Zombie Eyes bs-2 Page 20

  Stroud had been warned by the skull time and again about appearances and deceptions, but he had not been prepared for Esruad's graveyard exterior.

  Esruad came closer. Stroud flinched involuntarily. Overhead and surrounding them came the laughter of Ubbrroxx as if he were watching the scene unfold. The demon's voice said, "You have lost your human helpmate, Esruad. Now you are alone."

  Stroud pulled away but Esruad draped himself over Abraham. Stroud saw the flesh-peeled body black out everything else; simultaneously, he felt an overwhelming weakness overtake his vision and his mind as he slipped helplessly into unconsciousness, falling deep into what he sensed was his last sleep as the venom reached toward his brain.

  "No! No! No!" shouted Esruad at Stroud. "Nooooooo!"

  Ubbrroxx's laughter shook the ship, shook its own whale belly.

  Esruad looked around him, trembling so badly that the loose tatters of his death shroud shivered like leaves. But as he trembled, he put his hands through and into Stroud's midsection. Esruad's entire frame lit with a yellow to gold to orange light. As he worked over Stroud's body, he appeared to be mourning a terrible death.

  Kendra lashed out with everything remaining to her. They'd come in bands, the little rodent things scurrying along the ship walls, rafters, floor, like an army of crawling bugs. There were too many of them and some had escaped the gas and darts long enough to get at their protective wear, ripping into the cloth with vicious shrews' teeth, opening all of them up to the danger of the unholy infection. She'd been talking to Stroud when the first attack occurred.

  Now she was separated from Dr. Leonard and Wiz and searching for them. Wiz called out on seeing her light. "Here, over here!"

  They'd retreated to the tunnels, and in the gas fog and confusion she hadn't. Now she saw that her suit pants were torn open by the awful little beasts sent to torment them and make of them three more victims to the horror here.

  Stroud remained their only hope, but now she couldn't raise him on the comlink, and the eerie silence at the other end sent shivers of fear through her along with the vile virus that must surely be coursing through her now.

  "Dear God, dear God," Wiz was saying when she reached him and collapsed beside him. "Leonard is not good."

  Wiz's clothes, too, had been torn asunder. The fact they were still on oxygen helped, but for how long? The oxygen was fast being depleted with each scare thrown into them in this horror house. Kendra knew that a normal respiratory rate was fourteen to sixteen breaths per minute. A mental check of her own rate had her up around thirty-five. She hadn't lost any blood, had taken no bites, and for this she considered herself lucky when she saw the blood splotches over much of Leonard's body. The vile things had gotten to him, and their poisonous bites had thrown him into shock. She went desperately, perhaps futilely, to work over him, injecting him with what she prayed was a proper antidote, but as she did so Leonard, his eyes wide and without pupils, attempted to tear away what remained of her mask, snatching at her air hose, trying to get at her face any way he could.

  Wiz pulled Leonard's arms from her, shouting uselessly at Leonard, who suddenly slumped over, dead. "My God, my God," repeated Wisnewski, whose remark was answered by a horrifying, building laughter that seemed to come from everywhere around them and then from Leonard's body, which was suddenly moving as with a mechanical life of its own. Leonard's frame lifted and he came at Wiz, extending his hands toward the other man, saying, "Help me, Wiz ... help me ... My God ... My Gawwwwwwwwwd!" This was followed by a bloodcurdling laugh. "Your God does not exist here! I am your god here! Kneel before your new god!"

  Kendra fired one of her last darts into Leonard's body, causing it to crumple.

  She rushed to a shaken Wisnewski, who could not bring himself to look on Leonard.

  "We're next ... we're next," Wiz mumbled and blubbered.

  "No, we're out of here. Come on, Dr. Wisnewski, come on!" She began to lead him back toward what she believed to be the way they had come to this part of the ship. "We'd best do as Stroud said. I ... I can't raise him any longer on the communicator."

  "You don't suppose ... you don't believe that ... that he, too, is ... dead?"

  Kendra couldn't bring herself to say what she believed.

  -19-

  Stroud was somewhere between darkness and light, life and death, but he did not know how far to one side or the other he stood, or rather lay--or was he swimming weightless amid the acrid odors of the death ship and all the horrors of the grave it represented? He only knew that he was being buoyed up and up, carried off and away by a power that was not his own. He smelled fire and yet he felt ice as it burned into his abdomen. The venom of the serpent coursing through his veins? Probing, squeezing his insides?

  Stroud was eleven years old and trapped beneath the seat, the car aflame. His father's body was slumped over the wheel, the horn blaring. His mother's body was somewhere outside, thrown from the car despite her seat belt. Young Stroud had been asleep one moment and listening to the screams of his parents the next. They'd been on their way back to Chicago from Andover, from his grandfather's house. His parents had talked of one day taking charge of his grandfather's affairs in Andover, of taking control of the family estate there. And now they were dead. And now he was trapped in the burning vehicle, his arms pinned beneath him, his body half under the seat in front of him, where his father's body had now begun to burn.

  He screamed and screamed and screamed and then some powerful hands reached in and hefted him from the fiery wreck. It had been a policeman, who had raced to the scene when he saw the flames.

  He was taken in by his grandfather Annanias, raised by the old man, never knowing until long after his grandfather's own death at the hands of the Andover Devil that his parents had been murdered and that he, too, had been a target of the Andover Devil. Stroud had only learned the truth after years of being away, and after several visitations at Stroud Manse by the ghost of Annanias. He had taken so much on faith all his life from the old man; and then he had to take so much on faith from the old man's ghost.

  He knew he must do the same now with Esruad; that Esruad was just another form of Annanias, working through the depths of other generations, other dimensions.

  Stroud wondered if it was too late, however; if his lapse of faith had not breached their carefully tempered bond. He wondered if the demon had not already destroyed the delicate balance, and was not at this moment watching him squirm on a slowly revolving spit. That's how hot Stroud felt, as if he were roasting from the inside out.

  Then he suddenly retched--a good sign, a sign of life. Spasms shook him with the strength of ice to the tenth power lodged in his bones. The stiff iciness was becoming a kind of paralysis, his stomach seeming to turn to lead, his backbone like iron as if in retaliation to the pumping stomach that spewed forth a sickening gelatinous substance. Tearful and spitting the acrid bile, Stroud wondered if it was not his very insides being ripped from him by Ubbrroxx.

  He had gone blind from the venom. It tore at his every muscle, ballooned his every artery, and the pain was like a hundred twisted knots being turned inside him. The sensation of steroids on muscle, he imagined. His abdominals pinched his entrails, and for now it was as if he were shrinking on the inside, going within himself, deeper, deeper and deeper, as his mind crouched in a vain attempt to hide from the pain.

  It was killing him.

  It was everywhere ... around and inside him.

  It held him as if he were a child, plucking him from one fire to place him in another.

  It sent rivers of electric shock through his nerves.

  Swimming in pain.

  No lack of pain.

  No lack...

  "You will come to accept me as your god, Stroud," the ancient demon spoke.

  Esruad now seemed powerless and far away, blocked.

  And Stroud realized now that he was not swimming, but his mind was ... swimming away from the wizard from 793 b.c.

  As a backdrop to
his pain he heard the evil laughter of Ubbrroxx. He heard explosions and the mad rattle of bones. He imagined lightning bolts exploding all around him, and he wondered if it was bombs and explosives coming from above; wondered if he'd be buried here with the ancient bone pile created by the creature of creatures for all eternity.

  Stroud fought for consciousness and for breath. He called on help from his grandfather, who seemed to have abandoned him as well, fearful of watching his end. Would it all come to this, an unheralded death in the bowels of a haunted, cursed ship that had sailed from out of the past of his ancestors?

  "Stroooooud, Stroud." It was Esruad, and Stroud now realized that Esruad held him in his arms, in the protective shield around them both now. Just beyond them, timbers were bursting and bones cascading, but Stroud could not see this. Esruad communicated it through a strange telepathy.

  "We have only one chance, Stroud," the ancient wizard told him. "You are badly hurt, and if you do not join with me, you will die."

  "Join with you?" Stroud wasn't sure what that meant. "In the skull? Trapped there to wait for another thousand years, for another chance at Ubbrroxx?"

  "No, if you join with me, I will live in the receptacle of your body. It may be our only chance."

  "To join?"

  "Are you willing?"

  Stroud knew he had little choice. He was blind now and was losing feeling in all of his extremities. He'd die anyway. Esruad was offering him life for life. "Yes, we join."

  "The choice is made..."

  Stroud felt bitterly frustrated, unable to see. But he felt the intense fire that suddenly engulfed him, and yet it was not a burning fire. It was a fire of ice and it spread through his body, combating the numbness and deadness and poison inflicted by the serpent which had been just another extension of Ubbrroxx.

  "Damn you, Esruad!" Stroud heard the angry roar of Ubbrroxx as if it, too, were inside him and all around him.

  Stroud felt a calm filtering through him with the coolness of Esruad's being. He felt a crystal-like strength returning to his limbs and body. He found his blinded eyes opening to a cool, clear vision, and he felt the strength of his ancestors as they insinuated themselves in his every nerve and fiber. At his feet lay the crystal skull facedown, looking like a useless hulk of ice, and no sign of Esruad, for he was inside Stroud now ... in his head, his heart, his muscle. His brain was crowded with the souls of those who'd abandoned the crystal skull with Esruad, and it caused a jumble of confusion, noise, voices and sounds unfamiliar to Stroud. He was shaken and fearful of his own body now. For the first time in his life, he'd have settled gladly for the steel plate in his head. He imagined the lunatic, the schizophrenic he would soon become with so many spirits turned loose on his mind.

  "I hope you know what we're doing, Esruad," he said to himself, for he, now, was Esruad in the flesh and Esruad was him.

  "We can overcome this evil now, Stroud, as never before."

  "Destroy it?"

  "Completely."

  "How?"

  "Take up the empty receptacle and keep it with us."

  Stroud bent to lift the crystal skull and return it to his shoulder pouch.

  "Talking to yourself down in this hole, too, Stroud!" Sam Leonard's voice came as a shock, making Stroud think it was coming from the skull, before he wheeled to face Dr. Leonard. The other man had come out of the shadows.

  "Where are the others? Why've you come alone?"

  "Sorry, Stroud ... I tried to save them ... but ... but--"

  "Kendra?"

  "Taken off by the fiends!"

  "Wiz?"

  "Dead ... dead, Stroud! I knew we shouldn't've tried to follow you. I knew it was wrong!"

  "Get hold of yourself, Dr. Leonard." It was Esruad talking while Stroud was grieving for Kendra.

  "You say they made off with her? That Kendra was alive when you last saw her?" Stroud pressed for details. He then searched on his person for the communicator and tried desperately to reach her.

  Her voice came over in screams. She was being tortured.

  "We've got to help her."

  Inside his head Stroud heard Esruad tell him it was a trap. But Stroud didn't care what it was. He couldn't think of anything beyond helping Kendra out of her pain.

  "We've got to go on! This way!" said Stroud sternly, pointing the way. But it was Esruad who was speaking and pointing through Stroud. Stroud wanted to race back in the direction from which Leonard had come.

  "My way," Esruad was saying. "If I know Ubbrroxx, the woman will be ahead. It will use your woman to get to you. It knows this is your weakness. Don't allow it, Stroud."

  Leonard was looking at him strangely, listening to his conversation with himself.

  Finally, Stroud said, "We go this way, straight ahead."

  "But Dr. Cline is behind us," said Leonard.

  "The only way to help her now is to destroy Ubbrroxx."

  "You're not going to help her? Listen to those screams! How can you stand it?" shouted Sam Leonard.

  "Where're your weapons, Dr. Leonard?"

  "She is calling for our help."

  "Your weapons?"

  "Lost, dammit! I was lucky to escape with my life!"

  "All right ... stay close behind, and take this." Stroud gave him his dart gun.

  "What do you propose to use?"

  "Magic."

  "Good ... most comforting, Stroud."

  Stroud also hefted what was left of the gas in his canister.

  Stroud no longer breathed from the spent oxygen tank, and neither did Leonard. It was likely only a matter of time before Leonard succumbed to the contaminated air. But Esruad's magic kept Stroud protected, so far. With Leonard following, Stroud continued ahead while in his head Esruad talked to others there about strategy. There, seemed to be some whispering discord over Leonard. Something about his being untrustworthy. Stroud was being given a signal to ditch the poor man. Stroud fought the suggestion.

  "It will use Leonard and the others against you, Stroud. You must be strong and vigilant."

  Stroud assured Esruad that with their new-found strength and disguise, that he would be stronger.

  Kendra and Dr. Wisnewski had reached the mouth of the cavern where the bow of the ship stared back at them. Strangely, they had encountered no further setbacks or attacks. It was as if the creature was satisfied with Stroud's life, and that theirs were unnecessary now to its design.

  She tried again to raise Stroud but all she got for her trouble was static.

  "We're running out of oxygen," Wiz told her. "We haven't any choice. We must save ourselves, Dr. Cline."

  Kendra tearfully assented and they stepped from the confines of the underground world into the predawn where the army of zombies was still held in check.

  As they made their way up the incline, they stopped to stare at the legion of the dead, their thousands of eyes like one eye, the eye of Ubbrroxx trained on them. Firmly resolved, they began the long march through the fearfully silent, stony guards one step at a time, unable to utilize the helicopter that had brought them here. "Journey of a thousand miles," whispered Wiz.

  Down through the parting rows of zombies, Kendra thought of Stroud, feeling guilty at having abandoned him inside, yet certain that he had met with the same fate as Leonard. Wisnewski, too, thought of the friends they had left behind, and how very little they had accomplished. He took Kendra's hand in his and their touch bolstered one another amid the zombies standing row upon row, parting like disturbed pigeons to let them pass.

  Commissioner Nathan had seen Kendra Cline and Wisnewski exit the pit via monitoring cameras from above, beamed to his location. He was shaken when he saw that only the two of them had come out alive. It signaled the end of a long and hopeless night and the beginning of a long and hopeless day.

  Nathan was about to send in a chopper to pick up the two survivors when he saw them turn into the crowd of zombies and join them. He believed they had become zombies themselves.

  There was no
holding back the Army now. As soon as the first sun ray cut through from out over the ocean, all hell was going to break loose here, and thousands upon thousands of citizens--diseased as they were--would be annihilated to protect those who weren't. And still no guarantees...

  Kendra's screams now sounded close as Stroud and Leonard made their way through the dark passageways of the ship, going deeper and deeper to its center. Stroud felt the respiration of the evil Ubbrroxx all around him, and he realized that they were truly in the belly of the beast. Something stood in their way ahead. Stroud lifted his weak light to reveal an enormous crab-faced, molten black form. The beast had smaller, parasitic creatures crawling about it, feeding off its black skin, ripping parts of it off, slavering, chewing.

  "Ubbrroxx!" shouted Stroud, lifting his gas canister and firing. "Fire, Leonard! Fire!"

  Leonard froze, not using the dart weapon, instead turning it on Stroud, firing. The dart hit an invisible shield around Stroud and fell harmlessly at his feet, but it made Stroud turn and stare at Leonard's apparition as it became a giant cat that started to pounce. Stroud swung the gas around, choking the sight and the enormous throat of the creature cat, causing it to writhe in pain.

  "Stroud!" Esruad called in warning.

  Stroud turned back to see long tentacles wrapping about the invisible shield that encased him, pulling Stroud and his shield, and all that was inside it with him, toward the gaping, enormous maw of the crab-faced thing ahead of them.

  Stroud fired all he had of the gas. The monster drew him closer, closer, closer, and in its mouth Stroud saw the bottomless pit.

  "Strike! Strike, Stroud!" his inner ally told him.

  Stroud found the sword of ice emanating from his body and he struck out at the tentacles, slicing through them and sending up a sulfuric, gaseous cloud with the wounds he inflicted on the demon.

  The monster advanced on him with the speed of a flying witch, a banshee howl filling Stroud's ears, drowning out Esruad's shout. But Stroud instinctively jumped to one side, realizing how effective the envelope around him was when the huge, fleshy thing slammed into a wall that had been behind him. There was a resultant tearing away of that whole side of the ship and the creature somehow swallowed itself up and disappeared, leaving behind a scattering of the parasites that had been feeding off it.