Zombie Eyes bs-2 Read online

  "Must keep your wits about you, Stroud," his counterpart told him. "Leonard was never here."

  "A trick."

  "It sends out little parts of itself to form these creatures, and it used Leonard's image. Leonard is--was--most likely dead all along."

  "And the others?"

  "Most likely the same."

  "And Kendra's cries?"

  "You must ignore them, Stroud. Trust me."

  "Trusting you has kept me alive." But Stroud still feared for Kendra.

  "Keep control of your fears, your emotions, Stroud."

  "I will, if you will."

  "It feeds on fear, grows stronger in the face of it. It will do anything to unnerve you."

  "Apparently."

  "Including using the girl."

  Stroud stopped to sit down and gather his breath there in the dark, his hand going to his head. All the voices there behind Esruad's were unsettling. Kendra's fate, and how little he knew of it, too, was unsettling. And he was supposed to keep his composure.

  Stroud pulled out his communicator and tried to reach Nathan outside, but the signal was weak and all he got in return was static. He kept trying for a moment when once more Kendra's screams reached his ears. She was now calling out his name, pleading with him to come to her rescue. This made him shut down the radio and get to his feet, determined to carry on. His watch told him he had less than half an hour remaining before they would blow the place to kingdom come.

  "It was him, I tell you." Kendra had tried to answer the signal Stroud had sent up, but once more it was cluttered with Static. "He's still alive," she shouted amid the zombies.

  "But we can't go back," Wiz told her.

  "No, but we can get to Nathan. We can plead for more time." She tried to reach Nathan by radio but it remained jammed.

  They were halfway through the zombies, fearful yet of being attacked by them. Several had reached out to them with pleading eyes as well as hands. Some moaned as if trapped deep within themselves, pleading for release. If the creature wanted to kill Kendra and Wiz, all it had to do was turn these people loose on them, and yet it had not done so. Kendra had wondered why and she'd put it to Wiz.

  When he had no answer, she pushed him for a theory.

  "I should guess that it is reserving all its power to ... to combat Stroud and his crystal spirit."

  "And if that is so, it's further proof that he's alive ... that the battle down there is still going on."

  "Yes, yes ... that would make sense."

  "We've got to get to Nathan."

  "Yes, hurry ... hurry."

  They rushed on to the strange beating of an underground heart, the pounding rising in their ears until they felt their very souls shaken.

  -20-

  Kendra Cline's plaintive cries in the dark were like daggers plunged into Stroud's soul. Esruad tried desperately to hold him back, to tell him he must ignore the pitiful pleas of the woman, if he were to survive this day. Stroud, unable to listen anymore to Esruad, tore away and raced down the intricate, involved labyrinth now laid out for him by the demon. The walls of this maze were hard-packed clay molded together with the bones of men. Stroud rushed along its narrow and narrowing course to a point where his shoulders scraped the walls and his clothing tore on the outcroppings of bone. He then reached a point where the bones had taken on flesh and life and were reaching out at him, tearing at him as if they belonged to prisoners in cells who just wished to touch another human being.

  Stroud tore loose from the wall of hands and found himself standing before a stairwell of stones. He heard again Kendra's screams and he rushed up the stones only to have them crumble below his weight, taking him to the floor once again, and now the stones were, one by one, hurled at him.

  Esruad's shield around him held. He drew on Esruad's magical strength, making the leap to the next level, pulling himself up as if he were weightless, a kind of angel, he thought, an avenging angel.

  "Let the woman go! Ubbrroxx! Take me, and let the woman go!" he shouted at the darkness around him. In the distance, through what appeared to be a tunnel that went on through eternity, he saw a light, a green, glowing light which touched off a fire.

  "You want the woman ... so come for her," Ubbrroxx said, his voice curled by a laugh.

  Esruad struggled with Stroud to use his head. "Another sacrifice is nothing to ending the power of this evil, Stroud!"

  From the records uncovered by Leonard and Wisnewski, in the very written words of Esruad, Stroud had learned that he must locate the geographic center of the ship. He now stared down the tube of flame ahead of him. "But this is it ... this is where it lives, Esruad."

  Esruad had no argument for this.

  Stroud knew that momentarily he and Esruad would come face-to-face with the true demon...

  No more vile little familiars, beasts with tarantula bodies or tentacles, no more substitute horrors. Once Stroud penetrated the center, Ubbrroxx had no place else to hide and could take no more camouflage, create no more apparitions. It wasn't anything Esruad had said, nothing that Stroud had learned from the records, only a peaceful inner power called knowledge. The offshoots of the creature, its telepathic powers, its havoc, all emanated from here, and at the very back of this chamber it had Kendra.

  It had come down to Stroud and the Satan of the Etruscans, Ubbrroxx.

  Stroud felt fortified, however. He did not feel alone, not with Esruad within him, cloaking him in his impressive magic.

  Stroud started across the dark interior of the new cell he had reached when out of the dark on his right side a flying creature loped by his head, almost striking him. Stroud saw only the black wings of the beast as it swooped, until his light hit it, and he saw that it was an enormous vampire bat, not unlike the ones that he had done battle with in the caverns outside Andover, Illinois. Stroud heard others screeching in the dark, piercing the blackness with their beady, blind eyes.

  "Ubbrroxx is drawing on your fears, your worst nightmares, Stroud," he told himself.

  Stroud tried desperately to get a grip, but it was like looking into the graves of the many vampires he had personally driven into eternity with the long-spiked, chemically poisoned stakes he had used. Something roared like a beast to his left and then a den of snapping, snarling beasts rose up in Stroud's light, approaching. It was Kerac and his band of werewolves, monsters that Stroud had wiped out in the northernmost woods of Michigan the year before, after tracking one of their number from the streets of Chicago. All here, along with the vampires ... unreal, and yet so real and threatening. Then they pounced in unison with an attack from the vampires.

  "Hold to your faith in me, Stroud!" Esruad fired his mind with the message as Stroud saw all of the monsters of his mind flattened out against the invisible but powerful shield that Esruad continued to display.

  The werewolves and the vampires came in again and again, trying desperately to destroy the shield, to put a dent in it, but it was useless. "So long as you believe in me," Esruad told him in a whisper deep within his mind.

  The creatures outside the protecting cube now became people, and in their faces, Stroud began to realize who they were. Ubbrroxx now was sending forth the images of all of the people whom Stroud had come into contact with--innocent people--who had lost their lives around him, some due directly to their association with him, some indirectly. Among them were Leonard, soldiers he had known in the war, fellow cops he had known in Chicago when he was on the streets there, Magaffey, who was so instrumental in helping him uncover the vampire colony in Andover, the band of mercenaries he had paid to die in their effort to help him wipe out the werewolf herd in Michigan. All those who had lost their lives in Stroud's various crusades now stared in at him, asking him to join them. Even his grandfather's apparition was among the specters.

  Ubbrroxx was working on a very different level now, but Stroud remained firm in his convictions and his trust in Esruad. He noted that among the dead who wandered about the cube, pleading with him to co
me join them, there was no sign of Wisnewski or Kendra, and this gave him hope for their well-being.

  "How long are we going to stand still for this?" Esruad asked from within.

  Stroud took his meaning, stepping through the horde of ghosts who had for so long inhabited his nightmares.

  They reached out, flattening their ethereal hands against the cube enveloping him, and where this occurred their limbs disappeared into a wispy mist. Stroud stalked on, shouting, "I'm coming for you, Ubbrroxx! Nothing will keep us apart ... nothing."

  Stroud spoke a silent dialogue with Esruad as he continued on.

  Why did you imprison yourself in the crystal skull for all these years?

  To be here now...

  To fight the beast again, after failing the first time?

  We failed the first time because we were weak, fearful ... worse, we became willing accomplices.

  Not you.

  All of us.

  And that is what will occur now if the evil is not ended by us?

  I fear so, yes.

  Then we won't let it happen. Armed with what we know now about Ubbrroxx, its character ... and your magic--

  It has great powers of its own.

  But we have a chance.

  Yes.

  Because this thing fears you greatly.

  It fears us greatly ... us.

  Tell me what to do.

  The discussion was interrupted by another bout of piercing cries from Kendra.

  Stroud stared ahead from where the sounds continued to roll down the corridors of the black ship. "God, I can't stand that."

  Put her out of your mind.

  I can't do that.

  You must.

  Just tell me what to do next!

  Stroud listened to Esruad's communications as they spun about the coils of his brain, pinging off the metal strip below his scalp. As he did so, he looked again in the direction from which the screams continued. Horrible, nerve-ripping screams, like the cries of a bobcat locked in a bloody trap. It was heart-wrenching to think that Kendra Cline was in so much pain.

  Kendra Cline and Dr. Wisnewski continued aboveground through the throng of zombies, and as they neared the final end of the human wall of flesh, they began to see a difference in the zombies at the far exterior of the circle around the pit. Some of the zombies were moving, searching, looking lost and confused, even asking questions of a weak nature. Many were amazed to find themselves here, confused beyond words. Others had begun to race away, seeking cover, and this caused some gunfire which was immediately halted by screaming shouts on the soldiers' side of the barricades ahead of Kendra and Wiz.

  "Christ, we could be shot ourselves!" shouted Wiz to her.

  Kendra tried desperately to reach Nathan over the radio and thankfully, she found the radio clear of static. She got an operator on the other end and shouted, "Get me the commissioner."

  "Who is this?"

  "Dr. Cline and Dr. Wisnewski! Hold your fire!"

  "No shit!"

  "We're back from the pit."

  "Holy shit! We thought you were--"

  "Get Nathan for me, now!"

  "Right, right ... will do! Over."

  Only a few minutes passed while Wiz and she were held up at the barricade where others, former zombies, also wanted through, some pawing at one another, still quite out of their heads.

  Nathan shook the scene when his powerful voice was amplified through a bullhorn. "Let those people through! All of them! Let them pass!"

  Like refugees, the line of migrating, former zombies began moving further away from the center of their troubles. As soon as Wiz and Kendra cleared the barricades, Nathan pulled them aside.

  "We had thought you'd become one of them," Nathan said. "Thank God we were wrong. How did you bring these others around?"

  "We didn't," said Wiz.

  "But ... what does this mean?"

  "Only one possible explanation," said Wiz.

  "So many coming out of their forced condition," continued Nathan, quite amazed.

  "It seems to be only those at the fringes on the wall," said Kendra, "but it's a sign, a wonderful sign."

  "What kind of a sign?" asked Nathan.

  "It means that whatever is in control of these people has been considerably weakened by Stroud."

  "Are you telling me Stroud is still alive and that he has actually affected this--"

  "Yes, very much alive. We've been trying to get to you by radio, but we were jammed."

  "And Stroud? Have you been in radio contact with him?"

  She hesitated only a moment before lying. "Yes, I tell you he is still alive, and he has made a great impact on this thing, as you can see."

  "Those people coming to ... are they clean of the disease?"

  "Yes, you must take them in. You must open your lines to them," she insisted.

  "It will lessen the strength of the creature," added Wiz, who found a place to fall out, weakened by his experiences in the pit and the loss of his good friend, Leonard.

  Nathan saw the sun coming over the horizon in the far distance. He instantly got on the horn, shouting for calm, declaring that Stroud had managed a minor miracle and that the outer edges of the zombie line had come out of the spell they were under, due directly to Stroud's efforts in the pit. "Let those people through. Have ambulances and evac vehicles ready to take them out of here!"

  The process began, the lines opening, people spilling through, being helped along by armed soldiers and policemen. Medical wagons were instantly filled. A coffee line was begun and the Army began handing out blankets.

  Still, a wall of zombies remained, but even so the individual members of the wall began to crumble, fading away from the pit and toward the troop line. Each one was now welcomed by cheers from the combined forces here.

  "Where is Stroud now?" Nathan asked, the military brass breathing down his neck.

  "He is at the geographic center of the ship, where the influence of this creature emanates from," said Wisnewski from his sitting position.

  "And what about Dr. Leonard? Is he with him?"

  Kendra said, "Yes. Dr. Leonard remained with Dr. Stroud."

  "We got a garbled message saying he was with Stroud," Wiz instantly added to the lie.

  Kendra realized, as did Wiz, that if the officials thought there were two men down there alive, they'd think twice as hard before blowing the place with howitzers.

  "We were separated from them," said Kendra. "We were all fending off the vilest creatures imaginable."

  "They tore our protective suits away from us, and yet here we are, alive and well," said Wisnewski. "Further proof of Stroud's success."

  "I beg you men to give him a little more time, please," Kendra pleaded.

  Nathan was nodding but the military men were frowning, shaking their heads, one saying, "We will take it under advisement."

  "Well, take this under advisement, too!" Kendra shouted.

  "What?"

  Wiz put a hand on her, but she pulled away. "If Abraham Stroud is successful, and every newspaper in this country's going to know that he was, and you fools kill him in a thirteenth-hour bid for glory for yourselves, I'll see your asses fry for it!"

  They marched away from her and Wiz, Nathan now frowning at her and chasing after the military men, trying to calmly reason with them for another hour for Abe Stroud.

  -21-

  Stroud felt no fatigue and no pain whatsoever, so convincing was Esruad's control over him, along with the protection the wizard provided. They'd traversed a strange tunnel created before them by Ubbrroxx, and in all this time it was as if they had gotten nowhere, the light at the end as far away to the eye as it had been from the moment they entered. It was a kind of underground wormhole that was without beginning and without end, and only those who knew how to traverse it could find an outlet. Stroud began to feel as if he were in a bottle, the demon looking on at what he had captured. It was like being in a total whiteout that only made you more fitful as you p
lunged on and on, except here the reigning color was black.

  Then suddenly Esruad shouted for Ubbrroxx to take him. He shouted through Stroud, chanting the words: "Take me, take me, take me, take me, take me."

  As if waving a wand, the cry through the ages of an Esruad who asked to be sacrificed to the demon changed the territory all around them. The tunnel and its never-ending length, the unreachable goal at the end, all gone, replaced by a smoldering sludge heap over which hung Wisnewski and Kendra Cline, their flesh slowly boiling, bubbles rising over their nude forms, roasting alive, broiling. No wonder the screams of terror and pain.

  "This is how you will be repaid, Esruad," said the demon, whose very body was heating the humans that were strung over it. "Do you anticipate the moment as much as I?" It laughed its demonic croak.

  The slag heap of the creature awakened every nerve in Stroud and he could feel the intense heat of it scalding the outer layer of the protective shield afforded by Esruad.

  Stroud began to feel--literally feel--the pain that Kendra was suffering. He felt it in every fiber of his being. The slag heap rose and fell, the swells of its breathing forming an ocean wave of intense, volcanic fire.

  "You came a long way to find me," it said, snickering. "What for you is thousands of years ... for me is the time it takes to roast this man thing!"

  Wisnewski's body lit in flame and went up like a torch when a fluid, fiery finger from Ubbrroxx touched him. Stroud found his eyes dimming. It was torture to look on the ugliness of the monster, for in its center floated the remains of half-digested human parts. The demon was a shark of the underworld, swallowing its prey near whole, able then to reproduce any form it wished, capable of controlling lesser forms from afar.

  "My God, I'm going blind again," Stroud said.

  "Don't look on it!" Esruad replied from within.

  The demon heard both voices and slowed in its progress toward Kendra.

  "Now! Now! As planned!" shouted Esruad.