"We've got to get out of here!" Nathan shouted as the police were driven back and away from the pit.
"Thing is protecting its territory," Stroud told Nathan. "All of this is premature. It knew ... it somehow knew some of us were going to try to cut it off from the zombies, and now this. It has called them here to take charge of the pit. Tomorrow, they'll be dragging people down into the ship."
Kendra had joined them, the supply of syringes having been exhausted early.
"What're we dealing with, Dr. Stroud? What kind of intelligence is it?" begged Nathan.
"We're getting closer and closer to understanding it. We'll find a weakness, but it may take time. As for now, we've got to get out of here if we wish to remain alive. Kendra, come on--the helicopter."
"Here, Stroud, take this. It has three darts in it," she told him, shoving a dart gun into his hand.
Stroud gladly accepted the weapon, seeing she had one of her own.
Nathan's men were suddenly being engulfed by the horde, along with Gordon's men. Shots had continued but they were few and far between now. Casualties mounted on both sides, but the overwhelming numbers decided the battle before it had begun. Stroud had to tear Nathan away, the man firing his last round into the swarming zombies. Kendra's dart gun stabbed one that reached out for her with an empty syringe in his ugly, emaciated, bony hand.
"Forget fighting! Get to the chopper!" Stroud shouted, and urged her along, Nathan following, to their only visible means of escape. As the massive swarm moved on them, Stroud stopped to turn and fire. He put three darts into three of them in rapid succession. Each of the lead zombies coming toward them fell into fits and spasms, making a part of Stroud pity them, but hardly had his heart gone out to these poor devils than the others merely stomped over them, crushing the leaders underfoot in an attempt to get at Stroud and the other "living" people.
By now they saw no one else standing; only the chopper and its pilot ahead of them held out any hope whatsoever. Behind them, the ambulances and police cars had been swarmed. The chopper pilot, sporting a brown leather jacket and cap, shouted for them to hurry. Stroud looked over his shoulder when he heard Gordon scream and scream again, caught under the pounding force of the herd.
Nathan jumped in and helped Kendra aboard. Stroud stood just outside the chopper and yelled at the top of his lungs the word Esruad, and this had a visible effect on the teeming zombies, slowing their relentless movement toward them. "Hurry! Now!" Kendra shouted to Stroud, who leaped into the cockpit as the bird was lifting.
"Oh, God, oh!"
"Jeeee-sus H. Christ!" shouted Nathan.
Below them a flood of human automatons covered the construction site. They'd overwhelmed Nathan's men, the men in hard hats, killed Gordon and Kendra's two assistants. Kendra quietly sobbed in the rear seat alongside a terrorized James Nathan, who had reloaded and aimed his gun but stopped himself, realizing it was useless.
For as far as they could see, the zombies stood in waiting around the pit, there now to protect the ship and to bring the others--people like those in the helicopter--to the thing in the ship, where it would quietly feed for as long as it wished.
Stroud imagined such a death would be far worse than dying at the hands of a werewolf, and even worse than dying the slow death of a vampire victim. Something about this creature was nasty and vile and more evil than anything Abraham H. Stroud had ever faced.
"What was that word you called out to them?" asked the pilot, who introduced himself as Luther Stokes.
"A name," was all that Stroud said.
"Why'd they slow up just when you said it?"
Nathan drew himself forward, wishing to hear the answer. It was as if Nathan were suspicious of Stroud.
"Esruad ... something Leonard found in the writings ... an ancient name."
"I thought you had shouted your name, Stroud," said Nathan.
Abe thought of the similarities in the two names momentarily, but his eye was caught by Kendra's. She now looked at Stroud from her perch in the rear seat alongside Nathan. She was trembling, her eyes red, tears still falling. Far below, the ambulances that had carried her, Mark and Tom into the foray were covered in the human flood. Only the soft tones of nightfall helped the scene of what looked like a million ants feeding over the life down there.
Stroud's sharper eye saw the procession toward the pit and the ship, the bodies of the living, perhaps Gordon among them, being escorted to the creature in the dark recesses of the hole.
"We're going to have to go back inside," he said. "We just need more time ... a little more time."
Nathan suddenly snapped, incensed. "Time? We don't have any bloody time left, Doctor Stroud. This thing is sapping the life out of this city. And you stood in my way down there! Had we buried that thing, maybe ... just maybe--"
"Bullshit, Commissioner! This isn't going to be so easy or simple, and it never was! It wants 500,000 of your citizens, remember? And it doesn't trust us to draw straws, so it has come out to get us. Don't you see that?"
"Five hundred thousand?" asked Kendra.
"That or more," he replied. "Look about you. Look at the sacrifices. It's readying for a mass slaughter, and it wants them all in that hole."
"Christ, Stroud, how do you know this?"
"Records ... the items we brought back ... archeological evidence. We even know what the Etruscans called this thing: Ubbrroxx. Now, will you please listen to reason?"
"You call this reason?"
"It's our only chance, Commissioner."
"Why should I believe you, Stroud? One reason why."
"I'm the only man that's come out of there intact, untouched by this thing, and it fears me because of this."
Nathan dropped his gaze and slowly began to nod. "All right, all right. What do you need from me and my department?"
"All the help I can get," he said, staring down at the teeming multitude that seemed to be feeding on itself. The site disappeared as the chopper turned sharply right and swooped away. Stroud's thoughts went out to the poor souls trapped by the being, used by the being and fed upon by this evil entity. He tore away his headset and closed his eyes on the thought, resting his head as rotors beat above them. He soon again worked the headphones over his ears so that he could communicate with the pilot, giving him directions for where he was to take them.
"I will feed on your soul, Esruad..." came a faint whisper through Stroud's headphone, a whisper from someone in the helicopter. But it was the same demonic voice that had lived in Weitzel.
Below them the city lay stretched out like an enormous circuit board lit with sparks of electricity and beams of pulsating stars--automobiles screeching about in what seemed a mad bowl of punch. Lights blinked on all sides of them, towering monoliths that represented mountainous terrain. Far below, the bridges and canals crisscrossed one another like the veins in a man's hand. The Hudson River swarmed up toward them as if to swallow them up when the helicopter tilted toward the water. Stroud grabbed hold of the throttle to steady the sudden wobble, and in the distance he caught sight of the forest that was Central Park.
The pilot's hand fought his and he turned to stare into Stroud's face. Luther Stokes's eyes were fiery yet green and icy all at once, a palpitating presence reaching out through him in an attempt to destroy Stroud.
"Stroud! Stroud!" Nathan was shouting.
Stroud caught only a brief glance of the C.P. and Kendra in the rear as the helicopter began a wild gyration that plastered them all against their seats.
"Going down! Going down!" the insidious voice of the demon cried through Stokes's lips, having locked Stokes's hand on the throttle.
Stroud, who had flown helicopters in the war, tugged at the controls as the demon's laughter filled the bubble. Stroud shouted for Kendra to fire a dart into Stokes. Then he shouted for Nathan's help. "Shoot the pilot! Shoot him!"
Neither Kendra nor Nathan could readily respond, as the cab had become a centrifuge and they, like Stroud himself, were laborin
g under such centrifugal force that they might as well have been in a force-nine gale wind. Nathan could not straighten his line of fire, nor could Kendra.
Stroud brought up his knee, letting go of the throttle, bringing up both his feet and kicking straight out at Stokes's head. The force sent the other man into the door, jarring it loose. Stroud regathered his balance when the chopper righted a bit in response to Stokes's having let go. Stroud saw that he was reaching now for the controls again, and that was when Nathan's .38 exploded through the cushion of the seat and ripped through him. This only momentarily stunned the man, and he fought again to take the controls back from Stroud.
The dizzying whir of the helicopter continued, its rear rotors cutting stone as it edged about a building. Stroud turned her toward a relatively safer path along the river.
But Stokes's hands possessed the strength of the demon, and Stroud realized just how much energy the monster must have to make such remote attacks on him. It had to be staggering. For now, however, he had to get the reeling chopper safely grounded.
"Kendra!" he shouted for help, and finally heard the whuuuuup of her dart gun.
Stokes's reaction was a banshee scream, and Stroud kicked and punched and pushed out at him again, sending him, hanging on the door, outside the cab. In a moment he laughed, tugging the helicopter to one side, and shouted maniacally, "Goooooing dowwwwwwwn!" With that he dropped from the door panel some sixty or seventy feet to the pavement, splattering like an overripe melon.
The helicopter was still spinning, and Stroud remained in battle with the machine as if it, too, were possessed of the demon. It took Stroud's entire strength to hold her, his biceps bulging against the throttle. He needed lift, but the machine wanted to drop from the sky and end its crazed dance. The gyrating cockpit pushed Stroud back and back, disallowing the leverage he needed. It was a catch-22 of the deadliest kind.
"Stroud! Stroud!" Kendra cried out as they skirted past brick on all sides.
Stroud pulled himself to the controls and held firm, firmer, praying all the while, when suddenly she gained a bit of lift, as if taking a breath from her destructive course. Stroud took advantage, pulling for lift, and she responded, lifting ... lifting, no longer losing altitude. When Stroud righted the lopsided machine in the air, he saw that they had spiraled to within fifty feet of the ground in a fiery free-fall over Central Park. He had no idea how they'd gotten to this location.
"What the hell happened?" asked a breathless Nathan.
"Stokes was taken over by the damned thing in the pit!"
"How? How can it do that?"
"How can it turn thousands into zombies?"
"Why? Why's it keep coming after you, Stroud?" asked Kendra, still fighting for her own breath.
"Perhaps if I knew the answer to that..."
"As if it has targeted you?" she continued.
"I'm afraid I'm not very safe company to be keeping."
Nathan guffawed at this. "Damned straight there."
"But thank God you know how to fly this thing," Kendra said.
"Yeah, but it didn't know that." Stroud turned the whirly-bird a bit too sharply, causing Kendra to gasp again.
"It's all right. I've got her under control now. Commissioner, you think you can get clearance for us to land at One Police Plaza?"
"Not a problem. Give me that radio."
Still breathing heavily, his .38 in one hand, Nathan took the radio and called for the necessary clearance on the gleaming roof with the bull's-eye targets just ahead of them. It looked like a concrete heaven to them all.
-11-
Stroud, Kendra Cline and James Nathan were all shaken at what they had survived, and the lives of those lost weighed heavily on their minds. Nathan wanted to call in the National Guard and the U.S. Army and perhaps return to the site and destroy the zombies, every man, woman and child among them. It seemed the only way to proceed from his vantage point. Stroud asked for restraint and for time.
"At least enough time to determine the true nature of the enemy, Commissioner."
"There is no time!"
"Look here, you called me into this thing and now you're going to listen to me, dammit!" Stroud shouted, losing his temper. He had dealt with Nathan's type before in Chicago, with the cannibalizing werewolf that was stalking the city streets there less than a year ago. Nathan knew of his success with that unusual case, and he had no doubt heard the rumors and read the wild reports of other bizarre cases which Stroud had solved.
Nathan turned to Stroud, his wide shoulders heaving with a mixture of uncertainty and frustration. He gave a fleeting glance toward Dr. Cline, but she offered him no help. She had remained in a semi-trance on seeing the deaths of her co-workers. She'd had a chill and Stroud had located a blanket for her shoulders and a cup of steaming coffee.
"You tried it Gordon's way!" Stroud said adamantly. "And look what it's gotten us! Now, for the love of God, man, try it my way."
"I've got people I've got to answer to," he said feebly. Then he began to pace before them. "What is it you intend to do? What's Stroud's way?"
"I intend to lead an expedition back down into the ship, to face this thing on its own ground."
"That's madness," he said. "What guarantee do you have you'll come out alive?"
"Very little, perhaps none ... but this thing, whatever it is ... I don't know why, but I sense that it wants me. And thus far it has come after me on its terms. It's time I turned the tables, but first I've got to gain help from Wisnewski and Leonard, to learn more about this evil. Do you understand that?"
"And in the meantime?" asked Nathan, banging his fist on his desk. "What about those zombies out there? What do we do to stop them?"
Stroud had no answer for the commissioner. At a loss for a resolution to the problem, he knew he must gain more knowledge, ferret through the information Wiz and Leonard might provide back at the museum.
Nathan's intercom buzzed with an irritating bee sound, and the voice of rancor from people downstairs at the sergeant's desk spelled trouble. "Commissioner, you've got to get out of the building!" shouted someone at the other end.
"Casey? Casey, what's going on down there?" shouted Nathan.
"We're under attack! The zombies, hundreds of them! Spilling through every doorway, breaking in the win--"
The line went dead to the sound of gunfire. Nathan looked up at Stroud and their eyes met. "They've followed you here! They're after you, Stroud--you! God damn it all, we could just feed you to them and maybe ... maybe this thing would go away!"
"Maybe ... and maybe not, Nathan."
They stood staring hard across at one another, Stroud's steely gaze telling the other man that he wouldn't go as a willing sacrifice to Nathan or the others. "Or maybe I'm the only hope your city has, Nathan. Think about that. Why has it singled me out for sacrifice? Because it knows something you don't--"
"What? What does it know, Stroud?" Nathan's hand inched toward his chest and shoulder holster.
"It knows enough to fear me, that I hold the key to its mystery; that I can dispel that mystery in time--if given the time."
"They're at our doorstep!"
"Then get us out of here!" shouted Kendra, tossing off the shroud around her. "Do as Stroud says! Get him to the museum."
Nathan held his ground and slipped out his Smith & Wesson. Outside they could hear the shouting, screams and gunshots as the zombies continued toward them.
"Get us up to the roof, to the helicopter!" she shouted.
Nathan hesitated further.
"With me dead, New York doesn't stand a chance, not even with the help of the armed forces," Abe assured Nathan, whose gun hand was shaking, sweat beading about his forehead and wide cheeks.
"Come on!" he finally said, tearing open the door. The hallway was scattered with bodies, both policemen and zombies. Nathan fired on a wave of zombies coming along the stairs, shouting, "This way! This way!"
Nathan led them toward the service stairwell, but when they fle
w through the doorway, it was filled with zombies on the levels above and below. They ascended and descended toward the living as soon as they somehow realized that it was Abraham H. Stroud.
"Elevators, elevators!" shouted Nathan, backing out, racing around a terrace that overlooked the lobby below where the gunshots had died and the place was swarming with more and more of the mindless army of zombies. James Nathan saw that they were quickly being surrounded on all sides by the zombies, and even he realized it was useless to fire his weapon into the crushing wall of them. Kendra and Stroud pounded in frustration for the elevator to come, but it appeared that it would be too late.
The zombies closed in on both sides, leaving only the act of leaping down to the horde below in the lobby as an out, and that was no out.
Then came the ping of one of the elevators and they rushed to enter it, only to find it filled with zombies, backing them away. Another elevator arrived and from it poured more zombies.
"We're dead, Stroud," said Nathan. "We're better off taking the quick way out." He lifted his revolver to his eyes and fanned the drum, prepared to take all their lives.
"Esssssruuu-ad," said the zombies in unison all around them, and several joined hands and suddenly dissolved into a mire of brown muck from which was formed a devilish form that creaked and quaked as if half formed, the ugly eyes spewing forth frothy brown snakes, the mouth like the hole into Hell. "Esssssruuu-ad," it said to them. "You see now I can destroy you at any time--any time!"
"Then get it over with, you bastard mutation!"
Nathan pulled back the hammer on his .38, his hand shaking. He was poised to use the gun first on Kendra, preferring to see her dead to becoming a victim to the filthy mob of zombies that barred their way, along with the gruesome creature that had been formed from a number of their bodies.
"Nooooooooo, Esruad," said the creature, "I want you to come to me, Esruad ... and bring your friends." It ended with a horrible, satanic, croaking laugh.
Meanwhile the zombies had remained frozen in place, as if made of stone, and these statues could hardly be said to be breathing--all but the several who had been formed to simulate the appearance of the demon. These had coalesced into a horrible and hideous, multitentacled monster with enormous holes for eyes from which squirmed snakes that leaped out and reentered its body below, disappearing into the muck of its outer skin, a kind of brown ooze. The surface was slick with slime and Kendra hid her head in Nathan's chest, unable to watch the snakes feed from the thing's eyes. Parts of the zombie men who had gone into forming the creature--their limbs, eyes, ears--could be seen swirling about in the muck that they'd become. It had somehow devoured them whole.
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