Excavation

Joan slipped on a pair of reading glasses and squeaked her chair closer to the monitor. She leaned forward to study the image. “Bob, can you rotate it about thirty degrees?”

The radiologist nodded, chewing on a pencil. He tapped a few buttons, and the skull twisted slightly until it was staring them full in the face. Joan reached with a small ruler and made some measurements, frowning. She tapped the screen with a fingernail. “That shadow above the right orbit of the eye. Can we get a better look at it?”

A few keys were tapped and the image zoomed in closer. The radiologist removed the pencil from between his teeth. He whistled appreciatively.

“What is it?” Henry asked.

Joan turned and tilted her glasses down to peer over their rims at him. “A hole.” She tapped the glass indicating the triangular shadow on the plane of bone. “It’s not natural. Someone drilled into his skull. And from the lack of callus formation around the site, I’d guess the procedure was done shortly after his death.”

“Trepa

Joan must have read his thoughts. “I hate to dash your hopes, but trepa

Henry could not find his voice for a few breaths. “Are… are you sure?”

She took off her glasses, settled them back in her pocket, and sighed softly, clearly well accustomed to passing on a dire diagnosis. “Yes. I’d say he came from Western Europe. I’d guess Portugal. And given enough time and more study, I could probably pinpoint even the exact province.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Henry.”

He recognized the sympathy in her eyes. With despair in his heart, he struggled to keep himself composed. He stared down at the Dominican cross in his hand. “He must have been captured by the Incas,” he finally said. “And eventually sacrificed to their gods atop MountArapa. If his blood was spilled on such a sacred site, European or not, they would have been forced to mummify his remains. It was probably why they left him his cross. Those who died on holy sites were honored, and it was taboo to rob their corpses of any valuables.”

The reporter had been hurriedly jotting notes, even though she had a tape recorder also monitoring their conversation. “It’ll make a good story.”

“Story, maybe… even a journal article or two…” Henry shrugged, attempting a weak smile.

“But not what you were hoping for,” Joan added.

“An intriguing oddity, nothing more. It sheds no new light on the Incas.”

“Perhaps your dig back in Peru will produce more intriguing finds,” the pathologist offered.

“There is that hope. My nephew and a few other grad students are delving into a temple ruin as we speak. Hopefully, they’ll have better news for me.”

“And you’ll let me know?” Joan asked with a smile. “You know I’ve been following your discoveries in both the National Geographic and Archaeology magazines.”

“You have?” Henry stood a little straighter.

“Yes, it’s all been very exciting.”

Henry’s smile grew wider. “I’ll definitely keep you updated.” And he meant it. There was a certain charm to this woman that Henry still found disarming. Add to that a generous figure that could not be completely hidden by her sterile lab coat. Henry found a slight blush heating his cheeks.

“Joan, you’d better come see this,” the radiologist said in a hushed voice. “Something’s wrong with the CT.”

Joan swung back to the monitor. “What is it?”

“I was just fiddling with some mid-sagittal views to judge bone density. But all the interior views just come back blank.” As Henry looked on, Dr. Reynolds flipped through a series of images, each a deeper slice through the interior of the skull. But each of the i

Joan touched the screen as if her fingers could make sense of the pictures. “I don’t understand. Let’s recalibrate and try again.”

The radiologist tapped a button and the constant clacking from the machine died away. But a sharper noise, hidden behind the knock of the sca

All eyes were drawn to the speakers.

“What the hell is that noise?” the radiologist asked. He tapped at a few keys. “The sca

The Herald reporter sat closest to the window looking into the CT room. She sprang to her feet, knocking her chair over. “My God!”

“What is it?” Joan stood up and joined the reporter at the window.

Henry pushed forward, fearing for his fragile mummy. “What—?” Then he saw it, too. The mummy still lay on the sca

“My God, it’s alive!” the reporter moaned in horror.

“Impossible,” Henry sputtered.

The convulsing corpse grew violent. Its lanky black hair whipped furiously around its thrashing head like a thousand snakes. Henry expected at any moment that the head would rip off its neck, but what actually happened was worse. Much worse.

Like a rotten melon, the top of the mummy’s skull blew away explosively. Yellow filth splattered out from the cranium, spraying the wall, the CT sca

The reporter stumbled away from the fouled glass, her legs giving way beneath her. Her mouth chanted uncontrollably, “Oh my God oh my God oh my God…”

Joan remained calm, professional. She spoke to the stu

The radiologist just stared, unblinking, as the mummy quieted its convulsions and lay still. “Damn,” he finally whispered to the fouled window. “What happened?”

Joan shook her head, still calm. She replaced her glasses and studied the room. “Perhaps a soft eruption of pocketed gas,” she mumbled. “Since the mummy was frozen at a high altitude, methane from decomposition could have released abruptly from the sudden thawing.” She shrugged.

The reporter finally seemed to have composed herself and tried to take a picture, but Joan blocked her with a palm. Joan shook her head. There would be no further pictures.

Henry had not moved since the eruption. He still stood with one palm pressed to the glass. He stared at the ruins of his mummy and the brilliant splatters sprayed on walls and machine. The debris shone brightly, glowing a deep ruddy yellow under the halogens.

The reporter, her voice still shaky, waved a hand at the fouled lead window. “What the hell is that stuff?”

Clutching the Dominican crucifix in his right fist, Henry answered, his voice dull with shock: “Gold.”

5:14 P.M.

Andean Mountains, Peru

“Listen… and you could almost hear the dead speak.”

The words drew Sam Conklin’s nose from the dirt. He eyed the young freelance journalist from the National Geographic.

An open laptop computer resting on his knees, Norman Fields sat beside Sam and stared out across the jungle-shrouded ruins. A smear of mud ran from the man’s cheek to his neck. Though he wore an Australian bushwacker and matching leather hat, Norman failed to look the part of the rugged adventure photojournalist. He wore thick glasses with lenses that slightly magnified his eyes, making him look perpetually surprised, and though he stood a little over six feet, he was as thin as a pole, all bones and lanky limbs.