Exodus Code (2 page)

With al his energy, Jack forced the music and the voices to the back of his consciousness. Sweat dripped down his spine. He put his hand on Renso’s shoulder, squeezing, feeling some relief from the contact, the warmth of his friend’s body.

‘One more turn, Jack?’ Renso hoped he’d say no. His friend did not look at al wel back there.

‘Fine, Renso. Then I think I’ve seen enough for now.’

Renso took the Hornet up again, the wind whistled through the open cockpit.

With his binoculars, Jack scanned the horizon and thought he could see more glyphs, drawings the size of footbal pitches etched out across the dusty plateaus. One looked like a bird, the other a monkey, a candelabra. Renso turned and the plane came back over the basin and the rings from the north east.

Jack leaned over the side of the plane, staring into a clearing on the plateau below, an oasis on the mountain, a pueblo vil age circled by huarango tress, their roots like veins pulsing beneath the surface of the soil.

Jack watched as one by one the trees pul ed their roots from the ground and began dragging themselves towards the mountain.

THE HORNET DIPPED, jolting Jack from his seat. When the plane evened out, Jack looked down at the mountain’s meseta. The oasis beneath him was lush and edenic, the trees unmoving.

That was weird.

‘Renso, when did you discover this was here?’

‘Has to be right after the eruption in January. Right before Lent began,’

replied Renso. ‘I do an occasional, um, favour, transport work, for the locals,’

he grinned back at Jack again. ‘Keeps me in pisco and out of trouble. I think I’d’ve noticed if these rings were inside the mountain before that.’

Jack forced himself to focus on Renso’s words – the voices and the music fading, but the pain in his head, the tightening in his chest, they were getting worse. ‘The volcanic eruption must have cracked the top off the mountain – I’ve seen that happen before.’

Leaning back in his seat, Jack squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to push the pain away while Renso forced the Hornet higher, banking into its final turn.

The beauty of the Andes, the southern tip of the Gran Tablazo de Icas, spread beneath them like a canvas, the lush green lowlands, the highland peaks drizzled with snow, the canyons like ribbons winding between them, the plateaus dotted with sagebrush and the pyramids of sand lining the coastline.

The landscape reminded Jack of Boeshane, with its giant pyramids of rock and mountainous sand dunes erupting from the ground like golden obelisks.

‘Do you feel that?’ asked Jack.

‘Feel what?’

‘The air? Suddenly it feels heavy. Oppressive. Shouldn’t be so dense this high… and it tastes like—’

‘Tastes?’ Renso laughed and wagged his finger. He was real y worried now, but replied lightly. ‘I suggest no more tequila for you tonight, amigo.’

Jack’s heart was racing, a bitter taste fil ing his mouth. And that smel ? Like oil of vitriol… and fear.

His.

‘You realise this isn’t something we’re going to be able to keep to ourselves for much longer,’ said Renso, flying the Hornet low enough for Jack to get one more look. ‘Soon I’m not going to be the only one who owns a plane in this part of the world.’

‘I know,’ Jack replied, rubbing his temples. Now he felt real y sick. This was definitely much worse than a bad burrito.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Renso asked.

Jack’s head weighed a ton on his neck, his eyes wouldn’t stop watering, and every nerve in his skin was on fire. Was he dreaming? Even his hair seemed to hurt. ‘I’l do… some… some investigating, Renso. I’l return when I know more.

’

‘I don’t know, amigo,’ said Renso, glancing at Jack, holding his stare for a beat. ‘Perhaps this isn’t a place you should ever return to.’

‘Why not?’

‘You look like shit.’

Jack forced a smile. ‘Ah, thanks. It’s the altitude or something I ate.’

‘Ha, very funny, my friend. When has flying ever bothered you? I’m taking us back to Castenado.’

‘Good, but then I want a closer look, Renso. I need to get into that mountain. I need to examine those rings.’

‘Not on my watch, Jack.’

‘Why not?’

‘Cause, my friend, your eyes are bleeding.’

‘What?’ Jack wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, his tears pink against his pale skin. Before he had time to process what was happening to him, adrenalin shot up his spine, spiked across his limbs, and exploded into his brain. Jack’s back arched, his legs stiffened, and his entire body convulsed, rocking the tiny biplane. He couldn’t control his limbs, but he was aware of every violent flailing movement. It was as if someone had wired an electric current to his brain and was making his body dance.

‘
¿Qué diablos?
’ yel ed Renso.

Horrified, Jack watched the words spew from Renso’s mouth in waves of green and yel ow, but the only sound Jack could hear was a woman’s shril pitch. And her voice tasted like ginger.

And then as if a switch was flipped inside Jack’s brain, every sound around him became painful y amplified – the howl of the wind, the roar of the propel ers, even the scratching of his coat against his neck. And that stench.

What was that smel ? It was like trench mud and rotting corpses, mountains of them, suffocating him. Jack gagged. He bit down on his tongue. His blood tasted like… like death.

What the hel was happening to him?

Jack lifted his hand to his face, forgetting he was stil holding his notebook.

It flew from his fingers. Instinctively, Renso reached up to catch it.

‘Man, what the hel was that?’ Renso yelped, yanking his hand back. The notebook swooped up into the air and out of reach. Renso screamed, and the sound felt like a knife had plunged into Jack’s leg. He pressed his hand to his thigh, but there was no wound. Slowly, he pul ed himself upright, the convulsions final y abating.

Jack stared in horror at Renso’s right hand. His fingers looked as if a hammer was crushing them one by one.

‘Oh Jesus, what’s happening? Do something, Jack!’

At first Jack was too stunned to move. Renso’s hand seemed to have a life of its own, bone and cartilage pushing through Renso’s shredding skin.

Renso howled. Jack loosened his harness and at the same time Renso’s wrist snapped in half, arterial blood spraying across the cockpit. Jack scrambled from his seat. The Hornet plummeted towards the mountain.

‘
¡Madre mía!
’ Renso whimpered, his face draining of colour, his head lol ing against the Hornet’s controls as he fought to keep the plane in the air with his other hand.

‘Stay with me, Renso,’ Jack yel ed, ‘Stay with me.’

Jack tore his scarf from his neck, but when he tried to stabilise himself in the cramped space the Hornet bucked and he was thrown back into his seat.

Renso was bleeding out. No doubt in Jack’s mind. He was watching his friend bleed to death in front of his eyes. Jack climbed up on his seat, doubled over because of the wing, and hooked his arm over the frame above him. He stretched as far forward as he could in the tilting, tumbling plane, trying desperately to get the scarf around the ragged bloody stump that moments ago had been Renso’s hand. The screaming in his head was getting louder, the taste in his mouth sickening.

The Hornet lurched against Jack’s shifting weight, his clumsy movements wedging Renso tighter in the tiny cockpit. Renso’s head knocked the throttle forward as he fel into unconsciousness. The Hornet pitched into a spiral ing dive, once again plunging towards the mountain.

The Hornet tossed Jack into the air like a rag dol . Windmil ing frantical y, Jack lunged for the first thing he could, his fingers reaching, slipping then grasping the edge of the wheelbase, his legs flying out behind him. The plane shrieked towards the ground, the wind tearing into Jack’s flesh as he hung by his fingertips from the Hornet’s side.

Jack hooked his arm over the wheelbase and swung his legs, hoping to reach the cockpit. The Hornet flipped, trying to shake him off. Jack’s body slammed hard into the side of the plane, knocking the wind from him. Jack gasped and lost his grip.

The screeching violins, the strident voices, the tragic laments of hopelessness fel silent inside Jack’s head.

With his coat bil owing out behind him like enormous wings, Jack plummeted towards the face of la Madre Montâna, the plane spiral ing next to him.

‘This,’ thought Jack before losing consciousness, ‘is real y gonna hurt.’

Isela

Southern Coast of Peru, Hacienda del Castenado, present day
ISELA WAS PREPARING to shoot someone. From her position on the north side of the Hacienda del Castenado’s chapel belfry, the 14-year-old had a clear view of the Pacific to her left, the high desert tables of the Andes to her right, and the narrow canyon through la Madre Montâna in front of her. She was hot and bored and tired of always being the sniper in the tower.

In the 1640s, a Spanish Viceroy had erected Hacienda del Castenado to enclose (and strangle) the ancient Inca vil age of Isela’s ancestors, the Cuari.

The terraces of the hacienda were now a tourist gem carved into the west face of the mountain. To solidify his power, the Spanish Viceroy, Alphonsa Castenado the Great (or the Despised depending on the colour of your skin) had constructed the chapel as the hacienda’s focal point. It stood on the ruins of a native temple that had lasted for thousands of years until it was torn down by the Conquistadors.

Centuries later, Isela, a direct descendant of Alphonsa and his Cuari concubine, lurked here, an automatic rifle resting at her side.

Isela’s mother like most of the population of the surrounding vil ages was a devoted fol ower of the region’s religious cocktail of Catholic rituals and native rites. She believed that the chapel’s position on top of the ancient temple meant the hacienda and al who lived within its pink-washed adobe wal s were doubly blessed. As far as Isela was concerned, the place was continual y serving a crushing blow to her dreams to say nothing of her spirit, which Isela’s mother and her
abuela
, her grandmother, insisted was the reincarnation of a Cuari goddess.

Despite the strange dreams she’d been having al her life, and her uncanny ability to see clearly in the dark, Isela wasn’t sure she bought their explanation, but tourists did and so she was forced to dress and act the part during the Cuari Festival of the Goddess every Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the piazza. Not this week. This week the festival would have to find another deity. Isela planned to be long gone by Sunday.

Isela swatted a fly from her face and spat grime onto the cobbled stone of the belfry. She cursed her mother for the hundredth time that morning. If not for her mother, Isela might have had a chance to escape this oppressive existence before today. If not for her mother, Isela might have had a chance to put her talents, and she had plenty beyond her skil s with a rifle, to more legitimate uses. If not for her mother, Isela might have kil ed her stepbrother, Antonio Castenado, years ago.

In the cobbled piazza in front of the chapel, Isela watched the local artisans setting up their stal s round the shaded arched perimeter. Every morning these men and women readied their wares for the influx of tourists arriving from Ica and Lima and regions further north. A river of buses would stream one by one through the narrow canyon, until the hacienda and the outlying area were swarming with people.

Isela watched the men and women uncover their carts fil ed with shiny glazed pots, wooden crosses with brown Jesuses etched on them, and bright tapestries stitched with Inca designs, likely made in Mexico, Isela figured.

For a few seconds, Isela kept her eye on a couple of men and two women she’d never seen before who were struggling to steady their carts on the cobbled stones.

Isela picked up her rifle. She sighted at a cart layered with T-shirts stamped with everything from the pop image of Che Guevara to the silhouetted outline of Zorro. Tourists were such dicks, she thought.

Staring at those two men and women for a few beats, she guessed they must have been running the carts for a family member, someone who’d been taken il perhaps. Then Isela mouthed the sound of a shot, letting her imagination invent the chaos she could cause in the piazza if she fired at them.

Al hel would break loose. She couldn’t wait.

Despite the early hour, the businesses around the square bustled with life.

Each corner housed a bar or a café with barrels of the region’s famous pisco brandy sweating on stone slabs outside every establishment. Most of the umbrel a tables were already occupied with the wealthy tourists staying at the hacienda’s luxury spa hotel, which sat at the opposite side of the colonial piazza.

From her angle, Isela didn’t have a clear view of the chapel’s steps directly beneath her, but she knew they’d be fil ing with Indian women wrapped in multicoloured shawls with baskets balanced on their heads. She could, though, see a group of four or five boys beginning a footbal game on the airstrip, a dusty field with a prefabricated concrete shed built just outside the hacienda’s wal s. Two mangy l amas were munching sagebrush near the makeshift goal, the boys’ kicks erupting in clouds of dirt.

Before she set her gun down, Isela spotted two of the food vendors rol ing their steaming carts to either side of the hotel’s carved wooden gates.