Email:
Lespion@msn.com
Larra’s
Mayan Adventure
Shocked, Katie rolled over and struggled to
her feet. In front of her stood
a powerfully built man, about her height, but probably weighing a hundred
pounds more than she did. He
was dressed, in light brown shirt, with slightly darker
trousers. Braces held up his
trousers, but a black belt encircled his waist and a black leather cross-strap
was hooked though his right shoulder epaulet and connected to the
belt. Although there was no sign
of any insignia, the man had a distinct military bearing. His blue eyes studied
her intently. Behind him were
about a dozen more white men, all dressed in a similar manner to the
first. Several of them
carried rifles and all wore packs.
“So,” said the blue eyed
man. “I expect that you
are the other woman we were informed
about. The third of
“Who are you?” Katie demanded,
recovering from her shock.
“I am sorry,” apologized the blue-eyed
man. He swept off his hat and
Katie saw that his close cropped hair was as blonde as
hers. “I should have introduced
myself. I am Karl Schroeder and
these are members of my archeological
expedition. We have come here
in search of the mysterious lost city of the crystal
skull.”
Schroeder gestured to his
men. Two of them came forward,
their rifles trained on Katie. Her
bright blue eyes widened as she stared down the barrels of the rifles that
were leveled at her. “Do
not be alarmed,” said Schroeder, “A German gentleman would never
harm so beautiful a woman. But,
I would like to relieve you of you sidearm.”
As he spoke, Schroeder reached out and unbuckled
Katie’s gunbelt and removed it from around her
waist. “Now I feel a little
safer,” said Schroeder, mockingly.
“And now,” the German continued,
“can you tell me the whereabouts of your
companions?”
Katie turned and looked at the pile of rubble
behind her. “I don’t
know… The rockfall… The
earthquake…”
“Ah yes,” said Schroeder, “we
had a close call with that ourselves.
Fortunately not much rock came down in the area where we
were. Here though I see it has
been a different matter.”
Turning to three of his men who were not armed,
Schroeder gestured for them to come
forward. He handed Katie’s
gunbelt to one of them. Turning
back to Katie he spoke again:
“Do not worry, I am sure we can find your
companions. Meanwhile you are
to be out guest back at our camp.”
Addressing the man he had given Katie’s
gunbelt to he ordered: “Escort Miss Reddel back to our
camp. And treat her
well. I would not like to see
anything happen to so fine a specimen of the Aryan
race.”
As he finished speaking two of the other men
came forward and took Katie’s arms.
For an instant, she considered resisting, but then realized that her
best option was to cooperate. Her
chances of escaping were probably far greater if her captors considered her
a weak compliant female. Meekly,
Katie allowed herself to be led back down the canyon.
Amy got slowly to her
feet. Crying was not solving
her problem. Only digging through
that mass of rock would get Larra out.
But Amy feared the worse. If
Larra was still alive wouldn’t she have called for help by
now? The silence confirmed her
fears that her mentor was dead. She
scrambled back toward the heap of rocks that covered
Larra. Perhaps if she could just
move a few more…
Suddenly she heard a noise behind
her. Amy turned, surprised and
got an even bigger shock. Standing
before her were about twenty Mayan Indians, but these were no ordinary Indian
peasants, they were dressed in the style of warriors of the classical era,
a style that Amy had only seen in archeological
illustrations.
Each man wore a white breechcloth that was
formed by taking a strip of cloth and wrapping it around his waist and allowing
the two ends of the cloth to hang down in front and
behind. Around each warrior’s
head was a band holding long green
feathers. The men were armed
with a variety of weapons, ranging from bows and arrows to vicious-looking
clubs set with razor sharp pieces of
obsidian. Collectively, they
were a formidable looking bunch.
Amy suddenly wished that she had Larra’s
facility with languages. How
useful it would have been to be able to communicate with these
men. The warriors stood in a
tight group talking excitedly to one another, and gesticulating frequently
toward Amy. It was obvious that
she was the subject of their discussion.
Finally, after having reached some sort of decision, one of the warriors
detached himself from the group and slowly approached
her. When he was within ten feet
he surprised Amy by falling to his knees and bowing his head to the ground
in an obvious sign of subservience.
Amy did not know what to make of
this. It appeared that the warriors
had attached some importance to her, but who or what they supposed she was
she had no idea.
The warrior on the ground rose slowly and
approached her. Amy could tell
from the look on his face that he was deathly afraid of her, but as to why
he was afraid she was completely
ignorant. The man signed to her
and Amy was able to determine that he wanted her to follow
him. Amy hesitated, but then
realizing that she probably had no choice, she walked slowly toward the waiting
group of warriors.
Larra awoke in
darkness. There was an agonizing
pain in her head. She tried to
stand and banged her aching head into something very
hard. She sat back down with
a thump. Reaching cautiously
about her she soon came to the realization that she was completely surrounded
by stone. She appeared to have
been buried alive by the collapsing canyon
wall. She continued her inspection
of her surroundings. She determined
that she was trapped in a chamber about five feet long, three feet wide and
four feet high. And it was, as
far as she could tell, composed of immovable
rock. “How am I going to
get out of this?” she thought.
Larra inspected the floor of her
prison. Perhaps if she couldn’t
go up or sideways she could dig down.
She found, however, that the floor of her little cave consisted of
hard stone. It did not appear
that she was going to get out without some outside
help.
Opening her mouth, Larra screamed as hard
as she could.
“Help!
Help!
Help!”
She shouted until she was hoarse, but heard
no reply. It was of course entirely
possible that Amy and Katie had been killed in the
rockfall. There might be no one
to help her. The thought sent
a pang of fear through her bowels.
Larra reasoned that she had two
choices. She could wait where
she was until she was rescued or she could try to dig her way
out. Neither alternative seemed
likely to be very successful, but she was determined that she would simply
not lie down and die. She was
still wearing her pack. Pulling
it off she dug though it until she found a small
hammer. Although intended for
light archeological duty, it was the best tool she
had. Striking with a steady rhythm,
she pounded at the farthest edge of the huge boulder that formed the main
wall of her tomb. She might die,
but she was not going to give up.
An hour of steady hammering produced almost
no result. Only a few small chips
of stone had been broken from the edge.
Larra might as well have been pounding at the rock with her
fists. Nevertheless, it was her
only chance. Larra kept on pounding
at the almost unyielding rock.
Suddenly, she felt the ground and rock around her
shake. “Aftershock!”
she thought with alarm, knowing that her tomb could completely collapse on
her.
The ground under Larra heaved suddenly and
there was a grinding crash. From
above small boulders rained down on her.
Larra put her arms over her head and tried to make herself as small
as possible. Then, as quickly
as it had started, the aftershock
stopped. Larra looked above
her. Light was breaking through
into her tiny cave!
Larra scrambled to her
feet. The top part of the huge
boulder had been pushed back. There
was a hole about the size of her body at the
top. She could now stand up,
and reaching as high as she could, she gripped the top edge of the huge slab
that had fallen from the canyon wall.
Then using her well-muscled arms and pushing against the rock with
her feet, she slowly pulled herself out of the
cave.
Struggling out of the hole she slid down the
outside of the slab to the ground.
She was free! Now to locate
the other girls, but first she should clean herself up a
little. Now that she was out
in the light she saw that she was splattered with
blood. Raising her hand to her
still aching head she detected the presence of caked on
blood. She must have bled quite
a bit while she was trapped in the cave.
Taking a small mirror from her pack, she surveyed her
face. “Not too bad,”
she thought. There appeared to
be a small gash and a large bruise on her
forehead. It was amazing how
much blood a tiny cut in that area could
generate. About fifty feet farther
up the canyon she could see a small waterfall descending from the canyon
rim. She could use that to clean
herself up.
Larra approached the waterfall and was surprised
to see the tracks of a great many feet in the wet ground near where the water
splashed across the canyon floor.
Clearly a large number of people had been here, and not too long
ago.
Larra studied the footprints
intently. There were a pair of
relatively tiny bootprints, Larra guessed about a size
eight. She recognized them as
the type of footgear that Amy had worn.
Mixed in with them were the footprints of what appeared to be
sandals. There were dozens of
them. All of the boots headed
up the canyon.
Splashing water over her bloodied face and
forehead, Larra cleaned herself up and then set off rapidly in the direction
the footprints went. She guessed
that the footprints were a few hours old.
That would mean that whomever had made them would be fairly far off
by now, but not far enough ahead that Larra couldn’t catch up with them
if she got a move on.
The canyon opened up as she
progressed. It was now several
hundred feet across and covered in fairly heavy
vegetation. The going was much
tougher now and Larra drank frequently from her water
bottle. She knew that in this
climate it was essential to keep herself
hydrated. The trail she was following
also became more difficult to trace.
The path she was on frequently divided and then
redivided. Each time she had
to stop and study the ground to determine which way to
go. Larra’s tracking skills
were not highly developed and sometimes it took several minutes for her to
pick up the trail. She checked
her watch. It was getting on
to
Larra looked around for a place to
camp. Moving nearer to the canyon
rim she found a small cave. It
was not large enough to give her complete cover, but she could build a fire
in front of it to keep any animals and the insects
away.
Larra curled up in front of her
fire. She had stockpiled a supply
of wood that should last her the night, even though she would have to keep
waking up to use it. She ate
the last of her prepared food. If she did not catch up with Amy and her escort
tomorrow, she would have to head back to camp to get resupplied, and it would
take all day for her to do that.
All she could hope for was that Katie had survived the earthquake
and might be coming after her.
Very early the next morning Larra
awoke. Just up the canyon, she
could hear the sound of running water.
She needed to wash off some of the sweat and grime of the previous
day. Then she could resume her
search.
Larra found a fairly large pool of water,
fed by another of the numerous falls that cascaded into the
canyon. She knelt by the pool
and drank deeply, filling her water bottle and then drinking most of
it. She then splashed water over
her face and upper body, unbuttoning her shirt so that she could bath her
breasts and upper torso. She
did not worry about getting her clothing wet, as she knew that the heat of
the day would quickly dry it. In
the meantime, the cool water felt good.
She considered going for a swim, but decided that she had better get
moving. She didn’t have
all day.
Her stomach growled as she got to her
feet. She needed
food. Rummaging in her pack she
pulled out her emergency rations.
They consisted of hard biscuits and several handfuls of nuts and
raisins. It wasn’t much
but it would keep her going for a few
hours. She chewed the food slowly,
savoring the last of it.
“Time to get going,” she thought.
Larra began to move away from the pool, heading
farther up the canyon, when a voice froze in her
tracks. “Do not move,
Larra turned her
head. Only a few feet away stood
a heavyset blonde man. Beside
and behind him were about eight or nine other
men. Three of them carried rifles,
all of which were trained on her shapely
form. “Schroeder!”
Larra exclaimed. He had caught
up with her!
PREVIOUS
CHAPTER WIZARD'S
LAIR MAIN PAGE
L'ESPION'S
STORY PAGE
NEXT
CHAPTER