Authors: Erik Williams
Demon
CONTENTS
“I
got a work stoppage here,” Hank Prince yelled into his cellphone as two US Army Apache helicopters buzzed overhead en route to An Nasiriyah.
“What?” Jameson yelled on the other end. “You're almost done with that branch.”
“ âAlmost' don't mean shit in this case. One of the backhoes dug up the entrance to some goddamn tomb three hours ago.”
“Tomb? Big deal. Move the stiffs and get your ass back on schedule.”
Hank rubbed his forehead. “A tomb, a crypt, a buried temple. I don't know what the fuck it is exactly, but it's got the government pukes all kinds of spun up.”
“Why'd you dig it up then?”
“We found it by accident, damn it. It's twenty feet below the desert and right where the T section is supposed to go. And no, ground penetrating didn't show shit. Right now, I'm losing two man-hours for every hour of standstill, Jameson, and I can't afford a standstill.”
“I can't either, or did you forget who pays your salary? Who stopped you?”
“The Department of Antiquities shut us down hard.”
“Why are they involved?”
“Because we're close to some place called Ur. Anywhere near an ancient site and they have to be involved.”
“And there's no way around it?”
“All I can dig is one hundred feet to either side, but we're screwed if we can't get the T section in place, and the tomb is in the damn way.”
Jameson yelled and Hank could almost picture his boss's jowls jiggling and spit flying. He'd seen the reaction dozens of times before. Hank tuned him out after the fifth expletive, his attention lingering instead on the growing excavation under the tall Ingersoll Rand towers pumping out eight thousand watts of light. Government officials had already come and cordoned off the pit with yellow caution tape and left, with the exception of one person. Control of the site now rested in the hands of the lead archeologist from the Department of Antiquities.
Hank shifted his gaze and chewed on the inside of his cheek. In the east, the first rays of sunlight crested the horizon.
Another hot one on the way; no doubt about it.
“Look,” Hank said, “I didn't bury the fucking thing, and I sure as hell didn't mean to find it. Just pray it's the burial place of some fifth-century nobody and not Gilgamesh's tomb, because if it is, this branch of the sewer line ain't ever getting done.”
Hank hung up and swore under his breath. He hated cross-global leadership, especially when the asshole in charge was sitting in an air-conditioned office in Houston without any idea of the ground here. The whole situation was screwed up beyond his control. Dealing with pencil pushers like Jameson was the last thing he needed right now.
He slipped the cell phone into his pocket and looked at the pit. Around it stood Hank's third shift of diggers and fitters, doing nothing and getting paid for it. He took a deep breath of desert air and thought of contingency plans. All he could come up with was busy work and figured it was better than accomplishing nothing.
“Get the southern line prepped.” Hank's voice rose with each word. “And get the interceptors staged. This job won't be on hold forever.”
The diggers and pipe fitters started moving, but not fast enough.
“Let's go!” Hank clapped and stomped around the hole, shooing people to work. Satisfied his workers finally got the picture, Hank walked to the edge of the pit. At the bottom stood the government archeologist, next to the slab. The man who'd shut him down without a moment of hesitation.
“Well,” Hank said, “how we looking, Nouri?”
Nouri al-Hasad craned his head, his dark eyes glinting with what Hank thought was pure joy. “This is amazing.”
“Don't look so happy. How long?”
“Ten days, at least.”
“You got to be shitting me.” Hank knew Nouri from a previous dig when they'd uncovered a mass grave near Baghdad. The guy had never been anything but serious. A pure academic nerd with no sense of Western humor. If he said ten days, he meant it. “I don't have that kind of time.”
Nouri smiled. “We need to be careful with this find. I have never seen anything like it before.”
“It's a stone slab covering a tomb. Big deal.”
Nouri climbed a ladder out of the pit. Fast. Like a monkey scaling limbs to the top of a tree. His spry frame stood next to Hank a moment later. He pointed at the slab, hand trembling. Then Hank noticed his whole body had a slight tremor moving up and down it.
“It is not stone.”
“Sure as hell looks like stone to me.”
“I assure you it is not.”
Hank frowned. “Well then what the hell is it? Metal?”
“I do not know. And I have never seen the language carved on the surface. With its proximity to Ur, I hope for your sake more is not under there. This could be just the tip of . . . how do you say . . . the ice cube.”
“Iceberg.”
“Oh, yes, that is it.” Nouri held a small carving the size of his palm in his latex-gloved hand. “And look at this. Remarkable.”
Hank shrugged. It was the front profile of some beast's maw with long fangs. “Looks like the carving of a wolf's head.”
“Not a wolf.”
“Then what?”
“I do not know.”
Hank shook his head. “Look, I got a deadline, Nouri. You know, to get sanitation up and running in this armpit.”
Nouri chuckled. It was the first time Hank had ever heard him laugh, and it caused Hank's blood pressure to bump up.
“I see your affection for my country has not changed,” Nouri said.
“I got two daughters I miss, a son who needs his ass kicked, and a wife who has earned a big old pickle tickle. I care about them and the money I get if I finish this job on time. I make it happen, and I get to go home, see them, and then get another job making more money. Your mysterious nonstone and unknown language are costing my wallet some weight and my wife some loving.”
Nouri laughed even more. “Yes, but you have something truly priceless down there.”
“I'm glad everything I say is suddenly funny.”
“Think of the story you will tell your children.”
“Oh, sure, I can see it now. My kids sitting around the fire as I describe the amazing tomb that cost them their college tuition.” Hank kicked sand into the hole. “My time is worth more than that fucking slab and whatever's underneath it.”
Hank stuffed his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes. “You're sure it'll take at least ten days?”
“Absolutely.”
“And there's nothing you can do for me? Can't look the other way just this once?”
Nouri shook his head.
Hank looked from the pit to Nouri and back. “Shit!”
“I am sorry, Mr. Prince.”
“Yeah.” Hank's voice was softer, accepting defeat. “Me, too.”
The ground trembled, shifting the sand and causing his feet to sink about half an inch. Hank turned from Nouri to see a flatbed backing toward the pit. Loaded on it was the big T section for the sewer line.
“Hey,” Hank yelled at the guy signaling the truck to back up. “It's not going in. Get it off-site.”
As the flatbed backed, the signalman put his hands up to brake and then gestured to pull forward. When the driver shifted into drive, the rear right tires dug into the ground and spun. The driver gunned the engine, spinning the wheels faster and digging the flatbed in deeper. Sand flew in broad arcs into the pit.
The signalman yelled and waved his arms for the driver to stop. Hank took a step toward the flatbed, ready to chew some ass, when the ground around the rear wheels buckled and sank a few feet.
Before Hank could move any farther, the sunken earth collapsed another four feet and then split. Tremors knocked Hank off balance and to his knees as a crevice opened in the desert, racing like a snake from the back of the flatbed to the pit. The truck teetered for a moment before the back dropped into the new fissure. The chains holding the T section stretched taught, and one of them snapped, cracking like thunder.
A chain link the size of a man's fist screamed over Hank's head and collided with something soft and wet. Hank glanced over his shoulder. Nouri was on the ground, his body twitching and pumping blood, turning the sand crimson. The link had ripped the right side of his forehead off. Skull and brain jutted away from his smashed cranium.
Hank took two steps toward Nouri when his workers yelled to run away. He turned back in time to see the other chains snap. Hank dove onto his chest but didn't take his eyes off the pipe, even as another link sliced the air overhead. The T section rocked, tilted, and fell into the crevice, sliding toward the pit on a wave of sand. The massive weight carried it over the edge. It fell in what seemed like slow motion. The bottom of the T struck the slab covering the tomb a moment later. What sounded like concrete snapping rose up and reverberated throughout the site.
Hank pushed up and once again tried to get to Nouri, praying silently the poor bastard was still alive. As he did, his stomach cramped and his chest tightened. He dropped to his knees, attempting to breathe but failing to force air into his lungs. It was like a ton of weight pressed on him, concentrating directly on his sternum. Then his vision quit and he saw only black.
Just as quickly, the pressure on his chest eased. Hank sucked in a mouthful of air just before his muscles started twitching. Rocking over onto his side, he broke into convulsions, foam frothing out of his mouth. His insides burned.
Images of his wife and children flashed in his mind. They melted in fire and smoke. They screamed and stabbed each other with kitchen knives. The kids ripped flesh from their mother's arms and legs with their teeth.
The convulsions stopped; his muscles relaxed. The fire abated within. Hank managed shallow breaths as the grotesque images dissolved. He started to think the pain had subsided when a headache hit him so hard he screamed. His fists clenched sand and his back arched toward heaven.
Then the pain faded. The headache retreated as fast as it had attacked. His vision returned, the pale light of the moon above fighting with the light of the towers. Everything seemed still and quiet.
Until he heard the screams.
At first, Hank thought they were his own shrieks still echoing around his head. But as they persisted, he realized they were nothing like his anguished cries. These were savage and bloodthirsty and multiple. He'd heard screams like these once before on a job in Africa when he'd witnessed two silverback gorillas battle for dominance, beating one another to a bloody pulp until one had killed the other. Now he heard the same primal screams.