I quote some more Oz/Cordy in this chap, so be on the lookout. Also, Simon Donovan from 'West Wing' liiiiiiiiives!!!! *cackle cackle cackle* And I had a great idea but nobody wanted to be in the story, so I scrapped that part. Just know that y'all missed a chance to make out with Jonathan. *cackle cackle* Aaaaaaanyway, here we go.....

11: I Can't F***ing Believe They Killed Simon Donovan

Bey and O'Connell reached the door to the underground garage just as the explosion reached the other side of it, and though they were knocked off their feet, the sturdy entryway protected them from major injury. As soon as Bey was up, he tried the door handle, but leapt back as soon as he touched it.

"Hot!" he yelped, holding his hand. "What the hell just happened?"

"The timing is too perfect," said O'Connell. "My money's that you're going to have to shop for a new car."

Realization dawned on Bey's face, and he paled. "You don't think..."

"Yeah, I think." O'Connell grimaced as he stood. "Nobody's here but us, Meela just stole your keys, and an assassin already tried to kill Evelyn once." He took off his jacket and wrapped it around his hand, then tried the door handle again. As the door swung open, the sight that came into view confirmed O'Connell's suspicion.

The walls of the parking garage were singed black, and though the few parked cars around the blast had been smashed up a bit, the real damage was obviously to what had recently been a sleek black SUV. Flames licked the ceiling as the car burned, and the heat caused the two men to take a step back.

"Someone blew up my car," Bey muttered. "I can't believe someone blew up my car."

"My guess is that the people inside it were the key motivation."

"You think someone wanted to kill Meela."

"No. No one could have known she'd be in the car. Someone wanted to kill Evelyn. Or us. Or both."

Bey blinked for the first time since he'd laid eyes on his late car. "Speaking of Evelyn. She and the President are still in the broom closet."

"Yeah. So?"

"So Meela stole my key card. We have no way of getting them out."

O'Connell sighed heavily. "This just gets better and better, doesn't it?"

A violent wind suddenly whipped around the two men, and in an instant the blaze had been put out. A man appeared, or what could have once been called a man, for what stood in front of them could have just as easily been classified as a demon. His skin, while mostly there, was interspersed with shiny white bones and badly-decomposed muscle, and the look on his half-formed face could have killed. He took one look at the still-smoldering car and let out an ear-splitting roar. "Murderers!" he howled. "You will pay!!"

It was about that moment that Bey and O'Connell decided it would be a good time to run like hell.

The trio in the closet had only a moment to register the unlikely horror of being trapped by a swarm of flies before they heard a great creaking noise and felt the floor bend beneath their feet, giving way to an entirely new terror. The ground gave way with a snap and suddenly, with a whoosh of fly-infested air, they found themselves landing with a huge crash on the floor below. The flies dispersed, the air cleared, and it appeared that the accident may have been tragic, for nobody moved a muscle.

Finally Evelyn sat up, her head spinning, legs trapped beneath a rather heavy pile of floorboards. "Mr. President?" she asked to the silent air, not seeing anyone amidst the rubble of the collapsed closet. They appeared to have landed in a parking garage. "Mr. President!!!"

"What?" Izzy stood and dusted himself off. "I'm right here. Don't panic."

"'Don't panic?' I'm trapped!"

"Calm down, Evy, we'll get you out of here." Izzy began to move rubble off of his friend, though the pile was large and he knew it would take a while. "Hey, where's Chamberlain?"

Dr. Chamberlain answered this with a frightened scream as he leapt from his dazed position on the floor and began to sprint across the garage, running from something...

Ivan! He stood watching a blackened SUV, Beni lurking close behind. When he heard Chamberlain's screaming he turned and began to walk toward the President and the still-trapped Evelyn, a look of pure hatred on his face.

"What are we going to do, what are we going to do?!?!" Evelyn cried.

"Uh..." Izzy continued to throw floorboards off the pile. "Reason with him?"

Evelyn struggled to move her legs and still found she could not. "I personally don't think it's possible to come up with a crazier plan."

Izzy thought about this for a moment, then replied, "We attack the mummy with hummus."

"What?"

"Just trying to keep things in perspective."

"Thank you, Mr. President. Now would you please get me out of here?!?!?"

"I'm trying! I--oh, uh--"

By now Ivan had reached the pair and just like that had wrapped a half-decomposed hand around the President's throat, lifting him from the ground. "Well, what have we here?" Ivan asked as Izzy struggled for air. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. Caught at the scene of the crime. How convenient for me."

"Let him go!" Evelyn said, noting that she could now sort of move her legs beneath the heap of debris. "Let him go!"

Ivan turned his head to contemplate her. "And poor little Evelyn Carnahan, all grown up now. You were a sniveling little brat in 1972, and I see that hasn't changed. But, you will serve my purposes well enough." He let go of the President and threw him across the room, where he landed on the hood of a car, unconscious.

"Uh, boss?" Beni said from behind him. "I found something for you."

Beni led Ivan to another nearby car, in which Daniels was asleep in the front seat. "Ah ha!" cried Ivan. "The final sacrifice!"

Daniels started awake at the intrusion of Ivan's horrible voice and had only time for a startled gasp before Ivan sucked the life out of him. "Mmmm," said the mummy, no longer a mummy but a man. He was rather gorgeous, Evelyn reflected, if he hadn't been a murderer, a stalker, and...heading straight for her!

With a simple wave of his hand, Ivan had flung the boards away from Evelyn so that she was free. Before she had time to react, however, he'd suddenly whirled himself into a giant sandstorm, which filled every nook and cranny of the garage in an instant.

Ardeth and Rick raced through random hallways until they had become utterly lost, but this was okay because in the process they had somehow stumbled upon Jonathan. Literally.

As Bey flew around a particularly blind corner, his feet suddenly hit something solid and he tumbled to the ground. Rick managed to skid to a halt before meeting the same fate. "Jonathan?" he asked. "What the hell are you doing on the ground?"

Jonathan, the source of Bey's troubles, looked up at Rick and shrugged. "Hiding from the mummy."

"What happened to the intern?" Ardeth asked, hauling Jonathan to his feet.

"Uh, I think she got eaten. Hey, where's Evy?"

"In the closet," Rick replied. "Come on, we have to find them."

"It was right over the parking garage," Bey supplied. "Maybe if we retraced our steps..."

A man stepped around the corner and joined the little group. He was tall and handsome, with silvery hair. "Might I be of service?"

"Who are you???"

The man holstered his gun and held out his hand. "Simon Donovan, secret service agent."

"But...." Rick appeared very confused, as if he were seeing a dead man. "You were shot to death by the glaringly obvious second suspect in an unrealistic convenience-store robbery in the season finale of 'West Wing,' in a misguided attempt by Aaron Sorkin to make the viewers cry, which will really only result in us losing faith in the show, because come on, how many beloved recurring characters can he kill off, i.e., Mrs. Landingham, and expect us to invest our precious Wednesday at 9-10 p.m. slot in your show and still think he's going to win Emmys?!?!?!"

"Um," said Simon, "he did win the Emmy."

"Damn!"

"Anyway, Buffelyn was so upset by my departure that she decided to raise me from the dead for the purposes of this story."

"Hey, what happened with C.J.? Are you two together?"

"Funny you should ask. In fact, we're married, have children, and are going to spend the rest of our lives in alternate universe bliss."

"Good for you two. C.J. deserves some happiness."

Ardeth stepped between the two, obviously impatient for the conversation to end. "Enough about 'West Wing.' Let's talk about my new show, 'Presidio Med,' in which I play--"

"No, no, no!" cried Jonathan. "My new show is called 'MDs,' and I play--"

"Let me guess," interrupted Rick. "You both play doctors bravely fighting the system in San Francisco hospitals, on different channels in the exact same time slot."

"Wow." Jonathan appeared awestruck. "You're good."

"Primetime TV is just getting so predictable," said Rick. "Hell, even I was on 'Scrubs!'"

"People?" said Simon. "Shouldn't we be going and saving the President now?"

"Oh, yeah. To the closet!"

By the time the four men had found the closet again, it was obviously empty. After some heroic attempts at knocking the door down, the men resorted to guns, which effectively destroyed the door, though they still had to crawl through it to gain entrance. This proved to be somewhat of a problem, because the floor of the closet was pretty much gone.

After all four of the rescuers had dropped through the floor and into the parking garage by way of the closet, it was again quite clear that that room, too, was deserted. Although it was entirely possible, Rick thought, that his lover, the President of the United States, and the official White House Egyptologist were dead, Rick felt somewhere deep in his gut that Evelyn was alive. He was sure of it. Now it was just a matter of finding her, ripping that damn mummy to pieces, and begging forgiveness of Evelyn for being such an ass.

"Well, now what?" said Ardeth, strangely at a loss. "Where could they have gone?"

Before anyone could offer any theories, a car came squealing around the corner, skidding to a stop just before ramming into the group. The driver's side window rolled down, revealing the president behind the wheel of the beat-up sedan. "Get in," he said. "We're going to go get that mummy..."

~*~*~*~

I'm trying very hard to wrap this up. If you're reading, tell me, 'k? :)