Read Online One Rough Man by Brad Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

shamans. Both continually fought for control of the population of the Mayan city-states, and both were equally bloodthirsty. He believed the shamans had developed a weapon, mystical in the eyes of the average Mayan, which was used to seize power. He extrapolated that this weapon had somehow gotten out of control and had caused one or two dramatic wipeouts of various cities, which in turn led to an evacuation of other cities in a superstitious panic, and a wholesale destruction of the civilization.
    He was convinced that the Grolier Codex detailed the location of a temple, restricted to shamans alone, that housed this weapon. He had no idea what the weapon could have been, and cared only about finding the temple. He dealt in a world of history, of dangers long since dead. It never entered Professor Cahill’s mind that, if his theory were true, he was trying to find a weapon that the world was ill prepared to deal with.
     
     
    EDUARDO REACHED THE ENTRANCE OF THE CAVE in time to see Olmec pick up the sack. A fine cloud, not unlike flour, puffed out, encircling Olmec.
    “This isn’t worth anything,” Olmec said. “It’s a bag of dirt.”
    Eduardo began to dig through some scattered pottery, looking for something else of value, when he heard Olmec trip and fall. He was about to ask if Olmec was all right when what he saw caused him to stumble back and fall himself. Olmec had dropped the sack and was thrashing around as if hooked to an electrical generator. His head was growing lumpy and distorted and his breathing sounded as if he were drawing air through a swizzle stick. As his metamorphosis continued, he began to froth at the mouth, gasping for air. All of his exposed skin appeared to be rippling, as if a band of cockroaches were running through his veins. Before Eduardo could recover from his initial shock, Olmec’s eyes bulged obscenely, his mouth cranked open farther than any human’s should, and he ceased to move. Eduardo screamed, finding that deep in his soul he was still a Mayan, and ran out of the temple.
    He sprinted about fifty feet and stopped, torn between helping his friend and getting the hell out of there. He decided that his friend was beyond help.
     
     
    THE PROFESSOR ASKED THE SHAMAN if he could speak to the men as a group, intent on overcoming their superstition with gold, like an age-old explorer from Spain. As the men gathered around they heard an awful shriek to the north of their position, then a desperate thrashing sound. They began to rumble, looking at each other as if their neighbor could explain the noise.
    The racket grew in strength until it appeared to be just outside the camp itself. The men began backing up, moving away from the sound, like a herd of antelope one step removed from full-scale panic, tenuously waiting to see who would be the first to start the stampede.
    Exasperated, the professor advanced to the edge of the camp, convinced the noise was man-made.
    He saw the boy and shouted, “It’s Eduardo! Someone get the first aid kit!”
    Eduardo broke into the clearing of the camp, torn and bleeding from his pell-mell run through the jungle gloom. He fell to his knees, gasping for air. The men gathered around him, all shouting questions at once. The professor noticed that Eduardo was clutching his GPS in a bloody hand.
    He snatched it away, shouting above the cacophony, “Where’d you get this, you little thief! Where’d you go?”
    Eduardo looked up at the panic-stricken faces around him, eyes wild, showing more white than iris, and blurted out in Mayan, “The curse is real! It has consumed Olmec! He’s been taken!”
    That was enough to penetrate the thin veneer of modern logical thought, the words lancing the ancient suspicions hidden deep within each man. The tripwire broke. The men began to flee in all directions like a pile of leaves caught in a hurricane gale.
    Within seconds the professor was alone. He slowly moved in a circle, dumbfounded by the turn of events.