Within half a mile the experienced soldiers hiked down a slight slope through the thick jungle to a small creek.  Choosing to parallel the three-foot wide brook from twenty feet back so as to not get into the utterly thick mass of ferns, vines, stems, and stalks near to the water, they proceeded for about an hour until Kondor spotted a straight line under vines.

Calling a halt, he pointed out the shape.  Zeke took the hint and began pulling down vines, and small saplings and flowers from little catchments in the high stone shape that went up ten feet above them.  As they pulled off the greenery, underlying sandstone with carvings in the base appeared, and a bas-relief warrior with arms going in all directions stood to one side of three female dancers.  Following the sandstone rectangle around its base, they saw more dancers, and one thing that struck them both was how each one of them was of a different individual.

“They had to have local girls come stand here and model,” Zeke said, and Kondor nodded.  Looking up past some branches from an overhanging tree, he pointed out another line of dancers, and they too were each unique.  Further on, there were large bricks formed into a face with slanted eyes, and a laughing mouth that seemed more cruel than amused.  Kondor had no problem leaving it behind, although he was starting to think he might be in Southeast Asia or some world like it.

Going to the last side they saw numerous carved circles, and inside them were various animals carved out in bas-relief all around a monumental door frame that led into a false door.  A deer, parakeet, monkey, fish, shark, and hawk adorned one side of the door frame, and on the other side he saw lion, tapir, sloth, snake, and something that looked a lot like a brontosaurus.  No, an apatosaurus.  Brontosaurus had been a mistake, even if a more pleasing name.

Kondor rubbed his fingers over the sandstone.  There was no mistaking it.  The long neck, the huge tail, the four legs and the bulging body were too distinctive.  Whoever had built this cube of stone had seen an apatosaurus.  But all the signs of how the stone was worked pointed to Men building it.  Kondor reminded himself that he could be on an alien spaceship in a zoo.  Those Bible fairy tales of a young earth were just that, fairy tales.

Taking a lunch break, they pushed on.  By mid-afternoon it was beyond hot, and they just kept walking as warm rain spattered on their heads after hitting leaves above them.  Another hour, dry and hotter than before, they came to an open pasture land, and considered it a place to stop for a bit.  Walking out into the field, Zeke snapped something under his foot.  He pulled it up.  It was half of a bone.

Kondor with his medic training recognized it quickly.  It was half of a human bone, a femur from a human thigh to be precise.  Something cracked under his feet, and he looked down to something white:  a human skull.  Pulling the grasses aside, he saw more white bones.  Zeke did as he did, and then looked back up, visibly and obviously sickened.

Without another word, Kondor began to hike.  Zeke followed, also wordless.  They marched several more miles in silence until they found a smaller clear spot that examination proved was clear of human remains.  Kondor shook off his unease at going through what was effectively a cemetery by channeling his rage at whatever injustice that had been at a God who was not there.  If God was there, why had He not stopped whatever horror that had been?  Why had he let Leah die?

In an unhappy mood, the two ate their meal mostly in silence with some pro forma conversation.  It had been one of Kondor’s worst days in a very long time, he realized, and said as much  to Zeke.

“I know pal.  Bugs, humidity, branches smacking me in the face, and that massacre.  Things will be better in the morning.”

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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