Burial Ground

Michael McBride

Copyright © 2011 Michael McBride

Smashwords Edition

Burial Ground copyright © 2011 by Michael
McBride

Cover painting copyright © 2011 by Algol

Excerpt from Vector Borne copyright © 2011 by
Michael McBride

Excerpt from Innocents Lost copyright © 2010
by Michael McBride

Excerpt from Predatory Instinct copyright ©
2011 by Michael McBride

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from
Michael McBride.

For more information about
the author, please visit his website:
www.michaelmcbride.net

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Novels

Bloodletting

Innocents Lost

Predatory Instinct

Vector Borne

Novellas

Blindspot

Brood XIX

Remains (from The Mad & The Macabre, with
Jeff Strand)

The Calm Before the Swarm

Xibalba

ZERØ

TABLE OF
CONTENTS

BURIAL GROUND

Bonus Material

Excerpt from VECTOR BORNE

Excerpt from INNOCENTS LOST

Excerpt from PREDATORY INSTINCT

Beware lest you lose the substance by
grasping at the shadow.

---
Aesop

Out of the dusk a shadow,

Then, a spark;

Out of the cloud a silence,

Then, a lark;

Out of the heart a rapture,

Then, a pain;

Out of the dead, cold ashes,

Life again.

---
John Banister Tabb

The person who runs away exposes himself to
that very danger more than a person who sits quietly.

---
Jawaharlal Nehru

Andes Mountains

Northern Peru

October 11
^th

9:26 p.m. PET

The screams were more than he could bear,
but they didn't last long. Panicked cries cut short by wet, tearing
sounds, and then finally silence, save the patter of raindrops on
the muddy ground. From where he crouched in the dark recess of the
stone fortification, hidden from the world by a screen of tangled
lianas and the sheeting rain, he had listened to them die.

All of them.

The signs had been there, but he and his
companions had misinterpreted them, and now it was too late. It was
only a matter of time before they found him, and slaughtered him as
well.

Hunter Gearhardt donned his rucksack
backward, and wrapped his arms around its contents. He'd managed to
grab a few items of importance once he'd recognized what was about
to happen, and he needed to get them out of the jungle. More
bloodshed would follow if he didn't reach civilization. With their
inability to access a signal on the satellite phone, there was no
other way to deliver the warning. It was all up to him now, and his
window of opportunity was closing fast.

His breathing was ragged, too loud in his
own ears, his heartbeat a thudding counterpoint. He couldn't hear
them out there, but they had attacked so quietly in the first place
that the silence was of little comfort. They were still out there,
stalking him. There was no time to waste. He needed to put as much
distance between himself and his pursuit as possible if he were to
stay alive long enough to get down off the mountain. And even then,
they knew this region of the cloud forest far better than he
did.

He wished he'd had the opportunity to find
his pistol, but it would have been useless against their superior
numbers. His only hope was to run, to reach the river. From there
he could only pray that he would be able to survive the rapids and
that they wouldn't be able to track him from the shore. It was a
long shot. Unfortunately, it was also his only shot.

Tightening his grip on his backpack, his
muscles tensed in anticipation.

Through the curtain of lianas, the rain
continued to pour, creating puddles in every imperfection in the
earth and eroding through the steep slope ahead, which plummeted
nearly vertically into the valley below. If he fell, they would be
upon him in a flash. And that was only if he didn't slide over the
lip of the limestone cliff and plunge hundreds of feet through the
forest canopy to his death.

Hunter drew a deep breath and bolted out
into the night. Narrowing his eyes against the sudden assault of
raindrops, he focused on the rocky path that led down toward the
river. The ancient fortress wall flew past to his left, a crumbling
twenty-five foot structure composed of large bricks of chiseled
obsidian nearly consumed by the overgrowth of vines, shrubbery, and
bromeliads. Every footfall summoned a loud splash he could barely
hear over his own frantic breathing. The mud sucked at his boots as
though he were running through syrup. He barely managed to stay
upright long enough to reach the path, little more than a thin
trench between rugged stone faces. The ground in the channel was
slick and nearly invisible under the muddy runoff. His feet slipped
out from beneath him and he cracked his head on a rock. His
momentum and the current carried him downward onto a flat plateau
dominated by Brazil nut trees draped with vines and moss.

The roar of the river became audible over
the tumult of rain. He was so close---

A crashing sound from the underbrush to his
right.

He glanced over as he crawled to his feet
and saw nothing but shadows lurking behind the shivering
branches.

More crashing uphill to his left.

He wasn't going to make it.

Willing his legs to move faster, he sprinted
toward the edge of the forest and the cliff beyond. The waterfall
that fired from the mountain upstream was a riot of mist and spray
that crashed down upon a series of jagged rocks. Hopefully, there
was enough water racing through now thanks to the storm to have
raised the level of the river above them. Either way, he'd rather
take his chances with broken bones than the hunters that barreled
through the jungle, leaving shaking trees in their wake.

They were all around him now and closing
fast.

If he could just reach the rock ledge, he
could leap down into the river and allow it to whisk him away.

Ten yards.

Through the trees, he could see only fog,
but he'd been down here enough times to know that the foaming
whitecaps flowed only fifteen feet below. He would then need to
navigate a series of waterfalls, and keep from drowning long enough
to reach the bottom of the valley and the start of the real
trek.

Five yards. Another four strides through the
snarl of brush and he could make his leap. Just three more strides
and---

Searing pain erupted in his back as he was
slammed from behind. Something sharp probed between his ribs to
either side of his spine. The mist-shrouded cliff disappeared and
he saw only mud rising toward his face. The backpack against his
chest broke the brunt of his fall, but his forehead still hammered
the ground. He saw only blackness and tasted blood. The weight
pounded down on his back, knocking the wind out of him. Something
clawed at his shoulders as he slid forward.

The pressure on top of him abated and
whatever had stabbed him was yanked out as he rolled over the ledge
and tumbled into the fog toward the frigid river, unable even to
scream.

Pomacochas, Peru

October 14
^th

8:38 a.m. PET

By the time Wes Merritt caught up with the
children, they were giggling and prodding the corpse with
sticks.

This certainly wasn't how he had envisioned
starting his day.

He had been down on the rickety floating
dock on Laguna Pomacochas, loading his 1953 DHC-2 #N68080 seaplane
with supplies for a quick jaunt down to the City of Chachapoyas,
capital of the Amazonas Province of Peru, when the three boys had
raced up the wooden planks and begun chattering at him in Quechua.
Far from fluent in the native tongue, he had captured just a
handful of words here and there, but the few he understood told him
he wouldn't be making the flight that morning. Two words had stood
out specifically. The first,
aya
, meant "dead body." And the
second, undoubtedly the reason they had come directly to him rather
than the policía, was a word that he had been called on more than
one occasion himself.

Mithmaq
. The Quechua word for
stranger.

As Merritt approached the bank of the river
and the partially concealed body, he wondered if the children had
been mistaken. What little skin he could see was mottled bluish
black, and the hair was so thick with mud and scum that it was
nearly impossible to determine the color. The Mayu Wañu, or,
roughly translated, Resurrection River, rose and fell with the
seasons, alternately climbing up the steep slope behind him in the
spring into the primary rainforest, where the massive trunks of the
kapok trees bore the gray discoloration of the water, and
diminishing to a gentle trickle mere inches deep during dry spells.
The body was tangled in vegetation, half-buried in the mud on the
shore, half-floating in the brown river. Swirling eddies attempted
to pry it loose to continue its journey along the rapids into the
lagoon, but the earth held it fast.

"
Sayana
," he said in Quechua.
Stop.

The boys looked up at him, then slowly
backed away, their fun spoiled. One, a shaggy-haired boy of about
twelve in a filthy polo shirt and corduroys that were far too
short, peeked at Merritt from the corner of his eye and gave the
corpse one final poke. All three whirled and sprinted back into the
jungle, laughing.

Merritt eased down the slippery bank. The
mud swallowed his feet to the ankles and he had to hold the limp
yellow ferns to maintain his balance. A quick glance at the ground
confirmed the only recent tracks belonged to the barefooted boys.
He breathed a sigh of relief. There was a long list of creatures he
didn't want to encounter in his current compromised position.

Merritt hauled himself up onto the snarl of
branches that shielded the body from the brunt of the current and
crouched to inspect the remains. Judging by the broad shoulders and
short hair, the corpse belonged to a male, roughly six feet tall,
which definitely marked him as a foreigner to this region of
northern Peru. The man's shirt and cargo pants had both absorbed so
much of the dirty river that it was impossible to tell what color
they might once have been. Twin black straps arched around his
shoulders. His left leg bobbed on the river, the laces from his
boot squirming beneath the surface. His right foot was snared in
the branches under Merritt, the bulk of the leg buried in mud. Both
arms were pinned somewhere under the body.

Back home in the States, this was when the
police would arrive and cordon off the scene so the forensics team
could begin the investigation. But he wasn't back home. He was in a
different world entirely. A world far less complicated than the one
he had left behind, one that had initially welcomed him with overt
suspicion, but had eventually introduced him to a culture that had
made him its own. And although his white skin would always brand
him a
mithmaq
in their midst, no place in the world had ever
felt so much like home.