Life
and the Grave
By
Sanguine
Episode
9.7
Part Three
“Terrence!”
Nick cried, sprinting forward. He came to an abrupt halt
just in front of the archaeologist—or rather, the
corpse. “Oh, no. Oh, my—” On the brink
of hyperventilating, Nick staggered backwards as MacGyver
came closer.
The tall, bulky
man was lying in a pool of his own blood, a deep red puddle
that was widening by the second. His bald head was unnaturally
tilted backwards on the uneven bricks, the white bone
of his neck visible through the torn-away flesh and the
blood bubbling out of his lacerated throat.
MacGyver fought
off a wave of sickness and grief. "I can't believe
that this is happening." Head reeling, he stepped
away and braced himself against the cool brick wall. "Nick,
are you all right?"
"I-it's
the curse. It's got to be. We're gonna die."
"There's
no such thing as curses," MacGyver whispered half
to himself, eyes squeezed shut. "It's my fault. I
said that we shouldn't split up, and then I went right
ahead and let him do it. I should've stopped him."
"It's the
curse. The curse got him. Nothing you coulda done,"
Nick replied in a shaky voice.
MacGyver shook
his head vehemently. "There isn't a curse! It's my
fault! Oh, man. Terrence. No, this shouldn't have happened.
I shouldn't have let it happen. I'm so sorry. I'm so,
so sorry."
"We gotta
get out of here," Nick insisted quietly. "Gotta
get out before the curse gets us too." He started
shining the light around the area, flicking the beam around
the hall and the room. "But this room looks like
a dead end. It's just full of stuff. I don't see a way
out. We—we can’t get out of here. We’re
trapped! The curse!"
As the light
shone around the doorframe, MacGyver caught sight of something
gleaming and shiny, right at neck-height.
“A head
wire,” MacGyver managed to choke out. “Terrence
wasn't killed by any curse. That’s impossible. This
was a booby trap. I’ve heard of these before. A
razor-sharp wire, strong enough and sharp enough to almost
decapitate someone.”
“Y-you
mean those things could be anywhere?” Nick stammered.
MacGyver nodded
grimly. “I’m afraid so. Maybe it would be
better for us to look around on our hands and knees from
now on.”
Immediately,
Nick dropped to his knees. “Good idea. Very good
idea.” His face was pale and he rubbed his eyes
with one clammy hand. “I can’t believe this.
My God. What a way to die.”
“I’m
sorry,” MacGyver said quietly. “I wish I could
take all of this back. Terrence should still be with us
right now. I'm so sorry, Nick, but we're going to make
it out of here together, all right? Nobody else is going
to die. Our only choice is to keep moving.”
Trembling, Nick
reached into his pocket and wrapped a rosary around his
hand. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s get out of here.
And fast.”
MacGyver grabbed
the flashlight that had rolled to a stop against the opposite
wall and dropped to his knees himself, handing one of
the lights to Nick. Though his stomach was twisting in
knots and his heart felt heavy, he needed to get his remaining
companion to safety, and the only way to do that was to
take his own advice: don't panic, and think the problem
through. “The room that Terrence opened looks like
a storage room of some kind. You were right. It's definitely
not an exit, so our only option is to keep moving forward.
Just stay close to me so we don’t get separated
or lost.”
As they shuffled
forward, awkwardly trying to keep a hold on the flashlights
as they crawled, Nick replied, “I already told you,
I’m not letting you out of my sight. I’ve
got to get home. I have my family and my career to get
back to. …Hey, man, do you, uh—do you think
that the whole cursed-tomb thing is real? Be honest with
me. You keep saying that there isn't a curse, but after
what happened with Terrence, I need you to level with
me. Do you think it's even a possibility? Even a little
bit?”
“Not at
all,” MacGyver said. “No such thing as curses.”
“C’mon,
man, I just saw a man die right in front of our eyes,
and you’re telling me that this place isn’t
cursed?”
“That’s
exactly what I’m saying. This tomb isn’t under
a curse. It’s just protected. The Egyptians were
smart people, and they had a lot of strong beliefs about
the afterlife. All these traps and things—they’re
just the product of that.”
Nick shuddered.
“Well, I hate it. I just want to go home. I can’t
stand all these paintings on the walls—all those
eyes looking down at me. It’s freaking me out.”
“Hey,
don’t panic. We’ll make it out just fine as
long as we stay calm, okay?”
Slowly, Nick nodded. “Okay.”
“Good.”
Then MacGyver froze, and the security guard nearly stumbled
over him.
“What
is it?”
“Shhhhhh.
Stay quiet and turn off your flashlight for a second,”
Mac whispered. In silence, Nick obeyed and MacGyver switched
off his own light, holding his breath. There, at the other
end of the passageway, a faint yellowish orb of light
bobbed up and down. The orb quickly disappeared, but the
rays emanating from it remained for several seconds afterward.
“What was
that?” Nick whispered, switching on his flashlight
again. “Please tell me it’s not going to kill
us.”
“I can’t
say for sure what it was, but I have a suspicion,”
MacGyver said. “I can tell you one thing for sure:
we’re not alone in here.”
After crawling
through the corridor in silence for several minutes, MacGyver’s
flashlight shone on another door. “Look at that.”
“Do you
think it’s another storage room, or a way out? Is
it safe to go in?”
“I don’t
know. But there’s only one way to find out. Stay
back. I’ll crawl over and open it. If we’re
lucky, this one will only be guarded by a head wire, same
as the last one.”
“No, I’ll
do it,” Nick said, shuffling forward until he was
in front of MacGyver. “I’ll open the door.”
“Are you
sure?”
“Yeah.
I’m the security guy, so—so I guess this is
my job.” He took a deep breath and pushed the door
open with his hand, squeezing his eyes shut. Slowly, he
cracked one eye open. “Hey, it didn’t blow
up.”
MacGyver nodded.
“That's always a good thing.” He shone his
flashlight around the doorframe. “I don’t
see any wires, but be careful when you stand up.”
Nick nodded
and rose slowly to his feet, waving his hand around the
top of the door arch. “I haven’t gotten any
body parts cut off yet, so I guess we’re good.”
“And a
good thing, too, because it looks like the only other
hallway that we haven’t explored leads to a dead
end.”
Nick took a
single step inside the room, just enough for Mac to get
a look, and shone his flashlight around. “Hey, check
it out. There’s a door on the other side of the
room, but what’s all this red stuff on the floor?
There’s gotta be at least six inches of it all over
the place.”
“Nick,
don’t move!” MacGyver half-shouted.
The security
guard froze in place. “What? What is it?”
“That
stuff’s hematite powder. It’s another booby
trap.”
Nick squinted,
still motionless. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“I did
my homework, that’s all. It’s not smart to
come to a place like this without knowing at least the
basics of what you’re supposed to be investigating.
Besides, this isn’t my first time dealing with tomb
traps.” MacGyver sighed and added, “And it
probably won’t be the last.”
“Comforting,”
Nick replied in a sarcastic drawl. “So what does
this magic tomb dust even do? Is it bad juju or something?”
“It’s
nothing supernatural. If the article I read is accurate
at all, then when a grave robber—”
“That’s
us, right?”
“Close
enough. If we were to walk through that powder, our movements
would stir it up into the air.”
“And we’d
breathe it in and it would kill us?”
MacGyver nodded.
“Eventually, yeah.”
“So it’s
poisonous?”
“Not quite.
It’s not toxic and it’s harmless on the ground
like that, but each particle is sharp enough to shred
your lungs when you breathe it in. Over time, if you breathe
in a big amount of the particles…”
Nick winced.
“It cuts you apart from the inside out? Ouch. Well,
how do we get around it?”
MacGyver shook
his head. “We don’t. Not without hazmat suits.
Going all the way across would stir too much of it up,
and I don’t want to risk it. We’ll have to
find another way around.”
“But I
thought you said the only other way was a dead end!”
“I did,
but maybe we missed something.”
Without warning,
a light flashed on behind them and a voice intoned: “Oh,
yes. You missed something. You missed something indeed.”
Holding his breath,
MacGyver slowly turned to face the speaker. He was surprised
to see a young Egyptian man, probably in his early 20s,
holding a bright yellow flashlight. The young man’s
brown eyes were narrowed as he stared at the two intruders.
“My name’s
MacGyver. This is Nick. We’re lost,” MacGyver
said slowly, eyeing the person who’d probably been
following them this entire time. The man didn’t
seem to be armed; maybe he could be reasoned with. “Do
you know a way out?”
“Of course
I know a way out,” the young man snapped. “This
is my family’s tomb.”
MacGyver raised an eyebrow; he hadn’t seen that
one coming. “This tomb is at least three thousand
years old.”
“Of course
it is, but they’re still my family! The vizier and
the others buried inside this crypt are my ancestors,
and now you outsiders think you have the right to come
and take whatever you want! No. None of you are touching
my family. No one!”
“Just calm
down,” MacGyver said, holding up his hands in a
gesture of peace. “The archaeologists didn’t
know that the vizier had any living relatives left. If
they had, they wouldn’t have started excavating
without permission. We can work this out together. What’s
your name?”
“Call
me Fadil,” he said flatly, jutting his chin upward
in defiance. “I’m sick and tired of all of
you. I spoke to the archaeologists already. They wouldn’t
leave unless I had evidence of my kinship, but what kind
of evidence am I supposed to have after thousands of years?
All I have to go on is my father’s word, and I’ll
never doubt it.”
“Wait
a second!” Nick interjected. “I remember you.
I’ve seen you around before. You’re the one
who kept messing with the equipment and stuff a couple
weeks ago. I kicked you out!”
“That’s
right, I did mess with your tools,” Fadil snapped.
“And you still wouldn’t pack up and go. Even
when I snuck in and started stealing things, you didn't
leave!”
“Is that
why you followed us in here?” MacGyver asked.
Fadil nodded.
“And that’s also why I sealed off the entrance
to the tomb. No one else is getting inside here! It was
bad enough that they broke through into the first chamber.
I couldn’t believe that you actually managed to
find the secret entrance into the rest of the mastaba.
I was hoping that you’d all just give up once you
thought you’d hit a dead end, but no! You had to
keep digging, didn’t you?” Accompanying his
words with an aggressive jab with the flashlight, he repeated,
“Didn’t you?!”
MacGyver spread
his upheld hands wider. If he weren’t in such a
serious situation, he might have found it funny that he
was being held up with nothing but a flashlight, but the
stirring fear that Fadil might push one or both of the
Americans backward into the hematite powder cast a grim
light on the moment. “Hey, take it easy, okay? We
didn’t mean any harm. We didn’t know. If you
don’t want anyone disturbing the tomb, I can make
sure that the excavation comes to a halt. I’m friends
with the director of the Phoenix Foundation, the ones
who are funding the dig. I can guarantee you that the
archaeologists will leave. But first, we’ve got
to get out of here.”
The young Egyptian
squinted at MacGyver suspiciously. “Why should I
believe anything you say? How do I know you aren’t
trying to deceive me just so I’ll let you out?”
“Look,
all you have to go on is my word. But if you think about
it, I have no reason to lie to you. I don’t have
anything personal invested in this excavation, and even
if you don’t help us find a way out, those archeologists
will find a way around that stone blocking the entrance
eventually. And when they do, you’ll just be right
back where you started—unless you let me help.”
“Why would
you help me? For years, the Americans and the British
have been taking Egyptian artifacts back to your museums—artifacts
that rightfully belong here in Egypt. Why would you consider
helping me when no one else will listen?”
“Because
it’s the right thing to do,” MacGyver said
simply.
Fadil scoffed.
“And you really expect me to believe that?”
MacGyver shrugged.
“Yeah, actually. I do.”
“He’s
right,” Nick ventured. “We’ve got nothing
to lose either way… And at this point, neither do
you.” He reached out with his right hand. “What
do you say? We’ll stop the digging if you show us
the way out. Do we have a deal?”
Fadil stared
at the security guard’s outstretched hand for a
moment before clasping it with his own. “All right.
Deal.”
MacGyver grinned.
“Great! Let’s get moving.”
The Egyptian
nodded and took a step down the hallway. “You missed
the hidden tunnel to the burial chambers—it’s
back this way, and that’ll take us to the other
exit. Also, you don’t have to crawl the whole way.
The wire traps are only found on the doors to the three
storage rooms.”
“Three?”
Nick exclaimed. “But we only found one!”
Fadil flashed
an impish smirk over his shoulder. “This mastaba
has many secrets that you Americans will never find.”
MacGyver shook
his head with a smile and set off after Fadil, glancing
behind him with his flashlight to be sure that Nick was
following.
He saw the loose
brick just a second too late to call out a warning.
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