feeds on our pain, our fear, our being and our senses. It does not enjoy feeding on the emotionless automatons it has created of the others. They'd feel no terror, no suffering, as we who remain whole and intact do. The zombie herd is created to ensure that the demon gets its due, and according to the skull, it has raised the ante, as you've said, to five million souls.'
'How can you be sure of all this?' asked Kendra, coming toward him to resolutely stand before him. 'Suppose it's a trick ... this ... this skull spirit. Suppose it was sent here by the thing in the pit?'
'It is bound up with the demon, yes. It holds the lost souls of those who committed the others to the demon's tortures so many hundreds of years ago, and those trapped souls in the skull belong to the men, women and children who sacrificed their brothers, sisters, mothers to the creature in Etruscan times. The principal voice in the skull was that of this man named Esruad.'
'The soothsayer?' asked Wiz. 'The one much mentioned in the records?'
'It was no coincidence that we found his document in the ship,' added Stroud, pacing now. 'The creature has confused me with Esruad on more than one occasion.' Stroud stopped before the skull, his hand lightly moving over the object as he said, 'Esruad was a magician of sorts and a physician in his day. He dabbled in what we might call alchemy and witchcraft. In fact, it was he who discovered a method of fashioning pure crystal into skull molds, a technique which is unknown and considered impossible today. He molded the skulls to house the souls of men like himself for a dual purpose.'
Wiz, Leonard and Kendra were now held in rapt attention, as he continued. 'One, the skull acts as a receptacle for the souls of men filled with greater remorse than can be contained anywhere else in the universe. Two, the skull acts as a kind of beacon or transmitter through history.'
Wiz took a deep breath and came around to Stroud, saying, 'My impression of Esruad was that he was some sort of Rasputin, or Merlin--'
'He sacrificed many lives to learn of the mysteries of the universe,' said Stroud, 'but this one mystery was more horrible than he had begun to suspect until it was too late. He was quite likely the first surgeon, the first man to cut into a cadaver to unravel the mysteries of the human body. He also dabbled in the occult, and it led to Ubbrroxx.'
'An evil man?' asked Kendra.
'He believes so of himself.'
Wiz corrected Stroud to a degree. 'As scientists we have precious little to base moral judgments--'
'He has made the judgment for us,' Stroud said.
'Locked himself for all eternity in the cube of the skull,' said Wiz, understanding. 'Soul transfer?'
'Something like that, but he also took what remained of the others who'd succumbed to the zombie rule of the creature.'
'But how did Esruad fall under its influence?'
'Damned thing is powerful and devious. Don't know the full story, but it had to do with a woman.'
'Sure, blame it on that woman Eve,' said Kendra.
'Esruad blames himself and the weakness of his race.'
'And at the moment this thing in the pit believes you are Esruad?' asked Leonard.
'Yes, and we intend to use that to our advantage. Furthermore we know its name, and we have the crystal skull.'
'That won't be enough--not against this thing,' said Leonard.
'We have to trust that Esruad knows what he is doing,' Stroud replied.
'Trust a voice encased in a crystal skull that only you can hear?' asked Kendra. 'I think I'll trust to my anti- serotonin drugs, if you don't mind, Stroud.'
He met her eyes and saw the sincere confusion there. 'Yes, of course, we must rely on our own devices as well ... by all means.'
Leonard went to a corner, the fear of returning to the pit under any circumstances twisting his insides. Wiz, too, was frightened of the prospect, but he went to Leonard and said, 'It is a thing we must do, Samuel ... you know this.'
-14-
Abe Stroud had held on to the helicopter and they boarded on the rooftop of the museum, making a stop at the hospital, where they picked up protective suits, the darts, dart guns and the medication required. One of the doctors, something of a genius, according to Kendra, had created a gaseous form of the medication and this was placed hastily into spray canisters that the 'space' men returning to the buried ship could carry on their backs. Stroud never let go of the skull, keeping it always in his sight.
'How're we going to get past the army of zombies bent on tearing us limb from limb?' asked Kendra. 'Have you seen any of the TV footage on what's been happening out there at that damnable construction site?'
She took him into a waiting room where a TV was running the horrible scenes over and over as if even the inanimate electronic set itself could not believe the pictures it was conveying. Some shots from a helicopter, obviously, showed the extent of the horror. The zombie horde had become like one animal, working in unison as the deadly limbs of the creature at its center, both protecting and feeding the mouth. In the dark, it looked like a bottom feeder, buried in the ocean floor, sending out rays of spiked tentacles to draw in its food. The most horrible sight was that of the live bodies being transported from the perimeters of the limbs to the center, disappearing down and down into the thing.
'Christ, we've got to end this thing now! The time's come!' Stroud shouted when he realized that Leonard and Wiz were standing just behind him, both men mesmerized by the sight on the TV screen.
'How the hell're we going to get past that?' Wiz asked virtually the same thing as Kendra had.
Leonard was simply frozen by the sight, mumbling, 'My God ... my God...'
'We'll get in. They'll part for us. It will know we are coming in of our own accord and it will like
'You're sure of that?'
'Yes, I am.' He went to Kendra and said, 'You stay behind here. There's no need for you to--'
'Oh, no! I'm in, Stroud, for better or worse.'
'Kendra, there's no reason for you to go in there.'
'Let Dr. Leonard stay back. He's obviously distraught!'
'And have you take my place?' asked Leonard. 'I may be afraid, but I'm not so afraid that I would send you in my place.'
'Stroud is right. We've already been exposed to this evil, the three of us. We've come away from it not unscathed, but we've shown it that we have the courage of our convictions,' Wisnewski began. 'Dr. Stroud's right. If we are to beat this thing, we must show some backbone.'
'We entered the pit earlier,' said Stroud, his hands outstretched to her in a supplicating gesture. 'Kendra, we are marked, but you are not. We
Leonard nodded like a man who has been told that a son has died, not wishing to accept it, but not knowing any other way. 'I was infected. It was inside me, using me up...' He was remembering the dark night of the soul imprisoned within him by the evil. He was remembering the hole he had fallen into, the feeling of being trapped and held down and used. He'd been an insect pinned to a wall.
Wisnewski, too, was recalling the horror of having had his mind and body taken over by something that had crawled around inside him. 'We have to go back ... to finish it.'
'Or it will surely return to finish us.'
'You'll need medical help down there,' Kendra said. 'It's almost a certainty. And no one knows the safety features of the protective suits as well as I.'
'I'm telling you it's too dangerous, Kendra.'
She glared at Stroud. 'I don't need your condescension or patronage, Stroud, or your O.K. for that matter. You do, however, need me. You need my damned formula, and where it goes, I go.' She held up one of the large dart guns and a vial of the dark medicine she and her team had created to combat the zombies.
Stroud looked from her to his watch and back again. Time was ticking away, and with each minute more people were dying outside. He feared desperately for Kendra. She had no idea what she was letting herself in for, and should something happen to her...
