“Soldiers, less moaning, more focus!” ordered Lukeson.
“Mengy, can’t you do something?” Paula yelled. She was struggling to focus her attention on both Akins and the cobra sphinxes at the same time.
Then everyone saw Mengy in the middle of the room. She waved her arms up and sent a yellow dust-like wave in the sky. Despite missing the giant monster and half the cobra sphinxes, Mengy’s spell gave G.C.A. the chance to shoot the cobra sphinxes that were frozen in mid-air. They successfully dropped down dead like raindrops.
Lukeson smiled. “All right, troops! Only half left! Let’s get them while we have the advantage!”
But when he fired his AK-47, nothing came out. He pulled the trigger again and still nothing came out again. He retreated behind his column again and checked his solar bars – there was only six out of seven left! He tapped the ammo chart, it didn’t change. He quickly realised who would do this. As he started to run to Akins, his AK-47 was snatched from him. He disappointingly knew it was the cobra sphinxes that snatched it and it was them that picked him up.
Lukeson was thrown in the middle room with the rest of his squad and was guarded by a circle of cobra sphinxes, the giant flying creature and Akins – who was free from his handcuffs. He gave a mean look at Paula. “Excellent job, Guzman.”
I tried my best, sir. Paula knew it wouldn’t make any difference if she said that.
“Mengy, use your freeze spell attack again!” Pedro said.
The elephant demon sadly shook her head, meaning she couldn’t.
“Did you make her release you and stop our weapons from firing, Akins?” Stu Pot asked.
“I am a sorcerer. I do have my own powers.” Akins walked to the middle of the room. “Welcome to the training barracks for my cobra sphinxes and my pet dragon, Mukantagara.”
Training barracks? Now Lukeson knew why Akins wanted to trap him and his soldiers here. He brought them home for his sphinxes’ dinner.
The sorcerer gently scratched under Mukantagara’s chin. “You should call this an honour. No one has seen this place for millenniums.”
“Millenniums?” cried Kathy. “Is that how old you are? Are you immortal?”
“How many more of you are out there?” asked Larissa. “Immortal guys like you, I mean.”
“Why does it matter to you?” asked Akins. “Soon you will die along with the rest of the humans. Unless you join us. The future of the Earth will be secured with us. Why join the monsters that are ruining it?”
“Because, unlike you, I only believe killing should be the last choice of anything,” Lukeson said. “Unlike most humans, we are protecting every species we find and protecting them from harm. Not to blow our own trumpet, but what we’re doing is what I call fighting for peace. You and your friends are just murderers.”
“You should have taken my generous offer.” Akins didn’t seem to be bothered by what Lukeson called him and his army. “Once Mukantagara and my cobra sphinxes are unleashed, nothing will stop them in their path.” He raised his hands and then lowered them down.
Squad J glanced worryingly at each other. They thought they were dancing when they felt the floor beneath them shaking and vibrating. They turned to see a wall coming down. The rising cloud of dust quickly died down, revealing a big stony tunnel with some sparks of daylight at the end.
Akins turned to his army. “Begin your mission.”
The cobra sphinxes started to fly through the tunnel. Mukantagara flapped her wings and flew up to join them. But as she past the G.C.A. soldiers, she felt something on her right tiger-like leg. She peered down to see a blue and white zebra holding onto it.
“Stu, what are you doing?” yelled Rachael.
“Potter, come back here!” ordered Lukeson.
But Private Potter had vanished with Mukantagara.
What the hell is he thinking? Lukeson angrily wondered. Trying to stop that dragon or saving his own skin and leaving us to die?
Akins clapped his hands again and the wall with the daylight fixed itself up with the fallen bricks on its own. He grinned at the G.C.A. squad. “Don’t worry. He will soon join you all in death.”
“What do you mean?” asked Larissa.
Akins clapped his hands three times again. The room started to shake again. The squad saw a wall crumble down and they saw something emerging from the ground.
“It’s a portal!” cried Paula.
It looked like a doorway arch but was made out of massive rocks and the middle had a shining dark blue light.
“How do you know?” asked Pedro. “You haven’t even checked on your Spy Pad.”
“Well, in my spare time, I research stuff like this instead of wasting time on that back wax app game you keep playing.”
“It’s a hit!” protested Pedro. “I know because I invented it. And somebody likes it.”
“Just the one?” asked Larissa. “And who bought it?”
Pedro embarrassedly shut his eyes and gulped. “Me.”
“You’re the only one who paid for the app game that you made yourself?” Rachael had to laugh her head off.
“Well, there is no overnight success,” said Pedro.
Ignoring their squad’s banter, Akins turned to the rest of his cobra sphinxes. “Come.” He along with the rest of his cobra sphinx walked further into the middle of the portal. They vanished into the light.
“Grab the weapons and let’s follow them!” ordered Lukeson.
Picking up their weapons, Squad J ran to the portal, but the blue light vanished into thin air when they reached it. Paula reached her wing inside the middle.
“Well, Guzman?” Lukeson said.
“Nothing but stone, sir,” replied Paula.
“Oh, great,” said Larissa. “Here is what we’re going to do for the rest of our lives – spend an eternity in this unknown room under the Sphinx!”
“May not even be that, Larissa,” Rachael said, looking up. “Look!”
Everyone looked up to see massive cracks spreading throughout the big stony ceiling. Little stones started to fall down.
“Everyone, clear the middle now!” ordered Lukeson.
They all ran to the wall on the west side of the room, but the colossal collapsing column prevented them from reaching it.
“Try this side!” Rachael cried, pointing to the south side.
They all ran, but the nearest column was falling down too. They saw that the rest of the columns were falling down as well. They were still stuck in the middle. Then they could hear a rumble coming through the ceiling cracks.
Everyone looked up to find the large front feet of the Great Sphinx of Giza falling down through the massive cracks in the ceiling. The massive head soon followed. The Great Sphinx kept on falling down. To the trapped soldiers, it looked as if it was aiming to squish them into blood-stained pancakes. They all thought that this was Akins’s doing. There was no way for them to dodge the Great Sphinx. They couldn’t climb over the fat fallen columns.
“Meng, get us out!” Lukeson ordered.
Nothing happened. Everyone saw Mengy’s eyes were shut tight and her teeth were grinding.
“Mengy, any time now!” Larissa said.
“The Great Sphinx is going to squish us to death, Mengy!” Rachael cried.
The sphinx began to drop down faster and the G.C.A. soldiers still didn’t vanish!
“MENGY!”
CHAPTER SIX
Private Stuart Potter was about two thousand feet high in the sky and was struggling to stay on the furry back of Mukantagara. It was too slippery and she had nothing like horns or reins for him to hold on to. Not only was he riding on a monster, but he was riding on a flying monster.
He hated heights. There were many things he never liked to do such as fighting, killing, reading, studying, but heights was the one thing that he could never get over with. Only now he did realise he felt more comfortable with all the times he had to be partnered with Kathy and her rough driving than being up where he was now. That a
nd Lukeson giving him reading lessons, which he always found hard to do but his sergeant always ordered him to do so for an hour every day unless it was a full fighting day. As he was a soldier, Stu Pot had no choice. Lukeson always said he was making the dyslexic zebra do it for his own good, for his independence and his self-esteem, no matter how slow he was at reading. He always encouraged him never to give up.
Stu Pot never appreciated all of those things until now as he hung upside down. While hanging on the long, thick brown fur on the bear-like back, he tried crawling towards the dragon’s head, but she quickly rolled over so hard and so fast. Stu Pot wondered if this was her latest attempt to drop him. She had tried more times than both of them could count but she always failed.
Then Stu Pot heard a gunshot and his glasses got covered in blood. Holding onto the monster’s back with her right hand, he used his left hand to flip his glasses up. He could see Mukantagara’s throat spilling blood out and both of them were heading to some tall trees. He closed his eyes as they crashed through the branches, but his hands caught something and he stopped falling. He opened his eyes to see he was holding onto a very strong tree branch. He looked down to see Mukantagara crash land to the ground and skid out of sight.
Stu Pot took a few deep breaths to clam himself down and looked to see he was fifty feet high from the ground. He didn’t want to do it because his fear of heights started to get the better of him, but seeing that he was on his own and there was no other way, he started to climb down the tree by jumping onto the lower branch. To help him do it, he distracted himself by thinking how lucky he was. He didn’t know where he was or even cared, he was just grateful to still be alive. He didn’t even care if he was never found again by Squad J, though he hoped they escaped that underground temple alive and hoped to be with them again. He jumped on Mukantagara and left with her not because he was trying to save his own skin and didn’t care about his squad mates, but because he thought someone had to stop Akins and his monsters.
In fact, his squad mates were the only friends he ever had in his life. His life before Lukeson discovered him living unsheltered at Loch Ness and took him into G.C.A. was as happy and social as a single goldfish in a fishbowl filled with dirty water. Every now and then, he thought about what his life would have been like if it wasn’t for this secret powerful organisation and he stayed at Loch Ness or Edinburgh before that. He remembered living his whole life in Loch Ness, but he thought he must have been born in someplace like Edinburgh Zoo before the Great Mutation Storm; that would probably explain his Edinburgh accent, but he’ll never know. He could never remember his parents or if he had any siblings or cousins or any relatives. He spent his childhood at Loch Ness fending for himself and hiding from humans until he was discovered by Sergeant Rhys Lukeson of Global Creature Alliance who took him in. His life had never been the same since.
* * *
It took Stu Pot fifteen minutes to climb down the tree. He walked to the river and washed the blood of his glasses. After he dried them with his shirt, he put them back on and they were good as new. He still couldn’t guess where he was as he looked around, but he was impressed with its gorgeous tall trees and very clean waters.
Then he saw a skidded path through the knocked down trees. He thought it would lead him to where Mukantagara had crashed and he was right. He walked around and surveyed the dragon’s body. Her skin was stone cold and her eyes lids were closed. Then he looked into her mouth and couldn’t feel any breathing. He was now very certain that she was now as dead as all of the mummies back in Egypt.
Then he looked at her throat where the gunshot hole was. Blood was still pouring out of it. Judging by that hole, he noticed that gunshot wasn’t a metal bullet that the humans used. It made no sense to him as he knew it was only G.C.A. that created and used eco-friendly bullets. Could someone have spied into their secret lives and found out? Or could someone in the organisation accidentally have spilled the beans about them?
A very loud clunk sound made Stu Pot jump. He followed the noise that seemed to be coming from around the nearest tree. He jumped again as he saw a strange figure that was as still as a gargoyle. It looked scary, but he decided to check it out anyway. From what he could tell, the figure looked very much like a southern white rhinoceros. It was wearing a worn and nearly shredded brown shirt, black trousers with a few holes and worn black boots, the sort of clothes an experienced poacher would wear. It was standing on its two feet under the two muscular legs. The left arm was rhino organic and muscular while the right was a thick metal one holding a metal sniper gun, one that looked like the humans used.
Stu Pot surveyed the face with the long, scruffy black hair hanging down. Behind the big and the small horns, one eye was a green eye and the other was a metal eye with a red light in the middle. Its shining white teeth were dagger shaped. Could it be something like an art display for whatever this place was? Or could it be the thing that killed Mukantagara in mid-air? The zebra couldn’t put his finger on it, but he did put his finger on the warm-feeling gun. He studied at it and he tried to take it off. Then his shin got kicked and his chest got elbowed. He turned around to groan.
“Is this how you repay me for saving your life from that dragon?” demanded a loud male South African accent. “Taking my gun?”
“Saving my life?” said Stu Pot, checking his shin. “Well, I am grateful you killed the beastie, but I nearly died by falling –” Then he realised what he was saying and looked ahead to face the rhino again. “Did you just talk?”
The figure didn’t move. Not even so much as blink.
Stu Pot took the silent treatment as a ‘yes’ to his question. “Was it you who killed Mukantagara?”
“All right, you got me.” The lips on the rhino moved as those words were spoken. He started to move his legs and didn’t look back at Stu Pot.
“Thanks for saving my life, mate,” the zebra said. His chest and his shin were all right now.
The rhino didn’t make a sound apart from the stomping noises his boots were making as he walked on ahead.
“Who are you?” called Stu Pot. “What are you doing here? Where did you come from? Where did you get guns like that sniper?”
“I stole them and modified them to be more eco-friendly,” the rhino said. “Now, leave me alone.”
“May I at least know your name?”
“Just call me Rustom,” said the rhino. “And stop following me. Just stay away from me, okay?” He didn’t even look at Stu Pot when he was speaking. Then something stopped him moving.
“What’s wrong?” asked Stu Pot.
“Zip it,” ordered Rustom. He put the sniper gun over to his back, where the back of his shirt was spilt only in the middle.
Stu Pot wondered why the rhino was holding a gun over his back. Then he thought he was day dreaming when he thought he saw the rhino’s back of his shirt open up, followed by some metal that looked like cupboard doors on each side of his back. He could see nothing on his back except a big hole the size of a kitchen sink. It was completely metal on the inside.
Rustom dropped the sniper gun into his back and reached in to grab a shotgun. It looked like a normal one and it was clean. It had no blood or body fat on it. “You got any weapons on you?”
“Nay,” said Stu Pot. “I’ve lost them by dragon flying.”
“Here.”
The zebra put his hands out. What landed in his hand was a small Glock pistol. He was not impressed. “Is this the best you can offer me?”
“That Glock may be small but the bullets in it are more eco-friendly and powerful than the ones humans use,” Rustom explained. The metal doors on his back closed up and his worn shirt covered it up again. “Now, just shut up and be grateful that you’ve got something to protect your own ass.”
“From what?” Stu Pot got his answer when a lightning bolt struck fifty yards away from him. “Where are we, by the way? Does this place get many storms?”
“We’re on the Blyde River Canyon,” replie
d Rustom. “And, no, I don’t think –”
Stu Pot gasped as he watched Rustom get covered up in lightning. After it stopped, he fell down unconscious.
Stu Pot went over to check him, but lightning stopped him moving. He looked up to see some strange large blue birds flying over him. He aimed his Glock at them and fired what appeared to be was a small red laser bullet. The birds weren’t getting hit, but it was enough to scare them away, just like the cobra sphinxes in Egypt.
Stu Pot saw lightning sparkling around the birds and moved out of the way before they dropped some bolts on him. He tried to run, but lightning stopped him again. He kept running around and stopping like a broken spinning arrow of a compass. He thought the birds were trying to keep him – and the unconscious Rustom with him – in the circle of lightning bolts, but he couldn’t work out why.
Stu Pot fired his Glock at them again. He didn’t know what good it would do, but it was all he could do to protect himself from the birds. Then a massive lightning bolt missed him, but it made him drop the gun. Another lightning bolt turned it into ash. Seeing no choice but to surrender, the zebra closed his eyes preparing for his death. Then he heard the birds screeched louder and opened his eyes to see purple lightning zapping the birds. He ducked down and closed his eyes when they exploded. After hearing no more explosions, he opened his eyes to see no more birds in the sky and that he was covered in dust. This reminded him about what Kathy told him about the dust from the cobra sphinxes she picked up after she and Rachael used Paula’s lasers to slice them. He began to wonder if these lightning birds and the cobra sphinxes were in some way connected to each other.
“Stu Pot!” cried a voice he knew very well. “Are you all right?” It was the voice of Rachael Rhodes.
Stu Pot turned around. Words could not describe how delighted he was to see his beloved squad mates. “Aye, I’m great!” he cried happily. “I feel better for seeing you guys. How did you get out?”
“Mengy had enough magic in enough time to get us out of the temple before the Great Sphinx’s face squashed us like cockroaches and teleport us to your location just in time,” Pedro replied.
The Cult of Kishpu Page 7