by Brian Lumley
“It’s done,” said Garvey, opening his door. “Funny thing, but she wanted to know if you are okay, too!” And as he got out of the car, Trask asked him:
“Oh, and what about you? Are you okay now?”
“One h-hundred percent,” the telepath grunted, his hoarse voice giving him the lie as he followed locator David Chung out into the misty, gradually brightening predawn air. “Why, it’s just like old t-times!” But yes, Trask knew he would be okay.
And with the ground mist wreathing their legs, the eight took cover as best they could, wincing at each buzz and whirr, every zip! and spang! of ricochetting bullets.
“You techs,” Trask called out. “These weapons of ours—even this Swiss stuff—they aren’t much good over a hundred, maybe a hundred and ten feet. They’re not accurate enough. But what about your crossbows? I’m thinking if we can take out the searchlights . . . ? It probably won’t help much, but it will give these snipers something to think about, let them know they’re not beyond our reach up there on those balconies.”
No sooner said than a pair of ghostly figures hurried to position themselves one at the nose of the supply trucks, the other at the rear. And not ten seconds later—
There sounded the soft whirr of a bolt in flight. And:
—Glass shattered as a searchlight beam blinked out and a yelp of shock and outrage echoed down and across the esplanade. A moment later and there came a stream of curses as the lens of the second searchlight splintered, its beam instantly fading.
Except this time the cursing didn’t stop but changed to a series of questioning shouts, a terrified babbling, and finally a massed, hysterical screaming. And despite that the clamour of automatic gunfire had suddenly picked up to a furious pitch—a veritable fusillade—it was no longer directed toward Trask and his people, no longer rained down on the esplanade.
Along with Garvey and Chung, Trask ran half crouching to join Tech McGrath at the front of the parked trucks. The hard-as-nails Scotsman’s crossbow dangled loosely from his hand; his heavy jaw had fallen open; he was staring in disbelief at twin, jutting rock balconies over the cavern complex’s entrance. This was where the searchlights had been located. But as for the men who had worked them, and others who had fired bullets down the paths of the sweeping beams—
—All but one had mysteriously vanished, and the one who remained was even now cartwheeling down the face of the facade, screaming as he fell, his machine pistol flying. And behind the balcony’s chunky drystone wall, a group of grotesque, tattered scarecrow things stood severely silent, their eye sockets glowing with bioluminous corruption, their white teeth clenched in bony jaws under less than half-fleshed faces!
It was the same on the second balcony, on various ledges, and in openings all along the hollow facade of the crag: these things of leather and bone and shrivelled flesh, nightmarishly revitalized.
Despite that Trask knew what he was looking at, still his legs trembled as he stepped out from behind the truck into full view. With eyes that couldn’t see, still they saw him; and with hands that shed their fingers, shreds of sinew, pieces of mummied muscle, they beckoned him and his team on!
Standing behind Trask, Garvey laid an unsteady hand on his shoulder, causing him to start, and said: “Well, and what did I t-tell you? It’s just like old t-times, right, boss?”
“Right,” said Trask, his throat dry, his flesh creeping.
And David Chung sighed and said, “So now you know what St. John has been up to. Scott St. John—Necroscope! I wasn’t mistaken about him after all . . .”
46
Ben Trask could well imagine what it must be like in the reception area of Schloss Zonigen right now: the horror and insanity of the situation. He knew where these dead people had come from—the only place they could have come from—and how, by whom they had been brought back to pseudo-life. He and E-Branch knew these things, for they had known and “understood,” as best anyone and even extraordinary people such as themselves might ever understand, the terrible talents of the original Necroscope. He and his team knew, yes, but as for the crag’s defenders . . .
Had they believed, he wondered, that they’d seen all there was of terror and madness in the labyrinthine levels of Schloss Zonigen? The physical abnormalities, the malformations and mutations that the Mordri Three had visited upon their hostages: had these been considered the ultimate objects of revulsion, repulsion? Scarcely, for many if not all of the female prisoners, no matter how grotesquely mutilated, had been very badly and sexually used; even some of the males.
And having witnessed or—God help us!—experienced such atrocities, had it then been believed that every nightmare fantasy was made known, that there was nothing left of malevolence and its effects that might damage or even dismay the “sensitivities” of those who had seen and even partaken of such evil?
Well, and if so, by now they knew how wrong they had been. Not that the dead were evil, not where Trask was concerned, but as for Schloss Zonigen’s defenders—
—Oh, yes, he could well imagine it:
Those crumbling creatures, dead people, not all long gone into corruption, but some so desiccated by failed or neglected cryogenic systems and the resultant ice in their veins and organs that they were literally breaking up; those vengeful revenants, impossible to stop and impervious to bullets that passed right through their bodies; those zombies slow-marching to the attack, shuffling inexorably on, silent and utterly relentless, their skeletal arms reaching.
And now several of the dead were up there on Schloss Zonigen’s rock balconies, urging Trask’s crew forward with flapping rags of arms and bony, beckoning hands . . .
Within the hollow crag the sounds of shooting and screaming had slackened off, and as a silver rim began to form on the eastern peaks Trask’s thoughts snapped back from macabre reverie to the current situation. This one battle appeared won, but not the war. And time so very limited now.
Turning to his half of the team, he said, “Back into the cars—now!” And raising his voice he shouted along the row of parked supply trucks to where the precog and his people waited for his orders: “Ian, do you see what’s happened?”
“Yes!” came the high-pitched answer. “Good Lord, yes!”
“Then get back into your car,” Trask yelled. “We’re going to crash those doors!”
With the defensive gunfire from Schloss Zonigen effectively at a standstill, there was nothing to stop E-Branch’s tech drivers as their vehicles broke cover, accelerated out onto the frozen esplanade, and went skidding and fishtailing toward the doors. In an explosion of twisted aluminum and disintegrating safety glass, the cars took the buckled frames and a shower of flying shards with them into the reception area.
There the techs brought the cars to a sliding, screeching halt and the team piled out. Crouching, half closing their eyes in the dimly flickering, strobing lighting, they spread out and scanned the area for danger. But while near-distant gunfire was clearly audible, nothing seemed to be happening here.
As the electrics continued to sputter and flare, Trask spied behind the desk a white-faced, slack-jawed man with frantically swivelling eyes. Dressed in the grey uniform of a guard where he stood spread-eagled, trembling against the wall, he was no longer a threat. His machine pistol lay on the desk directly in front of him but he made no effort to reach for it. That was because a pair of dead men were with him, flanking him, waiting for him to make a move . . . which eventually he did when his legs gave way under him, and his eyes rolled up, and gurgling in the back of his throat he slid down the wall out of sight.
When the lights steadied up a little Trask’s agents took in a scene of utter mayhem. Grey-clad corpses were everywhere; they sprawled where they’d fallen, in deepening pools of their own blood, and it was obvious that the walking dead had turned their own weapons against them. Indeed, as the sounds of continued shooting echoed from somewhere deep within the complex, and near-distant shouting and screaming gradually faded away, so Schloss
Zonigen’s first victims—victims of hope and lies and greed—made themselves apparent.
They had been waiting in the shadows but now came creaking forward, forming a gauntlet that narrowed toward the arched-over portal of a major passage to the central areas. And there they came to a halt, let their commandeered weapons fall, and stood facing inward toward Trask and his crew. Silent and severe in countenance, still they were by no means threatening. Some were shrivelled, as dry as dust; some were wet with melting ice; and others . . . were simply wet.
But as one they lifted dusty, damp, or rotting arms, pointing out the route that Trask must take.
“Yes, I know,” he husked. “And I thank you. We can’t thank you enough.” Then, finding his own true gravelly voice, he told his team: “Let’s go!”
Within the passage—a great ribbed natural conduit, more like a lava run than a tunnel proper—the floor had been levelled and tracks laid. A pair of open-sided bogies, like the cars on a roller coaster, stood with their motors humming however unevenly. Two more dead men from the cryogenic level stood watch, and there were several more bodies beside the tracks where fleeing Mordri guards had been brought to a permanent halt.
The corpses stepped back as Trask’s team boarded the cars and the techs operated the simple controls. Looking back as the vehicles lurched forward, Ian Goodly saw the dead men slump and crumple to the floor. Their work here was finished.
And it was the same in the reception area. The Necroscope Scott St. John’s fifth-columnist warriors had now rejoined the Great Majority; they lay where they had surrendered once again to the darkness and the chill of Death’s embrace, but at least they would know something of peace now . . .
While in a different tunnel, and closer to the central cavern:
Three things had happened almost simultaneously as Mordri One commanded her personal bodyguards to open fire on Scott and the people he had freed. First: Wolf had crouched low, snarled, and leapt straight for Gelka’s throat in an attempt to distract her from Shania. Second: a renewed and vengeful Gunter Ganzer, Shania, Scott, and the ex-hostage to whom he had given a weapon, they’d all commenced firing in their own right. And third: several small explosions, a sudden uproar of shouting and curses, and the inexplicable but undeniable sounds of discharged firearms and close-quarter fighting had been heard echoing from the direction of the cavern of the machine itself.
Then . . . it was as if everything happened in slow-motion.
Scott was hit; he felt no pain, only surprise and disappointment, and a blow as from a huge fist, as the bullet passed through his shoulder under the collarbone and took him off his feet. People to left and right of him—it seemed like a great many of them—were being taken out, blown away, some of them mouthing their shock, their pain, as they drifted to the floor.
Dazed and beginning to hurt, Scott had lost his shotgun; his fingers were numb where a second shot had snatched it from his hand. But at the same time, as he came down on his backside on the dusty floor with his legs spread wide in front, he felt a jolt as the butt of his flamethrower thumped down behind him and the weapon rebounded and swung around in front on its sling. He caught at it automatically with his left hand, and his numb hand sought the triggers. Where the hell were they? One trigger for the pilot light, the other for the searing, cleansing fire.
But everything was happening oh so very slowly. And there was Gelka Mordri, no more than nine or ten feet away from him.
Torn by hot, flying metal, Mordri One’s henchmen had been gunned down. Gelka, too, had been hit, as witness several dark, spreading stains on her kaftan. Nothing vital had been damaged, however, and she showed little or no concern about these presumably “minor” injuries. For after all she was Shing’t; she could heal herself. But she was concerned about Wolf where his weight was throwing her off balance. He had sunk his fangs deep in her scrawny shoulder and was swinging from her like an erratic pendulum, twisting and turning with her every movement.
Scott found himself wondering, Where’s Shania?
I’m here! she answered, from the rocky niche to which she had transported immediately after firing off both barrels of her shotgun at one of Gelka’s bodyguards. I used the localizer to jump to safety—or rather, my Khiff took control of my mind and made me make the jump . . . and thus is now doomed. For the device is finally drained!
Scott gritted his teeth, felt rage flaring, and answered, It’s empty, dead? And without the localizer your Khiff will die, too? Well, she won’t be going alone. This Mordri bitch is going with her!
But he couldn’t use the flamethrower because now Gelka had torn Wolf free of her shoulder and was employing Shing’t paralysing power to hold him in front of her like a shield. And what was more—from the demoniacal look on her face and the way her taloned fingers were vibrating—Scott knew that she was using the touch on him!
“Hah!” she cried, throwing the howling animal in his face. Now, however, her expression changed to one of fear. She’d seen the flamethrower, the pilot light flaring as Scott squeezed its trigger. But before he could find the second trigger she issued a mad wild cry, backed off, and used her localizer. Swirling up from the floor, a dust devil filled the space where Gelka had been . . .
“My Khiff!” said Shania, hurrying through the shocked, frightened crowd and going to her knees beside Scott. “My poor Khiff! For now, for a time, she lives on but must slowly fade and die. And you . . . how badly are you hurt?” She slid her slender hand inside Scott’s parka and his tracksuit jacket—and then slid a finger into the hole in his shoulder!
“What in the . . . ? Damn!” said Scott, reacting to her touch and instinctively snatching himself away from her. But already the pain was receding, and he was reminded of what she was and what she could do.
Altered flesh is easy, malleable, she told him. But badly damaged flesh is more difficult. I can only start the healing, take away the pain. The rest is your body’s business. But you are healthy and you’ll come to no harm. I shall never let you come to harm! And she hugged him fiercely.
“Look after these others,” Scott said, carefully freeing himself and getting unsteadily to his knees. “Especially him.” He meant Wolf.
What . . . what’s happening to me? said that one from where he lay curled close by. What is this . . . this pain, this terrible hurting? Even on my father’s island when I was cut, cold, wet, and starving, I never knew anything like—like—Argh! Arrrgh!
Wolf’s cries of agony were mental and physical, his howling tore the air! He convulsed; his back arched; his tail grew stiff, bending up and over to lie flat along his back. And his dark anus began to split wide open, showing a pink interior as the inner flesh slowly curled back on itself!
Shania cradled him, stroked him, and Scott could almost feel the alien energies she expended. In another moment Wolf’s howling ceased; he writhed in Shania’s arms and then lay still, panting. The grey-furred flesh at his rear curled back, closed in on itself, and he was healed. Scott took him in his arms.
It is as I’ve demonstrated, said Shania, instantly turning to one of the human wounded, a young woman. Altered flesh is easily corrected—what has been put wrong by the touch can be put right—whereas torn or mangled flesh can be helped but must take its own course. None of these wounds are fatal; they will heal, but until they do these people must be cared for.
“You stay here and see to them,” Scott told her then, as Wolf freed himself and struggled shakily to all fours. “And you women—” Scott spoke to the freed female hostages, “—stay with Shania, look after your wounded. But as for you men, listen—” Climbing achingly to his feet, he held up a finger. The sounds of hand-to-hand fighting from the central cavern were growing louder, more frenzied: shouts, screams, gunshots!
“That’s where we’re needed,” Scott continued. “Because if that’s not an uprising, I don’t know what is! So grab a hold of these fallen weapons—my shotgun there, and Shania’s, too—and let’s be on our way. And remember, it’s not just
our lives we’re fighting for, it’s our world!”
Without waiting to see if they would follow his lead, he took his flamethrower in both hands, ignored the throbbing in his shoulder, and headed for the bend in the tunnel. Wolf went loping alongside him, whining and limping just a little. While behind them—
Grim-faced and determined, the ex-hostages looked at each other, then took up the guns and followed in Scott’s tracks . . .
In the cavern of the alien vessel all was confusion, chaos.
Word had gone out among the workers, the forced labourers, that the now functional machine was much more than a spaceship; that it was also a colossal bomb. Certain trustees—as witness Gunter Ganzer—and even a handful of guards had heard the rumours and now believed that the Mordris had lied. There would be no share-out of precious gold among the dupes and hirelings, no freeing of hostages or righting of the wrongs worked upon them. Instead there would be death and destruction on a massive scale and for all concerned.
And even now these facts were being promulgated, broadcast from an observation shack on a ledge in the cavern’s rock wall.
It was the young electrician Hans Niewohner who was shouting into the Tannoy system’s microphone, his slobbered, sucking words reverberating even over the din of battle; red-haired and once fresh-faced Hans . . . now gaunt and hollow-eyed, whose face dripped crimson from the long slash of the razor he had used to open his sealed mouth, and his mouth itself full of blood where he’d sliced the tip of his tongue free from the hard palate. He thought he would probably die from loss of blood, but not until he wreaked something of revenge on these loathsome Mordris.
