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SHARIF AWOKE TO NICK violently shaking him.
“Wake up, wake up. She’s gone, I tell you. Faye—my wife—is gone!” Nick grabbed the Egyptian by the arms and yanked at him. The man had always seemed so alert, so easy to wake up. Usually he’d be up long before Nick and Faye. What was the matter with him?
“Gone...Faye...gone?” The other man shook his head, fighting to understand what Nick was saying. Trying to focus his eyes. As if he were drugged. Nick had seen enough people high on stuff to recognize the signs. He hadn’t thought Sharif was on anything, but then he didn’t know Egyptians all that well. Who could tell? They liked their hashish, didn’t they?
“Faye’s gone! Have you seen her?”
Nick was kneeling in the sand at Sharif’s tent entrance, screaming like a crazy man. The guide was struggling to rise from his sleeping bag. Couldn’t the first time or two, and then as if he’d finally comprehended what Nick was saying, he sat up. His eyes flew open, awareness coming back into them, and with that, distress.
“No, I have not seen her. Not since last night.” His voice a bit slurred, but he was quickly becoming his sharp-witted self. His next words were normal. “What do you mean gone?”
Nick’s arms fell away as the guide unzipped his sleeping bag and scrambled out of it. He stood up, nude.
“She’s not anywhere around, or in the camp, I’ve checked. I’ve searched all around. I was hoping she was here with you.” Nick’s eyes weren’t accusing. They were too full of misery and fear to have room for suspicion. He fell back out of Sharif’s tent and swayed in the bright searing sunlight. He looked ready to punch someone or to cry.
When the guide’s eyes met Nick’s, there was worry in them, and calculation. He was already working on the problem.
“You have looked everywhere?”
“Yes, everywhere. The tent, near the donkeys, the spring. I thought she might be taking another bath. She wasn’t there. She isn’t anywhere.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Last night before we went to sleep. I woke up this morning and her sleeping bag was empty. She was gone.”
“And you heard nothing during the night?”
“No. Nothing.” Nick felt guilty as if he should have heard something, should have known Faye was no longer in her sleeping bag, no longer by his side. After all she was his wife. He should know where she was. “She didn’t leave a note, either. I mean she always leaves me a note on the kitchen table, at home, when she went somewhere. Nothing. Where is she? Why did she leave without telling me? It’s not like her.”
Sharif looked at him, but didn’t say anything. He was gathering his clothes together.
Nick’s eyes scoured the space around them as the Egyptian hurriedly dressed. No Faye anywhere. Nick glanced back just in time to see the man shove a black-handled rhino-horn dagger into a belt under his robe.
“You think we’re going to need that?”
“We may.” The guide’s manner was scaring Nick. His anger showed in stiffly held shoulders.
“You yourself have a knife hidden away in your boot, do you not?” He surprised Nick with the revelation. Nick had been so sure his knife was a secret. He’d been careful not to show it, not even a glimpse.
“You think someone took her?” Nick avoided answering the knife question. The other man knew he had it, what did it matter?
“Perhaps.”
“That Bedouin and his men?” His jaw clenched.
“Perhaps. Or maybe she is with Ankhesenaton.”
Nick wasn’t listening any longer, he moved away from Sharif and the tent.
****
SHARIF WAS WATCHING him closely. The Egyptian had seen something in the man’s eyes that he’d noticed before when Nick had told him about the attack on Faye in the bar, her coma. Her near death had left a deep scar on him. The man feared losing his wife more than anything in the world. It was that fear that was playing in his icy eyes now.
The donkeys were braying. The animals wanted to be unhobbled so they could get to the water.
Without warning the American started shouting Faye’s name, running around the small camp in ever-growing circles. He ripped their tent from the ground and tore through it as if he expected to find his wife hidden somewhere in or under it. He pushed past Sharif and trampled his tent into a flattened pool of rainproof plastic.
“Faye!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “You can come out now. You’ve had your joke. That’s enough. Show yourself. Faye!” Finally, sweating and stumbling, his face wracked with panic and loss, he ran back toward the Egyptian.
“We have to go after her. Find her!”
Sharif was standing where Nick had left him, before his now-smashed tent, his arms crossed over his chest, his face stony. He waited for the wild man to calm down.
“Save your voice, my friend, your energy. She is out there. Somewhere. She is lost.” Sharif was gazing out at the desert. Westward.
“How do you know that?”
“I know.”
The American was too upset to dispute what he said.
Suddenly, he turned to him and said, “Faye believes you have some kind of mystical powers. I pray she’s right. Her life might depend upon it. That or a keen tracking sense.”
“Your wife is lost,” he repeated again. “We must find her. Quickly.”
“Well, if you know she’s lost, how did it happen?” Nick’s eyes kept searching. Wind debris tumbled by them. The donkeys were still making noise.
Sharif began to gather up the tents, rolling them up into tight bundles, tying them. He was breaking camp.
Nick moved in beside him and helped.
“I think the bad ones lured her away.”
“The bad ones?”
“Ankhesenaton’s enemies. Amon’s followers.”
Sharif could tell by the stricken look in Nick’s eyes that he was remembering the monstrosities that had chased him and his patrons around the bar.
“One of those things I saw haunting the bar has my wife?”
Sharif saw the sick look that settled on the man’s face. He wanted to drop everything they were doing and run off into the desert. Find her. Now!
“I think they could be behind her disappearance. I cannot prove it, but I suspect it.” And it would explain, Sharif thought, the drugged way he’d felt when Nick had wakened him. Magic. They’d woven a spell on him so he couldn’t stop them. It was his fault she was gone, he should have been smarter. The bad ones had punished him for keeping the scroll from them. They had taken Faye.
“What do they want with her?”
“I do not know. Truly.” If he did, he would not say it aloud to the woman’s husband, the man was in enough of a state as it was.
“Oh, God, we’ve got to go after her.”
Nick had slept in his blue jeans. Now he started to pull a shirt out of the bag he’d stuffed his clothes into.
“No.” Sharif came up behind him. “Wear the Egyptian robes.”
Nick didn’t ask why, he just got into them as fast as he could. He started muttering to himself: “Faye’s out there. In the broiling desert. Alone. Thirsty. Lost. Maybe. The bad ones. Don’t want to think about them. I have to look for her. Find her. How could I have not known when she left the tent; didn’t come back? How could I have slept the night away with her out there? In trouble.
“We never should have come here. I knew that. I should have forced her to stay home. I...I....” His words faded away into muffled sobs, he was so distraught.
Sharif laid a hand firmly on his shoulder. “Don’t blame yourself. Punish yourself. It won’t help. It’s over and done. You did come to Egypt. You did do as Ankhesenaton wanted. Your wife is lost out there somewhere. Pull yourself together, for her, and let’s go find her.”
Nick faced him and nodded. Wiped the tears from his face. “Okay.”
Nick helped the other man unhobble the animals and, after letting them drink their fill, loaded them down. Filled all the canteens with fresh water. Then the two men rode out into the desert, Sharif’s hawk eyes scanning every stretch of sand and gully around them, as he led the way, kicking his animal viciously to make it trot faster, Nick and the extra donkeys trailing along behind.
“Which way?” Nick covered his face with a handkerchief as Sharif had showed him.
“Toward the quarries.”
After a few minutes, Nick joked, “If you’re following Faye’s trail, you must possess those supernatural powers Faye believes you do. Because I can’t see a thing in the sand, not a footprint, nothing.”
The Egyptian only nodded, but he was following something, his eyes sharply scanning the ground around them, and seemed to know where he was going.
****
THEY LEFT THE SAFE oasis behind as the desert winds beat at them and their mounts, increasing in velocity and intensity with every minute. Soon they were leaning into the winds, fighting to stay on their mounts. The extra pack animals tugging at the lines, holding them to a slow walk.
“Sandstorm coming,” Sharif yelled back at Nick at one point. “If it gets any worse, we’ll have to take shelter.”
“No. We keep looking for her,” Nick screamed back. The words were nearly lost in the squall.
Sharif said nothing as they plodded on, covering their eyes against the stinging grains of sand until the air was as thick as concrete and the donkeys balked, refusing to go another foot. The animals went to their knees and lowered their heads. Nothing the two men did would get them up again.
“We must stop,” Sharif cried to Nick behind him. “Take shelter.”
“I have to find her. She’s counting on me,” Nick insisted, staying in his saddle. “I’m not stopping!’
Sharif had to jump from his donkey and fight the other man to the ground, hold him down to keep him from plunging blindly into the storm. Certain death for any man, much less a novice.
“It will do her no good if you’re lost as well,” Sharif snarled in Nick’s ear. “We will find her. Just wait. The storm will be over soon.”
Nick lowered his head, nodded, accepting the truth of what the guide said.
The wind shrieked and groaned as the two travelers led and prodded their animals to a line of scrub brush, where they swiftly put up the largest tent, snugged up against the brush, and scuttled into it.
Sharif knew that if they were lucky, the sandstorm would blow itself out in a few hours and then, if they weren’t buried alive and trapped, they would dig out and continue their search. He didn’t want to think what Faye was doing during this storm. There was nothing they could do for her until it was over.
The desert is a strange place, Sharif explained to comfort the overwrought American once they were inside the tent. Just because they were in the storm’s path did not mean Faye was.
Nick prayed she wasn’t. Prayed that she was all right.
“Do not worry, my friend,” Sharif said as they squatted inside the darkened tent. “We will find her, wherever she is, whomever she is with. Ghost or mortal. And if Afshar finds her, we will get her back.”
“Yes, we will.” A note of steel now in Nick’s voice. His attitude had changed since their coming into the tent. It was as if he’d shed an extra skin and what was left was a man to be reckoned with. A hunter, no longer the hunted. In the semidarkness Sharif watched as the blond-headed man pulled a large hunting knife out of his right boot, the blade gleaming as he unsheathed it. “And I’ll kill someone to protect her, if I have to.” A menacing whisper.
“I’ve killed before. I can again.”
“You were a soldier once, were you not?” Shari’s voice was soft, but even over the wind the other man had heard him.
“I was. Once. In a hellhole called Iraq. The first war there. It was a long time ago. I thought I had forgotten all of that. But you never forget how to fight. How to kill. If you have to. When the stakes are high enough.”
“That is true,” Sharif said simply. His respect for the other man had grown. He knew that whatever happened now, he could count on Nick to be right at his side.
It was a good thing to know.
****
THEY WAITED FOR THE storm to end and, when it did, climbed out of the half buried tent. They’d been grounded for hours. Sharif didn’t say anything to Nick about the unusualness of the sandstorm. He’d seen many, but none exactly like the one they’d just come through. The wind had come from nowhere and it had seemed to him the storm had hung on them like a cloud.
When it left, it evaporated into the skies above them as if something had sucked it away. There was very little destruction around them.
He doubted this had been a natural phenomenon, just as his deep sleep the night before had not been natural.
For a while they walked their donkeys and gave them a chance to stretch their legs. The beasts were being difficult, as if they were terrified of something ahead of them. They’d been that way since the storm had ended.
By the time they entered the land between the black cliffs, they had difficulty keeping their animals moving at all. The donkeys wanted to go back, not forward.
“Strange-looking place,” Nick remarked as they picked their way through the rocky paths. The cliffs were monstrous, rising about them like a gigantic prison, blotting out the sunlight. “What is this place?”
“I do not know.” Sharif frowned. His hand was on the lead animal’s head, guiding it forward. It was getting darker and darker, almost as if night were falling. There was a chill growing in the air, a cold that touched his soul. “I have never seen these cliffs before. I do not think they should be here.”
Nick threw Sharif a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
Sharif was staring at the ebony slabs of cold granite that hulked around them. “They are not on any map I have ever seen. They should not be here.”
“But they are. The bad ones again, huh?” Nick offered. “This place is giving me the creeps. Something other worldly about it. It’s so dark and cold. It has a forbidden feeling about it. It’s so quiet. It doesn’t seem to be a part of the desert at all. It’s as if we’ve walked onto a set for a horror movie.”
Sharif let him talk, it seemed to calm him some.
“Maybe we should go around them?” Nick suggested.
“You want to try?” There was a touch of sarcasm in Sharif’s voice. He was busy studying the cliffs, trying to calm the agitated donkeys. The sheer stone walls were honey-combed with holes. Except for the clattering of the animals’ hooves on the rocky ground, it was so hushed he could hear his own breathing. No other sound arose. Not even the sighing of the wind. Eerie.
Before them were only black walls. Narrow twisting gullies going up, up. Most too tight to allow a man through, much less a donkey.
Nick spun around and, grabbing the reins of the lead beast, started back the way they had come.
Sharif, knowing what would happen, didn’t try to stop him, but followed him silently.
Nick was startled. “Didn’t we just come through here?”
Sharif’s laugh was strained. “We did.” He reclaimed the reins from Nick, and they turned to go ahead. “I did not think we would be allowed to escape that easily,” was all he said.
“Does it seem darker to you than before?” Nick asked a while later.
It was as if the sun had disappeared. As if it were night. Sharif was beginning to hear things. Whispers high above him. They made his skin prickle. He looked up, hoping to see what was making the strange noises, but there was nothing there.
“Darker? Yes.” Sharif took a couple of lanterns from the saddlebags. He turned one on and handed it to Nick, turned another one on for himself.
“You hear anything?” Nick pressed.
“Yes. I don’t know what it is, though.”
“Sounds like voices, doesn’t it? Very high-pitched.”
Sharif said nothing.
The two men kept walking, leading the animals, holding out the lanterns to light their path.
“Why did we come this way anyway?” Nick wanted to know. Sharif knew he was worried about Faye, worried about the noises that seemed to be hounding them, sometimes from far away, sometimes closer, and that was making him jumpy. “You don’t think Faye came through here, do you?”
“No. And we only came this way because it is between where we were and where we want to go. I had not expected to cross these haunted mountains. They are a surprise.”
“You don’t believe we’ll get out of them, do you?”
“Oh, I imagine we will. Eventually. The magic is strong here. But not strong enough to keep us imprisoned forever.”
“We don’t have to be here forever. Faye will die of lack of water and food within a matter of days.” There was desperation in his voice. “We have to get out of here.”
In his lantern’s circle of light, the Egyptian swung narrowed dark eyes onto his companion. “We will. Just follow me, and whatever you do, do not speak to anyone, or anything, that crosses our path. Do you understand?” Sharif’s warning was emphatic.
“Sharif,” Nick slipped in swiftly, wanting an answer, “you said this place is haunted. What did you mean?”
“I do not know where this place is, but I know what it is. Tombs. The cliffs are full of the dead. Such burial sites are riddled all through here. Everywhere.”
Nick stopped in his tracks and looked around. “It’s so damn dark. I can hardly see anything. Wait a minute! Did you see that?” He pointed a shaky finger upwards.
High up in the walls of the cliffs...in the holes...things were stirring. White grub-like blobs. Crawling out like maggots from rotten meat.
“Oh, my God!” Nick breathed out.
Before Sharif could answer, he turned and laid a strong hand on Nick’s chest, bringing him to a halt. There was a burning power in his gaze. Mesmerizing. Even in the dim light Nick could see the fires within. “And from this moment on do not utter a word. If you want to leave this place alive. Only follow me. Walk in my steps. Do not leave the path. I believe they cannot hurt you if you stay with me.”
They were orders, not requests.
Nick slammed his mouth shut. Obeyed. Because some gut feeling must have told him he had to listen to Sharif. If he wanted to get out of their nightmare and find Faye.
They continued their strange journey.
And the creatures buried in the cliffs began to dig themselves out. Emerging like grotesque babies from a mother’s black womb. Slithering, tunneling out, and tumbling down from their steep cliff tombs to besiege the two humans and their animals. Blocking their way.
The first ones sent the donkeys, white-eyed and frothing with terror, into a stampede. As hard as the two men tried, they couldn’t keep the animals calm; couldn’t keep a hold on them. The beasts reared up and slashed at their owners with lightning hooves. Sharif was knocked down and while Nick was helping him up, seeing if he was okay, the damned beasts ran off.
****
“WE’LL HAVE TO CATCH up to them later,” Nick whispered. If they could find them.
But he couldn’t be mad at the animals, he’d run away, too, if he could. He couldn’t. The things wanted him and Sharif. They’d closed in immediately and prevented the men from chasing after their mounts. Only the illumination from the lanterns was keeping the things at bay, and without that, they wouldn’t have been able to go a foot; it was so dark now beyond the lanterns’ light.
Sharif seemed okay. Merely a small bruise on his cheek from where his face had hit the rocks. He nodded at Nick and kept moving through the canyons, the light spilling several feet ahead of them to guide their way. Nick wondered if they’d ever get out. It was like a stone maze. Getting tighter and tighter. At times, he felt he was being led in circles.
And they had company every step of the way. Unwelcome company.
The atrocities were clawing at them. Trying to get at them. Nick shook off their touches with revulsion, shoving the lantern right into their grotesque faces, or what he thought were their faces. Most of them had none. He did so without a whimper, remembering Sharif’s warning not to speak.
He tried not to look at them, but it was hard. They were mummies, still wrapped, or partially wrapped, in their cloth burial dressings. Of all sizes. Even children. No longer white. Bloated and slick with tomb decay. Some minus arms, some minus other parts. Stinking like dead carrion. They stumbled after the men like a parade of zombies. Chomping toothless gums and chattering in a language only the dead could understand. It sounded like a million whispers just beyond human hearing. Nick could have sworn he felt their horror. Their hunger. Their hatred, jealousy of the living.
He and Sharif moved faster. Scrambling over the slick rocks and jumping over the smaller crevices.
Always just one step or two ahead of the following army of dead.
Nick’s hand was now on Sharif’s shoulder. The move had been instinctive. Whatever happened they must not get separated. Nick had no doubt that without Sharif the doppelgangers would bring him down in moments. Feed on his warm, live flesh like starving jackals. They’d devour him alive.
Soon the mummies were everywhere. Filling the passageways and lowering themselves from the cliffs. Hundreds, no, thousands of them converging on the hapless humans.
The smell was ungodly. Putrid. Nick tried to cover his nose with the hand holding the lantern. Hard to do. The light hurt his eyes that close. Mostly he held his breath for long periods of time.
The creatures could not stop them though. Paw and fondle them, yes, when they were able. But the apparitions couldn’t halt their progress.
Nick felt as if their flight lasted for an eternity.
He knew something was happening when it began to get lighter again. In stages. Slowly.
The mummies began to fall away. They shunned the light.
All of a sudden the two men broke free from the walls of dark stone. At one moment they were still among the steep cliffs, the next they were falling out into blinding sunlight. The hot sand rising up to meet them. The burning sun on their upturned faces as they peeked up, sprawled in the middle of the desert. In the middle of the day.
Nick gasped aloud, sat up next to a grinning Sharif. They turned their lanterns off.
The black cliffs, the smelly mummies, the nightmare world of the tombs were gone. They were sitting in the desert. Not a cliff in sight.
Not one stinking walking-dead roll of bandages anywhere.
“We made it!” Nick cried out, relieved. He happily slapped the Egyptian on the back. “By God, we made it.” Somehow he’d known it was all right to speak again. They’d come through the ghostly gauntlet. They were safe.
“Yes, we did.”
“I just wish,” Nick said, gazing behind them, “that I had got some pictures of that place—those things—to show to Faye.” He was shaking his head.
Sharif just stared at him.
“Never mind. I know we’re lucky to have gotten out of there alive.”
Sharif got to his feet and put out a hand to him. The hand with the strange blue tattoo. “Now we need to find those donkeys. We’ll need them and the supplies they carry before long.” The strain was leaving his face, his eyes. He looked tired, though. Drained. “They should be around here somewhere.”
Nick came to his feet with Sharif’s help. That was when the thirst and hunger hit him. He was already sweating. Good to be back in the desert again. It hadn’t changed a bit. Still bloody hot. Still full of damn sand.
It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that this whole adventure, since Faye had disappeared and he and Sharif had started after her, was a lot like those fake war games he’d attended back in the states last year with all his old war buddies. Running from your enemies. In a hostile environment with little to protect yourself. Outwitting them. Winning. War. But there was no way Nick could really compare the two experiences. The one had been games, this tracking down of his missing wife was deadly serious.
As they started searching for the animals, Nick asked, “How long were we in there, do you think?”
“I’m not sure. Hours, at least. I do not think it was days. But it is hard to tell in such a place.” Sharif peered up at the sun now low on the horizon. “I am ravenous enough to eat a hyena.”
Nick almost laughed, but didn’t. The situation was still too grave, with Faye missing. He hoped it hadn’t been days. He didn’t believe it had been. He prayed not. For Faye’s sake. He could barely stand to think of his wife. Where she might be at that moment. Was she thirsty, hungry? Alone? Terrified? Alive?
“We’ll find a hyena for you, then,” Nick said, straight-faced, “after we locate those stupid donkeys and find my lost wife.”
Together the two of them continued searching for the missing animals, their shoulders sagging. It had been a long day.
Sharif didn’t seem to be in a hurry to talk about the things they’d just escaped. That was fine with Nick. He’d rather forget them, too.
As if he ever would. There was still mummy powder all over his robes. The stench of them remained in his nostrils. The fiends had been much worse somehow than that crocodile-headed demon that had chased him back home. Or those bizarre Ba-birds with their tiny, gruesome human faces. Much worse.
It must have been because Nick had sensed their loneliness. Known that once long ago they’d been human like him. Had had whole bodies like his. Lives. Loves. Dreams. Poor bastards. Now they were walking nightmares, called up from hell by forces that could control them.
“There they are,” Sharif finally announced, spying the errant donkeys wandering around like milling housewives waiting for a sale. “All of them, too. We are lucky.”
Nick wouldn’t have minded if his donkey was gone. He was sick to death of it nipping at and biting him, but it never occurred to him to pick another to ride. He wasn’t about to let a dumb animal get the best of him.
The two men sprinted in the donkeys’ direction. They rounded them up with a minimum of trouble and put the lanterns back in the saddlebags. The creatures were tired of being lost, seemed almost glad to be found, and came right to them.
Within minutes, they’d checked to be sure nothing was missing, had grabbed something to eat from the saddlebags, and were back on the donkeys and bouncing over the desert again, returning to their quest, wondering what other horrors lay ahead of them.
It was about two hours later that Sharif first suspected they were being followed. There was a column of dust snaking its ways swiftly toward them.
“Nick?”
It was the first time the Egyptian had called him by his name, and Nick glanced up as he pulled alongside him.
“What?” He didn’t look at his companion but gazed straight ahead at a line of hills before them. Sharif had said it was the quarries.
“Do not look back, my friend. Just hold on tight, kick the donkey’s side with all you’ve got, and follow me. We are about to make a run for it—as you Americans would say.” There was no humor in the guide’s low voice when he said it.
Nick was going to ask him what the hell he was talking about when Sharif snarled, “Now!” and slapped his feet mercilessly against his mount’s flanks, taking off at a dead gallop toward the hills. His robes flew behind him like a flag in the wind.
Nick had no choice but to do as his partner had ordered. He bullied as much speed out of his tired beast as he could. The other pack animals, straining to keep up, brayed like old women.
Only once did Nick sneak a glance back.
From behind a group of screaming, gesturing Bedouins on swift horses was bearing down on them like a pack of lions after a wounded gazelle, closing the distance.
Afshar, was Nick’s first thought. His second: no way in hell are we going to escape those horses. Not on bone-tired donkeys.
They gave the Bedouins a hell of a run for it before they were surrounded and yanked from their saddles.
A hell of a run.