Robert W. Walker (19 page)

"Gordon's people?"

"Don't you see, it's got to do with Gordon's people back at the construction
site.
"

"But we had an agreement with the mayor that--"

"All bets are off. You've been so secluded at the museum that you don't know what's going on. Gordon's calling the shots now."

"
Dammit
! The fool has precipitated this. Damn him!"

"Gordon's planning to bulldoze the site and--"

"Seal it off?
Dammit
, don't those fools know that this thing is not in the pit any longer, that it's among us! In us! If we seal the site off, we seal our own fates. Where is Nathan in all this?"

"I don't know ... Gordon's overseeing the work."

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the hospital! I was on my way to see you when--"

"Are you all right?"

"--all right?
My patients are walking out on me like so many zombies, Abe!"

"But you're physically all right?"

"Yes, yes, but--"

"Good, then do what I ask."

"Whatever you say."

"That concoction you put together for Leonard. It may be our only hope at this point. Is there any way to transport as much of it as possible to the construction site?"

"Yes, but ... but why?"

"We may have to use it, Kendra."

"Use it?
On the zombies?"

"It may be our only hope. Those zombies as you call them are bent on destroying us, Kendra. Don't ask me how I know this, there isn't time. Just trust me."

"You'll need some way to inject the antidote--or should we now call it poison?"

"For any of those who come to the pit, consider it poison, I'm afraid. And yes, anything you can do about injecting literally hundreds ... please bring your tools and your ideas. I'll meet you at the site."

Kendra got on the P.A. system and gathered what remained of her staff and debriefed them as quickly as possible. She asked for volunteers to go with her to the Gordon Construction site carrying the necessary materials Stroud had requested. Only Mark and Tom volunteered.

"All right," she said, "we'll need all the protective gear we can gather up. We'll need all the syringes and dart guns we can find, and we'll need every ounce of the ... the so-called antidote. Everyone else remaining behind, I want you to go into producing more of this poison. It may be the only weapon we have against those zombies. And don't roll your eyes at me. I know these zombies were people once, but at the moment, they will kill you in order to see their ends met. Now, do as I say."

Very soon after this Tom Logan and Mark Williams had loaded a medical van in the parking lot with all the materials at their disposal, and they were now racing for the Gordon site and the fearful pit where they would link up with Abraham Stroud.

Abraham Stroud tried desperately to stop the mammoth machines at Gordon Construction from moving in to seal off the mysterious Etruscan ship. But police, ordered to control the strange, growing crowd of zombies and madmen that had encircled the construction site, dragged Stroud away from the dozers and to James Nathan. Not even the C.P. was listening to any more rhetoric. He shouted at Stroud, "It's time we took action!"

"Blindly?
Stupidly?"

"Any damned way we can get it!" His anger and his words were a mirroring of the feelings of almost all of the citizens of New York City. Thus far, the evil was dividing them, one against the other, as sharply as a meat cleaver. Stroud continued to argue. "But we're going to need access to the damned pit, to the ship! Nathan! We're close!"

"Not close enough,"
came
a sharp-edged voice beyond Nathan. It was one of the construction guys, the boss from the look of the man. He pointed skyward. "Here comes Sir Arthur now."

It was a helicopter with the markings and blue and white colors of Gordon's company. The foreman said, "He's going to be pissed off it hasn't been done."

"I don't give one shit about your boss's feelings, McMasters!" shouted James Nathan, making certain everyone within earshot understood that he was acting on his own here, and not as Gordon's puppet.

Stroud tried again to reason with Nathan. "We're going to have to go back inside ... to face this thing," he said.

"You'd do it, too, wouldn't you, Stroud?"

He looked Nathan in the eyes and held them in his steely gaze. "Damned right I would, if I knew we had a chance of beating this thing."

"Even if you go down with it?"

"I'll take my chances."

A silence settled over the two men even in the roar of the approaching chopper and several ambulances that parted the crowd and stormed through the gates.

"We'll need to reenter at exactly the same place."

"Why's that?"

"I can't say."

"Something else you're not sure of?"

Stroud merely sensed the importance of keeping open the pit. Once it was shut, he was certain the disease that had steadily infected thousands would only increase, multiply and
quadruple
, spreading on forever.

All around them along the copper dam supports, the fences and the barricades, an army of zombies stared down on them, and their numbers were swelling and threatening, an explosion of human bodies bent on the destruction of anyone who was not among them.

They stood in absolutely frozen poses all around the site, looking like the stone soldier statues that once guarded the Great Wall of China. A sound began to emanate from the army of zombies, an ominous chant that made the hair on the back of the neck stand on end. "
Ommmmmm-uuuuuu
,
ommmmmm-uuuuuu
,
ommmmmm-uuuuuu
..." Again and again, over and over, combating the rotor blades of the helicopter as it settled downward.

"See what I mean, Nathan?" Stroud shouted above the din, still trying to convince the other man of the futility of blowing the hole with a bazooka or covering it with mortar. "The thing is not inside there. It's out here, with us. It
is
us!"

Nathan stood mesmerized at the sheer numbers of zombies lining his streets. Shaken, he looked to Stroud for guidance. "What do we do?"

"Now you're talking. Order those dozers to cease and desist." The men on the dozers had stopped of their own accord when the zombies had begun to chant. So loud and piercing was the cry they sent up that it could be heard over the roar in the cab of a Cat. Nathan quickly dispatched some of his men to stay the dozers completely. He did so as Gordon, a tall, impressive, gray-to-silver-haired man, rushed at them, shouting.

"What is the meaning of this, Nathan? Can't you clear this area? Get these people out of here! What're your men doing there?" He saw that the men on the dozers were being forced off by the policemen, and he really lost his temper. "
Goddammit
, Nathan! I have just come from your boss, and he is in agreement with me! Do you understand? Damn you!"

"Covering over the pit and sealing it will only worsen the situation, Gordon!" Nathan shot back at him, equally loud and angry. "I've got to do what my scientific advisory team says. If that goes against the wishes of the mayor, then the
mayor'll
just have to can my ass! Meantime, please stay out of the way. This is a police affair."

Gordon was so livid he had gone white-faced. "We shall just see about that!"

He stormed off, presumably to find a telephone. The man seemed both blind and deaf to the fact he was, like the others, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of potentially dangerous people infected with the evil incarnated from the ship. Stroud wondered momentarily what
Esruad
would have done at a moment like this, no doubt fighting the ignorance and fear and hatred of his own people in the year 793
b.c
. Then he saw Kendra and her people rushing about, distributing syringes filled with her chemical weapon.

"There,
Commissioner,
is our weapon. Tell your men to use it."

"They're policemen, for Christ's sake. If these ... people ... attack, my men will go for their guns."

"Listen to me! We do know now something about what we are dealing with here, Nathan, and conventional weapons will not destroy this thing
any more
than bulldozers might."

"All right ... all right!" Nathan got on his bullhorn and told his people to arm themselves with what the doctors were passing out. "Use the syringes as your weapon in the event any of the ... the diseased people come at you. There are more of them than we've got bullets for, anyway."

"A few
shots'll
scatter them!" shouted one of the uniformed men.

"Use the medicine!" he shouted back as one of the zombies clambered over the fence and fell, got up and was met by a cop with a syringe who, afraid to touch the sick man, jabbed at him with it before plunging it into him. Others were coming over the fences, which were beginning to give way. The first man injected began to quake and gurgle and roll about the ground before his body was lifted and pounded on the earth by invisible hands. He was dead.

"Christ, they're coming in!"

Nathan uselessly picked up the bullhorn and shouted at the uncaring, unhearing mass of humanity at the fences encircling them. "It's no good!" he finally shouted, seeing another section of fence come down. "It's no use!"

Shots broke out as frightened police fired on the crowd pushing inward along one wall of the fence. Some of the shots were effective, others not.

"We've got to get out of here!" Nathan shouted as the police were driven back and away from the pit.

"Thing is protecting its territory," Stroud told Nathan. "All of this is premature. It knew ... it somehow knew some of us were going to try to cut it off from the zombies, and now this. It has called them here to take charge of the pit. Tomorrow, they'll be dragging people down into the ship."

Kendra had joined them, the supply of syringes having been exhausted early.

"What're we dealing with, Dr. Stroud? What kind of intelligence is it?" begged Nathan.

"We're getting closer and closer to understanding it. We'll find a weakness, but it may take time. As for now, we've got to get out of here if we wish to remain alive. Kendra, come on--the helicopter."

"Here, Stroud, take this. It has three darts in it," she told him, shoving a dart gun into his hand.

Stroud gladly accepted the weapon, seeing she had one of her own.

Nathan's men were suddenly being engulfed by the horde, along with Gordon's men. Shots had continued but they were few and far between now. Casualties mounted on both sides, but the overwhelming numbers decided the battle before it had begun. Stroud had to tear Nathan away, the man firing his last round into the swarming zombies. Kendra's dart gun stabbed one that reached out for her with an empty syringe in his ugly, emaciated, bony hand.

"Forget fighting! Get to the chopper!" Stroud shouted, and urged her along, Nathan following, to their only visible means of escape. As the massive swarm moved on them, Stroud stopped to turn and fire. He put three darts into three of them in rapid succession. Each of the lead zombies coming toward them fell into fits and spasms, making a part of Stroud pity them, but hardly had his heart gone out to these poor devils than the others merely stomped over them, crushing the leaders underfoot in an attempt to get at Stroud and the other "living" people.

By now they saw no one else standing; only the chopper and its pilot ahead of them held out any hope whatsoever. Behind them, the ambulances and police cars had been swarmed. The chopper pilot, sporting a brown leather jacket and cap, shouted for them to hurry. Stroud looked over his shoulder when he heard Gordon scream and scream again, caught under the pounding force of the herd.