Incarnation by Edward Bonadio

(1 rating) Rate this Story (5 best) 1 2 3 4 5

"So you are afraid of a little ancient hocus pocus are you? Ok, I'll have your men extracted within the hour. My team is staying tonight. We'll show you that your ancient rites don't scare American rangers. Besides, we have to RECON the area and finish the mission."
An hour later, Nazir and his team was on a chopper heading back to base. The Egyptian took the stone with him, promising Mohammad, "You are not to blame for the words you spoke, but I fear that we have inadvertently awakened a terrible thing, an evil hidden for centuries. The stone will go back to the authorities. I will make a report and see to it that the tablet reaches the museum of antiquities in Cairo."
Mohammad agreed, "There is no other choice but to place it into the hands of our learned men and I am glad to have retrieved such an important artifact." Nazir gave Mohammad the task of protecting the tablet on their trip back to base. However, the boy refused to remove it from his backpack, afraid to speak the words again in any language.
That evening, the major set up a perimeter around the destroyed terrorist camp. The bodies of the dead Islamists lay stretched out in front of the abandoned brick hut. Diggs let some of his men stay inside the hut but stationed two on the eastern perimeter and four more to the north and west sides of the camp. There were thirteen U.S soldiers on the team and Major Diggs took up residence in the bed of the Toyota truck at the southern edge of camp.
At midnight, the carnage began. As each terrorist body came to life, they waited for the unspoken command of their master. When all became fully reincarnated, on his command they turned their revenge on the unsuspecting souls in the hut. Without much of a fight, six rangers in the structure were beaten and hacked to death. No shots rang out, but their muffled death throws alerted those on watch at the edge of the camp. The ranger sentries stared out from their positions searching for invaders but they were next to succumb, their lives snuffed out from behind by unseen hands wielding large rocks, shovels or other makeshift weapons. Major Diggs lay asleep in the back of the Toyota unaware of the ongoing mayhem, but something stirred within him, a result of bad dreams and the premonition of doom channeled by Nazir's fears. The major awoke in a puddle of sweat, just in time to hear the muffled screams from the last of his ranger scouts. Feeling that something was terribly wrong, he dared not call out or to away his position to the intruders.
Nearby, strange sounds emanated from the well. Something was crawling out from the darkness of that ancient pit. Its opening echoed from the sound of falling debris and the occasional splatter of mud chips plunking into the dark water. The entity was alive and ascending from his grave. The evil priest had festered for centuries in his watery prison and the incarnate soul longed for his day of reckoning. His remains, thrown into the cistern by Pharaoh's soldiers, had long ago decayed until nothing was left but minute particles of dust and mud.