Robert W. Walker

by Zombie Eyes

  “How can we combat this dread?” Stroud asked, grasping the skull in his hands once more.

  Just as he did so, Kendra Cline pushed open the door and stared at the light emanating from within the crystal skull and realized that the naked man sitting in the lotus position and cradling the skull in his hands was Abraham Stroud.

  The crystal went dark and Stroud spun around, a look of sheer anger directed at her. “Get out and close that door, and stay out until I’m ready for you!”

  She backed out without a word, fright distorting her features.

  Stroud prayed that the spirit in the crystal would come again. It may take more hours now, thanks to Kendra’s barging in.

  “You are Esruad,” said a soothing voice from inside the crystal. “Esruad is you. It knows this, and now you know this.”

  “Esruad,” Stroud said. “Stroud … Esruad … Stroud … Esruad.” The words took on the flavor of a lilting chant, and soon the light from inside the crystal returned.

  “There is a way,” it told him.

  “Thank God.”

  “You must take the battle to it, into the ship,” said the voice from the skull.

  “Who are you?” Stroud asked. “Why should I trust you? As far as taking the battle to the ship, it’s sheer suicide for us all.”

  “There is a worse fate waiting in store for you if you do not, Stroud. Trust me.”

  “Why? Why should I trust the spirit of the skull?”

  “Spirits … for there are many of us imprisoned here.”

  Stroud thought about this and recalled the demon’s saying that it was legion, that it was everyman. The similarities were eerie, save for the voice. The voice that had spoken through Weitzel rattled demonic; the voice in the skull sounded desperate and terribly sad.

  “I am you,” said the voice.

  Stroud shook his head in confusion. It was the sort of thing his grandfather’s ghost might say, but it wasn’t his grandfather’s voice. “I don’t understand.”

  “I am Esruad.”

  “The Etruscan?”

  “Follow my dictates.”

  Stroud felt somehow connected to the spirit of the crystal, and that it was no accident that Mamdoud was moved to get the crystal into Stroud’s possession; in fact, Stroud wondered if his having gone to Egypt in the first place hadn’t been somehow “preordained” by Esruad, who, in the netherworld of the spirit, had known that the ancient ship would be unearthed long before Stroud or the others knew.

  “You are to take me with you, into the pit,” said the shining, silvery crystal skull in the half-light of the candle. “You must do it.”

  Stroud wondered how. How were they possibly going to get past the army of guards without themselves becoming victims? He wondered if he should reenter alone with the skull, somehow holding off the zombies.

  “They will part for you, Stroud, so long as I am in your possession.” It read his mind, his thoughts. For a moment, he wondered if this was not all a trick of the satanic power menacing the city. He recalled how Weitzel’s body had been used in an attempt to kill him, recalled the claw hammer that had come down at his own skull, recalled the attack on him, Kendra and Nathan.

  “Trust me, Stroud, as I must trust you.”

  “How will we destroy Ubbrroxx?”

  “Ubbrroxx must choke on the crystal.”

  “Down its throat? But what will happen to you?”

  “I will only rest when it is done. I and the 500,000 other souls trapped in this crystal.”

  “Five hundred thousand?”

  “Our souls give the crystal its life and energy.”

  Stroud marveled at the revelation. “You … you are the ones who sacrificed the others to Ubbrroxx?”

  “To our eternal shame and damnation, yes.”

  Stroud was finally beginning to understand the Etruscan seer in the crystal.

  Stroud rejoined the others to find Kendra on the telephone, with someone from the hospital, it seemed. They were still searching for and talking about a medical cure, now something to do with brain chemistry. Stroud went to Wiz and Leonard, cradling the crystal skull in the crook of his arm. The other two men stared at it, seeing the silver shimmer of lights that seemed to race through it like the electrical synapses in the human brain. It unnerved the two archeologists while at the same time fascinated them.

  “I need to know all that you have on this man Esruad, Wisnewski,” he told them.

  “I’ll make it available to you—”

  “At once.”

  “—at once, yes.”

  “What about the skull, Dr. Stroud? What does it mean?” asked Leonard.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to learn. It could prove to be our most powerful weapon, or our downfall.”

  Kendra hung up the phone and said, “What’s left of my team at the hospital has discovered on autopsy that the levels of serotonin in the brains of the zombies is at extreme levels; that this thing acts on the human mind through a narcotic effect much stronger than anything we’ve ever seen. We have drugs that can counterattack the serotonin levels, but it’s dicey staging a chemical war inside a man’s head. The ‘cure’ could be as dangerous as the disease.”

  “Put together whatever you can, Dr. Cline,” Stroud told her. “We’re going to need all the weaponry at our disposal when we reenter the pit.”

  “Not me,” said Leonard. “I’m not going back down there. If you fools—”

  “Suit yourself,” said Stroud. “I’ve got some research to do.” He then joined Wisnewski, who led him to the books and pamphlets he wished to see.

  There Stroud hunched over the material, with the skull beside him as if reading along with him, the eyes sparkling below the light. Wiz thought he saw movement inside the crystal, forms and shapes, but perhaps it was the light as it played over the thing.

  “In an hour,” Stroud informed Wiz, “we’re all to meet and form a strategy against this thing. Tell the others. There’s no more time to lose.”

  “Yes, of course, Dr. Stroud,” said Wiz, closing the door on Stroud.

  In Wisnewski’s darkly furnished, book-lined office, Abe Stroud gathered the others around him and told them what he had learned from the crystal skull.

  “The Etruscans could not destroy or even contain the evil. Their backs to the wall, as ours are now, they fed it instead, giving in to its demands, much as we are now.”

  “But we haven’t given in to its demands!” shouted Wiz.

  “No, you haven’t, Dr. Wisnewski, nor did Dr. Leonard, but every man out there at the pit tonight has.”

  “But they’re helpless to do otherwise,” said Kendra. “They’ve been—their bodies have been invaded, taken control of by this thing.”

  “Every single one of them has the choice,” he corrected her. “They may be unaware of the choice, or afraid to face it, but each one of those zombies out there can either die or serve this devil. That is the choice given them. But in serving, they must feed the unholy beast.”

  “You learned this from staring into that skull?” asked Leonard.

  “The zombies will sacrifice the rest of us, just as you said, Dr. Leonard. The zombies are not the sacrificial lambs, we are—those left uninfluenced by the monster. It feeds on our pain, our fear, our being and our senses. It does not enjoy feeding on the emotionless automatons it has created of the others. They’d feel no terror, no suffering, as we who remain whole and intact do. The zombie herd is created to ensure that the demon gets its due, and according to the skull, it has raised the ante, as you’ve said, to five million souls.”

  “How can you be sure of all this?” asked Kendra, coming toward him to resolutely stand before him. “Suppose it’s a trick … this … this skull spirit. Suppose it was sent here by the thing in the pit?”

  “It is bound up with the demon, yes. It holds the lost souls of those who committed the others to the demon’s tortures so many hundreds of years ago, and those trapped souls in the skull belong to the men, wo
men and children who sacrificed their brothers, sisters, mothers to the creature in Etruscan times. The principal voice in the skull was that of this man named Esruad.”

  “The soothsayer?” asked Wiz. “The one much mentioned in the records?”

  “It was no coincidence that we found his document in the ship,” added Stroud, pacing now. “The creature has confused me with Esruad on more than one occasion.” Stroud stopped before the skull, his hand lightly moving over the object as he said, “Esruad was a magician of sorts and a physician in his day. He dabbled in what we might call alchemy and witchcraft. In fact, it was he who discovered a method of fashioning pure crystal into skull molds, a technique which is unknown and considered impossible today. He molded the skulls to house the souls of men like himself for a dual purpose.”

  Wiz, Leonard and Kendra were now held in rapt attention, as he continued. “One, the skull acts as a receptacle for the souls of men filled with greater remorse than can be contained anywhere else in the universe. Two, the skull acts as a kind of beacon or transmitter through history.”

  Wiz took a deep breath and came around to Stroud, saying, “My impression of Esruad was that he was some sort of Rasputin, or Merlin—”

  “He sacrificed many lives to learn of the mysteries of the universe,” said Stroud, “but this one mystery was more horrible than he had begun to suspect until it was too late. He was quite likely the first surgeon, the first man to cut into a cadaver to unravel the mysteries of the human body. He also dabbled in the occult, and it led to Ubbrroxx.”

  “An evil man?” asked Kendra.

  “He believes so of himself.”

  Wiz corrected Stroud to a degree. “As scientists we have precious little to base moral judgments—”

  “He has made the judgment for us,” Stroud said.

  “Locked himself for all eternity in the cube of the skull,” said Wiz, understanding. “Soul transfer?”

  “Something like that, but he also took what remained of the others who’d succumbed to the zombie rule of the creature.”

  “But how did Esruad fall under its influence?”

  “Damned thing is powerful and devious. Don’t know the full story, but it had to do with a woman.”

  “Sure, blame it on that woman Eve,” said Kendra.

  “Esruad blames himself and the weakness of his race.”

  “And at the moment this thing in the pit believes you are Esruad?” asked Leonard.

  “Yes, and we intend to use that to our advantage. Furthermore we know its name, and we have the crystal skull.”

  “That won’t be enough—not against this thing,” said Leonard.

  “We have to trust that Esruad knows what he is doing,” Stroud replied.

  “Trust a voice encased in a crystal skull that only you can hear?” asked Kendra. “I think I’ll trust to my anti-serotonin drugs, if you don’t mind, Stroud.”

  He met her eyes and saw the sincere confusion there. “Yes, of course, we must rely on our own devices as well … by all means.”

  Leonard went to a corner, the fear of returning to the pit under any circumstances twisting his insides. Wiz, too, was frightened of the prospect, but he went to Leonard and said, “It is a thing we must do, Samuel … you know this.”

  -14-

  Abe Stroud had held on to the helicopter and they boarded on the rooftop of the museum, making a stop at the hospital, where they picked up protective suits, the darts, dart guns and the medication required. One of the doctors, something of a genius, according to Kendra, had created a gaseous form of the medication and this was placed hastily into spray canisters that the “space” men returning to the buried ship could carry on their backs. Stroud never let go of the skull, keeping it always in his sight.

  “How’re we going to get past the army of zombies bent on tearing us limb from limb?” asked Kendra. “Have you seen any of the TV footage on what’s been happening out there at that damnable construction site?”

  She took him into a waiting room where a TV was running the horrible scenes over and over as if even the inanimate electronic set itself could not believe the pictures it was conveying. Some shots from a helicopter, obviously, showed the extent of the horror. The zombie horde had become like one animal, working in unison as the deadly limbs of the creature at its center, both protecting and feeding the mouth. In the dark, it looked like a bottom feeder, buried in the ocean floor, sending out rays of spiked tentacles to draw in its food. The most horrible sight was that of the live bodies being transported from the perimeters of the limbs to the center, disappearing down and down into the thing.

  “Christ, we’ve got to end this thing now! The time’s come!” Stroud shouted when he realized that Leonard and Wiz were standing just behind him, both men mesmerized by the sight on the TV screen.

  “How the hell’re we going to get past that?” Wiz asked virtually the same thing as Kendra had.

  Leonard was simply frozen by the sight, mumbling, “My God … my God…”

  “We’ll get in. They’ll part for us. It will know we are coming in of our own accord and it will like that,” said Stroud. “It will see us as self-sacrificing, as it had Esruad.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, I am.” He went to Kendra and said, “You stay behind here. There’s no need for you to—”

  “Oh, no! I’m in, Stroud, for better or worse.”

  “Kendra, there’s no reason for you to go in there.”

  “Let Dr. Leonard stay back. He’s obviously distraught!”

  “And have you take my place?” asked Leonard. “I may be afraid, but I’m not so afraid that I would send you in my place.”

  “Stroud is right. We’ve already been exposed to this evil, the three of us. We’ve come away from it not unscathed, but we’ve shown it that we have the courage of our convictions,” Wisnewski began. “Dr. Stroud’s right. If we are to beat this thing, we must show some backbone.”

  “We entered the pit earlier,” said Stroud, his hands outstretched to her in a supplicating gesture. “Kendra, we are marked, but you are not. We must go back. We have no choice. Not even Leonard has a choice, not if he wants this thing utterly and completely ended and out of his system.”

  Leonard nodded like a man who has been told that a son has died, not wishing to accept it, but not knowing any other way. “I was infected. It was inside me, using me up…” He was remembering the dark night of the soul imprisoned within him by the evil. He was remembering the hole he had fallen into, the feeling of being trapped and held down and used. He’d been an insect pinned to a wall.

  Wisnewski, too, was recalling the horror of having had his mind and body taken over by something that had crawled around inside him. “We have to go back … to finish it.”

  “Or it will surely return to finish us.”

  “You’ll need medical help down there,” Kendra said. “It’s almost a certainty. And no one knows the safety features of the protective suits as well as I.”

  “I’m telling you it’s too dangerous, Kendra.”

  She glared at Stroud. “I don’t need your condescension or patronage, Stroud, or your O.K. for that matter. You do, however, need me. You need my damned formula, and where it goes, I go.” She held up one of the large dart guns and a vial of the dark medicine she and her team had created to combat the zombies.

  Stroud looked from her to his watch and back again. Time was ticking away, and with each minute more people were dying outside. He feared desperately for Kendra. She had no idea what she was letting herself in for, and should something happen to her…

  “Dammit, Stroud, let’s do it!” she shouted.

  Wisnewski frowned and Leonard said, “She may be of valuable assistance, and we’ll need all the assistance we can get, Dr. Stroud.”

  Stroud saw that he was outnumbered now. “All right, all right … but you stick close to me, do you understand?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Everyone ready?”
>
  “Let’s be on our way,” said Wiz.

  “Before I break down,” added Leonard.

  Stroud instructed them all to get their gear up to the waiting helicopter immediately.

  As the helicopter hovered over the sight of the army of zombies that continued to draw innocent people down and down into the hole at its center, Stroud and the others stared in rapt fear and awe at the power this evil wielded from below. “We’re going in!” shouted Stroud.

  “It’s madness to attempt it!” shouted Leonard from the rear, seated beside Wiz.

  “The skull will protect us!”

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as it takes! Dr. Leonard, you will not be returned completely to normal unless you face this thing.”

  “I may be dead before I’m cured of my fear, Stroud.”

  Wisnewski tried to console his friend in the rear of the chopper while Kendra Cline stared from the crystal skull on the console of the helicopter, in plain view, to the horror below. As she did so a light began to grow from within the skull and the light gained in intensity and vigor as they neared their destination. The light shone down on the colony of zombies like a strobe beacon and suddenly there was a halt to the frantic, insectlike work of the zombies, and then they stopped altogether.

  “I see it, but I don’t believe it,” she told Stroud.

  “So far, so good,” he replied, setting the machine down in the midst of the mob. They were completely surrounded by thousands upon thousands of zombies.

  “They will let us pass,” Stroud tried to assure the others, who were not fighting at their seatbelts to step from the false safety of the bubble they sat behind.

  “Can we be sure of that?” asked a worried Wiz.

  “Yes, now hurry!” Stroud’s voice was tinged with a mix of anxious frustration and a healthy fear of his own as he climbed from the pilot’s seat, taking the skull firmly in one hand, his helmet in another. They all got out, strapping on and snapping down the last remaining portions of their protective wear as the zombies looked on in wide-eyed silence, a green eerie glow about them where their own eyes emanated a strange light. They were a ragtag army of people from all walks, all ages and all manner of dress, their clothes torn, soggy and soiled, many wearing clothes stained with blood. Kendra tried to keep her mind focused on Stroud and the skull, as did Wiz, pulling at Leonard to stay close.