CHAPTER FIVE
“ETA to target twenty seconds, Sergeant Lukeson,” Paula called from the cockpit, holding the flying stick steady.
“Prepare to land,” Lukeson said to Squad J, who were standing up and holding onto the inside handles of their dark green wooden G.C.A. Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter.
Everyone felt much better and more alert after having seven hours sleep. The morning’s blueberry pancakes and super green smoothies for breakfast also helped to give them the energy they needed.
“Okay, Guzman, down we go,” Lukeson said.
Paula landed the helicopter on the bright warm sand. The rotor blades, decorated in solar panels, stopped moving.
Lukeson ordered Kathy to open the door. Then everyone hopped out.
“Okay, where is it?” asked Pedro, waving his wings in a karate move. “Where is Akins’s hideout?”
“I’d look forward if I were you, lad,” said Stu Pot.
“Why? Is it an exciting place we’re going to?”
“No, not that kind of ‘look forward’.” Stu Pot tried hard not to laugh as he knew he was on a mission. “I meant, ‘look ahead’.”
Pedro did so and was not as excited as he had hoped he would be. “The Great Sphinx of Giza?”
That was exactly where Squad J was. The ancient dusty, gigantic Great Sphinx of Giza towered above them.
“The whole of Egypt was attacked by sphinxes last night, Pedro,” said Larissa. “Where else would they be?”
“I just thought that this place would be too obvious,” said Pedro. “Also the sphinxes we encountered last night were very different to the more familiar ones in Egyptian mythology and Akins could be leading us into a trap here.”
Lukeson kneeled to his height. “You could be right, Pedro. That’s why Skipton is supervising most of the G.C.A. armies in North Africa in investigating elsewhere in case Akins’s secret temple is not here. So keep your eyes peeled, maintain your focus and report anything you find unusual to either me or your fellow soldiers.”
“Like if I find a clown with a popcorn beard, you mean?”
Ignoring that, Lukeson just got back up and turned to the whole squad who stood to attention. “According to Meng’s research, the entrance to Akins’s secret temple is somewhere outside the Sphinx, so don’t bother looking inside. Search everywhere for hidden doors, relics or whatever you can find. And quickly too. I want some good – and when I say ‘good’, I mean ‘excellent’ – results in less than one hour. Not a second later. Dismissed.”
Squad J spread out while Lukeson took over guarding Akins from Rachael. He had not had his handcuffs removed ever since G.C.A. captured him last night.
Lukeson was suspicious about their prisoner as he looked very relaxed for a man who didn’t sleep a wink last night. He grabbed his prisoner by his ear. “If anything happens to them at all,” he warned, “if they so much as fall into quicksand by accident, you will join them.”
“I’d like to see you make me try.” Akins’s smile was punched off.
* * *
Kathy sighed as she and Rachael finished walking around the Sphinx’s back right foot. They spend the last fifty five minutes finding no trap doors, no hidden holes, no relics, no objects and no clue at all. They were stressing over how they could find anything in the remaining five minutes that Lukeson gave them.
It was these kinds of stressful moments that made Rachael wish she was still in the Everglades National Park and didn’t gain the abilities to walk and talk like human beings from that Great Mutation Storm. “Look what good that storm has done to us animals.”
“We don’t know who caused it in the first place, Rach,” Kathy said. “G.C.A. has been searching for clues and relics, but they’ve found no certain results. No one in the world has. Whoever created and unleashed that storm must have been a real genius and I don’t think it was even manmade.”
Then Mengy appeared in a flash before them.
“Did you have much luck, Mengy?” asked Kathy.
Mengy shook her sweaty head and wiped it with her trunk.
“Yeah, you’re not the only one,” Rachael said. She thought it was lot hotter than yesterday in Alexandria.
“Girls! Girls!” cried the voice of Stu Pot.
The girls followed his voice and found the white and blue striped zebra a hundred yards away from the right side of the Sphinx. They didn’t know what he was doing, but they decided to head over to him since he insisted they do.
“What is it, Stu Pot?” asked Kathy.
“I think I’ve found a secret entrance,” said Stu Pot.
The girls looked down at where he was standing. It looked like an archaeologist site but very small with only one square and made out of mere stone. Not a single Egyptian letter or symbol at all.
“Did you dig this out yourself?” asked Rachael.
“Aye,” said Stu Pot. “And in answer to your next question, you see those tiny golden sphinx wings on the poles sticking up?”
The girls looked at the tiny golden sphinx wings on the tall poles at each corner of the square.
“Well, I tripped over one of them,” Stu Pot went on, “and that’s when I thought there could be a secret entrance underneath the sand. Then I started to dig it off with my bare hands.” Like Kathy, he had hands each with four fingers and a thumb instead of hooves. As far as they were concerned, they never had the honour of knowing what it was like to have had hooves. Both of them believed that the Great Mutation Storm had something to do with that.
“Not saying you’ve wasted your time, Stu Pot,” said Kathy, “but why are you confident this is a secret entrance, apart from the mini sphinx wings?”
Stu Pot climbed out of the hole. “Take a look at that giant stone. What do you see on it?”
The girls looked at the big stone.
“Nothing except a tiny hole,” said Rachael. “Just the one.”
Kathy and Mengy spotted the tiny hole too.
“You can just get a finger in it, Stu Pot,” Kathy said unenthusiastically.
“Exactly,” Stu Pot replied.
“Let me get this straight, Stu Pot,” said Paula, who had just arrived with Pedro and Larissa. They were all hot, sweaty and panting. “What you’re thinking is that Akins could be the only one to open this stone by putting his finger into the hole and take us to his secret temple. Is that right?”
“That’s correct, Paula,” said Stu Pot. “I could be wrong, but it’s the best idea I have at the moment.”
“And we’re going to find out right now.” Lukeson approached the squad, dragging Akins by his left arm. He threw his prisoner onto the square and aimed his solar panelled Beretta at him. “Open it,” he ordered.
Akins chuckled as he got up. “You know you can’t kill me with bullets. There is nothing you can do to make me –” Then his hands started trembling. He looked like it wasn’t his doing at all. He looked just as confused as the G.C.A. soldiers.
Then Akins was slammed to the ground. He glared as his right index finger looked like it was trying to resist going into the hole, but he was still progressing forward.
Lukeson wondered what could force Akins to do something he didn’t want to do. He looked at Mengy and wondered if she was that force. The elephant was moving no part of her body except her trunk. She was waving it like a lion tamer’s whip. Then she gave her commanding officer a wink, confirming that it was her doing.
Impressed, Lukeson nodded back and withdrew his weapon. He was just in time to see Akins as his finger went into the hole.
Nothing happened.
“Are you shoving his finger in real hard, Mengy?” asked Rachael.
Mengy nodded.
Still nothing happened. Everyone tried to ignore Akins’s mocking laughter.
“Maybe these things take some time,” said Stu Pot. Then suddenly he felt like he was sinking. He looked at his legs… falling into the sand! Panicking, he tried to move his legs, but they felt like being stuck in concrete. He saw that
his entire squad was panicking as they started to sink. They couldn’t free themselves either.
“Mengy, get us out of this quicksand!” Kathy cried.
Mengy closed her eyes and grinded her teeth. After ten more seconds of trying, she had to give up.
But by the time the sand was up to everyone’s chin, it stopped suddenly. Everyone was confused and worried about not knowing what was happening. Then it started to slide down. It was going down a large ramp. The G.C.A. soldiers joined the sand down the ramp before they had a chance to jump to safety.
As they slid down into extreme darkness, the G.C.A. soldiers screamed their heads off as there was no light to help them see where they were going. They didn’t know if they were on a ramp that had been built in the ancient times or if they had entered the Egyptian Underworld.
“How do you stop this thing?” asked Pedro.
“Mengy, can’t you do something?” asked Larissa.
Since Mengy couldn’t speak and it was too dark for anyone to see whether she was nodding or shaking her head, everyone had to assume that she either was out of power for the moment or sliding down the ramp was distracting her.
“Light, twelve o’clock!” Rachael said.
Everyone saw that she was correct. They were approaching a hole revealing a corridor with a bright orange light.
“Everyone, stick together and head towards the light!” ordered Lukeson.
The orange light got bigger and bigger as the squad got closer to it.
“Let’s jump to it!” Stu Pot cried.
“What?” Everyone thought he was crazy.
“This could be a trap!” he explained. “If we don’t jump, we might fall further down into deeper darkness!”
“Meng, whatever powers you have left, use them to blast us to the light now!” Lukeson ordered, deciding to take Stu Pot’s advice.
Then everyone screamed as they felt that they had fallen off the ramp, but they didn’t fall down. They saw their feet glowing purple as they quickly speeded towards the corridor in hovered air like one of their fired solar bullets.
Pedro and Larissa were the first ones to reach the light which was a flaming torch on the stone wall. Then they were bumped by their aunt Paula, Mengy, Stu Pot, Rachael, Kathy, Lukeson and Akins. Everyone groaned as they got up.
“Excellent thinking, Potter,” Lukeson said. “And well done, Meng. And thanks for the bruises.”
Everyone snickered.
“Ok, someone grab that light and let’s see what we can find down here.” Then the sergeant turned to Akins. “And you, no more tricks!”
“I got you down here, didn’t I?” Akins got no reply apart from the yank up by his left ear.
Rachael grabbed the flaming torch and led the Squad down the dark stony corridor.
* * *
“How long is this corridor?” asked Pedro. He had been walking for hours and seen nothing but dust and dampness. He was so bored that he would like to see something simple like an apple going mouldy. Everyone started to feel like that, though they were better at keeping it quiet than he was.
“No ambush, no hidden weapons, no booby traps, nothing,” Larissa muttered quietly. “Not a soul to been for miles.” Then she felt something on her head… crawling. She screamed and grabbed Kathy’s leg like a cat on a scratching pole.
“Calm down, Larissa,” Kathy said gently. “What’s up?”
Larissa pointed to her head.
Kathy took a look and chuckled. “Oh, Larissa! You do know that spiders are more frightened of you than you are of them.”
Spiders were one of the very creatures that G.C.A. couldn’t keep under control as they were so small and easy to run away from anyone. They were hard enough to keep on top before the Great Mutation Storm made them think and talk like humans.
“Well, I beg to differ.” Then web was shot on Larissa’s hair. “Ewe! Get it off me!”
“Everyone, stay still and shut up!” yelled Lukeson. “Toronto, sort Larissa out.”
Kathy gently took the spider off and picked the web out of her head. Everyone else, including Akins, was silent.
“You finished, Toronto, Larissa?” the sergeant asked.
Both girls nodded.
He addressed the rest. “Now, is anyone else getting distracted by anything at all?”
Everyone was silent.
“Be sure now.” Lukeson was better after having some sleep, but he was still in no mood for any slight hiccups.
Still no one made so much a breath let alone a noise or a twitch.
“Then let’s carry on.”
Everyone carried on walking.
“Aunt Paula,” said Pedro. “I need to go.”
“Oh, Pedro!” Lukeson roared at the top of his throat. Then he realised his roaring was echoing throughout the corridor. He hoped he hadn’t awoken any mummies or the Egyptian Underworld.
“Really, Pedro?” said Paula. “Can’t you hold it?”
“Not any longer,” said Pedro.
“‘Not any longer’?” Stu Pot was confused. “Care to explain that?”
“I drank four bottles of water before I left camp in case I got dehydrated and there were no toilets available before we left for this mission.”
“There’s a room with a light in there for him to do his business,” Akins said.
Everyone just looked at the room he was pointing. It was the biggest and brightest room they have seen. All the others were completely dark, empty and the size of a ferry cabin.
“Just trying to speed things,” the sorcerer explained. “You’re welcome.”
“Be quick as you can, Pedro,” Paula said.
Pedro dashed into the room.
“I suggest we check the room out,” Larissa said.
“I don’t want any more trouble than we need right now, Larissa,” Lukeson said.
“But, sir, it’s the only room we found with light since we’ve been stuck in this gloomy ancient underground temple,” said Kathy. “All the other rooms have been few and far between and showed nothing but darkness and dust.” She sneezed.
“I have to agree with both of them, sir,” said Stu Pot. “It might lead us to more clues.”
“Let’s just get in before it smells of Pedro’s piss,” Rachael said.
“Rhodes, language!” Lukeson snapped. Even though he knew he did it sometimes, he hated swearing, especially the really offensive ones. After calming down quickly, he addressed the soldiers. “All right, one quick look around and then we move on. Let’s go.”
Everyone entered the room. It was as massive as any room in any temple in Egypt; only it had nothing except stony columns, dusty walls and only seven small flaming torches. It had no gold, no diamonds, no jewels, no bones of any kind of creature and certainly had no spot of colour except the greyness of the room with the orange flames.
“Everyone, stick together,” said Lukeson. “And don’t touch anything.”
Then they heard an odd noise. They aimed their solar panelled AK-47s at the darkest corner. Something was coming out. But it was only a small penguin.
Pedro sighed as he walked out of the darkness. “I feel much better.”
Then there was a soft loud growl in the room. And it was coming from the dark.
“I don’t think whoever’s growling does,” said Stu Pot.
“Who?”
Pedro saw Stu Pot was pointing to something behind him and he turned around. He saw nothing except a fifteen foot creature. From what Squad J could make out, its head was like a green crocodile’s head with a furry brown upper body that looked like one from a bear and the lower body was orange and black striped like the one from a tiger.
The young penguin just smiled and turned back. Then he realised what he had seen, turned around again and saw it properly. He was so scared that all he could do was gulp. “Have I just… on…?” He nervously pointed to the monster.
“I’m afraid you did, Pedro,” Rachael said.
Pedro quickly rejoined Squad J. A
solar panelled AK-47 was thrown to him and he caught it.
Lukeson would have ordered everyone to clear the room, but he couldn’t find the entrance was, let alone where it used to be. It was like it was never there. He quickly glanced around the room and there was no way else to get out at all. It was like someone was trying to trap them in this room and he knew who and why. He would have confronted Akins, but the monster’s roaring stopped him. He aimed his AK-47 as it approached him and his soldiers.
“Fire at will!” he ordered.
Squad J fired their weapons, but they missed the monster because it flew up. Its wings on the lion’s body were twice the size of a cobra sphinx, not to mention the monster was soon joined by a whole new army of cobra sphinxes entering the room. The squad couldn’t work out where the little buggers came from.
“Take cover behind the columns!” yelled Lukeson.
Squad J hid behind whatever columns they could find and fired everything they had at the monsters.
“Guzman, keep an eye on Akins,” the sergeant ordered.
Behind her column, Paula held two solar panel shotguns. She had one to make sure Akins didn’t get any ideas and the other for the small cobra sphinxes.
“This is hopeless,” Kathy moaned to Mengy, who was sharing her column. “Every time we fight these things, we don’t hit a lot.” She checked her solar panel gun charge bars. Out of the seven yellow bars on the ammo chart which was beneath the gun’s grip, only two bars were glowing. She sighed angrily. “And to make matters worse, we’re running out of ammo very fast.”
“And there’s not a hole in the ceiling,” Rachael added. “Without daylight, our weapons will be useless in a second.”
That was always the biggest flaw of their solar panelled weapons. They required the sky to produce their ammo. The soldiers had never been stuck inside somewhere for long before as their previous missions had been outside mostly in the fresh air. They didn’t have the right weapons or ammo to make a hole to in the ceiling in fear of wasting them.
The Cult of Kishpu Page 6