Back in the room John told Desiree to wait up so he could go grab a coffee from the lobby. He hit the elevator and rode it down to the gift shop where he was able to get a tray put together with chocolates and strawberries. He was also able to add a couple of miniature bottles of champagne at an exorbitant price. He was happy to have gotten them at all. He’d read differing messaging about buying alcohol in the highly Islamic country. Once he had everything together one of the bellhops insisted on carrying it all up the room for him.
His beautiful bride was passed out under the covers with drool leaking out the side of her mouth. The bellhop struggled to hide a grin as he wheeled the pricey fruit tray into the room. John tipped him and sent him on his way. He sat down hard on the side of the bed hoping to ‘accidentally’ wake Desiree up. This was not how he’d pictured their first night in Egypt on their honeymoon. He finally gave up on her after shifting around a bunch and coughing and generally trying to wake her up without being obvious about trying to wake her up.
He was exhausted himself but decided to indulge in some of the champagne and fruit before crawling into bed with his lawfully wedded wife. He considered taking a short video of her to prove that she snored but decided against it. She was very much against having pictures or videos like that floating around out in cyberspace. It didn’t help that he’d absolutely bring pictures like that up any time he did a slide show in front of their friends.
He flipped the TV on and scrolled through the channels once he figured out how to use the remote. He was hoping for a channel with some English subtitles. He was thrilled when he found some news channels with English speaking reporters. He was munching on some expensive cheese and downing the extremely dry champagne in big gulps when he heard the sound of sirens outside. The hotel they were staying in was on an island in the Nile, so you had to cross a bridge to get to it. Their room faced the city across the narrow gap of water that made it an island. John walked out on the balcony to check if he could see what was happening.
He saw the bright lights of the flashers on top of a few emergency vehicles as they headed down the main road. The lights disappeared quickly into the labyrinth of the millennia old city. John chugged the rest of the very dry champagne grimacing a bit at the taste of it before making his way back into the room. He shut the door and locked it before closing the curtain. Climbing into bed beside Desiree he tried to turn the TV off. The remote stubbornly resisted his buzzed efforts to find the right button. He finally figured out he was holding it upside down.
Turning the remote around the other way he started to click the power button when he noticed the images on the TV. It was the tarped off area they’d seen earlier that day from the pyramid. The camera focused on an Egyptian archeologist who was explaining that they’d discovered the ancient crypt by using some kind of new particle seismic X-ray machine. John adjusted his head on the pillows waiting to see if they showed what was in the crypt. Instead the TV flashed to a drawing of the site. There was a tunnel that went down about a hundred feet before opening up into an underground cavern. The tunnel zig zagged back and forth as it descended into the earth. The archeologist was describing how massive stones had been placed at every turn to block off access to the site. The assumption was the huge carved out space below must be hugely important.
John sat up watching the TV with interest. The excavation had been going on for several weeks now and this was the day they’d be doing the reveal to the world. Now that the announcer mentioned it John remembered having heard something about it on the Discovery channel. It hadn’t been about Shark week, so he hadn’t paid that much attention to it. It was getting to the exciting part of the live broadcast so of course the show went to commercial. John put his head back and closed his eyes for a second. By the time the show came back on he was fast asleep.
What was revealed on the screen was a massive underground cavern as expected. A huge open space with some sort of bright green mold growing all over the walls. The archeologists all had breathing masks on while they were slowly lowered the thirty feet down to the floor. The camera showed the tomb raiders looking around at piles of broken vases covered in the green mold. A small underground stream trickled through the cavern. That discovery caused a ton of rapid-fire commentary as more explorers were carefully lowered down.
In the eerie landscape the cameras showed the large group of scientists slowly fanning out. Their cameras panning everywhere as they sought to capture what they were seeing and broadcast it to the world above. The bright lights on the cameras revealing more and more of the site. Bones began to be uncovered. The cameramen finally realized they were standing in piles of ancient human bones. One zoomed in on a mold covered skull that he then carefully avoided stepping on. The commentators were busy discussing if it was a mass burial site or if maybe human sacrifice had been involved.
The screaming was
