Zombie Eyes

troubles. As soon as Wiz and Kendra cleared the barricades, Nathan pulled them aside.

'We had thought you'd become one of them,' Nathan said. 'Thank God we were wrong. How did you bring these others around?'

'We didn't,' said Wiz.

'But ... what does this mean?'

'Only one possible explanation,' said Wiz.

'So many coming out of their forced condition,' continued Nathan, quite amazed.

'It seems to be only those at the fringes on the wall,' said Kendra, 'but it's a sign, a wonderful sign.'

'What kind of a sign?' asked Nathan.

'It means that whatever is in control of these people has been considerably weakened by Stroud.'

'Are you telling me Stroud is still alive and that he has actually affected this--'

'Yes, very much alive. We've been trying to get to you by radio, but we were jammed.'

'And Stroud? Have you been in radio contact with him?'

She hesitated only a moment before lying. 'Yes, I tell you he is still alive, and he has made a great impact on this thing, as you can see.'

'Those people coming to ... are they clean of the disease?'

'Yes, you must take them in. You must open your lines to them,' she insisted.

'It will lessen the strength of the creature,' added Wiz, who found a place to fall out, weakened by his experiences in the pit and the loss of his good friend, Leonard.

Nathan saw the sun coming over the horizon in the far distance. He instantly got on the horn, shouting for calm, declaring that Stroud had managed a minor miracle and that the outer edges of the zombie line had come out of the spell they were under, due directly to Stroud's efforts in the pit. 'Let those people through. Have ambulances and evac vehicles ready to take them out of here!'

The process began, the lines opening, people spilling through, being helped along by armed soldiers and policemen. Medical wagons were instantly filled. A coffee line was begun and the Army began handing out blankets.

Still, a wall of zombies remained, but even so the individual members of the wall began to crumble, fading away from the pit and toward the troop line. Each one was now welcomed by cheers from the combined forces here.

'Where is Stroud now?' Nathan asked, the military brass breathing down his neck.

'He is at the geographic center of the ship, where the influence of this creature emanates from,' said Wisnewski from his sitting position.

'And what about Dr. Leonard? Is he with him?'

Kendra said, 'Yes. Dr. Leonard remained with Dr. Stroud.'

'We got a garbled message saying he was with Stroud,' Wiz instantly added to the lie.

Kendra realized, as did Wiz, that if the officials thought there were two men down there alive, they'd think twice as hard before blowing the place with howitzers.

'We were separated from them,' said Kendra. 'We were all fending off the vilest creatures imaginable.'

'They tore our protective suits away from us, and yet here we are, alive and well,' said Wisnewski. 'Further proof of Stroud's success.'

'I beg you men to give him a little more time, please,' Kendra pleaded.

Nathan was nodding but the military men were frowning, shaking their heads, one saying, 'We will take it under advisement.'

'Well, take this under advisement, too!' Kendra shouted.

'What?'

Wiz put a hand on her, but she pulled away. 'If Abraham Stroud is successful, and every newspaper in this country's going to know that he was, and you fools kill him in a thirteenth-hour bid for glory for yourselves, I'll see your asses fry for it!'

They marched away from her and Wiz, Nathan now frowning at her and chasing after the military men, trying to calmly reason with them for another hour for Abe Stroud.

-21-

Stroud felt no fatigue and no pain whatsoever, so convincing was Esruad's control over him, along with the protection the wizard provided. They'd traversed a strange tunnel created before them by Ubbrroxx, and in all this time it was as if they had gotten nowhere, the light at the end as far away to the eye as it had been from the moment they entered. It was a kind of underground wormhole that was without beginning and without end, and only those who knew how to traverse it could find an outlet. Stroud began to feel as if he were in a bottle, the demon looking on at what he had captured. It was like being in a total whiteout that only made you more fitful as you plunged on and on, except here the reigning color was black.

Then suddenly Esruad shouted for Ubbrroxx to take him. He shouted through Stroud, chanting the words: 'Take me, take me, take me, take me, take me.'

As if waving a wand, the cry through the ages of an Esruad who asked to be sacrificed to the demon changed the territory all around them. The tunnel and its never-ending length, the unreachable goal at the end, all gone, replaced by a smoldering sludge heap over which hung Wisnewski and Kendra Cline, their flesh slowly boiling, bubbles rising over their nude forms, roasting alive, broiling. No wonder the screams of terror and pain.

'This is how you will be repaid, Esruad,' said the demon, whose very body was heating the humans that were strung over it. 'Do you anticipate the moment as much as I?' It laughed its demonic croak.

The slag heap of the creature awakened every nerve in Stroud and he could feel the intense heat of it scalding the outer layer of the protective shield afforded by Esruad.

Stroud began to feel--literally feel--the pain that Kendra was suffering. He felt it in every fiber of his being. The slag heap rose and fell, the swells of its breathing forming an ocean wave of intense, volcanic fire.

'You came a long way to find me,' it said, snickering. 'What for you is thousands of years ... for me is the time it takes to roast this man thing!'

Wisnewski's body lit in flame and went up like a torch when a fluid, fiery finger from Ubbrroxx touched him. Stroud found his eyes dimming. It was torture to look on the ugliness of the monster, for in its center floated the remains of half-digested human parts. The demon was a shark of the underworld, swallowing its prey near whole, able then to reproduce any form it wished, capable of controlling lesser forms from afar.

'My God, I'm going blind again,' Stroud said.

'Don't look on it!' Esruad replied from within.

The demon heard both voices and slowed in its progress toward Kendra.

'Now! Now! As planned!' shouted Esruad.

Stroud raced toward the gelatinous fire before them, watching snakes, huge lizards, spiders and rats raining down on him as he did so, bouncing off him as they hit the shield that was blazing red now from the heat. Stroud's form stopped before the demon, and the shield around him glowed, ablaze with the energy war going on between Esruad and Ubbrroxx, turning to a white-hot glare. Inside, Stroud felt his own flesh burning when the cube protecting him began to spin and spin and spin, so fast now that it resembled an enormous diamond in the darkness, a small crystal closet.

'Swallow me whole, mighty Ubbrroxx! Swallow me up now!' Esruad's voice wafted over the creature.

Now the demon moved toward Stroud, but it was confused at the sight before it. Stroud himself could hardly see through the spinning veil before him when suddenly he felt himself being wrenched apart, turning into two separate, distinct but identical beings. Stroud saw himself separating, dividing like a duplicating cell, and there were two spinning brilliant lights in the darkness, he and Esruad.

Ubbrroxx watched, hesitant, confused.

So far, so good, Stroud thought. 'Come for me now!' he shouted.

At the same instant Esruad shouted from his vantage point the same words. Stroud could not believe the mirror image they had become of one another there in the pit of darkness before the fiery demon, still breathing its hot breath against their shields.

Ubbrroxx swung its entire bulk at them, sweeping them down, a pair of broken bowling pins as the shields came crashing down around them. Stroud felt now at his most vulnerable and he tried desperately to do what was