Robert Walker - Zombie Eyes

"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 required, as Ubbrroxx, taunting now, raised a spurting jet of itself directed at Kendra and set her aflame !

On cue, Stroud screamed and raced madly at Ubbrroxx, cursing it for having burned the screaming woman alive, just as Esruad had promised he would. The other Stroud drew forth an enormous sword, a knight prepared to slay the dragon, but the sword took shape away from Esruad and grew larger and larger, forming an enormous steel mirror, and for the first time ever Ubbrroxx gazed on itself, sending a river of fire at the steel mirror created by the ancient magician.

Stroud saw the river of fire coalesce into a river of light, and it shone back at Ubbrroxx, blinding him, reflecting back a burning light that began eating away at it, parts of its fiery exterior falling away, raining down over Stroud like screaming bombs.

Stroud reached for the crystal skull and held it firmly up to the creature and he felt the jolt of light reflected off the crystal now, and in the struggle the three points of light and energy formed a kind of supernatural transponder network. It was Esruad's plan to reverse the field of energy from which the demon drew its evil magic, to transpose and interchange his own power for the demon's, and to ultimately neutralize it. His calculations and his faith in the triangulation of their three energy fields were an incredible risk, but it was the only risk worth taking anymore. It must work.

Stroud was now completely blind. The light, heat and energy charging down at him from the mountain of fire that was Ubbrroxx, pounding into the crystal skull, by all reckoning ought to have exploded the crystal. Stroud found himself beaten back by the sheer force directed at him as it beamed off the steel mirror to Ubbrroxx's essence and back to him. The energy surge had sent him to his knees, and he was being doubled over, his hands burning as if frozen in ice where he held firm to the skull. The skull turned into the hideous head of an ogre, but he held firm.

He heard no more laughter, no more screams, all the sounds that gave the demon comfort. He heard no more rending of flesh, no more flesh popping with heat, for all the power was now directed as with a laser at and into the eyes of the silvery, crystal skull. It was being drained away and stored like a battery in the skull and Ubbrroxx sensed this and for the first time began a whining, sniveling screechy noise like a keening bird that was going hungry.

Stroud felt now the heat polyps on his own face and hands bubbling, and for the first time he realized how badly he had been charred, but he was relieved to once again be feeling something, anything. For a time he had gone completely numb, blocking out everything, and his sight remained lost. He could only see now through the ethereal "eyes" of Esruad, who had regained the form of a lich once more and had come to Stroud, taking the skull that was burned into his flesh out of his hands and placing it into his own.