Later that night, I saw something odd in the distance. I got up and moved towards it. When I was at a point no one in the camp could see me I stopped when I felt a blade on my throat. A man in black walked in front of me and lowered the cloth on his face so I could see who it was. He nodded to the man behind me and the blade was removed before the other man left us alone.
"What have they found?" he asked me.
"They found the body and her canopic jars. The American's probably have the book as well." I told him.
"We need to know for certain." he told me.
"And we will. Are you planning another raid on the camp?" I asked him.
"Yes. We will strike tomorrow during the day." he told me and I nodded.
"Good, that will give me enough to time to..." I started saying but was stopped.
"NO!" we turned to look at the camps. "NOOOO! YOU MUST NOT!"
"Go! Find out what has happened!" he ordered me and I ran back to the camp to see the Egyptologist skidding to a stop as a strange, piercing whine was heard coming from the desert. I looked behind me as the sound grew louder and closer to us before I saw a huge wall of locusts swirling into camp and enveloping all of us. I ran to my brother and the english siblings as the raced for the crevice, trying to fend off the horrid vermin as I went. I met up with the other and we all raced down the labyrinth, slapping at ourselves and picking locusts out of our hair.
"Did you see that!? Grasshoppers! Billions of grasshoppers!" Jonathan said.
"That's one of the plagues, right? The grasshopper plague!" Rick asked.
"Yes." I answered.
"This is not a plague." Evelyn corrected. "It's generational. Every so many years the locusts of Egypt have a population explosion and they all take flight." I stepped forward and something squished under my shoe. Rick lowered his torch and we saw the floor was filled with slimy frogs.
"Okay,... and what about frogs?" he asked.
"As I said, yes." I told him. Suddenly the ground under our feet started to shake and hundreds of chittering scarab beetles boiled up out of the sand and started scurrying towards us. The Carnihans screamed as we all turned around and hauled ass out of there. We raced up a staircase, and just up ahead was a mass of scurrying, chittering scarabs. Rick leapt out onto a pedestal with Jonathan. Evelyn and I jumped into a grotto on the other side of the narrow stairway. The horrible sound of vicious scarabs scurried between the guys and us, their ear-piercing chitters sending shivers up my spine. Suddenly the wall moved and I fell backwards through an opening with Evelyn beside me. When we stopped falling I sat up and shook the sand out of my hair before looking around. It was almost pitch black around us. I got up and held onto Evelyn's hand as we felt our way along the dark walls. We rounded a corner and saw a shaft of moonlight filtering in through a crack in the ceiling showing a man standing in the middle of the room.
"Oh thank goodness, you're one of the Americans, aren't you?" Evelyn asked as we made our way to him. Just as we reached him he turned revealing Burns with both of his eyes missing. He stared at us with vacant sockets and we screamed in horror, backing away from him. Evelyn began hyperventilating as we bumped into something else. We screamed again and spun to see the mummy we'd found earlier with two fresh eyeballs in his sockets. We backed away into a wall. The mummy squinted at us, as though recognizing us.
"Anck-su-namun? Amunet?" he asked. Flashes of two beautiful women smiling appeared before my eyes. Who was that? The mummy stepped forward, the sand around him seeming to magnetize around him, swirling and dancing around his flaking skeletal legs. We backed away along the wall away from him.
"Help us... please... help us." Evelyn begged Burns. Burns opened his mouth, but could only gurgle and moan because his tongue was also missing. The mummy grabbed him and threw him to the ground and set his skeletal foot on Burns' chest, like a big game hunter standing on his kill. That's how the creature could talk.
"Kadeesh pharos Anck-su-namun!" the creature said making me shiver in fear. Suddenly, Rick cam flying around the corner and ran right up to us.
"Would you quit playin, around! Let's get outta here already!" Rick told us before turning to see what we were staring at and jumping back in fright. "WHOA!" the three of us started backing away down the hall with the creature gliding sideways with us, like a tiger cornering his prey, the sand around him swirling and dancing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Burns start to crawl away, whimpering as he went. The creature suddenly, stopped and unhinged his skeletal jaw, his skinless mouth stretching to an inhuman size, and he let out a horrific, primordial shriek.
"ANCK-SU-NAMUUUUUN!" Evelyn and I screamed and Rick shuddered in front of us.
"Ahhhhhhhh!" Rick screamed at him before blasting it with the elephant gun. Rick grabbed our hands and ran out into the open. Sand and wind whipped through the ruins as we stumbled up out of the crevice and came face to face with ten armed Medji. the Medji quickly raised their guns and just as quickly our hands went above our heads. Jonathan, Henderson, Daniels and the Egyptologist were already on their knees, hands over their heads, next to us.
"I told you to leave or die, you refused, and now you may have killed us all. For you have unleashed the creature that we have feared for more than four thousand years." the leader, Ardeth, told us.
"Relax, I got him." Rick told him.
"No mortal weapons can kill this creature. He is not of this world." Aredth told him.
"Are we talkin, about the same creature? The walking corpse? Really big mouth? Really bad breath?" Rick asked him sarcastically and I hit the back of his head. He turned and glared at me, which I returned. Several Medji drug Burns up and he stared out with vacant sockets.
"You bastards!" Daniels yelled.
"What did you do to him!?" Henderson asked the.
"They didn't do this." I told them.
"We saved him! Saved him before the creature could finish his work. Now leave, all of you, quickly, before he finishes you all." Ardeth told us.
"You're not going to kill us?" Jonathan asked them, shocked. Evelyn elbowed him in the ribs, making him wince in pain.
"We must now hunt him down, and try and find a way to kill him, before he consumes the earth. Allah be with us." Ardeth told us.
"Ardeth, let me come with you." I told him quietly.
"No, stay here with the others." he told me just as quietly as the other started heading down into the crevice.
"I told ya, I already got him!" Rick called down to them and Ardeth turned to him, deadly serious.
"Know this, the creature will be coming for you. He must consummate the curse. And until he does, he will never eat, he will never sleep, and he will never stop." Ardeth said before turning and jumping down into the crevice. Rick drug me with him and the others as we all claimed camels before heading off into the dark, windblown desert. Suddenly a horrific, primordial shriek was heard through the desert behind us.
"ANCK-SU-NAMUUUUUN!"