The lone native had already nocked another arrow, aiming directly at Zahra. She glanced at her feet and concluded that she had desecrated a holy shrine. It’s why the local was targeting her and not the other, more dangerous, outsiders.
“Get up!” Zahra hissed, stirring Joe and his team into motion. They did as she had and slowly got to their feet with their hands raised. One of the mercenaries refused to drop his rifle. He paid for the mistake with his life.
Five arrows pierced his flesh from behind. One penetrated the base of his neck, punching straight through his esophagus. The only sounds in the entire city were that of the dying man’s rifle clattering to the hard floor and his wet, gurgled breaths.
Calmly, Zahra turned her head and looked up to her eight o’clock. Five similarly equipped natives stepped out of the shadows. Then, dozens more appeared all around them. In seconds, everyone below was surrounded by what must have been fifty armed Amazonians. Z wasn’t as
Zahra had read about similar tribes, like those who called North Sentinel Island home. Inhabitants were known to slaughter anyone who came ashore — or even too close to shore. North Sentinel Island was considered so dangerous to outsiders that the Indian government banned any travel around it.
The cenote was deathly silent. Nothing moved. Zahra was okay with playing the waiting game. Anything was better than becoming an addition to Z’s macabre décor. After thirty seconds of inaction, one of Joe’s men tried to make a run for it. He didn’t get far. The fool was quickly turned into a pincushion, impaled with no less than fifteen arrows. Zahra shook with fear and snapped her attention up again. The natives that had fired had already reloaded their bowstrings.
“How do we get out of here?” Joe whispered.
“Based on the evidence, we don’t.”
“We come in peace!” she shouted, slowly turning in a circle. She wasn’t showing the tribe that she wasn’t their enemy. She had invaded their home. She was the very definition of
As of now, it was just Joe and three of his men. The guy that Zahra had knocked out was still down somewhere in the city, and another had just become a man-sized sea urchin.
“You ready?” she asked, lowering her hands. Her right hand landed on her sidearm.
Joe’s eyes glanced down at her weapon, and he swallowed. But he nodded and whispered to his men what to do. None of them wanted to shoot their way out, but there wasn’t really another option at the moment.
“Sorry, Joe,” she muttered. “Now!” But Zahra didn’t draw her pistol. Instead, she dropped to her knees and ducked her head. The others opened fire on the natives above and scattered, doomed to die the same way their brother-in-arms had.
Zahra pulled the mangled corpses of the young British explorers on top of her, using them, as well as the two stone altars, as shields against the volley of descending arrows. Just as quickly as Zahra had hidden, she shot back to her feet and ran, snatching up the arrow and journal. She ripped the book free and headed for the first-floor exit. She didn’t once look back at the condition of her “armor,” figuring they looked as bad as Joe and his team.
Speaking of Joe…
Within her mad dash, Zahra glanced left and spotted him on his back. His vacant, far-off stare was fixated in her direction. She hated that she had used Joe to save her own skin, but it was what she had been forced to do. Plus, Joe had been a backstabbing dickhead. If the natives hadn’t killed him, she would have had to have done it herself, more than likely.
Angry, unintelligible shouts echoed all around her, as did the sound of arrowheads deflecting off stone. One after the other, the lethal projectiles fell, just barely missing their intended target — Zahra. She serpentined her way back into the network of huts and put on as much speed as possible. Luckily, her legs were still in pretty good shape, all things considered. It also helped that the city had been built so precisely. The main throughway was a straight shot to the tunnel.
