Both girls were still upset at losing the closest person they had to a mother, but Rachael seemed to have accepted what happened and moved on much better than her friend could. “Kathy, it’s been three years. Petunia wouldn’t want you to still be depressed and keep mourning her. And don’t you think we’re lucky to have Lukeson to look after us?”
Kathy was just as silent as usual whenever Rachael said that. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful for what Lukeson had done for them; it was still not enough to help her come to terms with what happened to Petunia.
“Rhodes! Toronto!” Lukeson’s voice yelled.
Rachael answered her radio. “Yes, sir?”
“It’s been half an hour,” said Lukeson. “Where the hell are you?”
“We only just found a vehicle, sir,” replied Rachael. “We’re approaching the Cairo-Alexandria road.”
“And tell him,” Kathy added, “according to the speed I’m doing, to the lack of traffic on these roads and to Private Guzman’s watch…” She looked at the wooden digital watch on her left arm. The screen displayed a map of the Cairo-Alexandria road and a red line to Cairo International Airport. She looked at the Estimated Time Arrival display below the map. “We should be at Cairo Airport in an hour at maximum.”
“Did you get that, Sergeant?” asked Rachael.
“Got it, Rhodes,” replied Lukeson. “Just get here without any further delay.”
“Will do, sir,” said Rachael. After putting the radio away, she returned her attention to the turret and kept a sharp eye as the vehicle zoomed onto the open Cairo-Alexandria road.
* * *
Kathy had been driving for twenty minutes. So far no one had seen or heard anything suspicious.
Half that time, Rachael had been nodding off. It wasn’t just because of seeing only sand, but the night sky and having no sleep for the previous nineteen hours was persuading her to do it. Then heavy bumping woke her up and she found herself lying on the truck with a massive headache. She thought maybe the truck had hit a big hole or a massive rock. But as she got back up, it bumped again.
“Kathy!” she shouted. “We are in a hurry, but not to die!”
“It isn’t me!” Kathy roared back. “I don’t know if I’m hitting something or if something is trying to hit us!”
Kathy kept her beautiful amber eyes peeled on the road. She couldn’t find anything out of order. Then she felt that she lost control of the vehicle as it flipped over on its own.
It crashed and landed on the roof.
Despite being upside down in a crashed truck and shaking a little, Kathy was still fine. As she unfastened her seatbelt and picked up her solar panelled pistol from her weapons bag, she wondered what it was that made the jeep flip over when it did. She didn’t see a hole or any object on the road for miles so she couldn’t have run over something.
She turned to see Adofo hanging upside but still alive. “Are you all right, lad?” she asked.
“I’m fine, Kathy,” he told her.
“Stay brave for a little longer and I’ll get you down.” Kathy crawled out of her door’s window as fast as she could. “Rachael, are you okay?”
There came no reply. She hoped her friend jumped to safety as she picked herself up and ran to the back of the truck. Not a crocodile in sight. She was beginning to get worried. “Rachael! Rach!”
Hissing behind her made her jump quickly. She turned and drew her solar panelled pistol at… her best friend?
“Sorry, Kathy.” Rachael laughed. “I couldn’t resist.”
“Ha, ha, very good.” Kathy was impressed that Rachael had jumped to safety, but not with her humorous prank. Then she could hear more laughing but not coming from Rachael or behind her. The zebra quickly turned around to see a swarm of sphinxes above the vehicle. She wondered if they were the ones who had been hiding under it and made it flip over while they were still driving.
“The kid’s still inside!” Rachael cried. “Let’s get him out!”
She and Kathy fired their pistols at the sphinxes. They didn’t hit any but managed to scare them away from the vehicle.
“Let’s turn the jeep over,” Kathy suggested.
“With just the two of us?” Rachael thought the truck was too heavy for the two of them to turn it over on their own.
“What’s your better plan, then?” Kathy snapped.
The crocodile couldn’t think in a very desperate time so she surrendered to Kathy’s decision. The soldiers used all their strength to turn the jeep over. To their surprise, it was a success; it went over quicker and easier than either of them expected.
“We must be stronger than we think we are,” said Rachael.
Kathy thought it was too easy to be true. She went over to the other side and it was what she thought: a sphinx only helping them to turn the jeep over so it could get Adofo. She shot the sneaky monster at the forehead before it could bite him. “No wonder the job was easy.” Then she turned to Rachael. “Get the lad out. I’ll man the turret.” She jumped on the back.
Rachael undid Adofo’s belt, helped him out of the jeep and put him down next to her. “Are you okay, pal?” she asked.
All she got was his face trembling as he looked up. She looked up with him and saw why he was trembling: a whole flock of sphinxes charging for them. “Kathy!”
“I see them!” Kathy aimed the turret and fired everything it had at the sphinxes.
Rachael fired her solar panelled pistol at them.
The soldiers managed to hit a few, but most of them were dodging the turret bullets. Then they had no more bullets to dodge at all.
Kathy annoyingly found the turret was empty as a birdbath with no water. “How are you doing, Rach?”
Rachael was busy firing at the sphinxes with her pistol. Despite the reliable solar panels producing bullets very quickly, she was only able to wound them in the tummy or the wings. She was frustrated that she was not quick enough to aim for the heads. Then the crocodile was pinned down by two sphinxes and her pistol was kicked out of her hands. One sphinx caught it and starting tearing it apart like a cat playing with a ball of string.
Kathy fired her pistol at the two sphinxes pinning Rachael down. Then her pistol was grabbed by another one. She tried to rescue it by kicking it off the monster, but that only kicked it further away. More sphinxes caught it and tore it apart.
“Great!” Kathy snapped. “We have no weapons at all now!”
“Let’s take shelter in the jeep!” Rachael ordered. “You go first!”
After quickly checking there was nowhere else to take shelter apart from the jeep, Kathy crawled back into it.
Rachael gave her Adofo and then joined them.
“How about calling for help?” Kathy said.
Rachael got out her radio. “Sergeant Lukeson, come in, please.”
There came no sound.
“Sergeant, we need help,” Rachael tried again. Again, it was very silent. She opened the battery holder and saw two wooden objects the size of AA batteries. They showed nothing except a dimming red light on the small clear plastic side. Soon that was gone as well. “Bloody geothermal batteries are dead!”
Then they jumped when they saw four sphinx claws digging in from the roof. Then eight. Then twelve. Then twenty four.
Kathy closed her eyes. “Any bright ideas?”
“Look ahead, lasses,” said a male Edinburgh accent.
Then Kathy and Rachael looked ahead to see a seven-foot biped elephant with short black hair. She was standing in front of them on two feet and wearing a UK desert combat uniform.
“Mengy?” said Rachael. “What are you doing here?”
“The question is, ‘What are you doing here?’” said the Edinburgh accent.
Kathy and Rachael turned around to see a five-foot zebra that had a white and blue striped body. He was wearing the same UK desert combat uniform as the girls and his eyes were covered up by his blue glasses. His nose was also completely blue as well as his mane that was styled
like long hair from a male human.
“Stu Pot!” Kathy cried. Both she and Rachael were glad to see two of their squad mates again and alive.
“I guess we’re here because Mengy teleported us here,” Rachael said.
“Aye,” Stu Pot replied. “A few seconds ago, we were being chased by a swarm of those terrible sphinx buggers. We hid in this house behind us and they flew past us.”
Kathy and Rachael saw the small house Stu Pot was standing in front of. It was the size of a bungalow and it looked like a giant had sat on it, but it still stood up just fine. They could see it was just perfect for Stu Pot and Mengy to hide in.
“Then our magical elephant friend was finally able to sense you lasses in trouble,” Stu Pot said. “Then she teleported to you and brought you back here.”
Kathy and Rachael looked around to see they were away from the broken-down truck on the Cairo-Alexandria road and were now on the deserted Cairo-Suez Road just a few minutes away from Cairo International Airport. Though it was still a distance away, they could see Egyptian soldiers controlling the civilians outside the airport.
“Is there anyone else beside you two?” asked Kathy.
“Only Sergeant Lukeson, as far as my knowledge goes,” Stu Pot replied. “He’s gone off to help with the Cairo and Alexandria squads. Paula went off with her new invention to buzz those buggers away, but I haven’t seen or heard from them for forty minutes. The squads from Blackpool above us are as dead as dodos now.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Kathy said.
Then she remembered Adofo and was delighted to discover that Mengy had teleported him away from the terrible sphinxes as well. “Mengy, see what you can do with this lad,” she said, getting up.
The elephant approached the whimpering Adofo and put her trunk on his legs.
“Will it hurt, Miss Mengy?” Adofo asked.
“She can’t talk at all, Adofo,” Rachael told him.
The croc was not wrong. Mengy had never said a word since she joined G.C.A. Everyone assumed that she was from China not just because of her Chinese name, but because they found her trapped in a hidden cave in the Huangshan National Park. Three years ago, Lukeson and Squad J were sent to the national park to investigate some rumours about dragons, but instead they found an elephant with magical powers. When they found her in her secret cave, Sergeant Lukeson told her that they were creatures of peace and only wanted to help her. Seemingly like she was desperate for help, she surrendered and took them to a wall that had Old Chinese writing on it. Using their resources, the G.C.A. soldiers read that the elephant’s name was Huian Meng and that she was not an elephant but a magical demon with an elephant body, which explained why she had magical powers. That was all it said about her life.
It was Kathy who called her Mengy. She liked that nickname so much that everyone decided to call her that, except the senior officers. Everyone was amazed that she couldn’t speak at all let alone Chinese, but understood everything whenever she was spoken to easily enough. No one knew her age, but she looked well for a creature that had lived since the beginning of the Shang Dynasty. That was the dynasty everyone at G.C.A. was assuming she was born in because her hidden cave had paintings, pottery and weapons from that period of time when they found her.
All Mengy could remember of her earliest life was that all of her magical friends she grew up with had animal bodies and lived in the peaceful village far away from the human beings. She could also remember that her master (she didn’t remember his name or what animal shape he was) sent her to hide in the cave one day and not come out until he said otherwise. That was why she had never stepped out of the cave until G.C.A. found her. When she finally did, she was upset when she couldn’t find anyone from her old life or her home village. Seeing there was nothing else to do, she accepted Lukeson’s offer to join G.C.A. She was glad she joined them as they helped her blend in with society by G.C.A.’s standards, prove her worth and keep up with the times.
Adofo’s legs started to glow pink for about ten seconds and then, when Mengy took her trunk off, they ceased glowing. He didn’t scream at all because there was nothing to scream at.
Rachael took the boy’s sandals off. “Try wriggling your toes again, mate.”
Adofo wriggled his toes and was delighted to discover he was able to do so. “This is amazing! I can wriggle them!”
“Now, try to stand up,” said Kathy.
Adofo slowly put his toes on the ground. Then, using his arms to help him get up, his legs started to rise and straighten up. His whole body was standing up straight. He didn’t feel like he was going to wobble or fall down. Then he lifted his left leg up and put it down a foot further than where it last stood. It felt very easy. It was as if he had never been crippled. He felt the same when he moved his right foot forward. He moved his legs a few more times and then he decided to jog on the spot to see if he could run again when he had to. He felt like he could.
The animals cheered and applauded.
“I knew you could do it,” Kathy said.
Mengy tapped her on the shoulder with her trunk. Then she used it to point to herself and then to Adofo.
Kathy realised that the elephant demon didn’t know whether she meant her or Adofo. “Both, Mengy. I knew that you could heal him and that he could walk again.”
“At-ten-tion!”
CHAPTER THREE
The animals went silent and stood in line. Kathy and Rachael put Adofo in front of them. Everyone saw a human being approaching them. Looking to be in his early thirties, he was in a UK Sergeant’s uniform with a sergeant’s badge on his hat that covered up most of his shaved black hair. The soldiers shuddered in fear as they saw the anger on the man’s olive-skinned face.
“Well done, soldiers,” he said in his Welsh accent. “You’re just in time.”
“For a corporal punishment, Sergeant Lukeson?” asked Kathy.
“If you’re so smart, Toronto, then why can’t you understand my bloody orders!” snapped Lukeson. “Our mission was to find and seize a sphinx, not to alert G.C.A. to the humans! Especially on a night like tonight!”
“But, Sergeant –”
“Put a hoof in it! I’m sure you mean well, but we are part of a secret organisation that is supposed to protect people like you. Now, explain to me how are we suppose to do our jobs if you alert us to the most dangerous and uneasy species on the planet?”
“I hope you’re including yourself,” Rachael muttered.
“You got something to say, Rhodes?” asked Lukeson.
“No, sir.”
“I do, sir,” Stu Pot said.
Lukeson faced him. “Potter.”
“Kathy and Rachael were only discovered by this only one wee lad.” Stu Pot pulled out the shy Adofo. “He had broken legs, but Mengy healed them.”
Lukeson groaned in frustration. “What you’re telling me now is just stressing me out more, Potter. As if Egypt wasn’t under attack by creatures we know shit about and our squads from both Blackpool and Cairo are dropping faster than flies, revealing Meng’s powers to human beings will only cause us more problems! They will experiment on her, try to take her powers and then try to kill her. Now, tell me something good or, by Captain Tugson’s orders, I’ll have you all turned into meat for my supper tonight for failing to obey the simplest orders! I don’t care if you’re the last Blackpool Squad. Cairo and Alexandria still have plenty of squads left. They can take your place in five seconds.”
Rachael quietly scoffed. She knew that Lukeson wasn’t going to have Squad J turned into meat as G.C.A. had lost a lot of soldiers tonight and needed all the help they could get.
“My point, Sergeant,” Stu Pot said, “is that Mengy might have the powers to erase the last two hours of his life from his memory. That way he’ll never remember us or the sphinxes.”
“Then he’ll head over to the airport over there so that his people can look after him, sir,” said Katy.
Lukeson sighed. He always knew Men
gy was a magical demon the moment he found and recruited her three years ago, but he did not know everything about her or everything she was capable off. To him, she didn’t appear to master her powers very well. She was certainly no grand sorceress. It was like she had always been an apprentice her whole life. Her powers have helped their missions succeed sometimes, but they have also had their share of jeopardising them as well.
On Lukeson’s one hand, Stu Pot and Rachael’s suggestion could work out, but his other hand also told him that Mengy could kill the little lad. “You’d better be right about this, guys,” he warned, deciding to take the risk. “Meng.” He pointed to Adofo and moved away.
Adofo smiled at Squad J. “Thank you, Kathy, Rachael and all of you for helping me.”
“You’re welcome,” they all said.
Adofo took a deep breath before Mengy put her hands on his shoulders and put her trunk on his head.
Kathy approached Lukeson. “Sir?”
“What, Toronto?” He took the jar she showed in front of his face and studied the contents, but HE couldn’t make them out. “Explain the contents of this jar.”
Kathy explained that while she and Rachael were in Alexandria, they used Private Guzman’s laser cubes on the sphinxes. The contents of the jar were what remained of them.
The Cult of Kishpu Page 3
