Author's note: Nope, this is not a bot, not an error, it's chapter 17 of this story some TWELVE YEARS after chapter 16. (Oh god I can't believe this is finally happening) And the good news is, chapter 18 is coming next week, not twelve years from now, because I actually finished the story (following the ridiculous amount of notes I took down, because this took some very careful planning) and will be posting a chapter every Friday.
For old readers who followed and left reviews back in the day and are still there, welcome back! I'd recommend rereading the previous chapters, because I've been rewriting some little bits here and there. I hope you like the rest of this fic. As for new readers who might stumble upon this monster and think "huh, why not", welcome! And I also hope you like it :o)
This chapter's title is brought to you by Blind Willie Johnson. Because yes, the whole chapter is about taking a stand…
Disclaimer: As the date on my FFnet page shows, I registered on this site almost twenty years ago, which makes me A Fandom Old, I guess? And, well, I don't want to break tradition. So let me state for the record that Stephen Sommers owns and developed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns; the characters, places, some situations are his creation. Some things I did make up, but every character here is fictitious, and doesn't have anything to do with any person, living, dead, or in-between. (Who knows.)
FAIRY TALES AND HOKUM
Chapter 17: Take Your Stand
Evelyn had rarely been so angry at her son. Alex did have a mischievous streak – often encouraged, to his mother's dismay, by a father who tended to turn a blind eye to what he judged to be mild shenanigans and an uncle who sometimes still seemed half a child himself – but he hardly ever did anything that warranted more than a stern talking-to.
This time, Evelyn's anger was proportional to her sudden fear for her child, which took priority over everything else. Alex visibly struggled to explain his actions.
"But Mum, I've been in the pyramid too! I know which way to go, I can help Dad and Uncle Jon while you find the bad guy and stop him!"
"You will do no such thing! This isn't one of your adventure books, Alex – we know next to nothing about the men inside the pyramid, however I don't think they're going to draw the line at harming you. Not to mention the Army of Anubis. They're set to destroy everyone and everything in their path, including children."
Evelyn didn't shout. She was too furious for that. Besides, she usually didn't need to, and considering the way Izzy was slinking away, looking supremely uncomfortable, this was one of those times.
Unfortunately, Alex had inherited both his parents' brands of stubbornness, and knew how to dig in his heels when he felt it necessary.
"I know that, Mum. But Lock-Nah and the others didn't really cut me any slack for being a kid. If it hadn't been for Dad, he would have killed me in that jungle, and I think he would have really liked it."
Through her anger, Evelyn felt a stab of retroactive terror and fury at the men who had come so close to depriving her of her only child. Then she forced her mind back to the present and grabbed Alex by the shoulders, resisting the urge to hold him as tightly as she could.
"That's just it, Alex. You don't have to place yourself in danger now. You can stay at the camp, with the other children, and," she added pointedly as Alex opened his mouth to protest, "I can go into that pyramid knowing that you're safer than if you'd come with me. Have you any idea how worried I'd be for you if you went with me? Or what your father would say if something happened to you while you were down there?"
The argument was a bit of a low blow, but Evelyn was past pulling any punches, as Rick said. Of course Alex could be mature beyond his years. Of course he had endured things no ten-year-old should with remarkable fortitude. Of course – and this broke her heart – he was not unfamiliar with the worst human beings could inflict on fellow men, and even children. But this time he could stay behind, and, if she had anything to say about it, would stay behind.
Izzy's hesitant voice was loud in the sudden silence.
"Actually. Um. I don't think we can. Go back to camp, I mean."
Evelyn's eyes swivelled from Alex to him, and he pointed at something in the distance.
"Well, we could, but if that means what I think it means, we need to land and get into that pyramid right now."
Mother and son ran to bend over the rail, disagreement temporarily forgotten.
From ground level came a dot of light that made Evelyn's eyes water when they met it. After squinting a little in the near darkness, she saw tents lit up by campfires. In the middle, a figure knelt on the ground next to a fire, holding a mirror towards the dirigible.
The signal. Maher and his men had overpowered Hamilton's men, commando-style, and were telling her it was time to land.
Evelyn closed her eyes and took a shaking breath. They really didn't have time to go back.
"Alex," she said, her voice very, very low, "when we get home, you and I are going to have Words."
Alex swallowed and wisely kept his mouth shut. Visibly his mother's tone had successfully impressed upon him just How Serious the situation was. Good.
Hamilton's camp should probably have been bustling, but it was eerily still and silent when Izzy landed Dee next to the exposed top of the Pyramid of Ahm Shere. The men, she found, were huddling together, sitting down in the sand, throwing nervous glances at their captors. Maher's team was small, but effective.
While Izzy dragged the ramp out of the bowels of the dirigible, Evelyn turned to Alex and knelt down to his eyeline.
"Alex, please promise me you'll stay here. Please, swear on my life, on your father's, that you're going to stay on the dirigible and not wander off."
Alex still looked conflicted, but eventually nodded solemnly.
"I swear, Mum. I won't set a foot outside of Dee until you've brought back Dad and Uncle Jon."
His voice rang with absolute certainty, as though Rick and Jonathan were merely busy elsewhere, to be called back to the house for dinner. Not for the first time, her son's unshakeable faith in her was humbling, and not a little daunting considering what lay ahead. Evelyn wrapped him in her arms and held him close, laying her head against his, her nose in his fine hair. She was almost surprised when Alex hugged her back fiercely, silently, his small hands gripping the back of her blouse so tightly the fabric strained.
She was not surprised, however, when she heard a snuffle and a muffled, "Promise me you won't die again, Mum."
Evelyn ran a hand through Alex's hair; she pulled away to lay a kiss on his crown and rested her forehead against his for a few seconds, until he could give a wobbly smile and pretend he hadn't noticed she hadn't promised anything.
As she followed Izzy down the ramp, she looked back only once. Her little boy stood at the rail, firelight behind him, his eyes very bright.
Maher, a tall, willowy man who rarely talked, gave her a gentle smile when he saw her before he went back to watching the prisoners. His lieutenant, Atifa, met her in the centre of the camp, at the foot of the pyramid – or rather, the dozen feet that had been unearthed. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, a little older than Evelyn, who had met her a few years ago on one of her visits to Ardeth and his family.
"Are you sure you don't want anyone else coming with you?" she asked Evelyn in a low voice.
Evelyn shook her head. "Thank you, but no. You're needed here; I'm needed down there." She pursed her lips and breathed deeply through her nose. Her mission – taking down Hamilton by any means necessary – was clear, and she intended to see it through, but she couldn't help but shudder, like she'd shuddered two years ago, standing nearly in the same spot. She had lost count of the men she'd had to kill in that jungle to protect her son, her husband, and her friend. This, almost more than the memory of the smell of gunpowder and almost throwing up once she'd lowered her rifle, kept her awake at night. And she let it. Killing people should never be easy, she reasoned. The dead, even nameless, had their way of weighing on the souls of the living, their murderers' in particular.
Come to think of it, stripping Imhotep of his name in the hope of his never reaching the afterlife had been an exercise in futility. Engraving 'He Who Shall Not Be Named' on his sarcophagus hadn't taken away his sense of self any more than it had stopped her from bringing him back to life.
Atifa didn't argue the point. She held out her hand, and instead of clasping Evelyn's, laid it on her arm, just below the shoulder.
The warmth of this simple contact nearly undid her resolve before it strengthened it. Apart from Alex, Evelyn realised, she hadn't felt the touch of another human being in five days. She allowed herself one second of fierce longing for Rick's arms around her, or Jonathan's hand in the crook of her elbow, before smiling at Atifa and returning the gesture.
"Be careful," said Atifa in a low voice.
"You too," said Evelyn firmly.
And she entered the pyramid, feeling rather than hearing Izzy's presence at her back. Even the weapons he had brought didn't make any sound as he walked.
Evelyn herself held a pistol in her right hand and a sword in her left. The part of her that was Nefertiri scoffed at the imbalance and pointed out that a khopesh in each hand would have been better.
If someone asked her one day how one went about being a reincarnated princess from Ancient Egypt and handling both sets of memories and reflexes, Evelyn would be hard pressed to answer. There were facts she knew that she never learned, movements that came to her instinctively in spite of herself… Nefertiri had died a young woman, but Evelyn had a decade on her, plus a child. It had taken her hours and hours of fighting practice before she could truly find a balance between the warrior and the archaeologist.
Right now, for instance, Nefertiri focused on being as stealthy and silent as possible, while Evelyn's experience in entering tombs kept her eyes and ears open for anything unusual. Which, admittedly, amounted to everything in a pyramid that appeared to hold a veritable jungle in its entrails.
"Did you know about this?" muttered Izzy, startling her. "Was the place already like that when I picked you up last time?"
"No," she whispered. "Absolutely not. The oasis must have got sucked into the pyramid when the Scorpion King died."
A shudder ran through her body. If the Oasis of Ahm Shere was now inside the pyramid… did that mean everything else was, as well?
The jungle around her was hardly silent. Some wildlife must have made it home again, from what she could hear, and somewhere a small stream was babbling merrily and dripping over a wall. Against all odds, there was even a slight breeze on her face. So far, there was no sign of the unearthly silence that had preceded the arrival of the pygmy mummies.
"Right, right. The Scorpion King. Was that the one your boy's gold bracelet led to, the one who was supposed to rise from the dead and destroy the world?"
Evelyn turned sharply towards Izzy.
"It was, actually, outlandish as it may sound. That bracelet almost killed my son, and the Scorpion King almost killed my husband."
And a three thousand years old resurrected concubine killed me.
Izzy held out one hand.
"Look, couple of years ago I would've said this was nuts, but then a wall of water with a face on it tried to drown us and then the desert bloody ate an oasis and an entire pyramid. I'm willing to go on faith. Just… Lemme adjust a little bit."
"I know the feeling. But you're going to have to adjust quickly. We—"
The floor shook, the walls trembled. She and Izzy reached for each other at the same time for balance, and she felt his hand grip her wrist and send a shudder through her arm.
"Wha—"
The world went black, and for a second Evelyn felt a wild, irrational fear that she'd just been killed again. The sensation was nothing like she'd ever felt before. The shadow drove itself into the heart of her, like cold fire or burning ice, leaving her with a gaping void. Suddenly she was grateful to feel the grip of Izzy's hand. It was the only sensation that registered at all.
The shadow left as quickly as it had come. In its wake was a faint, greenish light, as though the braziers and torches she remembered were there had been lit again, somewhere beyond the foliage.
"What was that!?" gasped Izzy, letting go of her wrist.
Evelyn peered into the half-lit passageway to the trail they were following, then back to the way they had come from, her heart pounding in her chest fit to burst.
"I think… I think that was the Army of Anubis."
Her next words turned to ash in her mouth.
"We're too late."
Tomorrow often was a good day to die, Ardeth reflected. Today never was.
Tomorrow was convenient. It allowed room for steely composure and swagger, admiring stares on the part of the less lucky ones who would not be riding out to war, and maybe just a few seconds of feeling sorry for oneself.
Not so with "today". Today was the moment death stared you in the face and you hoped, wished and prayed that it would look away, just for you, just for one minute. It was the moment when you tried so very hard, as your enemy stormed upon you, to maintain a little bit of dignity and not let your body betray you with violently shaking legs or a loosening bladder.
A good warrior looked on combat as being 'today', because he knew that the true face of war was the face of your comrade-in-arms and best friend staring at you from the ground with dead eyes, sand mixing with blood in your own wounds and staring at whatever was pouring out of your gut in nauseating terror.
For all his years as a chieftain and a commander of the Medjai, and his experience in battle, Ardeth knew he would never be quite used to war.
He fervently hoped so, anyway.
Spurring his horse to reach the front of the first line, he caught a grim glance from Aziz, chieftain of the Fifth Tribe – a tall, thin man, whose deep-set eyes looked dourer than ever.
His expression did not surprise Ardeth. Aziz was a strategist first, and a warrior second. Although nobody – not even him – had been able to come up with a completely satisfying solution, he had been one of the strongest voices against facing the Army of Anubis a second time with nothing more than a wild hope that things would somehow turn out all right in the pyramid.
But try as he might, he couldn't think of a better strategy. Having known the Chieftain of the Fifth Tribe for years, Ardeth had a very clear idea of just how much this angered him. In all likelihood, Aziz was now close to seething, and the only thing that stopped him from speaking his mind to his Commander was the men and women standing around them, and, possibly, his own lack of a better plan of action.
But he waited, same as the others, careful not to let his mask of cool self-control slip. Ardeth knew that he felt just the same fraction of mind-boggling terror – voiced by the same instinct of self-preservation that whispered that right here and now was the last place to be.
Once more, though, he silenced it as he surveyed his people.
Most of them had already been there two years ago. He could see the weariness and horror in their eyes that came from knowing exactly what they would face. Some of the younger warriors, those who had never seen a Jackal of Anubis, were throwing worried glances here and there, breathing shallow and fast, but it did not come close to the terror of facing your nightmares for the second time in two years.
The wind changed. Ardeth's breath caught in his throat.
The stars above were still visible, but their light was cold, as though dimmed. The air suddenly cooled.
In front of them, between them and the pyramid in the distance, dark sand began to move.
Ardeth's hands tightened around the hilt of his scimitar.
They were coming.
"Kill them."
"Wait – stop! What!?"
Damn, the guy was fast. In the half-second it had taken Rick to instinctively reach for the gun he knew wasn't at his side, Ferguson had leaped in front of him and Jonathan, facing his colleagues with a wild-eyed fear in his eyes and his hands held placatingly in front of him.
To their credit, a few agents lowered their guns immediately.
"Robertson, Wyndham, Norton, come on – what does Baine think you are, cold-blooded murderers?" Ferguson's voice was a little higher than usual, and the sudden edge in it seemed to shake several agents into taking their fingers off the triggers of their guns. "Our job is to protect important and ancient artefacts, not bloody kill people!"
"Thank you for that eloquent address, Ferguson," said Baine coldly, as though this was just a hitch in the plan, "but I think we'll do without interruptions now. Gentlemen, proceed."
From the corner of his eye, Rick glanced at Jonathan, who seemed to be surreptitiously looking for a quick way out. Good. Here's hoping he's spotted the little passageway between the two trees and the statue.
Apparently Ferguson hadn't played his last card.
"Stop – think! Why?"
A burly giant of an agent lowered his gun entirely and asked, frowning, "What d'you mean, 'why'? It's a direct order, innit?"
"A direct – oh, for God's sake –" Ferguson threw up his hands. "What if he ordered you to shoot yourself in the head, you monumental idiot, would you do it?"
"Here, he's got a point," a younger agent piped up. "Do we really have to kill them? I mean, this isn't what I signed up for in the first place."
"Shut up and do the job at hand, McLean," came the low, scratchy voice of a much older agent, whose gun was still trained steadily at Rick and Jonathan. "It's not your place to ask."
Rick took a minuscule step back. If he could just bump into one of them and help himself to a gun in the process, they might have a chance to get out of this mess alive. What they would do outside against the Army of Anubis was another matter entirely, but right now, the priority was getting the hell away from Baine.
Rick O'Connell always prided himself on his sense of priorities.
The man himself stood silent in the background as voices rose in argument, slowly but definitely reaching inside his jacket for his own gun. Rick took a short moment to appraise the look in Baine's eyes. The guy was deadly serious.
Meanwhile, even as they clutched their guns, some of the other agents still exchanged uncertain glances at the idea of shooting two fellow human beings in cold blood. Maybe there was something to work with here.
In the blink of an eye, Rick grabbed Ferguson from behind, wrenched his revolver from his holster and shoved the muzzle between his shoulder blades.
Ferguson stiffened and let out a strangled sound. Rick tried not to wince and whispered, "Sorry, buddy. Just look scared."
"Not bloody hard, is it!" Ferguson hissed through clenched teeth, as Jonathan inched closer, his face even whiter than it had been five minutes ago.
"Rick, what the hell are you doing?" he whispered angrily. Rick gave an imperceptible shrug.
"Making a gambit. You play poker, you oughta know how it works." Then he stared at Baine, hard, trying to make him understand just how deadly serious he was, too.
"You make a move, I kill the guy," he said as levelly as he could, his heart hammering in his chest. He had played poker before, occasionally with a bad hand, but this was easily the worst hand he'd ever had. "Your call."
Okay, that got 'em thinking. They would surely think twice about murdering a fellow agent, someone they'd known for some time, maybe some years. Talk as little as possible, keep your eyes on theirs, make a slow retreat…
"Is it, really, Mister O'Connell?" Baine actually grinned, clearly enjoying the situation. "What makes you think I won't just shoot him as well? Do you really believe, in that thick American head of yours, that I would let the life of one agent compromise the mission?"
Shit.
Baine raised his gun.
Rick fell back on pure survival instinct and decades-old training. The second before Baine's finger squeezed the trigger, he dropped to the ground, pulling Ferguson with him. The jungle became a dark green blur as he leaped to his feet and bolted to the door, only risking the shortest glance behind him to check that Jonathan did the same, still keeping a tight hold on Ferguson's collar with his left hand and on his gun in his right. Leaves, branches, and the occasional chip of stone exploded around them as agent after agent decided to follow the leader after all and shoot.
All things considered, it was a sheer miracle that the three of them were still intact when they finally stopped after what felt like hours of running straight in front of them. Rick made sure of that once he had recovered enough to review his troops.
Jonathan was leaning against the wall for support, ashen-faced and gasping – from retroactive fright, Rick guessed, as well as the actual run – but Ferguson looked worse. His face was an even more alarming shade than his old friend's, his breaths coming in gasps, gulping and uneven.
The only sound that didn't come in muffled by the layers of green around them was the same faint gurgle that they'd noticed as they entered the pyramid.
With a bit of luck, they could find the source and follow it upstream back to the entrance at the top.
"All – all right, there, Tom?" Rick heard Jonathan ask uncertainly. When he looked back, Ferguson's glare was very bright in the half-gloom of the low, small corridor.
"Do I bloody look all right, Jon?" he panted, a bit of colour creeping back into his cheeks. "Those – what a bunch of stupid, mindless – I don't even – God, I can't believe that son of a bitch!" he finally exploded with on his face an expression even Rick couldn't deny was a little bit scary. "When I get me 'ands on him he'll be bleedin' sorry he was born!"
Nobody asked him who 'he' was – there was no need.
Thankfully, possibly because of the unsettling hush around them or the stifling damp heat, Ferguson's fury boiled down to a steady simmer quickly enough, although his dark glower spoke volumes about the fate he reserved for Baine if he was still alive when they got out of there. Rick caught himself thinking it might be kinder for the guy to never see the light of day again.
As for the other agents…
"Orders, they said," Ferguson muttered as they tiptoed their way up, watching every shadow like hawks. It was almost impossible to see the floor under all the greenery, so they tread very carefully. "Orders. Cretins. That lot wouldn't recognise common sense if it danced naked in front of them and hit them on the head with a big bloody sign…"
He hadn't even asked for his gun back. Maybe it was just as well, considering he was still shaking with anger. Rick kept it tucked into his belt, wishing for a lot more than one Browning Hi-Power with fifteen rounds for the three of them. A machete would have come in handy, too; they kept getting scuffed and scratched by the ferns and leaves around them. Still, at least they did have a gun, and he could hardly look a gift horse in the mouth.
Too bad they didn't have a convenient magical spear this time around…
After being surrounded by guards non-stop for days, the total absence of other humans and the relative silence made it tempting to relax a little bit. Rick knew better. He had more than enough experience with people and places trying to kill him to trust this traitorous boxed-in jungle.
Besides, concentrating on his surroundings was a lot more preferable to the alternative, namely what was undoubtedly happening outside the pyramid.
The Army of Anubis, unleashed a second time.
Rick caught himself wondering whether the Warriors actually remembered rising two years ago, fighting the Medjai, then disappearing back into the sands. The Medjai certainly remembered. Ardeth and his people must have followed the trail – which surely meant that they were outside right now, fighting their second worst nightmare again, dying, too, to defend humanity…
At least Ardeth was still alive. Of this he was sure. How, he had no idea, but the gut feeling was there. Funny, really; he had always felt a mixture of wariness and respect for the man, which had turned into a sense of kinship well before the Medjai had pointed out and explained the half-forgotten tattoo on his arm.
Whether Rick O'Connell really had been a Medjai in a former life or not was a moot point. They 'got' each other at a slightly different level than anyone else in their extended family. The first few years, Rick had chalked it up to their both being fighters, used to making the hard choices, with an ingrained sense of duty that had nothing to do with traditional military structures. Ardeth had his tribe and the task of guarding the deadly secrets of Egypt; Rick had his family, small as it was, and the deep-seated urge to shield it from harm.
When he had mentioned it to Evy, she hadn't taken it lightly or laughed, as he might have feared; she had suggested pensively that perhaps the two men had known each other in a previous life.
Rick had smiled at the theory then. But since their adventure at Ahm Shere two years ago he wasn't so sure.
Now was not the time for philosophical musings, though. Not with a supernatural army probably already decimating the Medjai and a madman down below channelling an Ancient Egyptian god…
"Wait," Rick said in a low voice. The other two stopped and looked at him curiously. "We can't just go. Hamilton's down there commanding the Army of Anubis. We gotta take him down, now."
Look who's getting 'involved' now. He could almost hear Evy's sharp voice in his head, telling him 'I read the book, I woke him up, and I intend to stop him' all those years ago. If it had been up to him, he would have grabbed her and hightailed it to another continent. Imhotep could be someone else's problem. But Evelyn Carnahan was principled, opinionated, and in possession of an unerring sense of responsibility; because of that, a stubborn librarian, a reluctant adventurer, a foppish dilettante, and a determined guardian had saved the world.
Oh God, he thought, Evy. Please let Evy and Alex be okay and very, very far from here.
Aw, who was he kidding. If he knew his wife at all, she was at the heart of things right now, doing whatever she could to make things right. Rick amended his half-prayer. Please, honey, take care of yourself. I don't think I could bear to lose you a second time.
"I'm all for that," said Jonathan darkly, yanking Rick back to the present, "but how? He practically has his own bloody army."
"He's not in command."
Rick and Jonathan both turned to Ferguson, who was frowning, lost in thought.
"What d'you mean?"
"Remember when I said I went to see the High Priest of Osiris before we left? He said no mortal can claim Anubis' army."
"We got that part," said Rick as patiently as he could, which was not saying much.
"Hang – hang on. He also said that Hamilton's… that his body and mind would just be a vessel. Without either, the connection would be broken."
Kill the bad guy, save the world. Sometimes it really was just as simple as it was complicated. At least that tune was familiar.
"Right." Rick checked the gun again, made sure the clip was full and that sand had not jammed the mechanism. "Let's go break a connection, then."
Retracing their steps proved easier than going forward, as they only had to follow the broken fronds and the crushed ferns. The jungle weaved an entire tapestry of sharp smells and small sounds around them: chittering, scurrying, chattering sounds that made all three men jumpy.
Rick walked in front, followed by Ferguson, Jonathan bringing up the rear. Ferguson looked like any city dweller who'd just been dropped into a completely new and hostile environment, while Rick's apprehension came from experience. Jonathan, he noticed, was especially jittery, the fingers of his left hand twitching every now and then.
"I can't believe we're going back down there to a bunch of trigger-happy idiots and one tosspot with delusions of grandeur," Rick heard him mutter. "I suppose we'll just go 'Oh, don't mind us, just popping round to kill your boss, we won't be a bother', and they'll say 'By all means, old thing, shoot the daft bastard, we'll just put the kettle on and pass the biscuits around, don't mind the flesh-eating scarabs and the angry pygmy mummies'…"
The steady stream of nervous chatter should have driven Rick out of his mind. In other circumstances he would have told Jonathan to can it before he really got the ball rolling. But it was familiar, and thankfully not in the way the jungle rustled all around them, boxed in every direction by walls, ceilings, and a floor you couldn't see. Besides, for all his bellyaching, Jonathan kept walking on.
The last mumbled sentences made Ferguson's ears prick up.
"Flesh-eating scarabs? I thought those were only at Hamunaptra!"
"Figure of speech. Wouldn't put it past the place, though." Jonathan gave a full-body shudder. "Just what we'd need, more creepy little buggers trying to eat us alive…"
"O-kay," said Rick, who didn't like where the conversation was going, "let's not get sidetracked here. Ahm Shere – pygmy mummies and jackal-headed soldiers from hell. Hamunaptra – flesh-eating scarabs and the Ten Plagues of Egypt. We got enough on our plate without mixing the two, dontcha think?"
Jonathan gave him a somewhat sheepish look that instantly reminded Rick of Alex when he could be bothered to actually act contrite, and Ferguson looked uncertain.
"Did you really get all ten plagues? I mean, that sounds awfully… Biblical."
"You'd better believe it got Biblical," Rick muttered. "Locusts, boils, blood everywhere, night at two in the afternoon… Our mummy buddy spared no expense."
"Lucky we stopped him before the tenth, though." Jonathan shifted uncomfortably. "'About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die…' I wasn't especially keen on seeing whether that pertained to me or not."
Ferguson's eyes went round. "That's right, your mum was Egyptian…" Then he shook his head. "Look at us. Trying to stop a madman from unleashing an army of jackal creatures, talkin' about mummies and plagues…" He sighed. "I liked it better when me job was pushing paper and trackin' ancient artefacts."
Jonathan clapped him on the shoulder. "Welcome to our world," he said in the tone he used to make himself look more impressive. Rick suppressed a snicker.
"Twice in ten years, Jonathan. Just twice. It's a lot, but I don't think we—"
He felt it the second before he had finished putting his foot down. The roots and shrubs parted and the floor vanished – he was only able to press the left side of his right foot on a hard surface before slipping. His leg followed his foot, his entire right side followed his leg, and before he knew it, he was hurtling down a steep slope, his body rolling and tumbling against the stone. Fronds and enormous leaf blades slapped and scraped at him along the way; he only managed to slow down when he caught hold of some kind of root as thick as his wrist. In the sudden lull he heard Jonathan shout his name before the root gave out and he was falling again.
Rick only had time to curl into the tightest ball he could before his body hit the ground and shut down.
A battle won without bloodshed was an even sweeter victory, Atifa reflected, gazing at the Westerners sitting in a huddle in the middle of camp. A few of them had tried to resist, fight back, but they had been quickly overwhelmed by either force or the sight of their already captive comrades. In the end, they had lined up to drop their weapons into a pile and resigned themselves to being prisoners.
All the Medjai had to do now was wait, and pray.
Maher was staring at the top of the Pyramid of Ahm Shere when she walked up to him. As usual, he didn't need to talk to voice his thoughts. The gaze he turned to her was very eloquent.
"I know," said Atifa in a low voice. "Everybody felt it."
Relief flashed in her chieftain's eyes, quickly replaced by a grimly inquisitive expression.
"Yes, I remember." How could she forget? They had both battled the Army of Anubis before. They had both faced its herald, the darkness that washed over hearts before being deposited on the sand and turning into a many jackal-headed nightmare. Knowing what followed made it even worse than the first time. Knowing their people and their commander would be fighting it again, and being unable to fight side by side… That was torture.
Atifa's head turned to the desert as though of its own accord. Maher followed her gaze, then lightly touched her shoulder and shook his head.
Maher hardly, if ever, talked. He devised tactics, gave orders, shared the good times and the bad, almost always silently. This was unusual, and a few people sneered at the idea of serving under a man who was, barring a few exceptions, a mute, but he was the best chieftain Atifa could think of serving. What he lacked in words he made up for in observation skills. He was a fount of knowledge about subjects like tracking, covert operations, and, oddly enough, constellations.
And he demonstrated every day that a man could have a kind, unguarded heart and still be a fearsome warrior in his own right. People had tried to test his role as chieftain. People had failed.
Sometimes he read other people's faces wrong; right now, though, Atifa only needed to look at him to know he had interpreted her reaction correctly.
"I know we can't help them," she sighed. "And I know our place is here, guarding the Pyramid and the prisoners. But –"
She was interrupted by a loud voice and turned to see Djedi, one of her men, running up to her.
"—Coming! They're coming!"
Maher raised his hands. One he used to get the panicked young man to stop and breathe, the other to encourage him to explain.
"The Warriors of Anubis! Wazad saw a detachment breaking from the main army. They're coming here!"
Absolute fear washed over Atifa. "How many?" she asked, doing her utmost to keep her voice steady.
"Wazad didn't say!"
Maher's hand came to rest on Djedi's shoulder. With his left, he indicated his eyes, and pointed to the direction Djedi had run from.
"Go," he said, his voice low. "Count. Come back."
Djedi swallowed hard, nodded, and ran off.
Maher's face was stone. He strode to the nearest campfire and picked up a flaming stick, then drew a small circle with it. The aftereffects lingered for a second, giving Atifa the impression of a circle of light around the fire.
"We can't run, can we."
Maher shook his head.
"Then we make our stand here."
A grim nod from her chieftain. The panic abated slightly, enough for sombre resolution to settle. Atifa took a long, deep breath, trying not to think that this might be one of her last, and turned to the men and women guarding the Westerners.
"Farid, Intef, Janan! Leave the prisoners. The Warriors are coming. Take two men each and build a barrier of fire around the camp. We'll end up fighting inside it and probably outside, so make it big enough. Dismantle the tents if you have to, use everything that burns. Quickly, we don't have much time."
The camp came alive with focused despair as men and women left their posts to grab torches and fuel for the flaming barricade. From the corner of her eye, Atifa saw the Westerners mutter between each other with mounting animation.
As she struck down a nearby tent, relieved to see that the structure was made out of wood, she heard a voice call in atrocious Arabic, "Excuse me?"
She turned to the group. A dark-haired man was on his feet, his face pale in the firelight.
"Yes?" she said in English. The man appeared relieved, and continued in his own tongue.
"I thought I heard the word 'warriors'. That didn't mean the other, er… your compatriots, did it?"
The last word was unfamiliar, but the question was obvious.
"Your leader released the Army of Anubis. Last time it only spread out from the Oasis of Ahm Shere, but now the jackal warriors are coming here to kill us all."
The Westerner paled even further. "We, er… How can we help?"
Atifa pinned him with her most withering stare.
"'Help'?"
"Well, we all agreed that Hamilton's a madman and that he did something really, monumentally stupid." A couple of angry mutters rose from the back of the group. The man glared in their general direction, then turned back to her. "Most of us agreed, anyway. If we're going to die, might as well die standing."
Atifa took two seconds to think. Then she went to Maher and explained the situation in a few short words. Maher nodded curtly, and went back to the barricade to help and wait for Djedi's news.
The Westerners' firearms would be useless. They would only barely have enough blades for everyone. Some would probably find themselves armed with only torches.
This was madness. But they needed the numbers.
Atifa went back to the group to find all of them on their feet, some shivering, some resolute, the rest a mix of the two.
"What's your name?" she asked the self-appointed spokesman.
"O—Owens. Mark Owens."
"Mark Owens, my name is Atifa, daughter of Amenia, and I will allow you and your men to fight by our side. If anyone tries to betray us, he will be dead before his hand falls."
Owens gulped, but stood a little taller. "You're not the enemy. They are."
"As long as it is clear to everyone. And remember – when this is over, you are still our prisoners."
"Better a prisoner than a bloody corpse," said another man behind Owens. Everybody nodded in agreement.
When Djedi and Wazad came running back from their look-out post with the certitude that they were about to be set upon by about two hundred jackal-headed abominations, the combined forces of the Medjai and Hamilton's men amounted to eighty people. Eighty human beings huddled behind a bulwark of fire, too low, too flimsy to really protect them. Eighty humans who had been fighting each other just hours ago, and stood now shoulder to shoulder, not ready to face the horrors in the dark but standing anyway.
They could hear roaring now. Atifa's palms were sweaty around the grip of her sword.
In front of them, under the starlight, darkness advanced relentlessly.
"RICK! You'd better not be dead, so help me God I'll – Rick! For God's sake, can you hear me?"
Jonathan knew he was yelling, knew he should not be yelling, and was well past caring. Miles and miles, in fact. Rick had disappeared down some kind of incline so steep it was almost a well, and he had no idea how deep the drop was or how hard the landing had been. This, to him, more than justified screaming his throat raw, prudence be damned.
That bloody pyramid had already been the death of his sister; they had only got her back on a fluke. There was, simply put, no way in hell it would claim his brother-in-law.
Tom dropped to a crouch beside him, his face pale, and laid a hand on his shoulder that Jonathan barely felt.
"Jon – Jon, please, be quiet, mate – Baine and his guys must be lookin' for us, you're gonna draw them 'ere –"
"Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing," said Jonathan, still bent over the drop trying to catch sight of how far it went and where the bottom was. "They might have rope with them. Do you have rope? Here, let me see your bag."
He was aware that he was babbling, that his hands were shaking as he ripped Tom's rucksack from his shoulders to rummage through its contents, and that he couldn't seem to get his voice down to a normal pitch. It just didn't seem very important right now.
Rick couldn't be dead, he just couldn't be. He needed to save the world, he needed to go back to Evy and Alex once the dust settled, to butt heads with his irresponsible reprobate of a brother-in-law, to be tired and battered and still make low-key jokes about mummies and big bugs and the end of the world…
Tom grabbed Jonathan's arm and snapped "Jon, shut up and listen", making Jonathan realise two things at the same time. One, he'd actually been muttering his train of thought under his breath instead of keeping it safely in his head. And two, in the sudden silence and stillness a small sound rose from the bottom of the precipice.
"Ow."
The panic rushed out of Jonathan in a flash, leaving him light-headed and shivering. He fell back on his arse in a graceless heap of limbs, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.
"Rick?"
"…Yeah?"
"Are you all right?"
"Kinda."
"Please elaborate?"
There was a silence, then a distant rustle.
"Feels like I got dragged behind a car for a mile or two. I'm okay, though, considering. No broken bones or anything."
"Can you stand?"
"Hell, I can even walk. Ow."
Rick's voice seemed to come from far away, but it sounded fairly strong and no less articulated than usual. When Jonathan opened his eyes again and crept towards the drop, he could make out a light-coloured blur between the criss-crossing vines and lianas. The wall Rick had fallen along to wasn't quite vertical, but it was sheer enough to make climbing back up next to impossible, especially without a rope.
"Think we could climb down?" asked Tom, sounding doubtful. Rick's answer was sharp and immediate.
"Don't even try. Those vines can't hold worth a damn. You'd break your neck."
"Well," Jonathan pointed out in his most reasonable voice, which had nothing on Evy's but still worked occasionally, "we'll just have to find a way down, then, won't we?"
"No you won't. I'm coming up. I can see stairs over there."
"I don't, so I highly doubt yours lead up to here."
"They gotta lead somewhere. This place looks kinda familiar, I think I know where to go."
"Hopefully not into another death trap, old boy. Do you have any idea what Evy would say if I made it out of that bloody pyramid and you didn't?"
"Jonathan. Just…" Silence. Jonathan wondered if Rick had noticed the way his voice had pitched up near the end of the sentence. With his luck, he probably had. Hence the tone – a mixture of 'shut up' and 'calm down'. "You do remember I still have the gun, right?"
"…Yes?" Jonathan said uncertainly. "And?"
"So you two are gonna hunker down where it's safe and not attract the attention of the other guys with guns till I can come up and even the odds a little."
"That's your plan, is it?"
"Yup."
Jonathan was torn. On one hand, the idea of staying put in relative safety had a lot of appeal. On the other, it meant keeping the group separated, and he knew from experience that it could lead to all sorts of bad things.
"Your plan," he declared, mostly for the sake of argument, "is terrible."
"Maybe. But that's what we're gonna do."
Well, nothing for it I suppose.
"Watch your footing while you're down there?"
After eleven years, Jonathan didn't even need to see Rick to know when he was being glared at.
"Just stay out of trouble," Rick said, and then the light blur disappeared and silence descended once more.
After a while, he heard a shuffle behind him. Tom held his rucksack in one hand, picking up his things with the other.
"You made a right mess of my bag," he said quietly, a small smile in his voice. Jonathan ran a hand over his face and shuffled closer, picking up a notebook.
"Yes, sorry about that. I – well. I was in a bit of a hurry."
Tom shot him a wry look, but didn't comment.
In his frantic search for rope, Jonathan hadn't really looked at the contents of the bag properly. What he found lying around and handed back to Tom to put away ended up being a pencil bag, a toolkit, two clips of ammunition for the gun currently in Rick's possession, a half-empty flask of water, a meagre first-aid kit, and two small notebooks.
"You know," he said, "maybe it comes from having a brother-in-law who can't travel anywhere without packing half an arsenal, but I think you're falling a little short of the mark regarding weaponry."
Tom made a face.
"I don't know what you think me job is, Jon, but I'm not some kind of gunslinger. Don't get me wrong, I can shoot, but that's not what I signed up for." He sighed. "Then again, what I signed up for wasn't really what I signed up for, so…"
Jonathan paused, toolkit in hand.
"Well, what did you sign up for, then?"
"Protecting antiques," Tom replied firmly. "Only, you know, not stealing them from museums. And pretending I'm an idiot as a cover."
"Only pretending?"
"Oh, do shut up," grumbled Tom as Jonathan grinned. "I fooled you, didn't I?"
Jonathan felt his grin slip several notches. A lot had happened since that late afternoon in Giza when his friend had pointed a gun at him and stopped being 'Tommy'. 'Tommy' was a warm memory of loud laughter, daring escapes, bright eyes over pints clinking in the comfortable darkness of a well-loved pub. Tom, on the other hand, was a fairly decent man chucked into a complex situation, who had a wife he loved dearly but lied to about his job, who had not wanted to bring harm to an old friend but had done so anyway.
Who had also put himself between Jonathan and a gun twice, and almost got killed for it.
A lot had happened, indeed, but the reminder was still anything but innocuous. It poked at certain areas that were still somewhat tender.
Tom's look was apologetic this time.
"Bit too soon?"
"Bit too soon." A thought occurred, and Jonathan allowed his smile to resurface, cheekily, if a little gingerly still. "You know you didn't fool Evy for a second, though. She had the measure of you, right enough."
"Smart woman."
"You have no idea."
Into the bag the toolkit went, and Tom picked up the rucksack. It still looked mostly empty despite everything that had gone into it.
The few steps between the edge of whatever it was Rick had fallen into and a safer spot near an archway were made in silence. Which was how they heard the footfall.
It wasn't Rick. That much was obvious. Unless he had picked up an escort along the way.
Jonathan pushed Tom against a wall and flattened himself next to him. Maybe, if they didn't breathe or think too loudly, the men walking along the wall wouldn't cross the doorway. Maybe they wouldn't see them. Maybe…
Jonathan and Tom looked at each other, drew their hands back in unison, and drove their fists into the first faces that came their way.
Two men fell to the floor, groaning, while a third sprang back, raising his hands frantically.
"Whoa, whoa, stop! We were looking for you!"
"Of course you were," spat Tom, massaging his knuckles. Jonathan knew exactly how he felt. The shock of colliding with his opponent's skull had made his entire forearm ring like a bell for half a minute. Surely boxing hadn't hurt that much when he was a lad. "Baine's orders were clear, weren't they?"
"But we're not acting on Baine's orders," muttered one of the men on the ground, rubbing his jaw. "He's a thug. And Hamilton's off his bloody nut."
"Come to your senses, have you?" Jonathan quipped. "That couldn't have happened earlier, before Hamilton's little light show and especially before you tried to murder us and my brother-in-law?"
The man who was still standing mumbled something Jonathan didn't catch, then asked, "Where is the American anyway?"
"He'll be joining us shortly. What are you doing here, if you changed your minds about killing us?"
The tall, broad-shouldered man Tom had punched was the last to pick himself up from the floor. "Like Vaughn said, we were looking for you."
"We, er," said Vaughn meekly, "thought you might know a way out of this death trap."
Tom's eyes grew cynical. "Of course. Turn right, then straight up until the supernatural army from hell."
"And that's if you escape the pygmy mummies," Jonathan added smugly, crossing his arms. "But considering the Army of Anubis is your boss' fault, you might want to do something about that first."
Two of the three men looked at each other uncertainly. The burly one scoffed. "Pygmy mummies. You must really think we're some sort of—"
"I don't have to think, old boy, I know you're the worst sort of, well, sort. But I'm not pulling your leg."
"He's really not, Norton," said Tom, shaking his head. "Norton, Vaughn, Wyndham," he added, turning to Jonathan and pointing at each of them in turn. "Maybe not the biggest pillocks I've ever worked with after all, but they come close. Are you even armed?"
"Of course we are!" protested Wyndham, opening his bag and taking out a stick of dynamite. "Look, we have explosives, and guns, and –"
"What a splendid idea. How about you lend us a couple?"
Wyndham looked at Jonathan like he had sprouted a second head.
"Why would we want to give you weapons?"
"Because somebody's going to have to do something about bloody Hamilton and Anubis' bloody army," Jonathan snapped, nerves already frayed and nearing the end of their tether. "And frankly, the fact that I'm going to have to be a part of it should tell you just how bollocksed the whole situation is!"
Either his little tirade hit its mark, or the three agents simply didn't want to get punched again. Jonathan found himself in possession of a handgun similar to the one Rick had taken from Tom, while Tom checked the clip of his own borrowed gun. Norton appeared to be sulking.
Wyndham slunk up to Jonathan, dynamite stick still in hand. "Er… When you said 'pygmy mummies'… You didn't mean the chaps in the Congo, did you?"
"Absolutely not. I mean eldritch little creatures about knee-high with sharp teeth and knives who delight in disembowelling people. They make spiffy shrunken heads, too, I've seen them."
"Jon, stop scarin' the kids," said Tom. He was a few feet away, investigating a pile of something that must have been stone before it got covered in gunk. "Especially Wyndham here. He's a bit trigger-happy."
"I am not!" protested Wyndham.
"Oh yeah? You were one of the first to shoot at me not an hour ago, you little –"
Jonathan shrugged. "He asked."
Norton said nothing, but looked uncomfortable. Vaughn glanced at Jonathan uncertainly and went to sit not far from Tom with a thoughtful look on his face. The three agents seemed to have absolutely no idea what to do next. Tom appeared to have no such problem: he was digging into the half-solid muck, sleeves rolled up on his arms, trying to extract what looked to be a statuette of a scorpion and a big tablet out of the sludge.
There was a lull in the conversation, followed by somewhat awkward silence. Jonathan, who had no patience for awkward silences, was racking his mind for something to do to pass the time until Rick found them when he realised his heart was going a mile a minute. It was pounding against his ribcage, making him almost sick to his stomach, as though angry that his brain wasn't catching up.
But what…
When it finally hit him, it hit him like a locomotive going on full speed ahead. The pyramid was silent. Deadly silent. The little sounds that came from unseen bugs and critters had stopped. And this could only mean one thing.
Jonathan's mouth went dry.
"Tom?"
Tom looked up, puzzled and somewhat apprehensive.
"Yeah?"
A sense of déjà vu struck Jonathan, whose brain helpfully provided him with the memory of him and Tom a few days ago, seconds before the Medjai attack on the camp, saying the same two words, down to the inflections.
"They're coming."
A susurrus ran through the plants around them, a hissing whisper that seemed to carry small cackling laughter with it. Jonathan felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He clutched his gun and glanced wildly around.
The movement got the agents' attention. Only then did they notice the sounds.
"Here," said Norton, striding towards the next room, "what's th—"
A spear whistled through the air and skewered his forehead. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Jonathan screamed. So did Wyndham, half a second later. Vaughn and Tom scrambled up, spouting a mix of curses and inarticulate yelling.
"Fall back! Fall back!" Vaughn shouted. Wyndham ran up to him and Tom, wild-eyed, waving his ingot of dynamite like a torch.
"Where to!?" he wailed. The hissing seemed to come from all directions, bouncing from the walls, surrounding them, taunting them. It seemed to drill into Jonathan's skull, driving out all coherent thought. He kept pointing his gun at the rustling ferns, searching desperately for something to shoot.
Behind him, Tom yelled, "Don't, you bloody idiot –"
Jonathan whirled round to see Tom, still cradling his big tablet against him with his left arm, reach for Wyndham with the hand that also held his gun, while Vaughn's jaw dropped open at the sight of the still-open lighter in Wyndham's hand.
The tableau burned itself crystal-clear on Jonathan's retinas just before the dynamite exploded.
It took a while for Jonathan to realise he hadn't, in fact, lost consciousness. The silence had been replaced with a shrill, high-pitched sound, like some sort of alarm going off much too late. The ferns and leaves were no longer rustling. In fact, when he opened his eyes, blinking a few times to drive away the mist, the plants were all gone. In their place was a mountain of broken bricks and big chunks of what had been a wall of gold and stone.
The plants were gone… and so were the four people who had been in the chamber with him.
Jonathan's mouth opened and closed a few times before his brain sparked into life again. When it did, he took a deep breath and shouted, "TOM!"
"Shush, don't, I'm right here," muttered a very welcome voice from the other side of the wall. "Are you all right? Are they gone?"
The emphasis on 'they' puzzled Jonathan for all of four seconds before the memories of a couple of minutes ago stampeded back through his brain with the subtlety of a herd of panicked camels. He scrambled up, swaying and seeing stars from the head rush, and clutched the gun he had picked up without even thinking.
Nothing.
The sounds he had come to associate with the in-pyramid jungle were back as though they never stopped. There was no sniggering, no hissing, no susurrus. Only the usual rustling and skittering that meant normal jungle activity. For a given value of 'normal', of course.
"Sounds like it," he said uncertainly, putting the gun in his belt. "Do you hear anything from your side?"
"Only Wyndham's teeth chattering. He had a bit of a scare." Tom's voice had the biting, icy quality it only got when he was badly rattled. "Which should be a lesson to him in the future – if he has a future, considering he's so terminally stupid as to light a dynamite stick in confined spaces with other people close by!"
"I am not!" protested Wyndham, more weakly than the first time. In the background, Vaughn groaned.
"Bloody hell, Norton…"
The reminder was sobering. The image of the poor bastard with a spear through his head remained seared in Jonathan's mind whether his eyes were open or closed. At least it had been instantaneous and presumably painless.
"I'm so sorry, Vaughn," he heard Tom say quietly. Wyndham gave a faint whimper.
There was a silence, during which Jonathan – mostly for something to do with his hands – walked up to the cave-in and looked for rocks to move to take the wall down. Or at least make a big enough hole in it for a man to go through.
"Where do you think those creatures went?" asked Tom after a while. Jonathan kept inspecting the stones.
"As far away from us as possible, hopefully. What was that thing I saw you mucking about with?"
"I have no idea. I think it's an incantation of sorts, probably for the Scorpion King? I can only make out a few hieroglyphs. It says… hang on… Followers of the Sunset King – no, wait, of the ruler of the West… something something on their side… It's 'ard to tell underneath that crust."
The Scorpion King was dead, and so was Imhotep, yet Jonathan couldn't help a shudder. "Would you mind not reading it aloud? Just in case. We really don't need another supernatural menace after us."
Behind the rock wall, Tom chuckled.
"You didn't used to be superstitious."
"I didn't used to see cursed mummies come back to life every ten years."
"Fair point." A pause. "Jon? Can I ask—"
Jonathan never knew what Tom meant to ask him. He was interrupted by a hair-raising scream that sounded like Wyndham and an awful noise that didn't sound like it could – or should – ever come from a human being but probably came from Vaughn.
From then on, it was pandemonium.
"Where are they…?"
"Tom, what's—"
"DOWN!"
"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod—"
"Bloody hell –"
"Ferguson! They're—"
"Oh f—Run!"
"TOM!" Jonathan clawed at the wall, no longer paying attention to which stones he should take down first, completely beside himself with panic and worry. The only thing on his mind was making his way through the cave-in to get to Tom. What else might make its way across didn't even occur to him. He barely registered a rock falling on his instep.
And then, all of a sudden, there was nothing. The only sound he was aware of was his own blood hammering against his eardrums. Around him, the jungle kept breathing, chattering, living. Of Tom and the other two agents, there was no trace.
"Tom? Are you… Tom, bloody answer me, please."
Jonathan hardly dared to breathe. His heart had jumped up into his throat, blocking all sound, making his voice come out strangled.
"Tom, I think it's safe to come out now. They're gone. …Tom?"
Why wouldn't the bloody rocks come down already!
"Tom, for God's sake!"
Only silence answered him.
"Tom? …Tommy?"
Notes:
1) I can hardly believe believe it took 178 pages and almost 111,000 words before this story passed the Bechdel Test, and barely at that. I'm glad it did, though :o)
2) The further this chapter got for eleven years was Ardeth's part (which was supposed to open the chapter) and 1,200 words of Rick's, Jonathan's and Tom's scene. Hopefully the transition between 26 years old writer Bel and 37 years old writer Bel is seamless. (The rewrites helped.)
3) FFnet doesn't send email alerts for PMs (hasn't since... January?). Check your account page for review replies :o)
4) I am sorry about that last scene and you are free to yell as much as you like as long as it's inarticulate shouting and not actual insults.