The Mummy: The Tomb Robbers' Secret

Bones

Roma rolled over and reached for Ardeth, only to find his side of the bed empty. She looked at the alarm clock she kept on a table next to her cot and realized it was seven o'clock.

She sat bolt upright, wondering why he had let her sleep for so long? The workman had begun their shift at four a.m., they'd been at work for almost three hours now and she needed to know how their work on clearing the shaft was progressing.

"Ah, you're awake, I've been checking on you. Did you sleep well?" Ardeth flashed his white teeth in a smile and she wondered what he was up to.

"Why did you let me sleep so long? I need to know what the workmen have found! You know I make sure I am up when they are, and I've missed breakfast."

He sat on the bed and put his hand on her leg. "Are you not aware you were up and down all night? I have never known you to sleepwalk but I had to take you back to your bed three times."

She grabbed her khakis and shook them, a habit that a desert dweller knows, insects hide in the folds of clothes and inside shoes, any dark, hidden place. She reached for the rest which lay bunched at the foot of the bed and pulled them on angrily. "You should not have let me sleep so long," she said again and stormed out of the tent.

The sight that met her eyes revealed why he had kept her in the tent so long—the workers' bus was missing. She turned and gave him an angry stare. "Where is the bus?" she demanded.

"Rick is taking the workers back to their villages. They would die in the desert before they reached home, so I gave them their wages, and O'Connell is driving them. You have the right to fire them but not to send them to their deaths."

"Who says I wanted to kill them? I wanted them to know they'd accepted a job and I expected them to fulfill their obligations. Now we're short of workers with a shaft to clear and a tomb to excavate. Do we have enough workers to divide into two teams?"

"You're asking for my opinion? I'm not the archaeologist, my love, isn't the shaft your priority?" He rubbed her shoulders, attempting to soothe her ill-temper.

"You should have asked me," she said, her feathers still ruffled but the mention of the shaft reminded her she wanted to see how the work had progressed. "Let's go to the tomb, I have a feeling we're going to find something today," she said. She exited tent, not looking to see if he followed her.

The men were talking excitedly in the tomb. They had cleared the shaft down to a dept of almost thirty feet and had found something they did not expect. A bricked-up opening, almost the height of a man, certainly large enough to admit an Egyptian in pharaonic times. Best of all, the bricks looked like they had not been disturbed, and though there was no sign of a seal.

A rope ladder had been attached to the ladder to make up the difference. Roma could not wait and climbed down to see for herself. The men held a lantern, allowing her to view the crude mud bricks that blocked the opening. She ran a slender hand over the rough surface of the wall. "Clear as much sand as you can from the floor, but you don't need to get all of it. We need a pry bar and maybe a sledgehammer if the mortar is stubborn. We'll bring up the bricks as we remove them, I want this opening cleared."

She climbed up the ladders and found Evelyn and Ardeth waiting for her. "Yes!" she said, allowing herself to express her excitement and taking Evelyn's hands said, "We did it," her voice full of jubilation.

"I told you," said Evelyn, "I knew we'd find something, all we had to do was look. And nothing has happened, there is nothing to fear, Roma. What we find down there might make us rich, or famous."

"If it hasn't been looted, though I must admit those bricks look like they haven't been disturbed in centuries. We'll give the men a break and something to eat. I haven't eaten yet today and I'm famished. Evelyn, when will Rick be back? We might need his help breaking down the wall."