The Mummy (23 page)

“Who’s running away? I just don’t see the point of running
back
to where we just barely escaped with our lives.”

Her expression turned firm, her voice, too. “We woke him—and it’s our responsibility to try to stop him.”

“We
woke him?”

“All right—I woke him. And I intend to stop him. If you don’t want to help me, well, that’s your decision . . . Cleo! Bad girl.”

The cat was in the trunk again.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m no coward, but you heard that Med-jai chief, Ardeth What’s-It . . . He said no mortal weapons can kill this thing.”

That stopped her, but only to mull over his words, as if he’d provided her telling food for thought. “Then perhaps we need to consider what would constitute an ‘immortal weapon.’ Perhaps another incantation in
The Book of the Dead . . .”

“I want no part of this.” He went to the trunk and grabbed a handful of her clothes and marched back to the closet with them. “And I can’t allow you to—”

“Allow? Who appointed you my guardian?”

Hanging her dresses back up in the closet, he said, “Evelyn, it’s too goddamn dangerous.”

“Rick . . . I need your help. Now that this creature has been reborn, his curse will spread, like a terrible infection. The mummy himself is the real plague, a plague that could destroy the entire world.”

He snatched some underthings from the trunk and marched them to the chest of drawers. “That’s not my problem.”

She stepped in front of him. “Are you insane? It’s everybody’s problem!”

“I’m not insane—that’s why I want no part of this. Look, I appreciate what you did for me, buying my freedom, saving my life. But the agreement was I’d take you to Hamanaptra. I did that, and I brought you back, too.”

She snatched the underthings from him and marched them back to the trunk, and dropped them in. “Oh, and so what’s the American term? We’re ‘square’ now? We’re ‘even’?”

“I didn’t say that . . .”

Hands on her hips, chin high, she peered down her nose at him, in that familiar, infuriating way she had. “Is that what this has been to you, what
I’ve
been? A business arrangement?”

“Hey—you got a choice: Come with me, and leave this insanity behind; or hop a boat back to hell, and try to save the world.”

“I’ve already booked passage, thank you.”

“Fine,” he said.

“Fine,” she said.

He searched for just the right, telling remark, to really put her in her place, to state his case in a manner so articulately that later, upon reflection, she would just have to come around to his way of thinking.

“Fine!” he said, and slammed the door behind him.

Then he realized he had some of her underthings in one hand, opened the door, pitched them in, and went off to get drunk.

Within minutes, O’Connell was sitting at the bar in the dingy dive near the fort, where even in the middle of the afternoon, business was good. Within these mud walls, in the dim gas lighting, soldiers of His Majesty and ex-soldiers of His Majesty and soldiers of fortune mixed bad women and bad booze in search of good times. A ceiling fan stirred the stale air as O’Connell sat between Jonathan and an old friend of Jonathan’s, Winston Havlock of the Royal Air Force, who’d been stationed here for years.

The walrus-mustached Havlock, his eyes nearly as bloodshot as his nose, was in fact the last of the RAF still assigned to Cairo. The “rest of the laddies,” as he put it, had either died in the air and been buried in the sand, or been transferred to better duty. A fighter pilot who now served as a taxi for British officers, Havlock spent more time in the bag, these days, than in the air.

Ten minutes into a bottle of whiskey, Havlock was O’Connell’s “old friend,” as well.

“Rick, old sport,” Winston said, “ever since the Great War ended, there’s been nary a challenge worthy of men like us.”

“You might be surprised,” O’Connell told him.

“At times I wish I’d’ve gone down in a blaze of glory, like the other lads, ’stead of sitting around this foul watering hole, rotting from boredom and booze.”

Jonathan was lifting a shot glass to his lips when Havlock reached out, plucked it from Jonathan’s fingers and drank it down.

“Bloody hell, Winston!” Jonathan said. “What’s the idea?”

“That rotgut’s not worthy of you, lad,” Havlock told him, climbing off the stool, barely able to stand. “Never let it be said Winston Havlock was not willing to sacrifice for his friends.”

“Thank you, ever so,” Jonathan commented dryly.

The pilot slapped both O’Connell and Jonathan on the back, said, “Right-o, lads! It’s back to the airfield with me.”

And he staggered off.

O’Connell raised an eyebrow. “How would you like to have
him
as your pilot?”

“Winston’s never really needed a plane to fly higher than a kite. Bartender!”

As O’Connell and Jonathan sipped their whiskey (Havlock was right: It was vile rotgut, at that), Henderson and Daniels sidled up to the bar. Daniels still had an arm in a sling and both men—though shaved and bathed, in fresh shirts and chinos—had a hangdog, bedraggled look.

“Well,” Henderson sighed wearily, “we’re all packed up. Booked a steamer to Alexandria, for tomorrow morning.”

Jonathan, who was a little drunk, said, “Going back home to mummy?”

Henderson bared his teeth, and it wasn’t a smile.

O’Connell touched Henderson’s arm, gently, and said, “Don’t mind him. He’s just a fool.”

“A bloody fool, I’ll have you know,” Jonathan insisted. “Sit down, gentlemen. My sister will buy you a drink.”

Henderson took the stool next to O’Connell, but Daniels—who was scowling at Jonathan, as if trying to decide whether to brain him or not—just stood there.

Henderson said to O’Connell, “So—you think that walking maggot pile is really coming after us?”

“I don’t know,” O’Connell said. “Plague season seems to be over, anyway. Funny . . . now that we’re away from that ungodly place, it’s like it . . . never happened.”

“Tell that to Burns,” Daniels snapped, still just standing there.

O’Connell asked, “How is he?”

“How the hell do you think he is? He had his goddamn eyes and tongue ripped out. How would you be?”

And Daniels, shaking his head, stormed out of the tavern.

“Don’t mind him,” Henderson said, his turn to apologize for a friend’s behavior. “It’s just . . . hell, can you imagine? Your eyes, your tongue, torn out like pages from a goddamn book. If I was Burns, I’d feed myself the barrel of a gun.”

“Maybe you can get him some help back in the States,” O’Connell said, swirling whiskey in his shot glass.

“You ask me,” Henderson said, “the only way to help the poor bastard is . . . kill him.”

And Henderson threw back a shot glass of whiskey, then called for another.

Sunlight filtered in through the closed curtains, but the quarters inhabited by the third American—Burns—were dark. The fort had electric lighting, but those lights were off. Only those few rays of sun were available to dance on the precious jewels decorating the canopic jar that sat in the midst of a table like a centerpiece. The man staying in this spartanly furnished guest room was, after all, blind, sitting at that table in dark glasses.

He had heard a knock at his door, and bid whoever-it-was enter. And whoever-it-was had turned out to be Beni, his expedition’s missing guide, who had somehow made his way back to Cairo, too. With Beni was an honored visitor who, informed of the valuable canopic jar, wished to make Burns an offer.

Or so Beni had hurriedly said.

And now, attended by Burns’s turbaned native servant, the three men sat at the table—Burns, in white shirt and chinos, Beni in his black pajamalike apparel, and (as Beni had introduced him to Burns) Prince Imhotep, a tall presence in a dark hooded robe, his face covered in a white mask, sculpted to his features, eyes glittering out of almond-shaped holes.

But, of course, Burns could not see this strange, forbidding figure, and for the first time since his eyes and tongue had been taken from him, a small kindling of hope grew within him: a buyer for his artifact! Money to take home, in seeking aid, therapy, nursing, for his new deformities . . .

“So varee peased too mee choo,” Burns said, by way of tongueless greeting. And the American, almost eagerly, thrust his hand out in the Western world’s ritual of friendship and trust, the handshake—a ritual his visitor refused.

Beni said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Burns, but the prince’s religion does not allow him to touch one beneath his station. A silly Eastern superstition, but we must honor it.”

“Mah ahpaw-low-gees,” Burns said.

The native servant poured tea for the group, but when Burns reached for his cup, he spilled it.

“Oooh!” Burns said. “Saw-ree. Eyes am whaa they use taw be.”

“The prince sympathizes with your loss of sight,” Beni said, shooing the servant away, using a harsh look to send him from the room. “The eyes he’s using aren’t the best, either.”

Long, tapering fingers reached for the canopic jar—the flesh of the hands bandaged, and strangely withered. Imhotep picked up the jar, and Beni rose, backing away.

“Mr. Burns,” Beni continued, “the prince humbly thanks you for your hospitality . . . not to mention your eyes.”

“Mah . . . eyes?”

“Oh, yes, and your tongue.”

Confusion blurred into fear within the darkness that was the world Burns lived in.

Beni was saying, “But I am afraid we must ask you to contribute even more, sir. You see, the prince must consummate the curse that you and your friends have brought down upon yourselves.”

Burns stood, seized by fear, stumbling backward, losing his way in this small room he’d memorized, as lost as if he were wandering in the desert. The only mercy Imhotep had granted him was ripping out his eyes, days before, which spared Burns from the horror of seeing the robed mummy remove his strange mask to reveal the hideous visage beneath: a skull whose flesh had rotted largely away, a gray grotesque mask-beneath-the-mask enlivened only by bright eyes and rotten teeth and a pink darting tongue.

• • •

In the dingy dive near the fort, three men seated at the bar—bound together by the adversity of the Hamanaptra adventure—raised shot glasses, clinking them together, in one last farewell drink.

“Good luck, fellas,” Henderson said, and simultaneously he, O’Connell, and Jonathan threw back their shot glasses of whiskey . . . and then, just as simultaneously, spat the liquid back out, onto the sand-and-sawdust-covered floor.

Around them, other patrons were doing the same—spitting out their drinks onto the floor, onto tables, onto the bar—and everywhere the liquid glimmered red.

“Sweet Jesus!” Henderson said, rubbing his face with a hand, streaking his flesh scarlet.

“Blood,” O’Connell whispered.

The floor of the tavern looked like the aftermath of a slaughter, a bloodbath . . .

“ ‘And the rivers and waters of Egypt,’ ” Jonathan intoned, “ ‘went red . . . and were as blood.’ ”

A sick feeling clenched O’Connell’s stomach—not the nausea of the taste of blood in his mouth, but the realization that if one of those plagues was suddenly here, then . . .

“He’s gotta be here,” O’Connell said.

“Who?” Jonathan asked.

“Who?” Henderson asked.

“The creature, you goddamn owls!” O’Connell growled, jumping off the stool, heading quickly for the door. “The mummy!”

As he ran out into what had been a sunny afternoon, O’Connell found—in this land where it rained perhaps once a year—a sky roiling with black clouds, flashing with lightning. Running across the road through the front gates into the compound, O’Connell spotted a spooked Evelyn, walking with some books in hand, her white cat tagging along, staying close.

Suddenly the sky thundered, startling Evelyn, and she dropped her handful of books; O’Connell grabbed her arm and she jumped like a scared cat—like the scared cat next to her, in fact.

“You were right,” he told her, breathlessly. “It is my problem, too.”

She frowned at him, trying to make sense of that, but before she could, a barrage of hail and fire hurtled from the sky, assaulting the courtyard like an air raid. O’Connell grabbed Evelyn, pulling her under the eaves, as a wooden trellis just in front of them caught fire.

And then the courtyard was filled with panic—soldiers, servants, camels, horses, running in every direction, the men doing their best to duck the baseball-size hail, dodging the fireballs, a few running to the central fountain to get buckets and start fighting the small fires that had broken out all around the fort.

O’Connell clutched Evelyn by the arms and spoke above the din of hysteria around them: “He’s here! The mummy is here!”

An alarm caused by more than the maelstrom around them leaped like flames in her eyes. “Are you sure?”

A ball of fire crashed within inches of them.

“Call it a hunch,” he told her.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the hail ceased; the fireballs abated. Only the whinnying of horses, braying of camels, and crackle of flames remained, and then those noises too settled and stopped and gave way to silence—a dead, unearthly silence.

The silence did not last long: A scream of pain and terror unlike anything O’Connell had ever heard—and in recent days, he’d heard a few—ripped the stillness like a sharp blade through thin fabric.

Right above them.

“Stay here!” O’Connell said, and raced up the open wooden stairway to the living quarters above; and, of course, Evelyn followed.

A turbaned servant, who’d gone in to check on his master, was in the process of running back out, wild-eyed, screaming, and when O’Connell entered the quarters of the blinded American, Burns, he immediately saw the man, what little was left of him, sprawled upon the floor: shriveled to a human husk, drained of its bodily liquids, organs sucked away as well.

O’Connell was suddenly aware of Evelyn’s presence, because she had hugged him, as if holding on for dear life. Then a loud moaning emanating from the far side of the room, beyond the bed, by the window, drew their attention to a bandaged head-to-toe figure standing there, loosely draped in a dark robe.