The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead 2 A Post-Apocalyptic Epic (11 page)

Chapter 10

Attamhim, Sudan

Jack Dreyden

The town seemed as dead as the pyramids. It was dark, dusty, tired. Nothing moved and no dogs barked. Jack wondered if they even had dogs. He also wondered why anyone would live there in the middle of the desert. Without casinos, he didn’t see the reason for anyone to live in a desert.

Attamhim, the nearest village to the pyramids, was ugly squalor and the cemetery, a mile outside of town, was worse. It seemed to double as the town’s trash dump.

They followed a rutted dirt road into the boneyard and right away Cyn sucked in a breath. Her hand squeezed Jack’s as she asked: “You feel that, right?”

How could he not? A hundred eyes stared up at them as they crossed the boundary dividing the land of the dead from the land of the living. The dead stirred in their graves and the hate was like poison in the air, wafting up out of the ground. “Yeah, I feel it. Ringo, you may want to stop.”

They were surrounded, but for some reason the dead weren’t digging out of their graves to get them. Taking his sword in hand, Jack slid out of the Volvo. “This is not at all what I expected,” he said, “but it may explain some things.”

“You mean like what Robert’s been doing all this time?” Cyn asked. “He’s been building a secret army.”

Jack grunted: “Yup. He could have raised thousands of these little cemeteries and we’d never know since we’re halfway around the world.”

Metzger and Fathers Timmons and Jordan came up behind them, each staring around, unnerved by the proximity of such a large number of undead. “But why this cemetery?” Father Timmons asked. “Is it just because he was in the neighborhood? I would say that doesn’t seem likely. This town isn’t exactly on the way to anywhere. Not even to the Pyramids. Shendi would have been a better choice; you have to travel right through it.”

“Maybe,” Jack said, going down to squat over a grave. It was unpleasant to say the least. Evil lay just below the surface...a very odd surface. He pushed away some of the trash and made a noise in his throat. “This grave has been recently dug up. Can I get some light?”

Cyn had her flashlight already out and beamed it down. In the turned up dirt were bone prints. “What in bloody hell? These ghouls have been up and walking around!”

“Maybe Robert needed some work done,” Jack suggested. “May I?” he asked, taking her flashlight. He tromped off towards the edge of the cemetery, noting that indeed, every grave had been dug up. Ringing the graveyard was a slat wood fence, three feet tall and badly in need of painting. The east side of it—the side that faced toward the Meroe Pyramids—was torn down.

It didn’t take an expert tracker to see that the ghouls had crossed and recrossed here. Jack jogged off down the “path” that had been created by the passage of the ghouls, with his team coming right behind. Timmons, who was the oldest, only lasted a hundred yards before going back for the cars which followed them at a discreet distance.

Meroe sat two miles away over a string of low hills and the path ran straight toward the pyramids, but stopped a hundred yards away; at the west end of the last hill to be precise. There they found odd mounds of dirt and sand; the ghouls had been digging.

They had burrowed straight into the side of the hill; that much was obvious; however the tunnel entrance was covered in rocks. Jack didn’t say a word as he started heaving away the stones.

“Slow down, Jack,” Metzger said. “I’m calling in the help we were promised. We don’t know what’s in there.”

Jack paused, with a stone hefted near his shoulder. He didn’t want to stop and it wasn’t the power of spells driving him or some evil force. The simple fact was that he wanted to explore! He wanted to discover. He wanted to creep down the tunnel with a torch in one hand and a treasure map in the other, just like he had always dreamed.

“Let’s let them do their jobs,” Cyn said, her smirk playing on her lips. She knew his heart...in this case, his childish heart. He tossed away the stone and went to stand with this team as the “others” that had been promised were called in.

In minutes, four black helicopters swooped down out of the dark. They were amazingly quiet and by their odd, angular appearance, Jack guessed that they were stealth helicopters. Thirty men leapt out of them and hurried to the tunnel. They were
Knights,
the military’s answer to the demon problem. Their arms and armor were black, all save for their silver crosses and shining swords.

There were four priests with them and they too were armed.

Cyn did a count of the full group. “Fifty men. Let’s hope that will be enough.” She meant it as a joke, but she was nervous as the rocks were pulled away and a hole ten feet wide and ten feet tall was revealed.

With the guns of fifty men and the one woman trained on the opening, Jack inspected the tunnel. It had literally been “hand-carved.” Gouges in the walls and scrapes by the thousands showed where fingers were used instead of shovels. The hole sloped downward, disappearing into the earth.

A squad of
Knights
went first; nine men and a priest. Then Jack’s team and then a second team of
Raiders
. They went slow, their flashlights illuminating everything. They checked the ground and the walls, inch by inch, looking for booby traps, trip wires, buried mines. They went slow, and they went without fear.

The priests were working as a team: one setting the power of the Lord against the possibility of fear, another against magical darkness, another against the cold. Timmons and Jordan walked behind Jack, ready with crosses and Holy Oil. Outside the tunnel, the other teams prepared themselves for a fight, with one team set facing the way they had come just in case the creatures from the graveyard should pop up out of the dirt and come after them.

The tunnel ran straight for ninety yards and then began to angle up until it came out in the burial chamber of
Beg 22
and what they found there was something out of
Indiana Jones
. The room, a square maybe twenty-five feet on the side, had a peaked roof, the walls leaning into each other, coming to a point twenty feet above their heads. Directly beneath that peak, sitting on the dusty floor was a golden sarcophagus that was nearly ten feet long.

“No one move,” Jack said, as two of the Knights began edging toward it. Jack worked his way slowly around the coffin, his blessed sword at the ready. There was nothing else in the room and when he had made a full circuit, he asked: “Is everyone as confused as I am?”

Heads nodded all around. “I don’t have my doctorate,” Cyn said, with her smirk playing on her lips, “but I’m pretty sure that isn’t Natakamani, the guy who was once buried here. As well, a golden sarcophagus isn’t on any cataloged list of items to be found in this tomb or any other in Meroe.”

“Sarcophagus?” Metzger asked. “Is that a coffin? Why’s it so big? What sort of creature is in there?”

“Just a man,” Jack explained. “There will be another sarcophagus inside this one and likely another inside that.”

Metzger was relieved. “So what do we do?” he asked. “Do we open it?”

Jack went around it a second time, paying close attention to the floor. There were no scrape marks. It had been carried in and placed perfectly in the center of the room. “I want to say, no. Especially not in this room. There’s no telling what sort of cunning plan Robert has for this. Why don’t you, uh, step back, I’m going to touch it.”

Everyone set themselves for battle as Jack slowly reached out and touched the gold. He half-expected to be shocked and half-expected the lid to blast off exposing some sort of undead creature. His mind hadn’t picked up a thing coming from the box and now his hand did not either.

He gave a contemplative: “Hmmm,” before running both hands over the lid. He even gave it a rap with his knuckles. It was solid metal, perhaps even solid gold. It was an impressive piece and most certainly didn’t belong in that pyramid. “It makes no sense,” he said in a whisper that everyone heard. Louder, he added: “I say we move it out to the surface and open it there.”

“What? Why open it at all?” Cyn asked. She was nervous about the sarcophagus and it showed in the fact that her sweet smirk was miles away. “Why don’t we take it back to the States? We could open it in a controlled environment, like at agency headquarters.”

“You want to open it in the middle of DC?” Jack asked. “Let’s say it is a trap and there is something bad in there and it gets out. There’s close to three million people within ten miles of the capitol. No, it’s better out here in the middle of nowhere. Fewer people will get hurt.” Jack looked back at the dark tunnel as if measuring it.

“Can’t we just take it through the door?” Metzger asked. “It’ll be quicker and I don’t like the idea of being in a dark tunnel with this thing.” Again everyone nodded, and when Jack did as well, charges were brought up by three of the
Knights
, and in no time, the granite slab was exploded into manageable pieces.

Everyone watched from cover, though it wasn’t the explosion that Jack kept his eye on; it was the sarcophagus. And when ropes were brought from the helicopters and the coffin was dragged out into the night, again he watched at the ready.

There was nothing to be seen.

And yet he was still wary.

He simply
knew
that there had to be something dangerous about the coffin or maybe something magical about it. Robert had gone to a lot of trouble bringing it to Meroe. It certainly wasn’t a Numidian or a Kushite piece.

Cyn saw him puzzling it over. She was snapping pictures of it from every conceivable angle. “I think it might be First Dynasty or even older. Look at the eyes; look how big they are. That sort of strange proportionality was only common in the earliest finds.”

“You’re right,” Jack agreed, somewhat reluctantly. “Which means it’s been brought all the way from Egypt and stuck in the ground. Why? I always get back to why?” He brooded over the sarcophagus while the others watched in silence. Finally, he sighed and shrugged. “So, do you want to do the honors with me?”

She stepped back, hurriedly. “Open it? No, I think it should be the soldiers. A bomb is still an option.”

It was a far-fetched option in Jack’s opinion. Robert had always held finds such as these with more reverence. Poison gas? That was a possibility. The
Knights
had
come prepared. Six of them in protective masks came forward, one at each of the corners and one at the head and another at the feet. With everyone ready for the unexpected and set strategically back with their weapons at the ready, Jack said: “Go.”

The six men grunted and then lifted the lid up and off the casket. It was heavy, but that wasn’t the reason why it came crashing down after they only took two steps. Two of the men at the closer corners could see perfectly what was inside the coffin.

They dropped their side of the lid and started scrambling for their weapons and for the next few seconds everything happened in slow motion—it wasn’t as if time
seemed
to be moving slowly, it really was moving in slow motion.

Jack’s hands, always so quick, were sluggish and his feet moved as if under water; even his eyes took forever to haul themselves away from the soldiers to focus on what was in the coffin.

Everyone was slowed except the creature that had been inside of it. There shouldn’t have been a “creature” in the sarcophagus at all. That wasn’t how these things ever worked and yet a tremendous monster leapt out, its evil suddenly sweeping from it in a terrifying wave.

Moving with blinding speed, it rushed full on Jack. It made sense; he was the main threat. He was a power house, even compared to the priests. He had grown strong, but he was nothing compared to the creature. It was huge; physically at least eight feet in height. Its features were human, though exaggerated: eyes four inches wide, a sharp, thin nose, ears, long and pointed, but flat to the skull. It was old and dead with wizened flesh the color of walnut.

Magically, the creature had power that could not be believed.

Like lightning it flashed at Jack, punching with a fist the size of catcher’s mitt. He was looking to cave-in Jack’s chest and would have if he hadn’t been wearing his Kevlar armor. As it was, Jack flew through the air from the force of the blow, his chest on fire, his breath locked in his throat.

He struck the side of the pyramid and began to slide down. As he did, the night started to light up with little blinks. The men were shooting. The guns lit, but as sound traveled far slower than light, they were silent. With time slowed to a crawl, the blasts didn’t reach Jack’s ears for a few seconds, and in that time the creature killed half the priests and five of the soldiers.

It had learned its lesson concerning Kevlar and now it went for the throat or the eyes.

Nine men dead in what? A half a second of real time? It was impossible to tell, and impossible to fight against. They would have been doomed, but time suddenly snapped back into place. It was jarring to say the least. Priests and soldiers were suddenly flying through the air and gunshots seemed to explode from every direction.

Jack fell in a crumpled heap at the base of the pyramid. The
Knights
and the
Raiders
oriented on the creature that had, a second before been only a blur moving as fast as their bullets. Now it was stationary and they tried to pin it to the earth in a hail of gunfire.