Robert W. Walker (36 page)

Nathan saw the sun coming over the horizon in the far distance. He instantly got on the horn, shouting for calm, declaring that Stroud had managed a minor miracle and that the outer edges of the zombie line had come out of the spell they were under, due directly to Stroud's efforts in the pit. "Let those people through. Have ambulances and
evac
vehicles ready to take them out of here!"

The process began, the lines opening, people spilling through, being helped along by armed soldiers and policemen. Medical wagons were instantly filled. A coffee line was begun and the Army began handing out blankets.

Still, a wall of zombies remained, but even so the individual members of the wall began to crumble, fading away from the pit and toward the troop line. Each one was now welcomed by cheers from the combined forces here.

"Where is Stroud now?" Nathan
asked,
the military brass breathing down his neck.

"He is at the geographic center of the ship, where the influence of this creature emanates from," said
Wisnewski
from his sitting position.

"And what about Dr. Leonard?
Is he with him?"

Kendra said, "Yes. Dr. Leonard remained with Dr. Stroud."

"We got a garbled message saying he was with Stroud," Wiz instantly added to the lie.

Kendra realized, as did Wiz, that if the officials thought there were two men down there alive, they'd think twice as hard before blowing the place with howitzers.

"We were separated from them," said Kendra. "We were all fending off the vilest creatures imaginable."

"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.

"I, too, must go now," said
Esruad
, holding on to the skull.

Stroud stared through
Esruad's
eyes at the spongy, moldering residue of mossy material left behind where
Ubbrroxx
had been. There were no smoldering skeletons hanging from the wall, no sign of Kendra or
Wisnewski
ever having been here; not
so
much as a shackle. There was only the wavy, fading apparition of
Esruad
, the skull he held in his hands and the fire inside the skull--electrical impulses, miniature shooting stars.

"Any further battles with the demon god," said
Esruad
in a reassuring
voice,
"will be fought inside the skull."

"Wait!" said the blind Stroud, stumbling toward
Esruad
but in the wrong direction as
Esruad's
spirit flew into the skull and the skull fell to the planks of the ship and rolled to Stroud's feet.

Esruad
, too, was gone ... possibly forever.

Stroud gathered up the skull which had saved them all--all but Leonard,
Wisnewski
and dear Kendra, he feared. He had been willing to sacrifice himself for them all, but that apparently was never the demon's wish.
Ubbrroxx
had wanted them all, and especially
Esruad
. The demon had wanted to swallow the skull and make its energy source part of its own.

Watch what you wish for, Stroud silently told
Ubbrroxx
, wherever the damnable bastard now was. "And watch yourself,
Esruad
..."