"What'll we do?" asked the guardsman beside Harry.
"Whatever the brass tells us!"
Then gunfire broke out without anyone's ordering it. Harry decided it was one of the untried guardsmen who'd fired, but it made little difference now as everyone opened up. The gunfire was electrifying to Harry, who'd been itching for something to happen all these hours, but it had the opposite effect on the Rolex guy, who slumped down into the bunker and began to blubber about how he had been home with his wife and kids only sixteen hours before in Albany and why was he here in the middle of New York's problems, anyway?
Harry emptied his clip into the oncoming zombies, ducked away and began pulling the kid together. "You got a weapon, soldier! Goddammit! Use it!"
The swarm of walking dead just kept walking over those falling ahead of them, and they were getting closer and closer, crushing barricades in their way. Some of the dead ones were lifted by others and used as shields now, and the zombies relentlessly moved forward, caving in anything in their way, trying to get at the living--and succeeding in places.
A few flamethrowers were brought in, and when some of the dead--those shot through the gut--suddenly got up and continued advancing toward the men with the guns, the flamethrowers went to work, catching fire the leaders, who rushed through the fire and grabbed hold of some of the soldiers on the other side of the flames as their bodies crackled and were consumed by the fire. Others all around the burning zombies were breathing in the acrid smoke, choking and backing away.
Harry Baker saw them breathing in the sulfur-filled air and he realized now that the zombie action was designed to recruit more to their side from the ranks of the soldiers and police. The choking, black cloud of air was filled with the germ or virus they carried. Harry had read about it. Something put out by the CDC people had warned that the virus could go airborne. Well, here it was, in full fury, and these guardsmen and cops breathing it!
From his vantage point he also saw other zombies ganging up on some poor devil and rushing him overhead from hand to hand, back, back and back toward the pit, presumably to feed whatever was down there.
"I'm getting out of here," Harry told the guardsman he was stationed with after he unloaded his gun once more into the onrush.
"Yeah, we've got to pull back!" agreed the guard.
"To hell with pulling back! I mean, I'm done! I'm out of here, and if you're smart, you'll do the same!"
"You're running out on your duty?"
"Listen, soldier boy, I never signed on for this kinda shit, either!"
Suddenly the barricade of sandbags that they were behind exploded over them with the onrush of what seemed to be seventy, eighty, ninety fiends, all reaching out to them. The guardsman and Harry screamed in unison but it was drowned out by the ummmmmmmmmmmmmm chant of the zombies. Harry saw that the guardsman froze up. He tore the man's automatic rifle from his grasp and fired and fired until he was overwhelmed by the numbers. He felt himself suddenly lifted and knew that he was being handed overhead, that he was being spirited to the pit and that damnable thing inside it. Alongside him, riding on a crest of zombie hands, was the guardsman, who'd lost his glasses and was screaming for help.
Harry slipped out a four-inch blade he kept in his boot, bobbling it and almost losing it as he was jostled forward. He saw the kid's body come near and he screamed, "This is for you, kid!" He tore a hole in the kid's jugular and watched as the blood rained down on his attackers, who seemed as oblivious to this as they were to everything else around them. Harry then placed the knife at his own throat and was about to rip into himself when he realized that he couldn't do it. Try as he may, he couldn't cut himself as he had the guardsman. And in that moment's hesitation he was slammed hard into a buttress of copper pipe as they moved him relentlessly along, knocking him into a semiconscious state. He'd lost the knife.
Harry didn't see the others like him all around, moving over the heads of the enormous crowd. The enormity of it, the numbers being moved into the pit, could only be appreciated from the air where a news camera was filming until the cameraman, suddenly overwhelmed by the horror at the end of his viewfinder, doubled over to vomit.
The only other place the scene could be viewed clearly was in the eye of Abraham Stroud as it reflected back from the center of the crystal skull he held at arm's length in the candlelit room at the back of the museum where he had found solitude and hiding.
"My God ... my God," Stroud said over and over as he watched the fate of men like Harry Baker, for the crystal now showed him clearly what did happen to men who were transported down into the bowels of that ugly, unholy ship.
-13-
Stroud gathered his inner resolve and strength in order to go on. He'd had to put the skull down after seeing the kind of torture the victims of Ubbrroxx had to endure there in the dark pit; unable to see anything but Ubbrroxx's eyes, the helpless victims were reduced to begging and quivering, for in the eyes was the soul of the beast, and the soul of Ubbrroxx was by far the most hideous thing about it. It was not a physical ugliness as much as it was an ethereal ugliness of despair, hopelessness, darkness and a never-ending desperation brought on by a feeling of being trapped wholly, completely, forever and ever, stripped of one's own soul for this thing's pleasure, for this thing slowly devoured your soul when it finished with your body.
Most of the victims were soon past screaming, however, as the apparatus for screaming was one of the first things the creature removed, turning a man dumb. It went for the other senses soon, leaving only the nerves, the eyes and the brain functioning as it stripped away parts of the victim held helpless under its talonlike grasp, much as a predatory bird rips away at its prey, one strip at a time.
After the body succumbed to this slow death, the monster went in for the soul, taking it and nourishing itself on the newfound soul, much as it took possession of its zombie army members, with one small difference--there was no escaping ever from its grasp. At least the infected zombie mob had by chance remained alive, and would be returned their souls in the end--if the promise of history held true.
"How can we combat this dread?" Stroud asked, grasping the skull in his hands once more.
Just as he did so, Kendra Cline pushed open the door and stared at the light emanating from within the crystal skull and realized that the naked man sitting in the lotus position and cradling the skull in his hands was Abraham Stroud.
The crystal went dark and Stroud spun around, a look of sheer anger directed at her. "Get out and close that door, and stay out until I'm ready for you!"
She backed out without a word, fright distorting her features.
Stroud prayed that the spirit in the crystal would come again. It may take more hours now, thanks to Kendra's barging in.
"You are Esruad," said a soothing voice from inside the crystal. "Esruad is you. It knows this, and now you know this."
"Esruad," Stroud said. "Stroud ... Esruad ... Stroud ... Esruad." The words took on the flavor of a lilting chant, and soon the light from inside the crystal returned.
"There is a way," it told him.
"Thank God."
"You must take the battle to it, into the ship," said the voice from the skull.
"Who are you?" Stroud asked. "Why should I trust you? As far as taking the battle to the ship, it's sheer suicide for us all."
"There is a worse fate waiting in store for you if you do not, Stroud. Trust me."
"Why? Why should I trust the spirit of the skull?"
"Spirits ... for there are many of us imprisoned here."