Requiem for the Burning God Read online

  His revolver shocked his palm and he involuntarily dropped it. The pain banished the music. He shook his head and blinked, finding himself crouching a few yards inside the cave, at the threshold where the sunlight yielded to the shadows. Any deeper and he would be wholly within the darkness.

  "Calder? Max?" MacKenzie was standing outside the cave, peering in. "What are you doing in there?"

  "Sorry." Max shook his head again to clear the fogginess from his thoughts. "I was ... I'll tell you later, okay?"

  "Aye, you'd better. I called your name a few times but you were just crouching there, staring into the cave."

  Max retrieved his Webley, which was pleasantly warm against the cave's chill, and stepped out into the sunlight. "How long was I in there?"

  "Well, I came back to see what was taking you so long. It's been a few minutes, maybe. The others are probably on the trail to the camp by now."

  "We'd better get moving, then."

  "Dirke will want to know what you were doing."

  "The less Dirke knows, the better. For now, let's take these prisoners back to Harris and his pet Germans to get them off our backs. If you're up to it, I'd like to investigate this cave properly tonight, where no prying eyes can see us."

  "What are you up to, Max?"

  "Call it an Englishman's curiosity but I want to know why these Huari are attacking a New World Incorporated mining camp. More importantly, I want to know why we found them outside this particular cave."

  "You're playing a dangerous game, lad," MacKenzie ran his fingers through his beard. "But if I knew what was good for me, I'd be enjoying a pint in the Butcher's Arms in Aberdeen and not finding myself on some God-forsaken hill in Peru."

  Max smiled and clapped MacKenzie on the shoulder. The Scotsman laughed softly before starting his way down the mountain. Max followed on his heels but glanced back at the cave. As the cave receded with every step, the darkness within seemed all the more absolute.

  #

  Chapter 3

  Keeping secrets from men who shared the same bunk house had proved to be impossible. After handing over the Huari prisoners that afternoon to a sneering but delighted Commander Harris, Neville, and two of the German geologists, Max had told Pendle his plan to investigate the cave that night. Somehow, Dirke had gotten wind of Max's plan and was geared up and ready when it came time for Max, MacKenzie, and Pendle to leave. Tipped off by Dirke's late-night preparedness, Smith, too, had covertly readied his equipment in anticipation of something happening.

  The five mercenaries, under Max's direction, struck out at midnight, with each man leaving in ten minute intervals. The moon was close to full and provided ample light when Max, as the last man to leave, slipped the bunk house door closed and crept through the camp. The wind had subsided but the generator was still mumbling with life, which masked any noisy steps Max made. A light was on in Commander Harris' quarters, presumably from his bedroom. A smaller adjacent building, which Max guessed to be Neville's quarters, also had a light on inside.

  On his way out, Max crept beneath the shuttered windows of the Germans' barracks. An external bulb lit up the front entrance but no light shone from within. As he leaned against the side of the building, he thought he could hear movement on the boards inside. A lone person's footsteps, perhaps. The lack of noise made by the Germans was a surprise. Either they had retired early for the night or they were still off on the geological survey Neville had mentioned. He doubted either option was the whole truth, not with a hothead like Lehmann as their senior man.

  Max left the barracks to wend his way through the yard. The clumps of abandoned machinery near the camp's perimeter made for dangerous obstacles in the moonlight, slowing him down. He stayed low to the ground to hide his profile behind the taller debris should someone happen to glance out a window in his direction. He sprinted the last open stretch to the trail when a cloud passed across the moon and plunged the yard into near total darkness.

  The trek up the trail was particularly hazardous for the first leg, forcing him to choose every step carefully and climb at a torturous pace. Once the clouds cleared, the moonlight was sufficient to tread with surety, and he soon found himself approaching the cave entrance and the four men clustered outside.

  "Max," Pendle whispered. "Glad you could make it."

  "I think its safe to raise your voice a little, Pendle," Max said, "but not too loud, you understand."

  "What's this really about, Calder?" Dirke asked. "Savages or something else?"

  Even in the poor light, he knew the group had turned to face him. This was the answer they were waiting to hear.

  "Do you trust those Germans?" Max began. "I certainly don't. Not as far as I can throw them, anyway."

  "What's this got to do with the Germans?" Dirke's tone was abrasive.

  "I'm not sure," Max admitted. "But when I was up here today, I thought I heard something. Something inside the cave. Those Germans have been off doing some geological survey but I never saw them return to the camp."

  "You're clutching at straws, Calder." Dirke holstered his Mauser pistol. "Which means I'm here on some madman's hunch."

  "I don't recall inviting you, Dirke."

  Pendle shuffled his feet, inadvertently signalling a long, awkward silence.

  "I'm going inside," Max said at last. He removed an oil lamp from his backpack, struck a match, and lit the lamp, casting the men in an amber glow. "You're welcome to return to camp, but don't breathe a word of this to anyone."

  "Save your empty threats, Calder." Dirke produced his lamp from his backpack and rummaged for his matches. "I don't trust you enough to allow you free rein over this mountain. Where you go, I go."

  "I'll go with you Max but not for the reasons Mr Dirke has," Pendle said.

  "Aye. I've already started this little adventure and lost good sleep because of it, so you'll not be seeing me turn back now." MacKenzie hefted his rifle. "You light the way, Max."

  Max turned to Smith. "And you, Mr Smith?"

  Smith studied something near his feet for long moments. He looked especially pale and drawn in the moonlight. His thinning hair was highlighted by the moon silhouetting him. In the end, he nodded, which was difficult to pick up in the dim light. The nod was as much of an answer as Max was likely to get.

  Once Dirke's lamp was alight, Max pressed on into the cave. A few feet beyond the threshold, he paused, fearing the return of the flautist's song. He unholstered his Webley and transferred the lamp to his left hand. He gripped the pistol tight as a ward against physical and psychological danger. His palm was already slick with sweat.

  The cave was larger than Max expected, with a chamber easily twelve feet tall and forty feet deep. The others moved in behind him, and with Dirke's lamp, the full dimensions of the cave became apparent. So, too, did the rent in the far wall. It was about the size of the cave entrance. Without hesitation, Max approached it and slipped inside. The others stayed within arms length of each other, becoming a tenuous single-file human chain.

  The rock was cold, dry, and in places brittle to the touch. It didn't have the usual qualities of deep earth caverns, with their pools of stagnant water and stalactites and stalagmites, although it grew increasingly salty to the nose. The passage was cramped and cold, but every time it threatened to become too narrow, sections appeared to have been crudely chiselled away, allowing a man to pass side-on. At these sections, the larger-statured MacKenzie and Pendle struggled, having to suck in their chests and push themselves through. MacKenzie, much to Max's surprise, struggled with claustrophobia, nearly ending the expedition when he refused to enter one especially tricky crack to get to the next chamber.

  Max led them on for what must have been three hours. They burned through two lamps. When the oil of the third lamp was running low, with the men deep within the bowels of the mountain and Dirke muttering for them to turn around, Max guided them into a large natural chamber that echoed with the noises of industry: men at labour, the grinding of metal and sto
ne, and the thump of shovels striking steel drums.

  Max signalled for silence and dimmed the lamp. He was the first to creep forward into this new chamber. Initially, he held himself tense, wondering whether these sounds were akin the phantom flute. But as he neared the source of the noises, they exerted no preternatural dominion over his body or mind. A light source, or multiple light sources, from up ahead provided an ambient glow by which Max and the others could navigate.

  Max discovered the far end of the chamber opened up onto a vast cavern that was the origin of the sounds and light. He positioned himself at the brink, learning that his cave was a mezzanine balcony of sorts overlooking the cavern and the labours taking place—the sight of which rooted him to the spot and threatened to unhinge his grip on sanity.

  More than one hundred bare-chested men in pitiable states— Peruvians of various shades and Huari natives—laboured around the cavern. Some were completely naked. Almost all were painfully thin and covered in dirt. Each worker had a cloth tied over their mouth and nose.

  They were overseen by a contingent of men in grey NWI uniforms almost identical to Max's. He recognised the German Lehmann among them, carrying his machine gun and idly chatting with another NWI man in German. He didn't see the portly Muller but had no doubt the German scientist was lurking nearby. Max recognised a couple of the other NWI men around the cavern, all carrying whips or rifles. However, there were several more NWI men that he did not recognise. Their uniforms were dirtier, as though they had been in these caves considerably longer than Lehmann and his flunkies.

  But it wasn't the sight of the NWI men or the desperate state of the slave labourers that froze Max. Spattered across the cavern floor were great pools of dark, viscous ooze. Dozens of crude torches were ensconced in the caverns walls but nothing of their light was reflected by the dark mass. Much of the ooze resembled tar and was jet black, its surface puckered and charcoaled as though it had been burnt. Yet more of the stuff, particularly near the edges, was a smoother grey-green colour, the shade of decomposition. The black and the grey-green colours slowly swirled together, reminding him of London's open sewers.

  Worst of all was the stench, which rose up with the heat and assaulted Max's nose. If the putrid substance had the colour of decomposition, then its stench was that of a thousand corpses left untended to fester and rot. It was all he could do not to turn away. Pendle, being less travelled, had no way of fighting it. He gagged and then vomited. He threatened to draw attention to them but MacKenzie was next to him in a flash, his hand clamped over his mouth as yet more vomit gushed through his fingers. The Scotsman turned his head away and closed his eyes until Pendle's muffled retching had subsided. Smith and even Dirke were drained of colour in their faces.

  With his heart and head pounding, Max came to understand what was happening. Muller's men were directing the Peruvian slaves to shovel up the ooze and deposit it into scores of metal drums. The full drums were being loaded onto a large platform that reminded him of a raft, which was suspended by cables to a pulley and rail system supported by a-frame beams. The first few a-frames were visible but the remainder of the system disappeared out of view into another cavern.

  While observing the slaves going about their labour, Max realised the cavern walls were covered in a fine blue-grey powder. The powder was nearly indistinguishable from the shadows thrown off by the torches, but every now and then, it glinted with the light. The substance covered a few dozen feet up the walls, perhaps reaching the halfway mark, at a near-uniform level around the cavern. It reminded Max of a high tide marker.

  Because of the slaves' condition, the work was slow but Max waited to validate his guess on where the drums where going. When the platform was filled with drums, a team of slaves under the direction of two whip-bearing NWI officers began winching the cargo. It steadily disappeared from view and into the chambers outside the main cavern—presumably to a location topside where Muller's men could transport the ooze elsewhere in the wider world.

  "So this is the geological survey those pack of liars were doing," MacKenzie muttered. He rubbed the vomit from his hand onto his pants. "I can put an extra hole in that bastard's smiling face." He aimed his rifle at Lehmann.

  "Wait," Smith hissed.

  "I count eighteen of them down there, all with rifles or sidearms." Max laid his hand across MacKenzie's rifle. "Is this the best course?"

  "Let's go," Dirke whispered. "This has nothing to do with us. Leave them be and we'll still get paid for all this nonsense."

  "We can't leave them, Dirke. Look there," Max pointed to one of the Huari labourers loading the drums onto the platform. "See the side of his face? The bruise?" Dirke and the others peered closer. "That's one of the Huari we captured today."

  Smith and MacKenzie nodded almost simultaneously. Pendle was still trying to regain his senses and dignity enough to understand what was happening.

  "Do we want to become slave traders? Is that worth the money, Dirke?" Max said.

  "I don't care about—"

  Bullets ricocheted all around them, blasting the pavilion of rock above them and showering them with debris. Smith and Max peered over the edge almost on instinct to gauge their assailant's positions. An instant later, amid a second storm of gunshots, Smith's head snapped back. He slumped to the floor, face down, body twitching. Blood that appeared black in the gloom poured from his head, granting him a macabre halo.

  "Smith!" Pendle cried, shell-shocked back into the present.

  Max crawled to Smith's side and turned the man's head to face him. Blood covered most of his face. Max wiped his face with his sleeve to discover a bullet hole near Smith's temple. His twitching subsided as Max gently laid his head back to the cave floor.

  "Herr Captain?" Lehmann called. "Is that you and your friends poking around in business that does not concern you, Herr Captain?"

  Max whipped his revolver up to take a few blind shots in the direction of Lehmann's voice but he didn't pull the trigger, remembering the many innocent lives that could be taken by a stray bullet.

  Lehmann strafed their position with his machine gun. The sound of it was like a dozen nails in their coffins, all hammered at once.

  "What do we do?" Pendle's voice cracked at the question. His face was pale from the vomiting but his eyes were large and red-rimmed as though he were on the verge of tears.

  "Keep it together, lad." MacKenzie held Pendle's gaze, his stern face enough to focus the young man on something other than imminent death.

  "Herr Lehmann," Max shouted.

  More rounds struck nearby—from Lehmann's machine gun and some of the riflemen.

  "Herr Lehmann," Max repeated, louder this time. His world was reduced to staring at the stone lip he huddled behind, ignoring the stench from the ooze, and avoiding the expanding pool of blood from Smith's head wound. He was failing the last two badly, concentrating instead on the silence and the crazy beat of his heart.

  "What is it, Herr Captain-of-the-Somme?"

  "I don't know what you're doing here." Max said. "And I don't want to know. Just let us out of here and we won't give you any trouble."

  "Trouble, Herr... Calder, wasn't it? Herr Calder, you have already given me trouble. Let me propose something to you instead."

  Max and MacKenzie exchanged glances. The pause as they blindly waited for Lehmann's proposal was agonising as the moments dragged on. Dirke shuffled to the end of their line, propping himself in the corner next to Pendle for a better position to sit up and fire.

  "If this goes bad," Max whispered to MacKenzie. "Take these two back out the way we came. They probably don't know how many of us are here. I'll hold them off while—"

  Their only warning was a sizzle as a small object flew over their sheltering ridge, over their heads, and landed in their cave several feet away. It was a stick with a burning fuse.

  "Dynamite! Jump!"

  Dirke was the first over the ledge, pushing Pendle before his as a shield. Max was next, followed by MacKenzi
e. The explosion ripped through the balcony cave as the big man was clearing the ridge.

  As Max was propelled through the air, flames and the bodies of his comrades flew past him. Amid the slow motion chaos of his fall, the boom of the dynamite still deafening in his ears, he heard with crystal clarity Lehmann's laugh, superimposed with the flautist's tune. His mind suffered demented pinwheels from the combination, spinning in circles of rational and bizarre half-thoughts, mirrored by his body as it was flung through the air and towards a cluster of wall-to-floor stalagmite columns.

  He was barely aware of the impact but something jarred in his shoulder, a sharp pain that cut through his concussive madness and honed his attention.

  When he regained his senses moments later, the pain in his shoulder doubled. He was crouched at the base of one of the cavern's larger stalagmite columns, thankfully away from the NWI men and the pools of stinking ooze. Max wiped blood from his eye, wincing as he brushed a gash on his brow. There was nothing he could do for the agony radiating from his shoulder except press his hand onto it. More pain blazed in the side of his neck. Tentative fingers discovered his collar bone had snapped. His shirt had been ripped at the shoulder, his sleeve torn, revealing a mess of grazes. Warm blood trickled down his elbow and forearm as he blinked more blood from his eyes.

  The others weren't so lucky in where they landed.

  MacKenzie lay bleeding and unconscious on the cavern floor about forty feet away. Much of his left arm and torso was smouldering from the explosion but he was otherwise in one piece. Two nearby NWI-clad Germans had moved in and aimed their weapons at the downed mercenary. Dirke and Pendle fared better. Both were quickly on their feet, with Pendle dazed from taking the brunt of the impact. His leg was bleeding in rivulets and a patch of blood was expanding beneath his shirt. Dirke only bore minor cuts and scrapes.

  Pieces of Smith were strewn across the cavern floor. One Peruvian slave had been knocked to the ground from the impact of Smith's severed arm. The poor man recoiled from the arm draped across him when he snapped out of his shock, kicking it away in his eagerness to escape.