Zombie Eyes

She heard a noise outside the lab, some disturbance, people cheering. Her intercom buzzed. It was Mark, shouting, "We're seeing some activity in here, Dr. Cline. You'll want to come see for yourself."

"Activity? What kind of--"

"They're coming around, all of them, on their own."

"The comatose patients?"

"Yes."

"All of them?"

"Yes. Come quickly."

She could hear her staff cheering in the background. So why did she feel a cold wave of eerie fear grip her heart? There was something on the other side of her sane world, scratching with a satanic talon to rip sanity from her. She could feel it close at hand like the rush of the A/C whenever she sat below the vent. Like something trapped in the wall, scratching to get in ... or out.

She was suddenly aware of an ominous silence outside. She got up and rushed to the monitoring room, where she stood frozen with the others this side of the glass that separated them from the walking zombies on the other side. What was at first thought a remarkable, unprecedented medical phenomenon was fast becoming a nightmare. The people whose limbs worked, who had snatched out their IVs, dragging them along behind, unfeeling, unthinking and unseeing, stared back at the fully living with green-hued eyes that bored through them. The jubilation of Cline's staff had ended abruptly with the realization that these zombies had the use of their limbs and muscles but not their minds. It was clear that they were like so many marionettes, their bodies manipulated by unseen hands.

They raised their hands and arms in unison and pounded with all their combined weight against the thick glass partition, which resounded with a barrel noise as it held. They brought their combined force against the glass a second time, a third, a fourth, as the interns, nurses and doctors watched in horror.

The zombies, on the fifth attack against the glass, used their heads along with their forearms, bloodying themselves in their relentless obsession to break through. The glass shattered but held at first, a spider's web of crackling lines now masking the horror somewhat, snapping Kendra and the others out of their awe-inspired helplessness.

"Call for help! Mark, get on the phone!" she shouted.

"Who do I call? Orderlies won't touch these guys."

Tom shouted from his phone, "It's happening on every floor, every isolation ward!"

"What?"

"Every comatose patient is walking out of the hospital."

The glass was hit again and again and it began to crumble. Some men and women who tried to subdue the flood of zombies were grabbed and lifted and carried before the army. Mark and Tom uselessly threw hefty notebooks and chairs at the front of the line, trying to slow their progress as they ushered everyone back. Mark grabbed Dr. Cline, pushing her through the door.

Once everyone who was able had gotten beyond the door, it was locked behind them, but suddenly the door was being rammed. The zombies attacked it without letup again and again and again.

"I've got to call Stroud," Kendra called out, racing back into her lab, but there she saw that some of the zombies had opted for a second way out of the isolation ward, having battered through a wall, using the bodies of some of her dead staff as their battering rams. She raced from here, and now the zombies were coming through the locked door of the monitoring room, the bodies of other blood-soaked men and women used as battering rams dropped before them and trampled underfoot.

The zombies made for the corridors, the stairwells, the exits, and before them ran the staff.

Kendra found nurses cringing behind a desk on the floor below who told her they'd telephoned police, but that the same thing was happening all over New York, at every hospital and clinic that had taken in victims of the plague, that they were all moving and killing as they went.

From the windows they saw a flood of zombies amassing in the streets going blindly toward some unknown destination. "Like an army of mindless insects," said one of the nurses from a window on the twenty-ninth floor.

"Where are they going?" asked another.

Then it dawned on Kendra exactly where the zombies were going. Their goal had to be the pit at the Gordon Construction site. Gordon meant to bulldoze over the pit, having changed the design of his massive tower, but something in the pit had other plans.

She raced for the phone and dialed Stroud at the Museum of Antiquities. It seemed to ring forever before Wisnewski answered it, and when she pleaded for Stroud, he told her that Abe was just getting some much-needed sleep.

"Wake him, dammit! This is important, Doctor."

"What's happened?"

"Please, I must speak to Stroud."

It seemed another eternity before Stroud got on the phone. She almost screamed. "There's something terribly wrong going on out here, Stroud!"

"What's wrong?"

"Our comatose patients ... all got up--" Her voice was out of control.

"Then your antidote is working!"

"No! No, it isn't! They're--they've attacked us."

"Attacked?"

"En masse! They've become like--like zombies, Stroud, and it's happening all over the city, and--"

"Easy, easy--"

"--and they're all heading for the pit, toward Gordon's damned hole!"

"Christ, it's happening."

"What?" She was suddenly confused. "You expected this?"

"No, not so soon, anyway. This thing must be incredibly powerful."

"Gordon's people must be warned, and Nathan's--"

"Gordon's people?"

"Don't you see, it's got to do with Gordon's people back at the construction site."

"But we had an agreement with the mayor that--"

"All bets are off. You've been so secluded at the museum that you don't know what's going on. Gordon's calling the shots now."

"Dammit! The fool has precipitated this. Damn him!"

"Gordon's planning to bulldoze the site and--"

"Seal it off? Dammit, don't those fools know that this thing is not in the pit any longer, that it's among us! In us! If we seal the site off, we seal our own fates. Where is Nathan in all this?"

"I don't know ... Gordon's overseeing the work."

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the hospital! I was on my way to see you when--"

"Are you all right?"

"--all right? My patients are walking out on me like so many zombies, Abe!"

"But you're physically all right?"

"Yes, yes, but--"

"Good, then do what I ask."

"Whatever you say."

"That concoction you put together for Leonard. It may be our only hope at this point. Is there any way to transport as much of it as possible to the construction site?"

"Yes, but ... but why?"

"We may have to use it, Kendra."

"Use it? On the zombies?"

"It may be our only hope. Those zombies as you call them are bent on destroying us, Kendra. Don't ask me how I know this, there isn't time. Just trust me."

"You'll need some way to inject the antidote--or should we now call it poison?"

"For any of those who come to the pit, consider it poison, I'm afraid. And yes, anything you can do about injecting literally hundreds ... please bring your tools and your ideas. I'll meet you at the site."

Kendra got on the P.A. system and gathered what remained of her staff and debriefed them as quickly as possible. She asked for volunteers to go with her to the Gordon Construction site carrying the necessary materials Stroud had requested. Only Mark and Tom volunteered.

"All right," she said, "we'll need all the protective gear we can gather up. We'll need all the syringes and dart guns we can find, and we'll need every ounce of the ... the so-called antidote. Everyone else remaining behind, I want you to go into producing more of this poison. It may be the only weapon we have against those zombies. And don't roll your eyes at me. I know these zombies were people once, but at the moment, they will kill you in order to see their ends met. Now, do as I say."

Very soon after this Tom Logan and Mark Williams had loaded a medical van in the parking lot with all the materials at their disposal, and they were now racing for the Gordon site and the fearful pit where they would link up with Abraham Stroud.

Abraham Stroud tried desperately to stop the mammoth machines at Gordon Construction from moving in to seal off the mysterious Etruscan ship. But police, ordered to control the strange, growing crowd of zombies and madmen that had encircled the construction site, dragged Stroud away from the dozers and to James Nathan. Not even the C.P. was listening to any more rhetoric. He shouted at Stroud, "It's time we took action!"

"Blindly? Stupidly?"

"Any damned way we can get it!" His anger and his words were a mirroring of the feelings of almost all of the citizens of New York City. Thus far, the evil was dividing them, one against the other, as sharply as a meat cleaver. Stroud continued to argue. "But we're going to need access to the damned pit, to the ship! Nathan! We're close!"

"Not close enough," came a sharp-edged voice beyond Nathan. It was one of the construction guys, the boss from the look of the man. He pointed skyward. "Here comes Sir Arthur now."

It was a helicopter with the markings and blue and white colors of Gordon's company. The foreman said, "He's going to be pissed off it hasn't been done."

"I don't give one shit about your boss's feelings, McMasters!" shouted James Nathan, making certain everyone within earshot understood that he was acting on his own here, and not as Gordon's puppet.

Stroud tried again to reason with Nathan. "We're going to have to go back inside ... to face this thing," he said.

"You'd do it, too, wouldn't you, Stroud?"

He looked Nathan in the eyes and held them in his steely gaze. "Damned right I would, if I knew we had a chance of beating this thing."

"Even if you go down with it?"

"I'll take my chances."

A silence settled over the two men even in the roar of the approaching chopper and several ambulances that parted the crowd and stormed through the gates.

"We'll need to reenter at exactly the same place."

"Why's that?"

"I can't say."

"Something else you're not sure of?"

Stroud merely sensed the importance of keeping open the pit. Once it was shut, he was certain the disease that had steadily infected thousands would only increase, multiply and quadruple, spreading on forever.

All around them along the copper dam supports, the fences and the barricades, an army of zombies stared down on them, and their numbers were swelling and threatening, an explosion of human bodies bent on the destruction of anyone who was not among them.

They stood in absolutely frozen poses all around the site, looking like the stone soldier statues that once guarded the Great Wall of China. A sound began to emanate from the army of zombies, an ominous chant that made the hair on the back of the neck stand on end. "Ommmmmm-uuuuuu, ommmmmm-uuuuuu, ommmmmm-uuuuuu..." Again and again, over and over, combating the rotor blades of the helicopter as it settled downward.

"See what I mean, Nathan?" Stroud shouted above the din, still trying to convince the other man of the futility of blowing the hole with a bazooka or covering it with mortar. "The thing is not inside there. It's out here, with us. It is us!"

Nathan stood mesmerized at the sheer numbers of zombies lining his streets. Shaken, he looked to Stroud for guidance. "What do we do?"

"Now you're talking. Order those dozers to cease and desist." The men on the dozers had stopped of their own accord when the zombies had begun to chant. So loud and piercing was the cry they sent up that it could be heard over the roar in the cab of a Cat. Nathan quickly dispatched some of his men to stay the dozers completely. He did so as Gordon, a tall, impressive, gray-to-silver-haired man, rushed at them, shouting.

"What is the meaning of this, Nathan? Can't you clear this area? Get these people out of here! What're your men doing there?" He saw that the men on the dozers were being forced off by the policemen, and he really lost his temper. "Goddammit, Nathan! I have just come from your boss, and he is in agreement with me! Do you understand? Damn you!"

"Covering over the pit and sealing it will only worsen the situation, Gordon!" Nathan shot back at him, equally loud and angry. "I've got to do what my scientific advisory team says. If that goes against the wishes of the mayor, then the mayor'll just have to can my ass! Meantime, please stay out of the way. This is a police affair."

Gordon was so livid he had gone white-faced. "We shall just see about that!"

He stormed off, presumably to find a telephone. The man seemed both blind and deaf to the fact he was, like the others, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of potentially dangerous people infected with the evil incarnated from the ship. Stroud wondered momentarily what Esruad would have done at a moment like this, no doubt fighting the ignorance and fear and hatred of his own people in the year 793 b.c. Then he saw Kendra and her people rushing about, distributing syringes filled with her chemical weapon.

"There, Commissioner, is our weapon. Tell your men to use it."

"They're policemen, for Christ's sake. If these ... people ... attack, my men will go for their guns."

"Listen to me! We do know now something about what we are dealing with here, Nathan, and conventional weapons will not destroy this thing any more than bulldozers might."

"All right ... all right!" Nathan got on his bullhorn and told his people to arm themselves with what the doctors were passing out. "Use the syringes as your weapon in the event any of the ... the diseased people come at you. There are more of them than we've got bullets for, anyway."

"A few shots'll scatter them!" shouted one of the uniformed men.

"Use the medicine!" he shouted back as one of the zombies clambered over the fence and fell, got up and was met by a cop with a syringe who, afraid to touch the sick man, jabbed at him with it before plunging it into him. Others were coming over the fences, which were beginning to give way. The first man injected began to quake and gurgle and roll about the ground before his body was lifted and pounded on the earth by invisible hands. He was dead.

"Christ, they're coming in!"

Nathan uselessly picked up the bullhorn and shouted at the uncaring, unhearing mass of humanity at the fences encircling them. "It's no good!" he finally shouted, seeing another section of fence come down. "It's no use!"

Shots broke out as frightened police fired on the crowd pushing inward along one wall of the fence. Some of the shots were effective, others not.

"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 laboring 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 flew 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.

"What the hell is this thing, Stroud? And why's it calling you Esruad?" Nathan wanted to know.

"This is a manifestation of the creature, not the actual creature. It's taunting us."

"Taunting us, or you?"

"It's toying with us," said Stroud firmly. "Damned thing is toying with us. It could simply let the zombies kill us now--"

"Then why doesn't it?"

"Because it wants something from me."

"What? What does it want?"

"I don't know, dammit! Not yet, anyway." Stroud sensed that the creature wanted him to return to it, to face it alone, that the creature somehow knew of his special gifts in combating evil, and that, in a sense, the evil thing had thrown down the gauntlet. But how was Nathan or even Kendra to believe or even understand such a concept?

One of the elevator doors opened and the zombies parted to show them that the car was empty. Stroud instantly understood the maneuver and shouted, "Both of you, get into the elevator car now! Now!"

The other two didn't hesitate and Stroud cautiously backed in last. The doors closed on the now fading form of the monster that'd been too hideous to gaze upon for longer than a second.

"Will this elevator take us to the roof?" asked Stroud.

"To a floor below. You'll have to take the stairs from there." Nathan's voice then became agitated, his gun still gripped in his hand, as he asked, "Why, Stroud? Why you? Why'd it spare you and me and Dr. Cline just now?"

"If I could answer that--"

"And why does it call you Esruad?" asked Kendra, her voice shaking with irritation, her breath coming short.

The elevator door opened on an empty corridor and an observation tower. Stroud saw the sign for the roof and he ushered them along the clear path to safety.

"Come on, we're getting out of here," he told Kendra.

She stopped, however, and demanded an answer.

"There's no time now."

"Make time. I want to know what it means: Esruad."

"Back at the museum. It'll all come clear, I promise."

Nathan, too, wanted answers. He swung Stroud around as if he meant to strike out at him and Stroud instinctively pushed his hand away, gun or no gun.

"Answer me, Stroud, why? What makes you immune to this damnable horror? And tell me why I shouldn't blow a hole through you, suspecting you as I do of somehow collaborating with this bloody supernatural beast."

This made Stroud stop and grab Nathan by the lapels, pushing him hard into the wall, Kendra tugging at Stroud to come away. Stroud caught himself up and let go of the other man, who had held firm to his .38 Police Special.

Stroud rushed on, pushing through a glass door and out into the wind that played over the top of the high rise, sending his hair into a wild gyration. He'd taken Kendra by the hand, bringing her along. He shouted back over his shoulder to Nathan, "Goddammit, Commissioner, I don't know all the answers! That's why I need help. I need Wisnewski and Leonard and more time."

"Why did it let us live?" pressed Nathan, running to catch up. He had seen a lot of good men die today, and he wondered why he was not among the dead.

"It wants me to come to it, to freely sacrifice myself, I believe. And when I do, it wants to play."

"To play?"

"Yeah, that's what it's doing with us all, Nathan, toying with us ... playing with our lives ... determining just how much of our civilized veneer it can strip away before we all turn on one another."

"It wants you. Has it wanted you all along? And would that end this nightmare?"

"You don't really believe you can bargain with the Devil, do you?"

Nathan thought for a moment. "No, I suppose not ... but--"

"No buts about it. When I do sacrifice myself, I'll do so armed with a great deal more than I now have, I pray," said Stroud as he strapped himself into the Gordon helicopter he had commandeered. Some police technicians worked atop the roof and had refueled it. All other police choppers were in service.

Kendra was helped into the seat beside Stroud by Nathan, who waved them off.

"Come with us," shouted Kendra.

"No, no, I'll be needed here. But I'll stay in contact."

"Be careful," Stroud called out to him.

"You, too, Stroud, and good luck. I'm sorry about the ... the..."

"Good luck is sufficient!" shouted Stroud, who sent the rotor blades into whirring battle with the wind. As the chopper lifted off, the image of the monster with snakes feeding out of its eyes filled Stroud's vision ahead. He tilted the chopper into the sky streaked with the wretched sight, slicing through it.

Kendra Cline stared down at Nathan, who was fast disappearing behind them. She felt herself still inwardly trembling at the touch of the gun at her temple, and yet she'd have preferred the quick death of the bullet to what the zombies might have done to her. She, like Nathan, now felt strange toward Stroud, that he was somehow different, because he had been singled out by the evil emanating from the pit, the evil with such power to reach out to take what it wanted from them.

Stroud felt her eyes on him now. He realized that she hadn't seen the apparition of the creature in the night sky, that it was meant only for him. He understood why Nathan might feel threatened by him, but now he was getting the same feeling from Kendra, and this he didn't quite know how to deal with.

"You have no reason to fear me, Kendra," he told her.

She breathed deeply, filling her lungs, holding on to her inner emotional turmoil. Her voice broke when she said, "I ... I know that."

He put a hand on hers, but she pulled it slowly away. "Keep it uppermost in your mind, no matter what happens, Kendra, that what I do is for us all. I will not bargain with this thing, not for my life, not for yours, not for any individual."

"I think I understand," she said, then turned to stare out into the surrounding darkness.

Stroud brought the chopper around, searching for the rooftop of the Museum of Antiquities, which he soon found.

As the helicopter lowered over the mammoth rooftop, Stroud steering by streetlamps and intuition, Kendra played out the events of the past few days in her head, but events and actions and words seemed all as confusing a haze as the night's quickly descending fog over the city. The ominous fog swirled and eddied, and it felt like her thoughts. Was Stroud so very different from other men that this evil being in the pit sought him out to play games with? What kind of man was Stroud, she wondered as she stared at the maw of the blacktopped roof. It appeared from where she sat that Stroud was taking her straight down into Dante's Inferno with him, there to abide somewhere between the sixth and seventh rings, she supposed, and she wondered at the dubious honor he had imposed on her, making her his companion in this occult contest. But she was now so tired and weary of thought that she almost welcomed his telling her when and where to move.

The helicopter's whir set her mind to droning with its even, calming sounds, so different from the horror of its mad gyrations before. Stroud, too, was like the machine: one moment loud and rancorous and the next quiet, gentle and caring. Yet, he was all a mystery; a man who seemed to have more than one past, a man filled with the life of the race itself, like some Greek dancing perpetually in the sand of the ages, or a mad cossack doing daredevil feats on the back of a charging horse.

The museum grounds were littered with refuse and white, tumbling things that looked innocent at first glance but took on a sinister appearance when stared at unblinkingly. McDonald's coffee cups, newspapers lost to the wind, sandwich wrappers had become apparitions that walked a ghostly landscape which by light was mere brush and trees and lawn that surrounded the Museum of Antiquities, where, deep inside, by the light of their gooseneck lamps, Drs. Leonard and Wisnewski were working diligently on answers to questions they did not know how to pose.

Kendra only half heard the snap of the seat belt that held her, felt only the warmth of Stroud's powerful arms go round her as he lifted her from the helicopter. She felt cradled, safe, and her mind begged for sleep, which Stroud now fostered in her. Complicated, confusing man, she thought, but quietly she allowed herself a moment's peace freeing her mind of questions and fears.

-12-

Abe Stroud found the two archeologists obsessively working, surrounded by half-eaten sandwiches and unfinished Cokes. Stroud asked them how well it was going and they looked up, a little startled, not having heard them approach, with no knowledge the helicopter was on the roof.

"I think we're onto something," Wiz said, "but it's taking time, Abe. Patience ... patience is rewarded."

Stroud worked his big hand across his wide shoulder to the nape of his neck, squeezing, headachy. "Only problem is, Doctors, we have a very impatient audience waiting for us, and worse, an even more impatient demon. Tell me what you've got thus far..." Stroud began looking over their shoulders.

"I'm going to call the hospital," Kendra called out from Wiz's office.

Stroud grimaced. He'd hoped she might sleep. He wondered how she was doing. But he must turn his attention back to Wiz and Leonard.

Inside Wisnewski's office, Kendra contacted colleagues at the hospital. "We're going to require as much biochemical weaponry as we can get from you, Karl," she was saying when Stroud poked his head in.

Stroud said, "Wiz has found something very interesting in the literature--amazing really. Can you come?"

"Be with you in a minute."

She joined them soon after. Wisnewski called her to sit beside him. He was saying, "Just a primitive drawing, not much more than a cave drawing of a behemoth with gnarled fangs and snakes crawling from its eyes, but it was given a name--Ubbrroxx--and further, this name was found by Leonard as well, on the parchment brought from the ship."

"Ubbrroxx," said Stroud, repeating the strange name several times.

"Careful," said Kendra, "careful not to unwittingly invoke it."

"Yes, well..." began Wiz, sensing some tension between them. "Abe's told us what happened at Nathan's building. In any event, it would appear that if we do not soon go to it, Stroud, it will come to us. Is that not right?"

"That's my belief."

"What was this ... this Ubbrroxx to the Etruscans? A deity?" asked Kendra, agitation dappling her pupils with fear.

"A dark deity, a god of the underworld, much as our Satan," said Leonard, wiping clean his glasses. "Here is a photo of a cavern wall drawing discovered in Tuscany a few years ago."

"My God," said Kendra, "it's ... it's..."

"What we saw at One Police Plaza, I know," replied Stroud.

"It is also what I saw," said Wiz, "the day I hefted the pick at you, Stroud. It ... it somehow became you in my mind--all a jumble. Seeing it like this again, it all came back to me. It leaped out after you, was on your back when you were blacked out. I went to strike it, but it seemed to be inextricably mixed with your own tissues, and when I hesitated ... well..."

"This thing is so vile," said Leonard, trembling.

"Stroud's blackout no doubt saved him from the menacing of the creature," said Kendra, trying to understand it all, but deciding that she would never be able to do so.

"Good," said Stroud, putting a firm arm around Kendra, "good!"

"What's good? We've got a crude picture of it is all!" said Wiz.

"We now know its name, and we know what it looks like."

"Don't think for a moment you know what it looks like, Stroud," said Leonard. "This is very crude, and besides, if you look on the real thing you'd be blinded by its sheer ugliness, according to the written word. Most likely, this was drawn by a blind man, giving directions to an artist."

"Perhaps that wizard you spoke of, Leonard," Wiz said.

"Wizard?" asked Kendra.

"The author of the parchment. Very astute man."

"What does he tell you?" asked Stroud.

"The creature can take many forms, control many lesser beings, including men."

"Creating instant zombies," said Wiz with a snort.

"He tells us that the true nature of the beast is so vile, so ugly, that it would burn out the human heart and soul to behold it in its natural state."

"Only what we might expect from an underworld deity," added Wiz.

"Then it is a shape-changer, a chameleon?" asked Stroud.

"Of a sort, but not in any usual sense. It controls and distorts the forms of lesser beings; turns some into ghouls and gargoyles and hounds and rats at its pleasure. At least," continued Leonard, putting aside his glasses now and rubbing his tired eyes, "at least, this is what the Etruscan writer believed."

"Then it can literally control anything it comes into contact with?" asked Kendra. "Insects, rats--"

"Worms, grubs, maggots," added Wiz.

"So, in that sense, it takes any shape it wishes, you see, Stroud?" asked Leonard.

"Yes, I begin to see. And I suppose it can take a pleasant form as well?"

"Exactly, and Leonard failed to tell you that. He also has some notion that the demon wants not 500,000 souls, but five million, Stroud."

"What?"

Leonard turned and rushed back at them with a resounding "Yes, yes, it wants five million this time."

Kendra repeated the staggering figure aloud in a whisper that filled the room.

"But I saw the figure. You said it was 500,000, Wiz." Stroud pointed at the Etruscan numbers.

"Yes, well, a mathematical equation worked out with the help of Esruad--"

"Whoa, Esruad? Esruad?" repeated Kendra, hearing the name come up in this new context.

"He was the writer of the parchment, his signature is here," said Stroud, directing her eye to the name in Etruscan.

"Then that thing out there thinks you are..."

Stroud finished for her. "Esruad, yes."

"And that may work to our advantage," said Wiz.

"What advantage is it against such a power?" asked Leonard. "At any rate, Esruad predicted the increase to five million should the demon rear its ugly head again. It appears as a warning near the end of the document."

"The matching document found in Tuscany almost two years ago, Stroud, has been held in ridicule as superstition and gibberish since its disclosure by Dr. Uri Ulininski."

"That would be logical in this most illogical scenario, yes."

"God," said Kendra, pushing back her long strands of hair, "it sounds ... sounds like Satan."

"One and the same, it is logical to assume," said Wiz. "Or a very dear cousin of the Fallen Angel."

Leonard quietly agreed. "It may well be what we have traditionally referred to as Satan. It may be the ultimate evil power on the planet. And we may be fools for even contemplating confronting it, Stroud."

The room had become cold with silence until Wiz said, "And to think, Satan is a New Yorker ... has been for some time."

"Christ, Wisnewski, how can you joke about this?" Leonard said, tossing a book down and stepping away from the others, obviously distraught over their findings.

"Now, look here," Wiz retorted, "I've done some unearthing of my own, and I've come up with a few facts as well, Stroud. We can continue without Leonard's input if we must."

Wiz pushed an archeological journal into Stroud's hands with some photos of a recent dig in Tuscany, and then he gave Stroud a magnifying glass. "Look closely at the parchment in Ulininski's hands."

"It ... looks like a reproduction of the one we have."

Stroud knew of the great Russian archeologist's work. Tuscany seemed far afield for him. According to his words in the article, he had been drawn to the location, almost as if by a spirit voice.

"Are you saying that Esruad knew that in time this evil would come again?" asked Stroud.

"He says so, yes."

"Amazing ... that he should predict it."

"He predicted it would occur amid the dwelling places of millions; amid giant girders that reached the clouds--our skyscrapers. And that a man flying in the belly of a machine would go into battle against the creature."

"That'd be you and your helicopter, Stroud," said Kendra.

"He said all that?"

"Yes," said Wiz. "I would have to say that this evil springs from the same source as all evil in the world, an eternal river of evil that flows beneath us all and from time to time infects whole populations."

"How can we dare oppose it, Stroud? How?" asked Leonard, returning to the circle.

"Dr. Cline's people are working on--what, Kendra?--something in the way of a biochemical deterrent to this thing?"

"So far, all we know is that it works on the zombies," she replied. "Whether or not it will work against the source is anyone's guess, but yes ... we're fashioning darts and a gaseous form of the substance."

"Then we are not completely without armament," Stroud tried to sound reassuring.

"I have ... some fears," said Leonard. "An awful fear."

"But we have a weapon," replied Stroud. "Dr. Cline has developed something for us."

Cline explained, "Using what we learned in reviving you, Dr. Leonard, we have developed a biochemical projectile laced with the stimulants that revived you. This was being tried on the many coma patients, until they began to attack us. We had upped the dosage given you to ... to create the killing poison."

"It stops what it hits," said Stroud.

"The same substance which brought me out of coma is being used now to kill other victims of this thing?" asked Leonard. "This is somehow backward and sounds like madness in itself, Dr. Cline."

"We've had no choice in the matter. They're out there, on the streets," said Stroud, defending her. "They attacked us and would have dragged us into that pit headfirst if we hadn't fought back."

Wiz and Leonard exchanged a worried glance. Wiz said, "Even if we could get near the pit, nothing will stop the mother of this evil, nothing."

"Survival of the fittest, I suppose," said Leonard. "Are we to survive, or it?"

"Funny, I never thought of myself as fit for consumption before now," replied Wiz. "And I still don't."

"It appears to have something to do with will and a strong mind, Doctor," said Kendra Cline. "In a sense, it's survival of the fittest mind, steel-plated or otherwise."

Stroud gave her a half-smile. "Time we planned our strategy, people. Some of us are going to have to go back down there, and we're going to have to hold on to our strong-mindedness in the face of terrifying obstacles."

They grew silent with the fearful truth of what Stroud proposed.

"Oh, by the way, Stroud," said Wiz. "Something came for you addressed to the museum."

"Oh?"

"A package."

"From Cairo," said Leonard.

"Cairo, Illinois?" It was not far from Cairo to Andover, Stroud's home.

"No, heavens, man! Egypt."

"Egypt? Really? Where's the package?"

"Box, actually. Very curious about it ourselves."

Wiz brought it in, a well-protected box of perhaps two foot by three. It took a full ten minutes to get to the bottom, snatching stuffing out of the center, but eventually Stroud came out with a crystal skull in his hands and a note from Dr. Mamdoud in Egypt. The note was characteristically clipped:

Dear Abraham,

Learned of your distress in New York and the part you are playing there. The enclosed may give you some insights, support, help. We pray and hope you will accept this gift. A man such as yourself, the skull will be used well. I was moved--no, compelled--to do this for you.

Mamdoud

Stroud was flabbergasted. "Do you have any idea the risk he took to get this to us?"

The others watched him leave with the skull cradled in the crook of his arm. "I will return soon," he promised, disappearing with his prize.

At the Gordon construction site the zombies had begun to form a thick wall of stony guardsmen, row upon row of them. SWAT teams and police of every rank had moved in on the area, which continued to swell with the infected people, some of whom had rioted against the police. It was widely known that Police Commissioner James Nathan and a handful of others had escaped the mob, and that upwards of a hundred construction workers, medical people and policemen were trapped inside the circle of zombies who were not responsive to the demands of the police.

Each time the police moved closer, the wall got tighter and thicker around the construction site and pit. Nathan didn't know what to do, but opening fire on the zombies after what he had witnessed was most tempting. But for now all was silence, all was still. The zombies were like one brick wall, Nathan thought. Even if Stroud and the others got up the nerve to go in, they'd never make it past this army of protectors.

The city was sealed off, under quarantine as well as martial law now. The governor of the state had stepped in and sent five thousand troops. The U.S. Army and the Navy were on standby. There were no airplanes, trains, buses or automobiles entering or leaving New York City. Even the harbors were closely guarded, for fear the disease would spread to other cities, counties and states. There were armed guards at every tunnel and every border crossing. Those remaining in New York were trapped here along with the zombies and whatever worse fate awaited them.

"I didn't sign on for this kind of duty," said one national guardsman to the cop standing beside him.

Harry Baker looked at the man. The guardsman wore a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, very expensive, along with a Rolex. He might be an accountant in civil life, or a lawyer, a young one at that, Harry thought. He wondered if the other man would hold up the night. Harry had fought in the war, had done a three-year stint with Emergency Services as a medic and had been on the NYPD for almost sixteen years now. He had thought that he had seen everything, up until now.

The brass had paired any number of first-timers like the Rolex guy with seasoned cops and now Harry occupied a hastily got-up "bunker" with the kid. The kid had shown him pictures of his nine-month-old, his cat and his wife in that order. Now, together, the two men stared at the wall of unmoving, granitelike men, women and children who formed a barrier around the construction site. They'd been like this for hours on hours. Stone men stoned, Harry had thought. It chilled him, gave him the all-over creeps, the sort that not even a hot shower could quell.

The hostages taken by the zombies were most likely dead and there was no communicating with this herd of deaf-and-dumb humanity, try as the NYPD might.

It was like the time before a battle, Harry thought. The fireworks were sure to come. And suddenly, they did.

It started with the ominous hummmmmmmm of thousands of people chanting in unison, creating of them a kind of single soul, Harry thought. He had never seen anything close to this. The only comparison--and it didn't come close--was a "wave" at a football game. But there the people were aware of one another, aware of their intentions. Here, it was something else as the throng of zombies began to move outward toward the armed soldiers and police in the mindless approach of an army of ants.

"What'll we do?" asked the guardsman beside Harry.

"Whatever the brass tells us!"

Then gunfire broke out without anyone's ordering it. Harry decided it was one of the untried guardsmen who'd fired, but it made little difference now as everyone opened up. The gunfire was electrifying to Harry, who'd been itching for something to happen all these hours, but it had the opposite effect on the Rolex guy, who slumped down into the bunker and began to blubber about how he had been home with his wife and kids only sixteen hours before in Albany and why was he here in the middle of New York's problems, anyway?

Harry emptied his clip into the oncoming zombies, ducked away and began pulling the kid together. "You got a weapon, soldier! Goddammit! Use it!"

The swarm of walking dead just kept walking over those falling ahead of them, and they were getting closer and closer, crushing barricades in their way. Some of the dead ones were lifted by others and used as shields now, and the zombies relentlessly moved forward, caving in anything in their way, trying to get at the living--and succeeding in places.

A few flamethrowers were brought in, and when some of the dead--those shot through the gut--suddenly got up and continued advancing toward the men with the guns, the flamethrowers went to work, catching fire the leaders, who rushed through the fire and grabbed hold of some of the soldiers on the other side of the flames as their bodies crackled and were consumed by the fire. Others all around the burning zombies were breathing in the acrid smoke, choking and backing away.

Harry Baker saw them breathing in the sulfur-filled air and he realized now that the zombie action was designed to recruit more to their side from the ranks of the soldiers and police. The choking, black cloud of air was filled with the germ or virus they carried. Harry had read about it. Something put out by the CDC people had warned that the virus could go airborne. Well, here it was, in full fury, and these guardsmen and cops breathing it!

From his vantage point he also saw other zombies ganging up on some poor devil and rushing him overhead from hand to hand, back, back and back toward the pit, presumably to feed whatever was down there.

"I'm getting out of here," Harry told the guardsman he was stationed with after he unloaded his gun once more into the onrush.

"Yeah, we've got to pull back!" agreed the guard.

"To hell with pulling back! I mean, I'm done! I'm out of here, and if you're smart, you'll do the same!"

"You're running out on your duty?"

"Listen, soldier boy, I never signed on for this kinda shit, either!"

Suddenly the barricade of sandbags that they were behind exploded over them with the onrush of what seemed to be seventy, eighty, ninety fiends, all reaching out to them. The guardsman and Harry screamed in unison but it was drowned out by the ummmmmmmmmmmmmm chant of the zombies. Harry saw that the guardsman froze up. He tore the man's automatic rifle from his grasp and fired and fired until he was overwhelmed by the numbers. He felt himself suddenly lifted and knew that he was being handed overhead, that he was being spirited to the pit and that damnable thing inside it. Alongside him, riding on a crest of zombie hands, was the guardsman, who'd lost his glasses and was screaming for help.

Harry slipped out a four-inch blade he kept in his boot, bobbling it and almost losing it as he was jostled forward. He saw the kid's body come near and he screamed, "This is for you, kid!" He tore a hole in the kid's jugular and watched as the blood rained down on his attackers, who seemed as oblivious to this as they were to everything else around them. Harry then placed the knife at his own throat and was about to rip into himself when he realized that he couldn't do it. Try as he may, he couldn't cut himself as he had the guardsman. And in that moment's hesitation he was slammed hard into a buttress of copper pipe as they moved him relentlessly along, knocking him into a semiconscious state. He'd lost the knife.

Harry didn't see the others like him all around, moving over the heads of the enormous crowd. The enormity of it, the numbers being moved into the pit, could only be appreciated from the air where a news camera was filming until the cameraman, suddenly overwhelmed by the horror at the end of his viewfinder, doubled over to vomit.

The only other place the scene could be viewed clearly was in the eye of Abraham Stroud as it reflected back from the center of the crystal skull he held at arm's length in the candlelit room at the back of the museum where he had found solitude and hiding.

"My God ... my God," Stroud said over and over as he watched the fate of men like Harry Baker, for the crystal now showed him clearly what did happen to men who were transported down into the bowels of that ugly, unholy ship.

-13-

Stroud gathered his inner resolve and strength in order to go on. He'd had to put the skull down after seeing the kind of torture the victims of Ubbrroxx had to endure there in the dark pit; unable to see anything but Ubbrroxx's eyes, the helpless victims were reduced to begging and quivering, for in the eyes was the soul of the beast, and the soul of Ubbrroxx was by far the most hideous thing about it. It was not a physical ugliness as much as it was an ethereal ugliness of despair, hopelessness, darkness and a never-ending desperation brought on by a feeling of being trapped wholly, completely, forever and ever, stripped of one's own soul for this thing's pleasure, for this thing slowly devoured your soul when it finished with your body.

Most of the victims were soon past screaming, however, as the apparatus for screaming was one of the first things the creature removed, turning a man dumb. It went for the other senses soon, leaving only the nerves, the eyes and the brain functioning as it stripped away parts of the victim held helpless under its talonlike grasp, much as a predatory bird rips away at its prey, one strip at a time.

After the body succumbed to this slow death, the monster went in for the soul, taking it and nourishing itself on the newfound soul, much as it took possession of its zombie army members, with one small difference--there was no escaping ever from its grasp. At least the infected zombie mob had by chance remained alive, and would be returned their souls in the end--if the promise of history held true.

"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, women 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.

The zombies, whose bodies formed the final barricade around the pit leading to the ship, parted as they neared them; they did so in mechanical, silent fashion. "Very obliging," said Stroud.

"Too obliging," replied Kendra.

"Once inside, we will have the upper hand," Stroud promised them all.

"What's to keep these fiends from sealing us inside with this evil?" asked Leonard. "None, none at all! I'm going back!"

Leonard bolted for the helicopter, pulling free of Wiz. Stroud rushed after and the wall of zombies moved in at them as Stroud caught Leonard. The zombies began their eerie chant and Stroud held the skull overhead, reflecting the green glow in a concentrated beam, changing their "Ummmmmmmmmmmm" into a chant of "Esss-ruuuuuu-aaaaaaaad, Esss-ruuuuuu-aaaaaaaad" and making them once again part for the party of fearful scientists. "They won't let us go now, Leonard," Stroud shouted over the din. "There's only one way out of this hell now; only one way--down the damned thing's throat."

Wiz and Kendra supported Leonard as they again moved toward the mouth of the Hell before them. It appeared blacker now than it had been when they had first entered it only a few days before. So much had happened since then; so many people had died, and so many others had been transformed into executioners.

"Move along ... move along," Stroud ushered the others in and Kendra had the unsettling thought that this vile creature was possibly much more cunning than they'd given it credit for, and that Stroud was as yet under its influence the way he was herding them into this black inferno. He looked at her suddenly, as if reading her mind, and said, "Trust me, Kendra ... trust me."

"Yeah ... I'm trying ... trying."

The light in the skull had dimmed as soon as they came within stepping distance of the pit itself. Part of the bow of the ship was visible here and Wiz placed a shaky hand on it, drawing his protected, gloved hand along the petrified remnants.

"Where do we go from here, Stroud?" he asked.

"The geographic center of the ship, but getting to it will be difficult to say the least. We can expect obstacles thrown up along our way."

"Obstacles?" asked Leonard.

"As before."

"But why?" asked Kendra, who had been debriefed by Stroud and the others on the details of their first encounter with the supernatural forces abounding in the ship. Even this deterrent hadn't kept her back. A video recording the same information had been left with Commissioner Nathan in the event they did not return.

"Yes, Abe, why would it place obstacles in our way if it parted the zombies for us?"

"It wants the crystal and Esruad, but it wants them on its terms, and down here, it makes the terms. We must be prepared for anything."

"We are," said Wiz, hefting his dart gun, looking awkward doing so.

Kendra held firm to the wand of her gas jet and said, "I only pray this will be enough."

Stroud saw, as did Leonard and Wiz, that the corridor leading into the pit had widened considerably, dug out by the army of working zombies the evil had employed. Before them lay a network of crisscrossing and parallel tunnels, which ran, it appeared, completely around the ship, the walls dripping with dampness. It was a labyrinth of darkness, cell upon cell of stored carcasses placed in beehive fashion into the walls and covered over with a waxy gauze. Stroud handed the skull to Kendra, investigating one of the cells. There were five dead to a hive, except that they weren't completely dead. Most were maimed, parts ripped from them, some looking as if they'd been bitten near to death, others without skin. They were the victims of the monster that had grown bored with them, and so put aside for later. It was storing the bodies after feeding on them, putting them up with the help of the zombie servants. It would return to them later for a second and third feeding. In so doing, it sapped away their spirits, their souls, Stroud realized.

Kendra and the others were spared the sight of the helpless, limbless creatures put up in storage in small cells oozing with the brown muck of the monster. Stroud knew that they could see the awkward shadows through the gauze and hear the awful babble of men without tongues, but he moved his party along, going ever deeper into the pit. There was only one way to help the suffering, only one way to save the city and the world from this terror.

"We've got to get into the ship itself," Stroud told the others.

"Easier said than done," replied Wiz. "Look."

They stared at the enormous, hideous creature guarding the only entry way open to them, the entrance they had once before used. The thing at the portal of rotten timbers had no visible or discernible face, but its limbs were long, hanging to its sides to what would be the knees on a man. It was bestial in appearance, much like a grizzly bear, save for the fact it had no snout, no eyes, and yet it seemed to be staring out at them from untold eyes as it sent a long, trailing feeler toward Leonard, who raced to get away from it, shouting and jumping.

"Use your weapons!" Stroud said, and they all began to fire on the beast, Kendra sending up a cloud of gas.

"This way, this way!" Leonard was shouting and rushing on, deeper into the pit.

"No! We stand and fight!" Stroud shouted, but Wiz bolted after Leonard, fearing for the man. Kendra felt the tentacle of the beast swipe by her face as she showered it with gas. A thousand screeching voices seemed to be coming from the creature as Stroud grabbed her and pushed her along the path Leonard and Wisnewski had taken.

"Out of here now!" he shouted through his comlink, and she obeyed without hesitation, following in Wiz's footsteps. Stroud, holding firm to the skull, raising it in the direction of the gas fog and the monster that was pursuing them, saw little creatures scampering about his feet and he kicked out at the hairy, sharp-toothed beasts, sending several flying and rolling off in balls of fur. A final one he crushed below his boot, hearing the explosion of its insides as he fired several more darts into the larger, heaving form in the fog.

"Come on, Abe! Now, away!" she shouted for him, and Stroud rushed to fulfill her request without looking back.

Stroud had wanted to take the ship by storm, to battle the first obstacle for the right to enter the ship at what appeared the easiest access. Yet the skull was strangely quiet, the light in it depressingly weak, and it was as if Esruad had abandoned him. Stroud was also disappointed in Wiz and Leonard. Only Kendra had stood her ground in the face of the horror that had approached them.

Kendra was kneeling over Leonard where he had dropped, his breathing too heavy. He'd taken in too much oxygen and was hyperventilating. Wiz stood over his friend, worried, offering words of encouragement and calm to Leonard. When he saw Stroud step from the shadows with the skull in his hands, Wisnewski said, "You shouldn't've forced Sam back here. You shouldn't've, Stroud."

Abe Stroud ignored the remark, catching his own breath, staring down the length of the maze that appeared to go on forever.

"Where's your friend in the skull now?" asked Wiz. "Where is Esruad?"

"Esssssss-rrrrrrrruuu-aaaaadd!" The walls of the labyrinth shook with the eerie voice of the evil here. It was the voice of Ubbrroxx. Stroud saw something moving along the passageway of the underground tunnel, just ahead. It was marshaling its army of horrors against them. The enemy knew every chamber and every underground passage intimately.

"What's holding them in check? What's keeping them from destroying us all now?" asked Stroud. "Only the skull, I assure you."

"If that is the case, we must guard it with our lives," said Kendra.

The moment Stroud stepped away from the others and into a circular room he became agitated. His eyes fell once more on the skull. Where was the so-called power; where was Esruad?

He looked back at where the others had remained and he saw that the walls were bleeding the brown slime substance all around them. "Get out of there! All of you! Now!"

Kendra saw the oozing chemical weapon of the creature as it dripped and spurted from the walls, burning a spot on Leonard's suit and his boot. She and Wiz helped Leonard to his feet and rushed him ahead, Stroud rejoining them to assist with a gob of earth that he smeared on the smoking substance on Leonard's suit and boot, rubbing it off, his own gloves left searing as a result.

Stroud had placed the skull in a pouch he'd slung over his own protective suit in order to free his hands. Kendra saw something burrowing from the earth at Stroud's side, and the ugly, wormy creature raised up out of the earth and snatched at the skull with disgustingly human hands, its eyes like those of a rat. Kendra instinctively screamed for fear, but seeing it reach for the skull, she also fired her dart gun, striking the odd creature a direct blow with the anti-serotonin drug. The creature burst into a fireball beside Stroud, and the odor from its burning brought others like it to the surface to scurry off in all directions from the four humans.

"What the hell're we doing down here! We've got to be crazy!" Kendra started shouting until Stroud grabbed hold of her and shook her hard.

"Get hold of yourself, Kendra! Get hold! We've got to keep our senses and our courage about us, all of us, Dr. Leonard, all of us."

"It's going to torment us and scratch at us and play with us like a handful of mice ... That's what we are to it," said Wiz, who was visibly shaking. "Just goddamned mice in its maze."

"We have to trust in our weapons, trust in ourselves, each other, and ... and Esruad."

"What else can we do? We can't go back the way we came," said Leonard, getting to his feet. "Outside we'd be fodder for those damned zombies. We'd end up like those poor devils in the cocoons, put up like pork waiting to be consumed. We've got to do as Stroud says now. We've got to see this thing through."

"Now you're talking, Dr. Leonard," said Stroud. "A few more minutes, people, and we're on our way."

"How is your suit?" asked Kendra, looking over the blemishes caused by the burning ooze from the walls. She found no rents, so far, but the chemical reaction might yet be eating its way through, she feared.

"We've got to find our way back toward the ship and we've got to find a way inside," said Stroud. "We've got to get to the heart of this darkness. We've got to face it down, and we've got to bring the skull to it under our own power."

"Tall order," commented Leonard "but we haven't any choice. Lead on."

"Are you sure, Abe?" asked Arthur Wisnewski. "Are you sure that it will make a difference? The skull, I mean."

No, he wasn't sure ... wasn't sure of anything, but he had known all his life that there were times when only an act of faith and courage could see a man through. Stroud rushed on, saying nothing in response to Wisnewski's question.

-15-

The tunnels dug out by the zombie army were intricate and complex, designed to confuse them, and they did a very fine job of it as they would enter one room to find themselves having gone around in circles. It was an underground maze meant to tease, and it was filled with the rank visions of Ubbrroxx's play, limbs and torsos of people who had been mercifully killed. It was obvious the creature offered its victims opportunities for escape, but that escape from here was impossible and futile.

"Which way is the ship?" asked Wiz. "Are you certain we're on the right path?"

"It's in that general direction, but so many false tunnels have been created, I can't say which cavern is best to follow."

Stroud felt like he was on a treadmill. They'd traveled already the distance of the ship and back again, and they seemed turned around.

"Let's take a break," said Kendra, tired.

The others agreed. Stroud went into a separate chamber, saying he'd try to consult with the skull.

The others waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time, and growing impatient, Kendra wondered if Stroud had abandoned them. She wanted to call out for him, or go to him, but she recalled the last time she had disturbed him while he was commiserating with the skull--the soul of Esruad, he claimed.

Just as she got up to go find him, Kendra felt a tugging at her leg that toppled her and suddenly she was being held upside down from the ceiling by powerful hands. She screamed as the rootlike, ropy creature that pulled her toward a black hole overhead tightened its grip around her ankles. Wisnewski grabbed onto her, holding firm, shouting for Leonard to help.

Leonard, frozen with fear, stared at the tentacled rope that whipped out at them and threatened to take hold of Wiz and him as well. "Look out!"

"Fire on it!"

Leonard whipped around the gas wand and fired from his canister just as one of the tarantula-like arms of the creature grabbed his own leg. He fired a dart into the hairy tentacle that held him.

Kendra had the presence of mind to do the same, as did Wiz.

The touch of the chemical repellents from their weapons continued to work, as there came a screeching cry of pain and death from the thing that'd crawled out of the roof and grabbed Kendra. Kendra was dropped, falling hard into Wiz. Leonard continued to fire, pouring on the gas now. The thing seemed to be coming apart before their eyes, parts of it falling away, other parts being dragged back up into a hole it had opened.

Stroud rushed into the foray, firing on the last remnants of the long-armed monster again and again as it disappeared into the darkness above them. He rushed to Kendra, helping her to her feet. She was whimpering and shaking, frightened to the bone.

"Where were you, dammit! Where were you?"

He held on to her, although she tried to pull free, angry with him. Taking her clumsily in his arms in the bulky protective wear with the oxygen tank and the other equipment on their backs, the shimmering skull's head poking from Stroud's pack, they looked an odd couple.

Wiz and Leonard were examining something on the ceiling, a part of the creature which had terrorized them. "Stroud, look at this," Wiz was saying.

Most of the creature had disintegrated with flame as the chemical reaction set it afire, but here was a portion that had been torn away and it was moving, dragging itself along the ceiling, weakened. Stroud grabbed hold of it and lifted it to the light. It was a small, evil gnomelike creature with its own set of little arms and legs, a furry, lice-ridden body, gleaming black eyes and razor-sharp teeth. It snarled at them under the glare, trying to tear open Stroud's glove where it was held.

"The larger creature was made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands of these damned sand crabs," said Stroud. "It's the same things that attacked us on our first visit to the ship, gentlemen. The creature covering the entranceway to the ship earlier, too, was made into whole cloth by an interlocking network of these dervishes piled one on another on another."

"They must interlock their bodies, creating the effect," said Wiz.

"Bloody little beasts," said Leonard.

"It will go to a stronger line of defense now," said Stroud as he squeezed the life out of the hateful beastie in his hand, tossing it up into the hole opened by the network of its brethren as it had relentlessly pursued them to this point in the tunnel system.

"Shine your lights here," said Stroud, pointing to the opening left by the creatures. "Damned thing is playing three-dimensional chess with us. No wonder we couldn't find the ship. We've been below it. The floor was on a slight slant the entire way, and we just came in, going deeper and deeper."

"And using up precious oxygen in the bargain," Kendra said.

It was a stalemate, unless Stroud's people could find a way into the sealed ship. "The damned ship is above us." He stared up at the ceiling and the hole with utter curiosity.

"This thing is playing us for all we're worth," said Wiz.

"It wants to play, and yet, growing bored with us down here, it's inviting us in," said Leonard. "Why?"

"The skull. It wants the skull far more than it wants us," Stroud replied.

They all turned to him, staring. There was some new resolution in his voice. Kendra spoke their minds. "Did the skull speak to you again?"

"Weakly ... Seems the energy of the skull is being sapped down here, drawn off by this thing, only adding to its power."

"Then perhaps it was a mistake to enter with it," said Kendra.

"No, we've made the right choices," he told them, "but now perhaps you should all wait at this juncture. I will go on from here with the skull."

"We're in this thing together, Stroud," shouted Wiz.

"We've come this far," agreed Leonard.

"Bravery becomes you both," he said to them. Then he turned to Kendra. "And you?"

"You don't think for a moment I'm going to wait here alone for you, do you?"

"Then let's move on. We've got to get up there."

"I'll go first," said Leonard. "Drop a rope down."

Stroud nodded and helped Leonard up to his shoulders, where he got a firm hold on the level above. He was soon tossing down a rope which he had tied firmly to a stone outcropping above. Wiz started up after, followed by Kendra and finally Stroud.

As soon as they were on the next level, the light in the crystal skull grew stronger. Everyone noticed the change. Kendra wondered again if perhaps they ought not to fear the skull itself, the way the eyes looked at her.

Aboveground, Commissioner James Nathan and his men watched from the rooftops, the distance too great to be of much use, yet there was a definite change in the zombies since Stroud's arrival. It was uncanny, mysterious and a great deal frightening to think that one man, that Stroud, somehow could control these numbers. At the moment, the army of unseeing, uncaring semi-dead just remained frozen in step, as if waiting for a signal from the pit--or from Stroud.

Nathan no longer knew what to believe. All around the mile-wide perimeter of the zombie army, the U.S. Army was being stationed. More men and more weapons. The war would continue here aboveground soon; if the zombies did not end it, the U.S. Army would.

Nathan had spoken to the commander. He had spoken to the mayor, and Bill Leamy had spoken to Washington, D.C., the President.

At the moment, all was poised to give Abraham H. Stroud his chance. Failing this, they'd move in and wipe out every man, woman and child who stood protecting and feeding the heart of this evil.

Nathan had tried on several occasions to contact Stroud's party, to no avail. Something kept jamming the communication line, and so far Stroud had not contacted him. Nathan was growing jumpier by the minute. But the damnable, murderous zombies were as still and as stiff as cut-out cardboard people, like the things Nathan fired on at the range. More and more, Nathan felt he'd have no trouble using a bomb on them.

But now he had the Stroud party in there, in the core of this unholy reactor, and he didn't know what to do about that.

He tried to hail Stroud again. He got a faint voice, going in and out with the static. It sounded like Stroud.

"How are you progressing?" he pleaded.

"Stroud is your enemy," said the voice. "Do not trust him."

"Who is this? Who's on this line?"

"My name is unimportant," came the wavering whisper. "Do not trust Stroud"

"Bastard, identify yourself."