The Judas Strain - James Rollins [3]
All empty.
Except for the dead.
The ground had been littered with birds, fallen to the stone plazas as if struck out of the skies in flight. Nothing was spared. Men and women and children. Oxen and beasts of the field. Even great snakes had hung limp from tree limbs, their flesh boiling from beneath their scales.
The only living inhabitants were the ants.
Of every size and color.
Teeming across stones and bodies, slowly picking apart the dead.
But he was wrong…something still waited for the sun to fall.
Marco shunned those memories.
Upon discovering what Marco had stolen from one of the temples, his father had burned the map and spread the ashes into the sea. He did this even before the first man aboard their own ships had become sick.
“Let it be forgotten,” his father had warned then. “It has nothing to do with us. Let it be swallowed away by history.”
Marco would honor his word, his oath. This was one tale he would never speak. Still, he touched one of the marks in the sand. He who had chronicled so much…was it right to destroy such knowledge?
If there was another way to preserve it…
As if reading Marco’s thoughts, his uncle Masseo spoke aloud all their fears. “And if the horror should rise again, Niccolò, should someday reach our shores?”
“Then it will mean the end of man’s tyranny of this world,” his father answered bitterly. He tapped the crucifix resting on Masseo’s bare chest. “The friar knew better than all. His sacrifice…”
The cross had once belonged to Friar Agreer. Back in the cursed city, the Dominican had given his life to save theirs. A dark pact had been struck. They had left him back there, abandoned him, at his own bidding.
The nephew of Pope Gregory X.
Marco whispered as the last of the flames died into the dark waters. “What God will save us next time?”
MAY 22, 6:32 P.M.
Indian Ocean 10º 44'07.87"S | 105º 11'56.52"E
“WHO WANTS ANOTHER bottle of Foster’s while I’m down here?” Gregg Tunis called from belowdecks.
Dr. Susan Tunis smiled at her husband’s voice as she pushed off the dive ladder and onto the open stern deck. She skinned out of her BC vest and hauled the scuba gear to the rack behind the research yacht’s pilothouse. Her tanks clanked as she racked them alongside the others.
Free of the weight, she grabbed the towel from her shoulder and dried her blond hair, bleached almost white by sun and salt. Once done, she unzipped her wet suit with a single long tug.
“Boom-badaboom…badaboom…” erupted from a lounge chair behind her.
She didn’t even glance back. Plainly someone had spent too much time in Sydney’s strip clubs. “Professor Applegate, must you always do that when I’m climbing out of my gear?”
The gray-haired geologist balanced a pair of reading glasses on his nose, an open text on maritime history on his lap. “It would be ungentlemanly not to acknowledge the presence of a buxom young woman relieving herself of too much attire.”
She shouldered out of the wet suit and stripped it down to her waist. She wore a one-piece swimsuit beneath. She had learned the hard way that a bikini top had the tendency to strip away with a wet suit. And while she didn’t mind the retired professor, thirty years her senior, ogling her, she wasn’t going to give him that much of a free show.
Her husband climbed up with three perspiring bottles of lager, pinching them all between the fingers of one hand. He grinned broadly upon seeing her. “Thought I heard you bumping about up here.”
He climbed topside, stretching his tall frame. He wore only a pair of white Quicksilver trunks and a loose shirt, unbuttoned. Employed as a boat mechanic in Darwin Harbor, he and Susan had met during one of the dry-dock repairs on another of the University of Sydney’s boats. That had been eight years ago. Just three days ago, they had celebrated their fifth anniversary aboard the yacht, moored a hundred nautical miles off Kiritimati Atoll, better known as Christmas Island.
He passed her a bottle. “Any luck with the soundings?”
She took a long pull on the beer, appreciating the moisture. Sucking on