“Havlock!” O’Connell cried. “You are one hell of a pilot! You just faked out a sandstorm!”
“That’s a first for me, lad!” Havlock yelled giddily.
But the wall of sand was arising, reshaping itself after its crash into the volcano, and chasing them; incredibly the sands seemed to be gathering into an image straight out of hell!
O’Connell was staring into a giant face formed in the cloud of sand—the face of Imhotep!
O’Connell, sitting in the gunner’s position after all, latched on to the Lewis machine gun, cocked the bracket, and blasted away at the looming visage, which seemed to laugh as the bullets passed harmlessly through, a wide laughing mouth which seemed about to envelope the plane, as if to gulp it down, a little snack for the huge orifice . . .
And then it did.
“Stop!” Evelyn screamed in English, seeing the plane swallowed into the cloud of sand. Then she repeated her appeal in ancient Egyptian.
But Imhotep seemed not to hear her, now; his eyes were almost closed, his brow tight as he gazed into the sand-obscured sky. He was lifting his arms, hands clenching and unclenching, as if the grains of sand were his orchestra and he their conductor.
Within the storm, the biplane was spiraling toward the earth, sucked downward in a whirlpool of sand, engine roar drowned out by the howling wind, over which the only thing that could be heard was the joint scream of terror from the men strapped onto the wings of the biplane. O’Connell, bracing himself for impact, thought he heard something else, from the pilot whose seat was back-to-back with his: laughter.
“Here I come, lads!” Havlock was yelling with maniacal glee. “Hold a place at the bar for Winston Havlock!”
Perhaps, O’Connell thought grimly, holding on to the sides of the plane, flying with a suicidal pilot had been less than an inspired idea . . .
Pacing the desert floor, Evelyn, chest choked with despair, watched the wall of sand in the sky, knowing her friends were caught within, drowning in that dry sea . . .
Whirling toward Imhotep, to curse him, she froze: The sight of him, standing there lost, locked, in concentration, told her what she must do.
She strode up to the handsome, unwrapped mummy and grabbed him by the arms and pulled him to her. She licked her lips and hooded her eyes and said, in ancient Egyptian, “I have been waiting for you, all these thousands of years, my love. What kept you?”
And she kissed him full on the lips.
Imhotep drew away, surprised; but as he gazed into Evelyn’s face, his eyes softened and surprise turned to lust as he kissed her, deeply, hungrily . . .
. . . unaware that the wall of sand was collapsing from the sky, falling like a sheet of arid rain. The biplane—still spinning—emerged into a clear sky, and dropped down over a towering dune, into the Hamanaptra valley.
A blast of sand blew into the air—not Imhotep’s work, but that of the biplane skidding to a stop. The sound of the crash landing alerted Imhotep to what had happened, woke him from his lustful reveries, told him that he had been tricked into breaking his concentration, and used by this twentieth-century wench, who—sneering at him—was pushing herself out of his arms, contemptuously, spitting disgustedly into the sand in rejection of his kiss.
Imhotep bellowed his rage as he backhanded her, knocking the woman to the sand; but she just sat up, sneering at him defiantly, wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
Though the sand had slowed and softened the biplane’s landing, it had flipped over and, like a bug on its back, skidded up atop a dune, in which the plane’s nose burrowed.
O’Connell dropped out of the gunner’s seat, onto the sand, hauling down his gunnysack, and leaned against the upside-down plane, catching his wind.
“Would I be imposing, terribly,” a voice reasonably posed, “if I were to ask you to provide just a little help—if it’s not too much bloody trouble!”
O’Connell glanced at Jonathan, looking at him with wide eyes from under the wing where he was still strapped on.
“A moment, Jonathan . . .”
“A moment!”
“I have to check Havlock . . . This plane is precariously perched—feels like it could slide down that dune, nose under the sand, and I have to get him out of that cockpit!”
But when he went to check, O’Connell found Havlock slumped at the stick with a foolish smile under the walrus mustache, his neck broken—snapped on impact, apparently.
The biplane, however, was moving, or rather the sands under the plane were—caused by nature, not Imhotep, but dangerous nonetheless—and O’Connell quickly untied Jonathan. Ardeth Bay had managed to get his hands onto his scimitar and was able to cut himself free. The warrior took it upon himself to unfasten the Lewis machine gun from its mount, throwing the cartridge belt over his shoulder and hauling his prize away. Helping Jonathan, whose head was still reeling, O’Connell followed Ardeth Bay toward an outcropping of rocks.
The sand beneath their feet was shifting again, sinking under their feet, and the plane was moving, sliding down the slope of the dune, nose first.
They made it to the rocks, the ground solid enough to risk pausing, and from this vantage point they could see the biplane sliding down the dune and into a vortex of sand that sucked the ship and its brave pilot into an unmarked grave.
O’Connell took a deep breath, threw Havlock a quick salute, and nodded toward the ruins that lay sprawled across the desert before them.
The City of Dead had already claimed Winston Havlock; now, as they trudged toward Hamanaptra, they knew all too well who its next three permanent residents were likely to be.
20
Too Many Mummies
Under the blistering morning sun, the ruins of Hamanaptra lay scattered like a child’s discarded building blocks. The lonely welcoming committee of stray, abandoned camels, subsisting on desert brush, still awaiting their dead masters, met O’Connell and his two companions at the periphery of the City of the Dead, the animals eyeing the newcomers hopefully.
No sign of the captive Evelyn, the monster Imhotep, or his sycophant Beni.
Somehow O’Connell knew that the mummy had beaten them here, that He Who Shall Not Be Named was already underground, preparing to raise his lover from the dead, at the expense of an innocent girl’s life.
It was as if they had left this site hours ago, not days—the ropes still dangled into the crevice near the open shrine with the half-buried statue of Anubis. From his gunnysack, O’Connell removed several torches, their nubs presoaked with kerosene, kept one, and passed the others to Jonathan and Ardeth Bay, who was lugging the heavy Lewis machine gun.
Before they descended into the darkness, however, O’Connell—using a compass—walked the ruins, according to the directions the late curator had given them: “The statue of Horus should be located fifty kadams west of the Anubis statue.” At the base of the Horus statue should be a secret compartment with the gold Book of Amun Ra, which could banish Imhotep and save Evelyn . . .
“All right,” O’Connell said, standing on a small sand dune, under which—presumably—was the statue they sought. “Now we know the direction we have to head in.”
And they dropped down into the embalming chamber—Jonathan’s “mummy factory”—and, with O’Connell leading the way, lighted torch in hand, watching his compass, they began their underground trek through tunnels and caverns and chambers, toward the statue of Horus.
“Can you read from this gold book,” O’Connell asked Jonathan, the group ducking low in a narrow passageway painted orange by their torches, “if we find it? Your sister may not be in any condition to.”
“I’ve had some training,” Jonathan said stiffly.
“Answer my question.”
“I can definitely . . . possibly . . . read it.”
“You can read ancient Egyptian.”
“Yes . . . Enough to order off the menu, anyway.”
O’Connell winced; the fate of the woman he loved depended on the
skills of her simp of a brother. It was enough to make him long for another ride with Winston Havlock. Then again, maybe they’d all be meeting up with Winston soon enough . . .
Before long they were making their way down a winding narrow staircase, cut right into the face of the rock, heading into the dark depths of the underground city, a stairway that seemed endless, as if it might extend into hell itself.
But they finally reached the bottom and were moving across a sandy-surfaced floor, as O’Connell followed his compass.
After a while, O’Connell asked, “This statue—what the hell does this Horus look like? Lion head, ram head, dog head?”
“Falcon head, actually,” Jonathan said. “Cute little fellow with a big beak.”
That Jonathan had any Egyptology knowledge at all was reassuring to O’Connell, who pressed forward into the darkness. His torch soon revealed that he’d led his trusting little party to a dead end: a passageway which had caved in on itself.
“We need to go through here,” O’Connell said, holding his torch close to the rock pile blocking the way. Looking carefully, he said, “I think it’s navigable, just beyond this entrance. We need to start clearing this stuff away.”
And they did, or at least two of them at a time did, as the quarters were cramped. On one of his breaks, Jonathan Carnahan noticed a grouping of jewels embedded in the nearby wall, glittering purple jewels arranged in the shape of a scarab.
Upon closer examination, Jonathan realized that the jewels were themselves shaped like those dreadful beetles whose skeletons had been discovered in Imhotep’s coffin. As the late Warden Gad Hassan had been before him, Jonathan was ignorant of the relative worthlessness of such semiprecious stones, the purple quartz winking at him attractively, like the jewel in a belly dancer’s navel.
With thumb and middle finger, Jonathan tested each stone, finally discovering one that seemed loose; he jiggled it, trying to free the scarab-shaped gem, and the object popped out. Dropping it into his palm, holding it there, Jonathan studied the stone, amazed to see the thing begin to glow, pulse with a light from within. Was something inside there? Something . . . wiggling?
“I say, lads,” Jonathan said. “Take a break and look at this! It’s quite remarkable . . .”
And then the scarab stone showed Jonathan just how remarkable it was, breaking open on its own accord, like a nut breaking out of its shell, and suddenly a real beetle was wriggling from the quartz cocoon!
Yelping, Jonathan immediately tried to throw the thing off his palm, and the gemlike shuck went flying . . .
. . . but not the vicious dung beetle, which already had begun to burrow into, and under, his flesh!
“Dear God, help me!” Jonathan screamed, and he began to dance in pain.
Whirling from the rock pile, O’Connell recognized the frenzied tarantella immediately: The late warden had danced himself to death with those very steps. Jonathan threw off his khaki jacket and was clawing at his arm.
“Grab hold of him!” O’Connell commanded the Med-jai warrior, and Ardeth Bay latched on to Jonathan from behind, gripping him around the waist.
Instinctively, O’Connell ripped the sleeve off Jonathan’s shirt; something was burrowing up the poor bastard’s arm, you could see it, right beneath the skin, like a bubble traveling up the bicep, as if on its way to his neck, where cords and veins bulged and throbbed!
“Scarab!” Jonathan shouted. “Beetle!”
If he hadn’t been hysterical with pain already, Jonathan might have passed out at the sight of O’Connell whipping his knife off his belt, the blade flashing past Jonathan’s bulging eyes.
And if Jonathan’s screams had echoed throughout the cavern before, now they resounded, as O’Connell stopped the bug’s progress with his blade, then cut the flesh in front of its path, and along one side, digging with the knife tip and flicking the dung beetle from its burrow onto the sandy floor in a splash of British blood.
The black bug was still hungry, however, and went skittering back toward Jonathan whose boot the bug was about to climb up on when O’Connell whipped out a revolver from under an arm and blew bastard away, turning it to jelly courtesy of a .38 slug as big as it was.
Having O’Connell’s bullet cut so close to his foot drew a yelp from Jonathan, whose screams had already subsided to whimpers. He slid down the rocky wall to the sandy floor and sat there, moaning, while Ardeth Bay turned the discarded shirtsleeve into a bandage.
“It’s not a bad wound,” O’Connell said, having a look before the Med-jai warrior covered it up. “Just superficial.”
Jonathan’s lower lip was trembling as he sat there like a hurt, frightened child. “It . . . doesn’t . . . doesn’t bloody well feel superficial!”
“From now on, for God’s sake, man,” O’Connell said, “don’t touch anything! Not a goddamn thing—keep your hands off the merchandise.”
Jonathan swallowed and nodded numbly, then said, “O’Connell . . .”
“Yeah?”
“My, uh, future children and I thank you.”
“We haven’t lived through this day yet. You rest while we get this passage the rest of the way cleared.”
Jonathan nodded again, and sat back, still breathing hard.
O’Connell and Ardeth Bay exchanged expressions, sharing silent knowledge that this little incident was only the smallest indication of trials, tribulations, and terrors to come.
And then they got back to work.
As O’Connell and his little crew had been descending down ropes into the embalming chamber near the statue of Anbuis, Evelyn Carnahan was already deep within the catacombs, the unwilling second of a three-person procession through the necropolis where, three-thousand-some years before, Imhotep and Anck-su-namun had died.
Skirts of her black gown flowing not unlike Imhotep’s robe, Evelyn was not as frightened as she might have been, believing as she did that Imhotep viewed her as the reincarnation of his lover. She was already mentally rehearsing her lines, in ancient Egyptian, so that once he had performed whatever hocus-pocus he had in mind, she could pretend to be the reborn Anck-su-namun, and wait and watch for the right moment to escape.
Ahead of her Imhotep led the way, torch in one hand, the massive, brass-hinged, obsidian Book of the Dead in the other, as they approached a stone slab that served as a bridge over a moat of bubbling black detritus, a foul moat on the edges of which large, hairy rats scurried at the sound of the humans. But a pair of the beasts were not deterred by these intruders, as they were busy feasting on one of their own, a smaller, deceased rat.
“That’s what happens to little vermin like you,” she said over her shoulder to Beni, who was holding his revolver on her.
Beni just laughed at her, then glanced where she was looking and saw the cannibal rats munching on their smaller crony, and blanched.
“You pride yourself on a familiarity with many religions, don’t you, Beni?”
They were crossing the stone bridge now.
“Keeping moving!” Beni said, nudging the base of her spine with the nose of the revolver.
“Well then, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Buddhist concept of karma. Your kind pays, Beni—they always pay.”
“Sure they do.” Beni laughed. Then quietly he asked rhetorically, “They do?”
Moving farther into the catacombs, the group reached a deep, ampitheaterlike chamber, whose walls were cavelike, but whose sandstone floor was as smooth and perfect as any temple’s. A steep staircase, carved in the rock face, emptied into this place. Though cobwebs draped the chamber—which was soon tinted orange as Imhotep glided about the vast room in his black robe, lighting ancient torches mounted on the walls—its stark majesty was inescapable. Statues of Anubis lurked here and there, icons and other precious objects perched on pedestals and mantels, and—most imposingly—a weird altar of heavy dark stone took centerstage. The altar was exquisitely decorated with winged scarabs, cobra heads, and rams’ horns, and as the daughter of Howard Carnah
an, Evelyn could not help being overwhelmed by its dark beauty.
Yet to the hostage of a reborn mummy, this sacrificial altar was less than reassuring.
It was then that the echoes of O’Connell’s scarab-slaying gunshot, reverberating through the catacombs, reached the ears of Imhotep, his guest, and his servant.
The high priest scowled at the sound, even as Evelyn brightened, knowing that Rick, and rescue, had to be close at hand. Hope flooded through her—the man she loved, and her brother, had survived that crash landing into the sand, she just knew it!
But Imhotep’s coldly handsome features were etched with rage. On the altar lay a shattered canopic jar, which (if Evelyn was not mistaken, quickly scanning its fragmented hieroglyphs) contained the crusted remains of some vital organ of Anck-su-namun—probably her heart.
He held in his open palm the decayed remains of the organ—yes, her heart—and gazed upon the desiccated tissue with somber, respectful adoration.
Then he closed his fist, crushing the heart to powder.
Evelyn gasped, shuddered. Beni smirked at her, the way a schoolboy smirks at a skittish schoolgirl.
Black robes sweeping behind him, Imhotep strode to a wall of the chamber, holding the massive Book of the Dead open in one hand like a hymnal, reading from it, reciting an ancient incantation from its obsidian pages. Then he blew into his hand, with the force of a small gale, scattering the dust upon the wall . . .
. . . which began to squirm, as things within it came alive!
Beni gasped, shuddered. Evelyn might have smirked at him for his amazed fear had she not been clutched by the same emotion.
From behind the crumbling walls, in two tiny avalanches, came two living mummies—not handsome and lordly, like Imhotep, but the good old-fashioned brand of living mummy: horrific-looking, bandaged-wrapped, putrid, rotting corpses.
They stumbled toward Imhotep, unsure of their footing—it had been a while since they’d walked, after all—and bowed before him. He spoke to them in ancient Egyptian.
“My God,” Evelyn whispered. “They’re his priests! His long-dead priests!”
The Mummy Page 21