Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

I pictured eyes watching in the dark. My groping grew desperate. My hand swept right, front, left.

Finally, my fingers closed on a metal tube.

I drew the flashlight to me and hit the switch.

Sickly yellow lit my body. I almost wept with relief.

The growling kicked into high.

Heart thudding, I pushed to my elbows and played the light over the northern and eastern walls.

No jackal.

The southern wall.

No jackal.

Reorienting, I swept the beam over the western side of the tomb. Every recess was filled with dirt and rock, leaving no crevice in which a jackal could hide.

I was probing the loculus closest to me, when a trickle of dirt cascaded down the wall.

The batteries chose that moment to die.

I heard movement above my head.

Fighting back tears, I shook the flashlight. It kicked back on.

I raised the beam.

The loculi were stacked one above the other in the western wall. The jackal was crouched in one of the upper-level recesses.

When my beam hit her, the jackal drew back her lips and snarled. Her body tensed. Her limbs flexed.

Our eyes met. The jackal’s were round and shiny.

A sudden realization. The jackal, too, felt trapped. She wanted out. I was blocking the tunnel.

We stared at each other. I stared a split second longer.

Snarling, the jackal launched herself at me.

I reacted without thought, dropping to the floor, wrapping my hands around my head, and tucking into a fetal curl. The weight of the jackal hit my left hip and thigh. I heard a snarl, and felt the weight shift.

Levering an elbow, I tried dragging myself away from the tunnel mouth. Paws hit my chest and moved toward my throat. I tucked my chin and crossed my arms, expecting teeth to rip my flesh. Then, the press of weight against my torso, the brush of fur against my head, and sudden release. The jackal had bounded over me and upward.

I heard panting and claws scraping stone. I turned my light toward the tunnel. The jackal was slinking out of sight.

Amazingly, the flashlight continued to shine, though weakly. Quick assessment. I gave the jackal time to put mileage between us, then crawled toward the tunnel. There had been some collapse, but the stones were nothing I couldn’t handle.

I spent two minutes lifting and rolling rock, then positioned my feet as before and flexed to heave myself upward.

And realized my left hip had taken a hit. Great. All I needed was another tumble and I’d be down here for a very long time.

Dropping back, I tested my legs.

As I shifted from foot to foot, my light angled upward and caught a hollow from which rocks had been knocked free.

I let my beam sniff the scar.

It looked deep. Too deep.

I rose and wedged myself upward into the tunnel for a closer look.

The scar wasn’t a scar. It was a breach.

Angling the beam, I peered into the void beyond.

It took a moment for my eyes to pick it out.

It took another for my mind to comprehend.

Oh my God! I had to show Jake!

Injuries forgotten, I pulled myself upward.

Just below the tunnel mouth, I paused and peeked out, prairie-dog style.

The upper chamber looked empty. No Jake. No jackal.

“Jake!” I hissed.

No answer.

“Jake!” I repeated as loudly as I could without bringing in vocal cords.

Same nonresponse.

I braced my feet, threw out my arms, and pulled and pushed myself onto the upper-chamber floor.

Jake didn’t appear.

Ignoring the objections of my shoulder and hip, I rose to a squat and looked around in the flashlight sweep.

I was alone.

I listened.

No sound filtered in from outside the tomb.

Rotating quickly, I moved my beam through the velvety black around me.

Blue flashed in the darkness of a northern loculus.

What the hell?

I knew what the hell.

I worked the light. I was right. The hockey bag.

But why? Where was Jake?

“Jake!” Full vocal.

I dropped to all fours, crawled toward the loculus, stopped. Jake had hidden the bag for a reason. Reversing, I crawled toward the tomb’s entrance.

It was then I heard the first sound since leaving the tunnel. I froze, head cocked.

A muffled voice.

Another.

Shouting.

Jake’s voice. Words I couldn’t make out. Hebrew?

More words I couldn’t make out. Angry words.

A soft thud. Another.

Running footsteps.

The blackness grew blacker. I glanced toward the entrance.

Legs were blocking the small square of sunlight.

IN A HEARTBEAT, BOOTS SHOT INTO THE TOMB. ABODY FOLLOWED. A large body.

I scrabbled backward and pressed myself to a wall. Crumpled cans jabbed my knees and pop-tops gouged the palms of my hands.

My mind flashed again to the man on the valley rim. My heart pounded. Sweet Mother of God! Would I live through this day?

Tightening my grip, I raised the flashlight, ready to strike.

The body had settled onto its haunches, back to me. My beam lit coconut palms on Waikiki blue.

I took my first breath since seeing the legs. Outside I could hear shouting.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Hevrat Kadisha.” Jake threw the words over one shoulder, never taking his eyes from the entrance.

“I don’t speak Hebrew.”

“The goddamn bone police.” Jake was panting from exertion.

I waited for him to explain.

“Da’ataim.”

“That clears it up.”

“The ultra-Orthodox.”

“They’re here?” I pictured men inshtreimel andpeyos rolling over the rim of the Kidron.

“In force.”

“Why?”

“They think we have human bones in here.”

“We do have human bones in here.”

“They want them.”

“What do we do?”

“Wait them out.”

“Will they leave?”

“Eventually.”

That was not reassuring.

“This is insane,” I said after listening for a few moments to the shouting outside.

“These cretins show up at excavations all the time.”

“Why?”

“To harass. Hell, we often need police protection just to do our jobs.”

“Isn’t access to archaeological sites by permit only?”

“These head cases don’t care. They’re opposed to the unearthing of the dead forany reason, and they’ll riot in order to stop a dig.”

“Is theirs a majority view?” In my mind’s eye the bearded men now carried posters and placards.

“God, no.”

Outside, the voices eventually stilled. Somehow, I found the quiet more disconcerting than the shouting.

I told Jake about the jackal.

“You’re sure it was a jackal?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“I didn’t see it run from the tomb.”

“She was moving fast,” I said.

“And I was focused on those morons out there. You’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Sorry,” Jake said. “I should have checked before we went down.”

I agreed wholeheartedly.

Outside the tomb, the silence continued.

I shone the light on my watch. Nine-seventeen.

“What’s the law in Israel regarding human remains?” I asked, still speaking in a loud church whisper.

“Bones can be excavated if they’re about to be destroyed by development or plunder. Once they’ve been studied, they must be handed over to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for reburial.”

As we spoke, Jake kept his eyes on the small opening through which he’d just slithered.

“Sounds reasonable. Similar statutes protect native burials in North America.”

“These fanatics are hardly reasonable. They believe halakha, Jewish law, forbids any disturbance of the Jewish dead. Period.”

“What if a site is about to be bulldozed?”

“They don’t care.” Jake flapped a hand at the entrance. “They say build a bridge, dig a tunnel, reroute the road, encase the whole bloody tomb in cement.”