The Cult of Kishpu

by J. J. Shetland

  The sphinx roared and the boy screamed. Kathy knew going out and showing herself was a risk, but she quickly remembered she was once in a situation like the boy was in when she was very little and she got helped by a very kind and flexible human being. That touching moment was the very thing that inspired her to do always do what she thought was right. The boy’s screaming getting louder helped to make her mind up quickly. She quickly ran out and fired her gun at the sphinx. Blood was pouring out of its back, but it was not paralyzed. It turned around, hissed very loudly and flew at Kathy, but she fired at the forehead. It landed next to her feet. She bent down to examine it. She got stone cold results. Then she saw Rachael running to her.

  “Kathy, you all right?” Then the crocodile spotted the deceased sphinx.

  “I had to, Rach. It was too dangerous and this lad would have been its dinner.”

  Rachael looked at the boy. She didn’t know what to do with him now that he had seen her and Kathy. Then she thought of something. “Maybe Mengy could mind-wipe him of this. If she’s still alive and has the powers to do so, that is.”

  Then Kathy noticed she was only looking at Rachael, who was holding the ammo bags that belonged to Martin and Bowe. “Where are they?”

  Rachael put the weapon bags down. “I saw them get killed by sphinxes. I tried to save them, but they were dead by the time you shot your sphinx. Their murderers flew off with their bodies before I could kill them. I’m sorry I couldn’t do better.”

  At least you did your best. Kathy was just as sad as Rachael was. Even though they only worked with them for one day and they never knew them very well, they were always sad to hear about the death of a fellow soldier in the G.C.A. Army. As they went to help to free the boy from the rubble, the zebra declared, “Martin and Bowe will not have died in vain. We will get to the bottom of this mission and make sure no one else in the world will be at the risk of being the snack of a sphinx with a cobra’s head.”

  Rachael knelt close to the boy. “Don’t worry, young lad,” she said, as she started taking rubble off his legs. “We’ll get you out. If you can understand me.”

  “Of course I can.” The Egyptian boy spoke English just fine.

  Rachael noticed he didn’t seem to be alarmed by the fact he was being rescued by an anthropomorphic zebra and crocodile. “You’re not scared of us?”

  “You guys saved my life from a menacing beast and now you’re rescuing me. I see no reason to fear you.”

  “What’s your name?” Kathy asked.

  “Adofo.”

  She and Rachael finally removed the rubble and tried to help Adofo onto his feet, but he screamed at the top of his lungs.

  “What’s wrong, Adofo?” Rachael asked.

  “My legs are hurting me!” Adofo screamed.

  “Put him back down,” Kathy said.

  Adofo whimpered as the soldiers laid him back down.

  Kathy hoped the loud screaming didn’t alert more sphinxes or whatever monsters were out there in Alexandria. After she gently rolled his black trousers up, she saw his legs had a collection of bruises and scratches. She asked Adofo to wriggle his toes, but he couldn’t. She wondered if his legs were completely broken.

  “How did you get trapped under the rabble?” the zebra asked. After seeing Adofo taking a long, deep, hesitant breath, she thought it must have been a very hard and upsetting story that he had been through. If he didn’t want to talk about it, she wasn’t going to force him to do so.

  But the boy decided to start anyway. “Two hours ago, I woke up after having an awful nightmare in my house. After calming myself down, I noticed the ceiling was raining dust on me. My father and I immediately dived out of the house before the roof collapsed on us. We don’t know what caused it to collapse, but it wasn’t just our house; it happened to every house in our neighbourhood. When we heard there was a sphinx attack, we ran with our neighbours to the Corniche to escape. As my father tried to decide which transport was best to take, he pushed me away before a sphinx pushed him down and bit his neck. After the nasty thing got shot by a soldier, I went to my father and held his hand. He told me to be brave and strong and how proud he was of me before he died. I was really heartbroken and wanted to kill more of those beasts. When I tried to help the soldiers attack a flock of them, they all only got scratched and bit to death. I didn’t have any weapons and I knew I couldn’t attack them with my bare hands so I had to run.”

  Kathy noticed tears were pulling down the boy’s cheeks as his fists were clenched while he was telling them about his father’s death. After a few seconds, he calmly freed his clenched hands and took a deep breath. “I ran through alleyway to alleyway like a maze to lose the beast,” he continued. “Then I ran into this building behind us and hid under the reception desk. After waiting for half an hour, I thought I had lost the sphinx. So I started to walk out when it showed up and nearly pounced on me, but I quickly rolled out of the way. It still chased me to the top of the stairs and I was running out of places to run or hide.

  “Then I saw the only opened window at the far end on the top floor and got out. I only wanted to hang out to let the sphinx pass me, but unfortunately it discovered me and stuck its claws into my hands.”

  Kathy and Rachael were shocked when they saw how deep the claw scratches were on Adofo’s hands. They were long and deep enough to plant a huge row of high hedges.

  “I jumped down before the fangs could bite me. After sliding down from the huge mountain of building sand I landed on, I was relieved until the falling rubble that the sphinx knocked over trapped my legs. I screamed in pain and tried to break free when the sphinx flew above me when I’m assuming one of you shot it down. You know the rest.” Adofo seemed to feel better for getting his painful story out of his system.

  “Well, I believe it’s a miracle that you’re not even dead,” Kathy said.

  Then a radio static was flying in the air. It was coming from Rachael’s radio that was completely made out of wood. She answered it. “Yes, Sergeant Lukeson?”

  “Rhodes?” shouted a male Welsh voice. “Why am I not talking to Corporals Martin and Bowe?”

  “They are both dead, sir,” Rachael replied. “It’s just me and Private Toronto.”

  “How?” demanded Lukeson.

  “Good news and bad news, sir,” said Rachael. “Good news is we’ve found a sphinx. It was exactly what the G.C.A. reports said it was: merciless, bloodthirsty and had a cobra head.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “The bad news is it was so dangerous we’ve had to put it down and Martin and Bowe were killed by two more.”

  “What the hell?”

  “And there’s worse, sir,” Rachael went on, watching Kathy still inspecting Adofo’s legs. “A cripple human boy has seen us.”

  “Good God, Private!” bellowed Lukeson. “You know the rules! You know you are forbidden to make contact with humans, no matter what! And when I say ‘no matter what’, I mean ‘no exceptions’! Is that clearer to you?”

  “Yes, sir, but there was no way we could have –”

  “No more crap excuses, understand?” Lukeson roared. “Just meet the rest of us outside of Cairo International Airport and bring the boy with you!”

  “Yes, sir.” Rachael’s radio was cut off. She went over to Kathy who was still comforting the depressed Adofo. “We need to go. Now.”

  “Help me look for something to help take Adofo with us,” Kathy said.

  They looked around the construction yard as quickly and thoroughly as they could.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ten minutes later, Rachael led her friends out of the alleyway. Kathy was carrying Adofo in her stripy arms as there was nothing else to move him around with. There was no wheelchair to be seen for miles and there was no time to look for one. The young boy wasn’t heavy, but the solar panelled AK-47 strapped around Kathy’s shoulder was. Rachael was not only carrying her own solar panelled AK-47, but the ammo bags as well. They were heavier than they looked.<
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  The soldiers were worried about was facing the angry Sergeant Lukeson. He was not just their commanding officer; he was the third-in-command of the whole of Global Creature Alliance. They were worried about what he was going to do to them when the mission was over. He had the power to put them on a charge or get them fired from the army service or even have them turned into meat and dresses.

  Adofo was still finding it so hard to believe that he was escaping a sphinx attack in Alexandria with an anthropomorphic zebra and crocodile that seemed very calm in a battle. He thought he was still having his nightmare back in his bed in his home, but his forehead got bumped when Kathy accidentally slipped on a loose rock and bumped into a wall. That was when he realised that he was not dreaming at all.

  “Sorry for bumping your head, mate,” Kathy apologised to the young boy.

  Rachael stopped her friends from moving and tried to listen out for something.

  Adofo thought he could hear sphinx hissing.

  Kathy couldn’t hear anything at all. Then she could hear hissing getting louder by the second. She wondered if it was because these sphinxes had fully grown lion bodies below their cobra heads that made them hiss louder than a normal Egyptian cobra hiss. She turned around to see a whole swarm of sphinxes were approaching them. She looked at the cowering Adofo and then at her solar panelled AK-47. She tried to reach for it, but she couldn’t multitask with holding him. She didn’t trust putting him on the ground in case something could happen to him while she was firing her weapon. Then she quickly looked around and saw something ahead. Seeing the end of the alleyway gave her an idea.

  “Hide at the ride corner, Rach!” Kathy took the left corner on the outside. She sat Adofo down on the nearest metal bin. “And chuck me one of those weapons bags!”

  Rachael took the right corner on the outside and chucked her friend a bag. She took a peek into the alleyway. “They’re still coming! I hope you know what you’re doing!”

  Kathy produced something out of the bag. It was a small grey metal cube with a tiny solar panel in front of a red button on the top. There were six holes on one of the faces. “Ready with Paula’s solar lasers?”

  Rachael produced a grey cube of the same make from her bag and lined it with Kathy’s. “Three, two, one, release the lasers!”

  The animals each pressed the red button on their cubes.

  The top three holes of Kathy’s cube fired red laser beams and connected to the top three empty holes of Rachael’s cube. The bottom three holes of the croc’s cube shot red laser beams to the other cube’s empty bottom holes.

  The charging sphinxes flew straight into the lasers before they had a chance to stop.

  “They’re not turning around or flying above,” Kathy said.

  “Maybe they’re attracted to red lasers,” Rachael said.

  As Kathy watched the sphinxes getting sliced into the lasers, she noticed there were no body parts of them left. There were no fur patches, no bones, no organs and no loose claws. She remembered none of this happening to the sphinx she killed to save Adofo’s life earlier. As she tried to make sense of this confusion, she did notice a pile growing under the lasers.

  After twenty seconds of nothing coming, Rachael and Kathy checked there were no more sphinxes coming, turned the boxes off and put them back in the weapon bags.

  Kathy was glad it was over because the cubes were heavier than they looked. She bent down to check the pile on the ground. It was loose and soft. She got out a small glass jar out of her weapons bag and started to fill it up.

  “What are you doing, Kath?” asked Rachael, putting her cube back in her bag.

  “What do you see here?” Kathy showed her the filled jar.

  “Grey dust. So?”

  “Just grey dust. No bones, no blood, not even a single feather.”

  “Are you suggesting they were manmade?”

  “I don’t know about that, but this is definitely not nature.” Kathy continued to try making sense of this mysterious dust. She remembered shooting a sphinx in the forehead to save Adofo’s life and it died leaving a cold bleeding body, but the sphinxes that went through red lasers turned into mere dust. She was confused as a squirrel not being able to tell the difference between an acorn and a metal nut. Then she decided she couldn’t make her mind up about anything right now as they had no further details. “The sooner we get this to Lukeson, the sooner this weird mission will start to make more sense. Come on, pick up Adofo and let’s get back to our helicopter.”

  She put the glass jar in her weapons bag and followed Rachael who had the other weapons bag and Adofo in her arms.

  The G.C.A. soldiers weren’t happy when they ran to the corner of the nearest building.

  “Damn!” shouted Rachael. “The helicopter’s crushed!”

  And it was. A completely wrecked and torn green UH-1D helicopter was buried under fallen rubble. It was only one hundred yards away from the closest skyscraper.

  “Look, the rotors can’t even be used as a brabantia washing line,” Kathy chuckled.

  “No time for jokes,” said Rachael. “We need to find a vehicle. Come on.”

  * * *

  By the time Adofo and the G.C.A. soldiers reached the long Corniche, they hadn’t found a single vehicle except the ones that were burnt-up cars, bikes and trucks along with scratched-to-death humans lying on the street.

  “No one seemed to have made it out alive,” Adofo said, pointing to the destroyed helicopters. “I remember seeing them all the last time I was here with my father.” He tried looking for him, but some of the deceased humans were no more than bones. He wondered if the sphinxes have been eating those people since he left the Corniche and he started to worry if his father was one of them as he looked for him. Though he knew he was dead, he would have liked to have seen him one last time.

  “No one has seemed to have escaped by sea either.” Kathy was looking at all of the drowned humans and sunken ships floating on the blood-filled sea. The most distant sunken boat made it no more than half a mile.

  “Kathy, look!”

  Kathy saw where Rachael was pointing. Joining the deceased humans were a very tall antelope, camel, stork, flamingo, tortoise, frog, crab and other animals in UK combat uniforms and holding solar panelled AK-47s.

  “They’re Blackpool Squads A to F!” Kathy cried. “The very top squads.”

  “Were the top squads,” Rachael corrected her. “And we’re still the lowest squad in the Blackpool G.C.A. army.”

  “Not anymore,” said Kathy, picking up the deceased soldiers’ weapons. “We can only go up.”

  “Tugson and Skipton won’t allow that and you know why.”

  “I know, but I’m just saying we can’t go any further down. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Lukeson putting us on a charge for not arriving as quickly as he wants us to,” Rachael said.

  “Then less wasting time, more moving,” said Kathy. “And if that’s the worst that can happen, then it’s nothing really to get our stripes twisted about, is it?”

  They kept searching for a vehicle, even though they were getting more tired. They were soon about to crash down without caring that unexpected fallen rubble could smash them to death.

  “Wouldn’t it save time if we asked Mengy to teleport us out of here?” Rachael suggested.

  “It would if she would answer her radio,” Kathy said.

  “Well, maybe she’s too busy,” Rachael pondered. “I don’t know much about these magical demons, but I suppose even they can’t multitask.” Then she looked around. “Hey, I think I saw something. Come on.”

  Kathy followed. “I hope it’s not a mirage you saw.”

  The confident crocodile stopped and pointed. “Do you call that a mirage?”

  Kathy saw a green armoured jeep with four seats inside and a gun turret on the roof. She didn’t know where it came from but she was glad that it was completely unharmed, save for the scratched paint and the smashed windscreen. She got
into the driver’s seat. After meddling with the keys for a few seconds, she was pleased that the engine finally spluttered and roared to life.

  “How’s it going, Miss Mirage?” Rachael teased.

  “Just shut up, put Adofo in the back seat and get the turret.” Kathy knocked all the smashed glass off so she could see proper.

  Rachael made sure Adofo was safe in the back seat with his seatbelt on before she jumped to the roof and manned the turret. “Ready, Kath!”

  Kathy put her feet down. The jeep reversed and did a rough three hundred and sixty degrees turn.

  “Careful!” Rachael yelled, holding onto the gun for life as it spun around like a merry-go-round. After her partner straightened the truck up, the crocodile got back up with a queasy stomach. “I could’ve fallen over! And puked!” And she did. On the road.

  “Rachael, who’s passed their driving test?” Kathy asked

  “All I’m saying is –” Then even faster speed knocked Rachael down again as she heard Kathy laugh her head off. The croc was glad that she had a friend that was a queen of lighting the mood up during the darkest of times.

  The croc got back on her feet and looked around holding onto the turret. When she turned right, she saw more of Alexandria’s burned buildings and deceased bodies of humans and sphinxes, all bloodied, scratched and even heads bitten off. Then she turned left and gasped. “Kathy, look on your left,” she said.

  Kathy looked left. All she saw was more burnt and ripped helicopters. “Are those helicopters ours?”

  “Yep,” Rachael replied sadly. “They’re all Blackpool Squads G to I. They’re nothing but skeletons now.”

  “What about our squad?” Kathy asked.

  “We can only assume they’re alive and fighting.”

  “I really hope so.”

  “Because you don’t want another incident like with Petunia?” Rachael took that as a ‘yes’ because Kathy went silent again.

  Before joining G.C.A., both girls had a human mentor called Petunia Clockson. She was the only human being besides the ones at the secret animal protection organisation on the planet that wasn’t scared of talking animals and would give them a home. She was the kind one who rescued Kathy when she was very young and taught her how to be good, kind and helpful. She raised her and Rachael in her solitary wooden orphanage in the heart of the Canadian Rockies since they were very little. There were other young animal orphans, but Kathy and Rachael had always been the closest of friends. So close that they developed a sisterhood between them. By the time they were teenagers, life with Petunia at her orphanage came to an end when it caught fire and she got trapped in the building. She never made it out. Immediately after, they were discovered by G.C.A. and signed up as soldiers. That was all Kathy and Rachael ever said about their past. No more than that.