The Hidden Oasis (66 page)

He was yelling to himself. Most of the group who had fled the temple with him had by now either stormed away into the distance ahead or else, as in the case of that idiot scientist Meadows, been crushed under falling masonry. Now it was just him and his fellow Egyptians – Kasri, the twins and, lagging behind, gasping for breath, Boutros Salah. His oldest colleague. The one person in the world he’d consider calling a friend. He was waving desperately.

‘Don’t leave me, Romani! Please wait. I can’t keep up!’

‘It’s your fault!’ shrieked Girgis, half turning and jabbing a finger at him. ‘You should have warned me it was a bad deal. You should have talked me out of it! And so should you! And you!’

This to Kasri and the twins.

‘All of you! You should have warned me! You should have
talked me out of it. I want my money! You hear? I want my money now, you dirty thieving
koosat
!’

He continued to rant as they stumbled onwards, flailing his arms, raging at the duplicity of the Americans and the treachery of his own people. They passed the wreck of the Antonov, the rock face behind slowly pushing the plane towards them, bulldozing it along on a churning tide of masonry and boulders and uprooted trees until eventually it was upended and dragged down and underneath the hem of the cliff like a toy boat beneath the prow of an ocean liner.

‘How is this happening!’ screamed Girgis. ‘Make it stop! You hear! That’s what I pay you for! Make it stop!’

His voice was lost in the deafening clamour of shearing stone. Even if they could have heard him no one would have taken any notice, all of them focused solely on getting to the bottom of the oasis and back into the tunnel as quickly as possible.

On and on they ploughed, the world growing ever darker as the gorge narrowed, sending billowing clouds of dust and debris surging into their faces. In the end they were to all intents and purposes running blind, the looming blackness of the walls to either side and the slight downward gradient of the ground beneath their feet the only indication that they were still moving in the right direction.

So impenetrable was the murk, so disorientating the thunder of splintering rock that Girgis was already thirty metres along it before he realized he was actually inside the tunnel. The dust cloud slowly dissipated around him, small pools of light gradually came into focus from the portable krypton lamps that had been arranged at intervals along the shaft when they had first come through earlier that morning.

He slowed, stopped, started running again, taking himself well away from the tunnel entrance and the chaos outside, covering another fifty metres before coming to a halt and leaning back against the shaft’s curved wall with its interlocked images of writhing snakes. Gasping for breath, he slapped the dust and grit off his hair and suit. The group had become strung out and separated in the final frantic dash for safety and Kasri was now some ten metres behind him. Salah was even further back, just emerging from the dust cloud, choking and wheezing. The twins were not immediately visible and for a moment Girgis thought they must still be back in the oasis, but then he spotted them away to his right, further along the tunnel, two spherical blobs marching off into the distance.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he yelled.

They kept walking.

‘You stop where you are and wait for me! Do you hear! You wait for me!’

‘Zamalek are shit!’ came a voice, echoing back up the shaft towards him. ‘And
Zamalekaweya
are scum!’

‘What? What did you say?’

They didn’t reply, just continued on their way, their outlines growing steadily more vague as they slowly merged into the shadows.

‘I’ll be seeing you on the other side!’ Girgis bellowed after them. ‘You hear? I’ll be seeing you on the other side, you little shits!’

Scratching at his head and neck, muttering expletives, he pushed away from the wall and set off down the tunnel in pursuit, waving at Kasri and Salah to follow. The rumble of the closing cliffs slowly dropped away behind them,
growing fainter as they descended ever deeper into the earth until eventually it had faded to nothing more than a distant creaking groan, no louder than the slap of their feet on the tunnel floor and the gravelly wheeze of Salah’s breathing.

They reached the bottom of the slope, Girgis still some way ahead of his colleagues. The ground levelled out, the tunnel now running flat, driving horizontally through the underside of the Gilf like an enormous worm burrow, the krypton lamps continuing to light their way – ghostly islands of illumination that if anything only served to intensify the tracts of blackness in between.

‘Not far now,’ shouted Girgis, whose mood seemed to have mellowed the further away from the oasis they travelled. ‘Another ten minutes and we’ll be out of this filthy shit-hole and back to Cairo. We’ll have a game of backgammon, eh Boutros! Just like old times!’

Salah lit a cigarette and grumbled something about not appreciating being left behind when they were in the gorge. Girgis waved the comment away.

‘I’ll make it up to you. Buy you a new car or something. Come on, keep up.’

He quickened his step, striding on along the tunnel, trying to ignore the painted snakes that seemed to shift and sliver in the ghostly half-light, coiling malevolently around the walls and ceiling. He walked for about a minute, then stopped, squinting into the shadows.

Although his memory wasn’t a hundred per cent clear – hardly surprising given everything he’d gone through – he could have sworn that when they came along the tunnel earlier that morning it had been completely straight. Now
there was a bend up ahead, the tunnel wall curving sharply around to the right.

‘What is this?’ he muttered, starting forward again before coming to another abrupt halt as something very curious happened. There was a dry rustling sound as of hands rubbing across grainy wood and, before his very eyes, the tunnel slowly straightened itself before bending in the opposite direction. He shook his head, certain he must be imagining it. He was tired, after all, emotional, had just been swindled out of $50 million. But then it happened again.

‘Boutros!’ he shouted. ‘Did you see that? Mohammed?’

He swung round, seeking reassurance from his colleagues, but now there was a bend behind him as well, where there certainly hadn’t been one before.

‘Romani!’ came Salah’s voice from round the corner, hoarse with terror. ‘The tunnel’s moving!’

‘What do you mean it’s moving? How can it be moving?’

Girgis was starting to sound upset again. Very upset.

‘The walls are moving,’ cried Kasri. ‘They’re bending.’

‘How the fuck can solid rock—’

He was cut short by another dry rustling sound, although now he was hearing it a third time it struck him as more of a dusty slither. As he watched aghast, Kasri and Salah slowly came back into view and then vanished again as the tunnel undulated gracefully from left to right. Walls, floor and ceiling rippled and stretched as though they were made not of stone, but of something softer, more elastic – skin or sinew.

‘Stop it!’ shouted Girgis. ‘Stop it now! I order you to stop it!’

For a moment it seemed as if his command had been heeded. Everything stilled, the only sounds the wheeze of Salah’s breathing and, from somewhere far off, a muted shout which Girgis assumed must be one of the twins. Five seconds went by. Ten, and he was starting to think that whatever geological forces were at work had calmed and settled when the corridor gave another slow, undulating contortion. This time it kept on moving, swirling sinuously first in one direction and then the other, back and forth, the krypton lamps toppling and rolling, everything blurring in a confusion of light and darkness and coiling serpents. Girgis was thrown to the floor, clambered upright, fell again, started crawling. He didn’t even know in which direction he was going, he just wanted to get away. The snaking became more violent, the floor swishing and slithering, the entire tunnel seeming to writhe. A malign hissing sound filled the air, a stench of rotting, half-digested meat clogged his nostrils, causing him to gag and choke.

‘Help me!’ Girgis screamed as his fellow Egyptians suddenly loomed in front of him, Kasri flat on his face, Salah on all fours, a cigarette still dangling from the corner of his mouth. ‘In the name of God help me.’

He fought his way towards them, desperately stretching out a hand. Salah and Kasri also tried to reach out, their fingertips coming to within inches of each other before, to his dismay, Girgis saw the tunnel starting to narrow and contract. Like a puckering mouth its circumference slowly closed around his two colleagues, clamping their legs and torsos in a tightening glove of rock, crushing them. For a moment they struggled, arms flapping, faces reddening as the shaft squeezed ever more ferociously, and then they
were sucked backwards and away. Salah’s hand protruded for a few seconds longer, nicotine-stained fingers curling into an agonized claw before it too was swallowed and he was gone. The tunnel gave another violent lurch and fell still. The hissing sound faded into silence.

For a moment Girgis knelt there, staring dementedly at the anus-sized aperture through which his companions had just been sucked, shivering and whimpering. Then, with a trembling hand, he took the upturned krypton lamp that was lying on the floor beneath the aperture, rose unsteadily to his feet and turned.
Forget what’s just happened,
he told himself.
Forget Salah and Kasri. Keep calm, start walking, get the fuck out of this godforsaken hell-hole.
But the corridor had contracted and closed ahead of him as well – presumably devouring the twins just as it had Kasri and Salah. He was alone and he was trapped, entombed in a minibus-sized section of tunnel.

‘Hello!’ he cried weakly. ‘Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?’

His voice was barely strong enough to fill the space he was in, let alone penetrate the solid rock all around. He called again, and again, the lamp in his hand – the only lamp – starting to fade as its battery ran down. The shadows grew thicker and more menacing, gathering around the margins of the krypton bulb’s weakening glow like a wolf pack around a campfire.

‘Please!’ he moaned. ‘Please help me, somebody. I’ll pay. I’m rich. Very rich. Help me!’

He began to weep, and then to scream, a high-pitched, hyena-like wail as he pounded his fists vainly against the unyielding stone, calling on God, any god – Christian,
Muslim, ancient Egyptian – to come to his aid, save him in his hour of need. Everything remained as it was, the silence every bit as intense, the rock cage every bit as solid, and in the end, exhausted, he slumped down on the floor with his back against the wall. Above him, barely visible in the fading light, an enormous painted snake’s head hovered, its jaws levered wide open.

‘Get away,’ he moaned, scratching at his neck and limbs, the feel of cockroaches on his skin more intense and unbearable than ever. ‘Get off me! Disgusting! Disgusting!’

His scratching grew more furious, fingers clawing and slapping at himself, the sensation of scurrying insects so loathsomely realistic that, drained and despairing as he was, he couldn’t bear to sit motionless and staggered back onto his feet. As he did he caught sight of something dribbling down the wall where he had been sitting. Chips of stone and grit by the look of it, a whole rush of material, although the light was now so weak he couldn’t be sure. He leant closer, trying to see what was happening, terrified that the tunnel was starting to cave in. But what he saw was worse than that. Worse than anything he could ever have imagined, his most terrible nightmare made real. Cockroaches, dozens upon dozens of cockroaches, hundreds of them, thousands, were streaming out of the mouth of the serpent on the wall like a surge of dirty brown water. He looked down – they were on his jacket, his arms, his legs, his shoes.

Howling, he reeled backwards, frenziedly trying to slap the insects away, his feet making a moist, crunching sound as he stumbled across the floor. He slammed against the opposite wall and dropped the lamp, its light momentarily
shining brighter, clearly illuminating the entire space. There were other serpent mouths – to his right, his left, above, in front – all of them spewing hordes of cockroaches. The entire cavity was alive with movement, a scuttling tide of insects sweeping towards him, surging up, down, across and over his body, enveloping him in a glistening shroud of wings and legs and feelers. The light only lasted a few seconds, just enough to bring home to Girgis the full horror of what was happening to him. Then it dimmed and went out, leaving just darkness, the click and skitter of millions of tiny feet and Romani Girgis’s crazed shrieking.

When Flin reached the top of the steps he paused, the extra height affording him a clearer view of what was going on in the oasis as a whole.

The scene was one of spectacular and increasing devastation. The pristine paradise of a few hours earlier was now barely recognizable as the cliffs continued their unstoppable advance, churning everything in their path, palm groves and flower meadows, orchards and pools, avenues and statuary slowly disappearing like debris beneath a pair of industrial vacuum cleaners. At the very bottom end of the gorge the cliffs already seemed to have clamped tight together, although it was hard to be sure because of the swirling dust. Further up there was still clear space between them, a wedge of greenery that grew wider – or rather, less narrow and compressed – the closer it came to the top of the canyon, although even this was fast being devoured as the cliffs swung remorselessly inwards,
obliterating everything in their path. Flin guessed he had about fifteen minutes until they reached the sides of the rock platform and started demolishing the temple buildings. And maybe another ten after that before they closed altogether and the oasis was gone. Fifteen at the outside. Not enough time. Not nearly enough time. He turned and started sprinting.