Black Rain

He looked from face to face. “Aside from the Chollokwan, and the rain, there’s nothing to keep them in check. Well, the Chollokwan won’t last much longer, and with the temple open, even the rains will be powerless to do any harm to those things. They’ll crawl back inside like roaches hiding from the light and when the storms pass they’ll come out again and they’ll continue clearing the forest of life and moving on to new hunting grounds. They’ll burn their way through the jungle like a fire in search of fuel, until eventually they’ll reach other places where they can hide from the rains, places with windows and cellars and doors.

“The Chollokwan have taken it upon themselves to fight these things,” he added. “They’re honoring an oath made three thousand years ago, and they’re paying with their lives.”

Of all people, Devers spoke. “Who the hell cares?”

Verhoven shoved him to the ground. “You don’t get a vote,” he said, then looked at McCarter. “You’re bloody crazy if you want to stay here.”

McCarter was undeterred. “If we leave now, we may live. And then again we may not.” He turned to Hawker. “I admit, from everything I’ve seen, your plan should work, if we can make it to the water. But that’s not a certainty. Not with an hour of light left and the pace we’re likely to keep.” He looked at Brazos, who could hardly walk; he’d been hobbling around the flat ground of the clearing with great difficulty. How much he would slow their pace in the jungle was anybody’s guess, but it would be substantial. And Brazos wasn’t the only problem. Susan’s asthma made it impossible to run or walk quickly over long periods. Danielle had been limping since her leg had been slashed in the cave; she’d struggled to make the hike they’d just completed, her calf repeatedly cramping for the last hour back.

Hawker’s march of just more than an hour would take three or four, or maybe five—and most of that in the dark. As McCarter spoke, the others followed his gaze, and he hoped his thoughts as well.

“If we walk out of here now,” he said, “we leave knowing we’ve killed off an entire race of people, brought this curse down on them and then just left them here to die. Men, women and children—an entire village. But if we stay, we can hold the high ground, morally and physically. We can fight those things on our own terms and maybe keep them away from this place long enough for the Chollokwan to recover, long enough for them to get the upper hand.

“We can’t reseal the temple,” he said. “But we can keep those things from getting back inside, at least for a while. Who knows how much that could help?”

McCarter truly didn’t believe they would make it through the jungle if they left and he wasn’t sure they had the right to leave anyway. “Maybe it’s not about living and dying anymore. But what we live for and, if necessary, what we die for.”

When McCarter finished a heavy silence lingered. Some of them looked off into the distance, others at the dusty ground, anywhere but right at him.

Danielle had listened to McCarter closely, her own thoughts heavy with all that had occurred. She remembered Hawker’s words, his prediction that she would regret staying, that there would be a price to pay for what they’d done. Now she felt it with all her heart.

To her it seemed unlikely that any of them would make it out alive, but as she stared at Brazos, the only survivor from the group of porters she’d hired, she knew it would be almost impossible for him.

In fact, as she saw it, there was probably no way out. If they stayed, the animals would soon overwhelm them and retake the temple. And if they left, then the animals would reclaim their nest with ease and then branch back out into the jungle, foraging for food once again. They would find the NRI group quickly, long before the stumbling humans reached the nearest stream, and that would be the end of them.

Good people, she thought. Her people. And in a few hours they would all be dead.

Unless there was another way.

She’d come here and stayed because she finished things, that’s who she was. But for all her efforts, there had been nothing there to find. The only thing left to do now, the only job left to finish, was to get her team home. She guessed it would take everything she had.

She turned back to McCarter. “I brought you all here,” she said. “I lied about the reasons and the danger. The explanations don’t really matter, but you have to believe me when I tell you I’m sorry.”