"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 an
d 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 narc
otic 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."
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