The Living Dead Series (Book 2): World Without End (2 page)

T
wo days later.

Five o’clock. Finally. Beatrice Kelly powered off the tablet she had carried most of the day while doing a last minute inventory of the Egyptian exhibit in the basement gallery.  When the British Museum closed its Egyptian rooms for renovation and sent the priceless exhibit on tour, the National Gallery Board jumped at the opportunity to display it. The collection of Egyptian artifacts, the most extensive in the western world, was amassed over centuries starting in 1753 with contributed items from a private collector. Sir William Hamilton donated more in 1772 but the biggest haul came in 1801 when British forces defeated Napoleon and happily liberated the collection that the Little Emperor had in his turn appropriated from the Egyptians during his expeditions in that ancient land. After that, European interest in the region grew and each year saw new treasures shipped to England for public and private collections. Only in the past twenty years or so had Egypt begun to restrict exports of its antique heritage.

Her boss wanted to be absolutely certain the actual exhibits matched the report she was preparing for the director. Fortunately everything did. Tomorrow was the grand opening for the collection and they were expecting big crowds. She lingered a moment, going back to look at a monolithic carving of Senemut, Queen Hatshepsut’s steward, architect, and possible lover. The sculpture showed the great man sitting down, only his head visible above a blanket-type garment through which a happy, little face peeked, just below his. The face belonged to Neferure, daughter of Hatshepsut, clearly content to be held by the man some archaeologists and historians conjectured was her father.

A glass display case held a series of brightly colored tiles showing a giraffe and zebra playing cards and drinking wine. Next to that was a polished lapis-lazuli makeup compact accompanied by a series of exquisite makeup brushes of varying sizes. She saw her reflection in the glass. The bun she had twisted her hair into this morning looked frayed. She pulled the chopsticks holding it and her hair tumbled down around her shoulders. The light streaks from last summer were long gone and she was back to regular blonde. She needed to have it trimmed. She finger-combed it then put it back up.

Checking her phone she found a voicemail, sent at noon today from her boss, Sylvie.

“Bea? It’s Sylvie. We’ve decided to close for the day in light of everything that’s going on. We may be out tomorrow too. Don’t worry about finishing the report right now. The opening is going to be delayed, obviously. Go home and stay safe.”

What did that mean? In light of what?  It had to be the snow. The building had been quiet all day and she had seen no one. She suspected that even the open areas had few visitors since the snow started. Personally she thought the city looked better covered in a sparkling blanket of white but she could see how people would prefer not to drive in it.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she saw Evan’s number. Since he lost his last job, he called her several times a day even though she told him that personal calls at work were discouraged in her department.

“Hello?”

“Bumble-Bea, where are you?”

“I’m still at work. I had a special project to work on today. Where are you?”

“I’m just hanging out. I thought you would be home by now. Have you seen the news?”

“Evan, I’ve been at work all day.”

He didn’t seem to hear her and kept talking.

“They’re saying it’s pretty bad and they’re telling people to-”

Dead air. The call dropped. Cell phone reception was never good down here. She turned the lights off and pocketed her phone.

Figuring out what to do about Evan, fun, charming and utterly irresponsible, had occupied her thoughts for the past few weeks. They dated off and on for over a year and in that time he found and lost two jobs, the first because of the economy but the second after an escalating feud with a co-worker that ended in a fistfight. He hadn’t had a job since then and she had a feeling his roommates weren’t going to float him much longer. He had hinted broadly that he might want to move in with her but every square inch in her rental was in use.

She headed up the stairs to the back hallway leading to her office. The guards must have herded all the stragglers out double-time. She met no one on the stairs or in the lobby.

As large as the public areas of the Gallery were, they were dwarfed by the storage areas that most people never saw. Bea’s office was carved out of a football field-sized area dominated by glass-less display cases, snarling reptilian figures missing limbs, eyes or teeth, benches with broken slats and other items, all awaiting repair. She scooted around a stack of wooden pallets and into her tiny office. It wasn’t much space but just the fact that she had an office at all made her happy. She had worked so hard for this. Taking classes while working two restaurant jobs had been her life for years until she finally got her first “real” job.

She loaded her report, typed a quick summary paragraph and then sent it to Sylvie. Checking her phone she found two texts from her brother. The first told her that school closed early today and in the second he complained that there was no food in the house. If there’s one thing I have learned, she thought, it’s that there is never enough food in the house for an eleven-year-old boy.  She texted him back.
“Sliced turkey meat drawer.”

Though she complained, she felt a fierce, protective love for him. Even before first their dad and finally their mom dropped out of the picture completely, lost to drugs and alcohol, it had really been just the two of them against the world. The day her parents brought him, a warm, blanketed bundle, back to the apartment from the hospital she knew he was hers. That very first night she woke to his fretful, hungry cries, fixed the bottle with the WIC supplied formula, and fed him herself. He latched ferociously onto the nipple, not stopping until he drained every drop. He then produced an enormous burp and went to sleep but not before their eyes met and the bond between them was born. Oh, she knew newborns weren’t supposed to be able to focus but he did that night.

It was Bea who made sure there were vegetables and milk in the house, Bea who saw that he went to bed on time and who helped him with his homework while their parents made half-hearted attempts to get clean. The attempts failed. After their dad left, her mom seemed to disappear a little more every day until finally one night she just didn’t come home. Bea was seventeen and working after school but Brian was only six.

That night when she got home from work, he had already fixed her a supper consisting of a peanut butter sandwich and chocolate milk and was sitting solemnly at the chipped formica kitchen table waiting for her to help him with his phonics workbook. When she asked him where their mom was he burst into tears and said he didn’t know.

The next morning Bea called the police and reported her missing but after three weeks they told her brusquely they couldn’t devote any more time to the case, especially with their mother’s history of substance abuse. For years she and Brian looked for her everywhere they went. There were several times when, catching sight of a slender woman with blonde streaked hair, they drew closer only to find that it wasn’t her. Almost every night for six months Brian woke up crying. She would go in his room and hold him until he went back to sleep. Bea, fortunately, was only a few weeks away from her eighteenth birthday and their caseworker endorsed her request to be Brian’s legal guardian. They never saw their mom again.

Double checking her work she opened the file she just sent to her boss. To her dismay, while the summary at the top looked good, the body of the report had not converted well into Word. There were gaps in the text and the margins were all over the place. If she had to retype the whole thing into Word she would be here half the night. She uploaded the original one more time and tried to convert it to a PDF to see if that worked better. A message popped up that said “Converting”.

Crossing her fingers she sidled out of her office, walked past the pallet stack and up to Sylvie’s office. The offices along the way were all open with the lights left on. That was unusual. She flipped the switches off as she went, a lifetime of ingrained thriftiness impelling her. All along the wall back here were items that, for whatever reason, the curators had decided not to display. There was a squat little statue that looked fine until she turned it around and found that- oh dear- the Egyptians did not shy away from phallic symbols in their art. She turned it back to face the wall.

Sylvie’s glass-walled office was locked which was also unusual. A battered, metal chest took up most of the space on her desk and the lights had been left on in here too. A series of tablets propped on a table looked like they might have once been part of a frieze. They showed the steps in the embalming process starting with the usual washing of the corpse in palm wine, followed by removal of the internal organs. The brain was removed first, pulled out through the nose by a hook. The body was washed again in Nile water and then wrapped in linen bandages, amulets placed in the appropriate places. The series continued on with another body, the embalmers performing the same steps but on the last tablet the corpse was shown stepping down from the embalming slab, breaking out of its wrappings. The artist had conveyed very realistic-looking fear on the faces of the fleeing attendants.

She looked back at the preceding images. The embalming process was something she had known by heart for years. Something was missing from the last series but she couldn’t figure out what exactly. Still, it made no sense not to display it. Maybe there just wasn’t room. She wandered back to her office.

The file was still converting and she checked her phone for the time. It was almost six-thirty. Everyone would soon be gone except for the night security staff. She took her shoes off and pulled on her boots, thinking about what she wanted for supper. Whatever it was she would need a lot of it to make Brian happy.

There were no windows down here but she was sure it was close to dark. The stupid file finally finished but now, while the body looked perfect, the summary at the beginning was all askew. Forget this. She deleted the summary and sent the body of the report through. She would explain to Sylvie tomorrow.

Finding her coat, she fished her hat and gloves out of the pockets then shouldered the over-sized, red, patent leather purse she had found on Ebay. It was the nicest purse she had ever owned and she had hesitated before taking it this morning. It was a lengthy walk from the Metro to her house and she didn’t want it ruined by the snow. Instead of walking home from Foggy Bottom she might take the Circulator bus tonight.

She would be fine from here to the first station. The Metro was fairly impervious to any kind of weather and went almost everywhere she needed to go. Her footsteps echoed on the hard, cold floors and again she saw no one on her way out. Usually one or two of her co-workers stayed late but not tonight. The snow must have spooked everyone into scurrying home. Her phone buzzed.

“Bea, where are you?” Brian asked.

“Still at work but on my way in a minute. What’s up? Did they cancel school for tomorrow because of the snow?”

“It wasn’t because of the snow. They told us that it’s flu or something; I forget what they called it. But just a few minutes ago, all the channels either went blank or stopped showing anything but the news. Everyone is supposed to stay home until it blows over.”

“Until what blows over? The snow or the flu?”

“The
flu
, Bea,” he said with exaggerated patience.

“Oh, okay. Are you all locked up?”

“The doors are locked but there’s someone rattling the gates. Oh, I think the dog was here. All the dog treats I left outside were gone when I got home.”

Their little rental had the good fortune to be inside the gates of a once stately Georgetown property. The old, creaky, metal gates were mostly unused since she and Brian came and went through a break in the stone wall caused long ago by the ground settling. Hardly anyone knew it was there as it was covered by a thick curtain of English ivy but a few weeks ago a stray found his way in and Brian was determined to entice him into becoming their dog.

“Who is rattling the gates? Can you see them?”

“I can see him, a little. It’s just a man. I’ve never seen him before but he looks sick.”

“Don’t go outside and stay away from the windows. The trains may be running slow so I’m not sure how long I’ll be, okay? Just sit tight.”

“Ok but, Bea?”

“What?”

“Can you bring home pizza?”

“I’ll try. See you in about an hour and, seriously Brian,
don’t go outside
.” She rang off, pocketed her phone and ran down the steps into the basement.

Next to the ramp in the south dock a service door was open, banging back and forth in a strong wind. A small pile of snow had already built up on the threshold. That door was never supposed to be left open. She heard someone outside gasping and struggling to breathe and she hurried over.

Blood stained the snow outside. In the failing light it appeared dark, almost black but she knew it was blood because she could see the body it poured from. It was Ben, one of the veteran guards. He had always been especially kind to her and was a friendly source of information when she was new and still finding her way in the often bewildering hallways, basements, and sub-basements of the huge buildings.