“You know they’re not hills, they’re huge buildings covered with dirt and plants. And these trees around us would be the only things that aren’t creepy except that they’re growing in the middle of this road. I feel like the people who lived here are watching us.”

“Trust me, they’re not.” He looked over his shoulder. “Nope. Not one ghost. But, just in case, let’s leave the Jeep here.”

As they walked, Remi said, “Look at those trees. The cover was all pretty much the same until we got here. Now look. The trees are all in a straight line.”

Sam stood beside her and sighted along the flat strip, where trees of all sizes and many species all ran along the center in a line. He stopped, shrugged off his pack, and began to dig a hole in line with the trees. The dirt was a rich, composted loam that came up easily. Shortly, he had a hole three feet wide and about three feet deep. “Take a look,” he said, and stepped out of the hole.

Remi jumped in, looked down, and used her machete to probe the surface. “It’s V-shaped and has a stone lining. It looks like an irrigation ditch.”

Sam looked around him, turning his body slowly. “I think it might be something else.”

“What?”

“Think back. Dave said that whatever else was going on in the Mayan world during the late classic period, it was made worse by droughts—two hundred years of them at least.”

“What do you think this was?”

“I think this flat space wasn’t a road. The Mayans had no wheeled carts, or tame animals to pull them, so why make it fifty paces wide? And it doesn’t go anywhere. It looks like a plaza, except there are six of them in all directions. I think this place was designed to collect rainwater.”

“Of course,” she said. “Both sides have a subtle slope down to the groove in the center and the groove would direct the water where they wanted it.”

“And that would explain why there are six strips leading inward from all sides. The place where they meet is the catch basin,” Sam said. “The six strips aren’t roads. They’re for catching rain and keeping it from washing away and sinking into the ground.”

“Let’s go see if we’re right,” said Remi. They hurried along the strip toward the spot where all six converged. At times, the brush and saplings came together to make their progress difficult. Here and there, the surface of the strip was bare even of leaves, cleared by some inundation during the rainy season.