She looked at him with pity. “Would you like a drink?”
“Please,” he begged.
She smiled at him, silently. In her hand she held a flask out in front of her, but just out of his reach. He tried to grab it, but his arm wasn’t long enough. He crawled through the burning sand, his face dragging through it. His mouth opened and he tried to reach it again, but her hands were still out of his grasp.
“Miriam, please, I need you to come closer!” he begged. “I don’t have the strength to move.”
She stared at him, her hardened face full of sympathy. “I’m sorry, Thomas, I can only help you so much. You’ll need to take the final step yourself.”
Thomas stared at his wife. How could she be so harsh to him at a time like this? Her hair was light brown, and her plump face was coated with the reddish blush of a woman who’d struggled through the cold hardship of the Northern Ireland winters all her life. No one would have ever considered her pretty, but she had loved him, and he had loved her. He had strengthened her resolve, and she had softened his anger. Together they had made a surprisingly good partnership — until God had taken her and his unborn child from him.
“Open your mouth and drink,” she coaxed him.
Hammersmith tried to drink from the flask, but found it tasted like poison. He spat it out and stared at his dead wife. “Why would you give this to me?”
She shrieked with laughter. “Because they’re coming for you — and you don’t want to be alive when they get here.”
Hammersmith opened his eyes in terror. He opened his mouth to scream. Instead he coughed. His mouth was full of hot sand, which burned the back of his throat, and he wondered how much he’d consumed. He’d heard stories of shipwrecked sailors becoming so desperate they drank seawater, only the salty water would inevitably speed up their deaths — would sand have the same effect?
He heard the war-cry from his pursuers. It was faint and melodic, as though they were repeating the same series of words over and over again. They were still far away, but it wouldn’t take long for them to close the gap. He considered consuming more sand if it would bring about his more immediate demise.
The war-cry forced his mind to return to the temple he’d tried so hard to forget. Back to the kind people who worshiped there, and to those who his party had betrayed so much. The temple was a pyramid and it almost appeared as though it had been constructed by removing all the sand around it instead of building it up by piling layer upon layer of stone on top of one another. Hammersmith recalled the first time he saw it. The place looked like the largest stone quarry he’d ever seen. Like a giant had scooped out a massive hole in the earth’s sandy crust. But instead of removing everything, the giant had left a pyramid of sandstone at its center.
Hammersmith had seen drawings of some of the pyramids found throughout the dry African continent, but he’d never imagined just how large they could be. He had no way of knowing that this was the largest pyramid ever built, or that great armies from around the world would gladly go to war to steal what it mined.
Inside was the most valuable thing anyone had ever seen. The local worshipers had been quick to show them. It was a skull made of gold, fashioned so that its teeth appeared to be stuck in some sort of grotesque grin, as though it knew just how much each of them had wanted to steal it. Like the damned thing was encouraging them to take it. Out of its mouth the strange religious relic burned with a darkened smoke. Each of them was allowed, even encouraged, to breathe the potent black smoke.
It sent them into a dream-like state. Everything somehow appeared clear to all of them simultaneously, as though every last one of them shared the same common goal — they needed to steal the relic and take it away, to where it wanted to go.
Hammersmith recalled the kind people who had found them nearly starving to death, dehydrated, and unprepared for the sheer intensity of the heat of the Namibian desert. The dark skinned men and women were kinder and more generous than any other people he’d ever encountered. They took them in and healed them with good food, water and shelter. These were the good people who they’d come to betray because of man’s most cruel master — greed. And it was that greed which had convinced them to steal their most sacred possession.
Despite the generosity of the native people, Hammersmith and the rest of the men who followed Smith were steadfast in their original goal. To steal a golden relic, so valuable, they had at first doubted its existence. They had come to the desert in search of it, with eighteen men and numerous weapons to take it by force. Only, instead of finding it, they had become run down and lost in the desert.
The golden skull had been laid out at the center of their beautiful temple on a pedestal. The inside of the skull was hollowed, and one of the native men, a religious man by the looks of it, reverently poured a blackened powder inside. He lit it and a darkened smoke, with a sweet scent, enveloped the temple. It had made him relax, like strong liquor. Only, unlike alcohol, which mellowed him to the point of drowsiness, whatever was inside the skull, made him feel good. It made him feel strong, powerful, and like the world was in perfect order.
It had a similar effect on the rest of the men in the party. All eighteen of them. They labored for the local people, moving large amounts of sand in giant human chains. They could work all day without rest and then wake up feeling energized and fully recovered by the morning. Hammersmith shook his head. It was the contents of that skull that had made them all so reckless. Something inside the darkened powder drove them with desire.
On the eighth day, their party had re-provisioned the camels and Smith, the best navigator among them, had determined it would be less than three days ride to reach the Atlantic. So, as humans do — they betrayed the very people who’d saved them. At one a.m. they stole the sacred artifact that meant so much to the people who had saved their lives. They carefully made their way out of the temple and climbed the giant sand dunes to escape the pyramid.
While being healed to good health, they had watched the hundreds, if not thousands of men, women and even children work every day to stem the tide of sand, which forever fought to drown their temple from existence. They were happy people and said they were privileged to have such a purpose, for their God had been very kind to them.
Hammersmith climbed the steep crest of sand until they were out of the temple’s sandpit. He watched Smith take a quick compass bearing and they set off at a hurried pace, riding their camels through most of the night. If they were lucky, they would have a five hour head start on their pursuers. Their carry bags were full of water and supplies, so they could maintain a good pace. There was little reason to ration anything. They’d reach the west coast of Africa days before running out of supplies.
They might have made it, too, if their beasts hadn’t become lame.
The sound was excruciatingly loud and appeared to approach from every direction. Through the sandy haze he tried to concentrate on the dune where the angry hoard approached. It looked like a black wave in a storm, rising up high only to soon crash down again, and take him with it to the next life. Like a mirage it moved slowly, and then it was upon him. Hammersmith knew Death had finally caught up. A broad smile crossed his cracked and bleeding lips. He’d made a final prayer to his God, and now had been granted his deliverance from this world.
At least a thousand men, women and children cried out. They wailed like possessed fiends — demons of the dark underworld. Their cries tormenting him as they charged past. He felt their tough feet and legs brush up against his body as they ran by. With each touch he felt the sting of Death upon his skin, but somehow that blessed relief never came.