A mummy with a blue ceramic pendant dangling from his neck appeared out of the gloom. She-I could see rough angular shapes like breasts and hips under her tangled linen wrappings-lead one of the dead behind her, a man with no nose. Just a gaping red hole in the middle of his face.
Three steps above me they stopped in unison, in a way that suggested she was in control of the dead man. She placed her hands on opposite sides of his head and pressed hard as she leaned her forehead against his. The dead man made a strange dry sucking noise, raspy and painful-sounding, that had to be him drawing breath in through his wound. When he spoke it was clear to me somehow that it was not his own voice I heard but that of someone else, speaking through him.
You should go now,she told me.He’s not so much in his right mind anymore, our Gary. He can’t hold his end up, if you catch me right. This place’ll be crawling with the dead anytime now. I’m guessing you don’t want to be here then.
I licked my lips. “Well, yeah,” I said.
Come with me then, lad. I’ll show you the way out,she said, and stepped past me, dragging her pet dead man with his head under her arm. She moved quickly, far more quickly than any of the dead I’d seen so far, and it was difficult to keep up in some of the narrower passages we had to crawl through. I must have run in exactly the wrong direction when I left Gary’s tub room. If it wasn’t for my Egyptian guide I would never have found my way out.
We emerged eventually into bright daylight and fresh air. I didn’t realize until I got some clean air into my lungs just how much soot I had inhaled. Gary’s fortress was burning-the plume of smoke trailing from the top of his tower was shot through with sparks. I didn’t care too much about that. There was no point in going back inside.
I did care about the fact that the mummy had brought me out onto a lawn of scruffy-looking plants surrounded by quaint brick houses. Gary’s stockyards, where the prisoners lived. I called out Marisol’s name until I started coughing, my scorched esophagus protesting vigorously against any further speech.
Doors and windows opened in the houses and terrified faces looked out at me. As I stood there wondering what to say to these people Marisol came running up to me with a chipped tea cup. It was full of water that I gulped down with gratitude.
Marisol gave the mummy one quick glance and got over any surprise she might have felt at the Egyptian woman’s presence. I suppose she must have seen lots of dead people during her time of imprisonment.
“Where’s Jack?” Marisol asked.
Jack. Sure. Jack, who as far as I knew was at that moment hanging upside down by one foot in Gary’s tub room. Dead. Hungry. Unable to get down. “He didn’t make it,” I told her. No point in going into the details.
She slapped me hard across my cheek.
“Okay,” I said, sitting down hard on the patchy grass.
“That’s for getting him killed. Now. What the hell is going on? Is Gary dead? Please tell me that Gary is dead.”
I nodded.
“Good. What’s the plan?”
I thought about that for a while before answering. There had been a plan-then the plan fell apart. Except now maybe it might still work. “We have a helicopter coming. That fire should be all the signal our pilot needs-he’ll be here in ten minutes. Then we’ll get you out of here. There’s one problem, though.”
“There’s only one problem?” Marisol asked. “That makes this the best day ever!”
“Calm down, alright?” I stood up and handed the tea cup back to her, having caught my breath for the moment. “There’s not enough room in the helicopter for all of us to go at once. But look-we’re protected by this wall.” I pointed at the fifteen foot tall brick wall that ran all the way around the stockyards. It butted up securely against the side of the fortress and was clearly designed to protect against undead attack. “We’ll take the women and children first, then come back and make a second trip for the men.”