Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake Read online

  She was right: the block was far less eroded than the others. There were no signs of chips or cuts from Ipuwer’s chisel.

  “Guys,” said Sami. “The other thermal blob is getting closer.”

  If Kit heard, he didn’t seem worried. With his good hand, he pulled the knife from his utility belt. He flicked it open and used the tip to examine the cracks around the edges of the block.

  “This block isn’t as well fitted as the others,” he announced, tucking the blade away. “I think this is it.”

  He slid another device from his belt, one of three gadgets about the size and shape of a hockey puck, with a round glass screen. He pulled wires from its side and jammed clips on their ends into the cracks around the block. They held the device against the rock, like a spider in the centre of its web.

  Kit tapped the screen and a keypad appeared. He punched in a code. The device began to vibrate against the rock.

  “What’s it doing?” I asked.

  “It’s an ultrasonic ED,” Kit replied. “Calculates the depth and nature of a surface. That’s the ultrasonic bit.”

  “So what does ED stand for?”

  “Explosive device. We need to get back right now.”

  We scrambled away along the ledge as the screen began a countdown from 20. My feet slipped and I was about to fall but Pan gripped my arm, steadying my balance. I glanced back and saw the countdown on single figures. Were we far enough away?

  Boom!

  Actually, the explosion was a bit disappointing: a hollow thud followed by a puff of smoke and sand. A few chunks of rock tumbled down the side of the pyramid, but not enough to alert any guards.

  Right then, with the entrance to the tomb open, a bomb going off and the black suit stalking closer, something even stranger happened.

  Pan and I were holding each other, protecting each other.

  We pulled apart, blinking away dust from the explosion.

  “Get off me,” she said.

  “You get off me,” I replied.

  “Kids!” Kit called. “You might want to see this.”

  He was back along the ledge, peering at the stone block. No – he was peering at something beyond the stone block.

  Sami’s voice crackled in our ears. “Kit? Kit? What do you see?”

  18

  “This single moment of discovery is a greater feeling than most people will experience in their whole lives,” Kit declared.

  He kneeled in front of the hole we’d blasted in the side of the Great Pyramid – the entrance to the Tomb of Osiris, we hoped. The block that had hidden the way in was less than a foot thick. Beyond, the bomb had scattered chunks of rubble along a tunnel that wasn’t much higher.

  “And I’ve discovered dozens of things,” Kit added. “So imagine how happy I am.”

  He didn’t look happy. His jaw was so tight you’d need a crowbar to get it open. He tore the bandage off his hand and flexed his fingers, which were still swollen. Wincing, he took out his other glove and slid it over the damaged hand. He set his rucksack on the ledge and pulled out a rope.

  “Are you ready?” he grunted.

  Pan shuffled closer, peering into the hole. “It’s dark,” she said.

  “It’s a secret passage,” Kit replied. “They’re always dark.”

  He fed the end of the rope through a clip on his utility belt, then through mine and tied it to the back of Pan’s belt.

  “Why the rope?” I asked.

  “Just a precaution.”

  “Against what?”

  “Dying.”

  “Guys?” Sami said. “The black suit is getting closer. Forty levels down.”

  “I’m going in,” Kit said.

  The only way in was on our bellies, which isn’t easy when crawling from a two-foot-wide ledge. Kit had to climb down one level and then slide up and into the hole.

  I was next.

  I should have been excited – we’d found the entrance of the tomb. It was possibly the greatest discovery in the history of … well, the history of history. But right then, I felt only fear and a sense of something missing: my parents. I know they were over-strict, and my mum especially seemed to have a self-imposed ban on having fun, but I could imagine how excited they’d be if they were here.

  The rope tugged as Kit slid deeper into the tunnel. I looked at Pan and forced a smile.

  “See you in the tomb,” she said.

  I slid down, slid up and slid into the pyramid.

  I crawled deeper into the tunnel, wriggling on my elbows. My smart-goggles switched to night vision so I saw the passage through a green filter, as if looking through a bottle. The tunnel walls were smooth, but the floor was rough and gritty, scratching at my stomach. Above, the ceiling was split with inch-thick cracks that I guessed were caused by the weight of stone pressing from above.

  Two million blocks…

  My breaths came faster. I’d never felt claustrophobic before, but I’d never crawled through a mole hole in a five-thousand-year-old tomb either. The further we wriggled the more it smelled, too – a rancid rotten-meat stench that filled the stale air.

  Pan’s head nudged my feet as she slid behind me. “You’re kicking my head,” she said.

  “You’re head-butting my feet,” I replied.

  Neither of us was angry; it just felt good to talk, and to know we weren’t alone. But I heard the fear in her voice too. Pan hated this tunnel as much as I did. With each shuffle forward, I grew more desperate to stand up and move my arms.

  “You’re thirty feet in,” Sami said. His voice sounded distant. “On a slight incline towards the centre of the pyramid.”

  Kit stopped, and I bashed into his boots.

  “There’s something carved on the wall,” he grunted. “Ipuwer. This is his marker. This is as far as he came.”

  “Smart guy,” Sami’s voice muttered in our ears. “Maybe you should copy him and—”

  “There’s an opening ahead,” Kit said.

  I rose on my elbows, just able to see past Kit to the end of the passage.

  “Looks like a clear crawl,” Kit said. “No obvious traps.”

  Kit and Sami burst out laughing. Not a great big laugh, more like boys at the back of class snickering at a private joke.

  “What’s so funny?” Pan demanded.

  “When there are no obvious traps,” Kit replied, “that’s when there are usually lots of traps. Keep your eyes sharp.”

  The rope tugged as he continued crawling. I passed the hieroglyphs scratched onto the wall, where three thousand years ago Ipuwer had decided to turn back. I wondered what exactly he’d heard about traps…

  The rope tugged harder. A grinding noise filled the tunnel, rock scraping against rock. Sand sprinkled from above.

  Kit had vanished.

  “Kit!” I yelled.

  “I’m OK!” he called.

  He rose from a pit in the tunnel floor. “A failed trap,” he said, laughing with relief. “The ground was supposed to collapse under my weight, but this block wedged it in. You’ll have to crawl down and back up. Seems safe enough.”

  I slid forward and looked down into a pit where the block had shifted. The people that built this pyramid didn’t seem like the type who made mistakes. I was glad they had here; if the block had fallen, the rope would have pulled us down with Kit.

  “Let’s get moving,” Pan urged.

  Sweeping away sand, I slid down into the pit and up the other side. I wriggled forward, giving Pan space to follow. As she came up, her hair was dusted with sand. It was coming from above, sprinkling through the cracks in the tunnel roof.

  No – it was pouring through.

  What if those cracks in the ceiling weren’t just cracks?

  “Kit?” I asked. “What if that stone wasn’t a trap?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if it was…” I looked up. Sand streamed more thickly through the ceiling. “What if it was a trigger?”

  “My God,” Kit cried. “Cra
wl! Crawl fast!”

  Sand poured down harder, covering the tunnel floor, causing our elbows to slip. It gushed onto my head, got inside my goggles, stung my eyes.

  “Thirty metres to the opening!” Sami yelled. “Move faster.”

  The sand was thick on the tunnel floor, narrowing the space. My head brushed against the ceiling.

  “Keep moving!” Pan screamed.

  Fear caused my limbs to thrash, but that made things worse. Each time I cleared an inch to move, it filled with sand. It sought out gaps, seeped into cracks. We weren’t crawling any more; we were digging through a gap that was getting tighter every second. Sand got in my mouth, up my nose, pressed on my back. We were drowning in the stuff.

  “I’m near the opening!” Kit called. “Too much sand… I can’t quite reach—”

  His cry was muffled as sand filled the tunnel. I pressed my face against the ceiling, gasped a last sliver of air.

  And then, no more.

  We were buried alive.

  19

  No… No please not like this. Not Pan too…

  The weight of sand pressed from all directions, like a hundred hands pinning me down. I tried to keep digging, but it was impossible. I tried to breathe, but my mouth and nose filled with sand.

  I didn’t want to die here, not like this. There were gadgets on my utility belt, ultrasonic explosive devices. If I could reach one, maybe I could use it somehow, to do something. But I couldn’t move.

  I reached back, just able to force my arm far enough to touch Pan – the fingers of an outstretched arm. She was still.

  Buried in sand.

  My chest was on fire, my lungs nearly out of air. The yellow-brown around me faded to black. I heard Sami in my ear, his voice distant and filled with panic.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God… Jake? Pan? Listen to me. I have to tell you something. It’s about your parents…”

  And then, something else.

  Something pulled.

  It was the rope!

  Kit was pulling the rope!

  The line tugged harder and I slid fractionally forward. I found new energy right then, something willing me to survive.

  I would not die there.

  Another pull on the rope, and I slid an inch. My arm shifted and I was able to force it back to tighten my grip on Pan’s hand. I felt her move and sensed she hadn’t given up either. Kit pulled harder and we scraped forward. The sand finally began to slide away as the space widened, and my head burst through the opening at the end of the tunnel. I spat out sand, gasped a breath of air and dragged Pan after me.

  And then we fell.

  We fell in a shower of sand and darkness until the rope snapped tight and we hung in the air. Pan dangled below me, the end of the rope trailing down a pit the size of a lift shaft.

  We both went a bit berserk, thrashing and kicking, a frantic mix of relief to be out of the sand and fear of where we were now. The rope swung and we bashed against the pit wall. Sand fell over me, spraying from the tunnel.

  “Get control of yourselves,” Kit barked. “You’re safe.”

  He’d tied the rope to clips he’d wedged into cracks in the rock, so he clung to the sheer side of the pit.

  “Safe?” Pan cried. “Where are we?”

  “In a pit,” Kit replied.

  “A pit? That’s all?”

  Kit pulled a flare gun from his utility belt. He fired it so the firework shot down the pit, a bright red streak that fell and vanished.

  “A deep pit,” Kit added.

  I gripped the rope tighter to stop us swinging.

  “If the tunnel’s filled up,” I said, “the black suit can’t follow us.”

  “Don’t think that,” Kit replied. “There’s always a way through if you’re good enough.”

  Good enough? Again I got the feeling that Kit knew more about the black suit than he was letting on.

  “You’re still both clipped to the rope,” he said. “We can abseil down the wall.”

  For once the height didn’t worry me – it’s hard to be scared when you can’t see the ground – but abseiling was tricky. I let my grip slacken a little on the rope, slid a few feet and clung on again, pressing my boots against the wall. The deeper we got, the warmer the air grew. The smell became worse, too, rank and rancid and thick in the air.

  Looking up, my goggles’ night vision revealed the block at the roof of the pit. A display on the lenses told me we’d abseiled eighty metres from the top. Sand had stopped falling from above. I heard a distant sound of rock scraping against rock and wondered if the black suit had triggered another trap.

  “You’re alive!” Sami’s voice yelled in our ears.

  “All three fit and fighting,” Kit replied. “Can you still see us on the thermo-cam?”

  “Just. You’re right in the middle of the pyramid.”

  “I think this pit goes underground, Sam. You know what that means?”

  “Duat,” Sami said.

  “Duat,” Kit replied.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  Kit slid another few feet down the rope. “The truth is, I was surprised the entrance to the tomb was high up on the pyramid. I expected it to lead underground.”

  “That makes sense,” Pan said.

  “It does?” I asked.

  “We thought that this pyramid was built after the tomb,” Pan explained. “Deliberately on top of the tomb. And Osiris was Lord of the Dead, remember? He lived in an underworld Egyptians called Duat. So it makes sense his tomb would have been somewhere underground.”

  Above, the scraping grew into a louder grinding sound.

  “Your thermal images are growing weak,” Sami warned. “You’re at ground level now, heading deeper.”

  A rush of hot air rose from below. The rope swayed and creaked.

  I looked up again. This time my goggles told me the top of the pit was only seventy metres away.

  Sixty-nine metres.

  Sixty-eight.

  I bashed the lenses with the back of my hand, trying to correct the reading. It didn’t make sense. The roof couldn’t be getting closer, unless…

  “The roof’s coming down!” I screamed.

  “Go! Go!” Kit roared.

  We swung down as fast as we dared – long slips of the rope, feet scrabbling at the wall.

  “What’s happening?” Sami called.

  “The sand running out triggered another trap,” Kit yelled. “A crusher top.”

  “You have a nickname for it?” Pan screamed.

  “Just keep going!”

  We were sliding more than climbing now, but the stone was coming faster.

  My feet struck Pan’s head.

  “That’s the end of the rope!” she called.

  “I have another in my bag,” Kit said. “I’ll lower it to you. You need to fix the clips to the—”

  “There’s no time for that!” I shouted. “We have to let go.”

  “What?” Pan shrieked.

  It sounded crazy, but I knew what we had to do. It was that instinct again. “The roof is going to knock us off anyway!” I yelled. “If we fall now, we’ll have more time to find a way out before we’re crushed at the bottom.”

  “We just let go? We don’t know how far it is.”

  “Go Pan! Now!”

  “Jake, we can’t! It’s—”

  She never finished because right then I slid the knife from my belt and cut the rope. Pan screamed and disappeared into the darkness.

  “Now you, Jake,” Kit said. “We don’t have much time.”

  I know it was my plan but it was an easier thing to say than do. Instead of falling, I gripped the rope tighter.

  Kit screamed at me as he dropped past.

  “Now, Jake!”

  I closed my eyes and let go.

  I don’t know how far I fell, but it felt like a mile – screaming the whole way, arms flailing and legs kicking the darkness. If I’d landed on stone I’d have broken every bone in my body.

  I
nstead, the surface gave way beneath me and I sank into a pool of dry, brittle objects – thousands of them. Some were round, but others were long and linked together, like chains made of chalk.

  My sister pulled me to the top.

  “I can’t see!” she gasped. “Jake, I’ve lost my goggles. I can’t see.”

  My own smart-goggles had taken a hit during the fall, and now their night vision didn’t work. I was as blind as Pan, but I could hear the crusher top sliding closer.

  “Where’s Kit?” I cried.

  “He was here, and then he was gone.”

  “So there must be a way out.”

  “But where are we? Why would he go without us?”

  “That doesn’t matter, Pan! Feel for grooves in the wall, gaps, anything that might be an exit. You go under, I’ll check the walls up here.”

  “But, Jake, the roof is still falling!”

  “Do it now, Pan!”

  I more or less forced her down. Alone in the darkness, I groped the sides of the pit, praying I’d feel a doorway. The walls trembled as the crusher top slid closer.

  My chest was heaving, my eyes stinging with sand and sweat. The dark was disorientating. I remembered Sami telling us we had torches built into our goggles.

  “Torch,” I ordered.

  A single beam shot from the frame of my goggles, dazzlingly bright. Blinking, I caught glimpses of the objects beneath me.

  “These look like snake bones,” I gasped.

  Some were old, cold and brittle. Others were still warm, the flesh only half rotten. That was terrifying, but I felt a surge of hope, too. Whatever killed these snakes must have got out of here, like Kit.

  The bones shuddered. The scraping grew even louder. I looked up and my torch beam hit the sliding stone block. It was right here. Suddenly being buried in sand didn’t seem quite so bad…

  Pan’s head broke through the bones. “Come on!”

  I went under and she pulled me to the bottom of the pit. Then she was gone, somehow vanishing through the pit wall.

  Around me the bones compacted as the crusher top hit the surface. The force drove me down, but I managed to grip the sides of a hole in the wall. With the last of my strength, I heaved myself through.

  I rolled over in a landslide of snake bones. The ground jolted as, beyond the wall, the stone block crashed down into the pit.