OCTOBER 5. NIGHT. NEAR EL KARNAK, EGYPT.
Micah roused at the sound of the brush door clattering open. It required Herculean effort to tug his eyelids up. A slender figure stood in the entry with an oil lamp in one hand, surrounded by a halo of firelit darkness. A tall woman. It was night. Had he slept so long?
He croaked, “Jahaza?”
“No, sorry. My name is Anna Asher. Formerly Captain Anna Asher, United States Air Force, cryptography division, stationed in D.C.”
Everything inside him was telling him to fall back asleep, to go home again where he was safe with his family. Not here …
He forced himself to stay awake. “Where am I?”
Asher left the door ajar and silently walked across the little church to crouch at his side. She placed the palm-sized oil lamp between them. “You’re near El Karnak, Egypt. Apparently, some refugee found you floating down the Nile in a reed boat and dragged you ashore.”
Micah processed the information. “El Karnak? East of Luxor in the Valley of the Kings?”
“That’s right.” She sat down on the floor beside him, as though she planned to stay awhile. “Jahaza says your name is Hay-Zore.”
“Hazor. Micah. Captain. United States Army.”
She had slanting, unnaturally large eyes. Wispy auburn curls framed her forehead, as though she’d been perspiring. “Jahaza wanted me to tell you that she left you clean clothes and water to wash.” She pointed to the folded linen garments. A tawny color, they looked like woven straw.
Micah just nodded. Being filthy was the least of his concerns right now.
Asher said, “What were you doing alone in that boat, Captain?”
“Really wish I knew the answer to that one.”
“Your combat suit suggests you were injured during a covert operation in Egypt, is that correct?”
“No idea.”
Her brows knitted. “You alone, Captain? Should I be looking for other U.S. soldiers in this camp?”
“Yes. My—my team, I … I have three team members. Please, help me find them.”
“I will. I’ll start asking around right after we talk.”
Micah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Soldiers took care of each other. They wouldn’t leave someone behind, not if they could help it. “Thank you. I appreciate your help.”
Through the open door, he could see a muscular blond American with a pistol on his hip standing before a fire with an African elder carrying an AK-74.
“Who’s your friend?” Micah tipped his chin.
Asher turned to look, and answered, “Dr. Martin Nadai, paleographer and religious studies professor, University of Virginia.”
“Paleographer?”
Behind Asher, the fragmented images of Jesus seemed to move in the flickering lamplight, as though the dark man was walking away on the green water.
“Yes. He’s a specialist in deciphering ancient languages.”
“What’s he doing out here?”
As Asher shifted, her voice changed, grew deeper. “You were in a fight, Captain. The villagers say your boat had been bleached white, but the reeds beneath your body were black as night, like a shadow in your shape. They think you are a wounded angel fallen to earth and come to save them.” She paused to let that sink in before she continued, “I hope you’re recalling the shadows left on sidewalks and walls after the Hiroshima atomic blast. I am.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m still alive.” He thought about it. “Aren’t I?”
Asher’s lips curved into a faint smile, but she was watching him like a wolf does a field mouse. “From the looks of you, Hazor, you barely made it out alive. Who got you out of harm’s way?”
Dread tightened his chest. The carved wooden anchors and fishes suspended from the roof swayed, flashing in the firelight as though coated with pure gold. “To answer your question, I can’t tell you what the beings were.”
She seemed confused. “Beings?”
He nodded. “They surrounded me. They must have carried me and put me in that boat. Though … though it could have been my team. I vaguely remember American voices. And Russian. On the other hand, maybe I walked to the river and got into that boat myself. I honestly can’t remember.”
She touched his combat suit, as though cataloging the scars and dents, which he’d done himself over the past few days, and been equally stunned that he’d survived whatever had happened to him. Without his new combat suit, he was certain he’d be dead.
Asher quietly asked, “When you called them ‘beings,’ what did you mean? You didn’t know what tribe they were?”
He shook his head. “No. I meant I don’t know what they were. They seemed … Jesus, how do I describe it? I was delusional, I think. They were silver ghosts, coming at me through the smoke.”
She held his gaze. Then she reached out to tap his left wrist. “Did they give you this?”
Micah twisted to look down and saw the festered wound. It had swollen so badly it was hard to tell what had caused it. “Could be shrapnel. Why do you believe the creatures did it?”
“Creatures?” She gave him a half smile, then returned her attention to his wound. “Well, you probably can’t see it, but I’ve been studying your wounds for three days, and this is definitely a puncture wound. You have another on your upper arm. You were inoculated, Captain. Do you know who did this? Was it a Middle Eastern man, early forties?”
“The army probably gave me the shots. But I don’t recall that.”
Micah grabbed his left arm and turned his wrist so he could examine the purple knot. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was putting fragments together … Cold hands had stuck a needle in his vein … carried him to a boat … set him adrift on the Nile River. They had saved him. For what purpose?
“Antibiotic?”
“No. The swelling is a histamine response that looks more akin to—”
“Vaccination?” Adrenaline prickled through his veins, waking him up, making him pay attention. “Against what?”
“Captain, think back. Did you see any faces? Was it a black-haired man who vaccinated you? Middle Eastern features?”
Micah stared at her. “Why would you think that?”
She reached down to move the lamp slightly to the right, then squinted at the flame. With her head bowed, her lashes cast shadows on her cheekbones. “Hazor, I don’t know how long you’ve been recovering, or what kind of damage your memory has sustained, so let me tell you what’s been happening for the past nine days.”
He sank back against the goat hides, preparing himself for the worst he could imagine. “I would appreciate that.”
Anna Asher frowned at him, as though assessing his ability to deal with the information, before she said, “Communications worldwide were knocked out four days ago. Probably some sort of—”
“Electromagnetic pulse?”
“That’s my guess, though no one out here knows for sure.” She ran a hand through her auburn waves and heaved a worried sigh.
He didn’t respond. He was working the problem. At last, he said, “Nuclear war?”
“Unknown. On our journey to this camp, every night we watched distant firefights light up the sky. Lots of planes. Lots of bombs. It was constant for four days, then diminished, and finally shut off like a light switch.”
“How long ago did the bombing stop?”
“The day we arrived here. Three days ago.” She clenched her jaw, as though to stave off the truth. “While we’ve been restocking our supplies and trying to find transportation to get out of here, we’ve noticed the flood of refugees fleeing from the Middle East into Africa has dried up.”
“Flood of refugees? Who would head for Africa? I’d go anywhere but here.”
“It seems to take longer for darker skinned people to get sick. A few even seem to be immune. This part of the world may have looked like a refuge. For a while the trails were filled with every nationality. We—”
“A refuge from what?”
She nodded as though just understanding that he didn’t even know the most basic of facts. “Captain, there’s some sort of plague running rampant across the Middle East and Europe. Maybe America, for all I know.” The fear in her voice spread across her face.
“I—I recall there was a plague. Why aren’t you or your friend sick?”
“I can’t answer that.” A swallow went down her throat. “I think we’ve just been lucky.”
Anna Asher’s attention was completely focused on his expression. For a few moments, he felt curiously as though they were the only two people left alive on earth, and she knew it, but didn’t want to tell him. She sat so still, it was riveting. Like being hypnotized by a cobra.
He asked, “What stories do the villagers here tell about what happened?”
Micah had the momentary impression of terror glittering far back in those odd emerald eyes.
“They say luminous beings walk the earth, and they’re taking revenge for all the atrocities committed against Africans over the centuries.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They think they’re safe. They don’t have the disease yet. Look around you, Captain. Do you see any non-Africans in this refugee camp?”
“You and Nadai.”
Even as her head turned toward the door, her gaze still held his. Finally, she broke eye contact and peered out at the firelit night beyond the church. “Other than ourselves, we’ve seen no other non-Africans since the flood of refugees stopped. It’s probably a temporary illusion, of course.”
“Why would it take longer for Africans to contract the disease?”
“Unknown.”
Micah filled his lungs and let it out slowly. They were both soldiers. She didn’t have to tell him that fighting only stopped for one of two reasons. Either somebody won, or everyone was dead. If the planes had ceased their flyovers, his side had probably not won. Some other nation had.
“To make matters worse, Captain, we need to leave here tomorrow. We’re trying to decide what to do with you. For your own good, it might be better to leave you—”
“I’m going with you, Asher. How will we be traveling?” My God, I haven’t even attempted to stand up. Can I walk?
“We bought an old fishing boat that’s been fitted with a makeshift mast and sail. Thirty feet long. It’s got to be fifty years old. The sail is basically a rag. I imagine we’ll spend most of our time paddling it. But it’s the best we could do. We’ll head down the Nile to the sea. After that … we’re going to play it by ear. We think the boat is seaworthy if we stay close to shore and the waves don’t get too high. We’re trying to make it home to America.”
Home. Longing filled him.
Anna picked up the lamp and rose to her feet. “Try to rest, Micah. This is going to be a long, difficult journey. You’re going to need your strength.”
“Affirmative, Captain Asher.”
When she’d gone, and the woven door closed, he listened to the soft voices outside, endeavoring to hear what they were saying to each other. He only caught a phrase here and there, things like devastation and mass graves.
After a time, he reached down the front of his combat suit and drew out the tracker. It switched on with no apparent effort. So it wasn’t an EMP. That would have knocked out every electronic device in range. Unless, of course, he had not been in range. Or, was the tracker EMP-shielded? If so, no one had informed him of that fact. Everything on the screen looked perfectly normal, huts, people moving, fires burning …
As he tried to fall asleep, one thought kept waking him: deprivation theory. Anthropology 101: people who feel they’ve been deprived of something, even something as abstract as justice, will do anything to obtain it.
Everyone they were going to meet on their journey home would be suffering from some kind of deprivation.
No wonder everyone wants a gun.