The Deadly Curse of Toco-Rey (15 page)

“Look out!” Lila screamed.

Tomás came leaping over the coffin and landed on Jacob Cooper like a ton of bricks, knocking him to the floor. They rolled and grappled and tumbled into gilded battle shields and war masks, which crashed down around them like a chorus of gongs and dinner bells. Tomás was grabbing and clawing and looking for something to bite; Dr. Cooper was just trying to get out from under him.

Lila got into it, grabbing up a candlestick to hit Tomás on the head. WHAM! He swatted her away with his arm, and she fell against the coffin, hitting her head.

Dr. Cooper saw her sink to the floor, out cold. Then he saw Tomás take a swing at him and blocked it. With a quick twist and a good wrestling hold, he flipped them both over so he was finally on top.

Not for long. Tomás was young, strong, and supercharged with toxin. He threw Dr. Cooper off with one powerful shove, and he went sliding through a pile of gold trinkets.

The air was filling with green dust. Through the green haze Jacob Cooper could see little red numbers blinking across the room:
2:38, 2:37, 2:36.

“Lila!”

She didn't answer. She didn't move.

Tomás came after him again. He used a judo move to trip the man and sent him careening into another stack of gold dishes.

In the excitement, he had let go of the other carvy. Where was it? If he could just get the venom on Tomás . . .

Oh no. He spotted it on the corner of the coffin, happy as a clam, gobbling down the spores and already shifting color from yellow to green. Jay was close to that corner. Maybe he could reach it.

“Jay!”

Jay didn't hear him. He was too disoriented, trying but unable to peel the carvy off his head.

Dr. Cooper dove for the bomb. Tomás dove for Dr. Cooper. They collided before Dr. Cooper could reach the bomb, and they went at it again. Dr. Cooper threw him off and reached for the bomb. Tomás grabbed him again and threw him over the coffin and into more crashing, tinkling treasure.

1:32, 1:31, 1:30 . . .

Jacob Cooper struggled to his feet, looked everywhere trying to get his bearings, coughed in the green dust, and then spotted the red numbers:
1:20,
1:19, 1:18.
Tomás was coming after him again.

Another head popped up out of the tunnel under the pedestal! Ben Cory!

Oh no. Two of them?

Dr. Cooper shot out his left hand, grabbed the remaining carvy off the corner of the coffin, and prepared to throw it. It didn't resist him. It didn't hiss, or bite, or chirp angrily.

It purred. It was a beautiful, deep green.

I'm sunk
, Jacob Cooper thought.

Tomás was half laughing, half growling, slinking like a big cat around the cockeyed coffin.

0:44, 0:43, 0:42 . . .

Ben Cory jumped up out of the tunnel and grabbed Tomás from behind. They fought, they growled. Tomás kicked. Cory hung on. They were busy, occupied with each other.

Dr. Cooper scurried the other way around the coffin and finally grabbed the bomb.
0:30, 0:29,
0:28 . . .

How do you stop this thing?
Dr. Cooper tried pressing some of the buttons on the key pad. He tried cancel, he tried pound and star, he tried 000, he even tried reset. The thing just kept counting down,
0:15, 0:14, 0:13 . . .

Ben Cory finally got the upper hand, landing a punch to Tomás's jaw that sent him tumbling over the coffin and to the floor, out cold.

Oh great! I'm next!
thought Jacob Cooper.

No time left. Dr. Cooper ran for the hole in the wall. Maybe they would survive if the bomb exploded in the hallway.

Ben Cory jumped in his path!

Dr. Cooper braced himself.
You or me, buddy,
but this bomb's going through that hole!

Ben Cory didn't throw a punch. He held out his hand, palm up, gesturing, Let's have it.

Dr. Cooper hesitated, not sure.

0:05, 0:04, 0:03 . . .

Ben Cory grabbed the bomb from his hand, and with amazing skill and dexterity tapped out the correct cancel code.

The display froze at
0:01.

There was a sudden, eerie stillness. Was it all over?

Ben Cory sighed, then tossed and caught the bomb playfully in his hand. “It's one of mine. I know the cancel code.”

Dr. Cooper could just barely feel some relief setting in. “Ben Cory?”

Ben Cory looked at him curiously, cocking his head. “Jake Cooper? What are you doing here?”

“Oh . . . nothing special.”

“You look kind of green.”

Jacob Cooper chuckled, looking at his green hands. “You ought to see yourself.”

Just then, Lila moaned and stirred, rubbing her head. Dr. Cooper went to her. “Easy now. Don't get up too fast.”

“Ooo . . .” she moaned. “What happened? Are we still alive?”

“Dad . . .” It was Jay! “Hey, is that you?”

Dr. Cooper couldn't help smiling as he looked at his son. “Yeah. Is that
you?”

Jay had finally gotten the carvy off his head and tossed it onto the coffin to join its buddy. “Oh yeah. It's me.”

They were alive in the spooky, dusty treasure room of Kachi-Tochetin.

On the plane returning home from Central America, Dr. Cooper tapped out a journal entry on his notebook computer:

    
We had to confine Tomás until Ben Cory and
I could convince Chief Yoaxa to give us a few
more yellow carvies for antitoxin. Upon seeing
me, Ben Cory, and then Tomás recover fully, the
Kachakas began to realize they were not dealing
with spooky mukai-tochetin but with a sickness,
and they became helpful friends.

    
With great solemnity, we helped Ben Cory
dig real graves, and the remains of John Cory
and Brad Frederick were laid to rest in a peaceful
setting near the waterfall.

    
As for Tomás, Juan, and Carlos, the laws in
that part of the world were rather vague about
what to do with men who have been duped by
foreigners and doped by dust, so I doubt they
will see much jail time, if any.

    
The Kachakas found the remains of the man
called Manasseh and buried him under the
thick, entangling vines of Toco-Rey to be forgotten.
We can only conclude that Dr. Armond
Basehart perished in the bomb blast that sealed
the first tunnel. We never found his remains at
all.

    
As for the deadly curse of Toco-Rey, we consulted
a mycologist from Mexico City, who
studied the fungus and its spores and discovered
it was a whole new species never before identified.
The Latin American Mycological Society
wanted to name the new species after him, but
he chose to give it the name Kachi-Tochetin,
after the ruthless king who used it to curse his
treasure. He theorizes that the Oltecas knew the
carvies carried the cure for the spore toxin and
so were able to survive. The Oltecas probably
used foreign slaves who had never encountered
the spores or the carvies to act as incubators in
the tomb, chaining them to the four pillars
until the fungus consumed them and filled the
treasure room with spores.

    
The fungus is still there in Toco-Rey and it is
still deadly, but the strange flying slugs are also
there, keeping nature in balance as they have
for centuries.

    
Happily, the secret of the deadly curse of
Toco-Rey is no longer a secret. An international
team of toxicologists have begun studying the
slugs and extracting their antitoxin, meaning
the spores will no longer be of any use to ruthless
weapons dealers.

    
The treasure we found has been granted to
the Langley Memorial Art Museum in recognition
of their past work in preserving the history
and artifacts of ancient civilizations around the
world. The Langley Museum never really hired
us, but I understand they have a bonus waiting
for me as a token of gratitude. Nice people.

    
To conclude, I'll make one observation
about all this treasure hunting . . .

Dr. Cooper looked up from his computer keyboard and across the aisle where Jay and Lila sat reclined in their seats, peacefully catching up on some much-needed sleep. Their skin was normal again, and except for some bumps and bruises, they were all right.

Dr. Cooper smiled as he typed,

    
Having found a fabulous treasure beneath
the ground while in the act of saving my two
children, I have affirmed one truth I will carry
with me for all time: Apart from the dear Lord
Himself, my children and my integrity are my
greatest treasure, and having them safe with me
now, I am the richest man in the world.

An Excerpt from
The Secret of the Desert Stone,
Book Five in The Cooper Kids Adventure Series
^®

KABOOM!
Dr. Henderson's seismic blaster was like a small cannon held in a steel frame and aimed at the ground. When Jay pressed the detonator switch to set off the explosive charge, the device actually leaped a foot off the surface with Jay and Lila standing on it—supposedly to hold it down. Dr. Jennifer Henderson sat calmly in the shade of the airplane's wing, her jacket collar up around her face to block the cold wind, tapping away at her portable computer.

“We should get an image in just a few seconds,” she told Dr. Cooper, who was looking over her shoulder. “The blaster sends shock waves through the Stone, and the sensors pick up the echoes. Then the computer interprets the echoes to let us know where the shock waves have been, whether they've passed through rooms or tunnels or different strata of rock. . . .”

The tiny cursor was sweeping back and forth across the computer screen. Line by line, beginning at the top, it was weaving an image like a tapestry. So far the image was one solid field of black. Dr. Henderson started tapping some keys. “Come on, come on . . . don't disappoint me.”

“Woo!” Jay hollered as he and Lila hurried back to the plane. “That blaster was some kind of ride!”

Lila was twisting her finger in her ear. “That thing hurt my ears!”

They joined Dr. Cooper and looked over Dr. Henderson's shoulder at the computer image. The black tapestry continued to form on the computer screen as she tapped a few more keys, muttering to herself and scolding the computer, “Come on, don't give me that!”

Finally, the seismic image was complete. Dr. Henderson leaned back, removed her hands from the keyboard, and sighed. “People, unless the equipment isn't working properly, I'm afraid the results are disappointing. The Stone is solid. No rooms, no tunnels, nothing.”

“Nothing?” Jay asked, clearly disappointed.

Dr. Henderson shook her head, waving her finger over the image on the screen. “See here? Between the top and bottom surfaces there is virtually no change in density. No cracks. No holes. No gaps or bubbles. Nothing.”

“So we haven't progressed much,” said Dr. Cooper.

“We may have fallen back a little. We don't even know what the Stone is made of.”

“But you said it was basalt,” said Lila.

Dr. Henderson shot a glance at the gas-powered core drill lying next to the plane's wheel strut, the drill bit burned and blunted. “While you were setting out the sensors, I tried to drill out a core sample. The drill didn't even make a scratch. If I'm going to be scientific and objective here, I have to admit I don't know what this thing is or what it's made of. I only know it's indestructible.”

“Do you still think it's man-made?” Dr. Cooper asked.

Jennifer Henderson sniffed a derisive little laugh. “I'm wondering what the builder used for a chisel. Even though he, or it, or they, left marks,
I
sure can't.”

Lila turned her back to a cold breeze that had just kicked up. “His Excellency isn't going to like this.”

“Just for my information,” said Dr. Henderson,

“now that we have the airplane, can't we just fly out of the country from here?”

Dr. Cooper looked across the vast, tabletop surface toward the distant horizon, barely visible beyond the Stone's sharp edge. “Yes, we can. I'm just not sure how far we can go on the fuel we have left.”

“Far enough to get out of Togwana would be fine with me.”

“But the question is, where can we go? If any of the neighboring countries help us escape, Nkromo would brand them as enemies. I'm not sure they'd want that.”

“Well,” said Lila, “at least we're safe up here.”

As if in response to her words, a disturbing quiver came up through the soles of their shoes.

“I knew it,” Dr. Henderson moaned.

The Stone was quaking, all right. Dr. Henderson's computer almost slid off its little stand before she grabbed it. The airplane began to rock, its wings dipping and jiggling. From deep below and all around, there was a deep rumble, like continuous thunder, as a gust of wind whipped across the Stone, kicking up tiny ice pellets that stung their faces.

Dr. Henderson was already throwing her gear into the plane. “Let's go, let's go!”

Dr. Cooper looked to the east and saw a curtain of snow, ice, and boiling clouds coming their way. “Fair weather's over. We'd better get off this thing!”

Lila looked the direction her father was looking and saw the storm approaching. Even so, she insisted, “But we're safe here, really!”

Dr. Cooper just tugged her toward the plane. “Jay, unchock the wheels!”

Dr. Henderson started running away and he grabbed her.