Chris Kuzneski - Sign of the Cross

Once they cleared the confines of Orvieto and headed toward the Italian countryside, Boyd was finally able to relax. His breathing returned to normal. The color reemerged in his cheeks. The knot in his stomach began to loosen, and his racing heart slowly slid from his throat.

Suddenly reenergized, Boyd removed the cylinder that he’d rescued from the Catacombs and stared at it. To him, the unearthing of the Catacombs was an event that would rock the archaeological community for decades to come. But the discovery of Orvieto paled in comparison to the item in his hand. If the Roman cylinder actually contained what he thought it did, the entire world would sit up and notice, not just a bunch of professors from the world of academia.

Front-page news all over the globe. Boyd’s picture on every magazine cover.

Before he got too excited, he realized he had to make sure that the promised treasure was actually inside. While Maria took a nap next to him, he held the cylinder next to the window to see if he’d missed anything in the gloom of the Catacombs. With the exception of the engraver’s inscription, the object was completely smooth, containing no ridges or flaws of any kind. Both ends appeared solid, as if the metal had no seams. But Boyd knew that wasn’t the case.

The artifact from Bath had looked solid as well, yet after running it through a series of tests, he discovered that one of the ends was covered with enough metal to keep air and moisture out but not enough to make it impenetrable. All he needed was a screwdriver, and he’d be able to pierce the metal top, then peel the surface back like the top of a can of nuts.

Desperate, Boyd glanced under his seat, searching for something to break the seal. Next, he checked the video camera bag, but all of the fasteners were made of plastic, which was way too flimsy to penetrate the top.

Bloody hell, he thought to himself. This cylinder is the key to everything. There has to be -

And then it dawned on him. He had just muttered the answer to his problem.

Boyd removed the key to his rent-a-truck and pushed its tip against the edge of the bronze cylinder. The container hissed as the seal was broken, allowing air that had been sealed for two thousand years to escape from the tube. With trembling hands, he pushed the key in harder, then peeled the thin layer of metal toward the edge. Not the entire way, though. He had no intentions of removing the document on the bus. All he wanted to do was to see if the scroll was inside.

To get a good look, Boyd raised the cylinder skyward, hoping to use the sun as a spotlight. But as he brought the opening to his eye, his concentration was broken. The scenery that had been rushing past at a steady pace had slowed to a crawl. The roar of the bus engine, the sound of the surging wind, and the chatter of his fellow passengers had disappeared as well.

‘Maria!’ Boyd shook her fiercely. ‘Wake up! We’re stopping.’

Her eyes popped wide open. ‘What do you mean we’re stopping? Where are we?’

‘In the middle of nowhere.’

She blinked a few times, then glanced out the side window, trying to place the terrain. Unfortunately, the sunflower fields and lush patches of green grass were commonplace for the area. There was no way she could tell anything from farmland.

Moving into the center aisle, she walked toward the driver, hoping to see a road sign or a mileage marker that would pinpoint their exact location. Regrettably, the only thing she saw was the bright hue of flashing lights. She rushed back to Boyd. ‘There’s a roadblock ahead!’

The color disappeared from his face. ‘They’re looking for us! I knew it!’

Maria realized the odds were pretty good that Boyd was right. ‘The way I see it, we’ve got two choices. We can try to talk our way out of this, or…’ She put her hand on the emergency door and opened it. ‘Or we can get the hell out of here.’

Not waiting for his response, Maria grabbed the video camera and slid out the back of the bus. Boyd followed her lead and climbed out as well.

‘Now what?’ he demanded. ‘Where to now?’

Maria crept to the back corner of the bus and looked around. ‘Damn! Where’s the rest of the traffic? There should be other cars!’ She glanced back at Boyd. ‘Did we go through a detour while I was sleeping? We aren’t on the highway anymore.’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. I was studying the cylinder.’

She growled softly. ‘Damn! We’ll have to run for it. That’s our only alternative.’ She eyed the terrain on both sides of the road and realized the field of sunflowers would be perfect. ‘If we can get into the flowers, we should be able to hide until they search the bus and leave.’

Boyd nodded, then wrapped his hand around the cylinder like a sprinter in a relay race. ‘All right, my dear. You lead. I’ll follow.’

After taking a deep breath, Maria burst from their hiding place and leapt into the belly of the golden field where flowers sprouted to seven feet tall. Boyd followed her through the labyrinth of stalks, catching faint glimpses of her as she scurried through the sun-colored field.

The bus driver knew something was wrong the instant he heard the call. In his twenty-plus years with the company, this was the first time that the police had ever radioed him with a new set of directions. At first he figured there was an accident up ahead or maybe a traffic jam, but when he saw the flashing lights on the rural road, he knew it was something worse.

They were looking for one of his passengers.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced in Italian, ‘please don’t be alarmed. This is just a routine stop by the local authorities. I’m sure we’ll be under way shortly.’

‘Are you sure?’ someone shouted. ‘Because two people just jumped out the back.’

‘Jumped out?’ he demanded. ‘What are you talking about?’

Before the passenger could answer, one of the cops at the roadblock hoisted an M72 Light Antitank Weapon onto his shoulder and fired. The rocket launched with a mighty whoosh , propelled by gases that burned at over 1400°F, and slammed into the metallic grill of the bus.

Fire roared down the center aisle like a flood, burning everything in its wake: the seats, the luggage, and the people, literally melting the skin off their bodies in a horrific ball of flames. The unlucky few who survived the impact of the rocket scrambled blindly in the black smoke, searching for a way out. They flailed wildly at the broken windows, trying to squeeze through the holes that lined the frame even though the razorlike shards punctured their faces and torsos.

Finally, one of the men came to his senses and opened the emergency exit in the back.

‘If you can hear me,’ he screamed into the smoke, ‘come this way!’

Seconds later, he saw a petite woman fighting her way through the inferno, dragging a badly burnt man whose face looked like it had been removed with a blowtorch. The first man didn’t know where she’d found the strength, yet she’d somehow managed to drag him to the rear exit.

‘You’re almost out,’ he assured her as he helped them to the ground. ‘We’re almost free.’

She tried to thank him but could only manage a hacking cough. At least she was still breathing, he thought. At least she had made it through the flames and had managed to save one of the passengers in the process. Somehow, miraculously, they had survived this tragedy.

At least for the moment.

While staggering from the bus, he spotted the policemen in the distance and screamed to them for aid, not realizing that they had started the fire to begin with. The smallest of the cops rushed forward like he was going to help, like he was going to put out the fire with the long nozzle that he held in his hands. But instead of giving them assistance, he did just the opposite.