*
In his dark and confined space, Taylor waited until the movement stopped and the voices faded. When he could no longer stand the mouldy stench of linen wrappings, he put his back against the lid and pushed. The lid slid from the coffin, breaking into pieces when it hit the ground. He squirmed at the reverberating sound and the intense, blinding light flooding the lower chamber.
Taylor covered his eyes and climbed out of the coffin. With a leg dangling over the side, his other was suddenly snatched by the mummified paw of Aquinas.
He shrieked as the ghoulish paw wrapped around his thigh. Her covered face moved from side to side as her mouth gasped for air. Taylor kicked off her claws and fell out of the coffin while Aquinas yanked the linen from her face. When light first came to her beady eyes, she howled in distress and disorientation.
Taylor lay on rock and looked back at the lioness, rising from eternal rest. She tore at the wrappings around her face and neck, opened her mouth and roared.
"God!” Taylor bawled, covering his ears.
She was a lanky seven feet tall, with a feline face and pale fur blazing against the light. She stepped out of the coffin and her chunky foot slammed down on the stone.
The lioness attempted to snag her meal but Taylor scurried to the treasure-stuffed niche in the corner. Reaching back, he gripped a jewel encrusted sceptre and swatted at the advancing queen.
"Back off bitch!”
The lioness's lower half was tangled in wrappings, which slowed her pursuit to a gracelessness lumber, giving Taylor time to react. He struck the sceptre across her snout, knocking an incisor from her mouth. When she recovered, Taylor struck the other side of her face, breaking the sceptre in half.
Aquinas shook it off, snared Taylor by the throat and raised him off his feet.
The powerful ark light made her stronger, but it also had a magnetic effect on Taylor's torch. Suddenly, he was stretched out by two magnificent forces, the ark in its chamber above and Aquinas below. Eyes rolling into his head, and still clutching the broken sceptre, Taylor forced the jagged end into the queen's face. She dropped him, howling in pain as new blood poured from the wound. Over her flailing arms and maddening screams, Taylor allowed the ark to tug him out of the queen's chamber. The force skidded him across the stone but before he could clear Aquinas, she clutched his foot and was dragged behind him.
Taylor's torch flashed hot and alive as the force pulled them up the ascending slope of the grand gallery.
Aquinas cut her claws into Taylor's shin and he moaned as the flesh was peeled from the muscle. Gathering speed up the gallery, he and Aquinas were rubbed raw on the rock, leaving trails of burning skin, hair and denim. There was no stopping their momentum, or the ark's irresistible tug on the torch.
The slope ended at the kings chamber, where the ark blazed like a second sun inside its coffer. Taylor braced himself as he and Aquinas crashed into the coffer, breaking one corner to pieces. Taylor shut his eyes and kissed his ass goodbye as the ark finally reeled him in. Screaming, he lit up from the inside out, his voltage shocking Aquinas to the chamber corner. Taylor's torch pressed against the ark and he writhed, caught in its light.
Moments before his atoms exploded, Taylor realized that if he could not pull himself from the ark, then he would pull the ark from the light. Using all his strength, he forced against the spasms and the fire to reach into the coffer. The power gauge on the torch went off the charts as Taylor gripped fingers around the universe stone. He raised the ark from the coffer and clutched it against his chest. He hauled it away from the shaft of sunlight but the furious fire would not leave him or the ark. Screaming, Taylor threw it down and staggered back against the broken coffer. Aquinas meanwhile, raised her head to see her wrappings and leg caught underneath the searing ark. As the light faded from Taylor's torch, the ark turned molten white. It ate into the granite floor to form a glowing and sinking rectangle. The glob fused with the queen's leg and pulled her into the hole. She fought back, begging for her new life as the pyramid turned in on itself. She ripped her wrappings and pulled her leg from the bone, but it was too late. She slipped into the volcanic sink, desperately digging her claws into the rock.
"Here!” Taylor bawled over raining rock. “Take my hand! I know you understand me!”
Aquinas clutched at the rim and began to pull herself up, but before she could clamour to safety, a plume of magma rose out of the hole to incinerate the screaming queen. Taylor rolled back as lava spewed into the chamber
"Fuck!” he cried, as the hole churned and cooked like a gateway to hell. He ran from the chamber, throwing himself to slide all the way down the grand gallery. At the bottom, he cowered as a 50 ton block of granite crashed in front of his toes.
Head ringing, face black with dust, he retreated from falling rocks, stumbling back up the gallery and diving into the ark chamber as an explosion sealed the corridor and his hopes of escape. He wafted at the dirt and soot, watching the twinkling light from the shaft above and the burbling hole of lava.
The floor beneath Taylor cracked and he threw himself into the empty ark coffer as hellfire grenades blew up around him. He lay in the coffer with the sunlight streaming down from above, the world around him shaking. Frantically, he began to punch coordinates into his still sparking torch.
Wiping the gritty stone from his eyes, he tried to focus his mind on maths alone, needing an estimated size of the pyramid and the necessary distance to jump him out of it. His concentration was steadily interrupted by the flood filling the chamber and seeping through a crack in the coffer. Taylor quickly rose his legs over the rims and raised his body using his elbows as lava leveled around him. Burning an inch from his back, and with not a second to spare, Taylor entered his final digits into the torch and his racing heart did the rest.
Disappearing instantaneously, the light dancing time-traveller reappeared on top of the capstone, the highest point of the great pyramid. He barely caught a glimpse of the view over Giza before he was sent hurtling down the casing stones, followed by a river of shattering stones.
Taylor's ass hit the ground at speed and he continued forward over hot sand and the crumbling casing stones.
With the fires smothered and the Sphinx keeping watch over Egypt, Taylor lay flat to enjoy the inhale and exhale of his own lungs. The pyramid wasn’t done however. There came a final, almighty explosion from the interior, blowing the capstone away into the sky. Taylor watched in awe as the capstone soared out of sight. The great wonder, crunched and broken, was finally still.
“God-fucking-sake.”
Taylor glanced at his torch and smiled at the reading: 98%. Plenty to get him home.
Without delay, he punched new co-ordinates into the device, five hours from when he first left. His original mission was to warn Lanza of the comet one year before impact. Having already scribbled a warning onto his whiteboard, Taylor hoped that mission was now complete.
He inputted the final digits, and pumping his heart into gear, Taylor howled like a dying dog when knives suddenly sank into his neck.
Apophis raised Taylor off his feet then slammed him back onto the sand. Beside the general, a red lion held his gravity gun at Taylor. The grief stricken Apophis roared with fury and hatred, squeezing Taylor by the throat. Taylor's gargling scream was suddenly muted by another from the red lion, whose eyes had gone wide with shock. Taylor watched as a spear emerged from the middle of the lion's chest, the sentry gurgling and dropping his gun. Bull appeared from behind the red lion, pulling out the spear as the creature fell limp.
Apophis dropped Taylor and turned on Bull, raking him across the chest with his claws.
In that moment, Taylor stretched for the gun, slid his hand into the stock and aimed the barrel at Apophis. The general whipped his head back at Taylor, who winked back.
“You ate the wrong finger.”
Taylor pulled the trigger and an astounding sonic boom blasted into the general's chest. Apophis spun through the ai
r in a crazed and manic scream, breaking his back against the face of the Sphinx. The general's rocky image crumbled from that guarding monument, the lion king dropping dead between its stone paws.
Taylor threw down the weapon and was helped to his feet by Bull. He smiled at his friend before frowning up at a growing shadow.
"Look out!”
Bull dived one way and Taylor the other as the incoming capstone smashed into the sand. In his desperate leap, Taylor's pounding heart ignited the torch and careered him through space and time.
— CHAPTER NINETEEN —