Rakitaki: A Jonas Quartermain Adventure Page 15

  Jonas shook his head. “The mummification process should have preserved the body, at the very least the bones if not the flesh. But it crumbled when I touched it, like it had been in a really hot fire. The more we find, the more questions I have.” Jonas idly brushed the powder from his side and felt a shiver run up his spine. The powder was very similar to the dust found under the lid of the sarcophagus.

  Simon grunted, then carried off more jewelry. Jonas had forgotten about taking pictures until he felt the camera on the loop around his neck bang into his chest as he stood up. He started taking pictures again, swapping for fresh rolls as each ran out. He took enough pictures to run out every roll he brought. Once he was done, he stooped and grabbed a few pieces of jewelry from the side of the main sarcophagus, then took them out to where Dylan was beginning the cataloging process.

  The excitement of their discovery quickly wore off as they made dozens of trips. The hallway was too narrow to let a wheelbarrow through. Jonas resorted to filling a cardboard box by the handful and ferrying it out to the waiting Simon. They would swap boxes and Jonas would return to fill it again. They still had only a fraction of the jewelry out of the burial chamber. Jonas' eyes burned with fatigue, his legs were cramped, and his hands ached. They had been moving the piles of heavy gold and bronze artifacts for two full hours.

  It was millions of dollars’ worth of necklaces, bangles, crowns, bracelets, and more. The initial discovery had been only a few hundred pieces by Dylan’s count. The real treasure was in the greater vault, which at that point was in the tens-of-thousands. Piles as high as Jonas and fifteen feet deep. It was a shocking amount of wealth, especially for an unknown Pharaoh, bordering on the scale of King Tutankhamen.

  “I need a break,” Jonas said as he stretched out on the surface. The sun was starting to rise in the East.

  “That's a good idea. We can keep going after a long break.” Simon stretched out, reaching to the sky.

  Jonas looked at the stairwell. “Will the jewelry be safe?”

  “For the most part, it should be. No Egyptian will steal from the dig, for fear of the curse. The Turkish men might, but if they get caught, they go to prison for a really long time.” Dylan spoke as he continued to catalogue the artifacts.

  Jonas sighed. “I guess we should have radioed Professor Calhoun after all. I’ll ask him to come back to the site this afternoon. He’ll bring extra help when he finds out,”” He walked over to the command tent, fired up the radio, and made a call to Calhoun.

  “Professor Calhoun, this is Jonas Quartermain.”

  A long moment of static was ended by Calhoun’s breathless voice. “What is it? Is there an emergency?”

  “No emergency, Professor,” Jonas said tiredly.

  “Then why did you call? I told you to use the radio only in emergency.” The professor’s irritation was evident.

  “We made a discovery last night. Found the burial chamber. And the greater vault. You’ll want to see it.”

  Calhoun was silent for thirty seconds. When he came back, he sounded excited. “How big?”

  “King Tut,” Jonas said.

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “No, professor, we worked for the last six hours on the vault. Come tonight, and bring help for the paperwork.”

  “Fine. Get some rest. I’ll still be there soon.”

  The far end went silent, then to static. Jonas shut the radio off and walked to his tent. He shook dirt and sand off, then entered. He stripped to his boxers and lay down. One question bothered him as he drifted to sleep.

  “How did I see the mummies when they were in the vault?”

  Jonas watched a jackal fleeing over a nearby dune. The moon was high, yet he wasn’t cold. It bathed the sandy plain in pale light, bright yet fleeting. He couldn’t remember leaving his tent. The jackal was running, running, never moving. All six legs worked to carry it away from an unseen threat. He could hear it yipping in fright. A deep baying followed it, unseen behind the silvery sand bank.

  His hair stood on end. Something rose from the sand behind him. It reached two skeletal hands down, hovering just above his shoulders. A legion burst from the ground in front of him. Sand showered down, hiding their forms for too long. They advanced through the cloud with spears leveled at his throat. They were silent. Too silent. He couldn’t hear them breathe. The sand finally settled back to earth, revealing the force that approached him.

  Rotten faces were pulled back in a dry grimace. Not a single corpse that approached had eyes. His breath caught in his chest. They were only a dozen feet away, still stalking toward him. A hint of laughter rumbled from the creature behind him, then floated away on a breeze. The approaching column of soldiers crumbled to dust in front of him. Weapons dropped into the sand and disappeared as it shifted.

  The jackal yipped again, this time brushing past him in its haste. A piercing cry tore the night. A shape grew out of the moon, wings spread wide. Talons stretched down toward his face. The rear claw of each foot touched his forehead above the eyes. In that brief instant, a massive stylized eye flashed in front of him, bathing the land in the golden light of day. Then the falcon broke contact and flew away.

  Jonas woke with a start, soaked in cold sweat. The tent was hot. His watch read nearly noon. It was hours before he had to be up, yet he couldn't think of sleep. His brain was caught in a whirlwind. He still had two more nights at the dig before he was to go back to town. He shrugged into his jeans and dirty shirt, then left his tent to take a walk. He could hear men snoring in tents nearby.

  Despite the grittiness of the hot wind, it felt nice to him. He started to calm down; to cool off from his fevered dreams. The sun high above brought peace of some kind to his mind. The Eye of Horus haunted his waking thoughts. Something about the number of symbols in the tomb, and how large the shen ring had been.

  “All wards against evil,” he muttered to himself. He walked to the tent that served as the makeshift mess hall. He helped himself to a bottle of water, greedily drinking it. Nobody was awake in the camp. The bizarre lack of activity in the middle of the day still gave him the creeps. The sun was high overhead, baking the sand and stone. He stood at the entrance to the mess tent, drinking his water and looking out over the dig site. He could see the generator sitting quietly next to the stairs that descended into the pyramid base.

  A shape wavered in the air on the far side of the pseudo-bowl the pyramid currently sat in. Jonas shaded his eyes to get a better look. It looked like Calhoun was standing on the far side of the pyramid, but the heatwaves coming from the sand made it hard to make a positive identification. He took a step into the sunlight and blinked as a gust of wind caught him in the face. By the time he opened his eyes again, the shape was gone. He searched the dune for a minute before deciding the image had been an illusion.

  He finished his water bottle then tossed it into the trash nearby. He made his way back to his own tent, curious about what he had seen. He had already forgotten about the strange dream. The wind caught the flap as he tried to close it, causing the fabric to snap open. He cursed the sand that swept in, knowing that he should sweep it out. He also knew it would be a futile effort, because the sand would be back the next time he opened the flap. He sighed, shucked his clothes and trudged back to his cot to attempt sleep.

  Jonas suddenly remembered his dream when he laid down. He worried over the strange images. A six-legged jackal, a falcon that nearly tore his eyes out. The army of the dead, and… whatever had been behind him. He dwelled on the dream as he fell into a light sleep. What seemed like only an instant later, he found himself being shaken by Simon.

  “Let's go, dude. There's still a ton of work to be done.”

  “What are you doing in my tent? Guh, I feel like shit,” Jonas responded. He tried to shrug off Simon's hand. The hand stayed in place, increasing in pressure. Then it clamped down, and he let out a gasp of pain. “Hey, ow! Let go asshole!”

  Jonas tried to turn over, to look at Simon,
but he found himself locked in place. He couldn't move, couldn't open his eyes. His breath felt strangled in his chest. He tried to move any muscle at all, but only felt terror rise. Then a clammy, cold exhalation crept over his neck and the side of his face. It reeked of rot and decay. The hand felt skeletal with a grip of steel. Jonas thought his shoulder would break from the force of the grip.

  “So much to do,” said a new voice. It was the source of the rank air. The voice sounded dead, disused for time untold. “Thanks to you, I can begin my work again. Crimson Night shall reign once more.” It faded into haunting laughter.

  19

  Jonas screamed, flailing in his bed. Then Simon was there, holding his shoulders against the cot.

  “Woah! Chill out Jonas! You're going to hurt yourself.”

  Jonas beat at the large man, swinging wildly. Simon shifted his grip from Jonas’ shoulders to his upper arms and held him down.

  “JONAS! STOP!”

  Jonas stopped flailing around and looked at Simon looming over him. He couldn’t remember what he had been dreaming about. He knew it wasn’t good, he had a sense of doom hanging over him, in addition to his still-racing heart.

  “What are you doing in my tent?” Jonas asked shakily.

  “You were making loud noises for a few minutes before you started screaming. I came to check on you,” Simon said, once again sounding concerned.

  “Yeah, I, uh, I was having a nightmare, I think,” Jonas said by way of explanation. “I couldn’t move.”

  “Sleep paralysis,” said Dylan from the tent flap.

  “What-the-what?” Asked Simon. He stood, watching Jonas closely.

  “Sleep paralysis. When you fall asleep, your body disconnects motor control from the brain. It's a defensive mechanism to keep you from falling out of your tree.”

  “What do you mean 'falling out of your tree'?” Asked Jonas. He sat up, wiping sweat from his forehead.

  “Keep in mind, modern humans have only been around for less than the blink of an eye, in biological terms. We evolved from tree dwellers in the last hundred thousand years or so. Basically, yesterday in terms of evolution.” Dylan waved his hand as he spoke. “That's why big eyes, or tusks, or noises in the night still scare us, even though we're the apex of Earth evolution.”

  A flash of the Eye of Horus lit up Jonas' mind, then he was back in the conversation.

  “Because as far as our DNA is concerned, we still need to worry about jungle cats, and wooly mammoths, and saber-tooth tigers. Make sense?” Dylan looked at Jonas around Simon’s side.

  “Basically,” Jonas said hesitantly.

  “Alright boys, enough talk about dumb things.” Simon stretched his back as he spoke. “Let's get the tomb cleared out.”

  “That's going to take all day. Probably all of tomorrow, too,” mentioned Jonas.

  “Then the sooner we start on it, the sooner we finish,” rumbled Simon. Jonas nodded tiredly, and got dressed. He followed his fellow students to the stairs, then plodded into the dark with Simon. They carried small cardboard boxes to fill with jewelry.

  They stopped cataloguing around midnight for lunch. Jonas still felt shaken from the day of nightmares. He worried that the pharaoh, Atakheramen, had gotten out of his coffin. His concern was baseless, the body lay exactly where it had for more than three thousand years. Still, he felt like he had to check on the wooden coffin every time he went into the crypt. It was still closed.

  Simon planted his foot wrong and slipped on a small piece of jewelry he had missed in the shadows of the sarcophagus and knocked into another mummy. That one had also crumbled to dust.

  “What the hell is up with these bodies?” Simon asked.

  “I don’t know, but we need to be extra careful. That’s two that have fallen apart now. Speaking of, where did the first one go?”

  “I thought you swept it up,” Simon said as he inspected the ring he had slipped on. It was partially smashed. He sighed and put it into his box.

  “With what? There’s no broom here.”

  “I don’t know man. Maybe Dylan did?”

  “Maybe Professor Calhoun did,” Jonas said quietly. He looked up the tunnel toward the surface.

  “The professor hasn’t been here.”

  “I could have sworn I saw him earlier today, when I woke up the first time.”

  Simon shook his head. “He doesn’t travel during the day. The A/C is out on the van, in case you missed that detail on the last trip.”

  “I did. Weird, I really thought I saw him. Well, let’s ask when we get back to the surface in a minute.”

  Just then a voice made them both jump.

  “Good gods,” Calhoun exclaimed from the doorway.

  Jonas put a hand to his chest to calm his suddenly racing heart. Simon calmly stood and glared at Calhoun.

  “You scared the crap out of me, Professor,” Jonas said.

  “Yeah, not cool. He might have broken something else.”

  “Shut up, Simon. You’re the one who creamed the mummy.”

  “More like powdered,” Simon replied as he looked at the dust coating his boots.

  “You… you ‘powdered’ a mummy? What does that mean?” Calhoun asked.

  Simon indicated the pile of dust behind him. “Fell to dust when I slipped. Barely even touched it.”

  “That’s a shame. Nothing we can do about it now. You were not kidding, Mister Quartermain. This is quite the find. Good news for you though, you have help now.”

  Calhoun waved behind him and both Jodie and Sidney emerged from the tunnel. They held boxes of their own. Both stopped at the sarcophagus and looked around the vault in awe.

  “I appreciate the help, Professor, but who will watch the village site now?”

  “I will. Ladies, Mister Quartermain is in charge. I am going back to the village at the end of the day. I will return in a day or two. I need to make sure the village continues moving forward. Too bad we haven’t found anything yet.”

  Just then, Davion walked around Calhoun and looked at the burial chamber with a measured eye.

  “It is quite the find, as you said, Nic.”

  “Here, you will call me Professor, Mister Jenkins.”

  Davion nodded absently. Jonas looked back and forth between the two curiously.

  “Is that why you took so long to get here?”

  “If what you said was true, I had to report it immediately. I took a trip back to Cairo and met up with Mister Jenkins, and we drove out here as soon as it was cool enough. We really need to do something about that van, Mister Jenkins. It is starting to fall apart."

  “I’ll put in a word,” Davion said. He carefully stepped around the students, inspecting the mummies and piles of jewelry. “You said something about the mummies having problems?”

  “Yes, sir. I bumped one, Simon bumped another. Nothing you would think would cause damage, but both fell to ash or dust.”

  “That is unfortunate. I’ll need to bring in our specialists for their removal.”

  “Now?” Asked Calhoun.

  “Now. Ladies and Gentlemen, consider this a lucky break. You get to take it easy for the next few hours while my people remove the bodies.”

  “But,” Jonas started.

  “No buts,” Davion said quickly. “Go topside and start getting caught up on paperwork. The bodies need special conditions to move. It’s… a corporate secret, you could say. Can’t have you snooping around and discovering our methods.”

  Jonas sighed and set his box down. The others followed suit, leaving boxes where they were. They walked out of the burial chamber in single file and returned to the surface. There, Dylan greeted them with a smile.

  “Hey guys. Here to help me out? I’m a bit… behind.” He gestured at the piles of gold artifacts around him. Jonas nodded and took a seat. He put on a pair of gloves and started filling out paperwork and bagging artifacts for transport. The other students followed his lead.

  They worked for two hours before the specialists sh
owed up. Four people in white hazmat suits walked by like sci-fi villains. Due to the bulk of the suit and the tinted faceplates, it was impossible to even tell if they were men or women. They each held a small toolbox, not unlike a tacklebox. The fan on the back of each suit drowned out any sound they might have been making. Four airlines extended from the back of the suits. They snaked into the pyramid, and stopped when they presumably reached the burial chamber. Jonas traced the white lines across the sand to a modified work van. Though the doors were open, plastic sheeting obscured the inside.

  When he stood to look at the van, Davion cleared his throat. Jonas looked back at the large man who shook his head. He took his seat and continued cataloging.

  Davion stood sentry at the foot of the pyramid stairs. He occasionally touched his ear and spoke quietly. Jonas wondered what the man was doing. He couldn’t see a walkie talkie on him, and the suit he wore was tightly tailored. An hour before dawn, the hoses started to move again. Two of the strange suited people emerged with a black plastic tube. It looked like a half pipe attached to a stretcher and closed off.

  The second team emerged with another tube a moment later. They loaded each into the back of an idling windowless work van. It looked brand new. They returned underground and retrieved two more. When that van was filled, the doors were closed and it took off into the night. Another van took its place. That one was filled, then another van. Jonas watched in fascination. Just before sunrise, the final body was loaded and the last van left. The suited people clambered into the modified work van, shut the doors, and left.

  Jonas thought about the last time he had interacted with the intimidating man. Davion had looked very closely at him, as if studying him when he started asking pointed questions. Anything that pried into the business of the Department seemed to draw Davion’s intense scrutiny.

  Finally, dawn broke. The dig was cordoned off and security personnel put in place. Valuables had been found, and Davion said the site needed to be protected around the clock. Jonas was thankful when he climbed into their own van and it rumbled off to the city. The restless day before had left him beyond exhausted. He was lulled to sleep by the rocking of the chassis and the rumble of the motor.