Robert W. Walker (20 page)

Nathan jumped in and helped Kendra aboard. Stroud stood just outside the chopper and yelled at the top of his lungs the word
Esruad
,
and this had a visible effect on the teeming zombies, slowing their relentless movement toward them.
"Hurry!
Now!"
Kendra shouted to Stroud, who leaped into the cockpit as the bird was lifting.

"Oh, God, oh!"

"
Jeeee-sus
H. Christ!" shouted Nathan.

Below them a flood of human automatons covered the construction site. They'd overwhelmed Nathan's men, the men in hard hats, killed Gordon and Kendra's two assistants. Kendra quietly sobbed in the rear seat alongside a terrorized James Nathan, who had reloaded and aimed his gun but stopped himself, realizing it was useless.

For as far as they could see, the zombies stood in waiting around the pit, there now to protect the ship and to bring the others--people like those in the helicopter--to the thing in the ship, where it would quietly feed for as long as it wished.

Stroud imagined such a death would be far worse than dying at the hands of a werewolf, and even worse than dying the slow death of a vampire victim. Something about this creature was nasty and vile and more evil than anything Abraham H. Stroud had ever faced.

"What was that word you called out to them?" asked the pilot, who introduced himself as Luther Stokes.

"A name," was all that Stroud said.

"Why'd they slow up just when you said it?"

Nathan drew himself forward, wishing to hear the answer. It was as if Nathan were suspicious of Stroud.

"
Esruad
... something Leonard found in the writings ... an ancient name."

"I thought you had shouted your name,
Stroud,
" said Nathan.

Abe thought of the similarities in the two names momentarily, but his eye was caught by Kendra's. She now looked at Stroud from her perch in the rear seat alongside Nathan. She was trembling, her eyes red,
tears
still falling. Far below, the ambulances that had carried her, Mark and Tom into the foray were covered in the human flood. Only the soft tones of nightfall helped the scene of what looked like a million ants feeding over the life down there.

Stroud's sharper eye saw the procession toward the pit and the ship, the bodies of the living, perhaps Gordon among them, being escorted to the creature in the dark recesses of the hole.

"We're going to have to go back inside," he said. "We just need more time ... a little more time."

Nathan suddenly snapped, incensed.
"
Time?
We don't have any bloody time left,
Doctor
Stroud. This thing is sapping the life out of this city. And you stood in my way down there! Had we buried that thing, maybe ... just maybe--"

"Bullshit, Commissioner! This isn't going to be so easy or simple, and it never was! It wants 500,000 of your citizens, remember? And it doesn't trust us to draw straws, so it has come out to get us. Don't you see that?"

"Five hundred thousand?" asked Kendra.

"That or more," he replied. "Look about you. Look at the sacrifices. It's readying for a mass slaughter, and it wants them all in that hole."

"Christ, Stroud, how do you know this?"

"Records ... the items we brought back ... archeological evidence. We even know what the Etruscans called this thing:
Ubbrroxx
. Now, will you please listen to reason?"

"You call this reason?"

"It's our only chance, Commissioner."

"Why should I believe you, Stroud? One reason why."

"I'm the only man that's come out of there intact, untouched by this thing, and it fears me because of this."

Nathan dropped his gaze and slowly began to nod.
"All right, all right.
What do you need from me and my department?"

"All the help I can get," he said, staring down at the teeming multitude that seemed to be feeding on itself. The site disappeared as the chopper turned sharply right and swooped away. Stroud's thoughts went out to the poor souls trapped by the being, used by the being and fed upon by this evil entity. He tore away his headset and closed his eyes on the thought, resting his head as rotors beat above them. He soon again worked the headphones over his ears so that he could communicate with the pilot, giving him directions for where he was to take them.

"
I will feed on your soul,
Esruad
..."
came
a faint whisper through Stroud's headphone, a whisper from someone in the helicopter. But it was the same demonic voice that had lived in
Weitzel
.

Below them the city lay stretched out like an enormous circuit board lit with sparks of electricity and beams of pulsating stars--automobiles screeching about in what seemed a mad bowl of punch. Lights blinked on all sides of them, towering monoliths that represented mountainous terrain. Far below, the bridges and canals crisscrossed one another like the veins in a man's hand. The Hudson River swarmed up toward them as if to swallow them up when the helicopter tilted toward the water. Stroud grabbed hold of the throttle to steady the sudden wobble, and in the distance he caught sight of the forest that was Central Park.

The pilot's hand fought his and he turned to stare into Stroud's face. Luther Stokes's eyes were fiery yet green and icy all at once, a palpitating presence reaching out through him in an attempt to destroy Stroud.

"Stroud!
Stroud!"
Nathan was shouting.

Stroud caught only a brief glance of the C.P. and Kendra in the rear as the helicopter began a wild gyration that plastered them all against their seats.

"Going down!
Going down!"
the insidious voice of the demon cried through Stokes's lips, having locked Stokes's hand on the throttle.

Stroud, who had flown helicopters in the war, tugged at the controls as the demon's laughter filled the bubble. Stroud shouted for Kendra to fire a dart into Stokes. Then he shouted for Nathan's help. "Shoot the pilot! Shoot him!"

Neither Kendra nor Nathan could readily respond, as the cab had become a centrifuge and they, like Stroud himself, were laboring under such centrifugal force that they might as well have been in a force-nine gale wind. Nathan could not straighten his line of fire, nor could Kendra.

Stroud brought up his knee, letting go of the throttle, bringing up both his feet and kicking straight out at Stokes's head. The force sent the other man into the door, jarring it loose. Stroud
regathered
his balance when the chopper righted a bit in response to
Stokes's having
let go. Stroud saw that he was reaching now for the controls again, and that was when Nathan's .38 exploded through the cushion of the seat and ripped through him. This only momentarily stunned the man, and he fought again to take the controls back from Stroud.

The dizzying whir of the helicopter continued, its rear rotors cutting stone as it edged about a building. Stroud turned her toward a relatively safer path along the river.

But Stokes's hands possessed the strength of the demon, and Stroud realized just how much energy the monster must have to make such remote attacks on him. It had to be staggering. For now, however, he had to get the reeling chopper safely grounded.

"Kendra!" he shouted for help, and finally heard the
whuuuuup
of her dart gun.

Stokes's reaction was a banshee scream, and Stroud kicked and punched and pushed out at him again, sending him, hanging on the door, outside the cab. In a moment he laughed, tugging the helicopter to one side, and shouted maniacally,
"
Goooooing
dowwwwwwwn
!"
With that he dropped from the door panel some sixty or seventy feet to the pavement, splattering like an overripe melon.

The helicopter was still spinning, and Stroud remained in battle with the machine as if it, too, were possessed of the demon. It took Stroud's entire strength to hold her, his biceps bulging against the throttle. He needed lift, but the machine wanted to drop from the sky and end its crazed dance. The gyrating cockpit pushed Stroud back and back, disallowing the leverage he needed. It was a catch-22 of the deadliest kind.

"Stroud!
Stroud!"
Kendra cried out as they skirted past brick on all sides.

Stroud pulled himself to the controls and held firm, firmer, praying all the while, when suddenly she gained a bit of lift, as if taking a breath from her destructive course. Stroud took advantage, pulling for lift, and she responded, lifting ... lifting, no longer losing altitude. When Stroud righted the lopsided machine in the air, he saw that they had spiraled to within fifty feet of the ground in a fiery free-fall over Central Park. He had no idea how they'd gotten to this location.

"What the hell happened?" asked a breathless Nathan.

"Stokes was taken over by the damned thing in the pit!"

"How?
How can it do that?"

"How can it turn thousands into zombies?"

"Why? Why's it keep coming after you, Stroud?" asked Kendra, still fighting for her own breath.

"Perhaps if I knew the answer to that..."

"As if it has targeted you?" she continued.

"I'm afraid I'm not very safe company to be keeping."

Nathan guffawed at this.
"Damned straight there."

"But thank God you know how to fly this thing," Kendra said.

"Yeah, but
it
didn't know that." Stroud turned the whirly-bird a bit too sharply, causing Kendra to gasp again.

"It's all right. I've got her under control now. Commissioner, you think you can get clearance for us to land at One Police Plaza?"

"Not a problem. Give me that radio."

Still breathing heavily, his .38 in one hand, Nathan took the radio and called for the necessary clearance on the gleaming roof with the bull's-eye targets just ahead of them. It looked like a concrete heaven to them all.

-11-

Stroud, Kendra Cline and James Nathan were all shaken at what they had survived, and the lives of those lost weighed heavily on their minds. Nathan wanted to call in the National Guard and the U.S. Army and perhaps return to the site and destroy the zombies, every man, woman and child among them. It seemed the only way to proceed from his vantage point. Stroud asked for restraint and for time.

"At least enough time to determine the true nature of the enemy, Commissioner."

"There is no time!"

"Look here, you called me into this thing and now you're going to listen to me,
dammit
!" Stroud shouted, losing his temper. He had dealt with Nathan's type before in Chicago, with the cannibalizing werewolf that was stalking the city streets there less than a year ago. Nathan knew of his success with that unusual case, and he had no doubt heard the rumors and read the wild reports of other bizarre cases which Stroud had solved.

Nathan turned to Stroud, his wide shoulders heaving with a mixture of uncertainty and frustration. He gave a fleeting glance toward Dr. Cline, but she offered him no help. She had remained in a semi-trance on seeing the deaths of her co-workers. She'd had a chill and Stroud had located a blanket for her shoulders and a cup of steaming coffee.

"You tried it Gordon's way!" Stroud said adamantly. "And look what it's gotten us! Now, for the love of God, man, try it
my
way."

"I've got people I've got to answer to," he said feebly. Then he began to pace before them. "What is it you intend to do? What's Stroud's way?"