Robert W. Walker (9 page)

-5-

Abraham Stroud awoke blinking back the pain and stiffness in neck and back, to find
himself
listening to his own EKG. The machine and he shared an isolation ward in the hospital with two rows of motionless bodies, approximately twenty-six in all, thirteen to a row.

Stroud looked closely at the man on his right. Stiff and cold, the man looked like a cadaver, his color drained. For a moment, Stroud thought he was in a morgue, but the sound of EKGs humming up and down the rows of the zombies forestalled this notion. On his left, he saw the profile of the man he had seen in the silvery crystal skull in Egypt: Simon Albert
Weitzel
. This gave Stroud a start and he sat bolt upright, finding himself connected by wires and tubes to machines and feeding drips. The IVs looked like plastic bats hanging on each side of him.

A little disoriented, he tried to piece together what had brought him here to lie among the near-dead victims of the thing in the pit.

He'd had a bad reaction to the decontamination unit. The brilliant light colliding with the plate in his head had caused a catatonic response. This had led the others to assume that he had succumbed to the bizarre fate of the others, that he had contracted this vile disease being spread about by the thing on the dead ship.

Stroud's EKG reading was the only one in the room that wasn't damned near a straight line. He now tore away the attachments to the machine, watching the green reading disappear. He snatched himself free of the IVs and threw his legs over the side of the bed, facing
Weitzel
. He went to the man, the first victim, curious and filled with questions that had no solutions.

"It is you," Stroud said with a raspy, dry throat.

Weitzel
lay like a stone, without response. His eyelids were closed. It was that way with all the patients in the room. Some nurse had gone about the silent forms and had placed a gloved hand on the eyelids, forcing them down. Stroud recalled the sensation as if it were happening now to him. Someone had done it for him while he lay in this state as well. Fortunately, for him it wasn't the same exact state.

"What's happened to you,
Weitzel
? What is happening to you now?"

Weitzel's
eyelids flipped open, causing Stroud to back off, but not before the man's left arm had shot up and his hand had wrapped about Stroud's throat, tightening with the power of a vise, cutting off Stroud's air.

Behind a glass, men and women were suddenly up and rushing about, hitting alarms, calling others. Stroud called for help and one of the white-coated men came over an intercom with, "You've just come out of a coma! Try to relax. What're you doing to that other man? Get away from him!"

Weitzel's
right hand quaked upward, trying to join with his left to strangle the life from Stroud.
Weitzel's
body trembled and shook, lifting off the bed, and a strange, eerie, metallic green and blue light discolored the whites of his eyes. His pupils were nowhere to be seen, rolled far back in his head.

Stroud tore the choking hand from his jugular, coughing and shouting for help. A distortion of
Weitzel's
already corpselike features began to overtake the man's face when a voice came from within
Weitzel
.

Weitzel's
lips were frozen, deathlike, but a voice came like a bubble trapped in the body up and up through him with a start and a rumble, a gurgle and an eruption that sent a brown ugly liquid dripping from his lips along with the preternatural voice. The sound was coming from deep within his chest. It was not
Weitzel's
voice. Stroud knew this even though he had never known the man, for the voice was far from human in origin. It came from the ship; it came to speak through
Weitzel
expressly to warn Stroud off. It had the desired effect, for it shook Abraham to his core, and it made the hair all over his body twitch.

"Stay yourself from my wake,
Esruad
."

"My God," said Stroud, regaining his composure as much as possible. "Who are you?"

"Be gone,
Esruad
!"

"My name is Stroud."

"
Esruad
."

"Who are you?"

"Stay you from my wake! Run,
Esruad
, run!"

"Damn you, what are you?"

"Life is mine."

"Life?"

"Life to feed on."

"Who are you?"

"Life-taker."

"Are you demonic? Are you Satan?"

Its laugh shook through
Weitzel
like a kettledrum, and from deep within
Weitzel
it amassed a vile, guttural sound that brought forth a frothy brown liquid that first dripped and then spurted from the body it inhabited. Stroud stepped back an instant before the viper's spittle shot across at him, missing him and staining the floor and the bed sheets Stroud had earlier been on. The brown mucus sent up a stench with the gas it created on hitting the air. It burned an acidic hole in the bed sheets and the tiled floor. It smelled of earth, ancient and deep earth, of bog and swamp and sulfuric acid.

As doctors rushed into the isolation ward in their protective gear, Stroud took hold of
Weitzel
, causing the fuming, discolored eyes to disappear, shouting at the thing inside him to identify itself. "Who are you, damn you? Who are you?"

Stroud heard only a psychic whisper then:
"Everyman ... legions ... armies ... I am everyman."

"Son of a bitch!"
Stroud strangled
Weitzel
.

The doctors tore Stroud from
Weitzel
. The struggle took Stroud to the floor with a couple of orderlies while some of the others stared in horror at
Weitzel
. The old man's body rose from the bed, levitating, convulsing before it collapsed onto the covers again and the straight line on the EKG signaled that he was no longer in coma but dead.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" a female voice shouted from inside one of the space suits. She came to Stroud and shouted, "Just what the hell do you think you were doing?"

"You must've heard the voice? You must've seen--"

"We heard nothing."

"We saw nothing," seconded another of the suits.

"I just held a conversation with something inside here, inside of that man."

"Hallucinating," said one of the doctors. "Not uncommon in people coming out of coma, Dr. Cline."

"Dr. Stroud," she said, "I am Dr. Kendra Cline, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta. You might be interested to know,
sir, that
you are the only man to come out of this thing. As for Simon
Weitzel
, you're welcome to look at the monitor tapes. He never regained consciousness; therefore, you could not have held a conversation with him."

"It wasn't
Weitzel
I was talking to."

"Are you sufficiently calm, Dr. Stroud, to allow us to release you now?"

"Yes, please let me up."

As Stroud regained his feet, he pointed to the soiled bedcovers and the tobacco-like stain on the floor. "Have your lab people determine the content of that substance, Dr. Cline, and handle it with the greatest care."

"What is it?" asked the second doctor.

"It came out of
Weitzel
, just before he died.
Ectoplasm of some sort."

"You don't really expect us to believe that, do you?" asked Dr. Cline.

Stroud stared through the thick protective glass mask that she wore and into her deep, probing gray eyes. She was a beautiful woman, he thought. "Believe what you wish. I guarantee you one thing, Dr. Cline."

"And that is?"

"You won't have any other explanation for how it got here. Now, I want out of here."

"You don't expect us to let you go without running some tests, Dr. Stroud."

He stared again at her.
"Tests?
I don't have time to play guinea pig for you, Dr. Cline."

"I can have you restrained, if I must!"

"Really?
And how exactly would you do that?"

"With the help of these men."

The orderlies moved in on Stroud again, threateningly. "All right, all right ... a few blood tests, serums, but that's it, and then I'm out of here. I've got to get back to the museum, help Dr.
Wisnewski
and Dr. Leonard, if we are to beat this ... this thing."

"I'm afraid I have bad news for you regarding Drs.
Wisnewski
and--"

"No, no!" He wanted not to hear this. "Tell me they are not dead."

"Dr. Leonard is over there," she said, pointing to the last man in the row of thirteen that lay on one side of the spotless ward.
"In deep coma, like yourself until now.
We can only hope--"

"And Dr.
Wisnewski
?"

She drew a deep breath, and even through the mask, he could see the concern on her features. "I'm afraid Dr.
Wisnewski
is under arrest and--"

"Under arrest?"

"Aggravated assault," the male doctor beside him said.

"
Wisnewski
?
That's impossible! That's madness!"

Dr. Cline calmly said, "He attempted to murder you, Doctor, with a pickax. I'm telling you this
bug--
whatever it is--is--"

He cut her off, going over to Leonard's body and staring down at the poor man. "Where is
Wisnewski
being held?"

"Bellevue lockup, psychiatric ward."

Stroud drew a deep breath, trying to comprehend the far-reaching effects of their having entered the dangerous archeological site. It must have been filled with the spores of the creature, and the little bastard rat things saw to it the infectious bacteria of the monster got into their protective wear.

"We must know what brought you back, Dr. Stroud, if we are to help the suffering whose number is doubling, tripling each hour!"

"Whoa, hold up ... I am not the answer to your prayers, Dr. Cline."

"That's apparent! But the contagion is spreading, rampant--"

"My God.
How long have I been under?"

"Sixteen hours."

"I've got to get out of here."

"We need you here, Doctor."

"No, I'm needed out there and at the dig."

"Are you crazy? You can't go anywhere near there again; at least not until we can determine the medical causes of this epidemic."

"Medical causes ... What if I told you there were no medical causes, Doctor? Suppose the entire episode was beyond human medicine and technology? Suppose I told you it has to do with the supernatural?"

"Then I'd have to say you should be kept longer for observation. This thing drove
Wisnewski
into madness. Perhaps you have overcome the effects of the coma, but not the madness."