently used in gene therapy, as it readily accessed and altered the genetic code. Several lab-engineered herpes-based cures were already in development for HIV, cancer, liver tumors—the list was extensive. In this case nature had done all the work, shutting down the SCN5A gene activated by the bird flu. “It’s amazing.”

“I’m tickled you think so, but you can wipe that look of hope from your face.” Weston faced her. “I will not be sharing my blood with you and I am not a philistine, so do not think you can receive the cure from me through . . . other means.”

Weston squinted suddenly, his eyes no longer meeting hers. She feared he was ogling her, but his expression was all wrong.

“What is that?” he asked. “On your wrist. It just changed color.”

“It’s a—” Sara froze as she looked at her outbreak meter. It glowed a deep, bloodlike red. Brugada was out.

The pandemic had begun.

She gasped. “No . . .”

Weston stepped forward, took her wrist, and looked at the rainbow of warm colors. “What kind of watch is this?”

Sara yanked her arm away. She held her wrist up in front of his face. “This means that the pandemic has begun. People are dying. You need to let me go.”

Weston stared at her.

“Please,” she said, her voice wavering with desperation.

“You know I can’t.”

Sara’s fear turned to rage. “Not a philistine? You’re allowing the human race to face the possibility of extinction!” She shook her head. It was useless. They’d had that conversation already. She looked at the wedding band on his finger. Time to push his buttons, she thought, before saying, “What about your wife? She’s still out there, right?”

“I warned you not to talk about her.”

“Did you love your wife? Did you ever?”

Veins appeared on Weston’s forehead as he grew angry. “I said don’t!” He raised the gun toward her.

The gun gave her pause, but Weston hadn’t taken her all this way to shoot her. “What about children?”

Weston walked toward her, menace in his eyes.

“A daughter?”

No reaction. But she could see by the widening of his angry eyes that she was about to stumble on the truth.

“A son.”

Weston paused, his eyes tearing.

“He’ll be one of the first to die. Brugada affects mostly males. Let me go and I—”

“My son is dead. Drowned. I left him alone for ten minutes. Ten minutes. When I found him it was already too late. I couldn’t save him. My wife came to hate everything about me and divorced me six months later.” He placed the gun’s muzzle beneath her chin and raised her head so they were eye to eye. “But I found a new family. Everything I love is here, and I will be damned before I let another one of my children die when I have a chance to save them.”

Strike three.