Robert W. Walker (13 page)

"Maybe."

He slipped through the door while the others crowded around the small porthole of a window. The moment
Wisnewski
realized someone was in the room with him, he rolled over and sat up on the bed of mattresses allowed him. There were no bedposts or springs, no unpadded metal whatever in the room, including the door. When he looked up at Stroud he cocked his head to one side and
squinted
his eyes.

"Dr.
Wisnewski
? It's me."

"
Esruad
,"
said
Wisnewski
, wide-eyed. "You ... you're alive!"

Stroud was astonished for the dual reason that Wiz spoke as calmly and surely as any sane person and that he had used the same name that the demon had used.

"No, my name is--"

"Stroud ... yes, A-Abe ... Abe Stroud."

"And your name, sir?"

"
Wisnewski
... Wiz, I'm called."

"Do you remember what happened to you, Dr.
Wisnewski
?"

"No ... Woke up here ... asses treating me like a fool! I could just strangle them!" He got up and rushed the door where he saw the faces staring in. "Sick to death of being treated like a bug in a glass!" He kicked out at the door with all his energy.
"Bastards!"

"Do you remember these?" Stroud asked.

His arms twisted about him in the straitjacket, Wiz went to his knees over the bones in the box Stroud had brought with him. Also in the box was the parchment that Leonard had come away from the ship with. "Oh, God ... oh, yes ... we ... we were in the ship."

"Yes," coaxed Stroud.

"And then we came back ... stepped out into ... into the
rain,
and the smelly fog began rising up."

"Do you remember anything else?"

"No ... nothing ... except the decontamination."

"Anything after that?"

"Leonard carried off in a stretcher."

"And?"

"You ... You fell out."

"Yes."

"That's all I recall."

"Nothing more ... nothing about an ax?"

"An ax?"

"You picked it up."

He shook his head. "No."

"Raised it over me."

"No, Abe."

"Went out of control."

"I don't remember it; not a bit of it."

Stroud tried a new tack. "Dr.
Wisnewski
?"

"Yes?"

"Why did you call me
Esruad
?"

He looked queerly at Stroud. "Did I?
Esruad
, indeed?"

"Does that name mean anything to you?
Anything at all?"

"I ... I must consult my ... my books ... must get to my laboratory, Stroud ... Stroud ... can you get me the hell out of here?"

Stroud began to undo the straitjacket, peeling back the layers. As he did so, he could hear the rumbling of concern just the other side of the door. He feared that Wiz--or the demon within--would make some attempt at killing him, causing the others to rush in and destroy
Wisnewski
. Stroud felt as if he were holding on to the man by a thread. He wondered how he could win
Wisnewski
back from the ship's curse.

"Dr.
Wisnewski
, you must fight this thing. Fight with all your strength!"

"I have! Christ, Stroud, I have! All this time in here, nothing to feel, no one to speak with!
Nothing but the sound of my own voice.
I swear, you leave me here and I will go mad!"

Stroud let go the bindings that restrained
Wisnewski
. The man's arms fell forward, weakly dangling before him. His eyes remained on the items in the box and he said, "Besides, Stroud, we have so much work to do and no time to waste."

"Now you're talking, Dr.
Wisnewski
."

"Leonard ... what about Leonard?"

"Afraid he won't be with us, Wiz."

Wisnewski
dropped his head forward, giving a moment of thought to Leonard before saying, "He was a good man."

"He's in coma, Doctor."

"A death for such a man, and yet ... you came back. Perhaps there is hope?"

"There is always that, sir."

"Please, Stroud ...
get
me out of here."

"That is why I am here."

The former smile of the man inched across his lips, but it was hollow and sad and beaten. "I'm damned hungry, too."

Stroud watched
Wisnewski
closely as he worked alongside the archeologist. As mad as he had seemed to authorities at Bellevue, Stroud found him distant, distracted, going in and out of his ability to recall events clearly, asking a thousand questions at times ... but even as a "madman," Dr.
Wisnewski
remained brilliant. They worked deep within the vast Museum of Antiquities in
Wisnewski's
laboratory where the man was surrounded by all that had been familiar to him most of his adult life.
Wisnewski
was something of a prodigal, and even as a child he drank wisdom as if it were an addictive wine. He'd graduated high school at the age of fourteen and had finished college at seventeen. He had received his Ph.D. at the ripe old age of twenty-one. From there he had held a series of positions with various museums and colleges across the country. His specialties were early American, Greek and Etruscan archeology. Wiz had been involved in one of the digs in present-day Tuscany, had written extensively on the subject and had gathered the largest private collection of documents on the Etruscans in existence, all bequeathed, he said, to the museum upon his death.

Leonard had joined him in his work on the Etruscans in Tuscany, and they had become the best of friends, inseparable with so much in common. Now
Wisnewski
worried greatly for his friend's well-being, often stopping in his work to look around for Leonard, who was not there. "We've become like an old married couple," he told Stroud, "but I hadn't realized just how married until now that he is gone."

"He's not gone, not yet ... and not if we can come up with some solutions to this mystery, Dr.
Wisnewski
."

"Yes ... yes, of course ... now it hits home ... now it is Leonard who is a victim. Odd, I had thought that I cared greatly about those poor victims of this thing, but not until now do I really suffer ... Well, back to work."

And back to work he went. Surrounded by his collection of Etruscan artifacts, journals and books on the subject, as well as photographs of the dig in Tuscany, Wiz had quickly fixed on the idea of work as helping him keep his sanity. He examined the materials that they had confiscated from the dark ship, and with Stroud's help, they had begun to determine exactly what they had come away with. He first spent hours on the bones, determining the age and relative health of the Etruscan who had lived before Christ.

Just outside the laboratory and office here stood armed police guards. They were technically present as escorts for a "mad" scientist who was paroled due to the emergency nature of the situation, but Stroud had also given them instructions to act as guards against forces that might at any time erupt outside to threaten the important work on the inside. Too often now this evil force had insinuated itself on Stroud, tracking him down through a strange telepathy that was beyond his reckoning. It had attacked him at St. Stephen's through
Weitzel
, on the street outside, at the construction site through Wiz. It followed that the zombies could hone in on him, come here for him.

In fact, given
Wisnewski's
earlier attempt on his life, Stroud could not completely trust him, either. Was he absolutely free of the disorder? Or might he be a mole in the plot against Stroud?

No ... no, foolishness, Stroud thought. This thing was bigger than any conspiracy against him--one man. This thing wanted them all, and Stroud just happened to be in a particularly vulnerable position, and all that had happened might well have happened to anyone else ... maybe.
Wisnewski
now stared at him as if reading his mind, but only said, "You're worried about Leonard, aren't you, Abe?"

"Yes ... very."

"His chances are not good, are they?"

"Presently, he's still comatose, but the doctors are doing all they can."

"Why was I spared, Stroud?
And you?
Why did it get to Leonard, and not us?"

"You're a fighter, and as for me--"

"Leonard's a fighter, too. That doesn't explain it."

"Hardheadedness, willfulness?
I'm not sure what the answer is. I understand that you caused a fire in your first cell at Bellevue without the use of your arms, without any matches. How did you accomplish that?"

Wisnewski
had not a single clue as to how he had done that. He had just a vague feeling that he could not entirely trust Stroud, that there was something strange about the other man and that he must keep his eyes on him.

Stroud checked his watch. He'd stepped off the airplane at Kennedy two days before, and it was now 6 p.m. Time was ticking away for them all.

Dr. Samuel Leonard, Ph.D., Archeological Curator of the American Museum of New
York,
still lay in a vegetative state of consciousness at St. Stephen's Hospital, his vital signs being monitored and scrutinized by the CDC team headed up by Dr. Kendra Cline. Cline had taken a special interest in Leonard when her aide Mark Williams pointed out that there were some interesting fluctuations in his EKG, fluctuations which signaled some inner turmoil within his mind to return to consciousness. Now he was being watched more closely than ever, and had been throughout the day. But no further changes had come.

Dr. Cline had remained with Stroud and
Wisnewski
until the two men became engrossed in their work with their dirty bones and dusty books, and then she'd pleaded with Nathan that she must return to the hospital to make arrangements for the smooth transition necessary when her colleagues met with her the next morning.

She wondered how much longer Leonard could fight
on his own,
and she wanted to help him. She had now called in two
neuro
specialists who agreed with her that Dr. Leonard was involved in a kind of tug-of-war between consciousness and unconsciousness. She wanted to act. She wanted to give Leonard the edge he required. But to do so would probably cost her
her
job, whether she was right or wrong.

There wasn't the time to test and retest the serum her people were developing, and there certainly wasn't time to secure permissions and approvals from all the agencies and people involved, from Leonard's next of kin to the Food and Drug Administration. Leonard would lose the battle within the hour, the specialists believed.

"The cure could kill him," Mark warned her, realizing what was going through her mind when they were alone again.

"He's dying anyway, Mark, and we've got to test this on someone, and the others ... the others may as well be mummies. They've all given in. At least Leonard wants to live."

"I've never pumped that much stimulant into a man," said Mark.

"And you're not going to now. I am."