She had completely stopped trying to measure time when the boy started to rattle deep in his throat. She’d heard the sound before and she didn’t like what it boded. “Hey—are you alright?” Ayaan asked him. “Hey. Hey!”
He turned with a horrible slowness. Not an unwillingness to talk to her—he appeared quite grateful for the human contact. No, he was moving so slowly because human time was behind him. He moved at the rate of the eternity he was about to join. He looked at her and uttered something in a language she didn’t know. His eyes were wild and failed to fix on her even when she shouted at him. Sweat sheened his face.
“I don’t understand,” Ayaan said. She tried the languages she had—Somali, Arabic, English, her smatterings of Italian and Russian. None of them got an intelligible response.
“He says he’s hungry,” a woman’s voice said, speaking Arabic. It came from the cage atop hers. She couldn’t see who it belonged to—the woman up there was hidden by her own blanket. “It’s Turkish,” the woman said, answer Ayaan’s next question. “Turkish, we’re from Turkiye. Where did they get you?”
“Egypt,” Ayaan answered. “He sounds like he’s in a bad way. Like he might—“
The woman clearly didn’t want to hear it. “Egypt, they drag us that far? I don’t know where they’ll go next with us. They take us out into the light once a day, give us a mouthful of rice to eat. I don’t know who they are, though a body hears tales, of course.”
“Listen,” Ayaan said, “this child—he’s not going to make it.” His rattling had grown into a sustained droning croak. He was dying, there was no better way to say it. “We have to let them know, they have to take him out of here.”
“They won’t,” an old man coughed from somewhere near. Ayaan got a sense of the bodies around her as if they were hovering in empty space with no bars between them, bodies lined up perfectly in meter-and-a-half wide rows, stacked a meter above and below, extending into infinity. She fought the sudden vertigo.
The boy spasmed, his forearms clanging against the bars of his cage. His legs jerked and the smell of fresh excrement seeped through the darkness.
“They have to, when he says he’s hungry—that’s one of the signs, maybe you’ve never seen it before, but—“
“Everyone’s seen it.” The old woman again. “We’ve all seen it too many times. They like it, this bunch. They like for us all to be dead, it’s holy to them. They rejoice when one dies. Now you be quiet. When you talk, it makes the time drag.”
“But he’s going to change! He’s going to change and we’ll be trapped in here with him!” Ayaan was panicking. She fought to control herself. This was not how a soldier acted. Slowly, with a real effort of will, she turned her face to the side, to look at the boy.
A ghoul stared back.
Ayaan grunted and shoved herself backward, away from him. The dead boy reached for her, his fingers jammed between the bars, his nails pale in the bruised flesh. His face swam towards her in the darkness, his teeth chewing at the metal, his eyes perfectly dead. It was the first time in years she’d actually looked into the face of a ghoul. She had forgotten how they changed, how the animation left the features. The skin went slack. Like a mask it hung on the skull—there was no mistaking an animate corpse for a living human being.
The face slammed against the bars. Ayaan let out another grunt. The fingers kept striving, pushing through the bars. A broken hand burst through, reached for her—couldn’t quite get her. She crammed herself into a corner of her cage, as tight as she could. The hand moved around inside her cage like it had no bones, like a tentacle reaching for her soft flesh.
Fear touched her, if the boy couldn’t. She was far enough back from the bars to be safe—the dead weren’t particularly strong, though they could push their bodies far harder than the living could bear. The boy couldn’t get through the bars. She was safe, as long as she could hold herself up against the far side of her cage. As long as her arms didn’t get tired. As long as she didn’t collapse. If those fingers ever touched her, she knew, the nails would sink into her flesh. The teeth would get her, somehow, through the cage. If he so much as scratched her, broke her skin, infection was almost inevitable. Infection and death. She was safe but only as long as her strength lasted.
She managed, somehow, to hold on until the truck stopped and burning light washed over them and they were pulled out of their cages. Their captors took the dead boy away and slammed his empty cage back into the grid of bodies. Finally Ayaan could relax, let herself fall against the hard bars. Her arms ached and complained. Her body felt wasted, wrung out. Her mind raced faster than ever.
By the time they reached their destination Ayaan had at least one thing figured out. There was no way to meet her obligation to Sarah if she was dead. If she died in captivity the Tsarevich would use her. He would make her one of his soldiers. If she wanted to help Sarah she was going to have to stay alive. No matter what it took.
7
Of course, Jack said, Sarah would want to rescue Ayaan. Along the way Sarah could simply liberate Ptolemy’s captive mummies. Simple.
Hardly, she thought as she clambered over the razor wire and back into the camp. There was nothing simple in the proposition.
For one thing Ayaan herself would hate it. Her policy had always been that those who fell behind were left behind. There were no exceptions, could be no exceptions, because exceptions endangered other people. Ayaan would expect no special treatment.
Then there was Fathia to consider. Fathia who did not trust her. Who seemed to fear her, a little. Fathia might be glad to see Sarah dead, but as long as she lived Sarah would never be allowed to leave the encampment again.
She would need to escape, then. That she’d done many times before, but only with the knowledge that she could return before her absence was detected. This time would be a lot harder. She knew she would have to at least make the effort to save Ayaan, but she also knew she couldn’t do it alone.
Dawn was dragging blood-stained fingers across the eastern hills as she slipped into the helicopter pool and found Osman sleeping in his hammock. She only had a few minutes to pull off one of the stupidest plans she’d ever imagined. Trying to be gentle she put a hand over the old man’s mouth and pinched his nose. He awoke in a panic, his eyes rolling wildly as he tried to figure out what was happening. When he saw Sarah the look on his face downgraded to one of wary confusion.
“Ayaan is alive,” she said. “If we go right now we can still rescue her.” She told Osman everything—even the secret she’d kept for so many years.
“Jack? The American soldier? You meet with his ghost in the desert? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Sarah shrugged. “He killed my father. He’s been trying to make up for that. Listen, we don’t have time to argue. The camp is going to wake up soon. If they find out what we’re up to—“
Osman barked a small laugh. “You’re assuming I’ll go along with this lunacy. In the old time I would accuse you of doing drugs. Now I just wish you would share. Listen, girl, Ayaan has done well by me. She has saved my skin many, many times. But she knew a bad proposition when she heard it. The second we leave, Fathia will brand us traitors. She would never let us come back.”
“If we have Ayaan with us when we return it won’t matter what Fathia says.”
Osman accepted that with a gesture of both hands. He wasn’t fully convinced, though. “Jack?”
“You need to get past that. It’s Jack. He’s given me enough information to make a plan, and I trust him. He’s also arranged some help for us.” In the end she had to fall back on the near terror most people felt when they knew about her arcane vision. “Come on, Osman. You say Ayaan has done well by you. Haven’t I? You’ve seen my power. It has gotten you out of scrapes so you know it’s real. Why are you doubting me now?”
He agreed wordlessly, rubbing at his head and eyes.
Together they fueled up the better of the two Mi-8s. Working
in the half light they unbolted the external fuel pods from the carcass of the third helicopter and mounted them in the Mi-8’s cargo area. They tried to stay quiet but there was no way to silence the noise of the aircraft’s engine starting up. Its pulsing roar woke the entire camp.
“Straight up,” Sarah shouted as Osman lifted the vehicle from its pad, barely waiting for the rotor to spin up to speed. “Get out of rifle range, hurry!”
She had known what would happen when they were discovered, and she had not been wrong. Women came running out of tents half-dressed, rifles in their arms. They would have slept with their weapons, waiting for some sign of the Tsarevich’s army. When they saw that it was one of their own vehicles taking off most of them lowered their weapons but one or two lined up shots and started firing.
“This is Fathia!” the helicopter’s radio squealed. “I do not understand what madness has taken you, but if you do not put down this minute—“
Sarah switched off the radio. The content of the threat didn’t matter—they already knew they were in trouble.
Once they were past rifle range the next threat came from the other helicopter. Though the weapons that came with the aircraft were long ago used up another pilot could follow them to their destination and then just shoot them there. Sarah rushed back into the cargo area and stared down at the airfield they’d just abandoned. She positively willed the other helicopter to stay on the ground. This was the one great weakness of her plan, this first desperate flight. It could all be over then and there.
Then she saw what she most feared. “They’re powering up the other copter,” she shouted into her headset. “Osman, we have a major problem.”
“With a minor solution. The next time I do something stupid, Sarah, please keep this in mind.”
Sarah didn’t understand—until she saw a puffs of fire blast from the dual turbines on top of the grounded helicopter. “You sabotaged it!”
“I disconnected a fuel line. It will take them but a moment to repair the damage… but it may take most of the day to find it.”
Sarah wanted to rush forward and hug him. You didn’t embrace the pilot of a military helicopter in mid-flight, though. “We’re safe,” she trumpeted, and he snorted one of his sarcastic laughs.
“Safe to fly into certain death, yes,” he chortled. “Alright, commander. Where to first?”
“Nekropolis,” she told him.
“Never heard of it.”
She hadn’t either. “There’s a good reason for that. Head northeast, toward the sea. We’re looking for a salt pan just this side of the canal. It’s surrounded on most sides by slickrock.”
They found it with relative ease. From the air the salt pan looked like a sheet of ice in the middle of the desert. Osman set down on the solid rock just off the edge of the pan—such features were notorious for their poor stability—and together they jumped out, their nerves still buzzing with adrenaline. “This is where we pick up our reinforcements?” Osman asked.
Sarah could understand his skepticism. On the far side of the pan a city had been constructed but it was like no city either of them had ever seen. Its main feature was a massive slab-walled temple set into the rocky cliffs, a structure of cyclopean columns crowned with carved lotus blossoms and huge, thin statues of serene-faced men. On either side of the temple entrance stood a sphinx, one with the face of a pharaoh, the other with the head of a goat. Nearby stood both a pyramid and a mastaba. There were ruins like this all over Egypt—they had both seen dozens—but none so eclectic. Nor any so new. Precarious scaffolding covered the pyramid. Across the pan they could see tiny figures moving up and down on the scaffolding, some carrying blocks of sandstone on their backs that must have weighed half a ton. Osman glared at her. “I’m not going to like this,” he said.
“No,” she admitted. She lead him across the pan, their feet breaking the crust of salt that rimed its surface and made it glisten from the air. From the ground it just looked white, a featureless white that caught the glare of the sun and made Sarah feel as if she were moving through pure light. As she climbed the steps to the temple she saw the darkness inside its square entrance and wondered how nice it would be to go in there where it would be cool and the air wouldn’t burn her lungs. She didn’t get the chance to find out. Ptolemaeus Canopus emerged first, his painted face bobbing toward her from the shadows. Other mummies followed him. One looked a hundred times as old and her wrappings were badly tattered but gold glistened from underneath here and there. Another wore a wooden mask in the shape of a ram’s head, tinted red and green and white.
As Ptolemy stepped down to meet her there was a great silent commotion on the pyramid. The work there stopped and the mummies who were building the giant tomb fell to their knees with their arms in the air. Jack had mentioned that Ptolemy had been an important man in his day—just what had he been, Sarah wondered, to evince such respect? What was he now?
He came closer and Osman stepped backwards, down the steps. Sarah held her ground. Ptolemy came close enough to touch her, close enough that she could smell him: cinnamon and nutmeg with an undernote of road tar. The ram-headed mummy held something out to her and she took it—a scarab carved out of soapstone. The same one she’d seen Jack give to Ptolemy the night before.
“Thank you,” she said, uncertain of protocol, but then she shrieked and nearly dropped the thing. It had come alive in her hand—she could feel it squirming and buzzing. She managed not to let go somehow and when she looked down she saw it hadn’t changed at all. It was energy, pure life energy neither light or dark, that was pulsing against her skin.
scarab this is heart this is my scarab my heart scarab it said to her, the words piling up and resonating off each other, looping around and around in her head until dizziness swept over her. She could feel the words instead of hearing them—they raced up her arms to her throat and she felt them there as if she’d said them herself. They came all at once, in no particular order, and she had to listen to them echo to tell them apart. you only heart scarab you only can hear you only you can scarab hear me this chosen is why hear you heart were chosen
The female mummy, the ancient one, pressed her body against Ptolemy. Her hands clutched at him and her linen-wrapped face buried itself in the crook of his neck.
wife my alone this is my wife alone she will gone rule in my place she will be alone when rule i am gone, Ptolemy told Sarah. Sarah just looked away and cleared her throat. He let the female nuzzle him a moment longer then stepped forward, closer to Sarah.
you family have no mate do family you have family
“Just... just the woman I’m looking to rescue,” Sarah told him.
those alike i seek triumph are my family together we are seek alike we will triumph together
“Yeah,” she said, when the vibrations from the scarab had calmed down, “great.” She cocked one thumb over her shoulder at the helicopter. “Should we get started?”
8
Light spilled across Ayaan’s sweaty body like scalding water and she convulsed away from it, pulling her blanket into a tight embrace that covered her eyes. Shouted words reached her but she refused to move, even when her cage was yanked out of the back of the truck and thrown rudely into the mud.
It had been at least three days since she’d been taken captive. It could have been much longer—she’d had trouble remembering how many stops they’d made. In her weakened state she couldn’t seem to keep anything straight in her head.
Underfed, unbathed, battered by the bars of her cage and severely dehydrated she was totally unprepared when a living man came by and unlocked the top of her cage, sliding it back and beckoning to her to get up and out. She pulled down the blanket and looked at him. Thin, beardless, white, maybe half her age. He had the carved, emaciated features and the dulled unassuming eyes of a Belorussian soldier Ayaan had known a lifetime before. He’d been a weapons instructor and he’d introduced her to the AK-47. “Where am I?” she asked in her pa
ltry Russian.
“Our place here, is on Cyprus. You speak tongue of Russia? Is good. Come now, come, will be not harmed,” he told her. “Come.” He smiled broadly.
She got up slowly, kneeling on the soft ground, letting her eyes adjust to the light.
“Is enough. Take time, yes? Take time and grow accustomed.” He smiled at her, a sad, knowing smile that told her he understood what she was going through, that he was so very sorry she had been cooped up in that cage but her suffering was over. The smile said she could trust him.
She wished she had a rock so she could knock that smile out of his mouth. She knew exactly what he was up to. The long ride in the truck should have broken her resistance. Any shred of human kindness now would be so welcome to her she would latch on to it like a babe at the teat, desperate for warmth and acceptance. It was a classic interrogation technique. She thought about spitting in his eye but thought better of it. He might give her something to eat or some clean water if she played along.
It occurred to her, but she refused to dwell on it, that he didn’t care if she believed. Playing along with his game was all he really wanted.
“Am Vassily. Please to come, will show you way.” He took her hand and lead her on unsteady legs through a gate in a big cyclone fence. Beyond lay a petroleum cracking plant lit up like cities used to be, full of burning light even in the day time just like cities were in the before, in the days when the dead stayed dead. It was one of the most beautiful things Ayaan had ever seen.
She looked back at the truck that had brought her there. The unloading was going smoothly. Each of the prisoners was met by their own guide—the Turks she had spoken with looked scared but unwilling to fight. She wasn’t surprised. Another truck rolled up and its gate opened and she expected to see more cages. Instead dead bodies flopped out of it, rubbery and grey. The ghouls staggered away from their conveyance, streams of them headed right for her. Ayaan pulled her arms in, ducked into a protective crouch but the dead walked right past her. They didn’t even glance at her.
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