Zombie Eyes

The pilot's hand fought his and he turned to stare into Stroud's face. Luther Stokes's eyes were fiery yet green and icy all at once, a palpitating presence reaching out through him in an attempt to destroy Stroud.

'Stroud! Stroud!' Nathan was shouting.

Stroud caught only a brief glance of the C.P. and Kendra in the rear as the helicopter began a wild gyration that plastered them all against their seats.

'Going down! Going down!' the insidious voice of the demon cried through Stokes's lips, having locked Stokes's hand on the throttle.

Stroud, who had flown helicopters in the war, tugged at the controls as the demon's laughter filled the bubble. Stroud shouted for Kendra to fire a dart into Stokes. Then he shouted for Nathan's help. 'Shoot the pilot! Shoot him!'

Neither Kendra nor Nathan could readily respond, as the cab had become a centrifuge and they, like Stroud himself, were laboring under such centrifugal force that they might as well have been in a force-nine gale wind. Nathan could not straighten his line of fire, nor could Kendra.

Stroud brought up his knee, letting go of the throttle, bringing up both his feet and kicking straight out at Stokes's head. The force sent the other man into the door, jarring it loose. Stroud regathered his balance when the chopper righted a bit in response to Stokes's having let go. Stroud saw that he was reaching now for the controls again, and that was when Nathan's .38 exploded through the cushion of the seat and ripped through him. This only momentarily stunned the man, and he fought again to take the controls back from Stroud.

The dizzying whir of the helicopter continued, its rear rotors cutting stone as it edged about a building. Stroud turned her toward a relatively safer path along the river.

But Stokes's hands possessed the strength of the demon, and Stroud realized just how much energy the monster must have to make such remote attacks on him. It had to be staggering. For now, however, he had to get the reeling chopper safely grounded.

'Kendra!' he shouted for help, and finally heard the whuuuuup of her dart gun.

Stokes's reaction was a banshee scream, and Stroud kicked and punched and pushed out at him again, sending him, hanging on the door, outside the cab. In a moment he laughed, tugging the helicopter to one side, and shouted maniacally, 'Goooooing dowwwwwwwn!' With that he dropped from the door panel some sixty or seventy feet to the pavement, splattering like an overripe melon.

The helicopter was still spinning, and Stroud remained in battle with the machine as if it, too, were possessed of the demon. It took Stroud's entire strength to hold her, his biceps bulging against the throttle. He needed lift, but the machine wanted to drop from the sky and end its crazed dance. The gyrating cockpit pushed Stroud back and back, disallowing the leverage he needed. It was a catch-22 of the deadliest kind.

'Stroud! Stroud!' Kendra cried out as they skirted past brick on all sides.

Stroud pulled himself to the controls and held firm, firmer, praying all the while, when suddenly she gained a bit of lift, as if taking a breath from her destructive course. Stroud took advantage, pulling for lift, and she responded, lifting ... lifting, no longer losing altitude. When Stroud righted the lopsided machine in the air, he saw that they had spiraled to within fifty feet of the ground in a fiery free-fall over Central Park. He had no idea how they'd gotten to this location.

'What the hell happened?' asked a breathless Nathan.

'Stokes was taken over by the damned thing in the pit!'

'How? How can it do that?'

'How can it turn thousands into zombies?'

'Why? Why's it keep coming after you, Stroud?' asked Kendra, still fighting for her own breath.

'Perhaps if I knew the answer to that...'

'As if it has targeted you?' she continued.

'I'm afraid I'm not very safe company to be keeping.'

Nathan guffawed at this. 'Damned straight there.'

'But thank God you know how to fly this thing,' Kendra said.

'Yeah, but it didn't know that.' Stroud turned the whirly-bird a bit too sharply, causing Kendra to gasp again.

'It's all right. I've got her under control now. Commissioner, you think you can get clearance for us to land at One Police Plaza?'

'Not a problem. Give me that radio.'

Still breathing heavily, his .38 in one hand, Nathan took the radio and called for the necessary clearance on the gleaming roof with the bull's-eye targets just ahead of them. It looked like a concrete heaven to them all.

-11-

Stroud, Kendra Cline and James Nathan were all shaken at what they had survived, and the lives of those lost weighed heavily on their minds. Nathan wanted to call in the National Guard and the U.S. Army and perhaps return to the site and destroy the zombies, every man, woman and child among them. It seemed the only way to proceed from his vantage point. Stroud asked for restraint and for time.

'At least enough time to determine the true nature of the enemy, Commissioner.'

'There is no time!'

'Look here, you called me into this thing and now you're going to listen to me, dammit!' Stroud shouted, losing his temper. He had dealt with Nathan's type before in Chicago, with the cannibalizing werewolf that was stalking the city streets there less than a year ago. Nathan knew of his success with that unusual case, and he had no doubt heard the rumors and read the wild reports of other bizarre cases which Stroud had solved.

Nathan turned to Stroud, his wide shoulders heaving with a mixture of uncertainty and frustration. He gave a fleeting glance toward Dr. Cline, but she offered him no help. She had remained in a semi-trance on seeing the deaths of her co-workers. She'd had a chill and Stroud had located a blanket for her shoulders and a cup of steaming coffee.

'You tried it Gordon's way!' Stroud said adamantly. 'And look what it's gotten us! Now, for the love of God, man, try it my way.'

'I've got people I've got to answer to,' he said feebly. Then he began to pace before them. 'What is it you intend to do? What's Stroud's way?'

'I intend to lead an expedition back down into the ship, to face this thing on its own ground.'

'That's madness,' he said. 'What guarantee do you have you'll come out alive?'

'Very little, perhaps none ... but this thing, whatever it is ... I don't know why, but I sense that it wants me. And thus far it has come after me on its terms. It's time I turned the tables, but first I've got to gain help from Wisnewski and Leonard, to learn more about this evil. Do you understand that?'

'And in the meantime?' asked Nathan, banging his fist on his desk. 'What about those zombies out there? What do we do to stop them?'

Stroud had no answer for the commissioner. At a loss for a resolution to the problem, he knew he must gain more knowledge, ferret through the information Wiz and Leonard might provide back at the museum.

Nathan's intercom buzzed with an irritating bee sound, and the voice of rancor from people downstairs at the sergeant's desk spelled trouble. 'Commissioner, you've got to get out of the building!' shouted someone at the other end.

'Casey? Casey, what's going on down there?' shouted Nathan.

'We're under attack! The zombies, hundreds of them! Spilling through every doorway, breaking in the win--'

The line went dead to the sound of gunfire. Nathan looked up at Stroud and their eyes met. 'They've followed you here! They're after you, Stroud--you! God damn it all, we could just feed you to them and maybe ... maybe this thing would go away!'

'Maybe ... and maybe not, Nathan.'

They stood staring hard across at one another, Stroud's steely gaze telling the other man that he wouldn't go as a willing sacrifice to Nathan or the others. 'Or maybe I'm the only hope your city has, Nathan. Think about that. Why has it singled me out for sacrifice? Because it knows something you don't--'

'What? What does it know, Stroud?' Nathan's hand inched toward his chest and shoulder holster.

'It knows enough to fear me, that I hold the key to its mystery; that I can dispel that mystery in time--if given the time.'