“But now a righteousness from heaven, apart from the law, is revealed,” she prayed under her breath, repeating the words of St. Paul to the Romans.
A sharp jolt rocked the chamber and she jumped back as the floor split open and the altar containing the scepter dropped down a shaft and disappeared. Before she could peer over the ledge, the shaft closed up into a cartouche bearing the symbol of Osiris. And she could hear something like the peal of thunder rumble below.
Suddenly it was eerily quiet. Serena could hear someone sobbing. It sounded like a young girl. She felt a tear roll down her cheek and realized it was her. For some reason she felt clean inside, as if all her worries and fears and guilt had been washed away.
“You did it,” she said, embracing Conrad. “Thank God.”
“How about when we get out of here?” he said when a deep, disturbing rumble echoed all around, inside and out.
Serena grew very still. “What’s happening, Conrad?”
“I think we’re about to be buried under two miles of ice.”
36
Zawas and his men were watching the Solar Bark disappear into the sky from their camp on the promontory of the Temple of the Water Bearer when the first big shock wave hit. Tents began to collapse, and Zawas panicked as he watched his only working Z-9A jet helicopter skid across the helipad to the ledge.
“Secure the chopper!” he shouted, and five Egyptians raced to tie it down.
No matter what may befall the rest of the world, Zawas told himself, no matter how many coastline cities should be swallowed up by the sea, there was no safer place on earth than where his team was established at that very moment. For should it take a day or a week, once the earth-crust displacement had run its violent course, the ground on which they were standing would be the center of the new world.
This is what he kept telling himself as his thoughts drifted to his extended family back in Cairo, most living in substandard “luxury” high-rise apartments that were bound to crumble in any major quake.
The air suddenly felt very warm, and the shocks grew more violent.
They were becoming so jarring, in fact, that he began to reconsider his strategy of encamping inside the Temple of the Water Bearer and wondered if an open area away from any monuments or shrines would be more prudent.
Zawas stepped inside his chamber off the promontory, found the Sonchis map on his desk, and rolled it up inside the nun’s green thermos along with the American blueprints to the Solar Bark.
Another shock nearly threw Zawas from his chair. He gripped his desk to steady himself. But it too began to move. He screwed the outer shell of the thermos into place and threw it in his pack before the shouts of his men brought him outside. What he saw made him shrink back in terror.
The sky seemed to be falling.
Zawas grabbed a pair of binoculars and scanned the mountains of ice that formed a ring around the city. And then it hit him: the sky wasn’t falling. Rather, it was the cliffs of ice surrounding the city that were falling.
An avalanche of ice from all sides was about to bury them all.
“Into the chopper!” Zawas shouted, waving his men in as he climbed inside the Z-9A and started the motor in a frantic bid to get airborne before impact. The blades started to move but then sputtered. The chopper was designed by the French but built under special license by the Chinese, who had supplied the Egyptians with several models. “Damn those infidels in Beijing!”
He tried to get the blades moving again while a dozen Egyptians piled inside. As the pilot took the controls, Zawas adjusted his binoculars to make a quick estimate of how much time they had until impact.
A wall of ice jumped into focus, and it was on course to slam the chopper and crumple them all into a bloody pulp of twisted metal and flesh. Zawas felt his heart stop beating as the foaming avalanche swept under the temple and began to rise toward the promontory. Then he could feel the chopper being lifted up toward the sky.
Inside P4’s star chamber, Serena felt hot as she climbed up the southern shaft using the line Conrad had taken with him when he first surveyed the city. But when she looked back, Conrad was still in the chamber below, trying to pull himself up with one hand, the other dangling uselessly to the side in the bloody tourniquet. She could see water bubbling around his ankles and began to panic.
“Conrad!” she shouted.
She braced her boots against the sides of the shaft and stretched out her hand to grasp his right arm. She pulled with a grunt but felt his hand slip away and heard a splash.
“Use this,” he shouted, waving what looked like a long scarlet bandanna. It was his tourniquet. He had untied it.
She wrapped one corner around her wrist and lowered her arm so Conrad could wrap the other around his wrist. She pulled so hard she could feel her back spasm in pain, and she cried out as she pulled harder until he finally climbed up in the shaft.
“Thanks,” he said, breathing hard. “Now let’s go.”
Serena looked up the shaft at the square of blue sky. “Why bother?” she said, out of breath. “There’s nothing out there. No radio, no way to signal anybody.”
“It’s our only shot,” he said. “The subterranean geothermal vent is powering down. The last blast of heat it’s giving off is probably melting everything around us, pumping the water through its hydraulic system. But the water is about to turn to ice. Everything’s going to freeze.”
Serena understood. “The girl in the ice. That’s going to be us.”
“Not if I can help it. Take this.” He gave her the bloody tourniquet strip. “Use it like a flag. Now move! I’ll be right behind you.”
Reluctantly, she took the bloody rag and made her way up the shaft, aware of Conrad falling behind. Occasionally she’d call back and hear him reply, but each time the echo grew fainter.
Finally, she reached the square of the shaft, her fingers turning cold as they clawed the edge. The wind was howling, and the temperature was dropping just as suddenly as it had risen. She pulled herself up to look out and beheld a fantastic sight that took her breath away.
The entire bowl of ice surrounding the city was crumbling, the melting snow turning into a huge lake that was drowning the city a mile below. Already only the tops of the taller temples and obelisks were visible. And the waterline was rising against the pyramid below. It would be only minutes before it reached her.
“No, God, please,” she said and looked back to Conrad.
But he was gone.
Filled with panic, she screamed, “Conrad!”
There was no answer.
She peered down the darkened shaft and saw something flicker. It was water, rising her way. And there was no sign of Conrad.
Conrad, unable to hold on any longer, slipped down the shaft into P4’s star chamber, which was filled to the ceiling with water. Desperate for air, he clawed at the stone ceiling in the dark to find a shaft opening again. But all he felt was the water closing in on him.
Then a powerful suction from below grabbed his legs and pulled him down the pyramid’s Great Gallery into some sort of pipe. Unable to hold his breath any longer, he let go and felt the water fill his lungs.
He was sinking into blackness when his body slammed against a stone grating. The water suddenly washed over him and receded down the drain.
Soaked and gasping for breath, he put his hands on the grating and pushed himself up. Then he ran wildly down the tunnel, trying to get his bearings, knowing he was totally lost. He was confused and more than a little worried about Serena. His body ached all over as he slogged through the water, which was ankle deep and getting deeper. Then he heard a rumble from behind.
He didn’t need to turn around to know what was coming. He simply braced his body and took a deep breath.
