Turning on his heels, O’Connell ran back the way he’d come, flew through the archway, and took the stairs two and three at a time, figuring the dead soldiers were right behind him—never dreaming that they’d race out of the archway and, defying gravity, walk down the walls, like spiders, and up on the ceiling above him.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, O’Connell whirled, sword in hand, ready to do battle—but the soldiers weren’t there! Hearing something clank in back of him, he turned quickly to see the undead bastards dropping from the ceiling and lining up behind him, shields up, weapons raised, ready to attack.
So, what the hell—he attacked them, wading into the bandaged brigade, sword flashing and slashing, thrusting the blade into the trunk of the closest mummy and hurling him into the nearby bog, which splashed blackly, hungrily receiving this offering.
Dueling with another of the mummies, maneuvering the creature toward the slime pit, O’Connell brought his sword back to deliver what he hoped would be a telling blow, and unknowingly jammed it into and through the skull of another of the devils, who’d been coming up behind him with a battle axe. As he followed through with his swing, O’Connell was startled to find a detached head on the blade, but he hit his opponent just the same, with both the sword and the skull, shoving the soldier mummy into the voracious bog, even as the now-headless attacker, still lugging his battle axe, tottered into the muck on his own disoriented accord.
Two more soldiers rushed up to take the place of their fallen compatriots and O’Connell plucked a torch from a wall mount and jammed it into the face of the nearest mummy; apparently those ancient bandages were highly flammable, because the soldier of death burst into flame, a head-to-toe human torch, or anyway inhuman torch. O’Connell kicked the blazing bastard in the stomach, shoving him into his comrade, who similarly ignited, both of them doing a frantic flaming ballet before tumbling into the slime pit, which put out their fire but sucked them under, the bog burping bubbles.
Four of the mummy military remained. Parrying the blows of their blades, ducking the thrusts of spears, O’Connell held his own, until he again found himself at the foot of the stone staircase, and soon was slashing away with the big sword as he climbed, backward, the four skull-faced soldiers skulking up after him.
He kicked the shield of one, which sent the mummy toppling into two more mummies, all three taking a tumble from either side of the open stairway, onto the stone floor. But they sprang back onto their feet, as if that fall were nothing, while O’Connell fought their remaining comrade, sword to sword. With a vicious sideways swipe, O’Connell took the bastard’s legs literally out from under him, dropping him to his bony knees. This success was undermined by the other three mummies making another of those supernatural leaps for a sprightly landing on the steps just above and behind O’Connell.
Swinging around with the sword ready to cleave, O’Connell felt a shield slap his body and send him tumbling back over the shortened torso of the mummy behind him, pitching down the stairs, toppling, losing his sword on the way to the hard stone floor.
And now, unarmed, he looked up at the grinning skull faces of three military mummies, advancing upon him down those stairs with their shields up and their swords high.
In the meantime, Jonathan, finally noticing Imhotep stalking him, continued skirting the edges of the black moat, doing his best to translate the remaining symbols of the inscription. On the move, he called out to his sister, who was fleeing Anck-su-namun’s mummy, that sacrificial knife jabbing and hacking away as Evelyn weaved in and around any barrier she could find. Right now they were back at the altar, circling the thing, playing a lethal round of tag.
Jonathan, now engaged in a similar lethal game with Imhotep, called to his sister, “What’s the Anck symbol that has two squiggly lines above it, a bird and a stork?”
“Ahmenophus!” Evelyn called, and stumbled.
This allowed the mummified Anck-su-namun, who was growing surer-footed by the second, to close the gap, reaching out a withered hand and grasping Evelyn by her throat; the skeletal fingers had incredible force, even as desiccated flesh peeled from the hand. The mummy turned Evelyn’s face toward her own, and Evelyn, already growing faint, air cut off by the viselike grip, found herself staring into the grinning skull mask of a once beautiful woman, whose other hand held high the sacrificial blade.
As the same time, O’Connell was on his back, scrambling awkwardly on his hands and heels, like a crab, looking up at the three mummy soldiers whose swords swung back, then swung down . . .
. . . just as Jonathan was saying, “Hootash im Ahmenophus!”
And the dead soldiers froze, their blades halting an inch from the stunned O’Connell’s face.
Then the mummified trio, in unison, stood upright, turning to face Jonathan at the outskirts of the chamber, where he’d been hopping around, playing keepaway, Imhotep slowly closing in.
Jonathan recoiled at this attention, and said to the dead soldiers, “Don’t look at me!”
But Evelyn, choking under the fingers of Anck-su-namun, called out, “Ca . . . ca . . . command them!”
Jonathan, eyes wide at the scrape Evelyn was in, looked at his soldiers, pointed at his sister, and yelled, “Fa-hooshka Anck-su-namun!”
The soldier mummies turned, and marched toward Anck-su-namun. Imhotep, seeing this, quickened his stride, and closed in on Jonathan.
Help was on the way, the mummies marching, but Evelyn saw the wrinkled corpse bracing to deliver the death blow with the blade, and the Englishwoman summoned whatever strength she had left to throw a right cross into the gray, shrunken face, taking teeth and knocking off rotten flesh, Anck-su-namun stumbling back.
Then the soldier mummies were upon Anck-su-namun, carving and cleaving, the would-be bride of Imhotep hissing her rage and hacking back at them with the sacrificial knife, but quickly falling to the floor, cut to ribbons by the three flailing blades.
“Anck-su-namun!” Imhotep shrieked, as if he were the one suffering the pain, and as Jonathan frantically scrambled away, the High Priest of Osiris was after him.
Still reeling, Evelyn, picking herself up from the floor near the base of the altar, gasping for breath, watched in horror as Imhotep grabbed her brother by the throat, just as the mummy of Anck-su-namun had done to her.
“Rick!” she cried, moving toward her brother. “Help him! Help Jonathan!”
O’Connell, getting to his feet, had witnessed Imhotep’s assault on Jonathan, too, and he ran to recover his sword, watching as the high priest lifted Evelyn’s brother up and off the ground as if Jonathan were weightless, pinning him against a wall. Sword in hand now, O’Connell raced across a stone-slab bridge over the bog, dashing toward where Jonathan struggled pitifully, Imhotep’s robes flapping like black wings, as the regenerated mummy choked his prey with one hand while, with the other, snatched the gold Book of Amun Ra from Jonathan’s grasp, as if removing a dangerous toy from a child’s fingers.
And then O’Connell was there, swinging the big blade like a scythe, chopping off Imhotep’s right arm like a tree branch, the limb thudding to the floor with The Book of Amun Ra still clutched in its dead hand.
Imhotep dropped Jonathan, who slid down the wall, clutching at his throat, making a gurgling sound; but He Who Shall Not Be Named—who whirled to cast a ferocious stare upon O’Connell—registered no fear, no pain, or for that matter blood: Where the dismembered limb had been sliced away, the rot of a decayed mummy showed within.
Imhotep might look human on the outside, but within he was still a desiccated corpse.
“Let’s see how tough you are one-handed.” O’Connell grinned at the monster, hefting the sword with a two-handed grasp.
Imhotep’s remaining arm shot out and grabbed O’Connell by the shirt and hurled him into a pillar, across the black moat, twenty feet away.
Hitting the stone pillar hard, feeling a rib crack, O’Connell cried out in pain, bouncing to the equally hard floor, where he felt
another rib crack. Pushing up, groaning, pain lancing through him, O’Connell saw Imhotep striding toward him, black robes swirling, scowling, his remaining arm outstretched, fist clenched.
Okay, so the bastard was left-handed . . .
Dazed, O’Connell staggered to his feet, looked drunkenly for his sword, which he’d lost on the trip to the pillar, and Imhotep was closing in on him as Evelyn’s voice called out, “Keep him busy!”
“See what I can do,” O’Connell said, and Imhotep slung his remaining arm, like a club, across O’Connell’s chest, and sent the American spinning through the air, crashing into the floor, near the altar, with an echoing slam. O’Connell did his best to get to his feet, but his knees were buckling . . .
Evelyn was at her brother’s side, bending over him, surprised to see him smiling, if somewhat dementedly.
“What . . . ?” she began.
Jonathan, breathing hard, held up the puzzle box. “Got it,” he said, clearly proud that he had mustered his pickpocket skills in the midst of being strangled by a living mummy.
“Get the book,” she ordered her brother, as she deftly opened the puzzle box, petals unfolding into the large, unusual key.
“You won’t be needing this,” Jonathan told the severed arm, as he lifted the golden Book of Amun Ra from its lifeless fingers.
And over by the altar, the regal, unstoppable Imhotep—eyes burning with rage—approached the barely conscious O’Connell, who was having trouble just staying on his feet, and clutched him by the throat, a deadly grip cutting off his air, lifting him off the ground.
Evelyn, kneeling over the book which Jonathan propped up in his hands, worked the key in the lock, and the golden volume opened with a hiss. Her brother held the book while Evelyn quickly turned the heavy golden pages, looking for the incantation, eyes racing over hieroglyphs, translating at record speed . . .
O’Connell, held high in the grip of the mummy’s hand, hung limp, like clothes on a line, was barely conscious, as an evilly grinning Imhotep spoke to him in ancient Egyptian. Evelyn was too busy to translate, but O’Connell—groggy as he was—felt he’d gotten the drift.
“I’m afraid your boyfriend’s finished,” Jonathan said glumly.
“Never,” she said, then called out to him, “Hold on, Rick! Hold on!”
But it was Imhotep who was holding on, to O’Connell’s throat, and now the mummy began to not just hold him there, but to tighten his steel fingers into a stranglehold. Coughing, choking, O’Connell’s body swayed, and so did his mind, in out and of consciousness . . .
It was like being back at the Cairo prison, with that noose around his neck, tightening, his feet kicking helplessly, the world turning red, then black . . . Maybe this had all been a dream, some final nightmare flashing through his last living moments, and he was still on that gallows, just another deserter from the Foreign Legion, hanging, dying . . .
And Evelyn stood, reading from the book her brother held open for her, and faced He Who Shall Be Named, as he strangled the man she loved, and in a loud, firm voice intoned: “Kadeesh mal!”
Imhotep froze, easing the grip on O’Connell’s throat, but still holding him high, and glared at Evelyn.
But there was more than just rage in that glare: fear. There was fear.
“Kadeesh mal!” she cried, voice echoing off the ceiling. “Pared oos! Pared oos!”
Tossing O’Connell aside, discarding him, Imhotep pivoted and stared at Evelyn and his expression was no longer regal, nor enraged: Terror was etched there, sheer terror, as surely as the hieroglyphs were etched upon that golden page from which she’d spelled his doom.
As O’Connell, coughing, weaving, got to his feet, Imhotep turned and stared at the yawning stairway. Through the archway came a sudden, strong gust of wind; but this chill breeze, whipping Imhotep’s robes and Evelyn’s gown, had not been summoned by the mummy.
Evelyn Carnahan, who until recently had not believed in curses, had unleashed this wind, this curse . . .
Through a vortex of wind emerged a black chariot, or a vision of one, as it seemed at once misty and transparent, and yet distinct and somehow real, charging down the stairs, neither the wheels driving the chariot nor the hooves of the two black horses pulling it ever touching the stone, hurtling down the steps nonetheless, with a jackal-headed driver—Anubis, a god who had apparently come to discipline a headstrong high priest.
Imhotep stood, facing this vision, with arms outstretched, a posture as close to surrender as possible for this proud man, and the chariot plowed right through him, circling through the vast chamber, dragging a black, semitransparent image of Imhotep behind—though the man himself still stood there, slumped. Evelyn could only wonder: Was that ghostlike vision, taken captive by this phantasm of Anubis, Imhotep’s soul?
Wind still whipping them, Evelyn and Jonathan took a quick step back. Though it was only partly visible, this horse-drawn black chariot was making a thunderous racket, and they instinctively got out of its way.
And Jonathan, holding the golden book, tripped, taking a fall, accidentally pitching The Book of Amun Ra into the black slime. As the gleaming volume sunk below the burbling surface, sinking into the black putrescence, Evelyn felt nothing, though her brother looked about to cry.
The chariot charged back up the staircase, Anubis whipping his steeds, dragging that black, misty image of Imhotep, reaching out yearningly, helplessly toward the physical form that was left behind.
And that physical form, Imhotep, the mummy who looked like a man, ran after his departing soul, hurtling up the stairs after it; but the chariot returned to the swirling winds from which it came and, in an eyeblink, disappeared.
Turning, his robes swirling, Imhotep dashed down the stairs. His soul may have been gone, but the rage was still here, his eyes burning with it, teeth clenched in the tanned face.
And he was striding right toward O’Connell.
The American, who had managed to find his sword, braced himself—O’Connell may have not have lost his soul, but he was battered, pulsing with pain, and could only wonder if he had another battle left in him on this strange endless day.
From just behind him, O’Connell heard the voice of the woman he loved.
“Don’t let him scare you, darling,” she said, and hearing her call him that made him smile, even in these circumstances. “He’s only human.”
And as Imhotep neared him, hand poised in that familiar viselike grip, O’Connell swung the blade of the sword up and into the mummy—deep, hard, right through the son of a bitch.
Imhotep’s eyes widened in surprise and pain. Wincing, he looked down at the sword impaling him, touched his stomach, and brought back a hand stained red.
“Tell him he finally got his wish,” O’Connell said, speaking to Evelyn, but spitting the words into Imhotep’s face. “Tell him he’s a man again.”
And Evelyn translated, shouting the words defiantly, and when O’Connell saw them register in the bastard’s eyes, he yanked the blade free, and shoved He Who Shall Be One Dead Sorry Son of a Bitch into the black bog.
Evelyn came up beside O’Connell, slipping an arm around his waist, and Jonathan came up along his other side.
“Good show, Rick,” Jonathan said. “Never doubted you for a moment.”
Imhotep was taking his time sinking, the black slime drawing him down almost lovingly, and he stared up at those who’d defeated him, flushed with princely, arrogant defiance, almost smiling.
Then his head was sucked under by the simmering blackness.
“Is it finally over?” Jonathan asked.
And as if in reply, Imhotep’s shaved head bobbed to the surface and he sneered at the victors, shouting out one last phrase in his ancient tongue. Then the slime pulled him under and he was, at last, truly, gone.
“What did he say?” O’Connell asked her.
Evelyn’s expression had a haunted blankness; she turned almost mechanically to say to him, “He said, ‘Death is only the beginning.’
”
23
The Shifting Sands
While men and mummies clashed in the vast ampitheater, the rats of Hamanaptra scurried about the perimeter, going on about their business, unconcerned about eternal life or undying loves, scavengers concentrating only on their own immediate well-being, their own narrow little existences.
Beni was no exception.
The sounds of battle echoing through the labyrinths of the City of the Dead had meant only one thing to the little thief: The others were preoccupied, leaving him to scurry about, gathering from the treasure chambers of Pharaoh Seti the First (Beni had discovered several more) the precious jewels and golden artifacts, which he stuffed into saddlebags he’d appropriated from the various stray camels that wandered about the ruins.
And while O’Connell, his girlfriend, and her stupid brother waged their hopeless war against the mighty Imhotep, the shrewd Beni made trip after trip, carrying the glittering booty up through the stairway in the temple, which the American expedition had uncovered. Rounding up, and tying up, three camels, Beni began piling the saddlebags onto the backs of the beasts; then he would scamper back down into the underground world, return to one of several treasure chambers and load up more saddlebags. Though any one of the chambers held a king’s ransom and more, Beni was flitting from one treasure room to another, looking for the smaller, more easily transported items: golden baubles, statuettes, loose jewels.
By the time the sounds of battle had died down, an exhausted Beni knew he would have to hurry, as Imhotep (he assumed the high priest would triumph over the mere mortals) came looking for his slave. So, despite his reluctance at leaving so much precious treasure behind, Beni knew this would have to be his last trip.
So he made sure he packed plenty of plunder into these last saddlebags, slinging one of them over an ornate golden staff that jutted from the wall like a fancy coatrack. Leaning against the wall, catching his breath, Beni heard a loud grinding, as if stone was rubbing against stone.
The Mummy Page 24