Robert Walker - Zombie Eyes

"All right, agreed." Stroud had finally gotten him off the phone when Leonard shouted for the other two men to gather round him.

"I've got it ... I've got it."

"We may have to give it what it wants," began Leonard, "but it isn't going to entirely trust us to do so."

Stroud and Wisnewski stared across at one another, each man shaking his head in confusion. "Do you want to explain that, Samuel?" asked Wiz.

"You were wrong about the 500,000 it wants, Wiz."

"I know the Etruscan numerals, Sam, and--"

"Yes, it wants that number, but that number is not the same as the ones it has inflicted with this disease of ... of control."

"What does it want?" asked Stroud. "What do you mean, Dr. Leonard?"

Leonard got up, his back aching from the hours looking over the documents. He paced a moment before saying, "The zombies are an army."

"An army?"

"To do its bidding. They will become it; it will become they. They are an extension of it. They will move in this world for it, because it cannot leave the confines of the earth in any other form. The Etruscan writer says that it is trapped by the wind if it comes out of the earth on a warm day or--"

"Or if it is raining," finished Stroud.

"Yes, how did you know?"

He told them about the experiments that Kendra had conducted on the substance that had oozed from Leonard and Weitzel.

"To think this vile thing once inhabited my body," said Leonard, quaking.

"Go on, Sam," said Wiz. "What else? How will it gain its sacrifices if not by taking the zombies?"

"The zombies will herd the rest of us to it, surround and force people into the pit, into the ship ... preferably alive."

Stroud thought of the attacks on him by the various zombies that he had come into contact with. He recalled the crazed man with the claw hammer.

Leonard continued, stopping at one point to place a finger on one word of the parchment that looked to Stroud like the tail feather of a bird. "This creature has the power to blow storms into the minds of men, and to become a parasite in the brain."

Stroud wondered for a moment if Dr. Leonard had gone mad. He didn't know how much of Leonard's spiel he could believe. "Whoa, wait a minute, Dr. Leonard. Are you trying to say that the Etruscans understood the physiological mechanisms that this demon used against them, and is now using against us? That they had the capability to assess--"

"Apparently the author of this did," said Leonard, poking his finger in the direction of the document under the magnifying glass. Stroud stared at it for some time and then a word on the page leaped out at him:

Mysterious Photograph

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The word seemed to have some meaning for Stroud, but he wasn't sure why. It was the last word on the document. He asked Leonard to translate it.

"That is the name of the author, a soothsayer or some such."

"I see."

"Not very often do we get such a document signed," said Wiz.

"What is the name?"

"Well, it lines up like this," said Leonard, showing him the written translation, which read:

ESROUD

Stroud stared dumbstruck at the name: Esruad. "Are you sure? There's no mistake?"

"It would seem the name has significance," said Leonard.

"You might say so. Weitzel spoke the name just before he died. He called me Esruad. You also, Dr. Wisnewski, when I first came to you in the psychiatric ward. Do you recall?"

Wisnewski shook his head vigorously. "Not at all."

"There seems to be something important in the name. Does it say what this man Esruad did during the plague time?"

"He speaks of despair, that no one would listen to him. He had been something of an alchemist, it appears," said Leonard.

"What about the monster itself?" asked Wiz impatiently.

"A dreadful thing to behold, it says. Esruad calls it the Ubbrroxx; describes it as life-eating, life-draining, diabolical ... unleashed ... uninhibited ... disease-carrying."

"Sounds like our creature," said Wisnewski.

"Remarkably so," agreed Stroud.

"And this fellow Esruad ... He sounds familiar to me, too," began Leonard. "I must go over some old notes of my own. If memory serves, he was a kind of prophet, soothsayer. Very little is known about him, but recent archeological breakthroughs in Tuscany have provided a few rays of light."

Wiz added, "No Etruscan literature other than funeral inscriptions survives, which makes this little piece of paper priceless."

Pulling at his tie Leonard continued, "Until recently it was near impossible to understand all but a few words, but the alphabet is a mix of Roman, Phoenician and an unknown tongue--very likely the Etruscans' ancestors. They traded with the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and most of what we know about them is told us by these other peoples."

"Right at the moment, I think it more prudent to understand the creature," said Wiz. "We can play history games later. What does it say about destroying the thing?"

"Esruad was unsuccessful."

"Obviously."

"It took 500,000 lives in the year 793 b.c. There was no stopping it."

"Just as I said, 500,000 lives," replied Wiz.

"But not the lives of the zombies. They lived on after with the guilt of thousands of others on their hands. They--the diseased ones--herded the healthy ones into the pit. When the creature was sated Esruad convinced his people that it must be removed. Using mostly slave labor, this was accomplished. It had gone into a dormant phase, during which time Esruad removed it and placed it on a ship. It was buried in the ship, packed in its own earth ball, and literally sent off into what was then space. It was buried months later, far beyond the seas, still inside the belly of the ship, along with the bones of those sacrificed to it."

"The land beyond the sea ... here and now." Stroud began to pace the room wondering if this was some kind of eschatological rite of passage for the creature, the "last thing" to come. Every religion had a last coming, a last end to history, a final conclusion to the grand pageant of mankind on earth. He began to wonder if the lives of 500,000 were not a small price to pay. Wisnewski and Leonard were quiet, perhaps with the same thoughts, Stroud guessed.

"I wonder if 500,000 lives will be enough for it this time," Wisnewski said, as if reading Stroud's mind.

The three archeologists looked again at the strange Etruscan lettering as if an answer lay somewhere in the writings of an ancient. "We sure as hell can't do what Esruad did," said Leonard. "What? Give up hundreds of thousands of lives to it, pray it goes dormant again? Attempt a removal? Send it off into ... into outer space or to the bottommost realms of the deep?"

"No, it must be housed in earth," said Stroud.

"What?"

"We don't know what kind of evil would be unleashed on the planet if it were to come into contact with salt water or even the vacuum of space. If Dr. Cline's experiments told me anything, it is that we must keep it away from water. Water only makes it airborne."

"What do you suggest, then?" pleaded Leonard.

"Esruad constructed a stone enclosure around the ship," said Stroud, "in what was an uninhabited land."

"Environmentally sound thinking," said Wiz.

"The best he could do in his day," continued Stroud. "We've got an obligation to do better, we with all our modern technology."