Not you.
All of us.
And that is what will occur now if the evil is not ended by us?
I fear so, yes.
Then we won't let it happen. Armed with what we know now about Ubbrroxx, its character ... and your magic--
It has great powers of its own.
But we have a chance.
Yes.
Because this thing fears you greatly.
It fears us greatly ... us.
Tell me what to do.
The discussion was interrupted by another bout of piercing cries from Kendra.
Stroud stared ahead from where the sounds continued to roll down the corridors of the black ship. "God, I can't stand that."
Put her out of your mind.
I can't do that.
You must.
Just tell me what to do next!
Stroud listened to Esruad's communications as they spun about the coils of his brain, pinging off the metal strip below his scalp. As he did so, he looked again in the direction from which the screams continued. Horrible, nerve-ripping screams, like the cries of a bobcat locked in a bloody trap. It was heart-wrenching to think that Kendra Cline was in so much pain.
Kendra Cline and Dr. Wisnewski continued aboveground through the throng of zombies, and as they neared the final end of the human wall of flesh, they began to see a difference in the zombies at the far exterior of the circle around the pit. Some of the zombies were moving, searching, looking lost and confused, even asking questions of a weak nature. Many were amazed to find themselves here, confused beyond words. Others had begun to race away, seeking cover, and this caused some gunfire which was immediately halted by screaming shouts on the soldiers' side of the barricades ahead of Kendra and Wiz.
"Christ, we could be shot ourselves!" shouted Wiz to her.
Kendra tried desperately to reach Nathan over the radio and thankfully, she found the radio clear of static. She got an operator on the other end and shouted, "Get me the commissioner."
"Who is this?"
"Dr. Cline and Dr. Wisnewski! Hold your fire!"
"No shit!"
"We're back from the pit."
"Holy shit! We thought you were--"
"Get Nathan for me, now!"
"Right, right ... will do! Over."
Only a few minutes passed while Wiz and she were held up at the barricade where others, former zombies, also wanted through, some pawing at one another, still quite out of their heads.
Nathan shook the scene when his powerful voice was amplified through a bullhorn. "Let those people through! All of them! Let them pass!"
Like refugees, the line of migrating, former zombies began moving further away from the center of their 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.