Candice Cushing and the Lost Tomb of Cleopatra

by Georgette Kaplan

  “What’s that?” Nevada asked.

  “It’s like hibernation.”

  “Then why don’t you just say—never mind. Thanks for the 411,” Nevada said. “That’s like information.”

  “Wait, is there a crocodile down there?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  The well opened up into an aquifer worn smooth by the water it had once held, maybe fifty feet from end to end and ten feet across. The sweeping, nearly organic curvature to the walls reminded Nevada of the slot canyons of Utah, a gulch with only weak illumination like a faltering spotlight coming down from the well opening. The light reflected off what water remained in the aquifer, throwing up ripples of firefly-like brightness from the ankle-deep water.

  The chamber was almost entirely full of crocodiles, lazing in the water end to end and side by side, lazy flicks of their claws and twitches of their tails the only motion. Each one was easily eight feet long, their dappled-gold hides almost blending into the muddy waters. Helplessly, Nevada played the beam of her flashlight over the horde. Their vacant eyes shone back at her, filling the darkness. But at the far end of the chamber, Nevada could make out a change in the angles—a symmetry to the twists and turns the rock took that spoke to her of a human hand. She lowered the flashlight. The crocodiles were nearly carpeting the floor, but there was just enough space between them for a few careful footfalls to carry her closer to what she’d seen.

  “Fuck that,” Nevada said. Taking out her phone, she opened the camera app, aimed it at the far wall, and zoomed in as far as possible. With her phone in one hand and the flashlight in the other, she could scan the writing like she was right next to it. Work smarter, not harder.

  One of the crocodiles rolled over a yard from her feet and Nevada drew back her boot. She dropped a hand to her holster. “Okay, buddy, let’s just be cool. Keep in mind, I am in the market for a new set of luggage.” With the crocodile motionless again, she went back to recording the writing. “Crocs. Why’d it have to be crocs?”

  “Nevada?” Candice called down, her voice sounding different. “You, ah—y’all reckon ya almost dun down t’ere?”

  Great , Nevada thought. Now she’s had a stroke.

  “Ah surely do would appreciate if it you wou’ come back up’in here now,” Candice continued in an accent that was possibly the worst thing to happen to the Appalachians since Deliverance .

  The crocodiles were beginning to stir, disturbed by the flashlight. Nevada shut it off. If Candice is suddenly talking like an X-Men comic, then maybe it’s her subtle way of letting me know not everything is copacetic. Nevada slotted the flashlight into her belt and dialed Jacques’s number.

  “Be up in a minute,” she shouted. “I think I had some bad fish last night. Might as well dispose of it down here. Trust me, you don’t want to be in range of this.”

  “Ah do appreciate that evah so much!” Candice trilled. “Yuppers, ah suh’ly do!”

  I do not sound like that , Nevada thought viciously as Jacques picked up the call. “Frenchie, hey, miss me yet? I need a favor.”

  Candice stared down the muzzle of a gun. In the inky blackness inside the gun barrel, she could barely make out the glint of the chambered round’s tip, ready to fly into motion with a little pull and a spark of ignition.

  There were two of them, one holding the gun on her, the other covering the well. Only one had brought a gun, a pistol. The other had a club, a long metal pipe that was either rusty or covered in dried blood, but he’d picked up the long gun Nevada had left. They were both, as far as she could tell, Sub-Saharan Africans, dark-skinned and in ragged clothes, with sandals cut out of car tires. They were obviously militia, comfortable with violence to the point of having favorite kinds, but there was no uniform. Just ash smeared across their faces, coating all of their features in white except for a red blotch on their foreheads. Candice swore she felt the madness coming off them, smelled it like some physical malady rotting inside their bodies.

  She couldn’t stop shaking. It wasn’t even for her own sake. She pictured them shooting Nevada, or using that club on her, and that was worse than her own life being in danger. She couldn’t imagine being killed herself, but she could imagine Nevada being hurt. Stupid, brave, cocksure Nevada...

  Long seconds butted up against each other. The one with the pipe seemed to be getting his grip tighter and tighter. The other held the pistol on her coolly, almost unthinkingly, and the longer it was pointed at her the more unnerving it became. Didn’t it require some thought to be violent? Some feeling of rage or hatred or… something? He seemed to be prepared to kill her on the flip of a coin.

  Then, out of nowhere, the gun barrel was pressed against her forehead. “Enough waiting!” the gunman shouted. “Come up now or she dies!”

  “Okay!” Nevada called, her voice echoing up the well. “I’m coming up!”

  As she climbed back up the rope, Nevada cursed herself at least half a dozen times for not doing a better job of protecting Candice. She’d left the Scorpion right there , but trust her not to think to pick it up and use it. Which was on Nevada, really, since she knew Candice was no gunslinger—but honestly, how hard was it to pick up a rifle? And be aware of your environment? Sneaking up on someone in a desert, honestly.

  Nevada clambered over the rim of the well, stifling a groan as her own Scorpion was aimed at her by some Coachella reject. It was unprofessional, that’s what it was.

  She looked at Candice, hiding her own dismay behind a carefully constructed poker face. “You okay?”

  “They snuck up on me,” Candice said. She bit her lip in embarrassment. Under other circumstances, it’d actually be pretty cute.

  “I can see why. They’re pretty short. I don’t think these guys have ever ridden a roller coaster.”

  The one with her Scorpion took Nevada’s pistol from her holster, keeping her covered with surprising professionalism. The other had what looked like a Steyr-Hahn Model 1911; more proof that Africa was the junk drawer for the world’s firearms. He kept it trained on Candice. The message was clear: misbehave and she gets it in the brainpan.

  “So what can we help you with?” Nevada asked, looking between them. “If it’s applying foundation, I think you’re doing a good job already.”

  “Where’s the skull?” Steyr-Hahn asked.

  “Top of the spinal cord, can’t miss it.”

  The one with the Scorpion stepped in, clamping his hand down on Nevada’s bandaged upper arm. She gritted her teeth, dark explosions popping before her eyes as pain erupted from the wound she’d received back on the train all the way down to her trembling fingers. Nevada was driven to her knees. When he backed off and she was able to look up, Steyr-Hahn had his pistol pressed against Candice’s head.

  “ Where? ”

  “I don’t know,” Nevada said. “It’s not down there.”

  Steyr-Hahn racked the slide of his pistol and pushed it up against Candice again. It was a cliché, but the way Candice cringed…

  Nevada held herself still to keep from shaking with rage. All she could do was hope the glib hero act would get through to Candice and convince her there was nothing to worry about.

  “You have ten seconds,” Steyr-Hahn said. “One…”

  Nevada pulled herself back onto her feet. “Don’t waste my fucking time, manlet. You might as well shoot me now because it’s not here and if I could pull it out of my ass on a moment’s notice, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be doing Vegas.”

  “Where is it?”

  Nevada groaned and rolled her eyes. “If I knew that, what would I be doing here? But I’ll tell you what, give me back my guns and take a walk, we’ll call it a day.”

  The one with the Scorpion laughed.

  “Oh, you like that one? I’ve got more,” Nevada said. “What’s the difference between your mouth and a litterbox? My cat won’t take a shit in a litter—”

  He stepped in and slammed his hand against her bandage. More pain. More dark explosions, big
ger, blacker. Nevada blinked and realized, oh, I’m on my knees again . The slimy feeling on her arm was probably her ripped stitches oozing blood.

  “Just as much fun the second time,” she muttered.

  “We kill them,” Steyr-Hahn announced. “We kill them both.”

  “That’s cool. Except for the part where you get killed a day later.” Nevada scooted herself back to lean against the well. “Seems pretty obvious that you’re trying to find the treasure by birddogging us. Guess what? We can’t find it if we’re dead and you can’t find it because you’re just fucking idiots. So when you go to Nazir al-Jabbar, you can tell him you don’t have the skull and you ventilated the only two people who had a chance in Zeus’s fuckstick of finding it. It’s cool. I’m sure he’ll understand—”

  “We don’t work for the Khalifa.”

  Nevada blinked. “Say what now?”

  “We serve at the pleasure of the Lady Tendai.”

  “Oh,” Nevada said blankly. “She a blonde?”

  “Remember on the train?” Candice asked. “The guy said that name before he tried to kill you.”

  “Oh yeah, right.” Nevada snapped her fingers. “She was horrible in that last Spider-Man movie!”

  “You said that last time,” Candice said.

  “And it’s still true!” Arms crossed over her belly, Nevada tapped the wrist of her left hand with her right forefinger, hoping Candice would get the message. Play for time… “Or did they release a director’s cut where their female lead isn’t an antisocial shrew played by a Disney Channel pod person doing a third-rate impersonation of Aubrey Plaza?”

  “You will—” Steyr-Hahn began.

  Candice cut him off. “Just a minute, just a minute,” she said. “Let her do this. If you’re going to kill us anyway, we might as well get this settled first.”

  “Thanks, babe,” Nevada said. She could see The Flying Carpet cresting the horizon. Turning to the soldier holding her pistol, she drew him into the conversation. “You know Spider-Man, right? I mean, there’ve been about twelve different movies. You gotta know Spider-Man.”

  “I… I have heard of Spider-Man,” the man said, caught off-guard.

  “Great! Perfect!” Nevada chopped her hand at him as she addressed him. “Who’s he married to?”

  The man looked to Steyr-Hahn for confirmation. “Who’s he…”

  “He’s married to Mary Jane Watson,” Steyr-Hahn said.

  Nevada pressed her hands together and briskly bowed to him. “Thank you, thank you . One last question…” She could see The Flying Carpet growing from a black dot into a scale model of itself. It was like someone was turning up the magnification on a microscope. The plane grew in leaps and bounds. “Can you describe Mary Jane Watson to me?”

  Steyr-Hahn shrugged a bit. “She’s a… beautiful woman with red hair—”

  Nevada shot up. Steyr-Hahn and the man with the Scorpion both aimed at her. “Boom! That’s my point right there.” They lowered their guns a little. “First thing you think of. She’s one of the most famous redheads in comics. And what does Spider-Man: ‘Homecoming’ —” She made air quotes. “—do? They give her brown hair!”

  “But…” the man with the Scorpion said. “She is a redhead.”

  “Who? Mary Jane Watson? They don’t even call her that. They call her Michelle now. And apparently her last name starts with a J, we don’t even know what it is, but her nickname or something is MJ, and that’s supposed to be some big twist since she doesn’t look or act anything like the comics. In a movie that’s called Homecoming, because it’s supposed to be so much more faithful to the comics than the Andrew Garfield movies, but nope . They’re even less accurate! Flash Thompson is now a bitchy nerd who wants Peter’s slot on the academic decathlon team. Drink that in.”

  “But…” Steyr-Hahn sounded lost. “Flash Thompson is a jock who bullies Peter Parker. Everyone knows this.”

  “Everyone but Kevin Feige, apparently.” The Flying Carpet was making its approach now, the sound of it beginning to build. Nevada raised her voice and spoke quicker. “I don’t know why you would do Peter Parker in high school, again, for the second time , if you’re going to get rid of all the classic high school plot points and replace them with generic YA novel bullshit. I guess we don’t need the Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson. I’m not done yet, this subject is not closed, but Candice, our Uber’s here!”

  She threw herself to the ground, Candice doing the same as the Albatross roared overhead, an apocalypse of sound and violent wind. Nevada pulled her keffiyeh up over her face. The soldiers took potshots at the plane, but even if they could hit it, it was immediately impossible to aim through the thick cloud of sand that The Flying Carpet kicked up in its wake.

  Nevada scurried for where Candice had been standing, but she must’ve moved. The sand in the air and the cloth screen Nevada held over her face made it almost impossible to see. Then the soldiers started firing wildly. Nevada hugged the ground, digging her feet and hands into the sand to break up her outline. She had only a few feet of visibility. She doubted the soldiers had much more.

  She heard Steyr-Hahn bark something in an African language she didn’t recognize; probably an order for the one with her Scorpion to hold his fire. In this haze, it’d be as easy to shoot friend as foe. Almost makes me glad I’m unarmed , Nevada thought wryly.

  Coming up into a crouch, she edged her way toward the sound Steyr-Hahn had made. The sand was still in the air, dissipating by degrees, but Nevada pulled her keffiyeh down anyway. She’d need to see as clearly as possible, even if it stung her eyes. The noise of The Flying Carpet dwindled into the background. All she could hear was her own heartbeat as it surged against her ribcage like a mad prisoner trying to break free. Her eyes were tearing up. Nevada wiped at them quickly. She could see movement in the dark cloud ahead of her. It could’ve been the wind beginning to cut into the haze, or—

  The soldier saw her, his silhouette resolving itself into a darkened shadow even as he turned to level her own carbine at her. Nevada dropped down to her belly as the hacking reports of the Scorpion told her he was firing. Bullets buzzed like hornets over her. She clambered on her belly across as much ground as she could cover. Simple instinct was that if someone wanted to punch you, stab you, shoot you—they would be standing up to do it. That’s what he would be looking for, an upright human figure in all the dust. Nevada stayed down, low low low , and circled around him. The sands were starting to part now; torn away as the wind pulled at them. He was aiming where she had been, trying to pick her out of all the swirling particles like he just had to look a little closer, a little closer—

  Nevada came up behind him. He still had the Scorpion’s sling across one shoulder as he held it in his arms. Nevada took hold of the shoulder strap and pulled hard , like she was bringing a dog to heel. The carbine whipped back and smashed against the soldier’s face as the momentum of the pull yanked him off his feet, dropped him on his back. Nevada caught the Scorpion in her hands as she stood over him. She supposed the sporting thing to do would be to toss it aside, let him get to his feet, and have a nice honorable fistfight.

  She brought the heel of her boot down on his face. His nose broke like an eggshell and the next time he exhaled, his mouth was full of blood. The sands were almost settled now, turning silhouettes into reality, reality into a world painted with orange sand. She reached down, took hold of the soldier’s shirt, and hauled him to his feet, holding him in front of her like a human shield.

  Steyr-Hahn had his arm around Candice’s throat, his elbow jutting out from below her chin, her body in front of his as he aimed his 9MM at Nevada. Nevada pulled her guy against herself. He might’ve been short, but he was big enough that Steyr-Hahn couldn’t shoot her without hitting him.

  “I can break her neck like you’d step on a twig,” Steyr-Hahn threatened.

  Nevada could feel the Shadow 2 that his buddy had taken off her. The soldier had stuffed its barrel down the back of his pants and
now it was pressed between their bodies. She folded the Scorpion’s stock inward with her chin, then wrapped her arm around her hostage, holding the Scorpion’s muzzle up against his jaw. “I can shoot you and him in the fucking face, but that seems rude.”

  “Drop the gun!”

  “No, you!” Nevada replied. “This is a CZ Scorpion, babe. I can shoot through this guy, through her, right into you!”

  “Don’t shoot through me!” Candice protested.

  “I’m not going to shoot through you,” Nevada said quickly. “I’m just saying it’s an option.”

  “Like throwing me off the plane was an option?”

  “ I didn’t throw you off the damn plane, Jesus Christ! ”

  “Enough!” Steyr-Hahn roared. “Drop your gun in ten seconds or I shoot your friend.”

  “You shoot her, I shoot him!” Nevada said, jamming the muzzle up into her hostage’s gullet.

  The hostage said something she couldn’t understand.

  “What’d he say?” she demanded of Candice.

  “He said don’t shoot him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Go ahead and shoot!” Steyr-Hahn shouted. “The Ash Army will gladly give our lives for the Lady Tendai! Ten!”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Nine!”

  “I don’t think he’s bluffing,” Candice said.

  “Eight!”

  “You’re going to look real stupid when you finish counting down and you’re just fucking bluffing.”

  “Seven!”

  Candice raised her voice. “Easy, he’s not bluffing.”

  “Six!”

  “Okay!” Nevada yelled. She dropped the carbine and wrapped her left arm around the hostage’s neck. With the chokehold locked in, he was in no shape to break free. Behind his back, she reached down to the Shadow 2. “Now let the girl go.”

  Steyr-Hahn grinned. “Let him go first.”

  Nevada eased the Shadow 2 up in her right hand. Her hostage tried to say something. She tightened her left arm around his neck. “You’re making me think I can’t trust you, guy.”