Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake Read online

  The mountains loomed larger. I was still pumped, but I hadn’t had much sleep and the juddering movement of the camel made my eyes heavy. My head began to loll. I guess Pan felt the same, because the next thing I knew we both jolted awake as a truck roared past us.

  It was headed for the red mountains.

  In an instant we were fully alert. The truck had no stickers or slogans. Its windows were black.

  “It’s them,” she said. “The snake lady’s goons.”

  Whatever cargo it was carrying was hidden under a black canvas awning. It was speeding towards a mountain that stood alone, blood red and shaped like a pyramid missing its peak.

  Pan checked the tracker. “The signal’s coming from that mountain.”

  But the camel train was turning the other way. We thanked the Bedouin with bows and smiles, and set off on foot towards the blood mountain. The tribe people kept calling to us to come back. They were trying to warn us that where we were going was dangerous. I hoped they were right – if it was dangerous, that meant the snake lady was there, and answers, and maybe Mum and Dad.

  40

  For a secret organization, the snake lady’s mercenaries weren’t too secret. We didn’t have to be expert Bedouin trackers to know where their truck was headed. A dozen tyre tracks marked their route all the way to the blood mountain.

  It would have been too obvious to follow the tracks directly. Instead we ran in an arc, away from the truck route at first, so that we came at the mountain from the side.

  By the time we reached the blood mountain, my throat felt like sandpaper and my legs like they’d been pumped full of hot water. The Bedouin had given us scarves to protect us from the sun, but my cheeks had begun to blister, and skin peeled in flakes from my nose. I’m not sure we could have kept going if we hadn’t reached the slope, where rocks jutting from the hillside offered slivers of shade. Above us, a vulture circled in the hot wind.

  From the desert, the mountain had looked like a smooth-sided pyramid. In fact, its slopes were covered with sharp, brittle rocks that stuck out like bone fractures. Several of the outcrops snapped as we grabbed them to use as rungs to scramble higher up. I dislodged another rock and sent it rolling a few feet down the side of the mountain.

  “That’s not a rock…!” I gasped.

  It had flipped over, revealing a light sensor on the side and a camera lens mounted in the front. That wasn’t a rock, and this wasn’t just a mountain, either.

  We edged across the slope until we reached a ledge above the tyre marks. The marks led straight into the rock. Wind whipped us, and the sky in the distance grew brown and hazy. It was hard now to see where the desert ended and the sky began. It looked as if a range of mountains was sliding towards us across the desert.

  “It’s a sandstorm,” Pan said. “But it’s miles away and they move slowly.”

  But something was moving fast. Another truck emerged from the sandstorm, racing towards us. This one was black too, with a canvas awning, and it was following the previous van’s tracks.

  “There must be a hidden entrance below us,” I said.

  We’d seen the type of security the snake lady went in for. We didn’t stand much chance of getting into this place alone, and we couldn’t stay out here with a sandstorm blowing our way.

  “We have to jump,” I said.

  “Onto what?”

  “The back of the truck. The tent bit.”

  “But it’s not slowing down. It’s going to crash into the mountain.”

  “Just jump. Now!”

  I grabbed Pan’s arm and pulled her with me over the edge. We landed on top of the canvas, rolled over and watched the side of the mountain rush closer.

  The truck drove straight through the rocks.

  “The rocks were a hologram?” Pan said.

  I nodded, as if I’d known that all along.

  We sank low on the canvas as the truck carried us along a tunnel illuminated by red strip lights. Leaning over, I checked there was no one in the back of the truck, then swung down and landed in a tumble inside. I reached out to help Pan, but she swatted my hand away and came down after me.

  “Are we getting closer?” I whispered.

  She checked the tracker, bashed it against her palm and checked again. “Yes, but there’s another signal.”

  The two flashing lights were now right on top of each other – my tracker and Mum’s. But Pan was right; there was a third signal now. It was further away, out in the desert, moving fast.

  “Kit said Sami would find us,” I said. “Maybe that’s him, letting us know he’s coming?”

  Or maybe it was nothing good at all. It didn’t matter. We were headed into the blood mountain with or without Sami.

  “What’s in here, anyway?” Pan asked, looking around the truck.

  In the red glow of the tunnel lights, we saw a wooden crate as big as a sarcophagus. We got our fingers under the lid and heaved. The wood creaked. Nails tore from grooves. We raised the crate’s lid and peered inside.

  “The coffin,” I whispered.

  The tunnel light glowed against the crystal casket, turning its carved snake into a ring of fire. The lid was slightly wonky, and I could just make out the murky outline of the mummy inside, thin and shrivelled.

  “It’s been opened,” I said.

  “Jake,” Pan replied, “this isn’t the same coffin.”

  She ran her fingers over the carvings, the way Mum had when she’d studied the hieroglyphics. “It looks similar, with the snake, but these other markings are different.”

  She sounded certain, and that was good enough for me.

  “So where’s this one from?” I asked.

  There was no time to think. The truck was slowing down. I heard voices and footsteps. We’d reached some sort of checkpoint. The light changed from red to blue, glowing brighter as it passed over the truck.

  “It’s some sort of security scan,” I said. “They’ll see us here.”

  “Jake, what do we do?”

  My first instinct was to make a run for it. We could leap from the back of the truck and try to get past the mercenaries. But we had no idea how many were out there, or where we’d run to.

  Then I remembered what the snake lady had said about the crystal coffin when I’d threatened to smash it up. She’d laughed at the idea. You could not destroy it, or penetrate it in any way.

  “Get inside,” I said.

  “Inside what?”

  “The coffin! Quick!”

  The blue light shone brighter, turning the lid from a ruby to a glowing sapphire as we gripped its edges and pulled. It moved more easily than I’d expected, the polished surfaces sliding smoothly against each other.

  In the half-light we saw the frazzled shape of a several-thousand-year-old corpse. Its face made us both recoil in disgust – a black crust mask, sharp bones and peeled-back lips, with a mouth that gaped open in a silent scream. The mummy’s arms were crossed over its chest like someone who had fallen asleep for way too long on a sunbed. There was something tucked under them – something green.

  The light grew brighter.

  “Hurry,” Pan hissed.

  I climbed in first, face down, and pressed against the mummy to give Pan room. She clambered after me, lying on her back so she could pull the lid shut. There wasn’t enough space.

  “Scooch down,” she whispered.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “The mummy!”

  “Squash it!”

  Whispering an apology to whoever this was, I pressed down harder. I heard things crunch and something squelch, and a puff of brown gas caused me to retch. The body compacted just enough for Pan to slide the lid shut. Something solid, like stone, pressed at my chest.

  I lay as still as I could as the blue light passed over the back of the truck. I expected to hear shouts and thumping footsteps. There were none.

  The light changed back to red and the truck drove on.

  “What now?�
� Pan whispered.

  I was desperate to get out. I was almost kissing the mummy’s crushed face, and some sort of sticky goo had seeped from its side. But as gross as it was, it was a decent hiding place as the truck carried us deeper into the blood mountain.

  The truck stopped. We heard the driver’s door slam, then echoing footsteps.

  Pan slid the lid open and climbed out. I wanted to leap out after her in case mercenaries were waiting in ambush, but I was stuck to the mummy by its goo. I had to scrape the stuff off me before I could follow.

  “It’s too dark to see anything,” Pan muttered.

  I fumbled my way to the driver’s door and managed to fit Kit’s skeleton key into the truck’s ignition. Headlights beamed across the darkness.

  “Jake,” Pan breathed. “It’s another tomb.”

  It was way bigger than any tomb we’d seen so far, a vast chamber deep inside the mountain. The walls were carved and painted with maps like those we’d seen in the lake tomb. There were images of pyramids with smooth and stepped sides, twisted towers and circles of standing stones. Around the walls, raised on granite plinths, were a dozen crystal coffins. The truck’s headlights gleamed off their surfaces so brightly it seemed as if each casket was glowing from the inside.

  “Where have they all come from?” Pan asked.

  “They all have the same symbol,” I replied. “The snake…”

  They’d all been opened too. I slid one of the lids back an inch and looked inside. The mummy’s face was like a large dried prune. Its shrivelled arms were crossed over its chest, and some of its fingers were bent back and snapped off.

  “Someone’s forced its hands apart.”

  I rushed to the next coffin and then the next. I saw the same thing in each: mummies with twisted hands and broken fingers.

  “They all had something in their hands,” I said.

  “Tablets?” Pan suggested. “That’s what the snake lady said they were looking for.”

  But there was something here that was far more interesting than a missing tablet.

  I ran back to the truck and shoved the lid off the coffin in which we’d hidden. I slid my hands over the flattened mummy until I felt the thing that had pressed at my chest. The thing that had glinted. The thing that hadn’t yet been taken.

  “Pan, this must be the tablet!” I called. “This one’s still here.”

  I could barely talk, I was so breathless with excitement. I had to snap a couple of the mummy’s fingers to get the tablet out, and then wiped goo from its surface. I held it into the glare of the truck’s headlights. It was the size of a comic, but as heavy as a bowling ball. It gleamed at me, dazzling green.

  “Looks like it’s made of emerald,” Pan gasped.

  “Like the symbol on the snake lady’s case,” I added.

  Pan took the tablet from me and studied it in the light. It was engraved all over with picture symbols.

  “Are they hieroglyphs?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Pan replied. She turned the tablet so that the light caught more of the symbols. “Some of them are like hieroglyphs, but others look more like cuneiform, the script used by Ancient Sumerians. These look like Ancient Chinese, and these … I think … are Aztec.”

  “What do they say?”

  “I don’t know! I just recognize them from Mum and Dad’s books. They’re not quite the same but they all seem to make up one script.”

  I remembered what the snake lady had said to Kit on the Nile: We have several tablets still to locate. For her, finding the Tomb of Osiris had been about finding its emerald tablet and then destroying the rest of the evidence. We still had no idea why, but now we had something to bargain with.

  Pan turned and stared at the walls and carvings around the chamber.

  “What’s going on, Jake?” she asked. “These buildings around the maps… These are Ancient Egyptian paintings. But see that pyramid? That’s in Mexico. And that’s Stonehenge, Jake. Stonehenge. What’s it doing here, in an Egyptian tomb? It’s just not possible.”

  But it was possible. It was here. The deeper we got into the snake lady’s world, the less we understood.

  The exit to the tunnel had been sealed with a metal gate. From the look of the lock, I doubted even Kit’s skeleton key would get it open. But there was another path, a carved passage that led deeper into the heart of the mountain. I took the tablet and shoved it into the pocket of my desert suit. “Come on.”

  The air grew warmer as we moved down the passage. We kept stopping, listening, looking back. Enough light from the truck’s headlights spilled into the tunnel for us to see that the walls were decorated with similar carvings to those we’d seen before. Images of temples that didn’t look Egyptian, giant skulls surrounded by halos…

  “This whole mountain is a tomb,” Pan whispered.

  We came to stairs cut through stone, an even narrower passage leading to total darkness. I felt a familiar tingle in my stomach, a sense that something was wrong. It was an instinct I’d learned to trust.

  Pan checked the tracker again.

  “The signals are right on top of each other,” she said. “See? We’re one, and Mum’s the other. Hopefully Dad, too.”

  “What about the third signal?”

  “It’s getting closer to this mountain. It’s coming fast.”

  Pan led the way up the stairs, raising the tracker for a glimmer of light. With each step the tingle in my gut grew stronger. None of this made sense. We were simply walking through a tomb. No traps, no security, no mercenaries…

  It was too easy.

  We reached the top of the stairs.

  “Another room,” Pan hissed, and she crept further into the darkness.

  “No,” I called. “Pan, wait!”

  Cursing, I rushed after her. We couldn’t see anything other than our own faces lit by the feeble glow of the tracker.

  “Pan, we should go back.”

  “Go back? That’s a rubbish plan. See the signals? Mum should be right here.”

  I had seen the signals. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to get Pan to safety. Because right then I felt certain that we weren’t safe at all…

  41

  “Pan, we have to get away from here.”

  I grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back to the stairs, but she shook me off. “Look at the tracker, Jake. We’re close.”

  “Pan, something’s wrong.”

  “Of course it is. We’re in the bad guys’ lair. But Mum and Dad might be here. Look for a light switch.”

  We didn’t need a light switch. Right then, a golden beam shone from above, spotlighting us. We staggered back, but the light spread wider and grew brighter.

  “What’s going on?” Pan breathed.

  Shielding my eyes from the light, I looked up to see a roof sliding back from the top of the chamber. The spotlight grew into a crescent and then a circle as the roof retracted fully and sunlight flooded in.

  We were in a huge cavern with metal scaffolds, gantries and ladders fixed to the walls almost all the way to the open mountain top. Doors were set into the rock around the gantries, ten levels high – hundreds of doors. Black-suited mercenaries stood around the platforms, armed with stun guns that were aimed at us.

  They’d known we were here.

  They’d been waiting.

  Only one side of the cavern remained in shade. A huge holosphere screen, as big as a stage, hovered above the ground. Hologram projections floated over it, rising almost to the height of the first level of gantries. They were silhouettes, four human figures darkened to hide their identities. They weren’t just photographs; they were live video images.

  The snake lady stepped out of the shadows. Sunlight lit her white hair, so her head seemed to have a golden halo. She held out her arms as if she expected a group hug, and gave one of her joyless laughs.

  “Darlings! You found us! Welcome at last, dear Jake and Pandora, to our modest little enterprise.”

  We should have ru
n, looked for a weapon, or done … something. But the last of our energy had drained away. Not with shock or fear, but with failure. The tracker had led us into a trap. We’d been played.

  The snake lady stuck out her bottom lip and made a fake glum face. “Oh, darlings, don’t look so sad. You have done so well to make it this far. It hurt me to try to stop you. And still you just kept coming, snapping at our heels like darling little puppies. But even little puppies must sometimes be drowned.”

  “You’re a cold-hearted witch,” Pan roared.

  She stepped back, made that knife-to-the-heart gesture and moaned deeply. “A witch! A witch, she says! Is it true? Am I so cold-hearted?”

  Her voice was suddenly as dark and hard as her eyes, as she addressed the black-suited mercenaries around the gantries.

  “I said, am I so cold-hearted?”

  Several of the mercenaries muttered in reply, and others joined in, their chanted answer – no, no, no – echoing around the mountain’s hollow heart.

  The snake lady smiled. “Darling Jake, dear Pandora. If I were so cold-hearted, would I now be offering you a job?”

  “We’d never work for you!” Pan spat.

  “Hold on,” I said.

  “Jake…” Pan hissed.

  I glanced at the tracker in Pan’s hand and saw the third signal still speeding towards our location. Was help on its way, or were we fooling ourselves again? If we could keep the snake lady talking, maybe we could find out.

  “Work for you doing what?” I asked.

  The snake lady was about to answer but was beaten to it by one of the silhouetted figures floating on the holosphere – a deep, gravelly voice that sounded like it had been deliberately distorted.

  “Containing you has proved difficult,” the shadowy figure said. “So instead, we wish to recruit you. We have ongoing operations on every continent, which require the very best hunters.”

  “What operations?” Pan demanded.