Zombie Eyes bs-2 Page 9

  Tom backed away, his eyes wandering to Mark, who was in the process of bagging Donaldsen, seeing that his remains were removed to a third room where an autopsy would be the man's next fate.

  "Tom," Mark called, "give me a hand here."

  Tom reentered IW-1, doing what he could.

  Kendra approached Leonard, hearing a strange hissing noise as if air were escaping through one of the tubes inserted in the man's body, but the intensity of the hissing increased to what she felt was a deafening noise. "What is that?" she asked those outside, monitoring.

  The question made Mark and Tom, holding Donaldsen's body in its black wrapper, stop and look back in at her from Isolation 1. At the outer control room, Anne and the others were also watching, raising their shoulders and saying they heard nothing.

  "Must be my ears ringing, I'm that tired," she said.

  "Let me take over for you, Dr. Cline," pressed Tom.

  "No, no ... it's all right," she said, believing it was, since the hissing sensation in her ears had now vanished.

  She checked Leonard's pulse and found it was racing and shouted at Anne for not having mentioned this to her, but Anne said the monitor showed no such thing. Shaken, wondering if she was hallucinating, Kendra reconsidered having Mark or Tom do the injection. She saw that everyone was staring at her with grave concern on their faces. They were all thinking the same thing. They were all certain that she had caught the disease herself, that she was in the first phase of its awful grasp.

  "Stay you from me," said a powerful voice that filled the room.

  "All right, dammit, you heard that, didn't you? Mark? Anne? Tom?" she said through her comlink.

  "What?" was the reply in chorus.

  "That voice."

  "There was no ... we heard no voice, Dr. Cline."

  They were all looking in at her as if she were strange. Mark asked her if she'd like for him to give Leonard the injection.

  "No ... no ... I'm all right."

  Anne frowned from the other side of the glass.

  She drew closer to Leonard, whose eyes suddenly opened, displaying green discoloration and no pupils, as they were forced far up into his head. The man's lips were moving like a pair of colorless, eyeless worms, as if moved by manipulating strings. Guttural sounds were emanating from deep within. Bubbling, gurgling, low-level volcanic noises.

  "I don't suppose any of you hear that?"

  "Yes," said Mark. "We're picking up some rumblings."

  "But the voice was in my head, huh?" she asked when suddenly Leonard's body began to tremble. It was slow at first, but building.

  "He's going into some kind of shock! Like Weitzel just before he died!" she shouted through her comlink and rushed the injection, plunging the syringe into Leonard's emaciated arm. At the same time his other arm came up and tore at her mask, covering it with brown spittle before he attempted to strangle her.

  He was speaking a phrase over and over, in Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and finally settling on English, and she sensed he had said the same thing in all tongues: "I will kill you!" he shouted, but it was an abnormal voice, inhuman, filled with rage.

  Leonard had been thrown into a seizure that literally lifted him off the bed. The IV was knocked over along with a tray, cords were snatched and the EKG went dead, but the man was very much alive, kicking, thrashing, afire as he came over her, knocking her to the floor. Mark and Tom rushed in. They had to sit on Leonard to hold him still while Kendra Cline climbed to her feet, exhausted and frightened, when suddenly they all heard Dr. Leonard say, "Where am I? Who are you? Please get off me!"

  "Dr. Leonard?" She was on her knees over him between Mark and Tom. She saw the brown ooze seeping from his ears, nose and mouth. It was a gummy brown substance, and she knew it was the same as had come out of Weitzel.

  "Where in God's name am I?" he asked her, his eyes clear and lucid.

  "I'm Dr. Kendra Cline, Dr. Leonard. You were in a coma, and now you're back with us. You can let go of him now, Mark, Tom. Help him up. My God, we're on our way to an antidote."

  He was weak, dehydrated, nothing like Stroud when he had come around, strong and virile.

  "Mark, scrape up some of that spongy substance for the microscope, and take every precaution with it."

  She asked Tom to see that Leonard got some nourishment and that he be run through the same series of tests as Stroud had gone through.

  "Abraham Stroud, too, was in coma?" asked Leonard.

  She confirmed this without telling him more, other than the fact that Stroud had come around and was given a clean bill of health. "I will call him immediately to let him know that you are all right, Dr. Leonard. And sir, you may just have saved the lives of many others. We were not at all sure our antidote would work."

  He nodded and watched her leave, taking his cues now from the space-suited Tom.

  Outside the room, Kendra Cline had finished decontamination, thinking that perhaps decontamination had saved Stroud and the others, yet the usual decontamination measures were not enough to combat this awful disease. She wasn't even sure any longer if it was a disease. Diseases didn't make comatose people speak in tongues, swear and foam at the mouth. And how odd that her experience with Leonard should parallel Stroud's with Weitzel so closely. Stroud claimed that Weitzel had spoken to him, but that it was not Weitzel. That it was something speaking through him. That was the exact sensation she had gotten from Leonard, and no one but her had heard...

  "Wonderful news, Dr. Wisnewski," Stroud told him, detailing the story that Kendra Cline had given him about Leonard's recovery.

  Wisnewski hadn't slowed in his work at all until now. He slumped into a chair and said, "Thank God. I'd thought we had lost our dear friend."

  "Perhaps it's time you got some rest, Doctor."

  Wisnewski didn't fight the suggestion. "Yes, need my wits about me ... all my wits..."

  "Whatever this thing is, Dr. Wisnewski, it's very potent, very powerful."

  "The evil of the ages," he said thoughtfully. "The core of the evil of all our ills, Stroud. That's what it is shaping up to be."

  "Satan?"

  "Satan, if you wish ... It has as many names as there are religions and races on the planet. The Etruscans had a name for it, most certainly, but so far, I have not been able to find it in the writings."

  "What do you make of the bones?"

  "Sacrifices to this deity."

  "How can you be certain?"

  He lifted one of the bones. It was a tibia with large spurs at the bottom. Wiz said, "This is representative of the entire lot we found in the ship. See the spurs? Broken and beaten and herded, those people were put aboard that ship, without provisions, to starve to death as they were being fed to this ... this bestial god."

  "These markings appear to be numbers ... the number of sacrifices, perhaps?"

  "Leonard will translate the numbers when he returns. But that is how I read the parchment, also."

  "This ... this thing somehow infiltrates a man's mind ... turns him into a walking dead man to come unto its altar and worship it and be made fodder for it?"

  "As far as I can tell, yes. Without Leonard, well ... he knows these characters so much better, you see."

  "Time for rest, Doctor. You've done more than enough tonight."

  "Great news, that about Leonard. I'd feared the worst."

  "I, too."

  "You know, Stroud, I saw it."

  "What?"

  "I saw its face. That is what drove me to madness."

  "You saw it? Where, how?"

  "It was in the chamber with you when you fell out. I looked in and there it was. Then it lay down beside you, whispering in your ear--this ugly, hideous creature--unspeakable, and I ... I snapped."

  Stroud realized it was on seeing this demon that Wiz had lifted the pickax. That he hadn't intended to strike Stroud, but that this creature had somehow created a hologram in Wiz's mind, placed it over Stroud and taunted the man to strike it. Had he done so, Wiz wou
ld have killed Stroud. The thing wanted Stroud dead, no doubt of that.

  Dr. Wisnewski's quarters in the museum were home for now, a pair of black leather couches, a coffee urn and a small refrigerator and bath.

  "If you had left me in that prison, I would still be mad now," the older man told Stroud as they made their way to the couches when the phone rang.

  It was Nathan, wanting a progress report. Stroud told him the news of Leonard, and that was all so far. No sooner had he hung up than the phone rang again. It was Kendra Cline. She sounded strange, upset.

  "I need ... must see you. Can you come here?"

  "Where are you? It's almost two a.m."

  "My lab at the hospital. Please, it's urgent. Please hurry."

  "I'll have to make arrangements here, but I'll be right over, Kendra."

  "Hurry, please ... hurry."

  "Are you all right?"

  "No ... no, I am not."

  "I'm on my way. Hang on."

  Stroud told Wisnewski of the emergency. "Something go sour with Dr. Leonard's recovery?" Wiz asked.

  "No, no! She said nothing about Leonard. Something else entirely." He lied because he didn't know, and he didn't wish to unduly upset Wisnewski. "Go to bed, and I'll return as soon as I can."

  "Don't worry about me, Stroud. Go ... do what you must."

  "There'll be guards at your door, should you need anything, Wiz, anything."

  "For God's sake, Abe, go ... go."

  Stroud nodded, turned and rushed out, fearful of the strange tone he had heard in Kendra's voice.

  Abraham Stroud had had a police squad car drive him to the hospital, and when he asked the driver if he could speed it up, the siren roared into life. He reached St. Stephen's within twenty minutes of Kendra's call. She was waiting for him in her lab, and he had to don the protective gear that she wore. He now stepped into the isolation chamber where she explained that she had the sample of organic matter that had filtered from Dr. Leonard's orifices as he came out of coma. The sample she wished him to look at was under her microscope. She was, for her, agitated.

  Stroud felt cumbersome in the suit, and looking over the comparison microscope with its double vision capability was a chore through the face mask. Stroud saw a great deal of teeming life on both sides of the scope, but nothing that meant anything to him. He lifted his eyes away and asked, "What does this mean? What am I looking at?"

  "Don't you see it ... those ... the things in there?"

  "I see ordinary bacteria, protozoa. Why are you so upset?"

  "Dammit," she said, looking into the scope herself and gasping. "Don't you see the souls there? You're supposed to be the seer, the prophet, the parapsychological genius, Dr. Stroud. Can't you see what's before your eyes?" She was shouting, out of control.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "Don't treat me like a child or a fool!"

  "Kendra, something is not right here."

  "Don't you think I know that!" She pushed him away and insisted he look again. "Look hard. Open up that mind of yours."

  Stroud saw nothing more than the microbes he had seen earlier, but he said calmly, "Where did this come from?"

  "Substance on the left is from Weitzel."

  Stroud saw that it was identical to that on the right.

  "Substance on the right is from Leonard."

  "Leonard?"

  "Yes. Dr. Leonard. From his ear. Stuff just seeped out of him." Stroud gasped, realizing it was from the beast.

  "Do you see the eyes?" she asked.

  "Eyes?" He raised his shoulders, unsure what she meant by this.

  "Mouths ... noses, ears, pained faces? All tangled and swirling in that microscopic world?"

  Stroud wondered how long it had been since she'd gotten any sleep. He wondered if she was hallucinating.

  "I see Dante's Hell when I look into the microscope," she said. "Which means I've either caught the disease myself and am going mad, or ... or your supernatural theory is ... is true."

  Stroud put an arm around her and said, "You need some rest. Let's get out of here. I'll see you home."

  "No, first you've got to see this." She pulled away and went to a table with a clear container that sat over a burner. She heated the brown slime and gases immediately rose and swirled inside the large container, creating a swirling, angry cloud that seemed bent on escaping the container. In the swirls, Stroud saw strange shapes come and go, come and go. He thought he saw a hand but it was immediately replaced by a fingerlike extension that was swept away by something resembling a half-formed eyeball that quickly disappeared, replaced by a scalp, a foot, a chin.

  "Do you see it now?" she pressed.

  "I see something."

  "That's not all," she said, turning off the heat and allowing the gas to dissipate, returning the substance to its original state. "Look at this."

  She led him to a curtained window which was actually a viewing port for a chamber within the chamber of the isolation lab. A scraping of the substance had been placed on a steel slab inside the chamber.

  "Watch," she instructed him, and then pressed a button that sent a shower of water down over the brown scum. The water hitting the material caused a steam to rise off it and there rose a yellow fog that discolored the pane before them. In the fog more shapes ... more souls, as she had termed them.

  "Whatever this is, it takes an airborne form when it is heated, or when it comes into contact with H2O. It penetrates the skin in the form of dampness, enters at the pores and gets to the nerve endings, and finally to the brain, traveling along the neurological pathways."

  "Sulfur trioxide, sulfonethylmethane, narcotic--"

  "And we've found mephitis is also part of the potent poison."

  "Mephitis? What is that?"

  "A foul-smelling, poisonous gas emitted from the earth--"

  "Like methane with a stench?"

  "Enough to do some damage to the neurological processes."

  "It's a miracle any of us came out of that pit alive, then."

  "Your protective wear, the clear oxygen you were breathing saved you. Neither you nor the other archeologists received the kind of dosage that others have gotten. Somehow it's transmitted from one person to the next. We haven't learned the mystery behind its transmittal yet, but it would appear from our tests that those infected, with the normal body heat, breed the bacterial infection, and there is a kind of invisible-to-us gas created around their bodies. This disease is expired through their breathing, through their sweat, through their pores. We're all very much in danger..."

  "It's a wonder I didn't get it from Weitzel."

  "I've thought about that quite a lot," she said.

  "And? Any conclusions?"

  "Luck, or simply that Weitzel had to expend so much energy trying to strangle you as you say that he ... the thing inside him ... simply spent itself. Perhaps the spitting up at you was its last hope of infecting you."

  "Then you are now willing to believe that something from inside Weitzel spoke to me?"

  "Yes ... yes, I am."

  She shut down the shower and soon the writhing cloud of yellow steam and the bizarre forms within it dissipated.

  "Why? Because of what you see here?"

  "That, yes ... but also something happened with Leonard, just before I injected him with the antidote."

  "Would you like to talk to me about it?"

  "Take another look in the scope now."

  He did so, and this time he saw what had so frightened her. In the Weitzel sample there existed amoebas and bacteria skittering all about, but now in the Leonard sample the same creatures had strange, humanlike appendages and eyes. It so startled Stroud that he pulled his eyes away.

  "You see it."

  "It takes some staring, but yes ... I saw it."

  "Like the souls of men on the head of a pin."

  "And something wants us all to join it in its private hell."

  She went about shutting down everything, including lights, putting aw
ay instruments, when Mark came in wearing protective wear and telling her that he would see to the "drone" work. She didn't argue, just cautioning him about the dispensation of the strange, gummy material that had seeped from two human beings, one dead and one alive. Stroud and Kendra Cline went through the decontamination unit and were soon on the other side of the isolation chamber. From outside, she said to Mark, "Be very careful in there. This thing is lethal."

  "Go," he told her.

  "So," she said to Stroud, "you still offering to take me home?"

  "Absolutely, and on the way you can give me an update on Leonard. I don't suppose I could see him for a few minutes tonight?"

  "He could still be contagious. We're watching him closely, and seeing you will only complicate our work. Maybe tomorrow."

  "Fine, then perhaps you can tell me what happened between you and Leonard earlier to bring you around to a better understanding of why I was attacked by Weitzel."

  "That I'd like to talk about, yes."

  "I've got a car waiting downstairs."

  She said her good-nights to the staff, telling them that by tomorrow she would be replaced, a bit of sourness in her tone. "Be good to the new man, or men in this case. They're both top-notch men on bacteriological and viral infections."

  The others thanked her and wished her well. Everyone told her to get some sleep. Soon they were in the backseat of the squad car, whizzing to her hotel. Along the way, between yawns, she told him what had occurred moments before Leonard received his final dosage of a metal-plated shot. Stroud found the story very interesting, and when she finished he said one word.

  "Mephistopheles."

  "No, mephitis, I said mephitis before."

  "I'm talking about the medieval legend of the demon that purchased Faust's soul," he explained.

  Sleepily, she replied, "Ohhhhhh."

  "The same demon gave his name in a play by Marlowe."

  "Goethe," she corrected him.

  "Marlowe as well."

  "But that's stories, literature."

  "It has always been curious to me that both Marlowe and Goethe gave their demon the same name, and he spoke in German when he needed to and English when English was called for."

  "Literary figures," she mumbled.

  "Or so it has always been supposed. I recently learned that Dracula was more than just a literary figure. Think of it ... before a few days ago who would have ever dreamed that an Etruscan ship lay beneath the largest city in the country, below Manhattan?"