That Time in Cairo

himself not to panic as he panned the light to his right, farther down the hall. The stones that made up the tunnel on either side weren’t like those of the cavernous room behind them. These walls were inscribed with hieroglyphics and covered in colorful drawings of an ancient world. Wolfgang stumbled to his feet and leaned against a wall, sweeping the light down its length. He knew nothing about what he was looking at, and of course he couldn’t read the hieroglyphics, but the painted imagery was brutally clear.

Death by the thousands. The images displayed in perfect clarity the swollen, blackened faces of men and women in an ancient world. They lay on the ground, their mouths open, their eyes closed. A sweep of his light farther down the hallway revealed images of animals lying in piles, with fire rising from them and men and women standing back and covering their faces.

Then more bodies. Pictures of piles of bodies and of robed priests lifting their hands toward Heaven, and of fire raining down from the sky to consume cities. Every perfect detail of this ancient artwork was preserved in such vivid clarity that it looked to be only hundreds of years old, not thousands. In this tomb of silence, where wind and water never touched the stone, there was nothing to deteriorate the art—nothing to wash away the story of the death that visited.

Wolfgang looked down at Amelia. She stared at the paintings, her eyes alight with a fascination that eclipsed his own.

This is what she’s dreamed of . . . a discovery to put her in the history books.

Wolfgang wiped his lip. Right then, he didn’t care about history. He didn’t care about artifacts and old plagues. He only cared about being trapped, and the fact that whatever oxygen they had left to breathe was a finite resource.

Then he heard the distant sound again—a soft grinding, and then a gentle tremor in the floor. He snapped the light toward the ceiling, where dust fell from the tight spaces between the stones. The vibrations in the floor grew louder and stronger, and he couldn’t tell from which direction it was coming, but the cloud of dust overhead thickened.

It’s all caving in.

Wolfgang stuck the flashlight in his teeth and bent to scoop up Amelia. She didn’t resist as he lifted her onto his back and held both of her hands over his shoulders.

As he ran, the rumbling behind him grew steadily louder, now accompanied by a shower of dirt so thick it was difficult to see. Wolfgang’s mind clouded in panic as the hallway on either side of him flashed by, dimly lit by the penlight. He choked on dust and sprinted toward the darkness ahead as the floor shook beneath him.

A loud crash sounded, followed by a shockwave that ripped through the tunnel. Wolfgang hurled himself forward, his mind blinded by an overwhelming desire to get out. Whatever he had to do, wherever he had to go, he had to leave.

The end of the tunnel came abruptly, opening up into a wide chamber with a high ceiling. The crash and boom of the collapsing passage behind him grew louder, and dust rained down from overhead. Wolfgang looked around the chamber, choking on dust as the light cast eerie shadows around him.

There were bodies everywhere, lying on pyres and wrapped in white burial strips with their arms crossed over their chests. Mummies—dozens of them—were lined up in neat rows all across the room. Wolfgang would have been shocked, or maybe even terrified, but the threat of the impending cave-in was too present to ignore.

Wolfgang dashed across the room, weaving between the pyres as Amelia bounced on his back, one leg hooked around his waist and the other flopping next to his hip. She choked in a pain-filled scream, but he kept running, reaching the far wall of the tomb as bits of rock fell from overhead.

Then he saw the next door. It was framed in the middle of the far wall, filled with blackness, but he thought the floor of that passageway led upward, not downward. Wolfgang sprinted for the opening without pausing to think. Chunks of rock crashed down around him, one of them striking a pyre and obliterating it in a shower of dust. Wolfgang choked and slid through the door as more explosions of rock on rock burst from behind him.

The floor of the passageway did indeed lead upward—but only at a slight incline. Wolfgang ran like he’d never run before, and Amelia bounced along on his back. A sudden tremor in the floor sent him crashing against a wall, and the light flew out of his mouth. He stumbled and looked back, but there was no time to go back for the light. The floor beneath him shook like an earthquake as the chamber caved in and the flashlight disappeared into the dust cloud.

Wolfgang ran up the passage. He couldn’t see anything now, and he could barely breathe. Everything was a choking, suffocating smog of dust and darkness, and the desperation that set in was unlike anything he’d ever felt.

I can’t die here.

Wolfgang imagined Megan’s face that night in Paris when they danced together at the art gala. He remembered the black dress she wore, the mocking smirk she gave him when he struggled to keep up with her smooth dance steps. What a strange thing to think about, he thought, here at the edge of eternity. Of all the memories in his life, he thought about that night. He thought about Megan.

I’m going to see her again.

Wolfgang stumbled forward, still clinging to Amelia with both hands. His shoulder struck a rock wall, and he immediately turned and felt around in the darkness until he found an opening again. The tunnel switched back on itself, like a stairway in a building, and as he stumbled into the next passage, he felt a slight incline beneath his feet.

That’s all I need.

Wolfgang wheezed and almost fell as another tremor rocketed through