The Alexandria Scrolls

What I saw chilled my blood. Scan after scan of densely packed script. The writing looked to be very old Greek. It had that cramped, linear perfection that ancient scribes spent their lives mastering. The last time I’d seen anything comparable was on fragments displayed during a tour of the Dead Sea Scrolls. My hands were shaking when I opened my backpack to put it away. I was in a lawless land, among people I didn’t know, in possession of something potentially priceless. My eyes fell on the Luger. The limit of my weapons experience was shooting Grandpa Doran’s bolt action .22 rifle when I was a kid but even the illusion of security was a comfort. I loaded the magazine and chambered a round. The rain had picked up. There was a small river running through the tent. I stowed everything in the backpack and used it for a pillow on the canvas cot. I lay fully dressed, boots and all, under a rough woolen blanket, trying to keep warm enough to sleep. Sometime in the night I heard the rain turn to wind-driven sleet. Then I heard the noises. They were soft and very close outside the tent and I was wide awake and full of dread. I rolled quietly to a sitting position on the cot, put on my glasses and slipped my hand inside the back-pack where I had stashed the Luger. A three round burst of automatic gunfire nearly tore out my eardrums. The flashes lanced through the tent wall. I felt bullets hammer into the taut canvas where I had lain. The tent flap opened. A face appeared. It was a demon face, indistinct and red in the faint glow of the still-burning camp fire. Reflex brought up the Luger. I felt it buck in my hand. The face disappeared in the muzzle flash. I charged out of the tent under a full head of adrenaline, swinging my back pack. The pack connected with something solid. A rifle discharged. I triggered two panic-stricken shots into a dark figure and took off running. Behind me the camp exploded in gunfire. Terror carried me down the slope past the Land Cruiser, picking me up when I fell, suppressing the pain when I barked my shins, driving me relentlessly. I ran until my legs were rubber and my lungs were on fire and then sat down gasping and tried to hear through the ringing in my ears.