Chapter 3: Le Commencement
Anna spent a restless night tossing and turning in her cot. Thoughts and dreams drifted through her mind as she lay, trying to still her body. Her heart beat rapidly as she futilly tried to think of soothing things that would easily put her to complete sleep, but she would become bored with any thought other than those of the dead city.
Morning drew quickly, and the young woman felt tired as she rose. Rubbing her weary eyes, she threw on the clothes she'd worn the day before and poked her head out of the tent.
The sun had barely risen, but already the camp was slowly buzzing with activity. Smoke curled into the crimson sky as Zahalm prepared breakfast while the morning guards said their thanks to those that had taken the night shift. Workers began to emerge from their tents, immediately heading for the tombs they'd uncovered the week before. As they worked to clear the entrances of sand before their morning meal, Anna smiled a bit.
"Oh dear, I forgot to tell Mimi about our guests. I'd better get on it," she murmured to herself, heading towards Zahalm and his outdoor kitchen.
Upon seeing his employer, the Egyptian man grinned, continuing to flip the griddle cakes he'd prepared. Though she should have been used to seeing him in a frilly apron, Anna had to shake herself to clear out any...undesirable thoughts.
"Good morning, Miss Anna. Are you well today?" came his laughing voice.
"Yes, thank you. Have you seen Mimi this morning? I need her to send a wake-up call to our guests and she's already left her tent."
Standing back from the flames a bit, Zahalm scratched his chin for a moment. Mimi was not a social person by any means, so it was highly unlikely that she'd be anywhere near the workers. She was an odd woman for sure, but she did her job well, so no one really complained.
"I haven't seen her this morning, but you could try her office. She mentioned last night that there were some wires on the fritz and she wanted to fix them pretty early. Perhaps she's getting a head start," he said, pushing up his sunglasses.
"Perhaps. Thank you, Zahalm. I'll be expecting something good this morning," replied the albino, turning to face the group of tents to the south.
"As always, Miss Anna. You know how things are."
"Right. As always. Carry on."
Although the sun was not even fully over the horizon, the heat was already taking its toll on her as she trotted towards the tent Mimi used as an office. Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved a pair of sunglasses and set them on the bridge of her nose. There were few in the world as sensitive to light as she, but as long as she had protective eye-wear and the perpetual plaster of dirt and grime covering her skin, she remained perfectly fine.
"Mimi, are you here?" she asked, pulling the flap back.
Among the clutter of wires and machines, she saw the figure of a woman in her early twenties down on the floor studying some rather sticky looking strands of...something.
"Mimi?"
The Norwegian woman raised her head, dark eyes focusing on Anna. Her vest and shirt were covered with the same yellowed substance as the supposed wires. Her gloves were thick with the stuff, and her scowl said 'No mercy'.
"He got cheese on the wires... Cheese!"
"Cheese?"
"Yes, that's what I said. Cheese! It's not a problem, though. Just get me some hairspray, ice, a toothpick, and a jar of peanut butter and I can fix it."
Anna blinked, but said nothing and simply headed back to the kitchen to retrieve the nessecary equipment. Once back, she handed the items to Mimi and stood back as she watched the woman work.
Spraying the hair product on the cheese, the girl rubbed down the offending dairy product with ice before tediously chipping it away with the toothpick.
"Um...What was the peanut butter for?"
"I'm hungry, so I needed it to spread on some crackers. This should only take an hour or so, but what did you need, Boss?"
Blinking again, Anna shook off the feeling that she employed the most dense human being on the earth and decided to just answer her question.
"I need you to put in a wake-up call to Section 5 in about four minutes. Think you can handle it?"
"No problem. I've set up the new speaker systems in those tents. I needed some guinea pigs to try them out anyway. We'll see how they like the static call."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'll take your word for it. I'll see you at breakfast."
Turning, she bolted from the tent, hoping to high heaven that the girl knew what she was doing.
Milo twitched in his sleep, a low and faint buzzing ringing in his ears. Still not awake, he rolled over and snorted lightly.
The buzzing became louder, more persistant as time wore on. Audrey groaned as she slammed a pillow over her ears and tried to drown it out, but to no avail. The buzzing wouldn't stop.
Sweet was becoming irritated. Half awake, he opened his groggy eyes until he could just make out his bedside table, but he could make out nothing that could emit such a noise.
Gaetan was in spastic fits, twitching every few seconds in his sleep. His advanced hearing allowed the noise to drive him nuts as he lay in his hole. Clawing at the sides of it, he opened his eyes wide, trying to locate the cause. Throwing his Teddy Mole over one ear and lying the other perfectly square to the ground, he tried to go back to sleep.
"Hei, dette er Mimi å taling. De vil all bedre blir opp før jeg stab De all til død med en plast spork!"
There was a sudden silence, then a murmur in the back ground. By now, the team was mostly awake, almost interested in what was being said.
"What do you mean, 'They don't speak Norwegian'? Doesn't everyone? Whatever...I'll repeat it... Stupid English... Hello, this is Mimi speaking. You'd all better get up before I stab you all to death with a plastic spork! I mean it, too! I don't care if you don't speak Norwegian! A spork is a spork, you got that! Now get out of bed you lazy English speaking people!" the high pitched voice shouted.
Once they'd all gathered around the pit, Milo surveyed his friends. He wondered if they had all heard the same...rather odd, broadcast that morning, and by the looks of it, they had.
Sweet and Audrey seemed as though they'd go face down in their plates and Gaetan was rubbing his ears madly. Milo, himself, had a rather nasty headache and Kida had disposed of the speaker when she found out that it was the source of the noise.
Anna bounced up to them, plate piled with food and hair pulled back. Setting herself between Milo and Vinny, she turned to the Italian and smiled apologetically.
"You like the new...alarm?"
Shaking his head slightly, he chewed on a piece of sausage and thought.
"Well, it could'a been worse. Mimi angry this mornin'?"
"Yeah. Apparently, Zahalm got cheese on her wires when he brought her some fondue. I haven't seen either of them since after the broadcast."
Milo and the others were leaning over by now, staring at Anna. That was the Mimi she'd mentioned last night?
Upon seeing their looks, she grinned sheepishly, hanging her head a bit. How could she explain Mimi to a bunch of people who'd never dealt with 'special' Norwegians before. After all, Mimi was a genius with communications equipment, but anything else, she was far less tactful.
As if the gods understood her plight, Zahalm rushed by screaming bloody murder, peanut butter covering his pink apron. Following at his heels was Mimi, cursing like a madwoman in her native tongue and weilding her jar of chunky Peter Pan goodness.
"Gods woman, what did I do?"
"Min ledningsfremføring! De fått ost på min ledningsfremføring!"
"What? You forget I am Egyptian!" he shouted, thick accent lingering in the air.
"My wires! You got cheese on my wires! Now you suffer!"
The group of diners watched as the two ran by before turning their stares back to Anna.
"Mimi... She's very good at what she does. She's just a little...eccentric."
There was a residual nod as they continued to eat while screams were heard far to the east. Perhaps later on, they'd have the honor of meeting the girl in person instead of watching her trying to kill a man with a jar of peanut butter and some saltines.
"So Anna, have you decided where we should start?" queried Milo after they'd finished their meal.
He, Anna, and the others had grouped around the book of old maps while the Russian struggled with a more modern map.
"Well, I think there would be promise in the ruins to the north. There were some caves there until the mid- eighteen sixties. Perhaps if we excavate them, we could find something useful. After all, they were mentioned as being a key source of mineral deposits for the ancient civilizations."
"How will we find these caves, Miss Anna? After all, the map you hold there does not mention them," Kida said.
"This is why I asked Mr. Thatch here in the first place. I can't read maps. I can read the sky; I can read the earth. I can even read my Uncle Will's diary, and that's pretty hard considering his...sexuality and tendencies to effeminite handwriting, but I can't read maps," Anna replied, thrusting the map at Milo.
"Well, I suppose I could triangulate the coordinates. It would take about an hour, but it's possible."
"Great! I'll go find Zahalm and Mimi. After all, we'll need them if we have to go too deep," she said, a shiver of excitement visible to the others.
As she turned to leave, Milo gave Gaetan a nudge. The Parisian looked up grimly, knowing in his heart that the scholar was about to ask him to do something he really didn't want to. Something almost assuredly pretaining to the albino bouncing off in the distance.
"Why don't you go help her? After all, I'd worry about that Mimi woman. If she's trying to kill a guy with peanut butter, Anna could get into trouble," he hissed in the geologist's ear.
"Why me? Can't you ask Vinny or Audrey? Zey could keep up wees her better."
"Now, Mole," glared Milo before returning to the maps, becoming completely lost in them.
Sighing in defeat, Mole trotted in Anna's direction, trying to keep up with her long gate.
"Would you like some help, Miss Anna?" he called.
Stopping short, she looked back, waiting for him to catch up. Her blue eyes gave him a hard glare, but her sneer was replaced by a half-smile.
"Well, at least you aren't yelling at me. Anyway, yeah, I could use some help. Mimi's pretty fast, but she tires easily. I figure they're somewhere near the laborers' camp."
They walked in silence for a few moments. It was rather tense, Anna taking side-glances at Gaetan every so often, and he doing the same. Finally, to break the silence, he spoke.
"I still sink your idea ees preposterous..." he mumbled.
"I still think you're a jerk," she spat.
Gaetan growled, but said nothing more until they came to the workers' campsite. The small tents were huddled closely together, but the sounds of panting could be heard close by. Upon further inspection, they found both Zahalm and Mimi collapsed on the ground between the canvas make-shift homes.
"My...wires... I...kill..you," came Mimi's exhausted pants.
Lifting one of the flaps back, they were met with a sight only one could imagine. Mimi was straddling Zahalm's back, his face in the dirt. He was covered with peanut butter, saltines stuck all over him. Anna saw a bit of blood trickling down his arm where a spork had been jabbed into it.
"Mimi, get off of him! C'mere, you. You'll have to help me carry her back," she snapped at Moliere.
About to protest, he found her jerking him into the tent, slinging Mimi into his arms.
"Carry her and I'll get Zahalm."
"Why should I 'ave to carry 'er?" he argued.
Anna glared down at him as she hoisted Zahalm onto her shoulders.
"Because, she weighs one hundred and thirty pounds. Unless you'd rather lug a hundred and eighty-five, you'll keep your mouth shut."
It took the two about twenty minutes to make their way through the labrynth of tents and back to the others. Zahalm had, in Sweet's opinion, suffered little damage. Mimi was quite small, unable to put too much force into her attacks.
The Norwegian woman had taken little as well. She'd become dilerious, though, and honestly thought that her Chinese Crested, Mr. Fluffs, was driving a bus to London. Anna spoke with little concern, relating that the communications officer was prone to such rants in the harsh heat.
Once they'd convinced her that Mr. Fluffs would return, they left the medical tent, Anna commenting on how much could have gone wrong.
"Mimi is not a bad person, nor does she mean to be rude. She...was quite wealthy, though, and was never disciplined much. If she gets angry, she dosen't know how to talk it out."
"I hope she will not become angered on our trip," piped Kida.
"So do I. The last time she attacked Zahalm, he came out with a broken rib and she couldn't use her hands for a week," Anna muttered.
Sweet cocked his head in question, wondering how such a burly man as the cook could have gotten a broken rib from such a frail-looking woman.
As if reading his mind, the albino shrugged.
"He somehow managed to get her hands into some boiling grease. She screamed, shoved the vat at him, and he ran into a wall trying to get away. They may not be the nicest people in the world, but they do their jobs well."
Making their way back to the tent where Milo was still working, the group turned silent. Sweet understood what such misfits could do to benifit their expedition. Mole, however, harboured doubts. Not only was this woman insane, but she employed psychotic Norwegians and Egyptians. How could such people be any aid to them at all?
"Have you made any progress, Milo? Mimi and Zahalm will be fine in a few hours anyway," Anna said offhandedly.
Looking up from the maps, the linguist smiled, pushing his gargantuan glasses back into place.
"That's great! I think I have most of this done. There are a few roads in that direction, but not close enough to be of much use. Once we reach the spot I marked here," he said, jutting a finger on the present day map, "we'll have to venture off of the path. Is that alright?"
"Of course! We'll start out tonight!" she cried.
"Why tonight?" questioned Audrey, taking a seat at the table.
The young latina had been checking over the equipment vehicles all morning, preping them for a rugged trip. Many times she'd had to scream at the other mechanics, but she'd become accustomed to their...different ways of thinking. She'd worked out a compromise with the young man that had headed the guild, allowing him to work on the crew's vehicle while she took those that hauled the machinery.
"It's cold in the evenings. This keeps snakes and other dangerous creatures from becoming active. Also," she pointed at her face, "I never work in the day unless it's in a shaft. I burn easily, and I can't allow myself to become sick or blistered."
Voting to sleep for the remainder of the afternoon and leave at dusk, the team departed. Moliere lingered behind, hating to ask Anna anything, but he knew that if he stayed in this burning wasteland, he might as well.
"Zat crazy Mimi woman won't be waking us up, will she?" he grunted.
Anna smiled behind clenched teeth, an evil twinkle in her eye.
"Oh no... I will!" she yelled, turning on her heel and storming off.
The geologist shrugged and made his way back to his tent. She had to be joking when she said that, right?
Well, this has been chapter three: The Beginning. The battle is now on between Anna and Mole. Only time will tell who wins. Norwegian is long when you translate from English... Hope you enjoyed it. R&R!