"Faster!"
Doug had the pedal flat on the floor as he and Doug sped to the scene in the Model T, it was a lucky thing Tony bought the car when he did; they were able to hit speeds of 40mph racing down Fulton Street dodging other vehicles and pedestrians.
"Jim? Are you there?" Tony tried reaching him on the radio to no avail.
"Look!" Doug motioned to a cloud of billowing smoke ahead dimly lit by a half moon. They followed it to the boathouse, now on fire. They jumped out to investigate, nearly tripping over Jim as he lay motionless on the ground a few feet from the blaze, clutching his radio in one hand and revolver in the other. Doug checked his pulse; Tony looked inside the building, six mangled bodies lay on the ground.
"He's alive…" Doug said, "barely." Jim's eyes were wide open, but he remained unresponsive. A small crowd was gathering to watch the fire.
"What could have happened?"
"He doesn't appear to be physically hurt, a shock of some kind."
"Unfazed by war, dinosaurs, Jack the Ripper… what happened?"
"The straw that breaks the camel's back isn't always the biggest," Doug reminded him.
They could hear the fire department arriving; a team of horses led the way pulling the engine. Tony and Doug pulled Jim away from the fire and the boathouse collapsed into the water before the firemen could even unload their equipment.
"It's all right, we'll get you home as soon as you're well enough to make the trip." Doug wriggled the items from Jim's hands, couldn't let the first responders see the radio and he didn't want him getting in trouble for possession. A quick look revealed a full cylinder.
Within the hour, Ann met them at the hospital where Jim was starting to come back around and they were allowed a few minutes alone with him.
"Jim," Ann asked with her best bedside manner, "Can you tell us what happened?"
He opened his mouth to speak, "I loved monster movies as a kid, and-they-never-scared-me-because-the-monsters-were-never-real," he babbled out.
"What monsters?"
"A mummy. Cult brought a mummy to life with the bracelet. It took them apart."
Ann looked bewildered, "Where is it?"
Jim thought for a moment and quietly laughed, "He went for a little walk."
Tony, Doug, and Ann left the room and let the doctor attend to their colleague.
"I think he believes it," Tony said.
Ann folded her arms, "As a scientist, I don't permit myself to believe in such things."
"I thought you said that as a scientist you had to be open-minded?" Doug challenged her. "Ghosts, sorcerers, aliens… are we going to draw the line at a reanimated mummy?"
"He went for a little walk is a line from The Mummy, he's remembering a movie he saw."
"There were six bodies in the boat house," Tony reminded her.
Ann wasn't convinced, "If a mummy went on a rampage in Manhattan, somebody would have found it newsworthy."
The living mummy, Prince Ahmose silently crept through the streets, he was more whole than before, the blood of his followers had strengthened him; fresh muscle tissue was slowly regenerating. Up the street, a pair of teenage boys were leading a reluctant horse up the steps of a church.
"Come on," one boy urged the other, "Get that door open." The other boy ran up and pulled the heavy door open, hearing the horse whinny he spun around. The horse had reared up, knocking the first boy to the ground. The freed horse took off down the street. Ahmose had seized the fallen boy whose screams filled the night as his friend took off in the same direction as the horse.
