Too late to stop, her hip bumped into Mason’s cot. The metal clanked and the table shook, but the Irishman’s weight kept it upright. The Italians had stripped away his battered and torn clothes and dressed him in a set of their own fatigues. Shirt open to his navel, his chest was exposed, a tangle of body hair on pale skin, natural muscle tone bulging. In the center, where the mummy had struck him in the Limpkin’s hallway, there was a bruise in the shape of a perfect, massive hand print. Placing her palm over the bruise, she felt heat radiate out, too hot for a fever alone. No, Mason’s sickness was something else, something the creature had done to him.
Under her fingertips she felt something else, too, and for a moment she had to fight the urge to scream, not in surprise or fright but in total mindless terror. The tremors she’d felt in the Limpkin’s decks echoed in Mason’s chest. Jerking her hand away, she scrambled away from the cot, running backward, until she collided with the curtain around Dr. Oelrich’s bed. Accidentally twisting, she wrapped herself in it, panicking and twirling, until she scrambled her hands up like claws and in a desperate grab tore the cloth free of its runner.
The doctor, mouth gasping for breaths like a goldfish, lay on the cot, his position unchanged, head still cocked to one side. His lidless, bloodshot open eye stared at her, past her, through her. Unnerved, she took a quick step back, put her hands on her hips, and held her breath. Counting, she waited until her heartbeat slowed into a regular pattern, and then stepped back up to the cot.
“No spider this time,” she whispered.
Now up close, it became clear that the fire had done more than sear the flesh: the inferno had liquified the cartilage of the doctor’s nose, as if he’d inhaled the flame itself. Removed from the heat, the cartilage had cooled like blown glass in a new configuration that completely blocked the air passage of both nostrils. She couldn’t imagine the pain involved in such a disfigurement.
She lifted her hands and placed one on top of the other, then placed them both over Dr. Oelrich’s gaping mouth. Hovering over his only source of oxygen, she paused. His body was destroyed. The likelihood of his survival, let alone regaining consciousness, was minute. Maybe she didn’t need to do this? Perhaps he posed no threat to Mason at all? Her hand quivered.
She felt his breath against the palm of her hand.
Dr. Oelrich’s left eye cracked open. A line of pus ran from the slightly open eyelid, pooling in the corner of the tiny sliver of pale pink before dripping onto the bed sheet.
Every instinct in her body told her to pull back her hand, as if the doctor might make a sudden lunge and bite off her fingers, but she steadied herself. She didn’t know if Dr. Oelrich was, on some basic level, conscious or the eye had simply opened by coincidence, but the action made her decision for her. No matter how remote the odds, she could not allow the doctor to live.
She readied herself to close her hand around his mouth and suffocate him. Her shaking hands locked. She wondered for a second whether his body would thrash as his lungs collapsed, or if the fire had seared off every ounce of survival instinct.
She moved in.
A single distant gunshot, the first in an hour, stopped her hands centimeters from his charred lips. Her head whipped toward the tent’s entrance flaps. Another shot, this one closer, from the perimeter of the camp. Then five. And then an uproar: the sound of the Italian soldiers rushing from their cots, boots on soil, the clank of rifle stocks, the yells of frightened boys and the bark of orders.
Dropping her hands to her side, she turned and went to the tent flaps and stepped through. Between swaying canvas walls, she saw a flurry of motion—arms and legs swinging as the soldiers ran past, rushing into battle. The gunfire became a barrage of constant sound, automatic fire joining the distinct bark of rifle fire.
As she turned to re-enter the tent, a strange realization spun through her thoughts like a lit sparkler, a puzzling observation that furrowed her brow as she held open the flap and stepped inside. All of the gunfire was directed away from the camp, as if the Italians were shooting at an enemy that refused to return fire.
The thought evaporated from her mind.
Dr. Oelrich stood, naked and covered in scar tissue, over Mason, his hand over the bruise on his chest. His hand was a perfect match to the bruise.
The doctor’s head turned and his blistered lips curled up, revealing a set of square, fossilized teeth hanging in a black chasm. As the stench of old decay reached her nose, Dr. Oelrich’s body fluttered out of form, as if one of the boardwalk flicker show boxes had broken, and was replaced with the mummy’s twisted form.
In her head, she heard it say, You are mine.
Chapter 34
Priscilla’s heartbeat pounded in her throat, a reverberating tribal drum struck by bone mallets. With each thump her vision blurred. The creature stared at her as it removed its hand from Mason’s chest.
Don’t fear me, its voice said inside her head. I have not tried to harm you. I will not. I need you.
“What about Mason,” she asked.
It answered, I don’t need him.
The impulse to flee grew inside her. There was nothing she could do to save Mason if the creature wanted him dead, no way to combat the ancient man, no rational reason not to run.
As if reading her thoughts, it told her, You may run, the same as you always have, and leave this man behind, but then he will die.
Faces flashed through her mind, a series of men and boys who had loved her and been abandoned at the first sign of commitment. The teenage lovers, rendered nameless by the passage of years, caused her no pain, but the later boyfriends brought winces. And then Buddy Martin filled her thoughts, a dead man standing in a doorway, a massive hole in his chest, eyes glowing with forgiveness as the door swung shut—
Not going? It asked.
“No,” she whispered. She knew her voice would have been lost under the thunder of gunfire to any human listener, but she suspected the creature that loomed over her would have heard the word even if she only thought it. “What do you want?”
I need you, it repeated. You are mine.
“What. Do. You. Want?” She screamed.
Come with me, it said. Come with me and he lives.
Its words had a surreal effect on her, a sensation something like a freefall; her body felt weightless and displaced, yet plummeting toward certain death. For a moment the feeling was too powerful to allow her to respond, even in a thought, and she worried the effect might never end and she’d spend the remainder of her life twisting through that endless descent. But then her lips parted and her tongue moved, actions in a slow moving dream, and once she spoke the spell was broken. “Go with you where?”
Does it matter?
They stared into one another, eyes locked, but this was not like the colonel’s stare down; the creature projected no malice toward her, only a smug sense of control, as if it already knew her decision. It moved its hand back over Mason’s chest and he began to convulse, feet and hands clattered against the cot.
Will you come with me?
Her heartbeat fluttering as loud as the volleys of gunfire outside, she fought every rational thought inside her and took a step toward the monster. “Yes.”
It removed its hand and Mason’s body calmed. The bruise on his chest disappeared and the unhealthy pallor left his skin.
The creature moved past her and out through the tent flaps, pausing only a moment to turn its decayed head and address her. Then follow me now.
The first few steps out of the tent and across the gap were impossible, every bit as unthinkable as holding her hand to a superheated frying pan. But with each stumbling, aching footfall it became easier. Passing into the first tent, she followed the march of the monstrous giant, snapping her head back every few feet to catch a glimpse of Mason, now only a sliver of his sleeping face visible between the leafs on the tent flap.
Raised Italian voices drifted down the corridor of crates and munitions boxes. The yells and shouts were to
o rapid and overlapping for Priscilla to make out, though the tone and pitch of the argument painted a clear picture of fear and confusion.
The mummy stepped out into the war room’s center. Stopping at the last crate, she watched as the colonel, Sergeant Sandro Palladio, and Corporal Cesar Gatano all stopped mid-shout to stare at the intruder. Standing beside their folding chairs, for a long moment the men did nothing but gape at the monstrosity in their sights. The colonel was the first to react, reaching for his side arm. Seeing the colonel take action, Sandro and Cesar broke out of their daze and followed suit. Three pistols rose to confront the monster.
It turned its attention from one of them to the next, fixing them with its burning, eyeless glare. It raised one arm and stretched out three long, tree-branch fingers.
The colonel fired. The shot blasted the center of the creature’s chest, tearing a black hole and creating a dusty cavity of dry bone and gray, powdery skin. Dry, granulated flesh spilled out in a spray of dark powder.
The mummy curled two fingers back to its palm.
Sandro and Cesar’s faces lost all expression, even fear, and their bodies relaxed. Then they raised their arms, put the muzzles of their side arms against their temples, and pulled the triggers. They fell away like dolls discarded out of a bored child’s hands.
The mummy turned its one remaining raised finger toward the colonel. A terrified expression passed over the officer’s face, eyes wide and tearing, bottom lip quivering, head bobbing with each breath. He stepped back in a clumsy, desperate attempt to escape, fumbled over the folding metal chair, lost his balance, and fell onto his back. He closed his eyes and started to pray.
The creature reached out with its free hand, wrapped its fist around its remaining extended finger, and cracked it to the side, breaking it at the joint.
The scream was worse than the sight. The colonel’s body jerked, his chest twisting, hips rotating in the opposite direction, until a loud crack sounded and a broken splinter of spinal column burst out from his lower back, tearing out through thick walls of muscle and elastic skin, gushing blood from ruptured clusters of veins and arteries. The look of fear on his face was replaced with one of abject, consuming agony. He writhed like a wounded insect until the blood loss became too great. Then, his prayer falling short of completion, he slumped to the floor and died.
The creature wrenched its finger back into a straight poise, though a jagged fissure ran across the appendage’s brittle outer skin where it had broken. The colonel’s body snapped back into proper shape, his spine sinking back through the meaty gash in his back and realigning.
Come now, girl.
Waving its hand, the bodies and chairs scattered from its path. The tent flaps pulled back, allowing it a clear exit, and remained open until Priscilla scampered through. Only then did the flaps swoosh closed.
The scene that met her outside stole her breath. The Italian soldiers were bunkered down across the encampment, rifles and machine guns propped against crates and tent poles, firing into the field beyond. None of them bothered to aim; instead they simply followed one shot with the next, a blind assault into the night. Her gaze turned to the battlefield. An army massed there, unarmed but marching toward the camp, torn British fatigues flapping in the crosswinds. The flashes of gunfire flashed off their pale, lifeless faces, illuminating features devoid of emotion or fear or even the most rudimentary thought.
“You’re doing this,” she said to the monster.
It didn’t bother to turn this time, didn’t pause as it strode out behind the Italian line. It said, This is not mine alone.
And then she saw the other two mummies out in the field, taller than the dead Englishmen, standing like proud totems among a thong of worshipers. They moved with a slow, balletic grace, like a colony of centipedes on a mesmerizing journey, bodies moving in perfect symmetry with the horde, ghostly figures marching in formation.
The Italians kept firing but none of the dead Englishmen fell. Bullets cut through flesh and muscle and left expansive wounds and shattered bones, but their forward movement continued unabated. An Italian cadet with a face that couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old hurled a grenade into the field. Landing short of the undead line, the Englishmen marched over it until it exploded in a white hot flash and tore two of the dead men to pieces.
More grenades followed, sailing over sandbag partitions and supply crates into the battlefield where they combusted in the oncoming ranks. One dead Englishmen continued to walk toward the camp even when his midsection was stripped to dangling lower rips and exposed viscera. As they approached the camp, the Italians retreated back, still firing into the crowd with their Carcano rifles.
The mummy walked unnoticed behind their line. One soldier turned, looked directly at the creature, and pointed. But instead of an unintelligible scream, he shouted in Italian, “What is she doing out here?”
They can’t see me, its voice explained.
An arrow sang as it arched into the camp and slammed through the soldier’s face, exiting below the occipital protuberance. He stumbled, feet crossing, as he reached up and took hold the arrow’s shaft on both sides of his head. Falling to his knees, he finally screamed, rolled onto his side, and began to kick.
At his position on the line, Norberto stood and waved one hand in frantic, sweeping motions. “GET BACK INSIDE—NOW—”
The dead broke over the sandbag wall, arms swinging like pendulums in wide sweeps. Hands tugged at Norbeto’s collar and pulled him back, prying him over the collapsing sandbags. He continued to yell as the English corpses surrounded him, grabbing hold of his arms and legs. He stopped screaming when one of them spun his head clean off his shoulders, rocked it back, and cracked it off his spine.
Their defensive perimeter crumbling, the Italians retreated farther back, shooting into the surging crowd at an arm’s length, their firing patterns becoming erratic bursts of noise, no longer coordinated volleys. Moving faster now, but still with fluid motion and graceful steps, the dead tore an opening in the wall and funneled through it.
A few fell from machine gun and rifle fire—but only a few.
Keep yourself behind me.
An engine roared to life from the parking grid alongside the tents. Tires spun in loose soil, kicking up earth, propelling a massive carrier truck into the battle. The massive metal beast bounced as it cut a path over the uneven terrain before screeching to a halt at the break in the wall. Three long-barreled Cannone-Mitragliera 20mm anti-aircraft machine guns clanked against the flatbed’s lip as it rumbled to rest.
One of the mummies from the battlefield pushed through the undead ranks into the gap in the wall. It reached one hand out toward the truck.
Soldiers leaped onto the flatbed, straightened the guns, took aim, and fired. The fury of the huge guns shook the earth as they fired and nearly overturned the truck. The heavy caliber shots tore through the mummy, each hit tearing away enormous sections of his body, blasting it to pieces. With the mummy destroyed, the gunner turned their attention to the English line and swept across it, blasting the invading cadavers. At such close range, the shells left very little behind of the English front line. Hundreds of empty 20mm shell casings hit the truck’s bed, clanging like church bells as they fell.
Priscilla stayed close to the mummy’s back as it stepped through the camp, moving toward the last tent in the line. A few of the Italian soldiers sprinted by, close enough to rustle her clothes, deserting the fight down the alleys.
The surviving mummy in the battlefield outstretched its arm and fingers. The gunners swiveled the three Cannone-Mitragliera barrels toward the monster. Before they could fire, however, the mummy’s hand snapped into a fist. The truck’s flatbed split, thick metal screaming, sides rising, guns skidding toward the sinking center. The gunners held on to the duel grips on their guns and were dragged inward as the two ends came together like clapping hands.
The gunners and the guns were flattened.
The dead infiltrat
ed the camp, funneling out from the gap in the sandbag wall, moving in their strange, serene dance toward the Italian soldiers, most now fleeing back toward the tents. The slower of the herd were picked off quickly, heads snapped, limps torn off.
At the last tent, the mummy abruptly halted. Priscilla stumbled over her own feet to stop in time. The idea of running into the creature’s back, her face and arms against its decayed flesh, was somehow more horrific than the carnage around her. The remaining two flatbed trucks, both piled with body bags, careened past the opening. Had they continued to walk, the trucks would have barreled headlong into them. She caught fleeting glimpses of the terror-stricken faces of the soldiers behind the wheels and the passengers on the long bench seats.
Diesel engines roaring, the trucks pummeled through the crowd, ramrodding dead Englishmen and living Italians alike, flattening bodies beneath wide double tires. Running parallel to the sandbag wall, the passengers extended machine guns from the side windows and fired into the swarming dead men. The battle became a deafening crescendo of noise: piercing gunshots, growling engines, the crackle of truck tires against soil, the wet slap of full metal-jacketed bullets striking lax flesh, the screams of terrified soldiers, and the unending march of boots.
An Italian soldier, his arm snagged by one of the dead, dug his feet into the ground and jerked to free himself. His shoulder separated with an audible snap, loud even in the chaos, and, shrieking, his finger tightened on his rifle’s trigger. It discharged with a sharp snap.
The bullet shattered the side window of the lead truck and dug a tunnel through the driver’s temple. Collapsing, the driver’s weight sent the truck into a sharp turn, disrupting the long vehicle’s balance. Wheels grinding, it capsized, rolling onto his side and digging into the earth like a crashing meteor.
The dead closed in.
The second truck veered into the sandbags, pitching against the wall and threatening to overturn as well, but then righted itself. The driver fought for control of the truck but lost it when the front right tire hit an errant sandbag and his hands slipped off and went into the steering wheel’s center divide; the wheel changed direction with sudden force, spinning a full three hundred and sixty degrees, twisting his wrists and breaking every bone in both of his hands. Plowing forward, the truck slammed into the fount of dead men funneling into the camp, felling them, but overtaxing the engine. With a crackle and a hiss, it died.
Eternal Unrest: A Novel of Mummy Terror Page 23
