The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (12 page)

Back at the museum, O’Connell and Evy were running out through those wrecked rear gates just as a truck—whose canvas side panels proclaimed
TSE KAR WAIT FIREWORKS COMPANY
—was rumbling by. O’Connell, a revolver in either hand, tried to wave the driver down, but the vehicle barreled on, the driver either not hearing . . . or perhaps spotting O’Connell’s weapons . . .

The couple, whose evening wear was soiled and ripped already, went sprinting after the slow-moving vehicle and jumped onto its running boards, on either side, in near unison.

The Chinese driver began to curse at them. To O’Connell this was just singsong gibberish and, anyway, he had no time for discussion in any language.

“Sorry, pal,” O’Connell said. “Mummy on the loose . . .”

And that was all the explanation the driver got before O’Connell opened the truck door, yanked the guy out from behind the wheel and dropped him unceremoniously off on the pavement. More cursing, more gibberish followed, but only for a moment. The truck commandeered, Evy was behind the wheel now and O’Connell was riding shotgun, or anyway Smith & Wesson revolver . . .

A few blocks away, Jonathan Carnahan was emerging from the Jolin Bar, his favorite gin mill (other than his own), bidding several Chinese regulars a fond good-bye. He spoke to them in Mandarin and was quite proud of being able to do so, unaware of how terrible he was at it:
“Gong xi fa chai cha cha . . .”

Knowing he was going to be driving, Jonathan had held it down to just one cocktail—well, two. So he was feeling singularly sober, and pleased with himself for being so, when a chariot drawn by horses of bronze, commanded by what appeared to be a reddish-brown living statue, and hauling some sort of wagon, came careening around the corner a block down.

Jonathan, in the process of unlocking the door of his prized Bentley, parked on the street, knew damned well this was no hallucination, because he—like the O’Connells—was one of a rare breed of human being: his experiences in Egypt had led him not to be surprised when a mummy decided to get itself reanimated.

This did not prevent him from blurting in dismay, “No!
No!
Bloody hell!
Bloody
fuh . . .”

The rest of his remark was blotted out by a tram rumbling by that also served to narrow the street and send the oncoming chariot veering toward Jonathan, and his parked vehicle.

“Hey!” Jonathan shouted. “You there—watch where you’re driving that thing!”

The Emperor Mummy did not seem to hear, or anyway care, and the pounding bronze hoofbeats grew louder as the strange procession bore down on Jonathan, and the bizarre vehicle was only half a length away when Jonathan dove over the hood of his Bentley. He landed on the sidewalk in a heap just as the chariot sideswiped the love of his life, then added insult to injury—actually, injury to injury—when the spikes on the cortege wagon wheels blew out both his tires and ripped a wide gash in the Bentley’s sheet metal.

The chariot rumbled off and Jonathan got to his feet and examined the damage. He was almost in tears, and trembling, not in fear, but in rage. He was swearing revenge when a fireworks truck pulled up and slowed and a knife blade from within the rear of the vehicle split the canvas side and O’Connell stuck his head out.

“Climb aboard, Jonathan! We have work to do!”

Jonathan allowed himself to be hauled aboard, shaking his head, saying, “Honestly, the two of you—you’re virtually
mummy
magnets, aren’t you?”

Up front, Evy accelerated.

A block away, the chariot was on Main Street, plowing wildly down the broad avenue, crushing anything unfortunate enough to be in its path. Underneath the rough-riding cart, Alex and Lin were working to move, from handhold to handhold, to the rear of the cortege wagon. Right now they were almost to the back bumpers. They were unaware that Alex’s parents were at all in pursuit, much less in a fireworks truck some hundred yards back, and closing.

In the rear of the truck, O’Connell was ripping canvas away so that he and Jonathan could get a view over the cab. Jonathan had discovered a big red rocket that might have been the mother of all the fireworks crated and piled back there. The two men lifted the thing up and onto the roof of the cab. Evy flinched a little as she heard them slam the rocket down, not aware of what her husband and brother were up to.

Right now O’Connell was explaining the situation to Jonathan as wind whipped their hair and they bounced up and down with the jostle of the truck, from which Evy was coaxing considerable speed.

“We’re only going to get one shot at this, Jon,” he said. Then to Evy in the cab, he shouted, “Honey! Drive
nice
and
straight!”

Then to Jonathan, he said, “Okay, buddy—light ’er up!”

Jonathan nodded and, thinking of his Bentley and the horrendous gash in its poor side, he thumbed his gold-plated Dunhill lighter and held the flame to the fuse. Then he stuck his fingers in his ears.

O’Connell grinned at his brother-in-law. “Happy New Year.”

Then the rocket took off, and its blastoff almost blew the two men out and off the back of the truck.

Down the street the rocket screamed, O’Connell’s aim dead-on. Half a moment before what would have been a direct hit, the Emperor Mummy turned unblinking dead eyes to see the rocket coming and, with a simple gesture of his head, redirected the spark-spewing missile and sent it instead into an electric trolley car.

The force of the explosion threw the trolley, like a toy train, into the air, passengers diving off as the car and the blast shattered neon signs and ripped wooden signs off structures. The Emperor Mummy guided his bronze steeds deftly around the resulting rubble.

Even a seasoned mummy fighter like Rick O’Connell could hardly have known that Er Shi Huangdi possessed a mastery of fire.

And even if he had known, O’Connell had another crisis, albeit a small one, on his hands: the launch of the rocket had somehow set the seat of Jonathan’s pants on fire. O’Connell began smacking the flames with his hands.

Jonathan, unaware his ass was on fire, objected: “Stop that! Why in bloody hell are you smacking me on the bum?”

“Because your bum is on fire!”

“On fire? Well then, crikey, man, smack it!
Smack
it!”

But smacking wasn’t doing the trick, so O’Connell yanked off his dinner jacket and roughly smothered the flames attacking his brother-in-law’s behind. “Stay still!”

“You stay still, with a flaming ass!”

“Hold on, it—it’s
almost
out . . . It’s out.”

Chin up, his dignity as shredded as the seat of his pants, Jonathan said, “Would you do me a favor, dear brother-in-law? Next time you’re in Shanghai, will you give me sufficient warning so that I might be the hell
elsewhere?”

“You’re welcome.”

Then the two men almost lost their balance as Evy hung a wicked left, clipping the curb. Up ahead, fires raged in the wake of the trolley mishap.

O’Connell leaned down to call through the rear window into the cab. “Evy! Sweetie!” He pointed. “The mummy went
that
way . . .”

She called, “I’m taking a shortcut!”

Meanwhile, Alex had helped Lin up and over the back bumpers onto the cortege wagon, where they hunkered down at the foot of the sarcophagus that separated them from the chariot and Er Shi Huangdi and General Yang. The pounding hoofbeats and the rumble over cobblestones gave them cover to whisper, as they assessed their situation.

Alex handed Lin his pistol. “Cover me. I’ll go after the Emperor—take him by surprise.”

She handed the weapon back. “No,
I’ll
go after the Emperor.”

He grinned at her. “Trust me—I’m pretty sure I have more experience with mummies than you do.”

His light brown hair was an unruly mess and his face was smudged here and there, but he looked very good to Lin, who found herself enormously attracted to this young man.

But she insisted. “I have to do it—I have the only weapon that can kill him.”

Her eyes said she meant business. And, truth be told, after fighting with her, Alex was convinced she could take care of herself, even if he wouldn’t have minded doing the job for her.

So he said, “Okay, Lin—you win.
This
time.”

Back on the fireworks truck, Alex’s father was in the hands of another strong woman—Alex’s mother—who was demonstrating exactly what her “shortcut” was: the truck plowed through the brick wall of a Buddhist temple, scattering worshippers celebrating the New Year, and driving diagonally across its courtyard. This caused chaos in the temple, of course, knocking over incense stalls and malla-bead vendors, with more than one chicken squawking and wing-flapping its displeasure as Evy pounded through.

O’Connell and Jonathan, holding on for this thrill ride, had figured they’d experienced the worst, and then Evy burst through another brick wall. Jonathan was launched backward but not out of the truck, fortunately hitting a metal strut and settling down for a knocked-cold nap.

O’Connell, about to scream at his wife, stifled it because, sure enough, they now
bump-bump-bumped
through the brick rubble onto Olympic Street, where the chariot was racing toward them, so close that the Emperor Mummy had to rein his horses to keep the chariot from colliding with Evy, who had pulled in front of him. As Er Shi Huangdi tried to steer around her, Evy swerved and stayed out in front.

Er Shi Huangdi shot a fierce glance at General Yang, and commanded in ancient Mandarin,
“Clear them from my path!”

Yang immediately began to open fire on the truck.

O’Connell pushed Jonathan into a relatively safe position, then went over and lowered the truck’s tailgate, and almost tumbled out, since Evy had just swerved to avoid Yang’s slugs.

He scrambled back up to lean through the cab window and hand Evy one of the Smith & Wesson revolvers.

“You might need this,” he said.

Then he leaned in some more and kissed her on the back of the neck. She smiled. She seemed to feel the old tingle—he certainly did.

Her eyes flicked from the road to his. “Where are you going?”

“Out. Don’t wait up.”

Then he sprinted toward the rear of the truck, where the chariot was close behind now, and leaped!

O’Connell reached out and grabbed one of the bronze horses storming toward him, its nostrils flaring, and got it by its pounding neck and held precariously on, riding backward and upside down, the cool feel of the bronze on his palms strange in contrast to the hot breath of the steed.

Back on the truck, Jonathan came to. He made his way up and crawled in through the window into the cab and sat beside his sister. “Where’s Rick?”

“Where do you suppose?”

Jonathan looked back, and saw O’Connell struggling like a drunken Cossack trying to hold on to that bronze horse. “Oh dear . . .”

But finally O’Connell hauled himself up onto the horse’s back and, like a cowboy chased by Indians, began throwing shots behind him. Again, one of his bullets caught the Emperor Mummy’s ear, blowing it off . . .

. . . and again it regenerated in an instant.

“Kill him!”
demanded Er Shi Huangdi.

The chariot plowed through a sidewalk café, scattering partygoers and demolishing tables, the rough ride making Yang’s shots go wild.

O’Connell flicked out his butterfly knife to see if he could sever the bronze harness keeping the steeds together; to his relief, the bronze cut like leather, and within moments O’Connell was able to rein his horse and had soon dropped back to the rear of the cortege, where Alex and Lin were behind the sarcophagus, about to make their move.

O’Connell held his hand out to his son. “Come on, Alex!
Jump!”

As Alex signaled his father to back away, Lin said with a smirk, “Well, so much for our surprise . . .”

Alex’s eyebrows were up. “What can I say? The old man has a hero complex.”

And as Lin feared, Yang now realized the wagon behind the chariot bore other passengers. He turned and fired at Alex, who ducked down behind the sarcophagus for cover, returning fire.

Yang ducked behind the skirts of the chariot as Alex’s slugs pinged off their thick bronze.

With the general busy with their stowaways, the Emperor Mummy was left by himself to deal with O’Connell and the now stray bronze horse. The Emperor locked eyes with the metal steed and the animal went out of control, bucking and veering off and down a narrow alley.

O’Connell, with no idea why the horse had spooked, yelled, “Whoa!” to no avail, as the thing kept bucking and he kept slamming back down on its bare bronze back.

And, once again, seasoned mummy fighter Rick O’Connell could not know that Er Shi Huangdi had a mastery over metal.

The other end of the alleyway O’Connell was unwillingly racing down was Warehouse Street. Here hogsheads of Tsingtao Beer were being craned in a cargo net across the street to a waiting flatbed truck. The runaway horse, with O’Connell on its back, dashed down the narrow alleyway, the crane swinging into view and blocking passage.

O’Connell dropped below the withers, hoping to avoid collision, but the horse plowed right through the crane and its bronze head, in a shower of sparks, was sheared clean off. The detached horse’s head landed in the lap of an old Chinese wino, sleeping off an early start to the New Year under a tattered blanket, only to wake up with a scream.

O’Connell grabbed the reins of the headless horse, but trying to steer the blind creature was a pointless process, and the best he could do was grab the mane and the jagged hollow neck and hold on . . .

Throughout all this, Evy had managed to stay in front of the chariot and keep the Emperor pinned behind her, maneuvering as necessary.

This infuriated the Emperor Mummy, who could see beyond the truck to where Annie Avenue widened into a square. To Yang he said,
“Use your weapon on the fire sticks.”

Driving his remaining horses, the Emperor managed to pull the chariot abreast of the truck as Yang pumped rounds into the canvas-lined rear of the vehicle, more sharp cracks rising above the hoofbeats and chariot wheels and engine noise. Several of Yang’s bullets pierced wooden firecracker crates riding behind Evy, and set off a chain reaction, a blazing, noisy fireworks show suddenly exploding through the truck’s canvas roof.