The navy blue sky was incredibly bright. John lay on his back and splashed his face with water from the canteen. He coughed and a spray of blood erupted from his mouth. When he'd set out from the dig site, he'd made a bee-line for the distant temple. An hour later, he felt like he was no closer. The dot would get larger, and then seem to shrink. He knew it was an optical illusion, but that didn't help much. Even in the cool high desert, the sunlight was hot and uncomfortable. Or, John had thought as he stripped off his shirt, it was the fever. The sickness was creeping through his chest making it hard to breathe. As he'd traveled farther and farther from the dig-site, each step had become a fight to stay upright. After a kilometer or so, the hard-pack dirt gave way to soft sand. John had stopped when he'd seen the marks in the sand. They were human footprints. Linton had either stripped off his boots in the tent, or left them somewhere far behind and John missed them.
