Zombie Eyes

'A few shots'll scatter them!' shouted one of the uniformed men.

'Use the medicine!' he shouted back as one of the zombies clambered over the fence and fell, got up and was met by a cop with a syringe who, afraid to touch the sick man, jabbed at him with it before plunging it into him. Others were coming over the fences, which were beginning to give way. The first man injected began to quake and gurgle and roll about the ground before his body was lifted and pounded on the earth by invisible hands. He was dead.

'Christ, they're coming in!'

Nathan uselessly picked up the bullhorn and shouted at the uncaring, unhearing mass of humanity at the fences encircling them. 'It's no good!' he finally shouted, seeing another section of fence come down. 'It's no use!'

Shots broke out as frightened police fired on the crowd pushing inward along one wall of the fence. Some of the shots were effective, others not.

'We've got to get out of here!' Nathan shouted as the police were driven back and away from the pit.

'Thing is protecting its territory,' Stroud told Nathan. 'All of this is premature. It knew ... it somehow knew some of us were going to try to cut it off from the zombies, and now this. It has called them here to take charge of the pit. Tomorrow, they'll be dragging people down into the ship.'

Kendra had joined them, the supply of syringes having been exhausted early.

'What're we dealing with, Dr. Stroud? What kind of intelligence is it?' begged Nathan.

'We're getting closer and closer to understanding it. We'll find a weakness, but it may take time. As for now, we've got to get out of here if we wish to remain alive. Kendra, come on--the helicopter.'

'Here, Stroud, take this. It has three darts in it,' she told him, shoving a dart gun into his hand.

Stroud gladly accepted the weapon, seeing she had one of her own.

Nathan's men were suddenly being engulfed by the horde, along with Gordon's men. Shots had continued but they were few and far between now. Casualties mounted on both sides, but the overwhelming numbers decided the battle before it had begun. Stroud had to tear Nathan away, the man firing his last round into the swarming zombies. Kendra's dart gun stabbed one that reached out for her with an empty syringe in his ugly, emaciated, bony hand.

'Forget fighting! Get to the chopper!' Stroud shouted, and urged her along, Nathan following, to their only visible means of escape. As the massive swarm moved on them, Stroud stopped to turn and fire. He put three darts into three of them in rapid succession. Each of the lead zombies coming toward them fell into fits and spasms, making a part of Stroud pity them, but hardly had his heart gone out to these poor devils than the others merely stomped over them, crushing the leaders underfoot in an attempt to get at Stroud and the other 'living' people.

By now they saw no one else standing; only the chopper and its pilot ahead of them held out any hope whatsoever. Behind them, the ambulances and police cars had been swarmed. The chopper pilot, sporting a brown leather jacket and cap, shouted for them to hurry. Stroud looked over his shoulder when he heard Gordon scream and scream again, caught under the pounding force of the herd.

Nathan jumped in and helped Kendra aboard. Stroud stood just outside the chopper and yelled at the top of his lungs the word Esruad, and this had a visible effect on the teeming zombies, slowing their relentless movement toward them. 'Hurry! Now!' Kendra shouted to Stroud, who leaped into the cockpit as the bird was lifting.

'Oh, God, oh!'

'Jeeee-sus H. Christ!' shouted Nathan.

Below them a flood of human automatons covered the construction site. They'd overwhelmed Nathan's men, the men in hard hats, killed Gordon and Kendra's two assistants. Kendra quietly sobbed in the rear seat alongside a terrorized James Nathan, who had reloaded and aimed his gun but stopped himself, realizing it was useless.

For as far as they could see, the zombies stood in waiting around the pit, there now to protect the ship and to bring the others--people like those in the helicopter--to the thing in the ship, where it would quietly feed for as long as it wished.

Stroud imagined such a death would be far worse than dying at the hands of a werewolf, and even worse than dying the slow death of a vampire victim. Something about this creature was nasty and vile and more evil than anything Abraham H. Stroud had ever faced.

'What was that word you called out to them?' asked the pilot, who introduced himself as Luther Stokes.

'A name,' was all that Stroud said.

'Why'd they slow up just when you said it?'

Nathan drew himself forward, wishing to hear the answer. It was as if Nathan were suspicious of Stroud.

'Esruad ... something Leonard found in the writings ... an ancient name.'

'I thought you had shouted your name, Stroud,' said Nathan.

Abe thought of the similarities in the two names momentarily, but his eye was caught by Kendra's. She now looked at Stroud from her perch in the rear seat alongside Nathan. She was trembling, her eyes red, tears still falling. Far below, the ambulances that had carried her, Mark and Tom into the foray were covered in the human flood. Only the soft tones of nightfall helped the scene of what looked like a million ants feeding over the life down there.

Stroud's sharper eye saw the procession toward the pit and the ship, the bodies of the living, perhaps Gordon among them, being escorted to the creature in the dark recesses of the hole.

'We're going to have to go back inside,' he said. 'We just need more time ... a little more time.'

Nathan suddenly snapped, incensed. 'Time? We don't have any bloody time left, Doctor Stroud. This thing is sapping the life out of this city. And you stood in my way down there! Had we buried that thing, maybe ... just maybe--'

'Bullshit, Commissioner! This isn't going to be so easy or simple, and it never was! It wants 500,000 of your citizens, remember? And it doesn't trust us to draw straws, so it has come out to get us. Don't you see that?'

'Five hundred thousand?' asked Kendra.

'That or more,' he replied. 'Look about you. Look at the sacrifices. It's readying for a mass slaughter, and it wants them all in that hole.'

'Christ, Stroud, how do you know this?'

'Records ... the items we brought back ... archeological evidence. We even know what the Etruscans called this thing: Ubbrroxx. Now, will you please listen to reason?'

'You call this reason?'

'It's our only chance, Commissioner.'

'Why should I believe you, Stroud? One reason why.'

'I'm the only man that's come out of there intact, untouched by this thing, and it fears me because of this.'

Nathan dropped his gaze and slowly began to nod. 'All right, all right. What do you need from me and my department?'

'All the help I can get,' he said, staring down at the teeming multitude that seemed to be feeding on itself. The site disappeared as the chopper turned sharply right and swooped away. Stroud's thoughts went out to the poor souls trapped by the being, used by the being and fed upon by this evil entity. He tore away his headset and closed his eyes on the thought, resting his head as rotors beat above them. He soon again worked the headphones over his ears so that he could communicate with the pilot, giving him directions for where he was to take them.

'I will feed on your soul, Esruad...' came a faint whisper through Stroud's headphone, a whisper from someone in the helicopter. But it was the same demonic voice that had lived in Weitzel.

Below them the city lay stretched out like an enormous circuit board lit with sparks of electricity and beams of pulsating stars--automobiles screeching about in what seemed a mad bowl of punch. Lights blinked on all sides of them, towering monoliths that represented mountainous terrain. Far below, the bridges and canals crisscrossed one another like the veins in a man's hand. The Hudson River swarmed up toward them as if to swallow them up when the helicopter tilted toward the water. Stroud grabbed hold of the throttle to steady the sudden wobble, and in the distance he caught sight of the forest that was Central Park.