“Aren’t you a little old for her, pal—like two or three thousand years?” O’Connell advanced on the creature, though his guns remained tucked in his shoulder holsters. “Get the hell away from my girl!”
Wheeling in anger, robes flowing, Imhotep scowled and growled at the intruder, teeth bared through rotting flesh.
O’Connell winced in disgust. “Whoa! Next time you’re plannin’ to kiss somebody, bring your lips.”
The mummy raised his arms in attack, lurching toward O’Connell, who yelled, “Jonathan—now!”
And in the doorway, Evelyn’s brother appeared, her white cat in his arms; Jonathan pitched the cat to O’Connell, fire-brigade style, and O’Connell tossed the little creature into the oncoming arms of the big creature, who instinctively caught it, reacting like a man who’d grabbed onto a bucket of hot coals.
The cat screeched, the mummy shrieked, in dreadful comic harmony. Imhotep dropped the animal and, clearly weakened, stumbled toward the window, which blew open, shutters rattling, and a gust of wind swept through.
And the mummy began to spin, to twirl, and before their wide eyes, which they soon covered as if caught in a sandstorm, whirled like a dervish into a funnel of sand, which blew and spewed out the window with incredible force, sucking and slamming shut the shutters behind him.
Not a grain of sand remained on the floor.
Jonathan entered, revolver in hand, trembling like an old man, and O’Connell rushed to Evelyn, taking her in his arms, as she looked away, rubbing the slime off her face with the back of a hand, reeling with revulsion.
O’Connell, an arm around Evelyn’s shoulder, walked her into the foyer, with Jonathan following, just as Daniels entered, bottle of bourbon in hand.
Which he dropped, the bottle exploding into glass fragments and splashing liquid.
“God in heaven,” Daniels said, gazing upon the withered corpse of his friend Henderson, “I’m next.”
O’Connell grabbed the man by his good arm. “None of us is next if we can kill that bandaged son of a bitch. And I just stopped him with a goddamn kitty.”
“Pity that famous gunnysack of yours isn’t full of felines,” Jonathan said dryly. “All we have are bullets.”
Evelyn was staring down at the shriveled corpse of Henderson, but not in horror: She was thinking.
“You’re both right,” she said to O’Connell and her brother. “We can only battle this monster from antiquity with the weapons of antiquity . . . and I think I may know how to do that.”
Within minutes, they were speeding down the streets of Cairo in the Dusenberg convertible, Jonathan behind the wheel, honking the horn to clear a path, Evelyn again squeezed between her brother and O’Connell. Daniels, sole survivor of the American party, sat in the backseat, with O’Connell’s gunnysack arsenal; his face drawn in fear, the once stoic soldier of fortune was removing his sling, testing his arm, apparently thinking having two limbs might come in handy.
Though still shaken by the appearance of an amorous living mummy in her bedroom, Evelyn managed a small smile for O’Connell, asking teasingly, “So I’m your ‘girl,’ am I?”
“Aw, just tryin’ to fluster that freak.”
“Are you sure you weren’t jealous?”
“What? That guy makes Frankenstein look like Valentino! When I kiss you, you won’t be spittin’ out bones and bandages.”
“Shut up!” Daniels screamed from the backseat. “Shut up you, fools! We’re all going to die if we don’t do something!”
Evelyn looked back at him, not unkindly. “We’re about to do something. Right now.”
And indeed the massive Museum of Antiquities loomed ahead, palm trees out front swaying in the evening breeze, gas torches along its sandstone walls glowing and flickering in the night, Egyptian warrior statues standing tall, guarding the double front doors, where—moments later—Jonathan dropped his passengers.
The curator was expecting them—Evelyn had phoned ahead—and the round little man, still accompanied by Med-jai chieftain Ardeth Bay, escorted Evelyn, O’Connell, and Daniels through the museum’s vast atrium entry way with its impressive display of sarcophagi, boats, and enormous statues. Their footsteps echoing (Jonathan, who’d parked the car, catching up with them), they headed up the wide marble staircase, Evelyn lecturing the curator, for a change.
“According to the ancient lore,” she was saying, “the black book found at Hamanaptra is said to bring the dead back to life.”
“The Book of the Dead, yes,” Dr. Bey said. “My understanding is that you read an incantation from that volume, which—”
“Yes, we’ve been over that quite thoroughly, haven’t we?” Evelyn’s expression was a combination of a wince and a smile. “But as a scholar, I tended to judge such things from an anthropological viewpoint. Such sorcery was something I was unwilling to believe.”
The curator’s pursed smile made his tiny mustache wiggle. “I take it you’ve revised your opinion.”
“Better believe it, buddy,” O’Connell chimed in. “Ask her how three-thousand-year-old breath smells.”
Evelyn gave O’Connell a quick, cross look, then said, “Yes, well, what I’m thinking is that if that obsidian volume can restore life to the dead—”
“I get it!” O’Connell snapped his fingers. “That gold book you had us looking for!”
“Why, Rick,” she said with surprise and pleasure, “I believe you’ve hit on the answer, too.”
“Sure—if the black book brings ’em back, stands to reason that gold book can send ’em to hell again!”
“Quite,” she said. “That certainly would be consistent with the lore.”
Narrow-eyed, nodding, Ardeth Bay said, “That might undo the damage you have done—and return He Who Shall Not Be Named to the grave.”
“Finally!” Daniels said through his teeth, clenching a fist and shaking it.
They had reached a landing and paused there.
“An incantation from The Book of Amun Ra,” the curator was saying. He’d been thinking this through. “Yes. That might do it! But that priceless artifact has been high on the lists of those plundering the Valley of the Kings since the time of the pharaohs—from the grave robbers of antiquity, to the likes of your own father, Miss Carnahan.”
She shrugged. “Well, maybe they didn’t know where to look.”
O’Connell touched her arm. “And you do?”
“Possibly. There’s a display on the balcony that may hold the answer.”
And they moved onto the balcony to a glass-and-wood display case of fragments of stone tablets bearing various hieroglyphs; the curator—using a far more conventional key than a puzzle box—quickly opened the display case. In so doing, he seemed to unleash an eerie chanting . . .
“What is that dreadful sound?” Jonathan asked.
“It’s coming from outside,” O’Connell said, nodding to the octagonal window that faced the parking lot.
The chanting was growing, and what exactly was being said became chillingly evident, and horrifying familiar: “Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
They gathered at the window and looked down at the crowd of people, in turbans and gowns, veils and dresses, rabble and well-to-do alike, even a few tourists mixed in with this native mob, pouring from the streets toward the museum, swarming like insects, some of them carrying torches.
“Jesus!” Daniels said. “What’s wrong with them? They’re like . . .”
“Zombies,” O’Connell said.
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“I say, what’s a ‘zombie,’ old chap?” Jonathan asked, his eyes wide with the terrible sight below him, the milling, chanting multitude.
“The living dead,” O’Connell said.
Daniels drew his revolver.
“West African voodoo cults,” the curator put in.
“Look at their flesh,” Ardeth Bay said.
Many of them were closer now, staggering like sleepwalkers, eyes wide and empty, t
heir skin covered with hideous lesions.
“Boils and sores!” Jonathan said. “It’s another plague!”
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“And they don’t look happy about it,” O’Connell said.
“It has begun,” Ardeth Bay said. “The end begins.”
“You can give up if you want to,” Evelyn said to the Med-jai warrior, then added sarcastically, “After all, you have been at this for three thousand years—perhaps it’s time you took a break. But we’re going to get to work—right, Dr. Bey?”
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“Yes,” the curator said. “As soon as I go down and lock the doors . . .”
While the curator did that, Evelyn began sorting through the broken pieces of tablets, tossing precious relics aside like empty paper cups when they didn’t give her what she sought.
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“According to the Bembridge scholars,” Evelyn said, entirely focused and seemingly unconcerned about the crazed crowd beyond these walls, “the golden Book of Amun Ra was hidden inside the statue of Anubis.”
Daniels said, “But that’s where we found the other book, that goddamn black book.”
“Precisely,” Evelyn said.
“Those Bembridge boys were mistaken when they spurned my sister,” Jonathan said. “Maybe they were wrong about that, as well.”
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
Daniels, pacing about with revolver in hand, said, “No offense, but your British reserve is giving me a royal pain. Can’t you work a little faster?”
Evelyn’s fingers were moving quickly across a large stone tablet. “My theory is that the Bembridge scholars confused the books, reversed where the two volumes were hidden. So if the black book was inside Anubis, then the gold book should be . . .”
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“Evy,” Jonathan said, “our American friend Mr. Daniels has a point—faster, dear, faster!”
“Patience is a virtue,” she reminded her brother.
“So is breathing,” O’Connell pointed out. He had a revolver in hand, too.
“Why don’t I save us some time,” Jonathan said, “and go get the car. Dr. Bey, is there a side door I can take?”
The curator gave Jonathan rapid instructions, pointing him toward a back stairway deeper inside the museum.
As Jonathan was about to scurry off, O’Connell said, “You think you can wade through those zombies?
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
The sound of the mob throwing themselves against front doors resounded through the atrium; the little group on the balcony could easily see those doors from where they stood, the heavy wooden panels shuddering and swelling and giving . . .
Jonathan patted O’Connell on the shoulder. “I don’t see that I have much choice, chum! Meet you at the side door!”
And Evelyn’s brother scurried off.
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“Here it is!” Evelyn cried. “So much for the Bembridge scholars—the golden Book of Amun Ra is in the statue of Horus!”
“The statue of Horus,” the curator said, frowning in thought, “should be located fifty kadams west of the Anubis statue.”
“Oh Christ,” O’Connell said, making a face. “You don’t mean we have go back to the City of Dead?”
Ardeth Bay said, “Only if you want to destroy He Who Shall Not Be Named.”
The front doors of the museum gave way, falling and echoing like giant timber, the front line of turbaned zombies pitching and tumbling in on top of the fallen doors, getting trampled by their bonkers brethren as the vocal mob, caught up in their frenzied trance, began streaming in, pouring into the gallery below, and reverberating up through the atrium came their crazed chanters’ cry: “Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“Trip back to Hamanaptra sounds swell right now,” O’Connell said. “Let’s go!”
And they ran in the direction Jonathan had gone.
18
Imhotep’s Triumph
In his own view, Jonathan Carnahan was neither brave nor a coward; what he prided himself on was his resourcefulness, a certain quick-thinking adaptability, no matter how dire the situation.
But as Jonathan exited the museum into the parking lot, where the Dusenberg awaited, he found himself facing a situation so dire it challenged even his deep reserve of self-serving sufficiency: a splinter group of the crazed, drooling throng, which had otherwise swarmed the front of the museum, was staggering toward him, eyes wide and glazed, flesh blistered with sores and boils, arms outstretched like insane somnambulists.
A dozen of more of these zombies were bearing down upon him, chanting at the top of their lungs: “Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
Whereupon Jonathan, skidding to a stop, bugged out his eyes, thrust his arms forward, turned, summoned some drool and intoned: “Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
As the deranged chanters lurched on, heading toward the front of the museum, Jonathan pretended to join in, while actually marching in place.
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
And when the lunatic cluster had moved on, Jonathan, wiping spittle from his face, shaking with fear, but giddy with his own ingenuity, sprinted to the Dusenberg, the only car in the lot, relieved to find it had not been overturned by the berserk horde. He fired up the convertible, hit the gas, and pulled a manic U-turn, drawing up alongside some bushes near the side door of the museum.
Interminable seconds slid by as Jonathan sat, the car’s motor purring; he could hear that rabble within the museum, wreaking havoc, turning treasures to trash; windows on the second floor were shattering as precious artifacts were hurled heedlessly out. Heart racing, hands clammy on the steering wheel, Jonathan wondered how long he could stand to wait, how much time he could give his sister and the others to join him, knowing they might already lie twisted and bleeding and dead at the hands of that lesion-ravaged legion . . .
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
But Jonathan waited, summoning the courage and willpower from somewhere, and suddenly they came bursting out of that side door, O’Connell and his sister hand in hand, the curator and the Med-jai warrior with scimitars in their hands, with Daniels bringing up the rear, revolver at the ready. They jumped and piled into the convertible and Jonathan floored it, yanking the wheel around, tires squealing as they headed for the only way out, the front drive of the museum.
The squealing tires caught the attention of a rare member of the mob, one whose mind was clouded only by greed, not by Imhotep’s spell: Beni.
Jonathan noticed the little scoundrel stepping out of the portal where the museum’s front doors had been, Beni’s face alive with recognition, as—seeing them as they fled in the Dusenberg—he called out, “Imhotep! Imhotep!”
Beni was not joining the chanters, either, but alerting his master.
And as the convertible peeled out of the drive, its passengers looked back with alarm at the sight of Imhotep, appearing in a shattered second-floor window of the museum, reaching out an arm as if from this distance he could pluck them from the vehicle.
O’Connell, in the front seat of the car, Evelyn between him and Jonathan, looked back sharply at Beni, pointing an accusing finger, yelling, “You’ll get yours, you little bastard!”
Beni grinned nastily and waved good-bye. “See you soon, Rick! See you very soon!”
And in that second-floor window, Imhotep—his regeneration more nearly complete, most of the mummy wrappings having dropped away, revealing smooth brown flesh—again opened his mouth wide, jaw unhinging, emitting a horrific, primordial shriek that cut through Cairo like a demented siren.
“Jesus!” Daniels, in the backseat, where he sat between Ardeth Bay and the curator, was slinging a pouch containing the precious jeweled canopic jar on a strap over his shoulder. “What’s the son of a bitch doing?”
“I think,” O’Connell said, looking back to
ward the receding museum, where the mummy’s disease-ridden disciples were suddenly streaming out of the front doors, in apparent pursuit of the Dusenberg, “he’s giving his army new orders.”
The plague had spread across the city, its inhabitants in the thrall of Imhotep, humans turned inhuman, sores and boils inflaming their bodies and their minds. Frantically, Jonathan sought streets free of the roaming crazies, with mixed success, losing any sense of direction, though O’Connell served as pilot, steering him toward the fort. This route took them down a narrow street in the bazaar section, a deserted artery that had the passengers in the Dusenberg trading tentative, relieved smiles. The worst was behind them, apparently.
But the worst was in fact right ahead of them, a gaggle of lunatics swarming out of alleyways and into the narrow tunnel of the street, blocking the way.
Jonathan slammed on his brakes, and the human roadblock began to press forward, charging at them, eyes wide, teeth bared in every pustule-pocked puss.
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
“Back up, goddamnit!” Daniels screamed. “Back up!”
O’Connell—glancing back at a mass of madmen coming up behind them, wielding weapons now, knives, axes, picks, clubs—clutched Jonathan’s arm. “No! Plow through the bastards!”
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
Jonathan hesitated, and O’Connell reached his foot over and punched the pedal, the convertible leaping forward, ramming into the herd, tossing them aside like roadkill, blood splashing the hood of the Dusenberg. Evelyn gasped and cried out in horror, but the murderous mass of deranged disciples gave not a thought to a few deaths among their numbers, and their corpses slowed the car’s progress. Others of the crazed crowd clung onto the car, half a dozen turbaned madmen trying to clamber into the automobile as the group fought them back—O’Connell and Daniels firing their revolvers, then frantically reloading, the Med-jai warrior and the curator hacking away with scimitars, Evelyn just pushing them off, throwing them overboard. Even Jonathan was driving one-handed, shoving, elbowing the lunatics as best he could.
“Im-ho-tep! Im-ho-tep!”
The Mummy Page 19