“
By RD Rivero
Early that morning, well past sunrise, the
ground in and around the small Berbil village rumbled in the heaves of a
violent earthquake. Signals and alarm
bells had sirened in Cat’s Lair but by the time the Thunderians arrived at the
scene there was little for them to do other than helping the sick, injured
survivors or tending, mending the broken and destroyed property.
By the afternoon hours the hardworking
felines had managed to prop-up and restore most if not all of the fallen,
damaged homes. Tygra and Panthro
installed a new device in the center of town that would signal -- that would
hopefully signal -- in the event of an oncoming tremor. Some of the grateful villagers looked on in
wonder while the instrument was set in place and calibrated.
“When the buzzer goes off,” Tygra began,
“that means that there’s an earthquake bound in about ten seconds or so.”
RoberBill was silent.
“There is no way to predict exactly when
an earthquake will happen so there is no way to alert for one sooner.”
“We will have to drill for just such an
emergency,” the small creature said.
“Once the alarm goes off the machine can
be reset by pressing the green button.”
“Your generosity is kindly appreciated but
I would like to show you something.”
The earth had caved in along a wide,
circular expanse fifteen miles in circumference that cut across rich and
bounteous farm land. RoberBill turned to
Panthro and Tygra and pointed while he spoke, enshrouded in the cover of tall
mounds of rock where no one else could hear.
“Mumm-Ra?
No, you never told us that!”
Tygra put his arms around Panthro to hold
him back. “That big, blue plush toy,
just what is that lovable mummy up to?”
Bengali and the kittens in the meanwhile
-- having little else to pass the time with -- began to play a quick game of
tag in the open fields.
“But I wanted to play hide-and-seek!”
WileyKat objected.
The tiger poked him in the ribs then he
and WileyKit darted away.
“I’m going to get the both of you!” he
shouted angrily.
“I’m on base, you can’t catch me!”
Bengali jumped back and forth mockingly --
his left hand never left the grasp if had of the brittle bark of the tall oak
that he himself had designated ‘home base.’
WileyKat growled: “I’ll get even with you yet!”
A ray of lightning, a clasp of thunder.
“You can’t catch me!” His sister taunted him while she swooped down
past him on a thin vine that could have,
no, that should have snapped in two before she had landed safely in the
tiger’s awaiting arms.
The young boy fumed, his clenched fists
shook in the air in the worst impersonation of Mumm-Ra ever. “You guys never play fair! I don’t know why I always hang out with the
two of you!”
WileyKat began to walk to them slowly and in
so doing he came to tread on over the upheavaled mess that the earthquake had
made of the countryside, the strange crink in the soil that ran like a seam in
the ground for as far as the eye could see.
He did not notice until it was too late, until the voices reached him
that Tygra and Panthro ran to him in terror.
His sister yelled out “WileyKat!” and he
stopped.
The newly-installed siren called, the land
began to vibrate. Rocks rolled in the
distance, trees swayed and fell in the local scene, the seam that ran like a
scar, opened though lips parted. Where
his feet were once on terra-firma there was now only air. He stumbled in a panicked confusion, he fell
into the gapping mouth-hole. He tried to
hold on to something, to anything, the others tried to come to help but instead
arrived in time to see WileyKat fall backwards into the darkness of the earth
beneath.
The shouts and the screams, more than the
earthquake alarm caught the attention of those below, of those who toiled in
the shadows of blazing torch light.
Slythe looked up and pointed. “A
Thundercat has fallen in! Mumm-Ra!”
“Silence!
Keep your voice down, fool, they already suspect, do you want them to
know, too?”
The red-robed mummy approached closer to
inspect the scene. A thousand feet above,
a gray, cloudy sky appeared strangely inviting.
With the weak light that shone down from there he saw that indeed a
Blundercat had inadvertently fallen and was headed screaming, headlong into
view, into doom.
The mutants were more than morbidly excited
at the prospect of what they were about to witness but just then, the mummy
realized that the victim -- or would-be victim -- was none other than the same
youngster who he had been watching only a few moments before, before the last
explosion. Mumm-Ra extended his hand,
his forefinger pointed at the tumultuous boy.
Almost instantly the kitten’s rapid fallen began to ease until at last
it appeared though he was not in motion at all.
The boy landed softly on the ground.
The earthquake had ceased and the rent
along the earth above had once again sealed.
“You mutants best try harder. Next time I want that village destroyed!”
the mummy shouted. He and Slythe walked over to the side of the
helpless Thundercat. The boy had been
knocked unconscious, no doubt, from having hit his head against the inner walls
during the fall, before Mumm-Ra had saved him, or perhaps it had happened under
fear. The mummy knelt down over the
slumberer and ran his bandaged hands across his puffed, red mane. He felt something wet and pulled back -- the
white cloths around his fingers were dabbed in blood. “Hmm,” he whispered.
Slythe interrupted: “I don’t see what this accomplishes! You should have let him die, Mumm-Ra.”
He smiled back evilly while he
retorted: “Your job’s not to question
me, reptile!” He picked up and held the
boy across his arms. “Your job’s to do
what you’re told: destroy that Berbil
village. Or is that task too difficult
for a race of savage plunderers?”
“It’s not difficult, but to make one more
earthquake would mean to blast away all the dynamite we have left.”
Mumm-Ra turned and glared at the mutant
with sparkling, shimmering eyes, eyes of red lightning fresh and ready to
strike. The mutant stepped back, the
mummy needed to say not a word more.
“We will do better next time.”
“I’ll be in my pyramid -- watching.”
Mumm-Ra whisked away. The boy began to groan softly and turned his
head sideways. The mummy put him down in
the darkness and began to unravel some of the bandages that covered his arms
and wrapped them across the small wounds on the small cat’s head above the ear.
“There, now, there, that should stop the
gash. I don’t want you to bleed all over
me!”
The boy opened his eyes somewhat and began
to murmur words incoherently.
“No, no,” Mumm-Ra said -- he had the
youngster up over his shoulder that time -- “back to La-La Land you go.” He patted him on the back though he was a
baby about to burp. He caused a deep
sleep to fall upon him, to keep him at bay for the meantime while he tended to
nurse the boy’s injuries. “Let’s get out
of here before those oafs have an accident with the explosives.”
La-La Land. La-La Land.
La-La Land.
La-La Land. La-La Land.
La-La Land.
La-La.
La.
.
The tunnel wound for miles. Cool air vented softly in a gentle breeze. Mild light sprang from overhead, from the
ceiling. The carved, stone ceiling. Dull, brown light.
In the whole universe the only sounds came
from his echoed footsteps. Fantastic
shadows danced around him. By instinct
he knew he was being followed but out of fear he dared not look back. He could not stop, he could only shuffle his
feet forward while as long as there was no end to the passage.
The ground rumbled.
He was able to stop -- he turned to
see. Behind him was darkness
absolute. It was void. It was not existence. Growing, advancing, enveloping him in
terror. He ran through the tunnel and
though his footsteps echoed louder than before he could still hear it
approaching like a predator its prey stalking.
The tunnel ended in a flood of light so
sun-bright that he could not hold his face up from the ground.
Complete at last he was awake.
Sprawled all around him was a cavernous
room with an incredibly ceiling. He was
in a rail depot -- he had seen and remembered such things from way back on
Thundera. A single, littered track
divided the platform into two parts.
Toward the far end he saw a lone trolley car, a long, still line began
from its folding, front doors.
In the distance, faraway he heard a
creepy, splash of water.
He stood at the end of the line for what
must have been hours. It advanced
slowly, agonizingly slowly, one person at a time -- each Thunderian. When he was closer to the trolley he began to
make out more of its details. Strikingly
was the sign above the windshield and another by the front door that read with
the words: ‘Third Earth #7.’ The black
and white vehicle swung slightly whenever someone boarded. Within he saw a tailored figure -- Tygra --
showing passengers to their seats. A
second, uniformed man up front -- Panthro -- was no doubt the driver.
Something, something, something else.
He realized why the line took so long to
advance. In front of the line and right
next to the trolley there was a large and deep pool. The splashing came from the conductor who swam
in it, swam laps around it. He dove in,
he bobbed up and down in utter euphoria.
Only when thoroughly satisfied did he emerge to punch a whole in the
next passenger’s ticket, then he would return for another dip.
The conductor himself was quite an oddity. While he had arms, he had no legs only a fish
tail that gave him the appearance of a mermaid but neither was he green nor
remotely attractive. Rather the figure
was a pale gray, a ghost gray. Eyes,
ears, lips, nose, his facial features as a whole blended into the mass of his
head in an indiscernible blur.
He had no ticket.
Panicked, there came a loud rumble and the
whole platform shook violently. From a
pipe that jetted out of a wall spewed an onrush of fresh sewage, steaming
sewage, with clumped, gooey, oozy wastes of all variety. Even after the bulk of it was flushed some
solid wastes still trickled out from the pipe’s lower rim. The pool’s water level had risen to the
platform but not higher. Strangely, the
greenish, bubbly water had no odor.
It high enough for him to see what the
conductor was doing when he swam in it.
In the pool were strong currents, rotating, revolving vortexes, swirling
the wastes around. The conductor glided
through it, reveling, smiling while the sewage spread over his body. It appeared that he could breathe the liquid
without difficulty like a fish. When he
completed his aquatic ballet he shot right up to the surface, some of the
sewage sprayed from his head and torso onto some of the line-standers, the rest
trickled in a stream from the platform to the drain.
It was closing in on his turn and he had
no where to turn, there was nothing he could do. In the course of time he had been waiting on
line more prospective passengers had come to stand behind him. In general everyone was much taller than him
and entirely inanimate. He felt a
different sort of terror when he realized that he was the second person on the
line.
The conductor resurfaced -- the pool’s
water level had steadily decreased. The
man before him handed over his ticket, got it punched and returned, then
stepped aboard the awaiting trolley. It
was his turn and he could not avoid it -- his hands trembled.
The conductor did not submerge, instead he
looked at him, half-in, half out of the pool.
“Ticket, Kat?” he said and for the first time he could see the
conductor’s lips and teeth, even the tongue.
Evidentially he had been savoring the waters not merely swimming in it
-- his teeth were smeared by solid wastes.
The conductor had a passing air of
similarity to Slythe.
“I don’t have one,” said WileyKat.
“Move along,” the conductor spoke with an
evil smile, dull eyes glowed red.
With that he entered the trolley. The uniformed man led him by the hand to a
comfortable back seat next to a rolled-up window. Other passengers, pale and dead-looking,
entered immediately afterward. They,
too, were escorted to their seats by the tiger who then stepped out of the
trolley along with the man WileyKat believed was the driver.
He was tense, very tense, for he feared
the worst would happen. Until at last
the trolley’s doors shut and it went along the way. As it advanced from the bright depot he
noticed that the line he had stood on had grown incredibly long. WileyKat looked right into the conductor’s
frustrated red eyes. In anger he knocked
several people, including the familiar, uniformed men into the sewage pool.
He had gotten away, the trolley had made
it out and for the first time he felt utter and complete relief.
The tunnel that he now traveled through
was painted in darkness, a darkness so inexplicably different from what he had
felt earlier in his first conscious moments.
There was a faint trace of green haze outside, a slight mist dense
enough to obstruct his thoughts. The car
was so quiet it, too, produced an unsettling distraction. Though he knew he was not alone in that
packed trolley the others were unresponsive, motionless, trapped in their own
little worlds.
Only WileyKat had cared to notice that
there was no driver.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the
fragmented profile of Mumm-Ra reflected from his partially open window. The mummy was in his transformed state, much
taller and larger than all the others on board.
He thought it was strange because he did not remember anyone sitting
next to him before. Still, he was not
going to be rude.
“So, where are you going?” he asked while
he faced the rolled-up window. A misty
breeze hit his face. Mumm-Ra turned his
head to him but said nothing.
The darkness lifted and just like that the
trolley was free from the underground tunnel.
The sun was out overhead but not in view. The sky was bright but not blue for there
were soft gray clouds above. The track
was elevated from the broad waters by a good ten feet. Out in the distance was what he believed was
long, large complicated highway draw bridge.
Perhaps it housed another set of tracks.
He saw small, multicolored objects moving within the guts of its
infrastructure.
“Been here before?”
“No,” he said.
“Neither have I. Do you know to where this takes us?”
“Away, I suppose.”
Outside that faraway bridge turned to the
horizon and there was nothing but water.
WileyKat turned to face his seat
partner. The big, blue mummy was a good
seven feet in height. He faced forward,
back straight up at attention. His eyes
did not wander but were wet and blinked quickly at times.
The other passengers had slumped over each
other in a haphazard, chaotic fashion.
WileyKat left Mumm-Ra alone for a
while. Every now and then he snatched
some looks. His eyes wandered from his
head to his chest -- over that odd, red tattoo -- to the old Egyptian
wardrobe. His body was covered in
well-defined muscles -- he should have been in many ways afraid or at the least
feel inadequate but was neither.
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
“From the same place as you.”
The water was promptly replaced by a large
canyon. They were headed toward the foot
of a mountain whose lower innards had been hallowed out to form an outdoor
train depot. More Thunderians stood
around the edge of the platform but none paid attention to the passing trolley.
That scene was soon gone, melted away to
form a rolling plain with few, if any structures.
The sun was now cast before the trolley
and slowly descending.
“We are the only ones, alive, here,”
Mumm-Ra said.
WileyKat was getting tired, he was bored
and found it hard to keep his eyes open.
Trees formed around the car, there was even a lake yet in his wandering
mind he saw that the whole terrain consisted of nothing more than a grid of
lines forming perfect squares all the way out past the horizon and to
infinity. That image soon faded.
His stronger, gentler seat mate put an arm
around him.
“Mumm-Ra, what do you dream about?”
“I remember darkness only.”
“I haven’t dreamed yet, I think.”
“You will soon enough. Are you comfortable?”
“Yes.”
The car stopped suddenly and its front
doors folded open on its own account since there was no driver, there was no
one visibly in control. An older-looking
woman entered -- WileyKit. She stepped
forward and she looked around. “No, no,
this can’t be right. No. I’m alive!
I’m alive! Don’t you
understand? I’m not dead yet.” She got off.
Two others boarded and took their seats -- they had punched out tickets
in their hands.
“Did you have a ticket?”
“No.”
“I didn’t have one either.” He looked right into the mummy’s eyes, his
bright red eyes. Mumm-Ra helped his
small friend to sit on his lap, he wrapped his heavy, agile arms around him.
The train stopped and the doors opened,
nothing happened until it occurred to the two that they should get up and out
of the trolley right then and there.
The car sped along without a further
moment of pause.
WileyKat and Mumm-Ra had exited in a
densely rural area with no improvements except for the tracks and a dirt road
that crossed it. The mummy led his
friend by the hand down toward the foot of a dark, green hill. Though they were in a forest, nature was
silent. Only the cool air whispered as a
soft winds blew gently.
The sun was no longer visible in the sky
by the time they met up with a pebble road.
There they turned and walked on to its terminus where a small, one-story
house stood. It struck WileyKat and he
wondered why there would be such a thing amidst trees, shrubs and a
crystal-clear lake.
An old woman -- was it Cheetara, was it
Pumyra, the face was so aged, so aged -- sat on the porch dotting over a dog
busy chasing its tail. Overcome with
curiosity he broke away from Mumm-Ra and ran childlike to them.
His friend followed closely,
cautiously. “Where are they?” he asked
when he arrived.
“I don’t know, they disappeared like a
mirage.”
They looked around in confusion.
The sun set, the sky darkened, there was
no old woman or dog that night.
“Should we go in? It’s getting cold out here.”
Thinking a little, the mummy at last
approached the door. It opened without
difficulty. They entered the dark
interior -- a spacious living room.
There were two red sofas, an arm chair next to the door by the
window. A coffee table, large and
square-shaped, with two large lamps, magazines and potted plants on it. The farthest wall held two wide bookcases
stuffed to the brink with books and loose, yellowed papers.
Mumm-Ra let WileyKat explore the rest of
the house once he felt sure that no one else was within. WileyKat took a few steps forward and made a
left turn into a large hall. The first
door he encountered was that of the kitchen.
That room was warm and brightly lit.
The countertops where granite and all the appliance, from the
refrigerator to the dishwashers had a shinny, metallic finish that though over
all plane it was very beautiful and familiar in a remote and disconnected
way. There was a small wooden table with
three chairs in utter contrast by its older-looking style.
A modest bathroom followed and after that,
all the way at the end of the hall, was the bedroom. To his surprise it was the coldest room in
the house. Central to the room was a
large bed. On the sides of its head were
night tables, each with its own lamp.
Two chests and an ample desk with a chair were the only other articles
of furniture.
The desk was stuffed with pens, papers and
other office supplies. There were
journals and calendars, a camera and film.
There was also money, lots and lots of money. One drawer in particular was full of maps,
another with small memo pads. The items
were fresh and unused.
Back in the kitchen he found the mummy
over the stove.
“I hope you’re hungry.”
“I’m starved.”
“Good.
I’m making you a small dinner.”
WileyKat sat on one of the chairs, Mumm-Ra
served him fried eggs and mashed potatoes.
He was given one glass of water and another of juice.
A few hours later he was in the living
room reading one of the books. When he
finished he began to write in a journal.
His letters were smooth and neat and he was very proud of it. After twenty pages of narrative he took a
shower and changed in to some new, looser clothes for the night.
In the bedroom Mumm-Ra sat at the desk,
studying maps, unaffected by the dreary forces of sleep. There were keys on the tabletop that WileyKat
had not seen before. He hugged his
friend good and gave him the journal to read and write in if he wanted to. With that he snuggled himself in bed alone.
The next morning he awoke to his friend’s
persistent shaking.
“We have places to go, we can’t stay
here.”
“I know, I knew from the start. Will you leave me?”
“No.
Never. Now come on, it’s time to
get up.”
WileyKat fixed himself a bowl of serial in
the kitchen while the mummy packed supplies into large, green backpacks. There were three of them: two that he would carry and one for the
youngster.
Outside in the back of the house Mumm-Ra
was waiting, folding some of the maps he had taken from the desk. WileyKat stumbled on his way over while
carrying that heavy load. Without a word
spoken the two began to walk.
In his decayed, mummified form he said to
the kitten: “It’ll be a long trip, but there’ll be plenty of stops along the
way.”
“Where are we going, Mumm-Ra?”
The mummy smiled for the first time: “To where the sun sets.”
The pebbled trail snaked across the land
toward the greenish mountains. The sky
was blue though covered sparsely with white clouds. The air was silent, the world had not yet awoken,
greeted the new day.
An omnipresent over-silence hung
oppressively in the hot, dry air.
Two Thundercats lumbered through eerie,
murky passages. The stonework everywhere
was covered in the thick, dust-encrusted remains of spider webs. An arcid sand with the texture of talc was
spread around the rough floors. It did
much to deaden the sounds of their approach but it also produced its own,
telltale alarm.
“Where are we now, Tygra?” Panthro asked
to the air. He looked to his left --
even if his friend was not invisible he could have never seen him. The blackness of the darkness was almost a
substance in itself, an ethereal, liquid mass that engulfed the interior of the
pyramid.
“We’re just under the crypt. The stairs are around here, somewhere.”
They continued to roam, feeling the walls
with their outstretched hands. True to
his word and past experience, the staircase was there, further down the length
of the hall. The cold steps led up to a
flat lid of wood, decayed and brittle.
Tygra was nervous -- he had never encountered that before.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
“It is, Panthro, we just have to be
careful.”
Panthro was afraid that the lid was
connected to hinges in dire need of oiling but that was not the nature of the
mechanism. The board was just something
that had been placed over the opening and it slid with a slight noise only
under their very careful guidance.
The darkness of the main vault was hardly
alleviated by the dull incandescence of the red flames of the torches that
adorned the support columns. The small
fires roared in a low howl though neither wood nor any other fuel was consumed.
The walls were cast in shadows that gave
the engravings an extra dimension of texture.
Even the lifeless, painted Egyptian figures seemed to dance in the
quivering flicker of the light.
The crawled between the tall statues. The four representations of evil that
encircled the pool. The figures were
tall and loomed into the shadows of the upper ceiling. The heads remained obscured and invisible
except for the eyes that glowed with the intensity of the torches.
Mumm-Ra’s sarcophagus was open, its cover upright against the tomb. It was whole for the most part although the
edges were cracked and chipped. A
blurred inscription was carved into a small, thin line across its form around
that part that corresponded to the ‘neck.’
The crypt was empty but none stared into
it long enough to tell for sure.
The purple waters of the pool bubbled but
not violently -- Tygra remembered some of the earlier times. The turbulent surface seemed to have an oily
slick that emitted a pleasant odor. On
occasion something long and intertwined with pulsating veins would surface,
swim around for a while and then sink once again.
Tygra and Panthro walked to the back where
there was a small shrine built around the statue of a bronze half-human,
half-jackal. Its arms were parallel over
its lap -- WileyKat rested on them, wrapped tightly in a red blanket. The tiger examined the boy. Bruises along his forehead had been padded by
linen bands. Dried blood had trickled
from his mane but the wounds, too, had healed.
He did not seem to be further harmed or under any spell, but of course,
no one could say for sure without a complete exam back in Cat’s Lair where they
could have a better look.
Panthro undid the blanket slowly, softly
-- he did not want to disturb him awake too soon, not while they were still
within the pyramid. The boy stirred but
quickly resumed his slumber. He mumbled
under his breath but the words were faint, formless.
WileyKat clasped in his arms a teddy bear,
brown with black eyes.
“What by Jagga? Where did this come from?” He looked it over after he had removed it
from the youngster’s grasp. He let it
drop on the floor then took the boy into his arms.
He and Tygra left as swiftly and as
stealthily as they had been allowed to come.
Allowed because Mumm-Ra had overseen it
all along, he had let the pair infiltrate his lair after the last of the great
earthquakes had done its work. The
Berbil village had been eradicated and with it the luster of the Thundercats
had been tarnished a little more.
Already there was talk in the Treetop Kingdom, among his agents and
operatives, about severing the bonds that tied them to the protection of Cat’s
Lair.
“My plan has worked perfectly,” he
whispered.
He had watched the scene unfold from a
distance and when he was certain that the three were gone he stepped forward to
the shrine. On the ground he noticed the
plush top. He picked it up and held it
under the light. Around the neck was a
linen cloth with word written in red ink:
“Homage to thee, Osiris, Lord of eternity, King of the gods, whose names
are manifold, whose forms are --” he stopped and, with the bear still in his
hands, he walked to the open tomb.
His hands trembled when he tugged at the
warm, fuzzy thing -- he held it tight to his breast while the lid slid in place
and the world was dark once again.
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