As the friends scrambled out of the tunnel mouth, the brutal Egyptian heat pounced on them like a waiting animal. The afternoon sun bore down with laser-beam intensity; after long, dark days underground, no one minded at all.

“Man, do I need this vitamin D!” crowed Luke, spreading his arms and turning his face toward the bright sky.

Alex eyed the sun-scalded landscape. Worn and weathered stone ruins jutted up from the sand. Directly in front of him, a stone foundation was just visible, the building that had once stood atop it lost to the ages. All around the phantom foundation, broken columns and shattered stone rose from the pale sand, like the bones of some great beast.

“They’re ruins,” said Alex’s mom, “but I don’t recognize them.” Alex could practically hear her mind whirring through a lifetime of scholarship and travel.

“Nor do I,” said Todtman. “Recently uncovered, I think.”

“Yes,” agreed Dr. Bauer. “Under the sand for a very long time. And modest.”

“Definitely not a pharaonic site. A temple?”

“Maybe, maybe, but nothing fancy.”

“Certainly not. A temple for commoners, then.”

The two scholars nodded sagely, and Ren threw in a quick: “That’s what I was thinking!”

“Yeah, uh, those sound like some real good points,” said Luke. “But maybe we should be looking for a parking lot? You know, cars, roads? So we can get out of here?”

“Yeah,” agreed Ren. “Last time we escaped from one of these thingies, there was a parking lot full of cars to steal.”

Dr. Bauer gave her a surprised look.

“I mean borrow,” said Ren with a shrug.

“This complex was bigger. There must be a lot of entrances,” said Alex.

As the group scanned the broken landscape, the ground beneath them began to shake once more. Alex looked over at his mom with wide-open uh-oh eyes. The sand around them began to dance like flour tossed in a pan. The other tremors had been quick, beginning to subside almost as soon as they started. But this one kept gaining strength.

As the friends did their best to keep their balance — knees bent, arms out — the stone ruins began to faintly groan. A moment later, a nearby column crashed to the ground.

“I feel like a scrambled egg!” contributed Luke, a half-baked metaphor that somehow proved his point.

Then there was a “Yip!” of pure surprise from Todtman. The German had been knocked to his knees and a broad crack was growing in the sand next to him. He began crawling away as best he could. But the crack spread, a jagged black opening in the earth that sucked in hundreds of pounds of sand as it grew.

Alex watched in horror as the foundation of the old building began to tip and slide sideways into the ground.

Another jolt knocked Alex and his mom to the ground. Alex felt his body beginning to slide down into the sand as it vibrated all around him. His mom was seated on the ground next to him with her eyes closed and a grimace of pain on her face as she clutched her side. “Mom!” he shouted.

Another crack opened up, closer and spreading outward like a slow smile. Alex was terrified it would swallow him whole.

But almost immediately, everything changed.

It stopped being about what the dancing sand would swallow and became about what it would reveal.

A ragged hand thrust itself out of the ancient earth and into the broad, clear light of day.

The hand clawed at the edge of the spreading black gap. The hand, and then the forearm, and then the elbow appeared and hooked itself over the edge. Falling sand washed over it — catching here and there in the time-yellowed linen that wrapped the arm — but still it kept clawing forward.

Alex was so mesmerized by the sight that he barely noticed the tattered hand breaking through the sand right next to him. It was only when the bony fingers hooked the cuff of his jeans that he snapped out of it.

“What the —” he blurted. He shook his leg, but that just made the thing latch on tighter. Alex grabbed his leg with both hands and tried to tug it free, but the hand tugged right back, using the motion to help pull itself up, a fish that wanted to be caught.

He dropped his calf and reached for the scarab. As soon as his hand closed around it, he sandblasted the mummy’s hand free with a whipping lash of desert wind.

As he did, a bright white flash lit his vision like a camera flash. Ren’s amulet.

He risked a quick look over, in case she needed help — and that’s when he saw it.

He had broken the grip of one hand, but what about the next? And the next? And the thousand after that? Because the entire landscape had transformed from one of sand and stone to one of clawing hands and grasping arms.

Soon, the first heads emerged: time-stained linen pulling free, eyeless sockets staring upward at the sun, and mouths full of jagged brown teeth spitting sand.

Mummies. Everywhere.

The tattered corpses pulled themselves from the earth, grabbing the edges of the old stone blocks, the bases of the old columns, and anything else that seemed solid.

Grabbing anything at all that remained of this commoners’ temple. This mass grave.

The undying army had arrived.