Robert Walker - Zombie Eyes

There Stroud hunched over the material, with the skull beside him as if reading along with him, the eyes sparkling below the light. Wiz thought he saw movement inside the crystal, forms and shapes, but perhaps it was the light as it played over the thing.

"In an hour," Stroud informed Wiz, "we're all to meet and form a strategy against this thing. Tell the others. There's no more time to lose."

"Yes, of course, Dr. Stroud," said Wiz, closing the door on Stroud.

In Wisnewski's darkly furnished, book-lined office, Abe Stroud gathered the others around him and told them what he had learned from the crystal skull.

"The Etruscans could not destroy or even contain the evil. Their backs to the wall, as ours are now, they fed it instead, giving in to its demands, much as we are now."

"But we haven't given in to its demands!" shouted Wiz.

"No, you haven't, Dr. Wisnewski, nor did Dr. Leonard, but every man out there at the pit tonight has."

"But they're helpless to do otherwise," said Kendra. "They've been--their bodies have been invaded, taken control of by this thing."

"Every single one of them has the choice," he corrected her. "They may be unaware of the choice, or afraid to face it, but each one of those zombies out there can either die or serve this devil. That is the choice given them. But in serving, they must feed the unholy beast."

"You learned this from staring into that skull?" asked Leonard.

"The zombies will sacrifice the rest of us, just as you said, Dr. Leonard. The zombies are not the sacrificial lambs, we are --those left uninfluenced by the monster. It 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 that ," said Stroud. "It will see us as self-sacrificing, as it had Esruad."

"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."