Ghostlands mt-3
Page 7
And he did nothing.
“I don’t have the answer,” Cal said.
“Yeah, we know that, Chief,” Olifiers agreed. “But nobody else even seems to know the question.”
That night, for the first time since before the beginning, Cal had the dream again.
He dreamed chaos.
Darkness, blacker than anything he’d ever conceived of, center-of-the-earth black, no-universe-yet-made black, dead-a-thousand-years black. Voices shouting, so clear that he could distinguish not only male and female, but each separate human soul screaming. He could tell rage from pain from terror. In the darkness of the dream he could hear his own blood hammering in his ears.
The sound of blows, metal on metal-metal tearing flesh. The stink of blood and of earth soaked with blood, of smoke and of charring.
He stood at the black heart of the tumult as they cried their anguish, their despair, demanded, pleaded-
That he act.
A shard of light split the blackness like a razor stroke. It glanced across an immense, irregular mound that might have been the bodies of men or merely the things they had used.
An object gleamed atop it, brilliant in the light, and Cal saw that it was a sword. Not opulent and bejeweled but plain, the leather of the hilt palm-worn. This weapon had seen use.
He reached out, seized it in his hand. The grooves and creases worn into the hilt by sweaty usage fit his palm. It was his palm that had made them.
As he drew it out, the light danced liquid on the blade, flashed a Rorschach of half-glimpsed living things in its silver-gold. Around him, the cries rose and blended to a single keening of raw need and pain. Holding the sword high, he knew what he must do.
But still he hesitated.
And here the dream added a new detail, one that tore freezing dead fingers into his heart.
In the light from the sword, Cal could make out one of the figures beside him in the darkness, a frail, delicate form with hair fine as spiderweb and eyes a scorching blue….
It was his sister, it was Tina.
And others dim beyond her, among the multitude of souls, barely discernible, crying out to him, begging…
Colleen. Doc. Goldie.
Words surged from within him, a reply ripped from his throat, his soul, screaming above their screams.
“IT WILL KILL HER!”
He did nothing, knowing they would die.
All of them were torn shrieking away by the Blackness, the Dark, the Storm….
Their cries were drowned in thunder that rent the universe apart.
Cal awoke to the sound of his own sobbing.
Far miles away, in the sea of mists, leaning his great pebbled arms against the railing of what some might have been deceived into calling a bridge, the distant, familiar one thought of the dream he’d had again.
Dead-a-thousand-years black…
He never saw himself in the dream, never could discern what role he might play. But he saw others there, ones he knew, enemies, those who wished him harm, never friends.
But then, he had no friends.
No, strike that. He had one.
A fragile thing to pin your hopes on, a dream of chaos and an old man blind as a stone.
Even so, he admitted, it beat getting a real job….
His dragon’s laughter, resonant and grating as a body being dragged over gravel, boomed out across the fraudulent sea and counterfeit sky…and was even heard by the Thing that ruled dragon, and sea, and sky.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Finishing his shift on sentry duty, Doc Lysenko found Cal Griffin sitting at the far edge of roof, peering out at the clouds, and the night, and the drifting snow.
“You’ve said that before,” Cal said, not looking at him.
“I’m a man of simple habits, Calvin. I find what works and I repeat it.”
“Not a bad trait for a doctor.”
“No…” Doc concurred. He crouched against the raised lip at the edge and faced Cal. “‘I could be bounded up in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams….’”
“Hamlet, act two, scene two,” Cal said.
“I’m impressed.”
“Blame my mother…and public TV. What’s your point?”
“You’re a worrier.”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Oh, indeed, I would never presume to separate you from your angst. I’m merely offering a sympathetic ear.”
Cal said nothing.
“You have a golden opportunity for complaining here,” Doc added. “Don’t waste it.”
Cal smiled at that, a weary smile, the weight of the world in it. “Oh, Doc, I am so not the man I need to be.”
“How many called to leadership feel they are? At least, the deserving ones? The megalomaniacs rarely have such doubts.”
Doc looked into the darkness to the uncertain future, then from memory quoted, “‘If only the men truly up to this challenge, the moral giants, were here to assume this mantle. But failing their appearance on the scene, we ourselves must take it up, though we are woefully inadequate to the task.’ You know who said words to that effect?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“It was John Adams, just before your country’s Revolution. So I’m afraid, Calvin, that your qualms are anything but unique.”
“Doc-”
“Don’t ‘Doc’ me. You inspire others to transcend themselves. That is a rare power, Calvin, greater than parlor tricks such as passing through walls or making balls of light. The block-and-tackle doesn’t question its purpose, nor the spatula nor the paper clip. But because we are conscious, we do, endlessly.
“Calvin, if Colleen is our rock and Goldie our erratic sage, then you are our beacon. Shine, Calvin. Just shine.”
“They’re looking to me to be something I’m not,” Cal said. “To be this…legend. I mean, Jesus, they broke out of slavery, came on the run in search of this larger-than-life tin god.”
“And that is such a bad thing?”
“If the Change brought about anything good, it’s that it made me be who I am instead of pretending to be something I’m not.”
“Calvin, six words. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
“For someone from Kiev, you’ve seen a lot of American movies.”
“Five years of selling hot dogs and not going to singles bars.”
“Okay, okay, I get your point. Print the Legend. If the Legend is what these people need-and what I suppose we need, too-then maybe I shouldn’t avoid it but rather embrace it.”
“I must say, Calvin, you’re getting so adept at articulating what I am about to say, you really don’t need me anymore. Pray continue.”
“These people are looking for a cure, and I don’t have one. But you’d say it’s like medicine. Sometimes hope is all you can offer, and though it may seem a false hope, it can help people marshal their forces, actually get better.”
“Yes,” Doc replied. “Miracles do happen, if one comes to it with a good heart and the possibility of good actually happening.”
Cal mulled it over, then said, “It’s medicine, even if it’s an empty black bag on one hand…the Storm on the other. Which is the better choice to offer?”
“And what is your answer?”
“My answer is, I’ll think on it. I’m not saying yes.”
“Any other reply, and I would conclude you were a spatula. But before this is over, Calvin, I suspect you will have to be our Gandhi and our Eleanor Roosevelt and our General Patton all in one. So I would advise you to get used to it.”
All Cal said to that was, “Mm.”
“And one thing more I might add for you to consider.”
“Another thing?”
“We are embarked on a journey into the unknown-which, I might observe, is indeed true of life in its entirety-but even more so now. You cannot know what you will need at your ultimate moment of truth…nor whom. So given that
, it is a good idea to bring as wide a variety of dramatis personae as possible.”
Cal grinned. “Back to the theater metaphor.”
“We are but players….” Doc rose with a groan. “Now, I’m afraid this old man is weary. If you will excuse me…”
“She deserves you,” Cal murmured. “Colleen.”
Doc nodded, accepting Cal’s acceptance. He continued on, limping slightly as he went.
“Doc?” Cal asked. Doc turned back. “What role do you play in our little band?”
“Me?” He considered it. “I am the mirror for the rest of you.” He smiled. “Good night, Calvin.”
Colleen and Doc bedded down in what had once been a Waldenbooks, amid the cracked vacant shelves, the discarded magazines displaying brides and movie stars and politicians. Sleep wouldn’t come to Colleen, which was nothing new, merely the ongoing challenge of relaxing and letting go of vigilance. Nevertheless, she forced stillness on herself and cradled Viktor in her arms as he drifted into sleep.
She maintained the contact even when, in troubled dreams, he called out to Yelena and Nurya, his lost wife and daughter, as he often did.
Colleen envied them their eternal claim on him. He had jettisoned so much of his past, had brought along no images of them (“No photograph could adequately capture what I hold in my mind,” he told her on one of the rare occasions she could coax him to speak of them). She wished she could see them just once, see what he had cherished and lost. That wound so defined him, had so charted his actions from Ukraine to Manhattan to this harsh pioneer land.
It was half-past two in the morning when Cal appeared in the shop’s doorway-its metal gate forever frozen halfway up-to alert them to the fact that they had visitors.
Emerging onto the roof with Cal and Doc, Colleen found the snowstorm had intensified, the flat surface growing icy, the breaths of the lookouts misting out into the moonlit sky like the trails of lost souls. She was surprised to see that Olifiers was there, too, and that he had brought the rest of his people with him.
Cal motioned her and Doc to the forward edge, where Goldie already stood gazing out. Even with the naked eye, Colleen could make out the horsemen several miles off, bearing torches, moving deliberately in their direction.
The paddyrollers.
How the hell did they get a line on us? Colleen wondered. She knew she had obliterated any evidence even an astute tracker would have caught, especially at night.
“Do we pull up stakes?” she asked Cal.
“No. They could run us to ground, and out in the open we’d have a harder time making a stand.”
“So what’s the play?”
“We’ve got a few minutes. We use the time we have.” He moved off to confer with Olifiers and the others.
Goldie was humming a tune Colleen at first couldn’t place, then recognized as “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.”
“Will you quit with that?” she snapped. “Or at least hum something good.”
Obligingly, he switched to “Every Breath You Take,” by the Police.
Colleen didn’t get the joke, until she looked through the field glasses Doc handed off to her.
In the garish light of their torches, she could see fifteen hard men riding quickly on big, powerful horses. The riders were weighted down with evil-looking knives, short swords and what looked like spearguns.
They wore body armor and police helmets.
But more striking than that-and what chilled Colleen beyond anything the white crystals flurrying around her could-were the three stunted figures scrabbling ahead of the horses, tethered to them by thick lengths of rope.
She understood now how the trackers had found them.
The posse had grunters on leashes, and were using them as bloodhounds.
SIX
THE PADDYROLLERS
They stood waiting in the fresh snow outside the glass doors-one shattered, one whole-as the horses thundered to a halt in front of the mall.
Colleen had her crossbow trained on the lead horseman as he steadied his mount, holding his torch overhead in a big gloved hand. The other men were fanned out behind him on their horses, palms on their weapons. On two of the steeds were big coiled lengths of chain-shackles awaiting use.
The horses blew out steam from their nostrils, their mouths frothing from the hard ride. The trio of gray, stooped grunters were gasping, too, the vapor in the cold air wreathing them in what looked like veils. Their huge, pallid eyes stared unblinking at Colleen and Doc, Goldie and Cal.
Cal stepped forward, but said nothing. He held his sword casually, in readiness.
“I am Hector Perez,” the head man said, speaking each word as if it were a command. “Lieutenant in charge of this duly deputized posse. We are currently pursuing a group of escapees from Stateville Correctional Facility in Joliet, Illinois.”
“Joliet, huh? Not Unionville?” Colleen asked, with an edge.
Perez didn’t move his head, but his narrowed eyes slid over to appraise her. “Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t catch your name.”
“I didn’t give it.”
Cal stepped between Perez and Colleen. “You were telling us your business,” he prompted.
“We have reason to believe our fugitives are inside that building.” Perez paused, then added meaningfully, “Our quarrel is not with you, unless you choose to make it one.”
Cal said, “Give us a minute.”
Perez nodded assent. Cal drew Colleen and the others close, none of them lowering their weapons or taking their eyes off their adversaries. They spoke in low tones.
“What do you think?” Cal asked
“I think they’re full of it,” said Goldie. “Olifiers and the others don’t have a prison vibe-or enough homemade tattoos by half. Plus I can smell eau de police a mile away, and these guys ain’t it. I’m telling you, they may have been regular force once upon a time, but they’re independent contractors now.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, but what if they’re not?” Colleen whispered hoarsely. “Do we really want to come down on the wrong side of this?”
Cal mulled it over, took a step back toward the grim rider. “Mr. Perez, much as we’d like to be agreeable, we aren’t convinced of your jurisdiction here.”
Perez grimaced, looking as if he’d just gotten a piece of nut jammed in a tooth. He shifted on his saddle and spoke solely to Cal. “Let me tell you my working philosophy. I treat everyone with respect. You can’t rob a man of his respect and expect him to act rationally. But there’s a hierarchy of command, and I am committed to that prevailing.”
“Is that why you have been whipping these people?” Doc asked acidly.
“We have levels of escalation when we meet with failure to obey, and pain compliance is one of our tools, yes.”
Recognizing he was gaining no traction, Perez sighed and again addressed them all. “I have seen enough suffering to last me a lifetime. I have seen mothers cook up their own babies in convection ovens. I have seen grown men violate boys not out of nursery school. I’m pleased to tell you those individuals did not survive to face a jury of their peers. Do we comprehend each other?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Then stand aside.”
Which was when the screams started.
In later times, Goldie associated the moment he first really came into his true dark power with that night, and the smell. That terrible, irrevocable instant when the clean, crisp scent of snow was invaded by the iron tang of blood, the air hot and fresh and thick with it, and the knowledge that someone was dying or dead.
But in that moment when the screaming began, all that was immediately clear was that Perez and his men were not alone.
Miles back, Perez had divided his force-which turned out to be not fifteen men, but forty-into three contingents. The middle group, the ones with torches, the decoys, rode straight on. The others came in fast and low on foot, silently and shrouded in darkness, flanking the building.
Fortunate
ly, as Goldie might well have observed, Cal Griffin was a lawyer, and thus well used to misdirection, treachery and betrayal.
So when these intruders came on hard and fast and furious, they discovered Cal had secreted fully half of Olifiers’s thirty-three men and women in the cars and trucks and Winnebagos that had up and died in and around the parking lot that fateful day when the Storm moved in.
These ravaged men and women surged out of hiding, screaming their lungs out, armed to the teeth with the pipes and branches and stones they’d brought to the party, not to mention the knives and swords and crossbows Cal and company had picked up along the way and augmented them with.
Like a director setting up a crowd scene, Cal questioned each and every one of them beforehand, discerning their skills and temperament, giving each his or her task.
He’d requested they not harm the paddyrollers any more than they needed to.
But hell-not to put too fine a point on it-it was payback time.
The screams didn’t surprise Perez. However, the sudden loud release of a very large spring from the roof of the mall building did.
Perez looked up at the sound from above, but wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way.
The weighted net-Goldie’s “security device,” hauled all the way from New York City-was catapulted off the roof of the mall building and landed squarely atop him and his horse, snaring them both. Perez let out a curse, the horse flailed wildly and shrieked, but the strong fibers held them fast.
Perez was an old hand, however, and managed to hold on to his torch in spite of everything. The cords began to sizzle and smoke where he worked to burn through them.
The three grunters tethered to Perez’s horse were clear of the net, but still bound to the steed. They pulled frantically, blindly, as if to get away but curiously did nothing to bite or tear away the ropes.
Cal cut their bonds, and they scampered away.
The other horsemen charged, and Cal, Colleen, Doc and Goldie had their hands full. But this was not the ragtag quartet that had driven a rioting mob back when Ely Stern had led it rampaging down Eighty-first. The four of them had been practicing their fighting skills every day since, and now they moved with a flow and effortless teamwork that rivaled the best basketball squad. Parry, thrust, slash, fire, fall back, regroup, attack again. And all the while Goldie dazzling the enemy with his harmless fireworks-not that they knew that-driving the attackers back.