7.

"We claim to be rational, but there is a layer of primitive savagery in all of us."

~

They were calling something at us in Arabic. If only they'd stop shooting long enough for me to listen! It took what seemed an eternity to discern even a single word, but the word I did understand was telling.

Girl.

Meaning, me. It was me they wanted, not Rick or Jonathan. Well, we'd been in this situation before, and we'd come out all right. What were a few men with guns compared to the threat posed by an immortal high priest and his army of undead followers?

My brother was injured, and Rick had been shot. If anything happened to either of them because of my cowardice, it would be on my head.

"Rick, tell them..." My throat tightened so that I could barely whisper. There wasn't much point in it anyhow, I supposed, since the lot of them knew we were inside. "Tell them they can have me, if they let you and Jonathan go."

He swore violently.

"Tell them," I implored.

He straightened, and turned to me. "I can't," he told me softly.

"You've got to."

"Evie, I can't!"

"I'm here!" I yelled, as loudly as I could manage. "I'll give you what you want without a fight, if you let the others go!"

"Dammit, Evelyn!"

The shooting stopped, as I'd expected. A deep male voice replied, in rapid Arabic. I caught perhaps one word in ten. Something about trust. And shoes, although that couldn't be right.

"Rick?"

"He doesn't believe you," he reported dully. "He thinks it might be a trick."

"Oooh, he's one to talk. The nerve. Speak English, won't you?" I called out. "You may as well! We're not going to play your silly game any longer--we know you're British, you rotters!"

Rick did a double-take. "What?!" he demanded in a whisper.

"You saw the note. That was not written by a native Egyptian."

"But--"

"The structure of the sentence was too precise, for one thing. And they misspelled words such as very, but managed to get far more irregular words like does, collect, and midnight bang-on."

"But--"

"And since the misspellings were obviously deliberate, it suggests that perhaps we were meant to think that the writer was not a native English speaker. From that, one must of course conclude that the writer is a native speaker. Why else would they attempt to mislead us?"

Outside, the voice yelled an epithet I happened to know. Rick hollered back, "Oh yeah? So's your mother, jackass!"

"Darling, that really isn't helpful," I reminded him gently.

In the corner nearest Rick, Jonathan sat up, moaning. "O'Connell?" he inquired. "Evie?"

"We're a bit busy at the moment, Jon," I told him.

"Well, la-di-da! I'll just pop round another time, shall I?" he huffed. "I thought that, with all the shooting and whatnot going on, it might interest you two gunslingers to know that there is another exit to this place, one that our trigger-happy friends outside don't happen to know about."

"Where?" demanded Rick.

"Under the floor." For a moment, I thought that the smack in the head had completely addled my brother's brain. The floor was completely solid, packed earth. A trap door, had there been one, would have been glaringly obvious. Then he continued on with, "Over in that corner where I was lying... I'd been digging a hole, you see."

"Is it big enough to fit through?" I asked.

"Well, sis, it's big enough for you or I to fit through."

"That won't work, then." I wouldn't hear of leaving Rick behind, any more than he would have let me sacrifice myself.

"Evelyn--"

"No, Rick... look, I've got an idea." I yanked the robe off over my head and threw it across the doorway to Rick. A plan was forming in my head, I just needed more time to work it out...

Crack!

Time that we, unfortunately, did not have.

"Evie, don't tease the animals," Rick quipped. Before Hamunaptra, I would have chided him for being flippant. But I knew that, at times like this, his sense of humour was what held him together.

"Jonathan, put that on." While he was struggling into the robe, I went over the plan in my mind. It just might work...

Outside, the shouting started up again.

"Yes, yes, the girl, we know!" I called irritably. "But not until O'Connell and my brother are safe!"

Silence.

In a whisper, I continued, "This is what we're going to do. Jonathan, you're going to slip out the back. Once you're out, don't run--walk calmly. They won't suspect you, dressed like that."

"Long as you can manage not to walk like a girl," Rick muttered.

"Hush up. Your part in all this, Rick, is to be set free. You simply walk out of here with me over your shoulder. They'll assume I'm Jonathan."

"Clever girl!" Jonathan's voice was muffled by a layer of cotton. "But, I say, Evie, wouldn't it be better for you to just slip out the back while O'Connell and I--"

Rick immediately vetoed this--as I knew he would, which was why I hadn't suggested it. "Forget it. If I have to run, I'd rather be carrying her than you."

"Well, whichever way we go about it, it's better than sitting in here, waiting for them to come in and fetch us." My nerves were frayed to the point of exhaustion. I couldn't keep my hands from shaking.

Another gunshot punctuated this statement.

"Knock it off!" roared Rick. "We said we'd give her to you, and we will!"

"Jonathan, are you ready?" I whispered, frantically trying to pin my hair back up.

"Ready, sis!" I was suddenly hit in the face with a bundle of soft, sweaty material. Jonathan's pajamas. Well, I supposed if we were going to get away with this, we had better do it properly. I pulled my shirt off over my head. If this sort of thing went on, I reflected, I could have a new career cut out for me as a quick-change artist.

"Wish I had that lighter right about now," Rick reflected. I said nothing, but I could feel myself blushing from head to toe.

"Watch it, O'Connell. That's my sister you're talking about."

"Jonathan, go!" I urged. Partly through sheer force of habit, I went through the jacket pockets once I'd taken it off, removing my pistol and the note. As I unhooked my borrowed suspenders and dropped my pants, I could hear Jonathan scraping and scrabbling in the corner. That would never do--if I could hear it, there was a chance they would too.

"Rick--"

"Got it covered." He pointed one of his pistols out the door and let fly. The resulting cacophony of shots and shouts was enough to cover the sound of Jonathan's rather noisy escape.

As soon as I was ready, I called out, "O'Connell is leaving now, with my brother, but I'm still armed, and you won't be able to come in here until after a count of one hundred. And if either of them is hurt, I assure you, you won't get what you're after." I slipped my shoes off--Jonathan had been barefoot. Rick tossed me his headscarf, and I tied it round my head as neatly as I could.

Hands up in the air, so they could see he wasn't armed, Rick crossed in front of the doorway and came to me. "All set?" he murmured.

I nodded.

He grinned. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but you look awfully cute in that getup." He touched my grimy cheek. "Stay really still, okay?"

"I will."

"Like, don't move, no matter what."

"All right."

He kissed me, suddenly, urgently. It lasted only a second, and then I was being lifted up onto his great shoulder. I went limp, letting my arms and head hang down over his back, making certain my face was obscured. I suddenly felt tiny and helpless; I wanted to clutch at his shirt, to steady myself, but I willed myself to remain still... until--

"Stop tickling my feet!" I pounded on his back with both hands. "What d'you think you're doing?"

"Just checking," was his curt, enigmatic reply.

And then we were off. I don't imagine it lasted more than a minute, but to me, unmoving, unseeing, forced to lie motionless over my fiancé's shoulder, it might just as well have been an eternity. He walked agonizingly slowly, to my mind at least. It was almost a relief when the shooting started; at least at that point I could stop pretending and look up to see what was going on.

Then there was a sudden flash of blinding light, and everything went black.