Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  “I’m limping along your backtrail, but, sure, I get the sense of it. Put a bead of ghost rock in a copper ball and you get a big bang.”

  “Because chalcanthite is pentahydrate—meaning it contains elements of water—the resulting discharge creates a vapor of a distinct azure hue.”

  “It’s blue. Got it. Stop showing off,” said Grey, “and get to the part where it raises the dead.”

  “Ah,” said Looks Away, “that’s the part that neither Doctor Saint nor Mr. Nobel quite understand.”

  “Are you messing with me, son?”

  “Not at all, my good fellow. I am in earnest. And that is where this whole thing began. As with many of the great discoveries in the field of explosive compounds, this revelation began with a bang. A rather large bang, to be precise. It blew out an entire wing of the factory in Sweden and killed sixteen men.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The rescue crews were picking through the rubble—and both Saint and Nobel were right there with them,” said Looks Away, “as was I … when one of the dead men sat up.”

  “Shit.”

  “Everyone was delighted at first because they had counted the man as dead and here he was, clearly still alive.”

  “Except he wasn’t.”

  “Just so. As Mr. Nobel’s assistant rushed to help him, the injured man grabbed him and … well…”

  “Well what?”

  “He bit the man’s throat out. And, um, swallowed it.”

  Grey was bent over with his arm extended to pour coffee into Looks Away’s cup and instead poured it on the Sioux’s foot. The Indian screamed and jumped back, and Grey jerked the pot away.

  He did not apologize. Instead he stood there, slack-jawed and horrified.

  “You said there were sixteen men killed?”

  “Yes,” said Looks Away, wincing and slapping at his soaked moccasin.

  “Did all sixteen—?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mother of God.”

  “I seriously doubt either God or His mother was there that day,” said Looks Away dryly. He pulled off his moccasin and set it on a rock near the fire to dry.

  “What happened?”

  “There was a bloody great fight, what do you think happened? Sixteen corpses got up and tried to eat everyone in sight. They killed eleven rescue workers and three of Nobel’s laboratory staff before they were brought down by a Gatling gun. It took many, many rounds to do the job, too.”

  Grey just shook his head. “Those fellows who were killed—the second bunch I mean—did they—?”

  “What? Oh, no. They stayed dead. Apparently it’s only someone who is killed by this new compound that reanimates.”

  “Reanimate,” said Grey, tasting the unfamiliar word.

  They sat there and looked at the line of corpses.

  “What was up on those rocks?” asked Grey. “What blew up?”

  “A cache of weapons made to fire the Lazarus rounds.”

  “The what?”

  “The chalcanthite bullets. After the, um, incident at the factory, Mr. Nobel gave the compound a name. Lazarus. Named for the—.”

  “—fellow in the Bible Jesus raised up from the dead. I went to Sunday school. Why the hell would Doctor Saint invent a gun that raises the dead?”

  “Oh, dear me, no … the gun doesn’t do that. It’s powered by the gas and, well, somehow that name got attached to the weapon. It’s one of several radical designs the good doctor devised. There are others, too. Better weapons. The Celestial Choirbox, the Kingdom rifle—.”

  “Now you’re just making shit up.”

  “I wish I was. Although I could hardly be described as a pacifist, I prefer to avoid violence whenever possible. I came out here to find these weapons because I have some friends who could use some help. But … the cache was clearly booby-trapped and when I opened the vault built into the rocks, it exploded, as you saw. I was behind the lead-lined hatch when the bomb went off and was thrown into a Joshua tree, so I survived. The others did not. And, well, there you have it, old chap. That’s my story.”

  “No,” said Grey, “that’s only part of a story. How’d you get from Sweden to Nevada? Who booby-trapped the cache? Hell, who put it there in first place? And why was that posse after you?”

  “Ah, yes, that’s a much longer tale,” said Looks Away, “and to tell it I really would like two things.”

  “What?”

  “Some of that coffee. In a cup this time.”

  Grey poured it. “And—?”

  “I would feel far more comfortable sitting in the dark telling tales if I had my gun back, there’s a good fellow.”

  Grey considered the request as he poured his own cup. Then shrugged. “Sure.”

  Looks Away fetched his Smith & Wesson pistol and knife. He removed a cleaning kit from his saddlebag and commenced cleaning and oiling the .44 American. Grey thought that was a smart idea and did the same with his Colt.

  The rest of Looks Away’s story was long and he rambled through it much the same as he had with the first part. After the disaster at the factory in Sweden, Doctor Saint and Mr. Nobel made a private agreement to do some quiet but intense research into the qualities of this new ghost rock compound. Doctor Saint returned to the United States and asked Looks Away to accompany him as his laboratory assistant, guide, and bodyguard. They traveled west as far as the rails would take them and then Saint hired a wagon and horses for the rest of the trip to the broken lands of what had once been California. There, at the edge of the new badlands known as the Maze, they set up shop in a tiny town called Paradise Falls. It was a wretched place of poverty, crime, drunkenness, and near starvation. Water was desperately short and Saint made himself a local hero by paying to have several wagons laden with water barrels brought in. And he used his knowledge of geology to locate several promising underground water sources. Those underground wells, unfortunately, ran through lands owned by a rich and reclusive man named Aleksander Deray, about which nearly nothing was known.

  Saint worked for many months to mine ghost rock and develop the new Lazarus weapons. The work was slow, painstaking, and more often than not met with frustration and failure. However he did manage to make a few weapons and seven months ago held a public demonstration of his Lazarus rifles. Dignitaries and military officers came all the way from the Confederate States of America to witness the demonstration. Saint had very little of the proper compound to spare, but the brief demonstration he put on was quite impressive. He was asked to accompany the Southern bigwigs down south to meet with the War Department and President Eric Michele himself. The invitation was very flowery, and there were many gifts and medals bestowed upon Saint. There was no actual apology from any of the CSA or even an acknowledgement of the years Saint had lived as a slave when he was a child. No mention of the generations of Saint families who had lived, toiled, suffered, and died on the plantations. The current administration of the CSA was all about the future, and making friends with learned men like Doctor Saint was part of their attempt to move a solid step out of the dark ages of slavery and into the enlightened era of the coming twentieth century. After all, as one of the dignitaries kept saying, our great-grandkids will be alive to see the New Millennia, and by then no one will ever remember anything as old-fashioned as racism and oppression.

  “And Saint believed all that?”

  Looks Away shrugged at Grey’s question. “Hard to say with him. I rather think he’s playing along until he finds out what they really want. He is not a deeply trusting soul, bless his heart. And although he is no one’s idea of an ‘agreeable’ or even affable soul, he is forward thinking. If letting go of the past moves science forward, then he will move with the tide.”

  “So he went?” asked Grey.

  “Indeed he did, and according to his last few telegrams, his demonstrations were quite a success. That’s when things started to go wrong, however. Instead of coming directly back here, Dr. Saint made several stops to gather special materials fo
r his work. His last stop was supposed to be Salt Lake City, to collect canisters of smoke from the ghost rock factories. However that’s where I lost track of him. I don’t even know for sure that he reached Salt Lake. There’s been no word.”

  “You think he was ambushed?”

  “If he had any trace of ordinary manners or habits I could venture a guess, but he’s an odd duck. He’s gone off on his own several times before, often with no advance warning and little explanation once he returns.”

  “Which means you don’t know whether to sit and wait or plant flowers on an empty grave.”

  “Just so. I wish I’d accompanied him, if only to keep track of him. He could drive an angel to hard liquor. On the other hand, I haven’t been bored. He left me behind to continue the work in Paradise Falls and to try and locate new sources of ghost rock ore that was rich in chalcanthite.

  “Some weeks ago,” Looks Away explained, “while he was out digging in the hills, the laboratory was raided. Most of the equipment was undisturbed, hidden behind very strong locks. But the thieves made off with many of Saint’s blueprints and nearly all of his canisters of compressed ghost rock gas. They also took a journal in which were recorded the locations of several of Dr. Saint’s remote testing sites. My employer had small caches of supplies scattered throughout this end of the country and did much of his research in spots where he mined for ghost rock, or where he felt he could field-test his devices without attracting attention. Some of them have pretty dramatic effects. I began systematically going from one to the other and found two sites undisturbed, two empty, and two others booby-trapped.”

  “Someone’s trying to kill you?” asked Grey.

  “Me or Saint. Hard to say. It’s even possible all of this was an elaborate plan to get me out of Paradise Falls.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s a different discussion. What concerns me is their methods. When they broke into Dr. Saint’s laboratory, they killed the two men we’d engaged as guards. Slit their throats.”

  “Those men were friends of mine,” continued Looks Away gravely. “All I could do was try to catch whomever was responsible, and they led me on a merry chase I can assure you. It would make a ripping yarn filled with traps, double-crosses, and all manner of devious villainy.”

  “So the explosion wasn’t a trap set by Saint?” said Grey, jerking a thumb toward the shattered rocks.

  “I … don’t know for sure. My guess is that it was another trap set for me by my enemy, but it could just as easily have been something set by Doctor Saint. He’s generally a humanitarian—after a fashion—but he does not like having his research tampered with. So, yes, it could have been his booby-trap.”

  “Nice. He could have blown you all the way back to London.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t have expected me to come out here, would he? He does know about the theft of his journal. And it’s not like this cache was something anyone could stumble upon.”

  Grey’s reply was a sour grunt. He found that he didn’t much like this Doctor Saint. And he was pretty sure calling the scientist a “humanitarian” was a bit of a stretch.

  “Why was the posse after you? You get some other girl pregnant?”

  “Hilarious, but no. Doctor Saint has rivals and some of them are quite vicious. Not at all above hiring a group of gunmen to end the life of one renegade Sioux. Especially one who has been hunting the men who committed the murders at the laboratory. I daresay I was making a nuisance of myself, buzzing around the edges of this and someone decided to swat me.” He slapped his palm flat on his thigh.

  Grey listened with great interest, but he watched the Sioux’s face for any telltale signs of deceit or evasiveness. Nothing showed, however. That didn’t mean that the man was telling the truth, the whole truth, part of the truth, or a pack of lies. Grey had played poker and faro at too many tables not to know that some fellows could keep darn near everything off their face. Even so, he had a sense that what he was hearing was at least partly true.

  Partly.

  He wondered what this strange English Indian was leaving out. The Sioux returned to his narrative.

  “I believe I’ve been getting close to proving who is responsible,” said Looks Away as he sipped the dregs of his second cup. “This was no ordinary theft, I’m sure of it. This was well organized and well financed. Someone important wanted that science and now they have it. I was following a lead and came here to Nevada. Someone swore they saw a blue explosion out here in the desert. Naturally I thought that my enemy’s people had raided this cache.”

  “What exactly was out here?”

  Looks Away spread his hands. “This was something Doctor Saint made before I came to work with him. It’s not much, just a small bunker built into a natural declivity in the sandstone. He enlarged it and built a small testing laboratory. A one-man station. It was all he needed to test the Lazarus weapons without prying eyes. Doctor Saint hid it very well, and even though I had no key, I know his methods. He always creates a hidden lever that is invisible to the naked eye. The man is as devious as he is brilliant…”

  “You found it, though?”

  “I used some of my grandfather’s tricks for finding the hinges. It was a clever trap set to trap a clever man.”

  Grey remembered Looks Away spitting on the ground and nodded. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Saint didn’t set this trap himself. Is your bad guy smart enough to set this kind of trap? He’d have to know a lot about how this ghost rock stuff works.”

  “Oh yes,” said Looks Away. “And the more I think about it the more I think it was a trap set specifically for me. Particularly if my enemy was, in fact, able to effectively interrogate the guards before he killed them. He had to know that I would keep hunting, so he lured me here with false clues.”

  “Lured you specifically?”

  “Not to blow my own horn, but yes, I daresay he did. It was a trap that brought me to an isolated spot and one that required geological knowledge and Sioux tracking skills to find. The posse was a nice diversion. Oh yes,” said Looks Away, “that trap was very much designed to kill me. My enemy is very, very clever.”

  “Do you have a name for this clever son of a bitch?” asked Grey.

  “Not one I can prove,” said Looks Away cautiously. “Merely one I’ve come to view as the only person with both means and sufficient guile.”

  “Who?”

  He finished his coffee, sloshed the last drops into the fire, and listened to them hiss.

  “Aleksander Deray,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Grey. “Pretty much figured. What are you going to do about it? From what you told me, this Deray character sounds like a bad enemy to have. Lots of money, lots of guns working for him, and like most folks he probably doesn’t cotton too well to nosy redskins.”

  Looks Away shrugged. “What can I do? I can give up, head to the Sioux nation and try to make peace with my family.”

  “Could you?”

  “Dear me, no. I’d probably find myself buried up to my chin in an anthill. If I was lucky.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have done that much damage to your cousin’s privates.”

  “Water, as they say, under the bridge.”

  “Or—?”

  “Or, I could go back to California, get the evidence I need, build a case and turn it over to the proper authorities.”

  Grey looked at him. “Proper authorities? In the Maze? Who in the great green hell are the proper authorities in that godforsaken place?”

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “No, but I heard tales. Ever since the Great Quake, there isn’t all that much of California left, and what is left is no place for proper people to live. Lots of bad people doing bad things and what little law’s out there is owned by someone else. No, son, I don’t think you’re going to get any help from the authorities.”

  “Correct. Which is why it’ll just be the three of us,” said Looks Away.

  “You and who else
?”

  Looks Away gave him a smile that was every bit as cold, lifeless, and murderous as he’d seen on the dead faces of Riley and Big Curley. The Sioux held up his .44 American. “Messieurs Smith and Wesson and your humble servant.”

  The fire between them popped and hissed.

  Grey Torrance said, “You know … I was thinking about heading west to see if there’s any kind of trouble I can get into.”

  “Are you indeed?” asked the Sioux, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Yes I damn well am.”

  They grinned at each other while above them the wheel of night ground on toward the coming dawn.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dawn found them miles away from the corpses and the blasted heap of rocks.

  Thomas Looks Away sat astride a chestnut mare that had once belonged to Big Curley. Since he had no way of knowing what the horse’s name had been, Looks Away renamed her Queen Victoria, but by mid-morning that name became unwieldy so he shortened it to Queenie.

  Grey gave Picky a thorough going-over to reassure himself that she hadn’t been injured by the madness of last night, and aside from a few scrapes and scratches she was fine. Three of the posse’s horses had survived the blast, and they trailed behind, laden with all of the supplies, weapons, and water the men could find.

  The chill of the night burned off with disheartening rapidity and the sun began to bake the landscape in earnest. The Joshua and juniper trees were spaced too far apart to offer any hope of shade. The horses moved forward, heads down, in a plodding walk that seldom veered from an arrow-straight line except to go around a knot of creosote bushes or avoid a barrel cactus. A clutch of vultures were hunkered down around a dead bighorn sheep, and once a sidewinder whipsawed through the dry grass.