Robert W. Walker (32 page)

Topside, Nathan seethed with frustration and anger, the feeling of helplessness so overwhelming as to make him see red.

"You should never have allowed those fool scientists in," said a Captain McDonald of the U.S. Armed Forces Special Services who was itching to turn his men loose on the zombies and his mortars loose on the pit.

"All I know is that we had a deal, McDonald, and you're going to stick to it, to the last minute!" Nathan knew that negotiating another second with McDonald and the others was useless. He stormed away from the other man to have another look through his field glasses at the calm before the storm.

He thought about his last conversation with Stroud, and the grim feeling that he would never hear the other man's voice again settled over him like a shroud. But he must resist the impulse to assume that Stroud and the others were doomed to failure, that there was no hope for them, for without that hope, James Nathan believed there was no other hope on the horizon. He didn't for a moment believe that the battery of tanks and howitzers being moved into place by the military was any match for the kind of power he had seen firsthand.

New York was his city, and on a normal night, he'd be able to look out over the harbor, maybe take his sixty-footer out for a night cruise to turn her to leeward and stare back at the jeweled necklace of the city in lights, following the constellations along the sensuous path where she lay snug against the harbor, winking ... always winking. To most people, in and out of the city, New York was a sprawling madhouse built on the shoulders of an Atlas whose main interest was commerce; to James Nathan the city was a graceful lady lounging as carelessly as a disinterested goddess like those you might see in a Babylonian temple, all-powerful and all around, and yet unseen ... just out of sight and out of range of the dimension of mankind.
Until you wounded her.
She could be as dangerous and unyielding as the ocean, as treacherous as a mountain glacier, callous, cold,
warm
as her mood dictated.

James Nathan had felt the pulse of the sensuous living thing that was New York City, and even with all her ills, she was a towering woman of substance--never to be taken for granted--and as for beauty, a modern Mesopotamia where most lived out their lives, nestled in her bosom, but never knowing her. Like lice on a mammoth elephant, krill in the presence of the whale. Most busy with their little ruts, their minds frantic with schemes that centered on themselves...

People ... what else was to be expected?

What can I take from her, from this goddess called New York? That is what people wanted to know. Take from her, always taking, stripping, biting out large chunks of her, but here was Stroud, a stranger to her, come to unselfishly give his life for her. Amazing...

Nathan, a native of the goddess, had spent his life below the temple of her lights, even as a small boy in a two-room flat with his mother, helping to support her through illness and alcoholism. He recalled nights on end, looking out his dirty little window over that grocery store at the towering monoliths that looked like the Emerald City in
The Wizard of Oz,
the lights gleaming so proudly that they sent shards of themselves as far away as here, to him. He saw the towers, the lights she held out to him in the darkness, and dreamed of one day taking something from her as well. All his life had been a struggle to become, and now he had reached his goal.

Now it was time to give something back to the city, and that prize was a man named Abraham Stroud. His home was threatened, and he had had to trust in a man who was more than just a man, a man who had some hold over the evil from below. Nathan found a dark corner in the bunker he shared with the
radioman,
gave a passing thought to his dead mother and prayed silently for Stroud's success.

Abe Stroud decided it was time to communicate with the others left behind, to be certain they were all right, and to tell them it was time they began back toward the surface, to get as far from the ship as possible. He reached Kendra, who had been for some time trying to get his attention on the
comlink
.

"Abe, why didn't you answer? We were worried sick--"

"Never mind that now. Did you reach Nathan?"

"Yes, but--"

"Did you gain any more time?"

"You'd best not bank on it, but we told him we weren't leaving you."

"Well, you
are
leaving, right now. All of you, out."

"Abe, the moment they see us surface, your life's forfeit! We won't do that. We can't."

Stroud suddenly heard screams coming through. Kendra and the others were under attack once more. He shouted for clarification but the static and the shouts ended and he knew no more than he did before. He was about to rush back when suddenly he tripped as he scurried over the bone pile. He got up readily and continued, but he fell once more, his feet plunging into holes opening up in the pile below him moments before he felt the quake that sent him onto his stomach again.

Stroud heaved to free himself of the bones, which seemed now to be tugging at his feet, pulling him down, ripping at his protective wear, snatching at his boots. Looking down, he saw that fleshy arms had risen from the bone pile and were tearing at him, attempting to pull him under where he would suffocate below the bones. He kicked out at them, but they seemed to be without feeling. He snatched at the wand to fire the gas, but he was hauled down and was being sucked into the quicksand of the bones.

"
Esruad
!
Esruad
!" he called out for help as he clambered for his footing. The skull rolled from the pack on Stroud's back, sending out a searing light that instantly covered the bones in a kind of radiation that stung the fleshy hands and arms reaching up for Stroud, making them loosen their grip. Stroud scrambled to his feet, finding his suit had been ripped in several places. The bulky outfit was of no further use, and so he began to tear it away. He stood in the light of the skull, bathed in it, and he somehow knew it would protect him far better than the synthetic clothing, and the paltry remainder of his oxygen tank.

Suddenly the bones opened up, and Stroud found him-self on the other side of the "feast" leavings of the creature, cascading down and down, falling with a powerful thud, the skull lost somewhere atop the mountain of bones. Stroud struggled to maintain consciousness, the glow of the orange aura of the skull weak but still a shimmering outline around him.

"
Esruad
...
Esruad
," he moaned, but the skull did not respond. He was stunned and fought for clearer vision.

Stroud saw a hideous creature burning with fire leap into view, coming straight for him. Stroud instinctively
recoiled,
believing the touch of the creature would set him instantly aflame. The monster reeked of decay and it burned as if made of gaseous materials, and yet it bore the look of a desiccated body. Stroud recognized the apparition as what Wiz called a lich, the single most powerful form of the undead. It greatly resembled a mummy in its tattered appearance, but those tatters and hanging strips of cloth were once flesh. The creature's eye sockets were empty, dead blackness with a green pinpoint of piercing light at each center that served for eyes. It was obvious this thing saw best in the dark. An aura of death and coldness radiated from it despite the fire all around it.

According to Wiz's books, the lich had been a wizard or priest in life, damned to an eternal hell. The bits of cloth still dangling from the soupy, lumpy body were supposedly magical. But also, according to Wiz's books, the touch of the creature could send a living man into a frozen state of paralysis, to make him utterly unable to move.

It lunged at Stroud and missed as he sidestepped, averting its touch. The bone pile it careened into turned to burning rubble, so intense was the heat of its touch. Somehow this lich had reversed the potency of its touch and commanded enough heat to sear bone or to cremate Stroud.

Stroud didn't know what to do. The creature advanced and he fired the gas, fearing the gas would also kill
himself
should he inhale enough of it. But Stroud found that the magical light surrounding him acted to keep the gas out. But the lich, too, was protected by the fire around it, which consumed the gas, dissipating it. It was immune even to modern charms, Stroud thought. The lich sent out a green light from its center, which took the shape of a
dragonlike
snake, enormous and weaving between them, readying to strike. Stroud saw human eyes in the snake-dragon's hideous head, and he knew the creature at the center of the ship was now placing all its energies into destroying Abraham Stroud, and taking possession of the skull on its own terms.

With the formation of the dragon-snake, which was as large as a helicopter, the
lich's
fire dimmed and receded.

Stroud backed away from the serpent creature that began to strike, first at his left, then his right. Stroud felt out of control, felt as if he were on the verge of defeat. He saw the lich circling to his other side. The two creatures were backing him along a dark corridor that no doubt would end in his death.

"
Esruad
!"
He invoked the name again and again, searching the darkness for the lost skull when suddenly behind him there appeared another lich, more vicious and ugly than the first, but whose vestments were in much better repair, showing
a nobility
about them. This
lich's
eyes spewed forth an orange fire and its skull was
neither dirty or
filth-ridden, as there was no skin, hair or gooey soup streaming from it. In fact, the skull looked absolutely sleek now that Stroud could see clearly as this one neared him.

Completely surrounded now, Stroud heard the second lich speak his name. "Stroud, I am with you. It is I,
Esruad
."

Stroud feared it was a trick, but he looked more closely at the
lich's
features, and alternating with the dead skull was that of the crystal skull. The orange-eyed lich was smoking like the first one, except that it smoked with a freezing-cold air that frothed off it, and inside of this, at the heart of it, there was a visible fire.

"Defend
yourself
!" shouted
Esruad's
new form, a form that required all of the energy of the skull. In
Esruad's
hand appeared a sword of ice that he plunged at the fiery lich, which now backed carefully away, a fire sword appearing suddenly in its grasp, materializing from within it.

Esruad
attacked, the two swords pounding overhead, ringing with a spectral clash, fire and ice shattering in all directions as the serpent with its dragon body leaped onto Stroud, whose protective outer current was losing its charge.

Stroud saw the serpent head come at him with its fangs about to strike when his own scream mingled with that of the first lich.
Esruad
had stabbed it through its center and turned it to stone, and then the serpent dragon fell atop Stroud like a gunnysack, dead and reeking of years of decay, molten with an oozy layer of soup that sent waves of disgust through Stroud. Barely had he gotten to his feet when another snake-dragon attacked from behind, knocking him to his knees. This one had dropped from overhead where it had been clinging to the ceiling. Stroud felt the fangs lock into his throat like two enormous meat hooks; he felt the blood gush up and out, draining
down
his back and chest. He was in its clutches, and it had him near death when
Esruad
lobed it in half with his ice sword.

Stroud, weak and trembling from the venom coursing through him, knew that he was a dead man, that there was no way out from this point on. He didn't even have the strength to push away the monster that spilled its insides over him.
Esruad
had to do this, too, for him.

But as
Esruad
did so, Stroud found the strength to drag himself away from the ugly, desiccated features of his ancient ancestor, for
Esruad's
appearance was as gruesome as the other lich.
Esruad
was a lich, a long-dead wizard who had come back to life, and he seemed to grow in strength here amid the horrors of his avowed enemy,
Ubbrroxx
. In fact, he almost seemed to draw his new existence from the creature, as if he was in cohorts with it and had played Stroud for a fool.

"Yes, I draw strength from this place, but not from the demon," said
Esruad
, reaching a spindly, dead hand to him. "You have brought me to the realm where I can flourish in order to fight our common enemy, Stroud. You must continue to believe, for if you fail to do so, I can't protect you any further."