“Edible,” she says. “No sign of the red mold’s toxin.”
That food in the warehouse—if all we need to do is cook it, we’ll be fine.
“Did the fire burn it off?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she says. “Fire kills the mold, but won’t neutralize the toxin secreted by the mold.”
Dammit.
Spingate turns the bone, looks at it from a different angle.
“Maybe the mold can’t grow on live animals,” she says. “Or maybe this particular animal is resistant to it. We need to catch one to find out.”
She doesn’t have answers, but at least there’s hope. We have to find the people who built this fire, befriend them if we can, learn their secrets.
“Em, Bishop,” Farrar calls out softly. “Come see.”
We join him at the collapsed wall. He taps the tip of his shovel against the rubble.
“The broken edges are clean,” he says. “No moss or dirt on them. Something knocked this wall in, and very recently.”
In the fading light, a spot on the ground just past the collapsed wall catches my eye. A patch of blackness. I walk to it, careful not to trip on the loose rubble. The spot is a neat hole, from something long and pointed punching into the dirt.
Long and pointed…like the feet of the creature that chased us out of the city.
“I think a spider knocked down this wall,” I say. “Maybe to get at the people who were inside.”
Is that why the fire was abandoned? Whoever the fire-makers are, I hope they got away.
We are all suddenly aware that danger could be close by. Our eyes flick to every growing shadow, to every dark spot in this tangled mass of yellow, green and brown.
Those colors…the spider’s shell matches them. Exactly.
I glance at Bishop, Farrar, Coyotl. Their charcoal and vines and mud…camouflage that lets them blend in to the jungle.
“We have to get out of here,” I say.
Bishop nods, his mud-smeared face turning this way, then that, white eyes wide and darting.
“Back to the city wall,” he says. “And move quietly.”
—
Darkness falls. For only the second time in my short life, I see stars.
We walk along the city wall, quiet as can be. We don’t use the flashlights for fear they might draw attention from the animals screaming in the night, or from the dreaded spider.
Bishop leads us; Farrar and Coyotl stay a few paces behind. I can’t help but look up through the thick jungle canopy. Countless pinpricks of bright light, like sparkling jewels, impossibly distant and immensely beautiful. There are two big circles up there as well: one bluish, the other maroon. Spingate says the circles are moons—small planets that orbit Omeyocan. That sounds impossible to me, but if Spingate says it, I believe her.
City wall on our right, dark jungle ruins on our left. The spider could be anywhere. At night it would be almost invisible in the trees, even if it was only a few steps away. But there was that whine—if it comes, hopefully we’ll hear it before it sees us. If so, maybe we can hide.
Spingate says the spider isn’t alone, that there have to be enough of them to support a “breeding population.” Sometimes I wish she wasn’t so smart. It might be better not to know some things.
Bishop raises a fist. We stop instantly. He’s staring down at his feet. No, at the wall near his feet. He waves us forward.
He kneels, points to the base of the wall and looks up at me. Moonlight shines off his wide eyes.
I look, but once again, I don’t see anything.
He reaches down and pulls the vines aside.
There is a hole in the wall.
I drop to my knees and look in. It’s rough and uneven. The city walls are thick, as thick as two Bishops lying head-to-toe, but past the far end I see the moonlit base of a ziggurat.
This hole goes all the way through.
Someone spent a long time making this, chipping away bit by bit. It’s narrow—I could crawl in easily, but I’m much smaller than the others.
A scent…burned toast again. There one second, then gone.
I look up at Bishop. “Are you sure you can fit through?”
He shrugs. “I know you can.”
I don’t like the sound of that. Does he think I would leave without him?
“Even if we get inside, we’re probably way past the edge of the map Gaston showed us,” I say. “We’ll still be lost.”
Spingate kneels next to us. She taps the black jewel nestled in her ear.
“I can get us back with this,” she says. “It’s out of range now, but if we get inside the wall and keep heading west, I think I’ll be able to reach Gaston soon enough. Then he can guide us back.”
Bishop tilts his head toward the hole.
“Coyotl, go through, make sure it’s safe.”
Coyotl is muscular, yes, but his muscles are long and lean. Compared to Farrar and Bishop, he’s skinny. He crawls into the hole, pushing his thighbone and black bag before him.
Bishop looks at me. “You next, then Spingate, then Farrar.”
“Then you?”