“I don’t believe all of them are mummies,” Dr. Hassan said as he waved the silver ax back and forth in the face of one, getting ready to give him the croc version of a pedicure.
He was right. Some of the beasts looked alive, while others were obviously undead. “There’s too many of them!” I exclaimed. “How do we get out of here?”
When one of Asten’s arrows glanced off the scaly head of a giant crocodile, Asten cried, “Hassan! Jump on my back.” Scrabbling onto Asten as best he could, Dr. Hassan wrapped his arm around Asten’s neck and held out the ax with the other. “Now, Lily! Take my hand. Ahmose, grab her other hand.”
I was flanked by the brothers, who closed their eyes and rose into the air. An aggressive croc lurched upward in an attempt to snag a limb, but Ahmose saw I was in danger and yanked me higher.
His actions pulled me away from Asten, and with Ahmose carrying the combined weight of me and Amon, I dangled and fell, landing on the back of a croc mummy that did not like the fact that its remaining back leg broke off upon impact. It spun quickly and snapped at me, grabbing my shirt in its teeth. Violently, it tugged, wrenching me over the side of its back.
Unfortunately, another crocodile mummy was waiting for me on the other side. The second croc scrambled closer and swung its heavy head into me, pinning me and clacking its toothless jaws, while a third latched on to my backpack. Claws ripped easily through my jeans. Desperate, I tried to scrabble away from the creatures, but the first croc had clamped too tightly on to my shirt for me to escape.
“Lily! Grab on to me!”
Ahmose had sunk down to jaw-snapping level and wrapped his arm around my waist. I held him tightly, one arm wrapped around his muscular back and the other grabbing on to Amon. Ahmose rose in the air, lifting the stubborn mummy croc with us.
Asten drifted closer and raised his arm. With a quick jerk, he thrust an arrow into the eye of the croc and its whole body shook and then exploded into a shower of sparkling dust particles.
Without the extra weight, Ahmose seemed to recover somewhat, though I could tell carrying two people strained him. We floated over the river of crocodiles and out into the dawn sky.
Ahmose and Asten headed for a small cluster of trees on the other side of a dune, and once again I was thankful that cameras could not detect them. After setting Dr. Hassan, Amon, and me down, both men panted. We weren’t too far from the road, so I said, “Why don’t I take it from here? I’ll be right back.”
Like any self-respecting New York City girl, I was well versed in putting on my best face in even the most challenging disasters, and this qualified as a doozy. After tying my ripped shirt at my waist and rolling my torn jeans, I twisted my mud-caked hair into what I hoped would pass for dreadlocks and headed down the street to a main intersection, channeling the idea that I was simply a backpacking bohemian teen who’d fallen on a bit of hard luck.
Within fifteen minutes I’d located a cab large enough to hold all five of us and managed to convince the driver to wait by promising him a very generous tip.
Though the driver raised his eyebrows at Asten’s and Ahmose’s lack of clothing, what really concerned him was Amon. Dr. Hassan had tied a handkerchief around Amon’s head to cover his empty eye sockets, but the blood was not as easy to conceal.
When the driver protested, I said, “It’s okay, the blood is fake. It was a college assignment, to do a reenactment of a temple sacrifice for film class. He was up all night.” I wasn’t sure if there was a college in Kom Ombo, and even if there was, I was pretty certain that they wouldn’t allow filming or reenactments of any type in historic temple sites.
The driver gave us a dubious look and kept glancing at us in the rearview mirror all the way to the hotel. As I prepared to exit, he asked about the giant tip I had promised.
“Just a minute,” I said, and stuck my head out of the car to speak with Asten.
“Can you hypnotize him?”
“What? What is ‘hypnotize’?”