by Martha Carr
She pulled out her satellite phone. Useless. It wasn’t just a crap signal. It wouldn’t even turn on. She’d brought an external power supply to try and beat the strange energy-sapping field, but it didn’t help.
The scariest thing about a cursed desert for a modern person is that it kills their phones.
No vehicle, no phone, and a lot of slow travel. Her horse was reliable enough, but she had remembered why she didn’t like riding horses. For all their majesty and beauty, they were crap factories. Getting used to the smell was taking some time.
Shay chuckled. “At least I’m not riding behind anyone.”
She fished her map out of her backpack. Without even a normal compass, she needed to be careful. She might not have been some circa 1750 Royal Navy sailor, but she knew enough about following the direction of the sun and Southern Cross to get her going in what should generally be the right direction.
The detailed topographical map also provided several useful landmarks to guide her travel. If she were zooming along in a truck, it might be more of an issue, but the casual pace of the horse gave her plenty of time to adjust.
There was nothing to do but settle in for a couple of days of riding to the potential sites of the Mahogany Ship.
A woman could lose herself in a desert landscape after a while. Shay already had. All the sandstone outcroppings had started to look the same. The shrubs weren’t impressive, and the birds flying overhead and scurrying lizards were just annoying. The few trees she spotted, mostly gum, were spindly and distant, as if mocking her.
The monotony of the trip wore at her. There were no distractions. No phone, no internet, no one else to talk to. Nothing but the land and Shay, alone with her thoughts. And that was the last place she wanted to be. This trip was supposed to take her away from all the buzzing in her brain.
Things were easier when she was a killer. Almost all her targets had been in cities or towns. She was never far from civilization, or at least a distraction, for more than a short period.
Her new job wasn’t that much different. Normally rural locations weren’t so far away in an age of technology and magic, and most of her targets hadn’t required lengthy time commitments. Even during most tomb raids in rural areas she could read or listen to material on her phone, but this cursed desert forced her into an important realization.
“Damn, I’m such a fucking city girl.” Shay laughed and patted the horse. “I wonder what Brownstone would do if he were out here, a thousand miles away from any barbeque.”
She’d taken to talking to herself and the horse on the second day of travel. A human voice soothed, even her own.
The horse swished its tail, whether in response or not, Shay wasn’t sure. Some sort of talking Oriceran horse would have been nice, but she wasn’t sure if such an animal existed.
“I’m allegedly dating the guy now, but I still don’t understand him,” Shay mumbled to herself. “I just don’t fucking get him. He’s not gay and we’re together, so…” She laughed. “Fuck, I wonder if the guy is a virgin? I didn’t even think of the possibility. I guess I shouldn’t press him. He’ll make a move when he’s ready.”
The horse nickered.
“Oh, you agree? What do you know, you’re just a horse. You’re not dating an alien badass with the social savvy of a turnip. He’s a badass though. First man I’ve ever met who can keep up with me.”
The horse neighed.
“Yeah, I agree with whatever you said. Go find an alien horse, and you’ll be all hooked up.”
Just a few more hours to the first site marked on her map.
“Son of a bitch,” Shay growled.
As if the desert were mocking her even more, there were almost no plants, and no rock formations or plateaus for miles. Australia wanted to be very clear to her that there was no teleported shipwreck at the first search point.
“Whatever. Got a few more sites to check.”
Shay’s horse neighed and shook his head.
“What’s your problem? It’s not like we even have to stop for you to do your business.”
A loud bellow shattered the calm.
Shay spun her head toward the source. A large, dark shape was charging toward them. She pulled on the reins to turn the horse.
“Fuck, what now?”
Whatever it was, it was coming at her from the direction of the next oasis.
Shay kicked the horse into a gallop, which he was more than happy to provide. If they could lose the creature, they could circle back toward the oasis before hitting the next possible ship site.
The horse kicked up dust as it charged through the few shrubs in the area. The dark shape closed on the horse. It was damned fast.
The tomb raider kept a hand on the reins as she pulled out her 9mm. She wouldn’t need any electricity to blast a few rounds behind her.
Her horse whinnied, terror propelling it forward. Shay spared another glance behind her. Their pursuer had closed to about thirty yards.
“What the fuck? I think I preferred those frog assholes in Russia.”
The creature lumbered toward her on six thick legs. Although it was hard to tell from a distance, it looked like it had a foot or two on Shay’s horse’s length. Two bulbous black eyes topped its squat reddish face, and a mixture of scales and patchy fur covered the rough hide.
Okay, not a drop bear. Maybe a bunyip? Yeah, that was it. They allegedly liked water, and it had come from the direction of the oasis.
Shay squeezed off a few rounds at the bunyip, but it didn’t even bother to stagger. Her horse neighed but didn’t buck.
“Guess it’s a good thing I asked for a horse used to gunfire,” she muttered. She was officially in Australia on a “hunting” trip.
The bunyip closed to twenty yards. Four more rounds didn’t do much more than her first shots.
Shay holstered her pistol. There was no point in wasting ammunition. Her gaze dropped to the wrapped sheath of the tachi lashed to the saddlebags. The tomb raider reached back to grab the tachi.
The bunyip bellowed again, and pain blasted through Shay’s head and her vision darkened. Several long moments passed before she could focus. Her horse lay on the ground, twitching but not bleeding. She was also on the ground, her hands and face scraped and her sword a few feet away.
What the fuck? Some sort of sonic attack? I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck.
The monster approached, this time at a leisurely pace. Its open mouth revealed a row of twitching sucker-covered appendages surrounding a circle of needle-like fangs.
Shay shook her head to try to clear it and pushed herself to her feet, although her stomach was lurching and the world was still spinning around her. The bunyip’s cry had gone well beyond simply intimidating prey.
The tomb raider stumbled and fell to her knees in front of the tachi. She reached out to snatch up the blade with a shaking hand.
“You sure are an ugly son of a bitch.”
Shay forced herself up again and gripped the sword tightly with both hands. The monstrosity charged her, but she held her ground.
Five yards. Four. Three.
Stomach churning and the horizon still rocking, Shay spun to the side and slashed with the tachi. The magical weapon dug deeply into the monster. It roared as green blood sprayed from the wounds and tumbled to the ground.
Shay stumbled toward it and kept stabbing into the monster’s head until it stopped moving.
The tomb raider stood there for a long moment, her sword covered in the blood of a legendary beast and her lunch threatening to come up.
She shuffled over to her horse. The animal whinnied and pushed to its feet.
Shay took the reins, grateful that he hadn’t immediately bolted and apparently didn’t have any broken bones.
“Hey, I know we’re both unsteady. How about I just walk with you a while?”
They walked forty feet before Shay looked back at the dead bunyip.
“By the way, I hope you’re fucking endangered, assh
ole.”
4
Shay let out a yelp of joy and the horse nickered.
The setting sun painted the sky an orange-red, highlighting the angular shape of the ship half-buried in the red sand, its prow pointing upward as if it were ready to launch into the sky.
A massive gum tree stood next to the ship. Since it was one of the few large ones she’d spotted since entering the cursed lands, and with no obvious water sources nearby, she assumed the wizard had helped the tree grow with magic.
Shay pulled out her pistol and pointed it upward as she scanned the tree. There was no way she was letting some drop bear ambush her, but there wasn’t a single animal in the branches, magical or otherwise.
She holstered her pistol and returned her attention to the Mahogany Ship. The masts were missing, with evidence of cuts centuries ago suggesting a purposeful removal. There was no sign of the sails or much of anything on the top deck. The colorful sand of the central Australian desert had infiltrated the ship through its many cracks and holes, but the wreck was well-preserved otherwise. That was likely due to the dry conditions or a spell, or maybe both.
The tomb raider didn’t care much about the reason. She only cared that she’d found it.
Of course, the damned Mahogany Ship had to be at the last site she’d checked, but it didn’t matter now. She’d found the cursed thing, and soon she could get the hell out of the desert and away from all the bizarre and violent creatures inhabiting the area.
The trip could have merely been annoying with a little violent spice from the bunyip, but that was only the start of her fun. She’d had to take down two more bunyips, some giant lizard bigger than a Komodo dragon, and some sort of weird-ass tentacle that popped out of the sand. Given the size of the last, she didn’t even want to think about the body of the creature it had been attached to.
Her solution had been to flee. Being brave when it could get you killed was just another way of being an idiot.
“You thought you had problems, Brownstone. All you had were some gangsters trying to kill you. This entire fucking country is trying to kill me! The Australians should just get someone to nuke this place for them.”
Shay shook her head. He would never know about her troubles. She couldn’t tell him.
The man might be a badass, but he didn’t deal with the kind of shit she did, at least not on a regular basis. He’d killed a strange creature in Japan, but for the most part, Brownstone stuck to two-legged threats. The last thing she needed was for him to tag along on every job out of worry.
Sometimes absence really did make the heart grow fonder.
She dismounted and tied her reins to the gum tree before she made her way to the ship, sword in hand. With her luck on this trip, there was probably a zombie kangaroo waiting inside to rip her throat out.
Shay sheathed her blade and scampered up the side of the ship where the hull met the ground. The mild angling of the bow made climbing onto the deck a challenge more of concentration than true agility. With careful steps, she made her way toward the captain’s quarters. The door collapsed with a thud at her touch, the hinges long ago rusted into oblivion.
According to the client’s records, the rest of the crew had attempted to flee into the desert, which might explain the absence of the masts. They must have tried to use the wood somehow.
The wizard had stayed behind, trusting his superiors to recover him and unable to admit his magic to the mundane crew.
Shay shook her head. The light illuminated a skeleton in a chair against the back wall of the room, which was pinned by a desk. Holes and cracks in the floor revealed that the desk had once been bolted down, but time and gravity had won against Portuguese carpentry and metalworking.
The skeleton’s head was slumped forward. There was a flintlock pistol in his right hand and a lead ball embedded in the skull.
Shay sucked in a breath. “Guess I wouldn’t have waited to starve, either. Sorry, pal.”
His tattered uniform was more scraps of fabric than proper clothing at that point, but the fact that there was anything left after centuries was impressive.
Something glinted in the skeleton’s other hand. Shay stepped forward to peer closer. The compass.
“Sorry, but it’s not like you need it anymore.”
Shay extracted it and dusted off the fine layer of sand covering the silver. If she had any doubts about its magical nature, the lack of tarnish on a centuries-old silver compass dispelled them.
A quick shove repositioned the desk, then she grabbed a drawer and pulled, but the handle snapped off after an inch.
Shay shook her head and pulled out the drawer from the top. There was nothing in there but dust and the hint of something that might have been paper long ago. The second drawer contained a few lead balls.
“Come on.”
The tomb raider knelt and inspected the final drawer, which held a black feather quill.
“Now we’re talking. Just need the lantern, and I’m out of here.”
Shay grinned. She wouldn’t say it was the easiest three million she’d ever earned, but she was satisfied with the job. She looked around the cabin, and her smile faded.
There was no lantern in the captain’s cabin.
She scrubbed a hand over her face.
“I’m really gonna have to check this whole ship?”
The tomb raider shook her fist. “Seriously, Australia? Why do you hate me?”
It had taken Lily an hour to come up with an excuse that got her out of Warehouse Two and out from under Peyton’s curious eye.
She tried saying she wanted to go get a burger. but he offered to drive. When she changed her mind and said she was going to work out first, maybe she’d run the distance between the two warehouses, Peyton only grew more suspicious, peppering her with questions.
“You’re meeting someone. Is it a guy? I’d understand. You’re a teenager,” he had said.
She stared at him, working on a different storyline that would get him to back off when it hit her.
“I need to get some, uh… girl things.” She kept the stare going, daring him to look away.
Peyton slowly turned red and sputtered, even throwing some of the petty cash at her.
That’ll teach him. Lily smiled as she got on the crosstown bus to Wilshire Boulevard. She didn’t want to tell him, tell anyone that she was going to the nuclear escape tunnel. Going home.
Lily slipped behind the strip mall and rows of green metal dumpsters to a hidden door between two of the stores. It looked like it had to be a second entrance to one of the stores and once opened, a curious passerby would have been met with a large steel door locked tight.
Lily grabbed hold of the handle and felt a lurch through her body. The tumblers in the lock fell into place and she pulled back, using her weight to get the door open just wide enough to slip through. The heavy backpack on her back just barely fitting. Weird magic.
She stepped off the short platform and felt nothing but air, reaching out for the metal ladder she knew was there.
She scrambled down the ladder, whistling out the old signal that it was her, not knowing if the code had changed and everyone would scatter.
By the time she made her way down the ladder and worked through the tunnels to the camp she found no one there. Her heart dropped from the disappointment.
She let out another loud, low whistle and waited to hear anything in return. Nothing. One more time.
Finally, she heard splashing and the sound of someone running toward her. She pressed back against the cement wall, not sure who was coming yet. No one had answered with the end of the code.
A tall, thin teenage boy with rumpled brown hair emerged from one of the tunnels.
“Harry!” Lily ran toward him with relief and hugged him tight around his neck. “I thought you were all gone.”
Harry hugged her back and could feel the newly defined muscles in her arms. He stood back from her to get a better look. “You thought we were gone? I pretty much
wrote you off. How long has it been? Who was that woman? What happened to you?”
“That’s a lot of questions, Harry. Not even sure I can answer them all. Where is everybody else? I brought food and some clothes. They’re a little unusual. I kind of borrowed them from a friend of mine.”
“Everyone is at the new encampment. You know us, we move around every week or so, just in case. You come back to stay?”
Lily looked down for a moment and squeezed her eyes shut, not sure what to say. “No, not this time. It’s just a visit.” She offered him the bag. “I can’t stay too long.”
“You got yourself a home, Lily. That’s a good thing.”
“This is home, Harry. I’m going back because I’m learning a trade. Tomb raider. I even saw the Ice bitch again.” Lily shook her head. “And I lost again, but each time I learn a little more about her. Her end of days is coming.”
Harry took her hand. “Be careful out there. We’ll be here when you’re ready to come back.”
“I’ll stop by again when I can slip away without anyone seeing me.”
Harry backed up in the direction he came and tilted his head back, letting out a loud bird call that echoed through the pipes. He smiled as the sound of running feet echoed and filled the pipes with sound.
Lily’s eyes filled with tears as she waited. He had let out the distress call that anyone living underground would answer, no matter what. One by one they came into view and saw her standing there, even as they swiveled around looking for trouble.
Petie, a young wizard noticed the smile on Harry’s face and caught on first, rushing at Lily to hug her. Everyone else quickly followed, patting her on the head and squeezing her till she thought she would pass out. She loved it all. Family.
“I’ll be back, I swear.”
Shay muttered to herself as she set up her sleeping bag in the desert. The damned lantern hadn’t been anywhere on the ship, and now she was left with nothing but exhausted muscles and the bright moon hanging in the sky as if taunting her.
