Deity (44 page)

The
lights flickered out, but Chac was relentless. He clicked on an LED flashlight
and yelled for them to keep moving. Peet felt nauseated by the heat. There was
no escape as they continued along the endless corridor. Lori looked faint. The
priest appeared even more so. But somehow they pressed on until they finally
passed through a darkened doorway.

Chac’s
beam glowed outward through a small chamber filled with shadows that danced
over a store of artifacts. Peet could hardly believe his eyes, but there was no
time to investigate. As quickly as they’d swept into the cache they were right
back out and climbing, climbing…climbing.

The
air lost its intensity. Peet sensed a sweet refuge ahead. There was a momentary
pause as Chac threw open yet another door and as he did, refreshing sunlight
poured in around him.

“Hail
Mary, full of grace,” Father Ruiz cried as he collapsed to his knees, his
trembling fingers working over his rosary.

“You
might want to pray a little harder,” Chac said, lifting his eyes skyward.

Peet
followed his gaze and his heart sank. Directly above a plume of steam erupted
from the peak of the volcano. The ground trembled beneath his feet, signaling
more to come. But more what? More steam?
More lava?

“Where
do we go from here?” Lori asked, panic-stricken.

For
the first time since Peet had known the man, Chac looked resigned. “Nowhere,”
he said solemnly.

Peet
understood what he meant. It didn’t matter what direction they went, or how fast
they ran, there was no escaping a volcanic eruption, and they were directly
below the business end of it. In a matter of seconds the volcano could spew
lava and ash over them, but not before deadly gases knocked them dead where
they stood. Even more frightening still, they could be incinerated by a
pyroclastic blast that would lay waste to miles upon miles of jungle, rock and
earth.

In
short, they were as good as dead.

Pyroclast

KC
gently elevated John’s swollen ankle atop a bundle of baskets while he made
himself comfortable on the thatched matt she’d just reclined against a tree. Ordinarily,
she’d have found such nursing duties irritating and mundane, but her mind was
distracted by thoughts of Peet. As it turned out he wasn’t an easy catch, not
the way she’d wanted anyway. But such was the story of her life with men. Those
easily available were not worth her time while the ones she wanted never seemed
within her reach.

Perhaps
Father Ruiz had been right. Men were not the answer to that aching hollow
inside. There had to be something more fulfilling, something that wouldn’t
disappoint.

It
was when she’d finally come to accept the priest’s point that the earth
trembled directly beneath her feet. The sensation startled her enough to give
her pause, not necessarily due to the physical act of quaking earth so much as
its timing. A message of confirmation had been transmitted directly to her, but
it hadn’t been missed by the villagers.

All
activity stopped. John sat up. The women who’d been paying continuous homage to
the great central praying pole even paused from their supplication. The only
thing that dared breathe were the two tendrils of smoke wafting out of the fading
bonfire coals like ghostly incense offerings.

A
young man set out the alarm, racing through the village screaming, “Tacana!
Tacana!”
As if on cue, the praying women began to rock
anxiously upon their knees, their faces lifting to the jungle canopy. They
began to moan with increasing intensity, their voices chasing the villagers to
the ledge where the men had earlier witnessed One Hunahpu’s rebirth. However, instead
of gathering over the ravine, the villagers turned their eyes north toward the
peak now venting white clouds of steam toward One Hunahpu’s throne.

The
ground trembled beneath Tacana’s growl.

KC
panicked.
“My God!
It’s going to…”

* * * *

Lori’s
heart threatened to beat out of her chest. She couldn’t breathe, which only
accelerated her pulse to the rhythm of the quaking ground.

This
is the end. This is what the 2012 conspirators have been calling for.

Nearby,
Father Ruiz was deliriously rocking on his knees, his eyes squeezed shut, his
fists clenched around his rosary, and he was mumbling. Lori weakened, falling
to her own knees, feeling faint and soaked with sweat. She closed her eyes. If
they couldn’t run then the only other thing they could do was pray.

Please Dear God…

A
low rumble rose from deep within the earth and the ground quaked violently.

“This
is it!” Chac declared.

Lori
clenched her eyes tighter. A pair of arms suddenly swept around her and her
nostrils filled with the sweat-musky scent of Dr. Peet’s damp shirt. She
huddled against the wall of his chest and his arms drew tighter. His breath
fell upon her neck.

Please
dear God…

The
sound of the contracting earth suddenly swallowed them. Not only was it
rumbling below, but it was booming above. The earth shook. The air thrashed in
thrumming waves. She held her breath against the surge of searing, toxic gases,
but they never came. Instead, a steady thwap, thwap, thwap hovered overhead. She
felt the wind tugging at her hair, the wind from an enormous angel’s wings
beating directly above, dropping over her like a protective dove.

Lori’s
eyes popped skyward. Indeed a heavy shadow blotted out the sun but this dove
had whipping rotor wings that lowered the angelic sheen of the Vol De Feu.

“Laffy!”
she gasped as Dr. Peet pulled her to her feet.

The
chopper hovered a few feet off the uneven ground, allowing Chac to hoist
himself
inside. With a boost from Dr. Peet and a hand from
Chac, Lori suddenly found herself scrambling onto the confined floor inside. Father
Ruiz was next, squeezing in next to her while Dr. Peet finally climbed in at
last.

“How
did you manage to find us, Laffy?” Lori yelled emphatically but the pilot
didn’t hear her as he lifted them up and spun them away from the
steam-billowing terror. But they couldn’t get away without a volcanic farewell.

Tacana
exploded in their wake.

The
Vol de Feu shuddered and protested with a panel of alarms and warnings. The
chopper wavered unsteadily, but that wasn’t what threw Lori’s stomach into her
throat. As Laffy fought to maintain control, Lori choked at the sight behind
them.

The
slope from which they’d just been plucked was suddenly consumed in a swell of
steam. It rolled like a wispy avalanche, steamrolling the jungle flat down the
side of the mountain. Acre after acre of trees
were
leveled right before her eyes.

It
was nothing like Lori had ever seen. The very hand of God was brushing across
the mountain like…well, like Dr.Peet now taking a swipe over his unruly hair. His
face was ashen and heavy. His eyes were transfixed upon the leveled jungle. And
beneath the noise of the helicopter, one name came in whispers upon his lips.

John
.

* * * *

Father
Ruiz was speechless as he watched the steam wash over the landscape below,
leaving a distinctive footprint of crushed green forest behind. Somewhere
directly in the path of the destruction was the Quiché village, John, and KC. In
a matter of seconds they would all be destroyed and he could do nothing but sit
and helplessly watch.

Father
Ruiz considered the pagan, tree-worshipping villagers. Had their ignorance
angered God? After all, the explosive steam poured out of the volcano as though
commissioned to exact punishment on a specific target. The thought caused him
to wonder if any of the villagers had been saved during his visit last night. Had
a soul not been converted? Had he been sent by God into the Chiapas jungle not to recover a crucifix,
but to rescue lost souls? Suddenly, Father Ruiz felt remorseful for the
villagers he had surely failed, a village only a breath away from Sodom and Gomorrah’s
fate.

Or
was it?

Even
as Father Ruiz regrettably watched the tragedy unfold, he recognized a strange
and unnatural phenomenon taking place. As the steam boiled down the slope of
Tacana, it didn’t gain speed as gravity would command. Instead, it was slowing
down. Its strength was literally evaporating into thin air. The destructive
cloud was dissipating as though torn apart piece by piece by the very jungle it
was mowing down until suddenly it had little more energy than to sway the trees
near the bottom.

It
was as thought the steam had hit an invisible wall.

The
helicopter passed over the last reaches of the devastation. Father Ruiz sucked
in an exasperated breath. There, at the very edge, where the ruined jungle met
the spared, stood a large, towering tree, stripped of all its limbs save for
two broad crossarms that appeared to embrace the slope of jungle now bowing
down before it.

A
cross! A giant cross!

As
the helicopter swung around, Father Ruiz recognized the heap and scrap of
offerings lying on the ground around it. The prayer pole! The Quiché villagers
hadn’t been worshipping a tree but groveling at the foot of a monolithic
crucifix. He hadn’t recognized it from the ground—the jungle canopy had
overgrown the crossarms.
 
But the arms
were free now, and like a couple of billboards, they each boldly pronounced a
single word to the world—

Gloria!
Jesús!

Amazingly,
the village itself remained in tact, nestled in the surviving forest behind the
protective arms of their one true God.

Mexico City

Christmas Eve, 2012

KC
sat alone amongst an assembly of sleeping pews, content with the solitude and
the soft waves of music floating through the spacious Metropolitan Cathedral. She’d
been there for nearly fifteen minutes, drawn immediately by the lofty Altar of
Forgiveness, gilded in golden abstracts against the cavernous shadows that
filled intricate recesses untouched by the candle glow. The cathedral’s
tremendous columns fortified the altar, securing its high architecture
somewhere in the darkness overhead like the Quiché crucifix hoisting its sentinel
crossarms into the refuge of the jungle canopy.

Golden
saints and cherubs surrounded a portrait of the Virgin, projecting from the
altar’s gilded shadows and extending around the banisters that encompassed the
nearest columns—wings opened wide to transfix and embrace.

“There’s
much more to see down the central nave.”

Startled
from the sublime vision consuming her anima, KC turned to find John leaning on
crutches at the end of her row. She shot him a timid smile and turned
immediately back to the breathtaking altar. “I’m too overwhelmed,” she admitted.

What
more could she say? What more could she see?

John
awkwardly clattered into the pew and collapsed beside her. “It’s quite a
spectacle,” he agreed.

KC
yielded to a pious appreciation for the surrounding ambiance. “Christmas has
never appealed to me quite like this,” she said. “It’s truly a season of
miracles.”

John
simply nodded.
An appropriate response to her newfound
sensitivity.
Perhaps he had been touched by the miracles too. After all,
there was no explaining why they were still alive. Only a miracle could have
intervened on Tacana’s wrath. In fact, they’d all been miraculously spared. Even
Laffy could not explain how the others could escape an open magma chamber
without being overcome by toxic gases, heat or steam.

Miracles.

John
allowed the reflective moment to linger a while longer before he leaned in
close and said in a hushed tone, “In the spirit of the holidays, I have a gift
for you.”

KC
turned to him with a quizzical grin.

“Actually,”
John said, “
it’s
Anthony’s gift. There’s a possibility
that two seats will open up on tomorrow’s flight and he’s letting you have
first call for one if you want it. He says it’s the least he can do.”

“That’s
awful nice of him, but he doesn’t need to do that,” KC said. “I have nothing to
hurry home to.”

“That’s
precisely what he said about himself.”

“Let
him go home,” she insisted. “I might catch another flight later.”

“Might?”

KC’s
grin turned timid. She’d opened the door to her secret. “Father Ruiz invited me
to spend Christmas here and I’ve already accepted.” The surprise washing over
John’s face made her chuckle. “He’s collecting food and other donations which
he intends to distribute to the indigenous people in Chiapas. I’ll provide the transportation if
we can find the right plane for the right price.”