He must surely find his enemy, the enemy of all men, somewhere out there on the other side. But which way? And was he up to it? Did he really have the courage to go on, even if he knew which direction to take, and most important, if he really knew and understood the enormity of the evil waiting just beyond the dark side for him? Why him? Because he was a Stroud? Was being a Stroud reduced to this--a curse? What would happen if he should fail? What would have happened had he not been pulled off that plane by Leonard and Wisnewski, if he had gone quietly home to Andover, Illinois, and from there on to a new archeological adventure on the other side of the globe, leaving New York to be sacrificed to Esruad's evil god?
How very strangely life worked, Stroud thought, as if in the same pattern that emanated from the earth over which water rapidly carved its movement. At the moment, Abe Stroud felt like a mere crystal of sand over which time itself was washing.
"Esraud cannot save you," whispered Ubbrroxx in his ear, and yet the voice filled the room. "You are mine now ... as he was mine once..."
"Never!" shouted Stroud, tumbling loose particles from the ship with the sheer energy of his own voice. "Never, you bastard thing."
"Be strong in your belief, Stroud. Hold firm to what you know of me." It was Esruad's voice, the voice of the skull. "Trust in me, not in anything else--not even your own eyes. I trusted my eyes, and for it, I had my eyes and my soul put out."
"You are ... blind?" Stroud quaked with the idea.
"Those imprisoned in the skull are all blind fools ... fools who did not see in life, and so who do not see in death."
"So I am to trust a blind fool?"
"Yes."
Stroud wondered what Esruad was trying to tell him. Much of their discussion here in the ship had to be in a cryptic kind of code of half-truths and innuendo, as the skull had alerted him to the fact that their enemy would monitor all their communications, just as it would monitor any communication through any modern devices he used with the others and those on the outside. Ubbrroxx would then use whatever information it could gather from these communications against Stroud.
"You may have to sacrifice the woman," Esruad had told him again, and once again Stroud said that he could never bring himself to do so.
"You must if it means winning. You must win against this evil, Stroud."
The inner monologue welled and waned inside his head like the sea tides, and there was a faint echo, also inside his head, as if bouncing off the steel plate which was acting as a kind of radar. The echo was Ubbrroxx, or that part of him that he sent out to infiltrate Stroud's mind, to gather in his thoughts, desires, fears and anguishes. Ubbrroxx was there now picking over the beaches of his memories, both good and bad, beautiful and ugly. He sensed it inside his head, but fortified with the warning that this would occur, he expected many seductions would follow. Stroud girded himself up.
The idea that Esruad knew every step the demon would take might have instilled a keen suspicion in Stroud if it were not for the shared secrets of the Etruscan's own worse nightmare: that Ubbrroxx would continue on and on and on through eternity feeding off mankind in ever greater numbers.
It appeared that Esruad's nightmare and Stroud's own coincided, and for this reason Stroud had decided to place his complete faith in the ancient wizard. But giving over Kendra to the beast ... Stroud still wondered if he could do it.
"You must," Esruad whispered in his ear, sounding now as demanding as the demon. "You have no choice."
-18-
Commissioner James Nathan could not believe the eerie calm that had come over the site of the devastation where 500,000 zombies stood against them, frozen in place. Some of his key people felt this was the time to attack, and so did the military brass, but he had made a promise to Stroud and he intended to keep his word. But holding off the others was getting increasingly difficult, especially since they had heard nothing from Stroud in an hour.
Then the communication came through from Kendra Cline, informing him of their situation, and that Stroud had gone on alone.
"How is Dr. Leonard now?" Nathan asked.
"Holding."
"And Wisnewski?"
"We're alive," said Wiz in response. "Our spines are like rubber, but otherwise we are fine. You must keep your people out, Nathan, do you understand? They wouldn't survive even a moment down here, son, believe me."
"What is Stroud doing, going on alone?"
"He has his reasons. We're counting on him, all of us," said Leonard, "possibly the entire human race, as it is shaping up. Because this thing will come again in the future, and each time it returns, it will devour more and more and more..."
"You people have a little over an hour before you've got to get clear of there, do you understand? The Army intends to shell the entire site at dawn."
"Stroud needs more time than that, Commissioner," Kendra pleaded.
Nathan shook his head and said, "I can't buy him a minute more. You people best start back now."
"No, Commissioner," said Leonard. "We stay until Stroud returns."
"Don't be fools!"
"You heard Dr. Leonard," said Kendra. "If you intend to bury Stroud here, we'll be buried with him." She hoped her bluff would buy the time Stroud needed.
"Wisnewski, you can't be as idiotic as your friends!"
"I've long been noted for my idiocy, Commissioner." He laughed into the communicator before they shut Nathan off.
Topside, Nathan seethed with frustration and anger, the feeling of helplessness so overwhelming as to make him see red.
"You should never have allowed those fool scientists in," said a Captain McDonald of the U.S. Armed Forces Special Services who was itching to turn his men loose on the zombies and his mortars loose on the pit.
"All I know is that we had a deal, McDonald, and you're going to stick to it, to the last minute!" Nathan knew that negotiating another second with McDonald and the others was useless. He stormed away from the other man to have another look through his field glasses at the calm before the storm.
He thought about his last conversation with Stroud, and the grim feeling that he would never hear the other man's voice again settled over him like a shroud. But he must resist the impulse to assume that Stroud and the others were doomed to failure, that there was no hope for them, for without that hope, James Nathan believed there was no other hope on the horizon. He didn't for a moment believe that the battery of tanks and howitzers being moved into place by the military was any match for the kind of power he had seen firsthand.
New York was his city, and on a normal night, he'd be able to look out over the harbor, maybe take his sixty-footer out for a night cruise to turn her to leeward and stare back at the jeweled necklace of the city in lights, following the constellations along the sensuous path where she lay snug against the harbor, winking ... always winking. To most people, in and out of the city, New York was a sprawling madhouse built on the shoulders of an Atlas whose main interest was commerce; to James Nathan the city was a graceful lady lounging as carelessly as a disinterested goddess like those you might see in a Babylonian temple, all-powerful and all around, and yet unseen ... just out of sight and out of range of the dimension of mankind. Until you wounded her. She could be as dangerous and unyielding as the ocean, as treacherous as a mountain glacier, callous, cold, warm as her mood dictated.
James Nathan had felt the pulse of the sensuous living thing that was New York City, and even with all her ills, she was a towering woman of substance--never to be taken for granted--and as for beauty, a modern Mesopotamia where most lived out their lives, nestled in her bosom, but never knowing her. Like lice on a mammoth elephant, krill in the presence of the whale. Most busy with their little ruts, their minds frantic with schemes that centered on themselves...
People ... what else was to be expected?
What can I take from her, from this goddess called New York? That is what people wanted to know. Take from her, always taking, stripping, biting out large chunks of her, b
ut here was Stroud, a stranger to her, come to unselfishly give his life for her. Amazing...
Nathan, a native of the goddess, had spent his life below the temple of her lights, even as a small boy in a two-room flat with his mother, helping to support her through illness and alcoholism. He recalled nights on end, looking out his dirty little window over that grocery store at the towering monoliths that looked like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, the lights gleaming so proudly that they sent shards of themselves as far away as here, to him. He saw the towers, the lights she held out to him in the darkness, and dreamed of one day taking something from her as well. All his life had been a struggle to become, and now he had reached his goal.
Now it was time to give something back to the city, and that prize was a man named Abraham Stroud. His home was threatened, and he had had to trust in a man who was more than just a man, a man who had some hold over the evil from below. Nathan found a dark corner in the bunker he shared with the radioman, gave a passing thought to his dead mother and prayed silently for Stroud's success.
Abe Stroud decided it was time to communicate with the others left behind, to be certain they were all right, and to tell them it was time they began back toward the surface, to get as far from the ship as possible. He reached Kendra, who had been for some time trying to get his attention on the comlink.
"Abe, why didn't you answer? We were worried sick--"
"Never mind that now. Did you reach Nathan?"
"Yes, but--"
"Did you gain any more time?"
"You'd best not bank on it, but we told him we weren't leaving you."
"Well, you are leaving, right now. All of you, out."
"Abe, the moment they see us surface, your life's forfeit! We won't do that. We can't."
Stroud suddenly heard screams coming through. Kendra and the others were under attack once more. He shouted for clarification but the static and the shouts ended and he knew no more than he did before. He was about to rush back when suddenly he tripped as he scurried over the bone pile. He got up readily and continued, but he fell once more, his feet plunging into holes opening up in the pile below him moments before he felt the quake that sent him onto his stomach again.
Stroud heaved to free himself of the bones, which seemed now to be tugging at his feet, pulling him down, ripping at his protective wear, snatching at his boots. Looking down, he saw that fleshy arms had risen from the bone pile and were tearing at him, attempting to pull him under where he would suffocate below the bones. He kicked out at them, but they seemed to be without feeling. He snatched at the wand to fire the gas, but he was hauled down and was being sucked into the quicksand of the bones.
"Esruad! Esruad!" he called out for help as he clambered for his footing. The skull rolled from the pack on Stroud's back, sending out a searing light that instantly covered the bones in a kind of radiation that stung the fleshy hands and arms reaching up for Stroud, making them loosen their grip. Stroud scrambled to his feet, finding his suit had been ripped in several places. The bulky outfit was of no further use, and so he began to tear it away. He stood in the light of the skull, bathed in it, and he somehow knew it would protect him far better than the synthetic clothing, and the paltry remainder of his oxygen tank.
Suddenly the bones opened up, and Stroud found him-self on the other side of the "feast" leavings of the creature, cascading down and down, falling with a powerful thud, the skull lost somewhere atop the mountain of bones. Stroud struggled to maintain consciousness, the glow of the orange aura of the skull weak but still a shimmering outline around him.
"Esruad ... Esruad," he moaned, but the skull did not respond. He was stunned and fought for clearer vision.
Stroud saw a hideous creature burning with fire leap into view, coming straight for him. Stroud instinctively recoiled, believing the touch of the creature would set him instantly aflame. The monster reeked of decay and it burned as if made of gaseous materials, and yet it bore the look of a desiccated body. Stroud recognized the apparition as what Wiz called a lich, the single most powerful form of the undead. It greatly resembled a mummy in its tattered appearance, but those tatters and hanging strips of cloth were once flesh. The creature's eye sockets were empty, dead blackness with a green pinpoint of piercing light at each center that served for eyes. It was obvious this thing saw best in the dark. An aura of death and coldness radiated from it despite the fire all around it.
According to Wiz's books, the lich had been a wizard or priest in life, damned to an eternal hell. The bits of cloth still dangling from the soupy, lumpy body were supposedly magical. But also, according to Wiz's books, the touch of the creature could send a living man into a frozen state of paralysis, to make him utterly unable to move.
It lunged at Stroud and missed as he sidestepped, averting its touch. The bone pile it careened into turned to burning rubble, so intense was the heat of its touch. Somehow this lich had reversed the potency of its touch and commanded enough heat to sear bone or to cremate Stroud.
Stroud didn't know what to do. The creature advanced and he fired the gas, fearing the gas would also kill himself should he inhale enough of it. But Stroud found that the magical light surrounding him acted to keep the gas out. But the lich, too, was protected by the fire around it, which consumed the gas, dissipating it. It was immune even to modern charms, Stroud thought. The lich sent out a green light from its center, which took the shape of a dragonlike snake, enormous and weaving between them, readying to strike. Stroud saw human eyes in the snake-dragon's hideous head, and he knew the creature at the center of the ship was now placing all its energies into destroying Abraham Stroud, and taking possession of the skull on its own terms.
With the formation of the dragon-snake, which was as large as a helicopter, the lich's fire dimmed and receded.
Stroud backed away from the serpent creature that began to strike, first at his left, then his right. Stroud felt out of control, felt as if he were on the verge of defeat. He saw the lich circling to his other side. The two creatures were backing him along a dark corridor that no doubt would end in his death.
"Esruad!" He invoked the name again and again, searching the darkness for the lost skull when suddenly behind him there appeared another lich, more vicious and ugly than the first, but whose vestments were in much better repair, showing a nobility about them. This lich's eyes spewed forth an orange fire and its skull was neither dirty or filth-ridden, as there was no skin, hair or gooey soup streaming from it. In fact, the skull looked absolutely sleek now that Stroud could see clearly as this one neared him.
Completely surrounded now, Stroud heard the second lich speak his name. "Stroud, I am with you. It is I, Esruad."
Stroud feared it was a trick, but he looked more closely at the lich's features, and alternating with the dead skull was that of the crystal skull. The orange-eyed lich was smoking like the first one, except that it smoked with a freezing-cold air that frothed off it, and inside of this, at the heart of it, there was a visible fire.
"Defend yourself!" shouted Esruad's new form, a form that required all of the energy of the skull. In Esruad's hand appeared a sword of ice that he plunged at the fiery lich, which now backed carefully away, a fire sword appearing suddenly in its grasp, materializing from within it.
Esruad attacked, the two swords pounding overhead, ringing with a spectral clash, fire and ice shattering in all directions as the serpent with its dragon body leaped onto Stroud, whose protective outer current was losing its charge.
Stroud saw the serpent head come at him with its fangs about to strike when his own scream mingled with that of the first lich. Esruad had stabbed it through its center and turned it to stone, and then the serpent dragon fell atop Stroud like a gunnysack, dead and reeking of years of decay, molten with an oozy layer of soup that sent waves of disgust through Stroud. Barely had he gotten to his feet when another snake-dragon attacked from behind, knocking him to his knees. This one had dropped from overhead where it had been clin
ging to the ceiling. Stroud felt the fangs lock into his throat like two enormous meat hooks; he felt the blood gush up and out, draining down his back and chest. He was in its clutches, and it had him near death when Esruad lobed it in half with his ice sword.
Stroud, weak and trembling from the venom coursing through him, knew that he was a dead man, that there was no way out from this point on. He didn't even have the strength to push away the monster that spilled its insides over him. Esruad had to do this, too, for him.
But as Esruad did so, Stroud found the strength to drag himself away from the ugly, desiccated features of his ancient ancestor, for Esruad's appearance was as gruesome as the other lich. Esruad was a lich, a long-dead wizard who had come back to life, and he seemed to grow in strength here amid the horrors of his avowed enemy, Ubbrroxx. In fact, he almost seemed to draw his new existence from the creature, as if he was in cohorts with it and had played Stroud for a fool.
"Yes, I draw strength from this place, but not from the demon," said Esruad, reaching a spindly, dead hand to him. "You have brought me to the realm where I can flourish in order to fight our common enemy, Stroud. You must continue to believe, for if you fail to do so, I can't protect you any further."
Stroud didn't know what to believe, and yet Esruad had warned that it would come to this. Ubbrroxx was deliberately placing doubt in his mind, dividing their combined strength.
And here stood Esruad as Stroud had never seen him before, his sword gone back inside the body from which it had materialized, standing in tattered yet royal raiments that hung limply on a once noble frame below the mummified creature that had stepped from the ages.
"You have no reason to fear me," Esruad almost shouted, angry at Stroud's reluctance. "If you fear me, if you doubt me, the venom of the creature will take you. Fight your eyes, Stroud. Use that mind of yours! That will."
Zombie Eyes bs-2 Page 19
