Robert W. Walker (21 page)

"I intend to lead an expedition back down into the ship, to face this thing on its own ground."

"That's madness," he said. "What guarantee do you have you'll come out alive?"

"Very little, perhaps none ... but this thing, whatever it is ... I don't know why, but I sense that it wants me. And thus far it has come after me on its terms. It's time I turned the tables, but first I've got to gain help from
Wisnewski
and Leonard, to learn more about this evil. Do you understand that?"

"And in the meantime?" asked Nathan, banging his fist on his desk. "What about those zombies out there? What do we do to stop them?"

Stroud had no answer for the commissioner. At a loss for a resolution to the problem, he knew he must gain more knowledge, ferret through the information Wiz and Leonard might provide back at the museum.

Nathan's intercom buzzed with an irritating bee
sound,
and the voice of rancor from people downstairs at the sergeant's desk spelled trouble. "Commissioner, you've got to get out of the building!" shouted someone at the other end.

"Casey? Casey, what's going on down there?" shouted Nathan.

"We're under attack! The zombies, hundreds of them! Spilling through every doorway, breaking in the win--"

The line went dead to the sound of gunfire. Nathan looked up at Stroud and their eyes met. "They've followed you here! They're after you, Stroud--you! God damn it all, we could just feed you to them and maybe ... maybe this thing would go away!"

"Maybe ... and maybe not, Nathan."

They stood staring hard across at one another, Stroud's steely gaze telling the other man that he wouldn't go as a willing sacrifice to Nathan or the others. "Or maybe I'm the only hope your city has, Nathan. Think about that. Why has it singled me out for sacrifice? Because it knows something you don't--"

"What? What does it know, Stroud?" Nathan's hand inched toward his chest and shoulder holster.

"It knows enough to fear me, that I hold the key to its mystery; that I can dispel that mystery in time--if given the time."

"They're at our doorstep!"

"Then get us out of here!" shouted Kendra, tossing off the shroud around her. "Do as Stroud
says
! Get him to the museum."

Nathan held his ground and slipped out his Smith & Wesson. Outside they could hear the shouting, screams and gunshots as the zombies continued toward them.

"Get us up to the roof, to the helicopter!" she shouted.

Nathan hesitated further.

"With me dead, New York doesn't stand a chance, not even with the help of the armed forces," Abe assured Nathan, whose gun hand was
shaking,
sweat beading about his forehead and wide cheeks.

"Come on!" he finally said, tearing open the door. The hallway was scattered with bodies, both policemen and zombies. Nathan fired on a wave of zombies coming along the stairs, shouting, "This way!
This way!"

Nathan led them toward the service stairwell, but when they flew through the doorway, it was filled with zombies on the levels above and below. They ascended and descended toward the living as soon as they somehow realized that it was Abraham H. Stroud.

"Elevators, elevators!" shouted Nathan, backing out, racing around a terrace that overlooked the lobby below where the gunshots had died and the place was swarming with more and more of the mindless army of zombies. James Nathan saw that they were quickly being surrounded on all sides by the zombies, and even he realized it was useless to fire his weapon into the crushing wall of
them.
Kendra and Stroud pounded in frustration for the elevator to come, but it appeared that it would be too late.

The zombies closed in on both sides, leaving only the act of leaping down to the horde below in the lobby as an out, and that was no out.

Then came the ping of one of the elevators and they rushed to enter it, only to find it filled with zombies, backing them away. Another elevator arrived and from it poured more zombies.

"We're dead, Stroud," said Nathan. "We're better off taking the quick way out." He lifted his revolver to his eyes and fanned the drum, prepared to take all their lives.

"
Esssssruuu
-ad,
" said the zombies in unison all around them, and several joined hands and suddenly dissolved into a mire of brown muck from which was formed a devilish form that creaked and quaked as if half formed, the ugly eyes spewing forth frothy brown snakes, the mouth like the hole into Hell. "
Esssssruuu
-ad," it said to them. "You see now I can destroy you at any time--
any time!
"

"Then get it over with, you bastard mutation!"

Nathan pulled back the hammer on his .38, his hand shaking. He was poised to use the gun first on Kendra, preferring to see her dead to becoming a victim to the filthy mob of zombies that barred their way, along with the gruesome creature that had been formed from a number of their bodies.

"
Nooooooooo
,
Esruad
," said the creature, "I want you to come to me,
Esruad
... and bring your friends." It ended with a horrible, satanic, croaking laugh.

Meanwhile the zombies had remained frozen in place, as if made of stone, and these statues could hardly be said to be breathing--all but the several
who
had been formed to simulate the appearance of the demon. These had coalesced into a horrible and hideous,
multitentacled
monster with enormous holes for eyes from which squirmed snakes that leaped out and reentered its body below, disappearing into the muck of its outer skin, a kind of brown ooze. The surface was slick with slime and Kendra hid her head in Nathan's chest, unable to watch the snakes feed from the thing's eyes. Parts of the zombie men who had gone into forming the creature--their limbs, eyes, ears--could be seen swirling about in the muck that they'd become. It had somehow devoured them whole.

"What the hell is this thing, Stroud? And why's it calling you
Esruad
?" Nathan wanted to know.

"This is a manifestation of the creature, not the actual creature. It's taunting us."

"Taunting us, or you?"

"It's toying with us," said Stroud firmly. "Damned thing is toying with us. It could simply let the zombies kill us now--"

"Then why doesn't it?"

"Because it wants something from me."

"What? What does it want?"

"I don't know,
dammit
! Not yet, anyway." Stroud sensed that the creature wanted him to return to it, to face it alone, that the creature somehow knew of his special gifts in combating evil, and that, in a sense, the evil thing had thrown down the gauntlet. But how was Nathan or even Kendra to believe or even understand such a concept?

One of the elevator doors opened and the zombies parted to show them that the car was empty. Stroud instantly understood the maneuver and shouted, "Both of
you,
get into the elevator car now!
Now!"

The other two didn't hesitate and Stroud cautiously backed in last. The doors closed on the now fading form of the monster that'd been too hideous to gaze upon for longer than a second.

"Will this elevator take us to the roof?" asked Stroud.

"To a floor below.
You'll have to take the stairs from there." Nathan's voice then became agitated, his gun still gripped in his hand, as he asked, "Why, Stroud? Why you? Why'd it spare you and me and Dr. Cline just now?"

"If I could answer that--"

"And why does it call you
Esruad
?" asked Kendra, her voice shaking with irritation, her breath coming short.

The elevator door opened on an empty corridor and an observation tower. Stroud saw the sign for the roof and he ushered them along the clear path to safety.

"Come on, we're getting out of here," he told Kendra.

She stopped, however, and demanded an answer.

"There's no time now."

"Make time. I want to know what it means:
Esruad
."

"Back at the museum.
It'll all come clear, I promise."

Nathan, too, wanted answers.
He swung Stroud around as if he meant to strike out at him and Stroud instinctively pushed his hand away, gun or no gun.

"Answer me, Stroud, why? What makes you immune to this damnable horror? And tell me why I shouldn't blow a hole through you, suspecting you as I do of somehow collaborating with this bloody supernatural beast."

This made Stroud stop and grab Nathan by the lapels, pushing him hard into the wall, Kendra tugging at Stroud to come away. Stroud caught himself up and let go of the other man, who had held firm to his .38 Police Special.

Stroud rushed on, pushing through a glass door and out into the wind that played over the top of the high rise, sending his hair into a wild gyration. He'd taken Kendra by the hand, bringing her along. He shouted back over his shoulder to Nathan, "
Goddammit
, Commissioner, I don't know all the answers! That's why I need help. I need
Wisnewski
and Leonard and more time."

"Why did it let us live?"
pressed Nathan, running to catch up. He had seen a lot of good men die today, and he wondered why he was not among the dead.

"It wants me to come to it, to freely sacrifice myself, I believe. And when I do, it wants to play."

"To play?"

"Yeah, that's what it's doing with us all, Nathan, toying with us ... playing with our lives ... determining just how much of our civilized veneer it can strip away before we all turn on one another."

"It wants you. Has it wanted you all along? And would that end this nightmare?"

"You don't really believe you can bargain with the Devil, do you?"

Nathan thought for a moment. "No, I suppose not ... but--"

"No buts about it. When I do sacrifice myself, I'll do so armed with a great deal more than I now have, I pray," said Stroud as he strapped himself into the Gordon helicopter he had commandeered. Some police technicians worked atop the roof and had refueled it. All other police choppers were in service.

Kendra was helped into the seat beside Stroud by Nathan, who waved them off.

"Come with us," shouted Kendra.

"No, no, I'll be needed here. But I'll stay in contact."

"Be careful," Stroud called out to him.

"You, too, Stroud, and good luck.
I'm sorry about the ... the..."

"Good luck is sufficient!" shouted Stroud, who sent the rotor blades into whirring battle with the wind. As the chopper lifted off, the image of the monster with snakes feeding out of its eyes filled Stroud's vision ahead. He tilted the chopper into the sky streaked with the wretched sight, slicing through it.

Kendra Cline stared down at Nathan, who was fast disappearing behind them. She felt herself still inwardly trembling at the touch of the gun at her temple, and yet she'd have preferred the quick death of the bullet to what the zombies might have done to her. She, like Nathan, now felt strange toward Stroud, that he was somehow different, because he had been singled out by the evil emanating from the pit, the evil with such power to reach out to take what it wanted from them.

Stroud felt her eyes on him now. He realized that she hadn't seen the apparition of the creature in the night
sky, that
it was meant only for him. He understood why Nathan might feel threatened by him, but now he was getting the same feeling from Kendra, and this he didn't quite know how to deal with.