Robert W. Walker (17 page)

Wisnewski
explained all this while placing the document below the two-foot-wide magnifying glass.

Leonard seemed at first oblivious of
Wisnewski
and what the other man was saying. Stroud watched both men carefully. Leonard now said calmly, "You don't know what you're talking about, Wiz. Stick to your bones."

It was curt for Leonard, uncharacteristic; but he now launched into studying the document, saying it could take hours, days, before he knew what each word meant. He asked them to be patient. "You can't rush a thing like this. You do, and you make bad interpretations, assumptions, and then you base everything on a fallacy."

"Fallacy?" asked Wiz, but Stroud put up a hand to him, indicating the prudent thing to do now would be to leave Leonard to his work. Leonard went into a kind of work-induced trance familiar to
Wisnewski
, and so the white-haired older doctor nodded and gave Leonard his leeway.

As Leonard worked, Stroud and
Wisnewski
huddled around a table with coffee and the bones that had come out of the pit.
Wisnewski
was still involved in studying these, but for now Stroud told him of the progress that Kendra Cline had had in combating the disease in people who were fortunate enough to have only a mild case of the "supernatural flu."
Wisnewski
was amazed to learn the details, hanging on Stroud's every word. He was particularly curious about the residue the disease left behind which seeped from the ears and other orifices of those affected.

"I'd wondered about that," said
Wisnewski
.

"You expelled some of it, too?
While you were in Bellevue?"

"Excreted is the operative word," he said, and left it at that.

The hours passed slowly, with Stroud helping
Wisnewski
build a complete log on the bones and with a silent Leonard going at the document in a grueling, nonstop examination which was creating extensive notes. Leonard was mesmerized by the document and several times noises escaped him but no words as yet.

Nathan had interrupted their work twice with phone calls, demanding to know of their progress. Stroud fed him what he thought prudent. On the second call, Stroud told him of Wiz's theory of the 500,000 sacrifices. Nathan gasped and said, "Is that it? We're supposed to sit idly by and watch hundreds of thousands succumb to this disease and do ... nothing?"

"Dr. Cline's already informed you of Leonard's recovery and what that means."

"But if this ... this thing in the pit wants 500,000 lives, what's our antidote to that? There is none!
If it doesn't get what it wants ... what then?"

Stroud hesitated before saying, "The whole of the city, we believe. So far, there are as many unanswered questions as there are--"

"I don't want to hear about unanswered questions, Stroud! I want results. You promised when I got you
Wisnewski
that--"

"I promised you nothing, and we're going at this night and day, and we're doing our goddamned best."

"I'm running interference for you scientists, Stroud, and you have no idea the pressures I'm holding back off your asses, so level with me! Do we have a shot at beating this thing or not?"

"Yes, yes, we do, but we need time to develop--"

"We don't have time. The goddamned dogs and cats and rats in the city are getting it now! They've attacked people, further spreading the disease."

Stroud thought of the neurological causes of the disease as they were explained to him by Kendra Cline. It seemed perfectly logical that animals would be affected as well. "Commissioner Nathan, I promise you ... as soon as we have a defense against this thing--"

"Yeah, well, I'm not so sure there is any defense anymore. Five hundred thousand! Christ, Stroud, do you know there are people in this city who would gladly sacrifice that many for the sake of themselves? Let's keep this information under wraps, understood? I can just see the headlines on that."

"All right, agreed." Stroud had finally gotten him off the phone when Leonard shouted for the other two men to gather round him.

"I've got it ... I've got it."

"We may have to give it what it wants," began Leonard, "but it isn't going to entirely trust us to do so."

Stroud and
Wisnewski
stared across at one another, each man shaking his head in confusion. "Do you want to explain that, Samuel?" asked Wiz.

"You were wrong about the 500,000 it wants, Wiz."

"I know the Etruscan numerals, Sam, and--"

"Yes, it wants that number, but that number is not the same as the ones it has inflicted with this disease of ... of control."

"What does it want?" asked Stroud. "What do you mean, Dr. Leonard?"

Leonard got up, his back aching from the hours looking over the documents. He paced a moment before saying, "The zombies are an army."

"An army?"

"To do its bidding.
They will become it; it will become
they
. They are an extension of it. They will move in this world for it, because it cannot leave the confines of the earth in any other form. The Etruscan writer says that it is trapped by the wind if it comes out of the earth on a warm day or--"

"Or if it is raining," finished Stroud.

"Yes, how did you know?"

He told them about the experiments that Kendra had conducted on the substance that had oozed from Leonard and
Weitzel
.

"To think this vile thing once inhabited my body," said Leonard, quaking.

"Go on, Sam," said Wiz. "What else? How will it gain its sacrifices if not by taking the zombies?"

"The zombies will herd the rest of us to it, surround and force people into the pit, into the ship ... preferably alive."

Stroud thought of the attacks on him by the various zombies that he had come into contact with. He recalled the crazed man with the claw hammer.

Leonard continued, stopping at one point to place a finger on one word of the parchment that looked to Stroud like the tail feather of a bird. "This creature has the power to blow storms into the minds of men, and to become a parasite in the brain."

Stroud wondered for a moment if Dr. Leonard had gone mad. He didn't know how much of Leonard's spiel he could believe. "Whoa, wait a minute, Dr. Leonard. Are you trying to say that the Etruscans understood the physiological mechanisms that this demon used against them, and is now using against us? That they had the capability to assess--"

"Apparently the author of this did," said Leonard, poking his finger in the direction of the document under the magnifying glass. Stroud stared at it for some time and then a word on the page leaped out at him:

Mysterious Photograph

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The word seemed to have some meaning for Stroud, but he wasn't sure why. It was the last word on the document. He asked Leonard to translate it.

"That is the name of the author, a soothsayer or some such."

"I see."

"Not very often do we get such a document signed," said Wiz.

"What is the name?"

"Well, it lines up like this," said Leonard, showing him the written translation, which read:

ESROUD

Stroud stared dumbstruck at the name:
Esruad
.
"Are you sure? There's no mistake?"

"It would seem the name has significance," said Leonard.

"You might say so.
Weitzel
spoke the name just before he died. He called me
Esruad
. You also, Dr.
Wisnewski
, when I first came to you in the psychiatric ward. Do you recall?"

Wisnewski
shook his head vigorously.
"Not at all."

"There seems to be something important in the name. Does it say what this man
Esruad
did during the plague time?"

"He speaks of
despair, that
no one would listen to him. He had been something of an alchemist, it appears," said Leonard.

"What about the monster itself?" asked Wiz
impatiently.

"A dreadful thing to behold, it says.
Esruad
calls it the
Ubbrroxx
;
describes it as life-eating, life-draining, diabolical ... unleashed ... uninhibited ... disease-carrying."

"Sounds like our creature," said
Wisnewski
.

"Remarkably so," agreed Stroud.

"And this fellow
Esruad
... He sounds familiar to me, too," began Leonard. "I must go over some old notes of my own. If memory serves, he was a kind of prophet, soothsayer. Very little is known about him, but recent archeological breakthroughs in Tuscany have provided a few rays of light."

Wiz added, "No Etruscan literature other than funeral inscriptions survives, which makes this little piece of paper priceless."

Pulling at his tie Leonard continued, "Until recently it was near impossible to understand all but a few words, but the alphabet is a mix of Roman, Phoenician and an unknown tongue--very likely the Etruscans' ancestors. They traded with the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and most of what we know about them is told us by these other peoples."