Eternal Unrest: A Novel of Mummy Terror

by Dixon, Lorne; Cato, Nick

  “Only pretending to be asleep?” Brigham asked, no louder than a breathy whisper, the pitch of his voice laced with parental concern.

  Dara answered, “Uh-huh.”

  On her tiptoes, Priscilla crept up to the open door.

  “And he was talking in his sleep, you say, before … he … changed?” The concern in his voice deepened, a quiver of fear breaking up his words. Pausing, he asked, “What did he say?”

  Priscilla slid half her face into the doorway and peeked inside. Dara was seated on a long workbench. Brigham knelt beside her, holding her good hand in his. Staring at the floor, the girl whispered, “Uncle Tamir says we all die. You shoot. I drowned.”

  “What about Miss Stuyvesant?” Brigham asked.

  Dara raised her head and looked him in the eye. “She’s in the door.”

  Brigham turned, releasing the child’s hand, and stood up. Caught eavesdropping, Priscilla slung herself into the doorway and gave him a guilty smile. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just … I was looking for Mason. And Buddy. There’s a raft …”

  Nodding, Brigham understood the rest without being told. She’d gotten the impression that his job at the British Museum was to solve problems before they had even fully formed. “How can I help?”

  “The men are on deck. We think that the refugees—”

  Brigham ran a hand over Dara’s head. “You stick with Miss Stuyvesant, you hear? Stick to her side like you’re bound by horseshoe glue.”

  Dara reached up, squeezed his hand, and agreed.

  One last look back as he reached the doorway and Brigham took off, sprinting down the hallway. Priscilla knelt down beside the girl. “What were you going to say, sweetie, before you saw me in the doorway?”

  Dara shrugged.

  “What did your uncle tell you about me?” she asked.

  Dara seemed to consider the question, moving her jaw back and forth as if it ran on a gear, and then dropped her eyes away from Priscilla. “He said Briggy got shot and I drowned. But you …”

  “Go ahead. You can say it.”

  Dara’s eyes filled with tears. “He say … that you die all alone in dark, with smile.”

  “Okay,” she said in a whisper. She brushed Dara’s bangs out of her eyes and wiped the tears off her face with her thumbs. “It’s okay. That doesn’t sound too bad, now, does it? Smiling? It sounds lucky—”

  “No,” Dara squealed. “It bad. Very bad.”

  The girl pressed herself against Priscilla and thread an arm behind her head, wrapping her in a tight embrace. Priscilla wanted to tell her that the thing inside Tamir had lied, that the things it said through his lips were just a way to scare her—but she didn’t believe that. She’d seen enough of its power to understand that it might be capable of anything; a creature that lived on after the death of its body might have no limitations at all. So instead of lying to Dara, she returned the hug, careful not to put pressure on the girl’s sling.

  They both wiped their faces as they gently pulled away from one another. “What do you say you help me find Mason and Buddy? They must be around here somewhere, must’nt they?”

  “Okay,” Dara said.

  They searched the lower decks together, only avoiding the engine room—it was most definitely not a place for a young girl—but found no one. Priscilla hurried Dara past the cargo hold doors. Although all the hallways looked the same, even the odd water-stained wall could never be a reliable landmark under the harsh lights; they never became lost. The halls were designed in a simple grid, she realized, and that three right or left turns would effectively turn them around and place them back in a hallway they’d already traveled. With no success, they headed up to the higher levels and knocked on cabin doors. It became a game for Dara, who zig-zagged across the hall, rapping on one door, counting aloud to three, then zipping to the next. Priscilla followed, cracking open each door, Dara making sure that Buddy hadn’t fallen into one of his deep sleeps and hadn’t heard her knocking.

  Still, they found no one. It was like being aboard a ghost ship, endless empty sleeping quarters, beds made with Presidential suite precision, waiting forever for sleepers who would never come.

  Dara hopped up the stairs as they made their way back up to the dining hall in the off chance one of the men had slipped by them and returned for more food. It, too, was empty.

  Shrugging, Priscilla faced her little companion and said, “You ever get the feeling that you’re being avoided?”

  Dara cocked her head to one side. “Maybe they play hide ‘n seeks?”

  “Maybe,” she said, answering in a floating, uncommitted voice. The empty ship was beginning to have an odd, narcotic effect on her senses, as if she’d drifted off to sleep and a dream had taken control, submerging her in a haze. “I guess maybe they’re up on the bridge with the captain?”

  The sound of steel-toed boots on metal snapped her out of her drear. Turning toward the shadowed stairwell at the end of the hallway, Dara slipped behind her leg, the girl’s eyesight more acute, her own eyes taking a few seconds to recognize the new arrival.

  Felix whistled as he walked, one foot perfectly in front of the next, legs scissoring. Hands in pockets, he walked with a confidence in his stride that she hadn’t seen before, as if something had changed in the man. It scared her.

  “There you are,” he said, cocking a thumb toward them. “Mr. Martin has been asking around, wondering where you got to.”

  “Where is Buddy? We’ve been looking for him.” She didn’t even attempt to hide the suspicion that wove itself into her speech. “And Mason, too.”

  Passing under a lightbulb, Felix’s pale face gleamed under the harsh light, blurring into a pale smudge as he passed directly underneath. As he continued on, the light fled and his features came into shockingly sharp focus. She hadn’t noticed his freckles before.

  “Guess I can put an answer to that mystery, then,” he said, speaking through a twisted little smirk, the corners of his mouth turned up in tight, dramatic curves. “Mr. Leland sent them topside to help with the rescue.”

  As he closed in and erased the last few feet between them, she asked, “You’re not helping?”

  The smirk bloomed into a full-blown smile. The ugliest smile she’d ever seen. The spots on his face were not freckles; they were spots of blood. He withdrew his hands from his pockets and waved the revolver. “I don’t have to do none of that work no more, Miss Stuyvesant. For a long time, I’ve been taking orders from men no better than me—bloated old Captain Hilliard and that weasel Leland. No more. Now I’ll be running things. And things’ll be different, lemmetellya.”

  Chapter 14

  Cold wind blustered across the port deck of the Limpkin, icy like the first breath of true winter on the peaks of the Sperrin Mountains, except here Mason’s view was not of quiet Irish farmland but endless waves of black Atlantic Ocean. His breath in the moonlight reflected a million glints of dancing color, but the glitter soon faded, all traces of warmth extinguished by a second gust of bone-chattering wind. Eyes watering, his vision blurring out, he didn’t bother wiping away the moisture. His face was already raw from his sleeve. Across the deck, he watched Buddy Martin strut across the deck, arms folded, face swollen and red.

  He didn’t need any explanations; he sensed it the moment he’d followed Priscilla into the dining hall. Buddy carried a torch, perhaps burnt down to the hilt, but still smoldering. He wondered if Priscilla reciprocated his feelings. He thought of how her body had felt in his arms when he’d pulled her out of the burning truck outside the museum, and then later when he’d held her on the dock.

  “Where are they?” Buddy yelled. There was a sharpness in his voice, a mixture of jealousy and anger and a dozen years of history that Mason could only imagine. As he came close, he saw that the cold was not responsible for the man’s puffy face alone; there were fresh bruises setting in on his cheek and temple. Mason knew the marks of a fistfight only too well.

  “Over there,” he said, po
inting to the spot along the railing where Eli, Brigham, and the three engine room workers huddled. “They’re trying to figure a way to secure a rope ladder off the side, but the wind is making it—”

  Buddy kept walking, heading to the men. “No, no, that’ll never work. What we do, we use one of the lifeboats. They already got deployment winches. We lower it down, they hop on board, we reel ’em in like a marlin on the line.”

  It was a good idea, he had to admit. He would have preferred Buddy to have come up empty, or better yet, tossed out an unworkable idea. But the lifeboats were the best option. “Sounds okay to me.”

  “That’s good that it sounds okay to you, ’cause it’s exactly what we’re doing.” Buddy moved past the engine room workers. They jumped out of his way like pins falling away from a bowling ball. Before the moment they scattered, Mason hadn’t noticed their fresh bruises.

  Buddy told hold of one of the winch’s hand cranks. Grunting, he leaned into the mechanism, shoulders and biceps bulging from the effort, but the gear refused to turn.

  Eli shook his head. “Don’t know the last time we actually deployed a lifeboat, Mr. Martin. Could be that they’re rusted tight.”

  Mason grinned and stepped up to the lifeboat’s other crank, wrapped his hands around the lever, and yanked it down. The gear screamed, but turned, and the bow of the lifeboat resting alongside the railing dropped an inch. Buddy might have been every bit as strong as he, but the American’s muscles were the product of gym weights, not factory and farm work. There was a difference there that no scientist or mathematician would ever be able to chart, but the proof was in the evidence: his side of the lifeboat hung lower.

  Buddy strained, grinding his teeth together between open lips, until his gear moved, too, at first slower than Mason’s, but then gaining speed. They raced the lifeboat down the side of the Limpkin, each rotation easier than the last. Glittering rust fell from the winches like tiny metallic snowflakes.

  Both sides of the lifeboat hit the water at the same time. Mason stared into Buddy’s eyes and saw a flicker of respect swimming inside an ocean of competitive anger.

  “Aye. Head’s skyward,” Eli yelled down to the men in the raft. Closer now, their silhouettes came into the moonlight, shadows turned into a quintet of heavily-bundled men, wet full length coats clinging to thin bodies. The engine room boys tossed weighted hemp ropes down; two onto the raft, the third went wide into the water. The refugees pounced on the lines and tied them down to stirrups on the raft’s edge.

  Abandoning the third line, the engine room workers pulled on the ropes, leaning back and back-stepping, pulling the raft toward the lifeboat. The ocean current fought hard to keep the raft at sea, but as the men retreated across the deck and more of the rope’s length came back aboard, the Atlantic lost its fight. The raft slammed up against the lifeboat. The refugees leaped onto the boat, one at a time, each careful not to upset the tiny boat’s balance.

  “They’re in, they’re in,” Eli called to the engine boys. They dropped the lines and rushed to the winches. With the added weight of five men, there was no possibility that Mason and Buddy could raise the boat on their own. Crowding in, the men’s hands lined the lever and together they worked the crank.

  “Whoa, slower,” one of the engine room boys yelled. It was important that neither winch outpaced the other, otherwise the lifeboat might overturn and spill the refugees into the sea. The climb was imperfect; the stern would creak up farther than the bow, forcing Buddy’s team to stop until Mason’s caught up, and then the advantage would shift. Seated, the refugees clung to the sides of the lifeboat, sometimes sliding but never in danger of falling overboard.

  The lifeboat came to rest alongside the railing, hull tapping against the Limpkin’s side. Mason and Buddy locked the winches down and tested the lines to prove they were secure, before reaching out and helping the five refugees over the rail and onto the deck. Unshaven and shivering, the men looked to have spent several days out at sea, but a quick glance at their hands showed no signs of frostbite, and none had any outward signs of exposure-related disease.

  “Are you all okay?” Eli asked, his voice still raised to overcome the constant echoing winds. “Are any of you hurt?”

  The last man to come aboard kept his head down, face obscured under a ragged wool hat, but said, “We’re fine.”

  The voice, barely audible against the wind, sent a chill down Mason’s spine. Judging by the lack of reaction from the Americans, he guessed they weren’t able to pinpoint the refugee’s accent, but he could. He’d spent a year on the Austrian border in a broken down hostel. The refugees were German.

  The ship’s access door flew open behind them, crashing hard against its backing wall. They turned toward the racket. Priscilla and Dara trudged out onto the deck. Felix followed a step behind, pointing at the back of Priscilla’s head. No, Mason clarified to himself, not pointing, aiming. He couldn’t see the gun’s dark metal, but he recognized the position of Felix’s hand: three-quarters of a fist with an index finger extended.

  “FELIX, WHAT ARE YOU,” Buddy yelled.

  Four of the Germans—all but the man who’d spoken—reached into their coats with both hands and brought out M40 machine guns. Held at their hips, they made no attempt to aim at anyone in particular. Any one of them could have emptied the deck of life with a tug of a trigger and a swing of the hips. Mason instinctively raised his arms in surrender. All of the others, except Buddy, followed suit.

  “I had expected we’d have to board this ship in a more difficult manner,” the unarmed German said, pulling the hat off his head. He was an older man with a long, narrow face and wiry gray stubble. “Under the circumstances, I will understand if you do not believe me, but we’re grateful for your assistance.”

  Felix brought Priscilla and Dara over as the German soldiers nudged the engine room workers into a huddle. One of the soldiers ordered, “On your knees.”

  Two of the workers complied. The tall white man remained standing and stared at the soldier with glowering eyes. “I don’t kneel for you or anyone.”

  The unarmed German motioned to the closest two soldiers. They rammed the muzzles of their machine guns into the back of the kneeling workers’ heads. “You’ll kneel, or these two die. And then you, too.”

  It was already freezing in the night air, but to Mason it felt as if that moment the temperature dropped another ten degrees. Keeping his arms raised, he told the worker, “Do as he says.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t kneel for you, either, Irishman.”

  The white worker spun, latching his hands onto the shaft of the soldier’s machine gun, and twisted it. The soldier fired. The machine gun belted a chorus of heavy, dissonant barks and its bullets tore holes in the deck at his feet.

  The other soldiers fired. The black worker and the man with the hair lip both dropped—small, smoking holes in the back of their skulls, faces blown out by wide exit wounds.

  Struggling with the soldier, the white worker had no opportunity to block the blows that followed from the other soldiers. They hit him low, cracking ribs with the butt of their rifles, until he collapsed.

  “Don’t waste the ammunition,” the older German said.

  The soldier reached into his coat and withdrew a long hunting knife. With a single smooth swipe, he swept down, arching the blade and slicing across the tall man’s throat, lacerating the major blood vessels, and twisted. He dropped a knee onto the worker’s temple to pin him down as he thrashed. The man’s warbling scream, distorted by the gash in his throat, didn’t float up to Priscilla’s ears as she might have expected. Instead, it struck her as if the sound had been funneled through the air directly to her ears.

  The soldier pressed the blade straight down into the worker’s throat, cutting off the scream and blocking his windpipe. The gasps were worse than the scream—and louder—until finally the worker’s body flattened to the deck and his mouth went slack. When the body finished twitching, the soldier wiped off his
blade and stood.

  “There won’t be second chances,” the older German said. “We’ll keep this simple. My name is Dr. Gottfried Oelrich. These men will do anything I tell them. So should you if you wish to survive our journey. Everything on this ship is now my property, including all of you.”

  As Felix nudged them into the remaining huddle, Dara broke away from Priscilla and wrapped her arms around Brigham’s legs. He told her, “Hold on and close your eyes.”

  Buddy spit onto the deck. “This is a private ship. You’ve already killed three Americans. You’ve opened up a can of worms here, Doc. What d’you suppose your superiors are gonna do when they find out?”

  Dr. Oelrich smiled. “My hands are not guided by Germany. The Party and I … had a parting of ways. The Leader is too concerned with personal philosophy to ever really embrace the future of the Aryan race. They ran me out—they had their reasons, I suppose—and set their dogs at our heels. But none of that concerns you, except this: I’m in no position to lose and I’ll do anything to succeed. You should fear that.”

  Buddy wrinkled his nose. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “It appears you are not,” Dr. Oelrich said, pulling a small, stub-nosed pistol out of his coat. “Which means, of course, that you’re of little use to us, but I have a solution for that.”

  He fired twice, low. Rocked by the shots, Buddy bent in half at the waist, hands pressing against the twin wounds in his abdomen. Crumbling to the floor, he let out a string of quick barks.

  Priscilla screamed and bolted toward him. The soldiers stepped into her path before Dr. Oelrich motioned for them to let her through. She dropped down on all fours beside him.

  “His wounds left unattended, this man will die. This is not hypothetical, it’s inevitable; I placed my shots very carefully. His large intestine is seeping toxins through his body. The blood loss will be slow, but steady. He will agonize.” The doctor buried his gun back inside the folds of his coat. “I have the tools and the knowledge to save him. But the decision is yours. He will be moved inside where I will stabilize him. If there is no resistance from any of you, I’ll save his life.”