"What the hell happened?" asked a breathless Nathan.
"Stokes was taken over by the damned thing in the pit!"
"How? How can it do that?"
"How can it turn thousands into zombies?"
"Why? Why's it keep coming after you, Stroud?" asked Kendra, still fighting for her own breath.
"Perhaps if I knew the answer to that..."
"As if it has targeted you?" she continued.
"I'm afraid I'm not very safe company to be keeping."
Nathan guffawed at this. "Damned straight there."
"But thank God you know how to fly this thing," Kendra said.
"Yeah, but it didn't know that." Stroud turned the whirly-bird a bit too sharply, causing Kendra to gasp again.
"It's all right. I've got her under control now. Commissioner, you think you can get clearance for us to land at One Police Plaza?"
"Not a problem. Give me that radio."
Still breathing heavily, his .38 in one hand, Nathan took the radio and called for the necessary clearance on the gleaming roof with the bull's-eye targets just ahead of them. It looked like a concrete heaven to them all.
-11-
Stroud, Kendra Cline and James Nathan were all shaken at what they had survived, and the lives of those lost weighed heavily on their minds. Nathan wanted to call in the National Guard and the U.S. Army and perhaps return to the site and destroy the zombies, every man, woman and child among them. It seemed the only way to proceed from his vantage point. Stroud asked for restraint and for time.
"At least enough time to determine the true nature of the enemy, Commissioner."
"There is no time!"
"Look here, you called me into this thing and now you're going to listen to me, dammit!" Stroud shouted, losing his temper. He had dealt with Nathan's type before in Chicago, with the cannibalizing werewolf that was stalking the city streets there less than a year ago. Nathan knew of his success with that unusual case, and he had no doubt heard the rumors and read the wild reports of other bizarre cases which Stroud had solved.
Nathan turned to Stroud, his wide shoulders heaving with a mixture of uncertainty and frustration. He gave a fleeting glance toward Dr. Cline, but she offered him no help. She had remained in a semi-trance on seeing the deaths of her co-workers. She'd had a chill and Stroud had located a blanket for her shoulders and a cup of steaming coffee.
"You tried it Gordon's way!" Stroud said adamantly. "And look what it's gotten us! Now, for the love of God, man, try it my way."
"I've got people I've got to answer to," he said feebly. Then he began to pace before them. "What is it you intend to do? What's Stroud's way?"
"I intend to lead an expedition back down into the ship, to face this thing on its own ground."
"That's madness," he said. "What guarantee do you have you'll come out alive?"
"Very little, perhaps none ... but this thing, whatever it is ... I don't know why, but I sense that it wants me. And thus far it has come after me on its terms. It's time I turned the tables, but first I've got to gain help from Wisnewski and Leonard, to learn more about this evil. Do you understand that?"
"And in the meantime?" asked Nathan, banging his fist on his desk. "What about those zombies out there? What do we do to stop them?"
Stroud had no answer for the commissioner. At a loss for a resolution to the problem, he knew he must gain more knowledge, ferret through the information Wiz and Leonard might provide back at the museum.
Nathan's intercom buzzed with an irritating bee sound, and the voice of rancor from people downstairs at the sergeant's desk spelled trouble. "Commissioner, you've got to get out of the building!" shouted someone at the other end.
"Casey? Casey, what's going on down there?" shouted Nathan.
"We're under attack! The zombies, hundreds of them! Spilling through every doorway, breaking in the win--"
The line went dead to the sound of gunfire. Nathan looked up at Stroud and their eyes met. "They've followed you here! They're after you, Stroud--you! God damn it all, we could just feed you to them and maybe ... maybe this thing would go away!"
"Maybe ... and maybe not, Nathan."
They stood staring hard across at one another, Stroud's steely gaze telling the other man that he wouldn't go as a willing sacrifice to Nathan or the others. "Or maybe I'm the only hope your city has, Nathan. Think about that. Why has it singled me out for sacrifice? Because it knows something you don't--"
"What? What does it know, Stroud?" Nathan's hand inched toward his chest and shoulder holster.
"It knows enough to fear me, that I hold the key to its mystery; that I can dispel that mystery in time--if given the time."
"They're at our doorstep!"
"Then get us out of here!" shouted Kendra, tossing off the shroud around her. "Do as Stroud says! Get him to the museum."
Nathan held his ground and slipped out his Smith & Wesson. Outside they could hear the shouting, screams and gunshots as the zombies continued toward them.
"Get us up to the roof, to the helicopter!" she shouted.
Nathan hesitated further.
"With me dead, New York doesn't stand a chance, not even with the help of the armed forces," Abe assured Nathan, whose gun hand was shaking, sweat beading about his forehead and wide cheeks.
"Come on!" he finally said, tearing open the door. The hallway was scattered with bodies, both policemen and zombies. Nathan fired on a wave of zombies coming along the stairs, shouting, "This way! This way!"
Nathan led them toward the service stairwell, but when they flew through the doorway, it was filled with zombies on the levels above and below. They ascended and descended toward the living as soon as they somehow realized that it was Abraham H. Stroud.
"Elevators, elevators!" shouted Nathan, backing out, racing around a terrace that overlooked the lobby below where the gunshots had died and the place was swarming with more and more of the mindless army of zombies. James Nathan saw that they were quickly being surrounded on all sides by the zombies, and even he realized it was useless to fire his weapon into the crushing wall of them. Kendra and Stroud pounded in frustration for the elevator to come, but it appeared that it would be too late.
The zombies closed in on both sides, leaving only the act of leaping down to the horde below in the lobby as an out, and that was no out.
Then came the ping of one of the elevators and they rushed to enter it, only to find it filled with zombies, backing them away. Another elevator arrived and from it poured more zombies.
"We're dead, Stroud," said Nathan. "We're better off taking the quick way out." He lifted his revolver to his eyes and fanned the drum, prepared to take all their lives.
"Esssssruuu-ad," said the zombies in unison all around them, and several joined hands and suddenly dissolved into a mire of brown muck from which was formed a devilish form that creaked and quaked as if half formed, the ugly eyes spewing forth frothy brown snakes, the mouth like the hole into Hell. "Esssssruuu-ad," it said to them. "You see now I can destroy you at any time--any time!"
"Then get it over with, you bastard mutation!"
Nathan pulled back the hammer on his .38, his hand shaking. He was poised to use the gun first on Kendra, preferring to see her dead to becoming a victim to the filthy mob of zombies that barred their way, along with the gruesome creature that had been formed from a number of their bodies.
"Nooooooooo, Esruad," said the creature, "I want you to come to me, Esruad ... and bring your friends." It ended with a horrible, satanic, croaking laugh.
Meanwhile the zombies had remained frozen in place, as if made of stone, and these statues could hardly be said to be breathing--all but the several who had been formed to simulate the appearance of the demon. These had coalesced into a horrible and hideous, multitentacled monster with enormous holes for eyes from which squirmed snakes that leaped out and reentered its body below, disappearing into the muck of its outer skin, a kind of brown ooze. The surface was slick with slime and Kendra hid her head in Nathan's chest, unable to watch the snakes feed from the thing's eyes. Parts of the zombie men who had gone into forming the creature--their limbs, eyes, ears--could be seen swirling about in the muck that they'd become. It had somehow devoured them whole.