by S. L. Duncan
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The boat docked off a pier outside the riverside town of Qinā just as the morning sun broke the horizon. As they debarked from the cruiser, Gabe noted that the water had returned to its normal blue color. But whatever Micah had done had left its mark. Hundreds of single sail fishing vessels were landed on the riverbank, and several cruise ships docked along the boardwalk carried a crimson stain on their hulls.
It had not gone unnoticed, either. Thousands of locals and tourists gathered by the Nile to observe the strange occurrence, discussing what it meant while snapping their cameras. The growing crowd seemed calm, though in the distance Gabe could hear occasional screams from women or the berating shouts of frightened men who must have believed the stains on the boats to be something more.
“They seem only mildly curious now,” his father said, walking up the boarding plank to the pier. “But wait. Soon the fear of the most terrified will spread from person to person. These people live among the Valley of the Kings, a land haunted by ancient tombs and temples built to powerful Egyptian gods. Their superstitions run deep. We have little time before chaos seizes the city.” He handed Gabe his bag. “Wait here.”
Gabe stood with Micah while his dad moved ahead to speak with the ship’s captain. After a moment he returned with a name and an address written on an Egyptian five-pound note. “I got the pilot’s contact information. The captain said he set up a meeting before we left Cairo.”
“But he’s in Luxor, right?”
“Correct. And we’re in Qinā, an hour or so north by rail. I don’t know if that means we’re going to be late or early, but we should get moving. The station is within walking distance. Generally, we’re safe in the city, and English, I am told, is common with the area being so prone to tourists. Just be aware and keep your eyes open.” His father glanced at a group of Egyptian women walking by, draped head to toe in black burqas. “Micah, you should probably cover your head and face. It isn’t that conservative here, but we’d do well to blend in.”
Micah removed a garment from her backpack and fashioned a makeshift hijab headscarf from it, tucking one of the sides across her face. “The smell of fish is getting to me anyway,” she said.
They walked farther into the interior of the city toward the train station. The streets of Qinā moved with the energy expected in a tourist destination. Palms and other trees lined the streets where visitors and locals shopped under the covered markets. The men dressed equally in Western styles and the long, robe-like jellabiya of the local culture. The colorful awnings fluttered in the morning breeze coming off the Nile. Three-story buildings framed the roads, with laundry hanging outside windows and drying on telephone lines. Satellite dishes looked to be very popular, decorating every roof. Above it all, minarets reached into the cloudless blue sky.
At the Qinā Station, his dad purchased their tickets, and they boarded a train packed with passengers. With only standing room available, Gabe held the bar overhead and watched Egypt pass by in the window, the train hugging the Nile as it rolled south. Flattened land streaked by in flashes of green palms and fields of tall grain growing by the river.
Occasionally, he would glance at Micah to see how she was faring in the sweaty, hot compartment, but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she once again focused on her hands, studying them as if they were now something foreign to her.
Luxor Station was a tourist’s Mecca. The whole place looked like one giant theme park. Posters of ancient ruins and statues lined every wall, along with advertisements for sightseeing tours for the nearby Valley of the Kings. Last-minute souvenir stands crowded the area with maps for those arriving and trinkets for tourists who wanted to remember their experience with a plastic sphinx.
They took a taxi to the address written on the Egyptian pound, a hole-in-the-wall café off the beaten path in a neighborhood near the airport. Its interior was open like a garage to the patio area outside. Sticky strands of fly tape hung from the ceiling, each full of tiny victims, though it seemed to help little.
Inside the building, away from the unbearable heat of the midday sun, local men sat around circular tables, smoking and talking. A single television above the bar broadcast an Arabic news station, though nobody seemed particularly interested. In the middle of the room a solitary fan limped from its missing blade, clicking as it slowly turned.
Gabe and Micah followed his dad to the bar, but the patrons, all of them men, seemed to stop what they were doing and stare at the girl.
She stopped. “I don’t think I’m welcome in here. How anyone ever meets a woman in this country is beyond me.”
“Right. Perhaps you should wait outside,” his father said.
“I’ll go with her. Try and hurry. It’s sweltering out there,” Gabe said.
He followed Micah through the exit and stood close enough to keep an eye on his father, who tried to engage the man behind the bar. He didn’t seem to speak English, so his father showed him the note. He pointed to a man sitting in a corner by himself, reading a paper.
The pilot, Gabe thought. He watched his father order two teas and then take them to the pilot’s table, offering him one of the cups.
The pilot appeared agitated and folded his paper in a manner to make the point. He then held up his watch and threw his hands in the air.
“I think we’re late,” Gabe said, watching. “Or early, maybe. Either way, the pilot isn’t happy.”
His dad tried to appeal to him calmly. Then he bent closer, and Gabe watched his father hold out his closed hand and rub his thumb over his index finger—the international sign for money.
“What’s going on?” Micah asked.
“I think my dad is trying to . . . bribe him.”
“Is it working?”
“Looks like it.”
“Good. I don’t like being here,” she said, swatting a fly from her face. “This heat is absurd, and it smells like rubbish.”
Gabe turned to her, and behind her hijab he could see her angry eyes. “You okay?”
“We’re in bloody Egypt trying to find a criminal to take us illegally into Ethiopia. And if you haven’t noticed, I turned a freaking river to blood this morning. No, Gabe, I am not okay.”
Gabe regretted asking, but he was encouraged that Micah seemed to be opening up. Opening to anger but opening nonetheless.
His father shook the pilot’s hand before walking out of the café. “He’s not a pleasant man,” he said. “Like I suspected, we were late. Among his many subtle qualities is a militant stance on punctuality. Apparently, he had chartered a group of tourists to do a flyover around the Valley of the Kings.”
“So we’re screwed,” Micah said.
“No. Luckily, greed is another one of his qualities, and money talks. And he’s not asking questions. I think he’s about to make his year’s salary on us.” He looked inside his wallet, and his nose scrunched up. “He’ll meet us at the airport in an hour. But if this doesn’t work, you may be right, Micah.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
At Luxor International Airport they arrived to a churning sea of people. Angry mobs had formed around various ATM machines, which had shut down, overwhelmed by use. More than a few times someone grabbed Gabe to plead something in Arabic. When he couldn’t respond, almost every one of them, whether indigent or affluent, repeated what they said in English. They all wanted one thing—cash to buy a plane ticket.
Micah and Gabe took advantage of a few spare seats and rested while his father searched for their pilot. Gabe had visions of a seatless, twin-prop plane stuffed nose to tail with smelly passengers and tagalong farm animals. He could almost see the chicken feathers floating through the cabin on takeoff.
“This place has gone crazy. People seem to be out of their bloody minds,” Micah said as she brushed a long strand of hair out of her eyes and placed the sword in its case in the seat next to her. Even without a proper shower for a day, she maintained a certain poise in her look and manner. The lack of m
akeup had only brought out her natural beauty.
“I think this morning has caught up to us,” Gabe said, trying not to stare at her. He motioned down the corridor.
Television sets hung from the ceiling and broadcast several different news stations. People congregated under them, waiting for information and occasionally pointing at the screen. Images occasionally elicited unified gasps from the viewers.
On one channel, the camera panned to a woman drenched in blood from the river, passing a reporter. She looked stunned. On a different television, journalists reported near the riverbanks, giving on-the-scene commentary or talking to scientists and religious experts. One blurb below a scientist claimed in English Red Algae Bloom Responsible for Religious Panic—Deemed Hazardous to Humans. On yet another channel, an Islamic cleric was being interviewed. He looked unconvinced by the official explanation and seemed to be trying to explain or persuade the correspondent that there was more to the story.
The channel then changed to an international feed. A Vatican spokesperson stood at a podium outside St. Peter’s Square nearly hidden behind a tangle of microphones.
“Micah, look,” he said and gestured to the screen. “The Vatican knows. Maybe they know about us. Maybe they can help us.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. If an archangel can be compromised like Yuri, then I don’t see why we shouldn’t also be concerned with the Vatican. I think it’s better we’re on our own,” she said.
Gabe sank into his seat, knowing she was right. The incessant roar of the airport crowd and the occasional hysterical scream played against his already frayed nerves. He felt jumpy, and the heat inside the airport choked the oxygen from the air.
“What’s wrong with you?” Micah snapped and leaned away from him in her seat. “You’re on my last nerve. Like a puppy in a thunderstorm.”
“I think I’m freaking out. Things are changing so fast, I can’t keep up.”
“Deal with it,” she said. “We no longer have the luxury to be scared.”
“Really? What about you? Bulletproof all of a sudden? An emotionless robot?” Gabe asked, surprised by his quickness to anger. “Don’t act so tough around me. You’re human, too, and just as scared as I am.”
“This is our task,” Micah said. “And I mean to finish it, whatever it takes. Carlyle would want nothing more from us than that. We do what we can and, if possible, what we were meant to do. Whatever else is left of all this”—she motioned to the crowd and airport—“whatever is left of us, if anything, will be decided soon enough.”
Gabe looked deep into her eyes. They exuded a strength and confidence in knowing who and what she was becoming. She’d accepted this new reality. He could only hope he would soon find the same inside himself.
His father pushed through the crowd and sat down beside them. He looked tired. “We’re leaving. Now. The pilot’s ready on the tarmac. He said the whole damned region is falling apart around us.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gabe.
“News of the river has gone international. Videos of the blood in the river taken by mobile phones have reached the Internet. Riots are breaking out along the Nile, all the way to Cairo. Some of the most powerful religious leaders are trying to take control of the government, convinced that what happened is a sign from God that gives them authority. There’s talk of military action, which would close the borders and all airports. People are desperate to get out of Egypt but not just tourists and foreigners. It seems a large population of locals is fleeing, too, and for some reason, Ethiopia has suddenly become a popular travel destination. If we don’t go now, we could be stuck.”
They got on the plane, and Gabe sat in the cramped space of his seat. At last, he was overcome by the lack of sleep, and before drifting off, one final question slipped through his mind. What exactly is waiting for us in Axum?
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Gabe, wake up. You need to see this.” Micah shook his leg and brought him out of his slumber. He’d drifted off for a brief nap since renting the old Land Rover at the airport outside Axum.
The discomfort of the day’s travel in the rickety plane ached in his lower back and legs. He tried to sit up in the seat but felt a sharp pain in his side. Something stuck into his abdominal muscle. He checked his ribs with his hand. None of them seemed to be out of place, but he still wondered if one had been cracked by Yuri’s kick.
“What’s going on?” Gabe struggled through a yawn.
The vehicle had slowed to a crawl, its engine drowned out by the sound of panicked voices. Not yet accustomed to the bright setting, he strained to see outside the Land Rover.
“We’re in Axum city center,” Micah said from the front seat. “Look.”
An Ethiopian face bashed against Gabe’s window, leaving a splash of sweat on the glass. All the weariness in his body jolted out of his system. The man pounded his fists against the door. Tears rolled down his face.
Gabe recoiled. “What’s happening?”
“A good question,” his father said from the driver’s seat.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of refugees lined the main road of Axum, standing next to shelters and tents in a mixed street of residential houses and roadside markets. Women, children, and men waved their hands and white cloths at the passing SUV. One small group knelt around a man who held a cross and his open palm to the sky.
The Land Rover passed a crying woman. She held her baby to the window.
“Something is going on here. I doubt Axum has a population that amounts to a tenth of this crowd.”
“Looks like there’s been some sort of . . . migration here,” Gabe said.
“Like in the book of Exodus, you know? When Moses escaped to Mount Sinai,” Micah added. “To the promised land.”
“You may be right,” his dad said. “My indications are that this road leads straight to the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. If the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle of God are both found here in these hills like the Ethiopic Christians believe, the church seems like our best chance for getting answers.” He peered through the refugees. “We’re nearing a gate. The road is ending. This must be the place.”
Gabe followed his father’s gaze. Ahead, above the crowd, an oasis of tall, thick trees could be seen behind a large fence that reached nearly as high as the trees. He found the leafy foliage odd amongst the dry dirt- and boulder-populated orange landscape surrounding the rest of the area.
Spotlighted towers separated sections of the chain-link barricade that reached around the compound and appeared new from the freshly turned soil at the base of the metal posts supporting the structure. It looked more like a prison than a church. Gabe noticed buildings partly obstructed by the foliage, including a small square structure to his left, its gated garden bordering the larger fence surrounding the compound. Farther into the compound, the white dome of its largest building, resembling a mosque without a minaret, peeked through the greenery.
The crowd prevented the SUV from advancing. Another frantic man threw himself on the hood of the Land Rover. He pounded on the windshield and motioned to his mouth.
“We have no food or water. We cannot help. I’m sorry. Please let us through!” His dad honked the horn.
More and more people surrounded the vehicle, and the crowd swelled the closer they got to the gate. They shoved each other, trying to get to the SUV. It rocked back and forth from the bodies that stacked against the sides. Some were getting hurt, crushed. They cried out in pain.
Ahead of the vehicle, automatic gunfire crackled over the SUV.
The crowd cowered from the sound as they scattered and fled, leaving the vehicle exposed and alone on the street.
Men dressed in military fatigues stood atop a set of concrete steps that led to a fortified compound behind a gate covered in barbed wire. They shot their Kalashnikov machine guns randomly into the air. Warnings spat from the guards toward the refugees, scaring them farther away from the vehicle, emphasized by more shots over th
eir heads.
One soldier pointed his gun at the Land Rover.
Micah cursed and tried to get the sword out of sight.
His dad threw the gear into park and took his hands off the wheel, holding them up. “Nobody make any sudden moves. I’ll get us out of this.”
Inspired by hours of action movies, Gabe’s imagination let loose on what the weapons were capable of doing to a person. In his mind, bodies lay in pools of blood, torn to shreds by bullets.
The gunfire ceased, and then the soldiers leveled their sights on the Land Rover as its engine idled.
Gabe held his breath and waited for the worst.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
On the steps behind the line of soldiers, a monk in a white robe appeared, his head wrapped with a ceremonial prayer shawl, which covered his ears and draped to his shoulders. He motioned to one of his men who wore a blue beret, different from the seemingly standard issue of desert yellow that adorned the others. The officer approached the monk and bowed his head.
“Look,” Gabe whispered.
The monk pointed at them, and the officer shouldered his weapon. Then, with a snap and rhythm similar to that of the Kalashnikov’s gunfire, he barked a string of orders to his platoon.
“Just cooperate, you two. This is all merely a misunderstanding,” his dad said in an attempt to steady their fears.
Gabe watched three soldiers surround the vehicle, one for each occupant. Micah’s door opened first, then his father’s and finally his own. The soldiers yanked them from the SUV, wrenching them out by their clothes.
Micah tried to protect the sword but was thrown to the ground before she could get the case. She jumped up, defiant, but another soldier seized her and held her back.
The old monk saw this and shouted to the soldiers. His father’s hands were put on his head as another soldier searched his pockets.
On the officer’s command, the other soldiers followed suit, searching Micah, then Gabe. Their hands were uncaring—squeezing their arms and legs, yanking at pockets. One of the soldiers pressed against Gabe’s side, and he gasped in pain from the pressure on his bruised ribs. Soon the soldiers had their passports and wallets. With the Land Rover emptied of its occupants, the soldiers herded their prisoners toward the steps of the gate.