The men chorused his final words, one leading a camel to Nazir. All were mounting up, horseflesh surrounding Nevada on all sides as they prepared to depart.
“Hey, daddy dearest,” Nevada called. “If you’re so merciful, don’t I get a last request?”
Nazir spread his hands magnanimously. “Why not?”
“Well, I’ve always wondered what it’d be like with an Arab guy—no, I’m fucking with you. But how about some tunes? I’ve got an MP3 player in my back pocket. Just put my earbuds in and press shuffle.”
Nazir laughed. “I hate to kill you, Easy Nevada. You are an object lesson in Western immorality. Even now, on death’s door, you remain obsessed with entertaining yourself.”
“Yeah, well, the whole ‘eaten alive’ thing sounds like it’s gonna take a while.”
Nazir gestured for one of his followers to carry out the request. He went to Nevada, dug into her pocket, and came out with an iPod wrapped in its earbud cord. He unwound it painstakingly.
“And put one in the girl’s ear too,” Nevada said. “Sharing is caring, right?”
The man pushed one bud in Nevada’s ear and the other into Candice’s, then pressed play on the small white tablet and rested it on Nevada’s shoulder. With the cheers of a live recording, Peter Frampton started singing “Baby, I Love Your Way.”
Nazir mounted his camel, casting one last look at Nevada and Candice before departing with his men. They were left with nothing but the sand and wind.
“You know, I think we really misjudged that guy,” Nevada said. She turned her head to look at the burrows. Nothing had emerged yet, but the moonlight outlined them in horrifying detail. “He’s a sweetie pie. Remind me to kill him for that thing about my kid.”
Candice wasn’t listening. “I’m going to die listening to Peter Frampton.”
“You don’t like Peter Frampton? What, do you not like to feel ?”
Nevada turned her head, trying to get at the iPod with her teeth, but the effort of reaching for it nearly slid it off her shoulder. She raised her shoulder desperately, getting the MP3 player to balance again, and breathed tersely, trying not to jostle it.
“Could be worse,” Candice said.
“How could it be worse?” Nevada asked, trying to relax her shoulders to settle the iPod into place. “Could it be raining?”
“Technically, yes. But scorpions don’t eat people.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve watched David Attenborough for twenty years. As long as we don’t agitate them, we’ll be fine.”
“What happens if we agitate them?” Nevada asked curiously.
Candice bit her lip. She could see stirrings of movement in the burrows. “They sting us to death.”
“So as long as we don’t move while a swarm of scorpions walk all over us, we get to die of thirst.”
Candice shrugged. The Frampton over, Ginuwine’s “Pony” played with its burping reverbs.
“You see what happened to my grandfather?”
“No. If he’s smart, he kept his head down once the jeep exploded. Oh, I’m probably not going to get the deposit back.”
“That was a rental?”
“Yes. Good news is, I can get us out of these handcuffs.”
“Yeah?” Candice asked, sounding less than sure.
“Yeah. You see the cord to the headphones?”
Candice twisted her head. “Uh-huh.”
“Bite it, then pull the player so it falls into my hands. I’m cupping them right behind my back.”
“Obviously,” Candice said, straining her neck for the cord. She couldn’t reach it. “Whatever you’re doing, I don’t suppose you could’ve done it sooner.”
She stuck out her tongue, managing to curl it around the cord, pulling it into her teeth as Nevada said “Nah, that Peter Frampton was a bop.”
It made Candice’s vertebra pop loudly, but she managed to twist enough that the MP3 player dropped into Nevada’s hands.
Nevada took one last look at their death trap. The sand of the burrows was now brightly lit and alive with scurrying black carapaces. Scorpions, shining in the full moon. There were at least a hundred already.
“You know how Apple will void the warranty if you open up an iPod yourself? Well, I don’t have a warranty, but I do have a set of lockpicks.” She pried off the back of the MP3 player.
Candice let out a shrill laugh. “I could kiss you!”
“I have been pointing that out.” Nevada sighed remorsefully. “I just downloaded a whole Kanye album onto this…”
Metal scraped against metal as she worked the torsion wrench of her set into the lock and bent it slightly, just beginning to turn the plug.
“Peter Frampton right in front of Ginuwine,” Candice observed. “You make an odd playlist.”
“It was on shuffle,” Nevada said defensively, fitting a pick rake into the lock and teasing out the first pin’s shear line. “Frampton is for cool vibes.”
“Uh-huh. And Ginuwine?”
“I’ll be honest with you. That one’s for Poundtown.”
Candice blew out a breath. “I’m going to die and the last song I listened to is going to be your sex jam.”
“It isn’t my first choice for how to eat you out, no.” The plug rotated a little with Nevada’s tension on the wrench. She eased the pick rake to the next pin, working it up slowly, carefully.
Nevada couldn’t resist any longer. She looked over to the burrows. The scorpions were a carpet covering the desert floor, the moon glinting off their shiny carapaces like they were some living assembly of bone: butting against each other, climbing over one another, slowly coming awake into an orgiastic frenzy.
They were twenty feet away, sandwiched between two high dunes that laid on top of one another, and the level sand led directly to where Candice and Nevada were chained up.
Nevada redoubled her efforts.
“Nevada,” Candice said gently. “How long is this going to take?”
The lock ticked quietly and rotated a little more. Nevada pressed the pick rake further “I’ve gotten two pins. Once I get them all, we’re free.”
“Okay,” Candice said as the scorpions inched closer. “How many pins are there?”
“That’s a very good question, Candice. Gold star.”
Nevada thought she could hear the scorpions: their rustling bodies and chittering mandibles, that string music that always played when you saw a spider in a documentary. She tried to remind herself of what David Attenborough had said, but it wasn’t like he was there , now was he?
“Nevada…” Candice keened plaintively.
The lock twisted more. “Three down.”
The scorpions surged toward them, a rising tide of black water—Nevada could see them licking up the steep slopes, unable to make the climb, slipping back into the flooding mass that was coming right at them.
The scorpions were upon them. Nevada froze, feeling their cool touch covering her body, passing over her with a million scratching legs. She wanted to leap up, shake herself off for an entire week, burn herself alive so she was clean. A cool lick of sweat ran down her back and she prayed the scorpions didn’t notice, didn’t seek out an appetizing meal…
“How many more?” Candice asked. “Nevada, how many more pins?”
“I’m…not…moving,” Nevada said carefully. She could feel one slipping into her pocket, nosing along the seam like the familiar weight of her wallet, but alive . It could touch her, it could feel her—
“You’re not arachnophobic, are you?”
“Oh yeah,” Nevada said, breathless. “I’m one of those weird people who are creeped out by giant bugs with multiple legs crawling all over me!”
“You have multiple legs,” Candice said, needling irresistibly.
“Fuck you!”
Nevada’s entire body wanted to shudder, and she focused all her will on not letting it. She felt a hundred, a thousand legs on her, airy and insubstantial, but they were alive, aware of her
, trying to figure out what she was and if she was food .
“Calm down,” Candice said gently. “Close your eyes. Breathe with me. Deep and easy, okay? Breathe.” She took a deep breath. “Thea, breathe ,” she insisted, and took another breath. This time Nevada matched it, her back moving against Candice’s as they both swelled with fresh air. Candice slowly exhaled, Nevada following along, and it felt like a connection.
“I can do it,” Nevada said, her voice barely a whisper as her tools rustled in the lock. Another pin was driven into place, the key pin plied up, the driver pin slotted into place, then another, and another—and always in the back of her mind, Candice’s breathing, and her own following along. Like Candice was breathing for her, letting Nevada feel only the surge of fresh air into her lungs instead of the scorpions crawling all over her, their stingers at the ready, all claws and legs…
The plug spun all the way around, clicking the lock open, and the sound must’ve startled one of the creatures because Nevada felt a sharp prick at her wrist. She swallowed a scream, jerked her hand away, and forced herself to slowly turn, crouch over Candice’s bound hands, and work on those manacles. Her breath burned against the back of Candice’s neck as she worked, first one pin, then another, and another, until the plug ticked all the way around and released.
Then she pulled Candice up, away from the swarm, brushing them both off as she hauled them bodily away. The moment they were clear she was jumping up and down, ripping at her clothes, scrubbing at her skin until she had almost annihilated the memory of their touch. Then she picked up a rock at her feet and threw it into the swarm.
“That seems uncalled for,” Candice said mildly, plucking a scorpion out of her pocket and tossing it underhanded back with its friends.
“One of them stung me.” Nevada held out her wrist. “Tell me if I’m gonna die. If I’m gonna die, just get a rock and do it now. I don’t want to know what nightmares this is all gonna give me.”
“You’ll be fine,” Candice said. “Scorpions can’t kill a full-grown adult. No matter how immature they are.”
“ Are you sure? ”
Candice gave her a look. “David Attenborough would not lie.”
“Okay…” Nevada dusted herself off. “New rule on this adventure: all animals must have four legs, tops.” She ran her hands through her hair. “God… let’s get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be here when the queen comes out.”
Nevada could feel Candice’s eyes on her back as she walked. “Scorpions don’t have queens.”
“You really wanna take that chance?”
Candice followed after her. “Where are we going?”
“No idea. But hopefully we find some shelter before the sun comes up. Then we sleep during the day, move at night.”
Candice nodded. “If we follow the moon, we can at least be sure we’re not going in circles.”
“I was following the moon,” Nevada said quickly.
“Uh-huh.”
As hot as the Sahara was during the day, it was even colder at night. They took turns in Nevada’s flak jacket. Every other minute it seemed Candice could feel Nevada slipping it over her, warm from her own body, and she breathed in Nevada’s oddly comforting musk. Then she would take it off, put it around Nevada, and hug herself to keep warm for another dozen steps. And before she knew it, the jacket would be back around her, blocking the wind that cut into her with its chill.
Above them, the stars weren’t beautiful anymore. They were mocking, an infinite reach as expansive as the desert they walked through. Candice felt less like she was walking and more like she was falling into a crevice—on one side, the endless sand, on the other, endless stars. And the burn in her mouth was still catching her tongue.
“What are you thinking?” Nevada asked, rubbing her arms to keep warm. Candice said nothing. She was enthralled by her breath visibly leaving her mouth. It looked like she was leaking. “C’mon, you’re smart, you’re always thinking. Tell me—”
“How smart can I be? I ended up here.”
“Well, I’m here and I’m a genius,” Nevada said.
Candice sighed, counting the seconds until she could put the jacket back on Nevada—trying to relish the relative warmth, which was impossible when Nevada was freezing. “I was remembering my Churchill.”
“Oh yeah?”
Candice cleared her throat and quoted: “Only the Madhi’s wives, if we may credit Slatin, ‘rejoiced secretly in their hearts at the death of their husband and master,’ and, since they were henceforth to be doomed to an enforced and inviolable chastity, the cause of their satisfaction is as obscure as its manifestation was unnatural.” She grinned ruthlessly. “I think I figured out the satisfaction.”
“Really? I was just thinking the exact same thing,” Nevada teased. “So what were you going to ask me back at the crash site?”
Candice reeled mentally—Nevada had put her off-guard with her gentle questioning, making this ask seem much more pointed. “Is this the best time?”
“Do you have somewhere to be?” Nevada needled. “You asked what I was doing after we found the skull, then you tried to change the subject—”
“People started shooting at us,” Candice said, taking off the jacket. “The subject changed on its own.”
She moved to put the jacket around Nevada, who pushed her away. “I’m fine.”
“You’re blue.”
“No need to get racial.”
“It’s your jacket,” Candice insisted, trying to put it on her again.
Then Nevada pulled her into an embrace, tightening the jacket around both of them as her teeth chattered. Candice took a deep breath, cast back in time to sharing breath with Nevada when the scorpions were all over them. Without the danger, it was shockingly intimate. Candice could breathe in Nevada’s scent, the smell of her hair, and feel like it was a part of her.
Nevada pulled away, taking the jacket with her and pulling it on. Trapping the newfound warmth in with her as she zipped it up. “It does look better on me.”
It was nearly dawn, the rising sun starting to fill in the shadows with the day’s first traces of color. The sands blazed with orange and red and yellow, almost hurting Candice’s eyes with their intensity. Then she saw shadows that refused to be lightened—flickering on the horizon with some looping gait. Camels. Camels being ridden.
“There!” she pointed. “There, c’mon, c’mon!”
She ran, an influx of energy burning away her tiredness. Nevada was hard-pressed to keep pace with her as she dashed up the dunes and came back down them, more than once falling into a roll, then springing back up like she weighed nothing.
“Hey!” she called, waving her arms as the camel riders loomed closer. “Hey! Heeeey!”
Nevada ran right beside her. “Do you have some Coke? Diet Coke? Sprite? I’ll even take Dr. Pepper if you have it…”
They pitched down a sloping dune and came up another whose sand was slippery, almost a powder. Nevada pulled Candice up it as the sand slid out from under them. Finally they were on the ridge of the dune, clawing their way to the top of it—and the camel riders were acacia trees, the heat distorting their gnarled branches and scraggly leaves into a deception.
The bait and switch ended Candice’s hope with a crushing finality. She’d tried determination, she’d tried hope, she’d even tried having faith in Nevada. There was nothing left to try. The hopelessness of her situation snapped closed on her. She was going to die. She was going to die in a bloody desert, where she’d been born, like her whole life was a flat circle amounting to nothing.
And the maddening part was how unfinished she was. She’d never find Cleopatra’s tomb. She wouldn’t wipe that holier-than-thou look off Nazir’s face. She wouldn’t even tell Nevada... she didn’t even know what she wanted to tell Nevada, just that it was stuck in her teeth like a popcorn kernel. She was going to die with a popcorn kernel in her teeth.
She looked at the trees like she could force them into being pe
ople.
“Mirage,” Nevada moaned. “It’s not even a good mirage. Where are the native girls with little coconut drinks? Where’s the swimming pool I swim in and then it turns out to be sand?”
“Quiet,” Candice said.
“What?” Nevada asked, examining the trees more closely. “Is one of them really a guy on a camel?”
“Just be quiet!” Candice hissed. Raising her hands to her mouth, she did a birdcall.
Nevada blinked. “If you’re going crazy, please take me with you.”
Candice pointed to the upper branches, where a blue, fork-tailed swallow replied in birdsong. “That’s a barn swallow.”
“What do crazy black women even do?” Nevada asked herself. “I know crazy white women listen to K-pop for some reason…”
Candice dropped her hands so hard that they slapped against her thighs. “Birds. Drink. Water. These blokes migrate all the way from South Africa to Great Britain. They stop at watering holes along the way. We follow this one, it’ll lead us straight to water.”
Nevada snapped her fingers. “That’s not bad. Attenborough again?”
Candice shook her head. “It’s how the Kushites established caravan routes.”
The barn swallow took flight.
Nevada thought of the desert as something to be crossed. To Candice, it was something to be immersed in. Endured. In the desert, life was an act of resistance. Maybe it always was.
They’d been walking for hours. The barn swallow flew effortlessly, and Candice was beyond envious. She would’ve sold her soul to do that. But she couldn’t, so she walked. Despite the heat. Despite the sun. Despite the sand burning into the soles of her feet.
It was strange. Candice had never thought of herself as particularly tough. Yet here she was, no hope, no drive, not even the numbness she’d felt after the disappointment of the acacia trees. She longed for that numbness—it had been better than this, feeling every jagged step she took, her throat so dry it felt scabbed over, her muscles clawing at each other in their soreness. She supposed this cast-iron core she’d uncovered should’ve been empowering or confidence-building or something. It felt more like she was too stupid to know when to give up and die.
Candice Cushing and the Lost Tomb of Cleopatra Page 18