Chapter 10

Guatemotzi was very afraid. Terrified. Watching these men wearing odd warriors’ costumes the color of naranja, the orange, was enough to frighten him by itself. But the curious rituals they had performed over the dead Americanos made him wonder if these men in orange might be Los Oráculos, messengers from the ancient gods sent from beyond the sun to see for themselves death had come to everyone who violated the Aztec temple, Chief Montezuma’s sacred place of eternal sleep.

Perhaps these were not men at all, but creatures from the Spirit World his grandfather told him about so long ago—evil spirits with the shapes of men who walked among the living seeking out those who departed from the pathway sought by true believers. They had even arrived in the belly of a strange metal bird like the winged god of his ancestors, Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent.

Every Americano is dead, Guatemotzi thought. Everyone who went in the sacred temple died in agony, writhing on the ground, bleeding, gasping for breath. Everyone . . . but me. I did not get sick like the others. I am alive and they are dead. I do not understand. Why would Los Dios spare me from the curse?

Watching these warriors in orange suits from the trunk of a palm tree, Guatemotzi knew one of them had seen him. Would they come after him in the dark and hunt him down? If they were truly Los Oráculos they could see in the dark as if it were daylight and no place would be safe for him to hide.

And what had they been doing to the bodies of the Americanos? Cutting them to pieces with small knives, opening their skulls and taking pieces of their brains! Did they intend to consume the body parts, as he had been told the priests of his ancestors did, or would they use them in some other ritual only the gods and priests knew about?

And what of the giant silver box carried from the sky by the metal bird? It had windows. Were Los Oráculos planning to live inside this box? Or was it a huge coffin for the dead Americanos? How could he know such things, being only a boy from a small village in the mountains to the south?

In early spring his father had warned him not to go to the North, not to leave their hidden village in Michoacán, for he said it was very dangerous in El Norte and a poor Indio boy like Guatemotzi would not belong in a world filled with automobiles and tall buildings and foreign gods and strange rituals of which he had no knowledge.

The black-robed priests of a new god had come to his small village, teaching the children Español and telling them of the one true god, Jesus, who preached kindness and love. Strange teachings for a god, and much different from the gods his grandfather spoke of, who conquered enemies and took their wives and children for slaves and who ripped the beating hearts from their enemies and ate them to steal their strength and courage.

This one true god seemed weak to Guatemotzi, who had been named for the last and strongest emperor of the Aztecs. His father had told him his name meant “one who has descended like an eagle when he folds his wings and drops like lightning onto his prey,” and symbolized aggressiveness and fierceness. This foreign god seemed no match for the ferocious gods of his ancestors.

For this reason Guatemotzi had avoided the cities of the new god, keeping to the mountains and jungles, hoping to learn more about the world outside Michoacán without losing his life to its many dangers. He knew this timidity was not living up to his name, but he figured he’d have plenty of time to be fierce when he grew larger.

He’d tried to explain to his father that he was only curious to see what other places were like, that he was not turning his back on his Indio heritage or his people by going away.

He wanted only to visit the burial place of his ancestors’ emperor, Montezuma, whose daughter was the wife to the original Guatemotzi, and to pray and perhaps to see if the ancient gods were still alive, to see for himself if they had been driven off by this new god, Jesus.

He was, after all, a full fourteen años, and his namesake had been the emperor who succeeded Montezuma and it was he who was killed when he wouldn’t reveal the location of the Aztecs’ gold treasury.

With such a powerful and important heritage he was surely brave enough to be traveling on his own, even across the dangerous North. By avoiding the cities there was little risk, and when he met the jefe of the Americanos and the others digging in these ancient ruins, he’d been offered a job using a machete helping to clear away vines and carrying brush.

The jefe had been a kind man, not like he expected from someone who came from the North, and the others were very gentle people who only wanted to dig for pieces of old pottery belonging to the Aztecs.

The jefe was very interested to find that Guatemotzi was a descendant of Los Aztecas and to discover that he spoke the ancient tongue, Nahuatl. The jefe often took time to sit with Guatemotzi and ask him questions about the tales of the ancient days his people had told him. Jefe even knew about his ancestor and namesake, the original Guatemotzi, and told him many people thought he was even greater than Emperor Montezuma.

Thus, Guatemotzi thought it fitting, to be able to help these kind Americans discover more about his people and their history . . . and they paid him so well! Six hundred pesos a day only to cut vines and carry limbs to brush piles!

It had seemed like a miracle to find such a wonderful job while wandering through the jungle, a gift from Dios Himself. When he came back to his village he would be a rich man who could be generous with his mother and father and sisters and brothers. But those were dreams he had before everyone started to die. . . . Before he stole part of the treasure.

The bleeding was unlike anything Guatemotzi had ever seen. The sickness began all at once, striking everyone. And within hours many were dying. They needed doctors, curanderos, and when the jefe sent Julio—they called him Jules—in an automobile with no roof to find a doctor, Julio died on a jungle road to the city before he reached a curandero. A farmer brought him back to the camp in his burro cart and three days later, the farmer was dead from the same strange illness, the bleeding.

What Guatemotzi still did not understand was why the sickness had spared him. He did not bleed now, nor had he bled when all of the others did. Were the gods of Los Aztecas saving him for some reason he could not comprehend?

He watched the orange-clad warriors until it grew dark and then he left for a hidden spot near a mountain spring where he kept food the Americano named Fitzhugh had given him, stored in green pouches and metal cans that had to be opened with a special tool.

While the food was tasteless and faintly unpleasant to smell, it was an alternative to hunting small game and Guatemotzi had few darts left for his blowgun, and he was unable to find the poisonous tree frogs from which he made the killing potion that would drop a deer in its tracks within only a few steps after the dart entered its flesh.

He resolved to eat the strange-smelling food and conserve his darts for later, when he would eventually undertake the long journey south to his home village.

A sound from the warriors’ camp startled him, the noise made by a small motor. Suddenly, lights were burning in the clearing and he could see lighted windows in the big silver box brought by the noisy flying machines. Los Oráculos meant to continue their rituals into the night.

Silently, as Guatemotzi trotted along a narrow jungle trail to the secret spring, he prayed the warriors in orange would not come to kill him tonight for what he’d done with the dead monkey’s collar he took from the sacred temple. It had seemed a small thing at the time, to take the collar from the dead monkey, hoping later to sell it for a few pesos to buy food with. The little collar was very old and it held only a few of the pretty green and red stones and some hammered silver.

What harm was done? The monkey would surely not miss it and the money the traveler in the jungle had given him would be put to good use in his village, making sure there was plenty of food for all of his people.

Perhaps, while Los Oráculos were busy within the metal box, he could sneak up without being noticed and see for himself what they were doing inside. After all, was he not known to be the best tracker in his village, able to creep up on deer and javelina and move through the jungle without making a sound?

He turned around and started back toward the clearing and its unearthly inhabitants. Moving silently through thick jungle vines and undergrowth, Guatemotzi slipped up to the edge of the forest and then crept to a wall of the iron box to peer carefully through a window.

“Madre de Dios,” Guatemotzi whispered, unconsciously mimicking the black-robed priest who taught him Spanish. Los Oráculos had shed their orange skins and had taken the form of ordinary humans, both men and women. Perhaps they were like el coyote, known as the trickster among his people, and could shape-shift at will. If so, their magic was indeed strong.

Though he couldn’t hear their voices, Los Oráculos appeared happy, laughing and joking among themselves much as the people of his village did when the rains came and the crops grew green and thick and food was plentiful.

And they were eating from the same green pouches Los Americanos had given to Guatemotzi. Were they saving the trophies and body parts they had taken from the dead bodies to eat later, or had they already consumed the souls and courage of the dead Americanos?

As Guatemotzi crouched outside the window, clouds parted and a full moon appeared overhead, bathing the clearing in ghostly white light. One of the females inside, the one with long hair like his mother’s (only a red-brown color instead of black) turned to gaze out the glass, her eyes locking on Guatemotzi’s. As she opened her mouth and pointed to him, Guatemotzi realized he had been seen.

With hammering heart and a dry mouth, he turned and sprinted through the jungle, thin legs pumping as fast as he had ever run in his life.

Lauren’s exclamation of surprise stopped all conversation in the lab as she pointed at an empty window. “There, outside that window! I saw a face staring in at us, a boy! I know I didn’t imagine it!”

Mason ran to the window and peered out. All he could see in the moonlight was branches of nearby bushes shaking as if someone had run through them. It had to be the same boy he’d seen earlier in the day.

Who was he, Mason wondered, and how had he escaped the plague? He knew the answer to those questions could very well be just what they needed to defeat this damned bug and possibly prevent many more deaths in the future.

Finding him would have to be a priority once daylight arrived.