Robert W. Walker (34 page)

"I hope you know what we're doing,
Esruad
," he said to
himself,
for he, now, was
Esruad
in the flesh and
Esruad
was him.

"We can overcome this evil now, Stroud, as never before."

"Destroy it?"

"Completely."

"How?"

"Take up the empty receptacle and keep it with us."

Stroud bent to lift the crystal skull and return it to his shoulder pouch.

"Talking to
yourself
down in this hole, too, Stroud!" Sam Leonard's voice came as a shock, making Stroud think it was coming from the skull, before he wheeled to face Dr. Leonard. The other man had come out of the shadows.

"Where are the others? Why've you come alone?"

"Sorry, Stroud ... I tried to save them ... but ... but--"

"Kendra?"

"Taken off by the fiends!"

"Wiz?"

"Dead ... dead, Stroud!
I knew we
shouldn't've
tried to follow you. I knew it was wrong!"

"Get hold of yourself, Dr. Leonard." It was
Esruad
talking while Stroud was grieving for Kendra.

"You say they made off with her? That Kendra was alive when you last saw her?" Stroud pressed for details. He then searched on his person for the communicator and tried desperately to reach her.

Her voice came over in screams. She was being tortured.

"We've got to help her."

Inside his head Stroud heard
Esruad
tell him it was a trap. But Stroud didn't care what it was. He couldn't think of anything beyond helping Kendra out of her pain.

"We've got to go on! This way!" said Stroud sternly, pointing the way. But it was
Esruad
who was speaking and pointing through Stroud. Stroud wanted to race back in the direction from which Leonard had come.

"My way,"
Esruad
was saying. "If I know
Ubbrroxx
, the woman will be ahead. It will use your woman to get to you. It knows this is your weakness. Don't allow it, Stroud."

Leonard was looking at him strangely, listening to his conversation with himself.

Finally, Stroud said, "We go this way, straight ahead."

"But Dr. Cline is behind us," said Leonard.

"The only way to help her now is to destroy
Ubbrroxx
."

"You're not going to help her? Listen to those screams! How can you stand it?" shouted Sam Leonard.

"Where're your weapons, Dr. Leonard?"

"She is calling for our help."

"Your weapons?"

"Lost,
dammit
!
I was lucky to escape with my life!"

"All right ... stay close behind, and take this." Stroud gave him his dart gun.

"What do you propose to use?"

"Magic."

"Good ... most comforting, Stroud."

Stroud also hefted what was left of the gas in his canister.

Stroud no longer breathed from the spent oxygen tank, and neither did Leonard. It was likely only a matter of time before Leonard succumbed to the contaminated air. But
Esruad's
magic kept Stroud protected, so far. With Leonard following, Stroud continued ahead while in his head
Esruad
talked to others there about strategy. There, seemed to be some whispering discord over Leonard.
Something about his being untrustworthy.
Stroud was being given a signal to ditch the poor man. Stroud fought the suggestion.

"It will use Leonard and the others against you, Stroud. You must be strong and vigilant."

Stroud assured
Esruad
that with their new-found strength and disguise, that he would be stronger.

Kendra and Dr.
Wisnewski
had reached the mouth of the cavern where the bow of the ship stared back at them. Strangely, they had encountered no further setbacks or attacks. It was as if the creature was satisfied with Stroud's life, and that theirs were unnecessary now to its design.

She tried again to raise Stroud but all she got for her trouble was static.

"We're running out of oxygen," Wiz told her. "We haven't any choice. We must save ourselves, Dr. Cline."

Kendra tearfully assented and they stepped from the confines of the underground world into the predawn where the army of zombies was still held in check.

As they made their way up the incline, they stopped to stare at the legion of the dead, their thousands of eyes like one eye, the eye of
Ubbrroxx
trained on them. Firmly resolved, they began the long march through the fearfully silent, stony
guards
one step at a time, unable to utilize the helicopter that had brought them here. "Journey of a thousand miles," whispered Wiz.

Down through the parting rows of zombies, Kendra thought of Stroud, feeling guilty at having abandoned him inside, yet certain that he had met with the same fate as Leonard.
Wisnewski
, too, thought of the friends they had left behind, and how very little they had accomplished. He took Kendra's hand in his and their touch bolstered one another amid the zombies standing row upon row, parting like disturbed pigeons to let them pass.

Commissioner Nathan had seen Kendra Cline and
Wisnewski
exit the pit via monitoring cameras from above, beamed to his location. He was shaken when he saw that only the two of them had come out alive. It signaled the end of a long and hopeless night and the beginning of a long and hopeless day.

Nathan was about to send in a chopper to pick up the two survivors when he saw them turn into the crowd of zombies and join them. He believed they had become zombies themselves.

There was no holding back the Army now. As soon as the first sun ray cut through from out over the ocean, all hell was going to break loose here, and thousands upon thousands of citizens--diseased as they were--would be annihilated to protect those who weren't. And still no guarantees...

Kendra's screams now sounded close as Stroud and Leonard made their way through the dark passageways of the ship, going deeper and deeper to its center. Stroud felt the respiration of the evil
Ubbrroxx
all around him, and he realized that they were truly in the belly of the beast. Something stood in their way ahead. Stroud lifted his weak light to reveal an enormous crab-faced, molten black form. The beast had smaller, parasitic creatures crawling about it, feeding off its black skin, ripping parts of it off, slavering, chewing.

"
Ubbrroxx
!" shouted Stroud, lifting his gas canister and firing. "Fire, Leonard!
Fire!"

Leonard froze, not using the dart weapon, instead turning it on Stroud, firing. The dart hit an invisible shield around Stroud and fell harmlessly at his feet, but it made Stroud turn and stare at Leonard's apparition as it became a giant cat that started to pounce. Stroud swung the gas around, choking the sight and the enormous throat of the creature cat, causing it to writhe in pain.

"Stroud!"
Esruad
called in warning.

Stroud turned back to see long tentacles wrapping about the invisible shield that encased him, pulling Stroud and his shield, and all that was inside it with him, toward the gaping, enormous maw of the crab-faced thing ahead of them.

Stroud fired all he had of the gas. The monster drew him closer, closer, closer, and in its mouth Stroud saw the bottomless pit.

"Strike!
Strike, Stroud!" his inner ally told him.

Stroud found the sword of ice emanating from his body and he struck out at the tentacles, slicing through them and sending up a sulfuric, gaseous cloud with the wounds he inflicted on the demon.

The monster advanced on him with the speed of a flying witch, a banshee howl filling Stroud's ears, drowning out
Esruad's
shout. But Stroud instinctively jumped to one side, realizing how effective the envelope around him was when the huge, fleshy thing slammed into a wall that had been behind him. There was a resultant tearing away of that whole side of the ship and the creature somehow swallowed itself up and disappeared, leaving behind a scattering of the parasites that had been feeding off it.

"Must keep your wits about you, Stroud," his counterpart told him. "Leonard was never here."

"A trick."

"It sends out little parts of itself to form these creatures, and it used Leonard's image. Leonard is--was--most likely dead all along."

"And the others?"

"Most likely the same."

"And Kendra's cries?"

"You must ignore them, Stroud. Trust me."

"Trusting you has kept me alive." But Stroud still feared for Kendra.

"Keep control of your fears, your emotions, Stroud."

"I will, if you will."

"It feeds on fear, grows stronger in the face of it. It will do anything to unnerve you."

"Apparently."

"Including using the girl."

Stroud stopped to sit down and gather his breath there in the dark, his hand going to his head. All the voices there behind
Esruad's
were unsettling. Kendra's fate, and how little he knew of it, too, was unsettling. And he was supposed to keep his composure.

Stroud pulled out his communicator and tried to reach Nathan outside, but the signal was weak and all he got in return was static. He kept trying for a moment when once more Kendra's screams reached his ears. She was now calling out his name, pleading with him to come to her rescue. This made him shut down the radio and get to his feet, determined to carry on. His watch told him he had less than half an hour remaining before they would blow the place to kingdom come.

"It was him, I tell you." Kendra had tried to answer the signal Stroud had sent up, but once more it was cluttered with Static. "He's still alive," she shouted amid the zombies.

"But we can't go back," Wiz told her.

"No, but we can get to Nathan. We can plead for more time." She tried to reach Nathan by radio but it remained jammed.

They were halfway through the zombies, fearful yet of being attacked by them. Several had reached out to them with pleading eyes as well as hands. Some moaned as if trapped deep within themselves, pleading for release. If the creature wanted to kill Kendra and Wiz, all it had to do was turn these people loose on them, and yet it had not done so. Kendra had wondered why and she'd put it to Wiz.

When he had no answer, she pushed him for a theory.

"I should guess that it is reserving all its power to ... to combat Stroud and his crystal spirit."

"And if that is so, it's further proof that he's alive ... that the battle down there is still going on."

"Yes, yes ... that would make sense."

"We've got to get to Nathan."

"Yes, hurry ... hurry."

They rushed on to the strange beating of an underground heart, the pounding rising in their ears until they felt their very souls shaken.