by R. A. Jones
“How long can Aman hold his breath?” Ferret asked.
No one answered.
With a bubbling upheaval, Iron Skull bobbed to the surface several feet away. Water cascaded in dirty sheets from his body, finding no purchase on his slick metallic “skin”.
“Anything?” Man of War asked.
“No,” Skull replied. “Where we’re standing looks like it could be the top of an old levee. The ground drops away on either side. I saw at least a dozen holes in the floor around it. No way to tell which one that beast may have fled down.”
“And no way to know if Aman is still alive,” Ferret said, when no one else would.
“Dead or alive,” Fantom said, “we have to find him. I don’t like the thought of leaving one of our own behind.”
“Neither do I,” the Witch said.
“I’m sure none of us does,” Man of War concurred. “But I’m not willing to concede he’s dead. If there’s one think I think we all can agree on, it’s that Aman can take care of himself.”
“That sounds pretty cold, buddy,” Ferret said.
“I didn’t mean it to,” Man of War assured him. “But here’s the cold fact: He’s just one man. If the Eye is right, losing that jewel could lead to the deaths of untold others. The choice seems clear to me; we’ve got to go after that gem, and we’ve got no time to waste doing it.”
“And what if you’re wrong, Clay?” the Witch snapped. “What if we lose the artifact and Aman?”
Unbidden, the image of bodies littering the floor of a cold mountain pass sprang into Man of War’s mind. And of the lifeless woman he held so desperately in his arms.
“Then let it be on my head,” he said grimly. He swept a steely gaze over the others.
“I’m going forward. Who’s with me?”
“I think we all are, bud,” Ferret said, casting a baleful eye around to see if any disagreed. “Lead the way.”
Man of War smiled grimly, nodded and proceeded ahead. The others fell in behind him single file, so as not to step off into the deeper waters on either side.
Within a quarter mile, the water began to grow more shallow, until it was no deeper than mid-calf. Each noted but made no comment of the fact that they no longer heard the sounds of any living creature around them, not even the insects.
So it was that the noise of water bubbling up in front of them seemed even louder when it arose. They tensed, preparing themselves for the appearance of yet another monster from the depths.
The frothing waters never grew above a few inches in height, though, and when they spit forth what they had concealed, it was nothing more than a large, oblong box. As it drifted toward them, Man of War recoiled in revulsion.
“Good lord!” he exclaimed. “It’s a coffin!”
Iron Skull raised his right hand above his head and activated the light set in his palm. As he increased the intensity of the illumination, casting more light all about them, they were greeted by an even more bizarre tableau.
Ahead and on either side of them, dozens of stone crosses could be seen jutting up out of the water. Some were fully upright; others tilted at odd angles. All showed the pitted effects of age.
Twenty feet ahead, the columned roof of a marble burial vault stood out in stark whiteness against the blackness of the water covering its lower half.
At that moment, the clouds overhead parted, scuttling away to the north and east. The moonlight cast a blue pall over the landscape, hiding nearly as much as it revealed.
Like a pot beginning to boil, more bubbles of water began to churn all about them. From the middle of each dark bubble popped another coffin, and another and another.
They had wandered into a cemetery, one probably long since filled to capacity and then abandoned. But now it had flooded and was coughing up its grisly contents.
“I don’t mind sayin’,” Ferret remarked softly, “that this place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“I’m sure we’ve all seen worse,” Man of War replied, louder than he had intended. “Fantom … have you gotten any sense yet of whereabouts the jewel we’re looking for might be?”
Before his teammate could reply, a loud cackling sound cracked the night, sending shivers down their respective spines. Their eyes flashed to the top of the partially submerged mausoleum ahead of them.
Where before there had been nothing, now they saw an old woman perched atop the flooded vault. Her stiff white hair formed an unkempt, tangled halo around her head. A dingy white cloth, resembling a shroud more than a dress, torn and loose, was fluttering about her in the light breeze.
Her face was dirty and so emaciated that it made her red-rimmed eyes seem to bulge awkwardly outward. As her mouth twisted open in another fit of giggling, those with keen enough vision could see that the few teeth remaining in her head were little more than tobacco-stained brown stumps.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the Witch asked, taking a tentative step toward the mausoleum.
The old crone responded by leaping nimbly to her feet, waving her hands before her eyes and barking out a string of words in no tongue any of them knew.
After the last word left her lips, the crone plopped down on her bony behind. She folded her arms over her nearly non-existent bosom, tilted her head back and grinned proudly.
“I don’t know if that was a greeting or a curse,” Man of War muttered.
“Given our surrounding,” Fantom said, “I suspect the latter.”
“I think it was just gibberish,” Ferret said. “It’s obvious the poor old lady’s crazy as an outhouse mouse.”
“No,” the Witch said, almost reverently. “I’ve seen women like her before. It’s wisest not to underestimate them. Or to anger them. Nothing good can come of it.”
“I think the Witch is right,” Iron Skull interjected. “Look around us.”
While their attention had been focused on the crone, the disinterred coffins had quietly floated into a rough circle surrounding the heroes.
The crone began calling out again in her unknown tongue. Her arms were spread, her head lifted up to the sky.
So loud was her incantation that even Ferret nearly failed to hear the sounds coming from nearer sources. When at last they caught his ear, his eyes widened.
“The coffins!”
The heroes instinctively reacted by forming a tight circle, facing outward. On all sides, the decaying lids of the floating coffins were slowly opening.
As each casket lid slid or fell away, the occupants within were revealed. A noxious cloud of decay spilled out and flowed over the tense teammates.
In the face of this, it was no true surprise when one of the corpses sat upright, though the muscles and tendons, not to mention the thought and desire, needed to do so should have been long since vanished.
The upright body was that of a man, or the remnants thereof. Both his clothing and his flesh hung from him in gray shreds. Strangely, there still seemed to be eyes peering out of the sockets of his skull, though there was no light that indicated they saw aught.
One by one, the others whose sleep had been unnaturally disturbed sat up from their repose. Their dead eyes stared not at the heroes, though, but rather gazed upward at where the crone sat.
She was cackling even louder now, peals of laughter that were as chilling as the sight of the animated corpses. Her arms were crossed, hugging herself, and the heels of her feet beat a staccato tune on the roof of the mausoleum.
Like an old wind-up phonograph losing power, her laughter only gradually faded away to silence. Then her brow furrowed, her features darkened even under the glow of the moon, and she barked out a command in her harsh magical language.
In obedience and acting as one, the risen corpses swiveled their heads so all gazed upon the living beings standing in their midst. Their mouths, or what was left of mouths, dropped open in silent screams.
Then, as if launched by catapults, the undead sprung out of the coffins. There could be no doubt as to their intent.
<
br /> They meant to leave no one alive.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Even with his incredibly augmented abilities, it was difficult for Aman to see in the near total absence of light.
Unable to discern either distance or direction, he had no idea how far the massive serpent had taken him from his compatriots. All he did know was that the monster’s tightening coils were threatening to squeeze out the last bit of remaining air in his burning lungs.
And for all his great power, without air … he would die.
Clearly this was no ordinary python; both its size and strength were far beyond the norm. Aman had already tried twice, unsuccessfully, to simply fly free of its coils and back to the surface. Each time, it had responded by tightening its grip and dragging him even deeper and farther away from the spot where it had first grabbed him.
Suddenly, from the murky darkness, he saw the great snake’s head lunging forward toward him. Its gaping maw revealed fangs poised to sink into its captive’s throat.
Aman swung his one free hand. Even slowed by the water, it struck the beast with enough force to make its jaws snap shut. More importantly, it caused the monster’s coils to loosen their grip ever so slightly, for only a moment.
That moment was all Aman needed to pull his left arm free and clear.
After shaking its head several times to clear its senses, the serpent reared back and lashed out again at its intended meal.
Aman’s hands shot out, grabbing at the beast’s distended jaws. A pair of its lower fangs thrust entirely through the palm of the man’s left hand, sending searing pain down the length of his arm.
He forced his teeth to remain clamped firmly closed, knowing that any outcry would serve only to expel from his lungs the thinning remnants of the oxygen he so desperately needed.
The injury it had inflicted was yet further evidence of the serpent’s unworldly, possibly sorcerous origins, in that its fangs were able to penetrate flesh that had repelled the flight of steel-jacketed bullets. Aman saw cloudy jets of his blood spring from the jagged wounds.
The snake began to thrash about wildly as its prey proceeded to push its jaws painfully apart. Though the waters were further darkened by his own blood, Aman thought he could see fear in the serpent’s eyes.
Nor was he immune to fear himself. Red flashes of light were beginning to explode in his eyes as the last of the oxygen in his lungs was depleted. He had no more than seconds to break free. Bubbles began to escape from his nose and mouth as he pushed harder and harder against the monster’s jaws.
Even with the roaring in his ears, he could hear the loud crack as the serpent’s jaws snapped in half. Death was almost instantaneous, and the limp coils of the monster fell away from him.
As he pulled his impaled left hand free, the water filled with even more blood, both his own and the serpent’s. Still, as he tilted his head back, he was sure he saw a faint light above and ahead of him. Desperate now for air, he used both arms and legs to propel himself like a torpedo toward the light.
His head broke the surface of the water, and he loudly sucked in great gulps of air. Only when his breathing had returned more or less to normal did he look more closely at his surroundings.
The stone ceiling above his head, seeming to drip in large stalactites, told him he was still somewhere below ground level. The pool in which he was now treading water was inside a subterranean grotto. Paddling slowly to the nearest edge, he pulled himself up and onto the rocky floor of the grotto.
The cavern was not pitch black as one might expect, and he cast his eyes about warily in an attempt to discern any possible source of light.
The flickering of shadows pulled his attention to the opposite side of the grotto. He could make out the shape of a tunnel opening, could tell that the faint light was filtering in from somewhere within its length.
Since no other viable options immediately came to mind, and even though he knew it quite likely that the tunnel would simply lead him to new dangers, Aman squared his shoulders and boldly entered the mouth of the tunnel.
“Come ahead, Aman,” a distorted voice said softly, momentarily freezing him in his tracks. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Aman smiled tightly. Even if the mysterious voice had not sounded so naggingly familiar, he would have felt compelled to follow it to its source.
Confident yet prudently cautious, he made his way forward, his eyes constantly darting about for sign of any concealed traps. Some hundred feet from where he had entered it, the tunnel opened into a rather small, round cavern.
Near the back of this naturally hewn chamber, he could discern what appeared to be a throne of sorts, chiseled from bedrock. A figure seated upon this throne, no doubt the source of the spoken summons, was hidden from view by stygian shadows.
“Come ahead, come ahead,” the shadowed man urged. “You were never shy before, young one.”
Looking to either side and behind him to assure himself they were alone, Aman approached the beckoning figure. As he did so, he saw one hand emerge from the inky shadows and snap its fingers.
In the instant, lights set in the floor to either side of the graven throne flared to life. Some of the illumination struck Aman, causing his eyes to narrow. Still, he could now clearly see the man on the throne, though he feared the lights might be causing hallucinations.
Lounging there languidly, smiling smugly out at him from beneath his mask … was his dead mentor, the Great Question!
CHAPTER XXXVIII
“I thought you were dead!” Aman gasped.
“Which is exactly what I wanted you to think,” the Question replied.
“But how is that possible? No one inside the Temple could have survived when it was brought down.”
“Indeed not. So, think, pupil … what does that mean?”
“You weren’t in the Temple.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
“But, how? And what are you doing here, half a world away?”
The Question threw his head back and laughed from deep within his belly. Aman clenched his fists in rising anger.
“You were always so naïve, boy,” the Question said. “And just as blind and foolish as the rest of the Council.”
He leaned forward, clutching at the arms of his makeshift throne. His eyes were afire with madness.
“That’s why I killed them.”
“You killed my mother that day, too,” Aman said coldly. “What could she possibly have done to hurt you?”
“Not a thing,” the Question replied, falling back in his seat. “She and the other servants in the Temple were inconsequential in any way. But they were there … so I killed them as well.”
The utter indifference of this pronouncement caused the rage growing within Aman to bubble even closer to the surface.
“The only facet of my plans that seemed to fail,” the Question continued, “came when you didn’t die that day. Or in Chile. Or in New York. Or at the pueblo.”
“So, all those attacks were engineered by you?’
“None other. And many more besides. But as I have recently learned, even your narrow escapes have worked to my greater good.”
“What greater good might that be?”
The Question smiled, eager to lay the details of his bold plan out before his former disciple.
“Since long before you were whelped, young Aman, I have believed I was destined to rule the world.
“Even when you arrived at the Temple, and the others declared you to be the prophesied savior of mankind, I determined to shape and mold you into the tool I would use to fulfill my own dreams of empire.
“I can’t tell you what a disappointment you were to me, boy. Time and again, you failed to absorb the lessons I strove so hard to teach you.”
“What lessons were those, ‘master’? Did I prove to have too much warm blood in my veins?”
“You proved to be weak!” the Question boomed.
“Define ‘weakness’,” Aman said defiantly.
/> “Oh, you are plenty strong of body, boy. Even strong of mind, after a fashion. But you are weak-willed. Fatally so. You lack the heart, the spirit, to achieve greatness.”
“Greatness meaning …?”
“What it has always meant, pupil. What I tried in vain to pound so deeply into that thick skull of yours that it would finally penetrate to your very soul.
“Most men are sheep. Born in dirt, they lack the capacity to rise above it. They graze, they breed … and when they die, they return to the dirt, having been oblivious to any other possibility.
“Greatness comes from the will to rise out of the dirt and shake it from your sandals. Once you’ve done that, once you’ve risen above the herd … you realize you were meant to lead the herd.”
“And so you’ve appointed yourself mankind’s shepherd?” Aman asked.
“Exactly,” the Question replied. “But a good shepherd does more than simply lead the flock. He seeks to improve it. The first step in that process is the culling.”
“Gods in heaven,” Aman murmured.
“The weak, the lame. The aged and infirm. Those defective in mind or limb. All have to be removed before they have the chance to breed.”
“You can’t seriously be considering genocide on a global scale,” Aman pressed.
“Why not? Sometimes, the best thing for a forest is a cleansing fire.”
“That’s insane!”
“No!” The Great Question slammed his left fist down on the arm of his throne. “What would be insane would be to stand by and watch as the world became like an apple being devoured by worms too brainless to realize they are destroying their own source of sustenance and life.
“Insanity would be having the power to save that world, and not using such power.” The lama’s head rolled slowly from side to side.
“I’ve known what needed to be done for quite some time now. I gave you and the Council the opportunity to share with me both the vision and the rewards.” His voice grew harder.
