The New Night Guard

Chapter 6

The next several days had fallen into a steady routine once everyone was awake. Roaming the halls with Ahkmenrah telling her about ancient Egypt, eventually stopping by the African Mammals exhibit to get the lions use to her. They had gone from lunging at the gate to ignoring her, Ahkmenrah thought it would be safe to let them out soon. There had been a couple more times when Ahkmenrah had to break up fights between the Vikings and Huns. That seemed to be the only time he really took charge of a situation, the rest of the time he seemed to avoid taking charge or even giving advice unless asked. There had been one time the Union and Confederate soldiers had been fighting about something and he had stepped in to break up the fight, while not as commanding as when dealing with the Huns and Vikings, he had the same authoritative edge to his voice as when he had insisted on keeping the cats. He had jumped right in to breaking up the fight, chastising the soldiers, but as soon as the situation had been diffused the same look of nervous fear crossed his face as when May had caught them in the park.

When they were alone May had asked him about it and he had admitted that while he thought of the other museum inhabitants as friends, some even as family, he just couldn't shake the fear that if he overstepped his authority that he would be locked up again. He knew it was highly unlikely that would ever happen, but as much as he tried to ignore it the fear was always there. The fact that he had considered the people who had known about him to be his friends at Cambridge and they had locked him up, didn't help.

Teddy had continued to make sure everyone was in place at sunrise. When May had asked him if she should be doing that he had admitted that while Ahkmenrah didn't know it, Larry had told Teddy about Ahkmenrah's claustrophobia, looking for advice on how to help him. He also admitted to watching her and Ahkmenrah before coming in to let her know everyone was in place. He had never seen Ahkmenrah get back into his coffin as willingly as when he knew May would be there to talk to him until the sun rose. He had insisted that for Ahkmenrah's sake he would continue to ensure everyone one was in place while May kept Ahkmenrah's mind off of being closed in the coffin for the day. Over all May couldn't imagine there being a better job.

That Friday McPhee had called and asked May to come in early.

"Why did you need me to come in early?" May asked as she walked into his office.

"I forgot to let you know, we have a group of kids from a local orphanage that come in to spend the night at the museum every year. You'll have to keep a close eye on them," McPhee told her.

May hoped he couldn't see how badly she was panicking and asked, "What should I do with them? What did the other night guards do when they came?"

"Just give them a quick tour and then make sure there's always an adult keeping an eye on them, they'll sleep in the cafeteria. The old guards use to lock them in there after the tour, but Larry lets them wander around a bit as long as they're supervised."

"Okay," May said before heading off to find a private place to make a phone call. As soon as someone picked up the phone, May asked, "Larry?"

"Yes, who is this?" he asked.

"Its May, your replacement at the museum," she replied.

"How are things going?" Larry asked.

"Great until McPhee just told me there's a sleep over tonight," May replied.

"Don't worry about it, Ahk already has that taken care of, some sort of way to make it so he's the only one who wakes up. Almost like an alarm clock that he has the tablet set up to do that on the night of the sleep over as soon as we know when the kids are coming, it's been set for months already," he told her.