Authors: Matthew Reilly
At first he thought he mustn't have heard her right.
But he had. He was sure of it.
But that just didn't make—
Race frowned inwardly and didn't translate the sentence
for the others.
On the screen, ropes were being looped around the boulder in the
portal.
'Alles klar, macht Euch fertig—'
'All right. Get ready.'
The men on the screen lifted the ropes.
'Zieht an!'
'And… heave!'
Up on the tower top, the ropes went taut and the boulder lodged in
the portal slowly began to move, grinding loudly against the stone
floor of the doorway.
Eight German commandos were pulling on the ropes, hauling the giant
boulder from its four-hundredyear-old resting place.
Slowly—very slowly—the boulder came away from the portal, revealing
an inky black interior.
Once it was clear, Gunther Kolb stepped forward, peered down into
the darkened interior of the temple.
He saw a set of wide stone stairs descending into the darkness
beneath him, into the belly of the great subterranean
structure.
'All right,' he said in German. 'Entry team. Your turn.'
In the Humvee, Race turned to Lauren.
'They're going in.“
Up on the tower top, five fully-loaded German commandos stepped
forward. The entry team.
Led by a wiry young captain named Kurt von Dirksen, they met Kolb
at the entrance to the temple, guns in hand.
'Keep it simple,' Kolb said to the young captain. 'Find that idol
and then get the hell—'
At that moment, without warning, a series of sharp
whistling noises cut through the air all around them.
Thwatthwatthwatthwatthwatthwat!
And then—srnack!—something long and sharp lodged itself in a clump
of moss on the wall of the temple right next to Kolb's head!
Kolb stared at the object in amazement.
It was an arrow.
Voices began to shout out from the Humvee's little television
screen as a hailstorm of arrows rained down on the
German troops gathered around the temple.
'Was zum Teufel!”
'Duckt Euch! Duckt Euch!“
'What's going on?' Lauren said, leaning forward from the back
seat.
Race turned to her, amazed. 'It looks like they're being
attacked.'
The deafening roar of submachine-gun fire engulfed the tower top
once again as the German commandos raised their MP-5s and
Steyr-AUGs and fired hard.
They all stood around the temple's open portal, facing outwards,
aiming up at the source of the lethal arrows—the rim of the massive
crater.
From the cover of the portal's walls, Gunther Kolb
peered up into the darkness, searching for his enemy.
And he saw them.
Saw a collection of shadowy figures gathered up on the rim of the
canyon.
There were maybe fifty of them in total—thin human shapes loosing a
barrage of primitive wooden arrows at the German commandos on the
tower top.
What the hell—? Kolb thought.
Race listened in stunned amazement to the German voices
coming in over the little television's speakers.
'Temple team! What's going on up there?'
'We're under attack! I repeat, we are under attack!”
“Who is attacking you ?”
'They look like Indians! Repeat. Indians. Natives. They're firing
down on us from the upper rim of the crater! But we seem to be
pushing them back—wait. No, wait a minute. They're pulling back.
They're pulling back.“
A moment later, the roar of automatic gunfire ceased and
there was a long silence.
Nothing.
More silence.
The Germans on the screen looked cautiously around themselves,
their guns smoking.
In the Humvee, Race exchanged a look with Chambers.
'A tribe of natives in the area,' Race said.
Gunther Kolb was shouting orders.
'Horgen! WellI Take a squad up there and form a perimeter around
the rim of the crater!' He turned to face yon Dirksen and his entry
team. 'All right, Captain. You may enter the temple.'
The five members of the entry team gathered in front of the open
portal.
It yawned before them, dark and menacing.
Captain yon Dirksen stepped cautiously forwarcl—gun in hand—and
stood at the threshold of the portal, at the top of the set of wide
stone steps that led down into the bowels of the temple.
'All right,' he said formally into his throat mike as he took his
first step downward. 'I can see some stone stairs in front of me.
Descending—”
'—the stairs nozom' von Dirksen's voice said over the Humvee's
speakers.
Race stared intently at the image of the five commandos as they
walked slowly into the portal until finally the last soldier's head
disappeared below the floorline and he saw nothing but the empty
stone doorway.
“Captain, report,' Kolb's voice said inside Kurt von Dirksen's
headset as the young German captain reached the bottom of the damp
stone steps, the beam of his flashlight slicing through the
darkness.
He was now standing in a narrow stone-walled tunnel. It stretched
away from him, bending around and down to the right in a smooth
curve. It sloped steeply downwards, spi ralling down into the gloom
of the temple's core. Small indented alcoves lined its walls.
'We've reached the base of the stairs,' he said. “I see a curved
tunnel ahead of me. Moving toward it.'
The entry team spaced themselves out as they began to move
cautiously down the steeply graded tunnel. The beams of their
flashlights played over its glistening wet walls. An echoing,
dripping sound could be heard from somewhere deep within the
temple.
Von Dirksen said, 'Team, this is One. Call in.'
The rest of the entry team responded quickly: 'This is Two.'
'Four.'
'Five.'
They ventured further down the tunnel.
Race and the others watched the Humvee's television screen in tense
silence, listened to the hushed voices of the German entry team.
Race translated.
“mso wet in here, water everywhere—”
'—stay sharp. Watch your step—'
Just then, a loud burst of static screeched out from the
television's speakers.
“What was that?” yon Dirksen said quickly. “Team, call in.”
'This is Two.'
'Three.'
'Four.“
And then nothing.
Race waited expectantly for the final soldier to call in. But his
call never came.
No 'Five'.
Inside the temple, von Dirksen spun around.
'Friedrich,' he hissed as he walked back up the passageway, past
the others.
They had come a short way down the steep spiralling
tunnel and now they stood in pitch darkness, the only light - the
beams of their flashlights.
Behind them, up the slope, they could see a wash of blue moonlight
bending around the tunnel's gentle curve, indicating the way back
to the surface.
Von Dirksen peered back up the tunnel.
'Friedrich!' he whispered into the darkness. 'Friedrich!
Where are you?'
At that moment, von Dirksen heard a loud whump from
somewhere behind him.
He spun.
And now saw only two of his men standing behind him.
The third was nowhere to be seen.
Von Dirksen turned back to face the entrance and was
about to say something into his microphone when suddenly he saw an
unusually large shadow slink around the bend in the tunnel above
him and, in that instant, he completely lost the ability to
speak.
It was silhouetted by the moonlight behind it.
And it looked absolutely terrifying.
The soft blue light of the moon glistened off its muscly black
flanks. Th.e beam of von Dirksen's flashlight glinted off its long
razor-sharp teeth.
The German captain just stared at the creature before him
in stunned silence.
It was huge.
And then suddenly it was joined by a second, identical creature,
stepping out from behind it.
They must have been hiding inside the alcoves, von Dirksen
thought.
Lying in wait. Waiting for him and his men to walk past them, so
that they could now cut off their retreat.
And then in a flash the first creature pounced. Von Dirksen never
had a chance. It moved incredibly fast for an animal of its size
and in a second its slashing jaws filled his field of vision and in
that moment all Kurt von Dirksen could do was scream.
Shouts and screams burst out from the television's speakers.
Race and the others stared at the screen in horror.
The screams of the last three members of the entry team being
attacked echoed across the airwaves. Briefly, Race heard gunfire,
but it only lasted for a second before abruptly both it and the
screaming cut off together and there was silence.
Long silence.
Race stared at the television screen, at the picture of the open
mouth of the temple.
“Von Dirksen, Friedrich, Nielson. Report.'
There was no reply from the men inside the temple.
Race swapped a glance with Lauren.
And then suddenly a new voice came in over the speakers.
It was a breathless voice, panting and afraid.
'Sir! This is Nielson! Repeat, this is Nielson! Oh God… God
help us. Get out of here, sir! Get out of here while you
still—”
Smack[
It sounded like a collision of some sort.
Like the sound of something big slamming into the man named
Nielson.
Sounds of a scuffle ensued and then, abruptly, Race heard a
blood-curdling scream and then—over the scream— he heard another,
infinitely more terrifying, sound.
It was a roar—an ungodly roar—loud and deep like that of a
lion.
Only fuller, more resonant, fiercer.
Race's eyes flashed back to the television screen and suddenly he
froze.
He saw it.
Saw it emerge from the shadowy darkness of the portal.
And as he watched the giant black creature step out from the mouth
of the temple, Race felt a deep sickness in the pit of his
stomach.
Because he knew then, in that moment, that despite all their
technology, all their guns, and all of their selfish desires to
find a new and fantastic power source, the men on that rock tower
had just violated a far, far simpler rule of human evolution.
Some doors are meant to remain unopened.
Gunther Kolb and the other dozen or so Germans on the tower top
just stared at the animal standing in the portal in awe.
It was magnificent.
It was fully five feet tall, even while standing on all four legs,
and it was completely black in colour, jet-black from head to
toe.
It looked like a jaguar of some sort.
A giant black jaguar.
The massive cat's eyes glinted yellow in the moonlight, and with
its furrowed angry brows, hunched muscular shoulders and
dagger-like teeth, it truly looked like the Devil incarnate.
And then, abruptly, the soft blue moonlight that illumi nated the
temple's portal was replaced by a harsh strobe-like flash of
lightning and in the deafening crash of thunder that followed, the
great animal roared.
It might as well have been a signal.
Because at that moment—at that precise moment—over a dozen other
giant black cats burst forth from the darkness of the temple and
attacked the Germans on the tower top.
Despite the fact that they were armed with assault rifles and
submachine-guns, the members of the German expedition never stood a
Chance.
The cats were too fast. Too agile. Too powerful. They
slammed into the sttmned crowd of soldiers and scientists with
shocking ferocity—bowling them over, leaping onto them, mauling
them alive.
A few of the soldiers managed to get some shots off and
one of the cats went crashing to the ground, spasming
violently.
But it didn't matter, the other cats barely seemed to notice
the bullets whizzing around them and within seconds they were all
over those soldiers, too—tearing into their flesh, biting into
their throats, suffocating them with their power ful clamp-like
jaws.
Hideous screams filled the night air.
General Gunther Kolb ran.
Wet fern fronds slapped hard against his face as he hurried down
the stone stairway that led back to the suspension bridge.
If he could just make it to the bridge, he thought, and untie it
from the buttresses on the far side, then the cats would be trapped
on the rock tower.
Kolb bolted down the wet stone slabs, the sound of his own
breathing loud in his ears, the sound of something large crashing
through the foliage behind him even louder.
More fern fronds smacked against his face, but he didn't
care. He was almost—
There!
He saw it.
The rope bridge!
He even saw a few of his men bouncing across its length, fleeing
from the carnage on the tower top.
Kolb flew down the last few steps and ran out onto the ledge.
He'd made it!
It was then that a tremendous weight thudded into him from behind
and the German general went sprawling forward.
He landed hard—face-first—on the cold wet surface of
the ledge. He scratched about desperately with his hands, trying to
get to his feet again when suddenly a giant black paw slammed down
hard on his wrist, pinning it to the ground.
Kolb looked up in horror.
It was one of the cats.
It was standing on top of him!
The demonic black cat peered down at him intently, curi ously
examining this strange little creature that had foolishly attempted
to outrun it.
Kolb stared fearfully up into its evil yellow eyes. And then with a
loud blood-curdling roar, the big animal's head came rushing down
at him and Kolb shut his eyes and waited for the end.
Down in the village, there was silence.
The twelve German commandos gathered around the monitor just stared
at each other in astonishment.
On their screen, they saw their comrades up on the tower top
running about in every direction. Occasionally, they would see one
of them dash across the screen and open fire with an MP-5 only to
be violently smacked out of the frame a second later by a large
feline shape.
'Hasseldorf, Krieger,' the sergeant named Dietrich said harply.
'Dismantle the western log-bridge.' Two of the Ger man soldiers
immediately broke out of the circle.
Dietrich turned to face his young radio operator. 'Have you been
able to get through to anyone up there?'
'I'm getting through, sir, but no-one's answering,' the radio man
said.
“Keep trying.'
Through the rainspattered windows of the Humvee, Race was watching
Dietrich and the German commandos assem bled around their monitor
when suddenly he heard a shout.
He snapped around instantly.
And saw one of the German commandos from the tower top come
charging out from the riverside path.
The commando was waving his arms wildly, yelling, 'Schnell, zum
Flugzeug! Schnell, zum Flugzeug! She kommen!”