What Lies Beneath, Chapter II

As Purvis stopped the jeep on a Cairo street that normally should be busy, he knew instantly that something was amiss. For one, there were no people about, Cairo was a busy city and people were about almost all the time. It wasn't even that late. Another thing was amiss in that a stench of death was on the wind.

The jeep's engine sputtered and died. The battery was dead, something he confirmed when he saw the battery had been bitten into. He saw acid burned little corpses lying under the axles. Apparently these pigmies had latched onto his jeep axles at some point and were chewing on the battery. The wiring looked like it was still alright, so Purvis drew his pistol and moved cautiously forward, giving Ranger two curt hand signals meaning to reconnoiter the area around the jeep near them. It was a wise choice for a living pygmy jumped out from under the jeep and Ranger's jaws clamped around the pygmy as he shook it to death.

"Come on boy, let's get out of here." Purvis said. Ranger whined as he threw the pygmy corpse aside as if it were composed of molten lead. He had two priorities, warn the base and locate some heavier firepower.

He found two MI corpses lying in front of a popular off base bar. Somehow their rifles had been destroyed which was a waste. He went in and saw several empty bottles. He hit on an idea just then, to create a few Molotov cocktails. He went around and under the bar made an unexpected discovery, an FN-FAL assault rifle. He chuckled despite himself; Hamid was always the paranoid one, ready for a big disaster to hit at any moment. That's how he had survived the Bug War. The FN-FAL did him no good this time, however, Hamid was nowhere to be seen.

There were two extra magazines strapped under the bar as well and Purvis snapped these up. He saw there was another clip in the FN-FAL, chambered a round and walked outside with his new rifle at the ready. He was fully aware he had sixty 7.62 mm rounds spread through three 20 round clips. He needed more ammunition. He had already gone through two of his pistol clips as well. He saw another of the soldier mummies come out from around the corner and put two rounds through it's chest dead center, it staggered forward a few steps and he fired another round through it's face, killing it. Another was sneaking around behind him and if Ranger hadn't alerted him, he would have been killed. Purvis turned, fired a three round burst into it's torso, and knocked it over with his rifle. He decided wisely it was in his best interests to run. And run he did.

Another mummy got in his way and Purvis put a pair of 7.62 rounds into its chest. There was something odd about this one, blood gushed from it. All the mummies he had so far shot had merely exploded desiccated fragments of rotted flesh and bone, but no blood. Ranger barked, a short sharp bark and Purvis saw that Ranger's radio transmitter, operational the entire time, had sent their entire encounter to the Command Post and the base as well. But nothing had come of it, strangely. Under normal circumstances, there would be MI everywhere. He tried to raise the base, getting nothing but static. He had a bad feeling about this. Ranger had picked up a scent trail and alerted him to it. Following Ranger's lead he went inside a building three blocks from the base and ran into a medium built Egyptian man, an MP named Sgt. Al-Samir.

"Sir." Samir said, "What's going on here?"

"I was hoping you'd know sergeant." Purvis said.

"No, I don't know anything." Samir said. "All I know was that I was standing my watch then I heard gunshots, screams, and finally silence. The entire city, as well as the base has been taken over by those.things."

Clad in his simple fatigue uniform and carrying only his side arm, Samir was lucky to have survived. "What do you have left?" Purvis asked.

"Just two nine millimeter clips, sir." Samir said, "What about you?"

"Not much more, half a rifle clip with two spares, and two pistol clips." Purvis said.

The two men walked towards the base until coming upon a dead MP lying face down on the sidewalk. Samir salvaged two more pistol clips, which he attached to his belt. The damaged shotgun the MP carried would have been a nice addition but it was bent at a nearly ninety-degree angle.

A mummy popped up from behind a wall and Samir popped two nine-millimeter rounds into it. It began to attempt to get back up again and Samir fired two more times, putting it down for good. "Samir, watch out!" Purvis said, turning around, his .45 speaking a couple times, the mummy with a scythe falling onto its back with two large holes blown through its chest.

"Why is this mummy bleeding?" said Samir, "Don't mummies typically have no blood?"

"I know, I've seen that too." Purvis said.

"We need to find answers somehow." Samir replied.

"And survivors, if any." Purvis said grimly. They walked into the base security building looking up the security cameras. It showed MI troopers in a fierce battle against several mummies staggering towards them. It showed civilians being herded to the relative safety of the underground shelters along with nonessential personnel.

"We should check the shelters, there may be survivors down there, sir." Samir replied.

"First lets make a side trip into the armory." Purvis said.

The armaments room in the security building had been unlocked and many of the weapons there had already been handed out. Samir unlocked a small steel wall cabinet. The riot gear was typically stored inside this locker, however none of it was left. He managed to find a Franchi SPAS 12 shotgun with a folding stock in the safe along with a box of shotgun shells. Taking the shotgun, he loaded eight shells into the magazine, and placing the remainder into the pockets of his MP fatigue uniform.

He found a box of .45 rounds for the CQB pistols used by the riot control unit in the security detail and handed them to Purvis who reloaded his empty clips and placed the rest of the fifty round box into his field pack.

They went into the underground shelter, and Purvis opened the steel door finding several tunnels dug into the floor, along with what appeared to be trails of people being dragged underground. He opened the door to the other room and slammed it shut just as hastily. Several scarab beetles came scrambling through the crack in the door he had opened. Samir fired two rounds from the shotgun he carried, blowing them away and punching holes into the floor in the process.

Purvis yanked the door open, lighting one of the two Molotov cocktails he had carried in a field pack he had taken from the jeep. He lobbed it inside the room and slammed the heavy door shut. The cocktail exploded, incinerating the living mass of scarabs covering the floor and anything else flammable that happened to be in its blast radius. When Purvis, .45 in hand, yanked the door open again, a thick cloud of smoke poured out of the room a mummy popped out of a tunnel. Keyed full of adrenaline, Purvis squeezed of a tight pattern of three rounds in the center of the mummy's face. It dropped back down to the ground.

It was then that both Samir and Purvis heard screaming coming from the next room, and the last room of the underground shelter. Using a pair of twelve gauge rounds on the lock Samir kicked the door down to find a mummy on top of Amoros. Firing a third shot, the mummy was blasted in half by a burst of double aught buckshot from Samir's shotgun. Purvis helped Irene to her feet and asked, "What's going on here?"

"I was hoping you'd know." Amoros replied.

"I'm sorry, I don't." Purvis replied.

"There are a couple others here," Amoros said, opening a large closet. A woman in her mid thirties with curly brown hair, a thirtyish professorial man along with a youngish collegiate man in his mid twenties stepped out. The woman Purvis knew, sort of, she was Lowanda Dumore, the bank president, who despite her attractiveness and soft seductive Southern accent had somewhat of a ruthless reputation. Apparently she also had a powerful survival instinct.

The two men introduced themselves. "Doctor Elliot Cray, Egyptology."

"Richard Leivy." Leivy, the college kid, was one of Cray's graduate students, the survivor of a four man Egyptology expedition to Hamunaptra, the other two being the victims Purvis had seen become little more than desiccated remains on the desert floor.

"Well," Purvis said, "If we're going to find any answers, I'm guessing we'll have to look at Hamunaptra."

"That's insane!" said Leivy, "We should get out."

"We should get to the bottom of this." Purvis said.

"Can't you just leave us here and pick us up when this all is done." Dumore said.

"We can't leave you guys here, it's too dangerous." Purvis said.

"First we have to gather some supplies." Samir said. Half an hour later, after rooting through the armaments locker with disappointing results, a single box of shotgun shells and two boxes of pistol rounds one nine millimeter the other .45 caliber along with one CQB pistol, the makeshift group was ready to go.

"Here, take this." Purvis said, handing Cray the CQB pistol.

"No, I don't like guns." Cray said.

"Take it." Purvis said. Lugging a heavy battery, Leivy and the others walked to where Purvis left the jeep and they all piled in as Purvis gunned the engine, driving them towards Hamunaptra and the great unknown.

To be continued.