Once around the corner at the end of the alley, Hooker flattened himself into a niche in the stone wall to await the expected pursuers. The daylong drizzle had slacked off to an unpleasant mist. He heard shouting and scuffling that he figured must be Buzz tangling with the two woodcarvers. Then the tumult increased as the rest of the tribe joined in. Hooker felt a quick pang of guilt that he wasn’t back there fighting beside his friend, but doing it this way was the only chance for any of them.
At least he had bought a little time. The Indian clothing would help make him less conspicuous, but his size would be a giveaway as soon as anybody started seriously looking for him.
He continued in the direction he had seen Connie being carried, hunching down into the shapeless white shirt and pants whenever Indians passed. He tried to keep his mind off what was happening to Buzz. He would be of no use to anybody without a clear head.
In the path dead ahead of him was the temple, and beyond it, Holchacán’s palace. The palace would be heavily guarded. He would probably not get any farther than the front door, if that far. Waste of time and effort. The temple was an unknown. Of the two possibilities, it seemed the less foolhardy, if only slightly.
The heavy temple door, rich with ancient Mayan carvings, was slightly ajar. As Hooker started to push it open, three Mayan guards, carrying their short, vicious spears, came running toward him from up ahead. With no sensible plan in mind, Hooker got down on his hands and knees to make himself as small as possible and began rubbing vigorously at the carvings on the lower part of the door. At least, he thought, it might give the impression that he had some kind of legitimate business there.
Amazingly, the three guards ran right past him. Apparently, the alarm had gone out from the disturbance Buzz had created, and the guards were on their way to restore the peace. As soon as they were out of sight, Hooker pushed the door all the way open and entered the temple. He struggled to pull it closed behind him, leaving a crack for the daylight to show through in case he needed to find it in a hurry.
He turned then and saw he was in the long corridor Buzz had described. A flickering light was provided by oil lamps set into the wall at intervals of about twenty feet. With no time to think about it, Hooker took off down the corridor at a run.
When he had gone several yards beyond the last of the lamps, Hooker smacked face first into something heavy, black, and soft. He recoiled, raising his hands defensively. He relaxed slightly when nothing attacked. Cautiously, he reached forward and felt a heavy curtain that stretched across the entire corridor, blacking out whatever was on the other side. He found where it parted, with much overlap, and eased his body through.
Before him was a sunken amphitheater ringed by stone benches, now empty. Down at the center, lit by an oil lamp at each end, was the raised stone slab that Buzz had described as an altar.
The altar was not empty. Connie was lying on it. Face up and naked. Her arms were fastened by wrist straps down at her sides. Her legs were held apart by more straps at the bottom corners of the altar. Standing over her, his headdress bobbing excitedly, his ceremonial robes open in front, stood the wrinkled Mayan priest. The weapon he held in his hand was no knife.
“Why, you dirty old man.”
Hooker started down one of the aisles between the rows of empty stone benches. The priest snapped his head up and looked at him, the wrinkled face a comic mask of surprise. One hand still held his penis, which was wilting fast. Connie rolled her head to one side and looked at Hooker. She wore a dazed expression.
“What goes on?” Hooker demanded.
The priest abruptly came to his senses. He snatched the robes around him and scurried up one of the aisles on the opposite side from Hooker to disappear through an entrance cloaked by another black curtain.
Hooker jogged on down to the altar and leaned over Connie. “Are you okay?”
“Are you kidding?” she said groggily. “They doped me, slung me over the shoulder of a giant, and carried me in here where that old fart was going to rape me. How the hell could I be okay?”
“At least you’re not permanently damaged.”
“I don’t think so. How about unbuckling me. I feel kind of exposed.”
Hooker undid the straps that held her arms first, and while Connie chafed the circulation back into her wrists, he went to work on her ankles.
“How did you find me, anyway?” she asked. “Where’s Buzz?”
“I’ll answer all your questions later if we get a chance. Right now all we have time for is finding a way out of here.”
Pulling the naked Connie along behind him, Hooker started up the aisle he had come down. As they reached the curtain, he heard the pounding feet and angry shouts of pursuers coming toward them.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
Connie was beginning to look more alert as her head cleared. “What about the other side, where the old fart went out?”
“Probably no better than this one. Let’s see if there are any other exits.”
While the shouts from the approaching Indians grew louder, Hooker and Connie hurried along the rim of the amphitheater, searching the walls for a break. At approximately halfway between the two exits, they found one, again concealed by a heavy curtain of black cloth. Hooker fought his way through it to find another corridor leading away from the amphitheater. It was dimmer than the one he had used to enter, with fewer lamps providing illumination.
“Where does it go?” Connie asked.
“Damned if I know, but it’s got to be someplace better than where we are.” Holding Connie’s hand, he ran along the dim corridor, trying not to think about the possibility of stumbling into a nest of snakes. Or worse.
A light brighter than the oil lamps flickered on the wall of the corridor ahead of them. Apparently, there was a turning in the passageway.
“What’s that?” Connie said hoarsely.
“More fucking Indians, if I’m not mistaken.”
“What do we do?”
“I guess we walk up to them and introduce ourselves. I’m fresh out of ideas.”
“Hooker, there’s an opening down here.”
“What?”
She tugged on his hand, pulling him down toward the pebbled floor. “Here. Feel.”
Connie guided his hand along the wall to where there was a gap in the rock. He shoved his hand through and felt no obstruction. He ran his fingers around the perimeter and figured it to be about three feet square.
“Shall we try it?” Connie said.
“It can’t get us into any worse trouble than we’re already in. You go first.”
On her hands and knees, Connie went into the crawl space off the corridor. As Hooker went in behind her, the flickering lights outside brightened, and the voices grew louder.
He followed, crawling. From time to time, to maintain his distance, he reached out a hand to her bare, smooth buttock. Behind them, running feet pounded past the opening where they had come in, then faded. Looking back over his shoulder, Hooker saw the light in the corridor dim once more to a pale gray smudge at the entrance to their crawlway.
“Are they gone?” Connie whispered in the darkness.
“For the moment. Keep moving.”
Cautiously, he reached up over his head. His hand felt nothing solid.
“Hold it a minute.” Hooker rose to a kneeling position, then stood up slowly. He banged his head on the stone ceiling of the passageway.
“Ouch. Son of a bitch.”
“What’s the matter?”
“They must have built this for short Indians. I think you can stand up here, though.”
Connie rose gingerly to her feet and discovered that the uneven rock that roofed the tunnel cleared the top of her head by about six inches. “That’s better. Are you still behind me? Give me your hand.”
Hooker, standing with his knees bent and head lowered to keep from bashing the ceiling again, reached forward in the darkness. His hand found the soft, bushy mound of her pubis.
“Oops.”
She took his hand firmly, held it where it was for a moment, then tugged him forward in the tunnel.
“Watch your step,” he said. “You can’t see a damn thing in here.”
“I think there’s a light up ahead.”
Hooker moved up beside her and peered into the gloom. She nestled close, making him acutely aware of her nakedness.
“It looks like something in the roof of the tunnel,” she said. “Maybe there’s an opening there.”
In the total darkness of the tunnel, bent over as he was, Hooker felt thoroughly disoriented. There did, indeed, seem to be a lighter patch in the black up ahead of them on the rocky roof. Connie let go of his hand and hurried toward it.
“Wait a minute; there might be — ”
Hooker’s warning was cut off by a shriek from Connie, followed by muffled sliding, rattling sound.
“Goddamnit!” Her voice echoed strangely.
“Where are you?” he said.
“I fell into some kind of a hole. Oh, my Christ!”
Hooker inched forward carefully, feeling his way along one rough stone wall. He saw now that what had appeared to be a light from the ceiling was actually a reflection from below.
The ground under his feet began to slope more steeply forward. At the same time, the stone smoothed out and turned slippery, as though coated with a film of oil. With nothing solid to hold on to, Hooker lost his balance, falling heavily on his butt, and skidded out of control down a slide of about six feet to a drop-off that deposited him in a tangle with the naked Connie.
“Hurt yourself?” she said.
“No, something soft broke my fall.”
“Before you start feeling too good about it, take a look around.”
By the light of a single oil lamp that illuminated the pit where they were, Hooker took a look. The chamber was roughly round, about twelve feet across. Everywhere he looked were skulls. Human skulls. He and Connie sat on skulls so deep, they could not see a floor beneath them. They were jumbled about in layers and stacks and untidy piles; some broken, some toothless, some nearly whole.
“Holy shit.” Hooker picked up one of the skulls nearest at hand and looked at it. The lower jaw was missing; the upper teeth smiled at him in a deadly rictus. He had seen skulls before in worse states of preservation, but what made this one odd was an uneven round hole, the size of a quarter, at the “Y,” where the frontal bone joined the left and right parietal bones, just at the crown of the head.
Hooker put the skull down gently and picked up another. It, too, had the peculiar hole at the crown. He quickly examined a third and a fourth. They all had the same disfiguration. Looking around him, he could see holes in each of the skulls whose top was toward him.
“What the fuck?” he muttered.
“Are you all right, Hooker?”
“Sure, peachy. Just wondering why all these skulls have holes drilled in the top. And whether it was done before or after the owner was dead.”
“What difference does it make.”
“None, probably. Let’s see if we can find a way out of here.”
He got to a semierect position, balancing with difficulty on the unsteady footing, and gazed up at the drop-off from the tunnel where they had fallen in. It was a perpendicular wall of featureless stone, and above that, the slicky slide that had deposited them here.
“We can forget that way out,” he said. “Let’s hope there’s another. This place is full of surprises.”
He and Connie began edging around the wall of the pit in opposite directions, feeling along the damp stone for anything that might indicate an escape. There was considerable clattering as the skulls rolled and crunched under their feet, so Hooker did not hear the heavy footfalls behind him until two slablike hands clamped on either side of his head.
He grunted and saw Connie turn to look. Her eyes went wide, and she lost her footing, falling into a heap with the grinning bony faces. Hooker’s muscles tensed to fight, but the pressure on the sides of his head increased to an agonizing squeeze. He had a flash picture of little Earle Maples’ head crushed like an egg, and he relaxed.
“Okay, pal,” he said through gritted teeth. “You got me.”