The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

by Max Allan Collins

  Then he led his little commando team, now reduced to two females (albeit remarkable ones), and they made their way toward the Great Wall, half a mile away.

  Colonel Choi, missing in action since the Emperor’s escape by chariot from the Shanghai Museum, was once again at General Yang’s side. With him, she watched with keen interest as the Emperor, still up there on his own giant shoulder, withdrew his wide-bladed sword from its golden sheath.

  Facing the empty landscape beyond the camp of Yang’s mercenaries, the Emperor plunged his blade into the stone, as easily as if the colossus were made of human flesh.

  In a commanding voice, he shouted, “Awake!”

  That single word echoed across the plain like ungodly thunder.

  And the earth began to tremble, to quake, but not to break apart at its seams, rather to collapse in a dozen places, angling down as if providing ramps into—and up out of—the underworld. A drumming rumbled from the earth, not martial music, but feet, and not human feet, but hard-baked clay, as from each ramplike hole emerged terra-cotta soldiers, moving quickly, with murderous purpose, charging up and out of the hell of their long state of suspended animation and into the light of day, and onto the field of battle.

  Rick O’Connell needed no binoculars to see the swarming soldiers now. He and the two women had made it to the Great Wall.

  “My God,” O’Connell said to his wife. “There must be ten thousand of them . . .”

  “If they get past the Wall, we don’t stand a chance. The world doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Don’t worry—Zi Yuan will give us all a chance, if . . . where is she?”

  They turned and the sorceress, like Alex before her, was nowhere to be seen. She, too, had a job to do, her own job, and the O’Connells did not figure in.

  “Us mere mortals,” he said, “must not get to see the supersecret entrance to the Foundation Chamber.”

  “I’ll forgive her,” Evy said, an automatic pistol in either delicate, gloved hand, “if she raises those zombie reinforcements before that terra-cotta army catches up with us . . .”

  O’Connell knew better than to argue with his wife.

  In the camp of yurt tents, one tent in particular had two guards positioned outside. They had been given strict orders that their lives depended upon guarding the young woman within. And yet they were human—seeing an army of terra-cotta soldiers march up and out of the ground had gotten their attention.

  They didn’t notice one of their number, or anyway someone wearing one of their gray uniforms, walking by with his head down. Had they not been distracted, Alex might have looked suspicious to them. As it was, the first they knew anything was when an unfamiliar voice said in Mandarin, “Sweet dreams,” and, one by one, the men got a rifle butt jackhammered into the back of their skulls.

  The guards fell, still alive, though unlikely to be for long, after their general learned they had allowed their charge to be rescued.

  Because that was exactly what Alex was doing—he went into the tent, untying the wide-eyed Lin, who said, “How can you be here?”

  “A dragon didn’t bring me,” he said with a grin, “but you should’ve known I wouldn’t give you up without a fight.”

  Her mouth frowned but her eyes smiled. “Oh, Alex. This is a bad idea . . .”

  “Oh, yeah. The worst.”

  Then he kissed her, and she kissed him, and the world stopped for a thirty-second eternity, as if the reality beyond the tent was not a reanimated Emperor Mummy, a megalomaniacal general, two hundred mercenary soldiers and a thousand or two terra-cotta warriors raised from the dead.

  A massive stone door rolled back and Zi Yuan stepped into the Foundation Chamber, breathing in air that bore the staleness of centuries. She moved past the astrolabe and the waterwheel and down the walkway to the great stone staircase. On the domed ceiling high above were corpses protruding in macabre bas-relief, a portion of the souls enslaved by Er Shi Huangdi to hold up his Great Wall.

  The sorceress climbed the many steps to the altar with its stations representing the five elements. Once there, from her garment she withdrew the Oracle Bones she had discovered in the library at the Monastery of Turfan on the Silk Road, so very long ago.

  These bones she tossed in the air with a grace and sureness of purpose, and they landed, unfolding for her to read from them, which she did.

  In ancient Sanskrit she intoned the text: “Open the gates of the past and free the souls of the wrongfully damned . . .”

  On the rolling plain above, a sea of terra-cotta warriors had taken the field in lines—infantry, banner carriers, pikemen, archers, and cavalry, terra-cotta horses as well as soldiers. They marched with an efficiency that was a fascist’s dream, until they came to attention before the Emperor, high above them on the shoulder of the colossus, saying in ancient Mandarin, “Look to me and hear my purpose! Today you awake to a world in the grip of chaos and corruption. With your allegiance, I will restore order and crush the scourge that is freedom.”

  And below, before the altar in the Foundation Chamber, Zi Yuan was saying, “Open the currents of justice and the lost wave of honor. Bring down the wrath of the oppressed onto this evil Emperor and all who follow him.”

  The dusty air began to stir.

  Up above, the Emperor continued: “I will slaughter without mercy. I will conquer without compassion . . .”

  And below, Zi Yuan continued: “In the name of the ancestors and the virtuous, in the body of the suffering, in the might of the one true cause, I sacrifice my immortality and that of my daughter so that you may rise this day and do righteous battle.”

  On the domed ceiling, a skull shook itself loose, as one waking from a long, deep slumber; and then a bony foot extended itself, stretching. As she looked up at this gradual transformation in its beginning, Zi Yuan felt a sudden weariness, and though she did not see it, white now streaked her hair and gentle spiderwebs of age had formed on her face, as her immortality spiraled into the ether.

  And above the Emperor was saying, “I have raised you for one purpose and one purpose only—to enforce my will on the entire world! Only then will there be true peace, under my iron hand.”

  The sound of cheering warriors—both human and terra-cotta—bled down into the Foundation Chamber, but another human sound, a moaning of awakening, could be heard when that martial roar died down.

  Speaking from her heart, Zi Yuan said, “I call upon the hundreds and the thousands to rise up and seize this moment, to take your victory, to take your justice . . . and to take your righteous revenge!”

  Over her head, a skeletal hand emerged from the bas-relief to shake itself with rage.

  The Emperor was about to mount the black steed that was his warhorse when he felt the ground shift beneath his feet and the animal’s hooves. Something was in the air, as well. He frowned, sensing a shift in the very cosmos itself.

  Then he said, quietly, for no ears but his own, “Zi Yuan . . .”

  At the base of the Great Wall, Rick and Evy O’Connell waited, a Russian submachine gun in his hands, a pair of automatics in hers. They could hear and see the terra-cotta soldiers, heading their way. To say they were outnumbered was beyond understatement.

  And then a trench opened in the dirt like a zipper along the base of the Wall.

  O’Connell grinned at his wife. “Here come the good guys . . .”

  The good guys, the reanimated Foundation Army, burst out by the thousands, and never had a sight so horrific been such a relief to human eyes. These were figures in various stages of decay, with only scraps of apparel, yet full of sinew and stringy muscle, and alive with the iron-willed rage of the wrongly killed. With hardly a weapon among them, they nonetheless swooped onto the plain, ready to fight.

  “A pretty motley crew, our side,” Evy noted.

  “I never saw anything so beautiful,” her husband replied.

  The two most unlikely armies ever to take the battlefield now moved into formation. The terra-cotta lin
es of the Emperor clanked into position, spears and shields up. The only representatives of the living were General Yang’s forces, anchoring the red-clay warriors, at the right, left and center flanks with sixty or so men per, ready to teach the ancient soldiers all about twentieth-century armaments, or at least being on the wrong end of same.

  General Yang, with the tall, lovely if scarred Colonel Choi at his side, positioned himself by his jeep, on which was mounted a .39-caliber machine gun. And the Emperor himself, no longer a mummy, sword held high, strutted on his high-stepping black stallion.

  “Archers!” Er Shi Huangdi called to his terra-cotta men in the ancient version of Mandarin they knew so well. “Form up!”

  The front ranks on each flank knelt, long bows in hand.

  And through the front line of the assembled Foundation Army pushed a figure Zi Yuan would have recognized, despite his desiccated condition: another general, a long-dead general returned to make his last stand—Lin’s father, Ming Guo. However the worse for wear he might be, Ming Guo’s sword still gleamed in the sun.

  O’Connell and Evy, from the sidelines, moved in quickly to approach this commanding figure.

  “Sir!” O’Connell said. “We’re on Zi Yuan’s side of this thing.”

  “Uh, Rick,” Evy said gently, “sweetheart—I doubt he speaks English.”

  Even so, the mention of Zi Yuan had registered on the time-ruined face.

  The Emperor’s voice echoed across the wasteland: “Fire!”

  And a thousand arrows took flight as if toward the sun, but arcing down in a deadly swarm, a shadow of death stalking the battlefield.

  O’Connell grabbed his wife by the arm, one of Alex’s Russian submachine guns in his right fist, as they bolted toward a ruined foundation along the wall, its lintel broken. They dove underneath in turn, Evy first, as the deadly rain of arrows fell. They had little room to spare, two arrows pinning O’Connell’s shirtsleeve to the ground.

  The arrows had ripped into Ming Guo’s line, as well, plunging through eye sockets and between ribs and sometimes shattering bones but usually doing not much harm at all. Ming Guo himself took a bullet that would have been in his heart if that organ hadn’t long since decomposed; he plucked it out and threw it aside with a peal of ghoulish laughter.

  Even Er Shi Huangdi could not kill what was already dead.

  Their general’s laughter spread through the ranks, a wave of defiance washing across the field as the skeletal soldiers wrenched arrows from their decayed torsos and pitched them aside with gleeful contempt.

  Er Shi Huangdi was not one to be mocked; he raised his golden sword and yelled, “Charge!”

  Ming Guo’s response was to raise his own sword and respond with a battle cry of, “Freedom! Freedom!”

  As the epic clash began, the two armies of the undead ran headlong toward each other, the terra-cotta minions of the Emperor against his risen murder victims.

  O’Connell, tearing his sleeve, freed himself from under the ruined foundation, and he and Evy ran to take cover behind some rocks, from which they began picking off terra-cotta warriors. Under the firepower of the Russian submachine gun, the front line of red-clay warriors shattered like a row of piñatas, sans the candy.

  Pleased with the weapon his son had given him, O’Connell smiled grimly, surveying the shards of scattered pottery, and said, “Welcome to the twentieth century, boys.”

  Elsewhere a phalanx of Foundation zombies was ramming into Yang’s twentieth-century troops, who were getting their own 200 B.C. welcome as modern weapons fired to no avail, the ancient warriors overwhelming them with sheer numbers.

  Yang was holding his own as the zombies bore down on him and, blowing off the skull of one, he saw the rest of the skeleton drop like the pile of bones it was, and the general made a useful discovery.

  “Shoot for their heads!” Yang yelled to his men. “Take off their heads!”

  His men followed orders, and machine-gun bursts and swinging bayonets did well with the undead attackers, although those who survived commandeered guns and, at first, used them as clubs, until observation of their foes taught the Foundation warriors quickly how to use these fire sticks. Possessed now with German-made machine guns that Yang had assigned to his best men, the zombies were quick studies, firing off full auto clips and decimating a wave of Yang’s flesh-and-blood troops.

  On the battlefield, Ming Guo’s zombie warriors were throwing themselves wholesale at the terra-cotta enemy; many of the Foundation warriors were destroyed in the effort, but others armed themselves with the fallen swords and spears of their foe, and hand-to-hand combat broke out between clay soldiers and zombie warriors.

  At an ammo dump in General Yang’s camp, munitions were being shuttled to the front by couriers on Triumph motorcycles with sidecars, the latter to be piled with ammo boxes and spare rifles. Two such couriers had just mounted up and were speeding toward the front when—from either side, where they’d been hidden behind tents—Alex and Lin knifed through the air, feetfirst. Kung fu kicks took both couriers out, flipping them off their bikes, with Alex and Lin dropping down onto the empty seats to take the couriers’ places.

  This exchange had not gone unnoticed, but Alex and Lin quickly throttled away, gunfire chasing but not catching them.

  Alex’s mother and father were not doing as well. They were out in the open now, their position having been overrun by terra-cotta infantry. O’Connell changed magazines on the Russian submachine gun and blasted the nearest warriors into dust and shards. They were retreating toward what they hoped would be sufficient cover, and Evy was blasting away with her twin automatics, as O’Connell’s PPS 43 laid down general cover and created considerable destruction.

  As he took one or two terra-cotta soldiers out at a time, with short bursts from the Russian weapon, O’Connell made his feelings clear: “I . . . really . . . hate . . . mummies!”

  More warriors were roaring toward them, spears out to run the couple through, archers firing with long bows.

  “I think,” Evy said, “the feeling may be mutual . . .”

  O’Connell concentrated his hellfire on a line of warriors nearby, cutting them in half. A half-decapitated terra-cotta soldier kept coming, screeching at them in ancient Mandarin.

  “Shut up, clayface,” O’Connell said, and gave it a vicious rabbit punch and the walking statue exploded into fragments, neither walking nor a statue any longer.

  All across the battlefield, the lines were engaged, a battalion of terra-cotta warriors charging forward when they heard a sound unfamiliar to their ancient ears: engine roar.

  Specifically, the roar of two motorbikes, mowing through their red-clay ranks. The warriors began to close those ranks, to overwhelm the intruders, but Alex unpinned a grenade and lobbed it to a terra-cotta commander.

  “Catch!” he said.

  Reflexively, the commander caught the ball, not sure what it was exactly. And he never was sure, as it exploded with a blast that turned him and many around him to so much reddish-brown powder, a dust cloud through which the twin motorbikes roared.

  Er Shi Huangdi, astride his magnificent black steed, was plowing through the Foundation zombies, swinging his sword and taking off skulls. He was thus engaged when he spotted, on a nearby slope, a familiar female figure, just standing there waiting for him.

  “Zi Yuan!”

  He leaped from his saddle and strode toward the figure and in seconds stood gazing up the rise at the woman whose charms he had coveted, so many centuries ago—the woman who had cursed him and stolen everything from him, including his life.

  “Zi Yuan,” he repeated.

  She did not bow to him; her eyes were as hard as they were dark. She remained beautiful, though age had touched her, if lightly.

  She said, “It is time to finish what we started.”

  So on the edge of the great battle, these two venerable opponents sought their own great battle, racing toward each other with swords drawn. When those swords clashed, spar
ks rose, thanks to the strength of this Emperor, who was not a towering figure for all his presence, and this slender woman, who should not have had the power to stand up against such a man.

  But she did, matching him stroke for stroke, blow for blow, until finally they paused, each catching breath.

  Er Shi Huangdi said, “Ming Guo taught you well.”

  “No,” Zi Yuan said. “I taught myself over the ages . . . preparing for this moment.”

  The sword battle continued, each duelist inserting martial-arts moves, leaps, kicks, into the fray, arms and legs a blur, the flashing blades making music, and then the Emperor finally managed to slice across Zi Yuan’s arm.

  And she began to bleed.

  The Emperor reared back and smiled. “So . . . you are no longer immortal.”

  Zi Yuan’s reply was to charge him in a violent flurry. Again he met her every thrust with a parry and she his, though he did not notice when her eyes flicked to the dragon dagger on his belt.

  As they faced each other, clenched hilt to hilt, Er Shi Huangdi smiled viciously. “Know that after I kill you, I will enslave your daughter . . . She will be my new concubine.”

  They continued to trade blows until, finally, summoning all of his power, Er Shi Huangdi knocked the sword from Zi Yuan’s grasp.

  She stood before him, unarmed. “You could have used mastery of the elements over me, Er Shi Huangdi. Why did you not?”

  “You could have used your powers of sorcery against me, Zi Yuan? Why did you not?”

  Neither could answer.

  Then, through a smile of serene confidence, Zi Yuan said, “You will never win.”

  He held out the sword, ready to run her through. “I already have.”

  But she surprised him one last time, plunging herself onto his sword, letting it enter her deep and through and through, collapsing onto him.

  “At last,” he said, “we embrace.”