Candice Cushing and the Lost Tomb of Cleopatra
Page 10
Candice felt like a slot machine as she watched, spinning through confusion, shock, anger—she settled on acceptance as the runner faded out. Nevada lowered him to the ground and checked his pulse. She gave a resounding nod.
Candice slumped back down onto a rock. “You know what your problem is?”
Nevada checked the device on the man’s arm. A light changed on it and it let out a shrill beep. “After seven therapists, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“You’ve got no bloody patience. You can’t wait to land the plane; you have to jump out of it. You can’t jog a few miles, you have to call in a helicopter! If you could only sit still, be bloody motionless for a minute without plotting or planning something—you’re going to get someone killed, rushing around like the whole world’s on fire.”
Nevada stood up. She had a way of seeming taller sometimes. More present in the world than she usually was. “They called me. He’s in the hospital. My son is in the hospital. They don’t know if he’s ever going to leave it.” And just like that, she was ten inches tall. “I am so close to having done everything I can. He can’t die without me having done everything. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to be asked how I’m holding up or how I’m doing or how it makes me feel. I don’t matter. I have this piece of me that was cut out and I thought it would do better that way and now it’s dying. Away from me, it’s dying. I don’t have time.”
Candice couldn’t think of what to say. It made a perverse kind of sense—even in vulnerability, Nevada kept her off-balance. She weaponized her own pain and used it to shield herself from criticism. Candice resented it even as she wondered if Nevada knew that she was doing it. And most of all, she was frustrated at not knowing what to say, even more frustrated at Nevada letting her off the hook and not expecting to discuss it at all. She’d always felt so emotionally mature, an old soul, wise beyond her years—Nevada took that and gave Candice a punch to the guts just to prove she wasn’t ready to defend against it.
“You’d probably be better off,” she finally said, “if you had someone to ask you how you’re holding up. How you’re doing. How it makes you feel. And if you let them?”
“I think I’m pretty far past healthy life choices by now.” Nevada gave Candice an almost pleadingly chipper look. “New Year’s resolution. I’m going to learn Italian and aim for not being emotionally dead inside.”
Candice forced a laugh, but silence fell anyway. Just them, the unconscious body, and the wait. It was a quiet arrangement. Nevada brooded like she was nursing a wound. After five minutes, Candice found the waiting unbearable—the irony, somewhat less so.
“So what is it with you and Spider-Man: Homecoming ?” she asked.
Nevada gave her a weak smile. “To answer that, I’ll have to ask you to journey back in time with me. The year is 2007 and an underappreciated classic by the name of Spider-Man 3 is about to be released…”
As Nevada talked, Candice stared up at the clear blue sky, at the barely existing clouds in wisps of papery white. Somewhere up there was the helicopter, and she waited for it like her ancestors might’ve waited for rain.
Had they waited for rain? She knew the Sahara hadn’t always been so big—Lake Chad to the southwest had once been an inland sea, a million square kilometers instead of a mere thirteen hundred, but did that mean her people had once been farmers, shepherds? She’d gone to Sudan in the first place to reconnect with her heritage, but she had less idea of what it was now than ever. It couldn’t be the Khamsin, who seemed determined to turn her homeland into nothing more than a vision of their own warped ideology. But then what was it? Beja nomad? Dinka pastoralist? The more she brushed up against her supposed people, the less of a connection she felt to them—to anything. Did that mean she couldn’t connect to them or they couldn’t connect to her?
Maybe at Cleopatra’s tomb, she would have her answer. She’d always believed that everyone had something of themselves in the past. Maybe her piece was out there in the Sahara, waiting for her to uncover it.
“And that’s why all the Tom Holland movies are a cinematic apology tour by Marvel for not using Miles Morales,” Nevada concluded confidently. At some point, she’d started smoking. The cigarette hung out of the corner of her mouth like she was a soldier biting the bullet during surgery. “Which they shouldn’t apologize for, since Miles Morales sucks.”
“Hot take,” Candice said distantly.
“No one even knows what his origin story is,” Nevada argued. “Batman, parents died. Superman, planet blew up. Miles Morales, it’s a fucking mystery. We know more about Wolverine’s backstory. Wolverine .”
“So we’re definitely talking about this, yeah? Yeah.”
Above the sound of Nevada’s opinions—which seemed to go on and on like a clown pulling a handkerchief out of his sleeve—Candice heard the steady chop of a helicopter’s rotors through the air. She looked up while Nevada tapped some ash off her cigarette. There was the helicopter, sidling down into the clearing Nevada had brought them to, the sound of its rotors becoming a bellowing cacophony that Candice covered her ears against. The wake slalomed down the surrounding rock to stir up the sand. Candice turned away from the instant sandstorm pouring in from the outside world, her elbow raised to ward off the grit from her face. Nevada’s cigarette was snatched out of her fingers. The helicopter seemed to downshift, idling its engine, or at least the rotorcraft equivalent.
“Have you ever heard of someone hijacking a helicopter?” Nevada asked in the relative quiet.
The helicopter’s cabin door slid open, and two medics emerged with a stretcher. They wore street clothes instead of a uniform but looked like they knew what they were doing.
“No,” Candice said as they approached.
“Good. They shouldn’t be expecting it then.”
Nevada got up and, while the medics checked out the unconscious runner, approached the helicopter. Candice trailed after her. One of these days, Nevada was going to get herself shot. If nothing else, Candice wanted a good look when that happened.
Nevada leaned against the helicopter’s fiberglass nose, looking up at the pilot. He wore a professional-looking flight jacket and had woolly hair and a beard that went down to his collar.
“English?” Nevada asked.
The pilot said nothing, barely even paying attention to the medics transferring the downed runner onto their stretcher.
Nevada pulled open her jacket and displayed her holstered gun to him. “American English,” she clarified.
The pilot looked at her with a bit more interest, giving a confused but nonthreatening spread of his hands. “What the hell?”
Nevada dropped her jacket shut again. “Relax, this question’s multiple choice. Either I hijack this chopper and you give my friend and I a ride to Faya-Largeau, or—” She dipped a hand into her pocket and came up with a clear plastic baggie. The contents were white. “I hijack this chopper, you give my friend and I a ride to Faya-Largeau, and you forget what we look like.”
The pilot craned his neck closer to the canopy. “What is that, a dime bag? It’d be worth my job, flying you to Faya. What do you take me for?”
“A businessman,” Nevada replied. She took off her backpack, held it in front of herself, and pulled open one of the compartments.
More baggies. Candice had seen piñatas that were less full.
The pilot rubbed his chin as he thought it over. “Fire one round so they know you’ve got a gun.”
Nevada flashed Candice a grin. “Just gotta know how to talk to ’em.”
Then she took out her gun and fired it into the ground.
Five minutes later they were airborne, on their way to Faya-Largeau.
“I can’t believe we left those medics behind,” Candice said, watching them dwindle away in the maze of Ennedi rock. “It is literally a marathon back to civilization.”
“Don’t worry. With help, they’ll probably recover from being the kind of people who run marathons.”
Yesterday, negotiations between the government and rebel forces had resulted in one of the factions surrendering. Their child soldiers would be given over to NGOs like Pike’s, to feed and house until they could be reunited with their families. For many of them, that wouldn’t be possible. But it was better to be an orphan than a soldier.
Pike clapped his hand triumphantly on the hood of the jeep. Ladu shut off the engine and got out, waving the first of the buses forward. It rolled up, stopped, and the children began to disembark. Some of Pike’s female followers were already there to put a friendly face on their new home. The refugees were told to set their weapons on a tarp, where God willing Pike would be able to put them to use against some of the bastards who had given them to the kids in the first place. In exchange, the children were given fresh clothes. Their green fatigues—most crudely hacked up to make them short enough for children—would be burned.
Some internet assholes had donated a hundred child-sized shirts with Cookie Monster on them, saying ‘Me So Hungry.’ It was the kind of thing that made Pike wish he could work to civilize the home front with the same brutal efficiency he did this place. They weren’t so genteel back home; they just found different ways to be savage. But with the offending words painted over, he could make use of the shirts. The boys would look like kids again.
It wasn’t a happy occasion, not a celebration, but Pike took satisfaction in it. He imagined it was something like a surgeon would feel after stitching someone up. There was still blood and bandages, but the cutting was over. The healing could begin.
He could feel God’s hand on his shoulder.
He looked over at Ladu. The man was gray-faced, looking out at the procession of children with blind eyes.
“What is it? You look like you just found your son playing with toy ponies.”
Ladu looked back at him. His eyes were bloodshot. “Nazir al-Jabbar sent someone to talk to you. They wanted to know where the girls went.”
Pike felt his belly pitch and yaw like a ship in a storm. “I didn’t tell that man anything.”
“But they know you know ,” John insisted. “Not al-Jabbar. Her .”
“Who?” Pike asked.
“They were at the exchange—I had to talk to them—they wouldn’t let us leave until I talked to them.”
“ Who? ” Pike demanded.
“Lady Tendai.” Ladu shook his head. It looked more like some invisible beast was biting down on his neck, shaking him, than like he was doing it. “You can’t say no to her, David. You can’t do that.”
“You told her where they went?”
“Yes. But… she said that wouldn’t make any difference.” His voice was small now. Lost. “She said all of us were going to die but you. God wouldn’t let you die. God wants you to suffer.”
Pike laughed uneasily. “Now why would God want a thing like that?”
“I asked her. I didn’t say no, but I asked her. And she asked me if I would like it better if that wasn’t what God wanted. If God couldn’t stop it.”
Pike heard an engine roar. One of the vans had broken formation—it drove for the camp so fast that its tires clawed at the road, jostling and shaking the vehicle like it was an animal too angry to hold still. Ladu just stood there, the strongest man Pike knew looking like he’d walked a million miles and no longer had the strength to lift his hands an inch.
Pike moved, pulling his rifle from its sling and lifting it to brace against his shoulder. Maybe he should’ve thought about it, considered his options, but it was like that van held all the doom he’d seen in Ladu’s eyes. He fired through the windshield, his shots chiseling away the image of the driver, and without a master the van swerved to the side. Children ran out of the way, his people shepherding them to the sides, and the van impacted the bus, rocking the massive weight all along its suspension. Both came to a rest, deformed from the impact, shaken heavily, but intact. The van’s tires scratched impotently at the ground but were unable to push any momentum into the bus.
Pike’s men formed on him instinctively, all but Ladu. Guns held at the ready, they advanced on the van. He could see through the bus’s window that the children still inside were getting up, and Pike told himself it would only be bruises and a few broken bones. The only life the driver had taken would be his own, when he decided to try to mess with Pike’s church, his family. It would all be like any other day in South Sudan. A little gunfire, a little craziness, but nothing he and God couldn’t handle.
The bomb going off was nothing like the 15,000 pounds of TNT it would later be found equivalent to—not to Pike. To him, it was like a hole being cut in the world, a shroud being torn, and through it, there was only hell.
Chapter 4
In Nevada’s experience, security in
third-world countries was one of two extremes. Either fanatical, hair-trigger paranoia or the twenty-four-hour siesta of low-morale forces. Fortunately for her, Faya-Largeau proved to be the latter. The intrusion of an unauthorized flight into their airspace was resolved with the pilot exchanging words with air traffic control for maybe thirty seconds. From what Nevada could grasp of his Arabic, he’d simply offered a bribe, and one that seemed insultingly low at that. Talk about your budget vacations.
From the air, Faya-Largeau wasn’t much to look at. A six-mile sprawl of low, mudbrick buildings built with desert anonymity. When Candice and Nevada walked through it, they could’ve been anywhere from Tangiers to Iraq. Nevada stowed the Scorpion in her backpack but wore the Shadow 2 on her hip. No one took any issue with it, except maybe Candice, who kept pointedly looking away from it like Nevada was smoking weed in a mall.
With the Beja camp at the outskirts of town, scavengers, peddlers, artists, and merchants had come from both sides to turn the neutral territory between city and nomads into an open-air bazaar. The city-dwellers had set up wooden stalls or sold their wares through windows in the buildings. The Hadendoa simply tied up their camels and unpacked their saddle bags onto pieces of cloth on the sand like they were having a picnic.
There was loot straight from the crisis in Libya, goods and jewelry sold for safe passage or offered in obscure trade, alongside home appliances still in the shipping boxes they’d been in when they were swiped from the docks in Egypt or Nigeria. Cassette players and VCRs, along with good old-fashioned Chinese knockoffs of anything and everything.
The hawkers were an ungodly combination of mosquitos, try-it-free salespeople at the mall, and Mormon missionaries. Nevada put herself between Candice and them, projecting a studied don’t-fuck-with-me vibe. Behind them, the mob of street merchants closed up again, everyone auctioning fake Rolexes and real elephant tusks to everyone else. Candice looked at the whole thing with a tourist’s curiosity, like she might actually be interested in any of this crap. If she put any more blood in the water, Nevada worried they’d have to shoot their way out.
“Your guy picked a nice meet,” Nevada commented acidly, eye-fucking a vendor into submission before he could try any harder to sell her a blender.
“Easy to find, you have to admit. Here! The races.” Grabbing Nevada by the hand, Candice pulled her to a roped-off circle, one of two. The one on the left had gathered a ring of white expats around it, watching as horses were put through their paces for prospective buyers. On the right, camels were doing the same, but were infinitely more ungainly. Ridden by young boys, they galumphed back and forth, barely able to walk in straight lines for any amount of time before swerving into each other. It was more a demolition derby than a race.
“Fast camels,” Nevada commented, then caught scen
t of delicious barbecue among the sweat, body odor, and animal flesh that mingled together to form the smell of the market. Nearby, meat and vegetables were roasting on a grill, drawing clouds of black flies like neon signs. “I haven’t eaten all day—what is that?”
“Slow camels,” Candice replied. When Nevada broke off to go to the grill, she called out “Where are you going?” in a perfect teacher’s pet voice.
“You’re so clingy,” Nevada chided her, pulling out a wad of Central African francs.
Candice followed her to the grill, where Nevada paid for a hunk of meat that turned out to be as gamey as chewing gum—made of grease.
“We’re supposed to wait at the camel market,” Candice insisted.
“Now we’re waiting at the camel market with food.” Nevada let Candice lead her back to the racetrack. Mangy dogs darted in and around the crowd, adding to the confusion as they barked at the camels, who responded as theatrically as pro wrestlers. The children riding the camels were hard-pressed to keep them from breaking out into the audience, but none of the adults in attendance intervened. Nevada guessed this was as much floorshow as it was auction.
“Someday I really am going to give up on figuring you out,” Candice said. “I really am.”
“What’s so tough to figure out? I like money, I hate getting shot, and I’m a very good lay. What more do you need to know?”
“Why’d you swipe the cocaine? You were all gung-ho about being a drug smuggler this morning.”
“I don’t think—do I look like someone who thinks these things out? I just thought you kinda got shanghaied into all this and you deserved a vote.”
Candice leaned against one of the posts holding the ropes up. “And obviously Jacques would vote for his plan, since it was his plan, so you—”
Nevada grabbed hold of one of the ropes. She leaned back and let it take her weight. “Yeah, I just liked the thought of knowing you were wrong about me.”
“Or you wanted to seduce me.”
“Honestly, Candice, look at me. I’m super cute, I have big arms, and this is me not even wearing lipstick. If you’re not seduced yet, that’s on you.”