The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (59 page)

“Wait, stop, listen to me,” Ramses shouted.

Glancing back as she reached the doors, she saw that Alex
had a hold of him. “Stop, Ramsey, let her go!” Other men were surrounding Ramses.

She ran on to the top of the stairs. Now it was Alex’s voice calling her, begging her to wait, not to be afraid. But Ramses would get free of his captors. They could not hold him, and his threats rang in her ears.

Down the steps she ran, clutching to the railing, badly hampered by the high-heeled shoes.

“Your Highness,” Alex shouted.

She rushed through the lobby and out the front doors. A car had just stopped at the foot of the steps. The man and woman were already out of it, the servant holding the door open.

She glanced back. Alex was running down the staircase, and Ramses was right behind him.

“Your Highness! Wait!”

She dashed around the car, and shoved the baffled servant out of her path. She slid behind the wheel and slammed her foot on the pedal. As it raced forward, Alex vaulted over the side door and fell down into the seat beside her. She struggled to control the wheel, barely missing the garden, turning back onto the street that led to the boulevard.

“God in heaven,” Alex shouted over the wind. “He’s taken the car behind us. He’s following us.”

She forced the pedal to the floor, turning dangerously to avoid the car directly in front of her, and then racing ahead into the open lane.

“Your Highness, you’ll kill us!”

The cold air struck her face as she leaned forward, twisting and turning the wheel to pass the sluggish cars that would not get out of her way. Alex pleaded with her. But she heard only Ramses’ voice in her ears: “I will put you back into the grave … into the darkness.” To get away, she had to get away.

“I won’t let him hurt you.”

At last the boulevard had given way to the open country road. Nothing in her path now. Yet she kept the pedal jammed to the floor.

Somewhere far out there lay the pyramids, and then the desert, the open desert. But how could she hide there; where would she go?

“Is he still behind us?” she screamed.

“Yes, but I won’t let them hurt you, I told you! Listen to me.”

“No,” she screamed. “Do not try to stop me!”

She shoved at him as he went to embrace her. The car twisted, went off the paving. Over the packed sand it plowed, plunging into the blackness, headlamps shining dimly on the open desert. She had lost the road!

Far off to the right she saw a twinkling light moving as if towards her. Then she heard that sound, that awful sound: the scream of the steam locomotive! Ye gods, where was it!

Panic seized her. She could hear the low rumble of the iron wheels!

“Where is it!” she screamed.

“Stop, you have to. Don’t try to race it!”

A glare of lights struck the little mirror above her, blinding her. She threw up her hands for an instant, then grabbed the wheel again. Then she saw the horror of horrors, the great roaring monster that had terrified her more than anything else. The giant black iron locomotive looming down on her right.

“The brakes!” Alex cried.

The motor car bumped, rose up in the air and caught at a dead halt. The locomotive passed only a foot in front of her, the huge grinding wheels directly before her eyes.

“We’re caught on the tracks, damn it, come on, get out!” Alex cried.

The whistle came again, screaming over the iron rumbling. Another one was coming towards her from the left! She saw its round yellow eye, the beam sweeping over her, its great flaring iron skirt as it thundered down the metal path.

They had her, these things; they had her. How could she escape them? And Ramses was behind her, Ramses was shouting her name. She felt Alex grab her arm and try to pull her out of the seat. The hideous locomotive was on top of her; as it struck the car she screamed.

Her body was thrown upwards. In one glaring moment she felt herself flying, high above the desert, tossed like a doll into the wind. Below the horrid iron monsters travelled past each other, over the endless sands. Then a searing flash of orange fire rose under her; unendurable heat enveloped her with a great deafening sound the like of which she had never before heard.

Ramses was thrown backwards by the explosion. He landed sprawling on the sand. One instant he had seen her body, thrown up and out of the car. The next the car had exploded, and she
had been swallowed in midair by a great plume of orange flame. Again the explosion rocked the earth with its force, the fire spewing even higher. And for a moment he could see nothing at all.

As he scrambled to his feet, the great northbound locomotive was trying to stop. Wheezing, grinding still, it lumbered on the burning wreckage of the car shoved to the side, off the track. The southbound train roared on, oblivious, its rattling boxcars adding to the unbearable noise.

He ran towards the burning car. The mangled frame looked like blackened timbers in the rolling, greasy blaze.

He could see no life, no movement, no sign of her! He was about to run into the fire itself when Samir grabbed him. When he heard Julie scream.

In a daze he turned and looked at them. Alex Savarell was struggling to get up, his clothes blackened and smoking. His father stood beside him, a burnt garment hanging from his hand. He would live, the young man. That was clear.

But she! Where was she! Appalled, he stared at the giant trains, the one stopped now, the other fast disappearing; had ever the world known such power? And the explosion; it had been like a volcano.

“Cleopatra!” he cried out. Then he felt himself, for all his immortal strength, slowly crumpling. Julie Stratford held him in her arms.

The dawn came with a fiery glow on the horizon; the sun, caught in a mist, seemed not so much a disk but a great layer of simmering heat. The stars faded slowly.

Once again he walked back and forth over the same stretch of railroad track. Samir watched him patiently. Julie Stratford had gone to sleep in the backseat of the car.

Elliott and his son had returned to the hotel.

Faithful Samir alone stood with him, as once again he examined the burnt mangled car. Horrid the skeleton of the thing. Horrid the bits and pieces of charred leather clinging to the blackened springs.

“Sire,” Samir said patiently, “nothing could survive such an explosion. In the olden times, sire, such heat was unknown.”

It
was
known, he thought. It was known in the eye of an erupting mountain, the very image that had come to him last night.

“But there must be some trace, Samir. Something must remain.”

But why punish this poor mortal who had never done anything but give him comfort? And Julie, his poor Julie. He must take her back to the safety and quiet of the hotel. She had not spoken since it happened. She had stood by him, holding on to him, but she had not spoken a word.

“Sire, give thanks for what has taken place,” Samir said tentatively. “Death has reclaimed her. Surely she is at peace again.”

“Is she?” he whispered. “Samir, why did I frighten her! Why did I drive her out into the night? Samir, we quarrelled as we had always quarrelled. We strove to hurt each other! There was no time suddenly; we stood outside it, warring with each other.” He broke off, unable to go on.

“Come rest now, sire. Even immortals must rest.”

HEY STOOD all together in the train station. For Ramses, a moment of the most pure and undiluted anguish. But he had no more words to use to persuade her; when he looked into her eyes, he saw not a coldness, but a deep and unhealing hurt.

And Alex, he was changed now into another human being with Alex’s face and form. He had listened resentfully to the half-truths they’d given him. A woman Ramsey had known; mad; dangerous. Then he had closed himself off; he wanted to hear no more.

They were older now, this young man and this young woman. There was a faint greyness in Julie’s expression; there was a numbness and sullen quiet to Alex as he stood at her side.

“They won’t keep me here more than a few days,” Elliott said to his son. “I’ll be home perhaps a week after your arrival. Take care of Julie. If you take care of Julie …”

“I know, Father, it will be the best thing for me.”

Icy the smile that had once been so warm.

The conductor made his call. The train was ready to roll out of the station. Ramses did not want to see it moving; did not want to hear that noise. He wanted to escape now, but he knew that he would stay till the end.

“You will not change your mind,” he whispered.

She continued to look away.

“I’ll always love you,” she whispered. He had to bend down
to hear it, let her lips almost touch him. “To my dying day, I shall love you. But no, I cannot change my mind.”

Alex took his hand suddenly. “Good-bye, Ramsey. Hope I see you in England.”

The ritual was almost over; he turned to kiss Julie, but she’d already pulled away. She was on the metal stair into the passenger car, and then for one instant their eyes met.

It wasn’t reproach; it wasn’t condemnation; she couldn’t do anything else. She had explained it a thousand times in those same few words.

Finally the noise again, the awful engulfing sound. With uneven chugs, the string of windowed cars began to move forward; he saw her face at the window. She pressed her hand to the glass and looked down at him again, and again he tried to interpret the look in her eyes. Was there a moment’s regret?

Dully, miserably, he heard Cleopatra’s voice.
I called out for you in those last moments
.

The train was sliding by; the window was suddenly bright silver as it moved into the sunlight; he couldn’t see her anymore.

It seemed the Earl of Rutherford led him out of the station to where the motor cars waited, with the uniformed chauffeurs at their open doors.

“Where will you go?” the Earl asked him.

Ramses was watching the train disappear, the last car with its little iron gate growing smaller and smaller, the noise entirely manageable now.

“Does it matter?” he answered. Then as if waking from a spell, he looked at Elliott. Elliott’s expression surprised him almost as much as Julie’s. No reproach; only a thoughtful sadness. “What have you learned from all this, my lord?” he asked suddenly.

“It will take time to know that, Ramses. Time, perhaps, which I do not have.”

Ramses shook his head. “After all you have seen,” he asked, dropping his voice so that only Elliott could hear him, “would you still ask for the elixir? Or would you refuse as Julie has refused?”

The train was gone now. Silence reigned in the empty station. If one did not count the low hum of conversation here and there.

“Does it really matter now, Ramses?” Elliott asked, and for the first time Ramses saw a flash of bitterness and resentment in Elliott.

He took Elliott’s hand. “We shall meet again,” he said. “Now I must go, or I will be late.”

“But where are you going?” Elliott asked him.

He didn’t answer. He turned and waved as he crossed the train yard. Elliott acknowledged it with a polite little nod and a scant movement of his hand, then moved on to his waiting car.

Late afternoon. Elliott opened his eyes. The sun fell in slashes through the wooden blinds, the fan churning slowly overhead.

He lifted his gold pocket watch from the bedside table. Past three. Their ship had sailed. He enjoyed the relief for a long moment before thinking of anything else that he must do.

Then he heard Walter open the door.

“Have those damned people from the governor’s office called yet?” Elliott asked.

“Yes, my lord. Twice. I told them you were sleeping and I had not the slightest intention of disturbing your rest.”

“You’re a good man, Walter. And may they burn in hell.”

“My lord?”

“Never mind, Walter.”

“Oh and Your Lordship, the Egyptian fellow’s been by.”

“Samir?”

“Brought the bottle of medicine from Ramsey. It’s right there, my lord. Said you’d know what it was.”

“What?” Elliott rose on his elbows. Then, slowly, he turned his gaze away from Walter to the table on his right.