Zombie Eyes

"I am aware of that, Doctor."

"We need your help, Stroud. If it was the steel plate in your head that kept you from going comatose for as long as the others, then perhaps we can learn something from you and--"

"You can't implant metal in every patient you've got in there. There must be twenty-five now that Weitzel is dead."

"There are hundreds, Dr. Stroud."

"Hundreds?"

"All across the city, every hospital."

"It's really becoming an epidemic."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you. Now, will you please listen to reason?"

"No, I mean ... I have to find Dr. Wisnewski. See if there is anything I can do for him."

"There's nothing you can do for Wisnewski, but here you might possibly--"

"You're wasting precious time studying me. I'm not the cause or the cure of this thing! Don't you understand that? As for Dr. Wisnewski, the very idea of his attacking a man ... well, it's entirely impossible, out of character."

"But it happened. Do you suppose that he is somehow manifesting the disease in another form entirely? He never went into coma as you and Leonard did."

"Mine was a blackout, pure and simple."

"You've suffered such attacks before?"

"Since the war, yes."

"I see. Then it was just a coincidence of sorts, and we were wrong to place you in with the others."

He paced before saying another word. "Part of this madness unleashed by that pit--that's what Wiz's strange behavior is. Something ... some thing that is diabolical spoke to me through Weitzel and--"

"I must say you're persistent, sticking with that story. Do you really believe there is some ... some supernatural force at work here? Do you believe there is a supernatural power behind the misfortunes of those who--"

"Who is to say? You saw the body leave the bed. You haven't the experience with the supernatural that I have. I have seen and struggled with vampires, Dr. Cline, and with werewolves. Yes! Werewolves. And now this..."

"Do you really expect me to believe you?"

"Believe what you wish." He spoke now as if to himself. "It must have somehow taken hold of Wisnewski."

"The man tried to drive a pickax through you, Stroud, and you're building a 'Satan-made-me-do-it' defense for him?"

"Wisnewski could never kill a man."

"But he attempted just that, before witnesses."

"Some evil was unleashed through him, something that goes for the control mechanisms--the center of consciousness--"

"Whatever it is, it goes right for the brain like ants to a feast; shuts it down tight. It's really a horror."

"Death for a man like Leonard."

"I've been watching his readout very closely, though, Stroud, and he at least shows an occasional fluctuation--as you had."

"Really? What does that signify?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. It makes you want to interpret it as a struggle of sorts, as if Dr. Leonard is not giving in so easily as the others."

"That'd be Leonard. He may appear frail, but his mind is ... well, he's the best."

"Deviations in the EKG have continued since he was brought in. We're going to try the steel alloy, a direct injection into the bloodstream ... monitor him closely. Makes me feel like a goddamned engineer, working on a robot ... but these men ... well, may as well be robots for the condition they're in."

"Did you learn anything at all from the substance your people scraped off the floor beside Weitzel's bed?"

"An odd mixture of minerals, alkalies, sulfur, methane. We'd learned from blood tests on the victims that they suffered respiratory alkalosis--"

"Which is?"

"Low blood levels of carbon dioxide and high levels of alkalinity in the blood."

"Alkali ... sulfur ... methane. Doctor, how is that possible in a communicable disease?"

"To my knowledge, it isn't."

"Yet Weitzel coughs up this ball of it."

"We've been trying a treatment with acids, to restore the base balance between acids and alkalies in the body, but this hasn't worked. Perhaps, coupled with the metal..."

"Conventional methods of treatment are going to be of little help." He went to a nearby coffeepot and poured himself a cup, offering one to her, which she declined. Stroud then finally sat down, sipping the hot brew.

"We're going to pursue every avenue," she said.

He nodded. "I'm sure you will. This isn't your first epidemic, is it?"

"Afraid not. I've worked quite a bit in developing countries where rickets and polio remain a terrible problem. I haven't long been with the CDC."

"But you will be."

"I wouldn't put down any bets. At least not yet."

"Did you find anything else unusual in that muck that Weitzel spat at me?"

She shook her head in annoyance. "He may've had a muscle spasm, Dr. Stroud, but he could not have spit at you or anyone else."

"I didn't plant that stuff, Dr. Cline."

"I'm sure you didn't."

"So, did you find anything else?"

"Sulfur trioxide."

"Means nothing to me."

"It fumes in air and reacts violently to water."

Stroud recalled the strange fog that lifted off their bodies as they hit the air in the light mist and rain. Dr. Cline continued, saying something he didn't quite understand, and wasn't sure he could pronounce. He tried desperately to catch her, asking, "And this sulfonethylmethane?"

"A narcotic, very powerful, especially in such concentration. This alone could turn a man into a zombie."

"But your blood tests showed none of this?"

"No ... very strange ... if it came from inside Weitzel. Almost as if it were stored like a hormone in an organ."

They stared long into one another's eyes for several silent minutes.

She pulled her gaze from him and continued. "We also found high levels of succinic acids, choline and..."

"Yes?"

"Mephitis, an odorous gas."

"What does that tell you?"

"Very little, except that none of this should have been in that hospital room with you men."

"What is this acid and choline?"

"In the human body, they are natural by-products of succinylcholine, normal body chemicals. They break down after death into their component parts."

"Sounds to me like you had graveyard muck under your scope, Doctor."

"Not so fast. The drug is also used in careful dosages as a muscle relaxant during surgery of the abdominal cavity. Its presence in a hospital room is not altogether remarkable."

"But encased in fluid and mud spewed forth by a supposed coma victim?"

She dropped her gaze. "You can't expect me and the others here to believe that some sort of demon possession is involved here, Dr. Stroud, can you?"

"No, I guess I can't expect that from any of you medical people. Now, if I may, I'm out of here."

"Dr. Stroud, please tell me this. Do you recall anything at all of your experience when you were under?" she asked.

"I may in time, but for now ... sorry. Sometimes I have total blackout from which I recall literally nothing. Other times I may get fragments ... bits and pieces coming back..."

"You can tell me nothing more?"

"Sorry."

"What about hypnosis? Would you submit to a test?"

"A test? Do you ever do one test, Dr. Cline? Look, I'm on my way out of here. I'm surprised Nathan hasn't already sent a car for me."

Stroud drained his coffee, got up and asked, "Will you please just do all that you can for Dr. Leonard?"

"Of course we will."

"Have you heard anything at all from Nathan? I have to arrange to see Dr. Wisnewski, and Nathan may be my only way in."

A look of fatigue and perhaps defeat colored her features as she leaned back in her desk chair. Stroud saw something skitter past her liquid gray eyes, something she was hiding. He wondered a moment about her past, what had brought her to be here in New York at this time. She might well be wondering the same of him.

Finally, she said, "I'm afraid Commissioner Nathan does not know that you ... that you are out of coma, Dr. Stroud."

"What? But that was our agreement!" He was astonished.

"My secretary has been trying to get through to him for hours, but--"

"But? But what?"

"He's about the hardest man in the city to reach right now and--"

"And nothing, Doctor. We had an agreement. You broke it, pure and simple. Damn, you've just strung me along, and you're still trying to find reasons for me to stay put."

"Don't you care about what's happening here? Don't you see this is the only rational way to proceed? I thought you were a reasonable man!"

"I try to be, but sometimes, Doctor, reason is not enough."

"Then think about this!" She rushed to catch him at the door. "You could very possibly be a carrier; by coming into contact with others, you could be exposing them to this unknown disease."

He took a deep breath, realizing she was right. "I'll have to risk that."

"Haven't you any moral compunction whatso--"

He hated to do so, but Stroud closed the door in her face. He must rush as quickly as possible to Commissioner Nathan's. The man must be frantic by now, losing Leonard and Stroud to apparent coma, losing Wisnewski to madness and seeing the plague numbers rise without any idea what was going on.

Stroud had to slip from the hospital quietly without any attendant press or other attention. He found a service elevator and made his way out the back. He had to get to Wisnewski.

-6-

Stroud had called for a cab but he was told it might be an hour, maybe two, before one could get to him. Every cab in the city was on call and when Stroud stepped out onto the street he knew the reason why. Sirens were blaring everywhere. Every medic, every cop and every good citizen in New York had been pressed into service as ambulances roared through the congested streets. Panic was rampant. There was evidence of some looting, and there was evidence everywhere of the alien disease. People who had contracted the disease were in such large numbers now that many lay in the gutters, alleyways and streets, others afraid to touch them. All of the plague victims, eyes staring wide from inside bodies they could not maneuver, were like zombies. Their muscles and minds were locked in various poses of frozen gesture where they lay.

A man rushing by Stroud had tears in his eyes when he came face-to-face with Stroud and said, "There're too many of them! Too many! I ... I can't help it ... can't..." The man dashed off, stumbling as he went.

The man who had screamed his frustration in Stroud's face had good reason, as mad as he sounded, for it came clear to Stroud that the streets were now filled with insanity. Stores were being openly looted, youngsters making off with VCRs, camcorders, tape decks, while older citizens were going in for jewels. The break-ins and looting had apparently become too much for police along with trying to contain the epidemic.

Everywhere Stroud looked he saw the fallout from the evil that had been unleashed on the city; it could all be traced back to that damnable ship and Gordon's unquenchable desire to build yet another skyscraper the likes of which the world had never seen. It was apparent to Stroud that this ship below the city was meant never to be disturbed, but now that it had been, what were their alternatives? How did you combat an evil that worked through the body chemistry of mankind, taking control of their minds, turning them into unknowing servants?

Stroud saw a pair of frightened children holding hands, zigzagging first toward him and then away, fearful of everything that moved. He shouted out to them not to fear him, but they raced on without turning an ear to him. Still he shouted, praying they would heed him, "Get to a church, a hospital or hospice!"

The sound of sirens continued in Stroud's ears as he made his way toward downtown Manhattan and One Police Plaza where he hoped to locate Nathan. He'd been unable to reach the commissioner by phone.

From an alleyway behind him a madman suddenly rushed Stroud with a claw hammer. Stroud sensed his presence moments before the hammer came down, grazing Stroud's shoulder when he bobbed and brought his fist into the man's abdomen. The blow seemed to have no effect on the man and Stroud suddenly realized from the look in the attacker's eyes, and the deathly pallor of his skin, that he was under the control of the affliction. Stroud saw the same unnatural glow in the whites of the man's eyes as he had in Weitzel's. Whatever this thing was, it seemed to be bent on destroying Abraham H. Stroud. Why? Stroud now grabbed the hand with the hammer in it, twisting and tearing, but the zombie's strength and grip on the weapon were incredible. Finally, Stroud brought up a knee to the thing's groin, and when this had no effect, he did it again and again. Still no visible effect and the thing was gaining strength while Stroud was weakening. The hammer was pulling free of Stroud's grip and would momentarily crush his skull, steel plate and all, when Stroud saw a speeding car coming toward them.

Stroud knew his timing must be perfect as he backed the creature at his throat toward the street. He brought up a leg and wrapped it around the ankle of the mad zombie and, letting go of the hammer, shoved with all his weight, toppling the crazed man into the path of the vehicle which pinned him beneath its grillework. In the screeching of tires and horn, Stroud thought he heard a voice escape the dead man, or was it simply air? It seemed to say, Esruad ... Esruad. Stroud saw that the deadly claw hammer lay in the gutter down and across the street, where it had flown on the impact.

Then Stroud saw another zombie mechanically bend at the waist and lift the hammer. Behind him, coming from doorways and from behind trash cans, other zombies wielding bottles, sticks, bricks, cordless drills--anything they'd found at hand--were closing in on Stroud.

A man jumped from the car and shouted at Stroud, saying, "Here you are, Stroud! Get in!"

It was Nathan's aide, Lloyd Perkins. "We learned from the hospital that you had gone. Very foolish of you to leave on foot, Dr. Stroud."

"Just get us the hell out of here, Perkins."

Stroud leaped into the passenger side of Perkins's car. Perkins backed off the man he had hit when Stroud pushed him into his path, dragging the body half a block before it was released to the other zombies. Stroud watched them gather about the remains to stare dumbly down at it.

"The C.P.'s been in conference after conference on this thing since you and the others came out of the pit," said Perkins. "I've got to tell you, Stroud, everybody--I mean everybody in the city--is going nuts, and some are going nuts with fear."

"You think we made a mistake going down there, Lloyd?"

"Don't know that it made a difference either way, but the C.P.'s been monitoring your progress, along with Leonard's and Wisnewski--"

"How is Dr. Wisnewski?"

"For now he's safe; in a padded room at Bellevue."

"Poor man." Stroud heard a voice emanating from the steel plate in his head which told him to go to Wisnewski, that it was urgent.

"We've got more to worry about than Wisnewski at the moment. The whole city is going up for grabs."

"Take me to Bellevue. I've got to see Wisnewski now."

"I was sent here to bring you to Nathan, and that is what I'm going to do."

"Bellevue first, and then, as soon as I see the old man--"

Perkins pulled a .38 Smith & Wesson and lay it on his lap. "Dr. Stroud, you may pull a lot of weight in Chicago, but this is New York. You're going to see the C.P."

Perkins escorted him into a conference room where Nathan was discussing the state of affairs with the mayor and City Council. There were some perfunctory introductions before Stroud saw that Dr. Kendra Cline was also here. James Nathan told the others that Dr. Stroud was one of three archeologists who had gone into the pit to investigate the sunken ship.

"He is also the only man to have gone into coma induced by this ... this disease, and has come around," added Nathan. "Dr. Cline can speak more to that if you have any questions."

"Am I to understand that you have some natural immunity to the disease?" asked the mayor, a tall man with thinning gray hair and a wide girth. He had the look of a man who was playing poker with thieves and he knew he could not win.

"I never went into coma, Mayor. It was merely a blackout. Dr. Cline can verify that."

Kendra Cline pursed her lips and nodded. "It would seem that that is the case with Dr. Stroud, from all our findings."

"Then you never contracted the disorder in the first place?"

"No, sir."

"But Leonard did, and Dr. Wisnewski."

"In a manner of speaking," said Nathan. "Dr. Wisnewski's aberration took the form of madness."

"I am told he attempted to murder me with a pickax," said Stroud. "But that was not Dr. Wisnewski's doing."

"He was surrounded by witnesses, Dr. Stroud," said Perkins.

"Since I've come out of what Dr. Cline had taken for coma," said Stroud, "I have been attacked twice by ... by these controlled people. Dr. Wisnewski was not acting out of madness but control. Something is controlling this entire event."

This caused a general stir throughout the room. The mayor stood and paced the length of the table. "Dr. Stroud, do you have any idea what this ... this something is that is in control?"

"Only that it is beyond our normal reckoning, sir, and that without Wisnewski's help ... with Dr. Leonard gone ... I'm not at all sure we will understand what we are dealing with until it is too late."

"What do you propose, Doctor?"

"First, I would like Dr. Wisnewski released into my custody, and any and all objects that we brought out of the pit be returned to us for complete examination under controlled conditions--"

"You want us to release a man who attempted to murder you, into your custody?" asked one of the men seated around the table, but the mayor raised a hand and silenced him.

"Go on, Doctor."

"Under my guidance and care, perhaps Dr. Wisnewski and I can carry on with our original plan to defuse this situation."

"And what does that amount to, sir?"

"First and foremost, we must understand the enemy, understand the meaning of the ship ... how it came to be here, why. To understand the meaning of the ... of the bones inside her hull."

"Bones, like those you brought out?" asked Nathan. "Those were human bones."

"Exactly."

"I don't like it," said the deputy mayor, the man the mayor had silenced moments before. "Suppose Wisnewski attempts to kill Stroud again, and succeeds? And suppose the papers got hold of that, and--"

"To hell with the papers and your office, Dennis!" shouted the mayor. "This ... this is war. We've called in the National Guard, and we've declared martial law and a curfew." The mayor's face had gone red, but now he settled down again. "Stroud had Leonard's backing, Wisnewski's backing, and despite what some of us may have read or heard about Dr. Stroud, he appears our only hope in this matter. Whatever Pandora's box we've opened, a bazooka shot to the ship isn't going to close it, or restore the faculties of some nine hundred to a thousand people who've succumbed to this thing."

"Then you will accept my recommendation, sir?" asked James Nathan. "That we give Dr. Stroud carte blanche on this matter?"

"Up to a point, Nathan ... Stroud ... up to a point. We need results, and quickly. We need to show the public that we are acting to ward this thing off. To this end, Dr. Cline will assist you, Dr. Stroud, in any way she can."

"What?" asked Cline, taken totally by surprise. "Mayor Leamy! I don't work for the city of New York, and I am needed at St. Stephen's. I've got patients and tests and experiments to oversee."

"Dr. Wallace has already dispatched two of your colleagues to take over your duties," said Mayor Bill Leamy. "We've got to pursue this thing aggressively and from as many avenues as are opened to us, Dr. Cline. To that end I want you to monitor the progress of Dr. Wisnewski, and to give assistance wherever possible with this special approach. Is that understood?"

Stroud saw that she was fuming beneath the nod. "I will do what I can, but I won't take responsibility for the consequences."

"Good ... good," said Leamy, taking a deep breath. "Wiz is an old and dear friend of mine. I think it is time, Dr. Stroud, Nathan, that you go to him."

Arthur Wisnewski's frustration rose and rose and rose as he beat his head against the padded door to the chamber the demons had thrown him into. He feared their return, feared what they intended for him once they returned, feared they intended to feed off his body as if he were a cockroach for them to swallow, so horrid and vile was their crablike appearance, and the thing that Stroud had become--so hideous that Wisnewski had felt his heart grip itself and squeeze as the blood suddenly pumped through his small body and he had lifted the pickax to dismantle the monster Stroud. The next time he saw Stroud, he would kill him.

He knew Stroud for what he was now ... knew that his true name was Esruad and that Esruad was to be destroyed. He didn't know what the name Esruad meant, other than its inherent evil. He had never heard the name before, but something in his mind triggered the explosive hatred for what was below Stroud's mask.

He had been screaming for them to bring Stroud to him for hours. Even with his hands tied, he would find a way to kill Stroud, he promised ... promised himself? No, not himself ... someone else, but he couldn't recall who.

He had rammed the door continually since finding himself here. He recalled very little of the tortures the bestial, vile things that were his captors had done to him; he felt no pain, only an enormous disgust and hatred for them--for all of them--but for Stroud in particular. Stroud was their wizard, their leader.

"Use your spittle on Esruad," a voice inside his head kept telling him. But what good would spit do against a creature of Stroud's enormous strength and those bulging fangs and lower teeth like a wild boar, his body crawling with living parasites feeding over him.

"Spit," commanded the voice inside him.

Wiz did so, splattering the padded door with a burning brown syrup that sent up a smoke cloud. The smoke curled about the chamber, getting thicker and thicker, the feathers and tick inside the pads turning the smoke into a thick, ugly black cloud that made Wisnewski cough and cough and cough until it finally set off an alarm. The bells exploded in his ear and the door was thrown open, two of the vile creatures, their boars' heads heaving, their tentacled limbs reaching for him and gaining hold.

"Stroud! Bring me Stroud!" he called out as they forced him through the choking smoke and outside.

"Spit! Spit on them!" came the voice within.

But Wisnewski suddenly felt dopey, dropping to his knees as the drug from the hypodermic sent him under. The last thing he felt was the hideous hands of the monsters grabbing him up by the middle, his arms still strapped tightly about him, alarms sounding in his brain, drowning out the voice there.

Later Wisnewski awoke in another white, empty, padded cell. On the floor beside him was a huge globule of the syrupy liquid he had spat out at the pads in the other room. Wisnewski felt drained, weak, woozy and confused. He tried desperately to remember who he was and where he was ... what had happened to him ... why he was in a straitjacket.

His mind felt like a blank tablet and when he looked at the reinforced glass window in the door, he found people staring in at him as if he were a lunatic.

He fought to regain his mind, his memories, but they were fleeting, as if they'd only been stains wiped away with a washcloth. Who was he? Where was he? Who were his jailers?

He felt that a deep chasm inside of him had been opened up, and somewhere in the void was his identity and the events that had brought him to this place.

"Where am I!" he shouted at the eyes staring in at him. He got up, rushing at the eyes. "I demand to know who you are and where I am! Who's in charge here? I want to talk to whoever's in charge!"

But the eyes just stared in, locked on him as if watching a bug and quite fascinated with the useless dance he was doing before they might squash him.

Angry, frustrated, Wisnewski rammed his small body again and again into the door, pleading for help, but nobody came...

-7-

The scene at Bellevue was chaos, the halls littered with more zombies than they had beds for. People were beginning to get nasty, their natural pity for the dummies around them turning into loathing, fear and hatred. Doctors and nurses were working night and day in what seemed a useless effort to keep up. Dr. Cline was angry, seeing the suffering and feeling that she ought rather to be in her laboratory, that every moment that passed was opportunity lost. She was quite unhappy being in the company of Nathan and Stroud.

They stood just outside the padded cell where Dr. Wisnewski was now. "He's a strange one," said the orderly, a large, powerfully built man who looked capable of crushing Wisnewski without even knowing it.

"How has he been?" asked Stroud.

"Very unruly ... kicking at the door ... shouting to be released."

"Open it up," said Stroud.

The orderly said he had no authorization to do so. Nathan flashed his badge. "We've cleared it with your superiors. It's out of your hands, Mr. Gilliam."

"Well, if you say so. Your funeral."

"Open it," said Stroud, who had brought the bones from the pit with him in an open box. "The rest of you wait here," he told them.

Nathan took exception to this, saying, "Stroud, he's got a straitjacket on, but he still has teeth, so..." and he offered up his gun.

"No, I won't need that."

Perkins offered to go in with him.

"No, I have to do this alone."

Kendra Cline said, "Maybe you're the one who's mad, Stroud."

"Maybe."

He slipped through the door while the others crowded around the small porthole of a window. The moment Wisnewski realized someone was in the room with him, he rolled over and sat up on the bed of mattresses allowed him. There were no bedposts or springs, no unpadded metal whatever in the room, including the door. When he looked up at Stroud he cocked his head to one side and squinted his eyes.

"Dr. Wisnewski? It's me."

"Esruad," said Wisnewski, wide-eyed. "You ... you're alive!"

Stroud was astonished for the dual reason that Wiz spoke as calmly and surely as any sane person and that he had used the same name that the demon had used.

"No, my name is--"

"Stroud ... yes, A-Abe ... Abe Stroud."

"And your name, sir?"

"Wisnewski ... Wiz, I'm called."

"Do you remember what happened to you, Dr. Wisnewski?"

"No ... Woke up here ... asses treating me like a fool! I could just strangle them!" He got up and rushed the door where he saw the faces staring in. "Sick to death of being treated like a bug in a glass!" He kicked out at the door with all his energy. "Bastards!"

"Do you remember these?" Stroud asked.

His arms twisted about him in the straitjacket, Wiz went to his knees over the bones in the box Stroud had brought with him. Also in the box was the parchment that Leonard had come away from the ship with. "Oh, God ... oh, yes ... we ... we were in the ship."

"Yes," coaxed Stroud.

"And then we came back ... stepped out into ... into the rain, and the smelly fog began rising up."

"Do you remember anything else?"

"No ... nothing ... except the decontamination."

"Anything after that?"

"Leonard carried off in a stretcher."

"And?"

"You ... You fell out."

"Yes."

"That's all I recall."

"Nothing more ... nothing about an ax?"

"An ax?"

"You picked it up."

He shook his head. "No."

"Raised it over me."

"No, Abe."

"Went out of control."

"I don't remember it; not a bit of it."

Stroud tried a new tack. "Dr. Wisnewski?"

"Yes?"

"Why did you call me Esruad?"

He looked queerly at Stroud. "Did I? Esruad, indeed?"

"Does that name mean anything to you? Anything at all?"

"I ... I must consult my ... my books ... must get to my laboratory, Stroud ... Stroud ... can you get me the hell out of here?"

Stroud began to undo the straitjacket, peeling back the layers. As he did so, he could hear the rumbling of concern just the other side of the door. He feared that Wiz--or the demon within--would make some attempt at killing him, causing the others to rush in and destroy Wisnewski. Stroud felt as if he were holding on to the man by a thread. He wondered how he could win Wisnewski back from the ship's curse.

"Dr. Wisnewski, you must fight this thing. Fight with all your strength!"

"I have! Christ, Stroud, I have! All this time in here, nothing to feel, no one to speak with! Nothing but the sound of my own voice. I swear, you leave me here and I will go mad!"

Stroud let go the bindings that restrained Wisnewski. The man's arms fell forward, weakly dangling before him. His eyes remained on the items in the box and he said, "Besides, Stroud, we have so much work to do and no time to waste."

"Now you're talking, Dr. Wisnewski."

"Leonard ... what about Leonard?"

"Afraid he won't be with us, Wiz."

Wisnewski dropped his head forward, giving a moment of thought to Leonard before saying, "He was a good man."

"He's in coma, Doctor."

"A death for such a man, and yet ... you came back. Perhaps there is hope?"

"There is always that, sir."

"Please, Stroud ... get me out of here."

"That is why I am here."

The former smile of the man inched across his lips, but it was hollow and sad and beaten. "I'm damned hungry, too."

Stroud watched Wisnewski closely as he worked alongside the archeologist. As mad as he had seemed to authorities at Bellevue, Stroud found him distant, distracted, going in and out of his ability to recall events clearly, asking a thousand questions at times ... but even as a "madman," Dr. Wisnewski remained brilliant. They worked deep within the vast Museum of Antiquities in Wisnewski's laboratory where the man was surrounded by all that had been familiar to him most of his adult life. Wisnewski was something of a prodigal, and even as a child he drank wisdom as if it were an addictive wine. He'd graduated high school at the age of fourteen and had finished college at seventeen. He had received his Ph.D. at the ripe old age of twenty-one. From there he had held a series of positions with various museums and colleges across the country. His specialties were early American, Greek and Etruscan archeology. Wiz had been involved in one of the digs in present-day Tuscany, had written extensively on the subject and had gathered the largest private collection of documents on the Etruscans in existence, all bequeathed, he said, to the museum upon his death.

Leonard had joined him in his work on the Etruscans in Tuscany, and they had become the best of friends, inseparable with so much in common. Now Wisnewski worried greatly for his friend's well-being, often stopping in his work to look around for Leonard, who was not there. "We've become like an old married couple," he told Stroud, "but I hadn't realized just how married until now that he is gone."

"He's not gone, not yet ... and not if we can come up with some solutions to this mystery, Dr. Wisnewski."

"Yes ... yes, of course ... now it hits home ... now it is Leonard who is a victim. Odd, I had thought that I cared greatly about those poor victims of this thing, but not until now do I really suffer ... Well, back to work."

And back to work he went. Surrounded by his collection of Etruscan artifacts, journals and books on the subject, as well as photographs of the dig in Tuscany, Wiz had quickly fixed on the idea of work as helping him keep his sanity. He examined the materials that they had confiscated from the dark ship, and with Stroud's help, they had begun to determine exactly what they had come away with. He first spent hours on the bones, determining the age and relative health of the Etruscan who had lived before Christ.

Just outside the laboratory and office here stood armed police guards. They were technically present as escorts for a "mad" scientist who was paroled due to the emergency nature of the situation, but Stroud had also given them instructions to act as guards against forces that might at any time erupt outside to threaten the important work on the inside. Too often now this evil force had insinuated itself on Stroud, tracking him down through a strange telepathy that was beyond his reckoning. It had attacked him at St. Stephen's through Weitzel, on the street outside, at the construction site through Wiz. It followed that the zombies could hone in on him, come here for him.

In fact, given Wisnewski's earlier attempt on his life, Stroud could not completely trust him, either. Was he absolutely free of the disorder? Or might he be a mole in the plot against Stroud?

No ... no, foolishness, Stroud thought. This thing was bigger than any conspiracy against him--one man. This thing wanted them all, and Stroud just happened to be in a particularly vulnerable position, and all that had happened might well have happened to anyone else ... maybe. Wisnewski now stared at him as if reading his mind, but only said, "You're worried about Leonard, aren't you, Abe?"

"Yes ... very."

"His chances are not good, are they?"

"Presently, he's still comatose, but the doctors are doing all they can."

"Why was I spared, Stroud? And you? Why did it get to Leonard, and not us?"

"You're a fighter, and as for me--"

"Leonard's a fighter, too. That doesn't explain it."

"Hardheadedness, willfulness? I'm not sure what the answer is. I understand that you caused a fire in your first cell at Bellevue without the use of your arms, without any matches. How did you accomplish that?"

Wisnewski had not a single clue as to how he had done that. He had just a vague feeling that he could not entirely trust Stroud, that there was something strange about the other man and that he must keep his eyes on him.

Stroud checked his watch. He'd stepped off the airplane at Kennedy two days before, and it was now 6 p.m. Time was ticking away for them all.

Dr. Samuel Leonard, Ph.D., Archeological Curator of the American Museum of New York, still lay in a vegetative state of consciousness at St. Stephen's Hospital, his vital signs being monitored and scrutinized by the CDC team headed up by Dr. Kendra Cline. Cline had taken a special interest in Leonard when her aide Mark Williams pointed out that there were some interesting fluctuations in his EKG, fluctuations which signaled some inner turmoil within his mind to return to consciousness. Now he was being watched more closely than ever, and had been throughout the day. But no further changes had come.

Dr. Cline had remained with Stroud and Wisnewski until the two men became engrossed in their work with their dirty bones and dusty books, and then she'd pleaded with Nathan that she must return to the hospital to make arrangements for the smooth transition necessary when her colleagues met with her the next morning.

She wondered how much longer Leonard could fight on his own, and she wanted to help him. She had now called in two neuro specialists who agreed with her that Dr. Leonard was involved in a kind of tug-of-war between consciousness and unconsciousness. She wanted to act. She wanted to give Leonard the edge he required. But to do so would probably cost her her job, whether she was right or wrong.

There wasn't the time to test and retest the serum her people were developing, and there certainly wasn't time to secure permissions and approvals from all the agencies and people involved, from Leonard's next of kin to the Food and Drug Administration. Leonard would lose the battle within the hour, the specialists believed.

"The cure could kill him," Mark warned her, realizing what was going through her mind when they were alone again.

"He's dying anyway, Mark, and we've got to test this on someone, and the others ... the others may as well be mummies. They've all given in. At least Leonard wants to live."

"I've never pumped that much stimulant into a man," said Mark.

"And you're not going to now. I am."

"Dr. Cline--"

She began to dress in the protective wear necessary to enter the isolation ward. "Don't you see, Mark? We don't have any choice. There're literally thousands in the city in Leonard's condition now. We've got to act."

"But we should at least get authority to go ahead from someone at CDC."

"No, they haven't any idea what we've got here. Samples we've sent them have just baffled hell out of them, and--"

"What about James Nathan, then?"

"All right ... get him on the phone, Mark. Go on."

"You'll wait until I get back?" He had to go into an office across the hall for a phone.

She didn't wait for Mark. She finished dressing, filled a hypodermic with the serum and called on the intercom to those monitoring the room of zombies to open the air lock. This done, she stepped through, waited the few minutes for the germ-free environment to be maintained and then stepped through the final glass door, going for Leonard's inert form.

"How is Dr. Leonard doing, Anne?" she asked her assistant at the controls.

"Nothing new ... same as before, Doctor."

She nodded behind the heavy glass of her mask, hardly tipping the head covering she wore. She moved in on Leonard, the hypo at her side, hidden from the view of those on the outside. She recalled Stroud's words when she had telephoned him at the Museum of Antiquities moments before talking to Mark.

"Leonard's next of kin ... anyone in the city?"

After a moment's hesitation, Stroud said, "My God, have we lost him?"

"No, no ... nothing like that..."

"Not yet, you mean?"

"I just have to know if he has anyone close who--"

"Wiz tells me he has no one."

"He's still hanging on ... fighting, in fact." She mentioned the EKG fluctuations.

Stroud said, "He looks frail, but he's got a strong mind."

"That may be the crucial difference here."

"Is there something you want to tell me, Doctor?"

"Not really ... no."

"You want to try something?" he had asked.

"Oh, nothing ... just thought--"

"Leonard is worth any gamble, Dr. Cline. We need him back, and I know that if he could speak, he'd tell you to take the risks, whatever they are."

"You don't understand, I ... I can't."

She had hung up quickly then. And now she was here, standing over the helpless form of a once-vital man.

She lifted the hypo, her hand trembling. She tried desperately to steady herself when suddenly Mark's voice broke her concentration, making her turn and look through the glass at all the people staring in at her. "Dr. Cline! Let's do it properly, under controlled conditions! Nathan has declared martial law in effect, and he says he and the city will take responsibility for any experimentation we wish to do here."

She breathed a full breath for the first time since suiting up, and she relaxed her hand. "Thank God," she said.

"God, god, god, god, god, god!" one of the other comatose men began to chant, rising up and tearing out his tubes and coming with a wild stare toward her, a wild stare that showed no pupils.

"Get out of there, Dr. Cline! Get out!" Mark and the others were screaming.

Cline did so, backing through the door as the zombie rushed toward her but stopped over the body of Leonard, draping itself over him as if shielding him from her.

Once outside, Kendra saw the zombie's inert form slide off Leonard, who remained on his bed. The other man appeared to be dead. At the same time, Leonard's EKG was coming weaker, weaker, weaker still.

"No time to lose, Mark! Everyone ready, and Tom, suit up!"

Her aide Tom Logan was frozen in place until Mark shook him hard, snapping him out of it.

"Everything must be readied in IW-2, stat!"

-8-

St. Stephen's, like every other hospital in the city, was being flooded with those stricken by the disease, their numbers pouring in. Leonard would be the test case. All of them knew that he had, from the outset, shown an unusually high resistance to the forced condition, that his mind had struggled back toward the surface of reality. Most of the others with the bizarre disorder had not. So, even if they had a cure for Leonard, it was unlikely that it would be useful across the board. But it would be a start, a chemical answer to the puzzle of the graveyard muck that had somehow insinuated itself on these human bodies.

The stimulant, if further developed, might reach into the black hole that the others had fallen into.

All was prepped now, save Leonard was not in the secondary isolation ward, everyone wary of stepping into IW-1 since Kendra's close encounter with the zombie who had erupted in a screaming chant of God's name.

Kendra saw from the blank screen that had been monitoring this man that his name was Frank Donaldsen. His inert form had remained as silent as stone since the outburst. Earlier, her team would have rushed to his aid, but not since the reports of what was happening at other hospitals had reached them, reports that said that such patients were becoming violent.

"We've got to move Leonard out," she told the others. "Mark, Tom?"

The two of them followed her in and they began to kick out locks on the bed, rolling it and the monitors together through the electronically opened entranceway to IW-2. Mark rushed back and took Frank Donaldsen's pulse. He looked up and shook his head, signaling that their fears were unnecessary, that Donaldsen could hurt no one.

Tom asked Dr. Cline if she wished for him to make the injection. "No, no ... it's my job." Even with Nathan's assurances, she knew that she was ultimately responsible.

Tom backed away, his eyes wandering to Mark, who was in the process of bagging Donaldsen, seeing that his remains were removed to a third room where an autopsy would be the man's next fate.

"Tom," Mark called, "give me a hand here."

Tom reentered IW-1, doing what he could.

Kendra approached Leonard, hearing a strange hissing noise as if air were escaping through one of the tubes inserted in the man's body, but the intensity of the hissing increased to what she felt was a deafening noise. "What is that?" she asked those outside, monitoring.

The question made Mark and Tom, holding Donaldsen's body in its black wrapper, stop and look back in at her from Isolation 1. At the outer control room, Anne and the others were also watching, raising their shoulders and saying they heard nothing.

"Must be my ears ringing, I'm that tired," she said.

"Let me take over for you, Dr. Cline," pressed Tom.

"No, no ... it's all right," she said, believing it was, since the hissing sensation in her ears had now vanished.

She checked Leonard's pulse and found it was racing and shouted at Anne for not having mentioned this to her, but Anne said the monitor showed no such thing. Shaken, wondering if she was hallucinating, Kendra reconsidered having Mark or Tom do the injection. She saw that everyone was staring at her with grave concern on their faces. They were all thinking the same thing. They were all certain that she had caught the disease herself, that she was in the first phase of its awful grasp.

"Stay you from me," said a powerful voice that filled the room.

"All right, dammit, you heard that, didn't you? Mark? Anne? Tom?" she said through her comlink.

"What?" was the reply in chorus.

"That voice."

"There was no ... we heard no voice, Dr. Cline."

They were all looking in at her as if she were strange. Mark asked her if she'd like for him to give Leonard the injection.

"No ... no ... I'm all right."

Anne frowned from the other side of the glass.

She drew closer to Leonard, whose eyes suddenly opened, displaying green discoloration and no pupils, as they were forced far up into his head. The man's lips were moving like a pair of colorless, eyeless worms, as if moved by manipulating strings. Guttural sounds were emanating from deep within. Bubbling, gurgling, low-level volcanic noises.

"I don't suppose any of you hear that?"

"Yes," said Mark. "We're picking up some rumblings."

"But the voice was in my head, huh?" she asked when suddenly Leonard's body began to tremble. It was slow at first, but building.

"He's going into some kind of shock! Like Weitzel just before he died!" she shouted through her comlink and rushed the injection, plunging the syringe into Leonard's emaciated arm. At the same time his other arm came up and tore at her mask, covering it with brown spittle before he attempted to strangle her.

He was speaking a phrase over and over, in Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and finally settling on English, and she sensed he had said the same thing in all tongues: "I will kill you!" he shouted, but it was an abnormal voice, inhuman, filled with rage.

Leonard had been thrown into a seizure that literally lifted him off the bed. The IV was knocked over along with a tray, cords were snatched and the EKG went dead, but the man was very much alive, kicking, thrashing, afire as he came over her, knocking her to the floor. Mark and Tom rushed in. They had to sit on Leonard to hold him still while Kendra Cline climbed to her feet, exhausted and frightened, when suddenly they all heard Dr. Leonard say, "Where am I? Who are you? Please get off me!"

"Dr. Leonard?" She was on her knees over him between Mark and Tom. She saw the brown ooze seeping from his ears, nose and mouth. It was a gummy brown substance, and she knew it was the same as had come out of Weitzel.

"Where in God's name am I?" he asked her, his eyes clear and lucid.

"I'm Dr. Kendra Cline, Dr. Leonard. You were in a coma, and now you're back with us. You can let go of him now, Mark, Tom. Help him up. My God, we're on our way to an antidote."

He was weak, dehydrated, nothing like Stroud when he had come around, strong and virile.

"Mark, scrape up some of that spongy substance for the microscope, and take every precaution with it."

She asked Tom to see that Leonard got some nourishment and that he be run through the same series of tests as Stroud had gone through.

"Abraham Stroud, too, was in coma?" asked Leonard.

She confirmed this without telling him more, other than the fact that Stroud had come around and was given a clean bill of health. "I will call him immediately to let him know that you are all right, Dr. Leonard. And sir, you may just have saved the lives of many others. We were not at all sure our antidote would work."

He nodded and watched her leave, taking his cues now from the space-suited Tom.

Outside the room, Kendra Cline had finished decontamination, thinking that perhaps decontamination had saved Stroud and the others, yet the usual decontamination measures were not enough to combat this awful disease. She wasn't even sure any longer if it was a disease. Diseases didn't make comatose people speak in tongues, swear and foam at the mouth. And how odd that her experience with Leonard should parallel Stroud's with Weitzel so closely. Stroud claimed that Weitzel had spoken to him, but that it was not Weitzel. That it was something speaking through him. That was the exact sensation she had gotten from Leonard, and no one but her had heard...

"Wonderful news, Dr. Wisnewski," Stroud told him, detailing the story that Kendra Cline had given him about Leonard's recovery.

Wisnewski hadn't slowed in his work at all until now. He slumped into a chair and said, "Thank God. I'd thought we had lost our dear friend."

"Perhaps it's time you got some rest, Doctor."

Wisnewski didn't fight the suggestion. "Yes, need my wits about me ... all my wits..."

"Whatever this thing is, Dr. Wisnewski, it's very potent, very powerful."

"The evil of the ages," he said thoughtfully. "The core of the evil of all our ills, Stroud. That's what it is shaping up to be."

"Satan?"

"Satan, if you wish ... It has as many names as there are religions and races on the planet. The Etruscans had a name for it, most certainly, but so far, I have not been able to find it in the writings."

"What do you make of the bones?"

"Sacrifices to this deity."

"How can you be certain?"

He lifted one of the bones. It was a tibia with large spurs at the bottom. Wiz said, "This is representative of the entire lot we found in the ship. See the spurs? Broken and beaten and herded, those people were put aboard that ship, without provisions, to starve to death as they were being fed to this ... this bestial god."

"These markings appear to be numbers ... the number of sacrifices, perhaps?"

"Leonard will translate the numbers when he returns. But that is how I read the parchment, also."

"This ... this thing somehow infiltrates a man's mind ... turns him into a walking dead man to come unto its altar and worship it and be made fodder for it?"

"As far as I can tell, yes. Without Leonard, well ... he knows these characters so much better, you see."

"Time for rest, Doctor. You've done more than enough tonight."

"Great news, that about Leonard. I'd feared the worst."

"I, too."

"You know, Stroud, I saw it."

"What?"

"I saw its face. That is what drove me to madness."

"You saw it? Where, how?"

"It was in the chamber with you when you fell out. I looked in and there it was. Then it lay down beside you, whispering in your ear--this ugly, hideous creature--unspeakable, and I ... I snapped."

Stroud realized it was on seeing this demon that Wiz had lifted the pickax. That he hadn't intended to strike Stroud, but that this creature had somehow created a hologram in Wiz's mind, placed it over Stroud and taunted the man to strike it. Had he done so, Wiz would have killed Stroud. The thing wanted Stroud dead, no doubt of that.

Dr. Wisnewski's quarters in the museum were home for now, a pair of black leather couches, a coffee urn and a small refrigerator and bath.

"If you had left me in that prison, I would still be mad now," the older man told Stroud as they made their way to the couches when the phone rang.

It was Nathan, wanting a progress report. Stroud told him the news of Leonard, and that was all so far. No sooner had he hung up than the phone rang again. It was Kendra Cline. She sounded strange, upset.

"I need ... must see you. Can you come here?"

"Where are you? It's almost two a.m."

"My lab at the hospital. Please, it's urgent. Please hurry."

"I'll have to make arrangements here, but I'll be right over, Kendra."

"Hurry, please ... hurry."

"Are you all right?"

"No ... no, I am not."

"I'm on my way. Hang on."

Stroud told Wisnewski of the emergency. "Something go sour with Dr. Leonard's recovery?" Wiz asked.

"No, no! She said nothing about Leonard. Something else entirely." He lied because he didn't know, and he didn't wish to unduly upset Wisnewski. "Go to bed, and I'll return as soon as I can."

"Don't worry about me, Stroud. Go ... do what you must."

"There'll be guards at your door, should you need anything, Wiz, anything."

"For God's sake, Abe, go ... go."

Stroud nodded, turned and rushed out, fearful of the strange tone he had heard in Kendra's voice.

Abraham Stroud had had a police squad car drive him to the hospital, and when he asked the driver if he could speed it up, the siren roared into life. He reached St. Stephen's within twenty minutes of Kendra's call. She was waiting for him in her lab, and he had to don the protective gear that she wore. He now stepped into the isolation chamber where she explained that she had the sample of organic matter that had filtered from Dr. Leonard's orifices as he came out of coma. The sample she wished him to look at was under her microscope. She was, for her, agitated.

Stroud felt cumbersome in the suit, and looking over the comparison microscope with its double vision capability was a chore through the face mask. Stroud saw a great deal of teeming life on both sides of the scope, but nothing that meant anything to him. He lifted his eyes away and asked, "What does this mean? What am I looking at?"

"Don't you see it ... those ... the things in there?"

"I see ordinary bacteria, protozoa. Why are you so upset?"

"Dammit," she said, looking into the scope herself and gasping. "Don't you see the souls there? You're supposed to be the seer, the prophet, the parapsychological genius, Dr. Stroud. Can't you see what's before your eyes?" She was shouting, out of control.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Don't treat me like a child or a fool!"

"Kendra, something is not right here."

"Don't you think I know that!" She pushed him away and insisted he look again. "Look hard. Open up that mind of yours."

Stroud saw nothing more than the microbes he had seen earlier, but he said calmly, "Where did this come from?"

"Substance on the left is from Weitzel."

Stroud saw that it was identical to that on the right.

"Substance on the right is from Leonard."

"Leonard?"

"Yes. Dr. Leonard. From his ear. Stuff just seeped out of him." Stroud gasped, realizing it was from the beast.

"Do you see the eyes?" she asked.

"Eyes?" He raised his shoulders, unsure what she meant by this.

"Mouths ... noses, ears, pained faces? All tangled and swirling in that microscopic world?"

Stroud wondered how long it had been since she'd gotten any sleep. He wondered if she was hallucinating.

"I see Dante's Hell when I look into the microscope," she said. "Which means I've either caught the disease myself and am going mad, or ... or your supernatural theory is ... is true."

Stroud put an arm around her and said, "You need some rest. Let's get out of here. I'll see you home."

"No, first you've got to see this." She pulled away and went to a table with a clear container that sat over a burner. She heated the brown slime and gases immediately rose and swirled inside the large container, creating a swirling, angry cloud that seemed bent on escaping the container. In the swirls, Stroud saw strange shapes come and go, come and go. He thought he saw a hand but it was immediately replaced by a fingerlike extension that was swept away by something resembling a half-formed eyeball that quickly disappeared, replaced by a scalp, a foot, a chin.

"Do you see it now?" she pressed.

"I see something."

"That's not all," she said, turning off the heat and allowing the gas to dissipate, returning the substance to its original state. "Look at this."

She led him to a curtained window which was actually a viewing port for a chamber within the chamber of the isolation lab. A scraping of the substance had been placed on a steel slab inside the chamber.

"Watch," she instructed him, and then pressed a button that sent a shower of water down over the brown scum. The water hitting the material caused a steam to rise off it and there rose a yellow fog that discolored the pane before them. In the fog more shapes ... more souls, as she had termed them.

"Whatever this is, it takes an airborne form when it is heated, or when it comes into contact with H2O. It penetrates the skin in the form of dampness, enters at the pores and gets to the nerve endings, and finally to the brain, traveling along the neurological pathways."

"Sulfur trioxide, sulfonethylmethane, narcotic--"

"And we've found mephitis is also part of the potent poison."

"Mephitis? What is that?"

"A foul-smelling, poisonous gas emitted from the earth--"

"Like methane with a stench?"

"Enough to do some damage to the neurological processes."

"It's a miracle any of us came out of that pit alive, then."

"Your protective wear, the clear oxygen you were breathing saved you. Neither you nor the other archeologists received the kind of dosage that others have gotten. Somehow it's transmitted from one person to the next. We haven't learned the mystery behind its transmittal yet, but it would appear from our tests that those infected, with the normal body heat, breed the bacterial infection, and there is a kind of invisible-to-us gas created around their bodies. This disease is expired through their breathing, through their sweat, through their pores. We're all very much in danger..."

"It's a wonder I didn't get it from Weitzel."

"I've thought about that quite a lot," she said.

"And? Any conclusions?"

"Luck, or simply that Weitzel had to expend so much energy trying to strangle you as you say that he ... the thing inside him ... simply spent itself. Perhaps the spitting up at you was its last hope of infecting you."

"Then you are now willing to believe that something from inside Weitzel spoke to me?"

"Yes ... yes, I am."

She shut down the shower and soon the writhing cloud of yellow steam and the bizarre forms within it dissipated.

"Why? Because of what you see here?"

"That, yes ... but also something happened with Leonard, just before I injected him with the antidote."

"Would you like to talk to me about it?"

"Take another look in the scope now."

He did so, and this time he saw what had so frightened her. In the Weitzel sample there existed amoebas and bacteria skittering all about, but now in the Leonard sample the same creatures had strange, humanlike appendages and eyes. It so startled Stroud that he pulled his eyes away.

"You see it."

"It takes some staring, but yes ... I saw it."

"Like the souls of men on the head of a pin."

"And something wants us all to join it in its private hell."

She went about shutting down everything, including lights, putting away instruments, when Mark came in wearing protective wear and telling her that he would see to the "drone" work. She didn't argue, just cautioning him about the dispensation of the strange, gummy material that had seeped from two human beings, one dead and one alive. Stroud and Kendra Cline went through the decontamination unit and were soon on the other side of the isolation chamber. From outside, she said to Mark, "Be very careful in there. This thing is lethal."

"Go," he told her.

"So," she said to Stroud, "you still offering to take me home?"

"Absolutely, and on the way you can give me an update on Leonard. I don't suppose I could see him for a few minutes tonight?"

"He could still be contagious. We're watching him closely, and seeing you will only complicate our work. Maybe tomorrow."

"Fine, then perhaps you can tell me what happened between you and Leonard earlier to bring you around to a better understanding of why I was attacked by Weitzel."

"That I'd like to talk about, yes."

"I've got a car waiting downstairs."

She said her good-nights to the staff, telling them that by tomorrow she would be replaced, a bit of sourness in her tone. "Be good to the new man, or men in this case. They're both top-notch men on bacteriological and viral infections."

The others thanked her and wished her well. Everyone told her to get some sleep. Soon they were in the backseat of the squad car, whizzing to her hotel. Along the way, between yawns, she told him what had occurred moments before Leonard received his final dosage of a metal-plated shot. Stroud found the story very interesting, and when she finished he said one word.

"Mephistopheles."

"No, mephitis, I said mephitis before."

"I'm talking about the medieval legend of the demon that purchased Faust's soul," he explained.

Sleepily, she replied, "Ohhhhhh."

"The same demon gave his name in a play by Marlowe."

"Goethe," she corrected him.

"Marlowe as well."

"But that's stories, literature."

"It has always been curious to me that both Marlowe and Goethe gave their demon the same name, and he spoke in German when he needed to and English when English was called for."

"Literary figures," she mumbled.

"Or so it has always been supposed. I recently learned that Dracula was more than just a literary figure. Think of it ... before a few days ago who would have ever dreamed that an Etruscan ship lay beneath the largest city in the country, below Manhattan?"

"Yeah ... yeah..." She was dozing.

Stroud said, "Suppose for a moment that something of hellish dimension did visit Goethe and Marlowe, and did call itself Mephistopheles? Could such a creature have existed since the dawn of time? Another Mephistopheles? Alive since early Etruscan times?"

She started, her body twitching with a sudden violent reaction. She'd seen the trapped souls when she closed her eyes and it had shaken her.

He put an arm about her and she did not resist.

"What are we going to do, Stroud? What?"

"We're going to do what we've been doing; we're going to fight this thing with everything we have."

"But what if it's not enough? What if we're not--"

"Shhhhh! We're a great deal further along than we were this morning. Your serum saved Leonard, no doubt of that. It may save the others."

"Leonard fought it ... so many of the others have given up."

"Well, we're not giving up."

She snuggled into the crook of his arm, sobbing quietly. He held her close. "You've earned some rest. Come on, take it easy."

"Don't leave me tonight," she quietly asked.

"I won't," he promised. "I'm here."

-9-

Stroud sent the squad car on its way and he helped Kendra into the elevator and up to her room. She dropped her keys at the door and he picked them up. He let the door swing open. She stood there a moment, her eyes meeting his, blinking back the fatigue. She looked vulnerable, he thought.

"I've got a large room," she said, "with a view of the Hudson ... very nice."

She stared into his eyes as she spoke. Stroud bent to kiss her, bringing his lips to hers with a tentative, tender gesture. She quaked a bit before returning his kiss.

A bell rang, signaling that people would be getting off the elevator across from them. She pulled him inside and closed the door, covering his mouth with hers.

"Hey, hey, Kendra," he tried to protest. "You're beat, and it wouldn't be fair of me to--"

"Who asked you?" she said, covering his mouth again, filling it with her tongue.

"Whoa, easy, girl," he said, gasping. She had tasted wonderful, and she felt great in his arms.

"You talk too damned much, Abraham Stroud." She began unbuttoning his shirt, plunging her hands into the muscles of his chest. Stroud lifted her and carried her to the bedroom.

"I'm putting you to bed," he told her.

"Just as I wish." She kissed him and the fire within her, the smell of her, overwhelmed him. He returned her passion with his own as he knelt to cushion her where he placed her on the bed. She'd gotten his shirt completely open, and now Stroud removed her blouse.

He wanted to hide within the white texture of her skin, hide from all that was bad in the world, escape the evil, if for only a night. She pulled his head down to the center of her breasts, her body squirming, heaving below him.

"I need you," she repeatedly said, until Stroud joined her in a chorus of the three words.

After the lovemaking she fell into quiet, calm sleep, both spent and refreshed. Stroud lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling fan that had kept them cool, and in the rotating blades he saw no ghosts, no swirling dervishes, no bizarre shapes. He saw only darkness and movement and he felt only calm and warmth beside Kendra, listening to the sound of her breathing, his hand taking stock of her heartbeat. For the first time in recent memory, someone had stilled his own nightmares.

Dr. Samuel Leonard was fit to be tied. He wanted out. He wanted news and information. He wanted to talk to Wisnewski. He wanted to talk to Stroud. He was shouting these things when Stroud walked in and said, "Samuel, it's so wonderful to have you back!"

"Get me the hell out of here, Abe!"

"Processing it right now. Dr. Cline's seeing to the details."

"Where are my clothes?"

"Brought you some things from your home," said Wisnewski, who stepped in.

"Arthur! It's so wonderful to see you. I'm so anxious to get back to work," Leonard said as the two embraced.

"Put these on. We're breaking you out of here," Wiz told him, smiling. "So good to see you, Sam."

Downstairs they found Kendra Cline, who had finished processing Leonard. She told him that he was a free man.

"Free, yes," he agreed. "Free from hell."

He had recalled nothing beyond a horrid, overwhelming and engulfing feeling of being held down, trapped, the entire time he was under.

Stroud told him that he knew the feeling, and this made Kendra Cline look askance at him, trying to determine his meaning. She hadn't spoken very much to him about the previous night, nor he to her.

Wisnewski grabbed some flowers that were on a nurse's duty desk and began to give them out one at a time to patients along the floor. Save for this, he showed no tendency toward his earlier "madness." He greeted each patient with a large smile and a big "How are you, today?" This turned a lot of heads.

Stroud meanwhile brought Leonard up to date, ending with the fact that the parchment and the bones confiscated from the death ship were waiting for his examination.

"You don't propose we go back into that ... into that hole, do you?" Leonard said, trembling, his first sign of anxiety since coming out of coma. "Is that what you all have planned for me? Is it? Well, you can save yourselves the trouble. I'll be damned and gone to hell before I'll go back to that ... that ship."

This made Wisnewski rush to Leonard. "You old bird, these people, this city is counting on us to--"

"I'm no hero, Simon. Neither are you!"

"We must do what we can."

"It could come again for us anytime ... anytime!"

"All right, take it easy," said Stroud.

Kendra also tried to calm him. "You will not be forced to go anywhere, Dr. Leonard. You've been through quite enough already."

"Yes," he agreed, "through hell and back."

"Will you at least come to the lab?" asked Wisnewski. "To look over the items we brought back?"

Leonard looked from one face to the other, biting his lip. "All right ... all right. But no, I will not go near that place again."

"Agreed," said Stroud.

Wisnewski made a muttering sound as he left ahead of them for the waiting car, not hiding his disappointment with Leonard.

"Come along, Dr. Leonard," said Abe Stroud, ushering the other man, who nodded and allowed Stroud to guide him.

"I'll be along later," said Kendra. "I don't want to leave things in a mess here, and I want to break in the new guys."

"Sure ... sure," said Stroud, "and about last night."

"Yes?"

"I ... I hope we can do it again sometime."

She smiled warmly. "Me too."

Dr. Samuel Leonard's expertise was philology: ancient written documents, hieroglyphics and symbols. He had unraveled and unlocked more secrets of past civilizations than anyone living on the planet. Wisnewski brought him the parchment in a protective cover, flattened out to its worn edges, looking like an Arabic treasure map of bizarre origin. The paper was a yellowish gray, stony-looking. It told a full tale, the strange Etruscan symbols spilling over the edges, and there were no margins at either the top or the bottom.

Wisnewski told Leonard that he had worked up a theory to the meaning of the cryptic letters and numbers, working as best he could with his more limited knowledge of ancient lettering. He pointed out that the figure of 500,000 seemed to refer to the number of human lives that must be sacrificed to the Overlord, some creature of the Dark Side that threatened to destroy all Etruscan life if its hunger for human life was not fulfilled.

Wisnewski explained all this while placing the document below the two-foot-wide magnifying glass.

Leonard seemed at first oblivious of Wisnewski and what the other man was saying. Stroud watched both men carefully. Leonard now said calmly, "You don't know what you're talking about, Wiz. Stick to your bones."

It was curt for Leonard, uncharacteristic; but he now launched into studying the document, saying it could take hours, days, before he knew what each word meant. He asked them to be patient. "You can't rush a thing like this. You do, and you make bad interpretations, assumptions, and then you base everything on a fallacy."

"Fallacy?" asked Wiz, but Stroud put up a hand to him, indicating the prudent thing to do now would be to leave Leonard to his work. Leonard went into a kind of work-induced trance familiar to Wisnewski, and so the white-haired older doctor nodded and gave Leonard his leeway.

As Leonard worked, Stroud and Wisnewski huddled around a table with coffee and the bones that had come out of the pit. Wisnewski was still involved in studying these, but for now Stroud told him of the progress that Kendra Cline had had in combating the disease in people who were fortunate enough to have only a mild case of the "supernatural flu." Wisnewski was amazed to learn the details, hanging on Stroud's every word. He was particularly curious about the residue the disease left behind which seeped from the ears and other orifices of those affected.

"I'd wondered about that," said Wisnewski.

"You expelled some of it, too? While you were in Bellevue?"

"Excreted is the operative word," he said, and left it at that.

The hours passed slowly, with Stroud helping Wisnewski build a complete log on the bones and with a silent Leonard going at the document in a grueling, nonstop examination which was creating extensive notes. Leonard was mesmerized by the document and several times noises escaped him but no words as yet.

Nathan had interrupted their work twice with phone calls, demanding to know of their progress. Stroud fed him what he thought prudent. On the second call, Stroud told him of Wiz's theory of the 500,000 sacrifices. Nathan gasped and said, "Is that it? We're supposed to sit idly by and watch hundreds of thousands succumb to this disease and do ... nothing?"

"Dr. Cline's already informed you of Leonard's recovery and what that means."

"But if this ... this thing in the pit wants 500,000 lives, what's our antidote to that? There is none! If it doesn't get what it wants ... what then?"

Stroud hesitated before saying, "The whole of the city, we believe. So far, there are as many unanswered questions as there are--"

"I don't want to hear about unanswered questions, Stroud! I want results. You promised when I got you Wisnewski that--"

"I promised you nothing, and we're going at this night and day, and we're doing our goddamned best."

"I'm running interference for you scientists, Stroud, and you have no idea the pressures I'm holding back off your asses, so level with me! Do we have a shot at beating this thing or not?"

"Yes, yes, we do, but we need time to develop--"

"We don't have time. The goddamned dogs and cats and rats in the city are getting it now! They've attacked people, further spreading the disease."

Stroud thought of the neurological causes of the disease as they were explained to him by Kendra Cline. It seemed perfectly logical that animals would be affected as well. "Commissioner Nathan, I promise you ... as soon as we have a defense against this thing--"

"Yeah, well, I'm not so sure there is any defense anymore. Five hundred thousand! Christ, Stroud, do you know there are people in this city who would gladly sacrifice that many for the sake of themselves? Let's keep this information under wraps, understood? I can just see the headlines on that."

"All right, agreed." Stroud had finally gotten him off the phone when Leonard shouted for the other two men to gather round him.

"I've got it ... I've got it."

"We may have to give it what it wants," began Leonard, "but it isn't going to entirely trust us to do so."

Stroud and Wisnewski stared across at one another, each man shaking his head in confusion. "Do you want to explain that, Samuel?" asked Wiz.

"You were wrong about the 500,000 it wants, Wiz."

"I know the Etruscan numerals, Sam, and--"

"Yes, it wants that number, but that number is not the same as the ones it has inflicted with this disease of ... of control."

"What does it want?" asked Stroud. "What do you mean, Dr. Leonard?"

Leonard got up, his back aching from the hours looking over the documents. He paced a moment before saying, "The zombies are an army."

"An army?"

"To do its bidding. They will become it; it will become they. They are an extension of it. They will move in this world for it, because it cannot leave the confines of the earth in any other form. The Etruscan writer says that it is trapped by the wind if it comes out of the earth on a warm day or--"

"Or if it is raining," finished Stroud.

"Yes, how did you know?"

He told them about the experiments that Kendra had conducted on the substance that had oozed from Leonard and Weitzel.

"To think this vile thing once inhabited my body," said Leonard, quaking.

"Go on, Sam," said Wiz. "What else? How will it gain its sacrifices if not by taking the zombies?"

"The zombies will herd the rest of us to it, surround and force people into the pit, into the ship ... preferably alive."

Stroud thought of the attacks on him by the various zombies that he had come into contact with. He recalled the crazed man with the claw hammer.

Leonard continued, stopping at one point to place a finger on one word of the parchment that looked to Stroud like the tail feather of a bird. "This creature has the power to blow storms into the minds of men, and to become a parasite in the brain."

Stroud wondered for a moment if Dr. Leonard had gone mad. He didn't know how much of Leonard's spiel he could believe. "Whoa, wait a minute, Dr. Leonard. Are you trying to say that the Etruscans understood the physiological mechanisms that this demon used against them, and is now using against us? That they had the capability to assess--"

"Apparently the author of this did," said Leonard, poking his finger in the direction of the document under the magnifying glass. Stroud stared at it for some time and then a word on the page leaped out at him:

Mysterious Photograph

COM:\m="Walker-ZEyes-1.jpg"

HTM:

KML:

FUB:[NOTE: Image omitted. Images not supported in this ebook format. Download the MS Reader, Acrobat, Hiebook, or Rocket format file.]

PDB:[NOTE: Image omitted. Images not supported in this ebook format. Download the MS Reader, Acrobat, Hiebook or Rocket format file.]

PDF:INSERT IMAGE "Walker-ZEyes-1.jpg" HERE

The word seemed to have some meaning for Stroud, but he wasn't sure why. It was the last word on the document. He asked Leonard to translate it.

"That is the name of the author, a soothsayer or some such."

"I see."

"Not very often do we get such a document signed," said Wiz.

"What is the name?"

"Well, it lines up like this," said Leonard, showing him the written translation, which read:

ESROUD

Stroud stared dumbstruck at the name: Esruad. "Are you sure? There's no mistake?"

"It would seem the name has significance," said Leonard.

"You might say so. Weitzel spoke the name just before he died. He called me Esruad. You also, Dr. Wisnewski, when I first came to you in the psychiatric ward. Do you recall?"

Wisnewski shook his head vigorously. "Not at all."

"There seems to be something important in the name. Does it say what this man Esruad did during the plague time?"

"He speaks of despair, that no one would listen to him. He had been something of an alchemist, it appears," said Leonard.

"What about the monster itself?" asked Wiz impatiently.

"A dreadful thing to behold, it says. Esruad calls it the Ubbrroxx; describes it as life-eating, life-draining, diabolical ... unleashed ... uninhibited ... disease-carrying."

"Sounds like our creature," said Wisnewski.

"Remarkably so," agreed Stroud.

"And this fellow Esruad ... He sounds familiar to me, too," began Leonard. "I must go over some old notes of my own. If memory serves, he was a kind of prophet, soothsayer. Very little is known about him, but recent archeological breakthroughs in Tuscany have provided a few rays of light."

Wiz added, "No Etruscan literature other than funeral inscriptions survives, which makes this little piece of paper priceless."

Pulling at his tie Leonard continued, "Until recently it was near impossible to understand all but a few words, but the alphabet is a mix of Roman, Phoenician and an unknown tongue--very likely the Etruscans' ancestors. They traded with the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and most of what we know about them is told us by these other peoples."

"Right at the moment, I think it more prudent to understand the creature," said Wiz. "We can play history games later. What does it say about destroying the thing?"

"Esruad was unsuccessful."

"Obviously."

"It took 500,000 lives in the year 793 b.c. There was no stopping it."

"Just as I said, 500,000 lives," replied Wiz.

"But not the lives of the zombies. They lived on after with the guilt of thousands of others on their hands. They--the diseased ones--herded the healthy ones into the pit. When the creature was sated Esruad convinced his people that it must be removed. Using mostly slave labor, this was accomplished. It had gone into a dormant phase, during which time Esruad removed it and placed it on a ship. It was buried in the ship, packed in its own earth ball, and literally sent off into what was then space. It was buried months later, far beyond the seas, still inside the belly of the ship, along with the bones of those sacrificed to it."

"The land beyond the sea ... here and now." Stroud began to pace the room wondering if this was some kind of eschatological rite of passage for the creature, the "last thing" to come. Every religion had a last coming, a last end to history, a final conclusion to the grand pageant of mankind on earth. He began to wonder if the lives of 500,000 were not a small price to pay. Wisnewski and Leonard were quiet, perhaps with the same thoughts, Stroud guessed.

"I wonder if 500,000 lives will be enough for it this time," Wisnewski said, as if reading Stroud's mind.

The three archeologists looked again at the strange Etruscan lettering as if an answer lay somewhere in the writings of an ancient. "We sure as hell can't do what Esruad did," said Leonard. "What? Give up hundreds of thousands of lives to it, pray it goes dormant again? Attempt a removal? Send it off into ... into outer space or to the bottommost realms of the deep?"

"No, it must be housed in earth," said Stroud.

"What?"

"We don't know what kind of evil would be unleashed on the planet if it were to come into contact with salt water or even the vacuum of space. If Dr. Cline's experiments told me anything, it is that we must keep it away from water. Water only makes it airborne."

"What do you suggest, then?" pleaded Leonard.

"Esruad constructed a stone enclosure around the ship," said Stroud, "in what was an uninhabited land."

"Environmentally sound thinking," said Wiz.

"The best he could do in his day," continued Stroud. "We've got an obligation to do better, we with all our modern technology."

"Meanwhile," Wiz said acidly, "it's back and it's waited a long time for a meal."

Stroud nodded. "And it looks like we're it, unless we can find a way to beat it."

"Esruad couldn't find a way."

"I still have some yet to decipher," said Leonard. "Just thought you two ought to know what I've learned."

"Good work, Samuel," said Wiz.

Stroud agreed. "Yes, very good work."

Leonard went back to work. A worried Wisnewski took Stroud aside and asked, "How much of this do you think men like Nathan and Perkins and our Bill Leamy are going to buy? Before it is too late, I mean."

"Wiz, my friend, it may already be too late. If what Sam says is true, this army of comatose people will soon awaken to rise up against the rest of us, and we'll be forced to either destroy them or be destroyed."

"Imagine a sentient, diabolical being with the power to exact such tribute from the human race."

"Sentient, yes. Diabolical, yes, to every degree. And the worst of it is that it will turn us against one another, Wiz. That it will feed on humans is only the tip of the iceberg; that it will set in motion evil working through mankind for eons to come, this makes this thing from below satanic."

"We've got to find a way to fight back."

"Couldn't agree with you more."

"Cline's antidote, the stuff that helped Leonard ... is it the answer?"

"Afraid not. She tells me that it is only working in a small fraction of the cases. Most have succumbed too completely to be reached. It seems to help only in cases not too far advanced."

"So all these comatose people, all these madmen running about the city like wolves in packs ... it's all a fermentation process, and when the fermenting is done..."

"Then we'll see the city fall like a house of cards as men are turned against men, as the sacrifices begin."

-10-

At St. Stephen's Hospital in the middle of Manhattan, Dr. Kendra Cline and her assistants continued to work tirelessly on an antidote that wouldn't throw the victims of this plague into a catastrophic fit that, for some, had ended in death. Leonard had been the rare exception. She theorized that the protective wear and the fact he and Stroud and Wisnewski had been breathing untainted oxygen had gone far to combat the ravishes of the paralyzing disease. To date they had had only a handful of successes. Those who were infected simply were not responding to the treatment, except to die of it, which, as the grim word getting around the hospital had it, wasn't such a bad cure, given the alternative of a vegetative state.

All the hospital's equipment was strained beyond the limits.