The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set

by Ernest Dempsey

  Spending time and energy on such things was hardly productive. It didn’t get him out of here and now that he was stuck, the clock was running. He’d have two or three days to survive without water. After that, he’d be dead.

  He stepped to the sloped barrier of rock and debris and pulled at some of the smaller stones. They gave way easily enough, but the second he jerked them free, more dust and rock collapsed into the passage, making things worse than they were just seconds before. He looked up to the cave ceiling and realized that part of the roof was being held up by the boulders blocking the way out. Even if he could get them to move, the rock and earth overhead might crush him.

  Dak put his hands on his hips and thought for a moment. He analyzed the walls and ceiling. They were hand-cut, not naturally formed by time and pressure. Someone had spent a great amount of time carving out these passages in limestone.

  If they built one way in, perhaps there was another.

  Dak hurried back down the corridor, making his way to the big room in half the time it took to get to the top.

  The dozens of bodies lying on the floor greeted him again, but he ignored the sight and focused on his search, the only thing that might save his life.

  The light on the phone panned across the room as he turned one way and then the other, scanning the walls for any sign of a door. Unfortunately, he found nothing.

  He stepped over two dead men and stopped at the wall, then slowly made his way around the perimeter of the room, tapping on the rock with the butt of the Kalashnikov on his shoulder. Every time, the same sound resonated from the dense stone.

  Dak was about to give up the search and return to the original cave entrance when he noticed something unusual. His skin tickled at the sensation and he spun around to find the source. A thin stream of air washed over his arms, causing the hairs on his forearms to raise.

  “A draft,” he said.

  He froze again and waited until he could detect the faint sliver of air seeping into the room. Then he realized where it was coming from. He spied a huge metal supply box sitting against the wall, propped flush against it.

  Cocking his head to the side, Dak tiptoed over to it, narrowly avoiding patches of drying blood.

  He stopped and craned his neck, bending over at the hips until he could see behind the huge metal crate.

  There, behind the backside of the box, was an opening in the wall large enough for him to crawl through. It only reached about three feet high and was probably that wide, but it was more than enough for Dak to fit.

  He looked back over his shoulder. The darkroom seemed a fitting end to the terrorists, men who’d taken the lives of so many innocent.

  It wouldn’t be his end.

  Dak wedged one leg between the wall and the metal crate and used his weight to push the heavy container away from the cavity until he had enough room to use both legs and his rear end. Once the box was far enough away from the wall, Dak got down on his hands and knees, pointed the light into the black opening, and started crawling.

  Eight

  Hamrin Mountains

  To Dak, it seemed like he was crawling for hours. His knees rubbed raw on the hard stone surface of the little tunnel. His hands and fingers, too, were worn to the point he could almost sense the skin peeling away layer after layer as he pressed forward into the mountain passage.

  He noted that the walls in the confined corridor appeared to be similar to the ones in the paths he walked through before, cut in a seemingly hurried fashion. The sides and roof were jagged, undulating.

  He found himself wondering why someone would cut through hard rock such as this, and not bother to continue carving through it in a way that would allow people to stand on their feet instead of crawling on their bellies.

  Dak checked his watch as he reached a bend in the tunnel and noted he'd only been crawling for fifteen minutes. He sighed, frustrated, but didn't let those emotions deter him. He had to keep going.

  His tongue felt parched. Every time he swallowed gave the sensation of sandpaper grating against the back of his throat. He knew he needed something to drink, but he was far from dehydration. Dak and the others had been deliberate about taking in plenty of fluids, both before the mission and during. Out in the desert dry air, moisture got sucked out of people faster than they realized, which meant diligence was a necessary component of staying on top of personal hydration needs.

  He was thirsty, but he'd be okay. For now.

  Dak pressed on, reaching another switchback in the tunnel that cut to the left. He contorted his body at a sharp angle to make his way around the corner and that's when he felt the cool breeze for the first time in earnest.

  It wafted over him like a curtain, brushing against his face, hair, and arms. He pointed his light directly ahead, but all he could see was a deeper black beyond the frame of the corridor walls. Frowning, Dak pushed onward until he reached a lip at the end of the tunnel where the ceiling and walls abruptly ended. Something straight ahead of him glinted a shiny yellow color.

  The frown on his face deepened, pinching his eyebrows together tightly as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

  Dak emerged from the crawlspace and dusted off his pants and shirt before raising the light again and sweeping it over the new area.

  He stood in a chamber, cut out of the mountain in a perfect square. The walls were smooth, unlike those of the corridors he'd seen thus far. The room was far more refined, and whoever constructed it had specifically reserved their best work for this space.

  He turned around 180 degrees and held the light up so he could see what was written over the doorway.

  Hieroglyphics unlike any he'd ever seen adorned the stone surface over the doorway. He recognized some of the cultural references in the drawings as coming from the Sumerian civilization. Amid the images of animals, people, deities, and shapes, Cuneiform script filled in some of the gaps between, giving the viewer not only a picture story of the past, but the words to go with them.

  Dak couldn't help feeling a tingle of excitement as he stood there in the chamber, staring up at images and words that were carved and painted thousands of years go. This room was easily one of the oldest known archaeological sites in the world, at least based on the scant information he gleaned so far.

  He spun around, shining the light on the rest of the interior, and found what looked to be a sarcophagus in the center, resting atop a solid limestone table. Vast treasures surrounded the burial table and sarcophagus. Golden statues resembling animals from all over the world lined the walls, along with gilded boxes, bowls, plates, and jewelry. One treasure chest to the right overflowed with riches, including diamonds and other precious jewels. Gold coins were scattered around on the floor at the base of the chest.

  On the far end of the burial chamber, Dak noticed the two imposing, golden guards standing on either side of a darkened doorway. Each of the figures possessed the bodies of men, their heads covered by crowns with horns protruding out in two directions. The detail that went into creating the golden statues was astonishing, right down to the veins and muscles in their arms and necks. Dak thought for a fleeting second that the creatures might actually come to life if he disturbed the sacred room. But he wasn't superstitious, and the terrorists had already begun pilfering the chamber of its precious items.

  Dak looked to the right and found two more figures just like them. To the left were two more. A seventh one stood at the head of the sarcophagus, as if hovering over the interred in permanent judgment of their earthly deeds.

  "What is this?" Dak said out loud.

  His feet moved involuntarily, carrying him deeper into the burial chamber. He paused when he reached the foot 0f the sarcophagus and gazed down onto its form.

  The massive container stretched nearly eight feet long. It was at least three feet wide. The expertly carved lid displayed every possible detail of the dead man inside. The shirtless body exhibited huge pectoral muscles, biceps, and abs. A skirt draped over the dead ma
n's private area, giving way to impressive legs sticking out of the bottom.

  The figure's head wore a crown of golden leaves and a necklace that hung low around the neck with toothlike barbs clinging to it.

  Dak reached out his right hand and ran his fingers along the smooth metallic surface. He crouched down low and pointed his light so that the beam illuminated the sides of the limestone burial table. He hadn't seen the designs carved into the stone before, but now he could see them clearly, and Dak couldn't believe it.

  He stood and slowly ambled around the sarcophagus, inspecting every inch of the limestone table before coming to a stop where he began.

  The images depicted a man, one of great physical prowess, standing on the bow of a boat, holding a staff to the heavens as a storm raged around him. Several people stood behind the man atop the boat's deck. The picture also displayed more animals, some of the varieties that could be seen on the walls of the chamber, but also with species that Dak had never heard of, save for in myths or legends.

  "This isn't possible," he whispered, his voice suddenly taking on an air of reverence. "That was far too long ago."

  He lifted the light and shone it on the walls, higher now than he'd looked before. Giant waves revealed themselves along every wall. Mountain peaks poked out from beneath the watery scene. Dak leaned close to the wall nearest him and narrowed his eyes. There were people in the water, some sinking beneath the surface, others still swimming for dear life.

  Dak had studied this event many times in his life. The first time he saw it was as a child on his mother's knee as she read stories to him from the Bible. Later, he revisited the tale in high school, church, and then in college.

  The story bore striking similarities in a vast number of other cultures and it seemed as though every nation in the world had one of their own—with varying degrees of differences here and there in the details.

  No doubt flickered in Dak's mind. He'd let go of that long ago. He believed in the story, in one form or another. It didn't really matter to him if he was right or wrong about the details he'd been taught growing up. His beliefs belonged to him. Not someone else. They could do what they wanted.

  It wasn't Dak's theological beliefs or his historical assumptions, that took a beating as he peered through the darkness at the golden burial plinth. What he had trouble believing, was who the man was buried just a few feet away from him.

  Based on the writing on the wall, the hieroglyphs, and the location of the tomb, there was only one logical conclusion, and it shook him to the bone.

  Dak had just accidentally stumbled into the tomb of Gilgamesh the Sumerian.

  Nine

  Hamrin Mountains

  Impossible? Evidently not.

  Crazy? Absolutely.

  Dak’s breath came in huge, even gulps as he continued to stare in wonder at the sarcophagus.

  “I discovered the tomb of Gilgamesh,” he said, mesmerized by the weight of his realization. “Well, I didn’t discover it. The… terrorists did. Still. Who am I talking to?”

  He stopped and pressed his lips together.

  How had this tomb, the burial chamber of one of the most legendary characters in history, go undiscovered for so long?

  To be fair, they were out in the middle of nowhere, on top of a mountain in a backwater part of the world. He wasn’t the best about keeping up with history and archaeology anymore. Life’s tendency of making people busy went double for Dak. Still, he hadn’t heard about anything going on in this part of the world. Most historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists would probably balk at the notion of coming to this place in the Hamrin Mountains, especially with so many extremist groups lurking around.

  Still, some of those folks threw caution to the wind in plenty of dangerous locations. Typically, nothing happened, but now and then there was an attack or a heist.

  Governments tried to keep incidents like that to a minimum. They needed the revenue from the tourist industry to keep things afloat, and if a bunch of archaeologists were killed or abducted and held for ransom, fewer and fewer would come. That would mean fewer artifacts, not as many headlines in the media. Tourism would suffer, at least that’s what the governments believed.

  The archaeological community didn’t mind them taking that stance. That meant things would be safer during digs. Usually.

  He wondered how the terrorists discovered the burial chamber. As far as his team knew, the extremist group had been in this spot for more than a month. His intel didn’t go back farther than that, but they might have had been here longer.

  “What were they doing here?” he wondered out loud. Since when did terrorists become grave robbers?

  The first question would have to wait. It’s possible the terrorists found the cave by accident while looking for a place to hide between operations, eventually turning it into their headquarters. Surely discovering the burial chamber was an accident. He doubted any of the extremist groups were students of ancient history or had unraveled some mysterious puzzle to lead them here.

  The second question was much easier to figure out.

  Terrorist organizations depended on money to fund their operations. There were travel costs to gather recruits, food to feed them, weapons, munitions, and technology that could be altered and used for nefarious purposes.

  Dak had heard of terror cells abducting young girls and selling them to the sex slave trade. Human trafficking was a lucrative business in the tar pits of the underworld. Drugs were another revenue stream that filled extremist coffers. In this part of the world, heroin was one of the big earners, along with a few other opium-based substances.

  Considering those sources of income, this group might have been planning on selling these priceless treasures to fund future terrorist attacks. Dak was no expert in pricing ancient artifacts, but his best estimate for this room was in the tens of millions, maybe more. That could buy a lot of bullets and ordnance for a group like this. They’d be able to recruit heavily in the region, and beyond.

  Dak chewed on his lower lip for a moment. He looked down at the cell phone in his hand to check the battery life. It still had over 50 percent, which was plenty—if he could find a way out of here soon. Then another thought poked his brain. If the terrorists were going to sell these relics on the antiquities black market, he might find a contact on one of the dead men back in the other room. He loathed the idea of going through the crawl space again, but if he could do it once he could do it again.

  First things first, he had to find the exit.

  Dak drew a deep breath and marched over to the doorway between the two guards. He recognized them as two of the Anunnaki judges from Sumerian mythology—sons of the great sky god Anu or An, as he was often called. Funny, Dak thought, how certain elements from his education dipped in and out of his memory. It was most often the odd ones for him, the things that other people didn’t care about or skimmed over in their studies. For Dak, those were the nuggets that made history so fun, so inviting. He’d once wowed a professor by including a tidbit about President William Henry Harrison on an essay, mentioning the detail that he was the president who gave the longest inaugural address and served the shortest term.

  No one else even bothered to consider that fact, instead focusing on the president’s few high points while in office.

  Dak stepped between the Anunnaki guards and into the darkened corridor. He held the light out in front of him, figuring it was unlikely he’d need to shoot anything in an ancient—and until recently, undiscovered—tomb.

  The passage angled up and then leveled out after about thirty steps. At the top of the rise, it cut sharply to the right, then back to the left. At the second turn, Dak started to see the residual glow of sunlight on the walls and floor of the corridor. The air, too, felt different—warmer. It brushed against his skin with a welcoming radiance even before the light touched him.

  He felt his pace quicken as he neared the corner. He peeked around it, wary that it could be a trap. All he could
see was blinding sunlight pouring into the corridor. As his eyes adjusted, he stepped toward the light. Emotions fought to take hold of his mind. Relief filled his senses, along with feelings of regret, anger, and the shock of being left to die, buried alive in an ancient cave.

  Dak stopped at the exit to the cave and all of those emotions crashed down around him. He braced himself with his right hand, holding onto the edge of the cave’s wall as he poked his head out. Just as quickly, he pulled back into the corridor, his heart full of devastating disappointment.

  The passage exit perched dangerously on a cliff, sixty feet up from the desert floor.

  Ten

  Hamrin Mountains

  Dak stared down the side of the cliff for a moment. He briefly considered climbing down, but that would be foolhardy. Most of the cliff's face was smooth without many narrow ledges or hand holds to make the journey down even remotely possible. He'd done some rock climbing in his life. A few of the climbs were difficult, bordering on the expert level. This, however, was a death sentence. He wouldn't make it halfway before he slipped and fell, or got stuck on the face of the rock.

  "So close," Dak groused.

  He thought hard for a minute, weighing his limited options. Since climbing down the cliff didn't appear to be a good idea, he needed a safer way to descend the mountain. Rope would be good, but there was none to be found.

  Then an scheme bubbled to life.

  It wasn't a pleasant idea, and the execution of it would be even less so. Still, it was his only chance. When faced with survival or death, he would always choose survival.

  Dak spun around and hurried back down the corridor. He passed through the burial chamber and returned to the crawlspace, got down on his hands and knees, and began squirming through the tunnel again.