Zombie Eyes bs-2

  Zombie Eyes

  ( Blood Scream - 2 )

  Robert W. Walker

  A LEGION OF THE DEAD...

  It starts with a sacred crypt, dug centuries ago, discovered under Manhattan. Buried with it is a diabolical creature spreading a strange contagion, claiming its victims by the thousands. But the dead aren't staying dead for long... and only one man is qualified to brave the unstoppable zombie army.

  ...IN A CITY OF THE DAMNED

  Psychic detective Abraham Stroud knows the origin of what festers in the unholy pit. And only he can battle the primeval horror as it prepares mankind for the ultimate sacrifice.

  Zombie Eyes

  Bloodscreams #3

  By Robert W. Walker

  Copyright © 2010 by Robert W. Walker, www.robertwalkerbooks.com

  Cover copyright © 2010 by Stephen Walker, www.srwalkerdesigns.com

  PROLOGUE

  Manhattan on a cold April 13, 1992

  Simon Albeit Weitzel did not know what he was doing here in the night, standing before the pit opened deep in the earth by Gordon Consolidated Enterprises. He didn't know how he had arrived here. He couldn't recall the traffic lights or buses or trains--none of the particulars--but he did recall the sounds he heard daily, weekly, now stretching into the second month ... the sounds that had cost him his job and his sanity.

  The sounds had begun when the old Maramar Hotel had been demolished and the planned Gordon Towers was begun, just after the deepest foundation moorings were dug, far below the former foundations. The noises sounded like straining, muffled voices, the cries of people sometimes. They pleaded with Weitzel for understanding, but the voices were in some strange language he did not know or understand. The cries came from deep within the earth below street level. Either that, or he was indeed mad, and the sounds came only from his addled brain.

  Either way, he was drawn here like a somnolent zombie to its lord.

  "What in God's name am I doing here?" he asked the empty, mud-packed pit below the towering buildings on either side of him. "What am I doing here again?"

  There was some small similarity between the voices and the electrical pulse of Manhattan all around him with its ominous and resounding mmmmmmmm beating into his ears. He had always had a horrible fear of losing his hearing, and now he wondered if he ought not to pierce his own eardrums and force himself into deafness to rid himself of the cursed sound that welled up from below to drown out the city's heartbeat and Weitzel's own.

  Weitzel stood just outside the periphery of the construction site, his nerves quivering with anticipation and anger and frustration all at once, a mix that threatened to send his already high blood pressure off the charts. His doctor had told him no more, Weitzel ... No more can you do this thing to Ida ... to yourself ... No more can you go down there and look and look and wait for this thing to happen. It will kill you.

  Yet Weitzel was drawn to the construction site like an addict to sense the ommmmmmm of it all, the sounds no one else heard, the voice no one else heard. It was all here, going undetected in the middle of New York City, an ancient wonder that these fools that worked like automatons over the supports of yet another tower to the sky could not sense. Only Simon Weitzel could sense it.

  It had begun on March 14 when he was walking past from his job at the travel agency. Like many others on lunch break that dreary day, he had stopped to examine how the work was going at the construction site for what the builders were saying would be the world's tallest building, a twin towers complex of offices and condominiums being built by one of the richest men in the world. Sir Arthur Thomas Gordon III's monstrosity was said to require the deepest set pylons that had ever been sunk into the earth, as it was to be made earthquake-resistant as well as exceedingly tall. At the top Sir Arthur would have a suite that he might come to whenever he was continent-hopping.

  Weitzel and others were taken with the sheer, cavernous size of the hole in the earth, in the heart of Manhattan, that these men had dug. It seemed to him that the ugly insult to the island might be the final straw, that something terribly wrong might come of it. It had been just a passing thought, and yet it festered and festered, bringing Weitzel back again and again to stand for hours staring down into the enormous maw the machines had created. He did so by means of little windows cut from the restraining walls of wood and metal that formed an efficient barricade here.

  It became an obsession. Weitzel's employer packed him off after tardiness had become absences for days at a time.

  His wife hammered at him to stop talking about the hole in the ground, and his children and grandchildren ignored his concern, thinking him odd. Simon began spending more and more time at the construction site, so much so that he became a regular fixture, and he got to know many of the workers. He began to warn them that they must not go any deeper into the earth. They laughed at him.

  Then one day Weitzel found a way down into the pit. He didn't know why he climbed the barrier after the workmen came through. It was foolish by day to do so. He didn't get far before he was grabbed and held for the police, who escorted him away. The trouble and embarrassment and expense were almost unbearable for a man who had respected the law all his life and had not before seen the inside of a police station except on TV and in movies.

  Weitzel spoke to his doctor about it, confiding for the first time to anyone outside of the family that he heard strange noises coming from the pit.

  "It's the sound of the heavy machinery," said Sydney Baen, his doctor and friend of many years.

  "No, nothing like mechanical."

  "Echoing from off the metal walls, those pile drivers, Simon. Simon--"

  "No, no, it is more because--"

  "Simon, have you ever lain in bed at night on a perfectly still night after watching a movie on television and you kept hearing voices after the set was turned off? Radio voices, like? Have you ever heard the hum of the house at night, the electrical pulse of the house? This thing with the hole in the ground, Simon, believe me--"

  "Goddammit, Sid! It's not outside of me! The sounds I hear, they are inside of me."

  "Inside of you?"

  "In my head, Sid ... in my head ... And they're trying to tell me something ... a warning, maybe? I don't know. Sometimes I stand there and I think I hear two voices ... one warning me, the other enticing me."

  "Warning you of what? Enticing you toward what?"

  "I don't know! If I knew..."

  There was a long silence between them until Sydney cleared his throat as he considered his words carefully. "Simon, I have a friend who is also a doctor. I would like you to see him."

  "A shrink?"

  "A psychiatrist, yes."

  "You think I'm crazy, Sid?" Both the way that he asked it and the desire behind the question told Sid that Weitzel was sincere. "If I'm going out of my mind, Sid, I want to know, and I want to know what I should do."

  "Then you'll see Dr. Marchand?"

  "I'll see him, but I got to tell you, I don't have a lot of money."

  "For me, Marchand will reduce his rates ... Not to worry."

  What Weitzel got from Marchand was the same advice that he had gotten from his wife: stay away from the source of irritation. Stay completely clear of this pit. But here he was, and he was unsure just how he had gotten here, by cab, by train, by foot? He didn't remember leaving the house, and it was pitch-black outside and his watch read 3 a.m. He didn't understand why he was here, but he knew he had been drawn back, just as before, only this time there was no one else around.

  Weitzel found the entryway, on his guard for anyone who might be watching the place. There was a trailer some hundred yards off with a light in it, a watchman inside with coffee or cocoa, no doubt, as the air was chill, near brittle.
Weitzel ignored the ache in his legs, ignored the unreasonable action he was taking and the cold as he scaled the fence. Some power source had drawn him here from his home in Brooklyn. It was so powerful that it had somehow lodged in his brain and had gotten him up and dressed--had Ida been witness to his leaving?--gotten him across town and was now getting him over a rickety fence covered with Gordon Construction signs that seemed more permanent than the barrier itself. Some power beyond Weitzel's control drew him down into the pit.

  Weitzel moved forward feeling he had no choice. Whatever this thing was, he must see it through. No one outside of the fence had been the least help to him. As he moved ever closer to the deepest level of the construction area, Simon Weitzel passed silent machines that stood like sleeping bovines about him; he passed layer after layer, finding it mind-boggling that they'd persisted in digging so far, so deep. Architects must have required the pylons to be fitted at something like six hundred and fifty feet, if not more. Far below the sewer lines and the underground rail lines, and even the tunnels that ran between Manhattan and the mainland.

  Weitzel found the blackness closing in all around him, but in the distance he saw what seemed like some strange, green firelight. It was the source, he told himself ... the source of all his months of grief. He heard the ommmmmmm of life here, like the pulsating electricity that would one day run through the building those fools proposed to build over this ... this thing. He heard the voices in his head struggling for dominance.

  "Ooooooommmmmmmmm, a-way ... go/no ... here to-stay ... a-way ... commmmmmmm for-ward/away..."

  Weitzel did not know anymore what he should or must do, but he did know that there was only one way to get an answer to the mystery plaguing his life. With the will and determination that had characterized his forefathers, Weitzel moved toward the green glow at the very deepest trailing of the tunnel. He passed concrete posts already embedded in the bedrock as he did so.

  When he reached the light it had disappeared, sending him into total darkness. He stood, shaking, fearful and trying to ward off the incredible odor with a mere handkerchief when the light reappeared, diffusing all around him and entering him through every pore and fiber of his clothing and his being.

  Now in his head he heard laughter, dizzying, bantering and then teasing laughter like that made by a man in the throes of sex. The laughter was in him and it came out through his throat. It was loud and brazen now and Weitzel's body glowed in the cavern like a green lantern, until suddenly something shouted that was not inside him, but outside and coming toward him. It was the watchman who was railing.

  "It's you, you old bastard! I've called the cops and this time you're really in trouble! Damned old fool! I ought to shoot you dead for trespass!"

  Weitzel's body collapsed before the watchman's eyes, the watchman shining a powerful beam on the old man's form. "Dammit, dammit, no!" But at the same instant, the watchman saw something skitter from the heap that Weitzel had become, rush to the dark corner of the tunnel and begin to burrow like a large rat.

  The watchman's light tried to follow the thing but each time it darted out of the light until suddenly it was gone, beneath the earth.

  "Damn ... damn. What was that thing?" the watchman asked himself when suddenly he saw that Weitzel was in some distress. He went to the old man, who was groaning, and roughly got him to his feet.

  "Come on, you old fool. We've got a date with the cops."

  Weitzel said nothing, his blank expression and dead eyes registering nothing. The zombielike appearance in the man's eyes startled the watchman for a moment before he said, "Drunk as a skunk, aren't you?" But smelling no booze, he amended his assessment of Weitzel. "Got into too much Geritol, or bought into some bad coke, huh?"

  Weitzel said nothing and only moved along if directed and helped. When together they took a few steps, the watchman realized that he was surrounded by a strange, green fog that was somehow luminous. "What the hell?" he asked himself, letting Weitzel go and only half sensing that the other man sank to the earth. The watchman looked down between his feet at the peculiar two-headed, six-legged rodentlike creature between his legs that seemed to spit forth the green light. The watchman heard this thing talking to him deep within the coils of his brain, saying that in time he would be called upon to act, but for the time being, his power, his energy, was required by the thing between his legs, at his feet. As it ripped its way from the earth, it attached itself to the watchman's leg, and from there it began to drain him, not of blood or bodily fluids, but of his mind.

  -1-

  Nazlett el-Samman, Egypt, the same day

  The working conditions were dismal and filth-ridden, a former stone "hut" of one of the city dwellers that happened to be situated above the dig; it was a place that seemed to have accommodated thousands of years of dust and sand flying through the door, seeping in through the cracks and the tiny, single window. Abraham Hale Stroud and the others on the archeological dig who worked at this terminus of the site had to do so under field lights powered by a generator brought with them. The lights illuminated the work and the stark environment. You could almost see the fleas in the sand that filled the cracks in floor and wall. Then they had the further inconvenience of the slag heap piled in the next room, filling it; shovel porters with rickety, noisy wheelbarrows went in and out all day long making room for more until the find was had.

  Dirt and dust had long before taken possession of his lungs, and the marvelous and recent discoveries of Cheops's most secret, most hidden and most treasured of treasures had taken possession of his imagination. But at the moment, Abraham Stroud felt a wave of fatigue flushing through his veins, threatening nausea and dizziness. He'd topple if he didn't get any rest, and it was foolish to push himself to such a state, yet he felt a sense of urgency as if some great power beyond his control might at any moment snatch the prize of these days from him.

  The discovery here at the foot of the great pyramids was the most significant find since the opening of Tut's tomb. He was very proud to have played a part in the new archeological endeavor which would dramatically call the world's attention to the Egyptian forebear of Tut, Cheops. Stroud's own fascination with the bevy of skulls fashioned from crystal and other minerals had already led him to make calls worldwide to inform colleagues that there appeared to be proof of a definite link between the Egyptian pyramid builders and those in Central America, as the Central Americans had been, to date, the only ones in possession of the mysterious crystal skulls which some believed to be psychic antennae.

  Of course, there remained years of study, painstaking documentation, cataloguing, all the burdens of science, and yet Stroud knew he would not be allowed anywhere near the treasures of Cheops a day longer. So, working with Dr. Allulu Mamdoud and Dr. Ranjana Patel, both of the Cairo Institute for Egyptian Antiquities, and both fine archeologists, Abe Stroud had furiously worked through the last seventy-two hours to finish his abstract on the Crypt of Skulls, an impressive collection of crystal, onyx, gold, silver, balsalt and other minerals fashioned into the likeness of the human skull, an entire room full.

  This portion of Cheops's burial chamber had had an instant attraction for Stroud, as the ornate skulls spoke to him. He heard lives--past and present and future--speaking through the skulls, saw life in the iridescent, jeweled eyes of some and in the simplicity of the completely crystal ones, which by all accounts could not possibly exist, either then or now! There was and remained no technology that could create them. Yet, here they were in his hands.

  Staring into the depths of such crystal fashioned as a skull, Stroud saw and felt the time of Cheops, whose twenty-three-year reign ended in 2528 b.c. He marveled at the basalt skull, too. Basalt was rare, expensive and one of the most difficult stones to cut, reserved typically for the flooring of temples.

  Now here they were, skulls of basalt and crystal ... in Abraham's hands, dug from the grave of Cheops, whose great pyramid was the largest ever built. Where did he get all the skulls? Had he coll
ected them? Had he chosen to be buried with his collection? Was there some reason why?

  Burial was an elaborate ritual in his day, to ensure that neither the pharaoh nor Egypt should ever die. The journey to eternity began in the nearby Valley Temple, where the pharaoh's body was taken for ritual purification and a kind of embalming that modern science still could not replicate. For the final rituals, the body was carried up a long, cavernous causeway to a mortuary temple next to the pyramid.

  The discovery in March 1990 of Cheops's Valley Temple at the foot of the pyramids in Nazlett el-Samman had confirmed theories about the layout of Giza Plateau. It was here that Cheops, his son and grandson built their three pyramids and monuments.

  Nazlett el-Samman lay at the foot of the plateau, facing the Sphinx, and for decades sewage from the village had been thought the chief cause of the Sphinx's deterioration. A U.S.-financed sewage project had been undertaken, closely monitored by Egyptologists because of the proximity of the monuments and the probability of uncovering antiquities.

  They were soon unearthing mammoth granite and limestone blocks, flint knives, Roman brick walls and other relics. By the middle of the first month more artifacts and remains were turning up, and finally the main prize--a fifty-nine-foot-long row of basalt rocks. Dr. Mamdoud immediately identified it as the floor of Cheops's Valley Temple, and Dr. Patel gave her instant agreement. Basalt was reserved for royal use as flooring in sacred places.

  The Egyptian Antiquities Organization moved in quickly, taking charge, overseeing every detail. By the time that Stroud had become involved, the dig was out of the hands of Mamdoud and Patel, yet they remained for their own reasons and as a go-between with the Americans on site. When one American left abruptly, Dr. Stroud was asked by the University of Chicago Museum of Antiquities if he would care to fill in. He had jumped at the chance, turning down a trip to Russia in the bargain.