Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  Perkins licked his lips.

  “Theft,” he said.

  “Theft?” cried Jenny Pearl. “So help me God I’ll nut you and feed—.”

  Looks Away touched her arm and it cut her flow of threats.

  “Theft it was and there’s no way you can deny it,” countered Perkins. “There’s your proof, and it’s enough to get you a full month in the mines. Hard labor, too.”

  As he spoke, Perkins pointed to the base of the well, where two wooden buckets lay on their side, surrounded by a pool of water that was drying quickly in the hot afternoon sun.

  “Maybe I’m missing something here,” said Grey. “Are you saying they stole the buckets?”

  “No, you damn-fool,” said Perkins. “Anyone can clearly see they were stealing water.”

  “Water?” echoed Grey. He looked from Perkins to Jenny Pearl, to Looks Away, to the monk named Brother Joe, and back again. “You’re arresting them for drawing water from the town well?”

  “Of course,” said Perkins. “That well is the sole and complete property of—.”

  “No, wait,” said Grey, holding up his free hand. “We’re talking about water? Water as in … water?”

  “What are you? Stupid?”

  “No, but I am deeply confused,” admitted Grey. “Or maybe appalled is the right word.”

  “That’ll work,” agreed Looks Away, icily. Miss Pearl nodded.

  Brother Joe tried to explain. “Mr. Deray has legal claim to all the water rights in this whole region.”

  “Why? Is he grazing cattle or sheep?”

  “No.”

  “What’s he farm, then, that he needs so much water? Help me out here, brother, ’cause I’m having a hard time getting my hands on this.”

  “Like I said,” laughed Perkins, “you’re a fool who doesn’t know shit from sheep’s wool.”

  Grey’s arm was a blur. He raised his gun and fired a shot into the dirt between Perkins’s feet. The bullet ricocheted up and whined away into the distance. The deputy emitted a sharp yelp like a kicked dog and jumped two feet in the air. He landed flat-footed and froze into a hunched statue, eyes as wide as saucers.

  “You want to keep a tighter rein on your mouth, son,” he said. “Call me a fool again and I’d be just as happy to put the next one through your kneecap. See if I don’t.”

  Perkins’s mouth was open but he said nothing. Grey was pretty sure that the man was, at the moment, incapable of human speech. It took some effort to keep a smile off his face.

  Brother Joe took a step forward as if he planned to stand between Perkins and Grey should the former incur any further wrath. The action said a lot about the monk’s devotion to the heart of scripture. It said a lot less about his awareness of the realities of this hard world. Even so, Grey lowered his gun again. He still didn’t holster it, though.

  Looks Away let out an audible breath.

  Jenny huffed. “You should have shot him. That’s what people do with mangy dogs.”

  Grey turned to the other men. He could see that they each wore a deputy badge. His heart sank. However he said, “I see anyone’s hand twitch in the direction of their holsters I will kill each and every damn one of you. No, don’t look at me like that. I have five shots and my friend has six. If you don’t think we can put you down before you clear leather, then have at it. I’m sure there’s a coffin-maker in town.”

  “There is,” Jenny assured him.

  “So,” continued Grey, “you have to ask yourself if there’s anything here worth dying for. I’m thinking there isn’t.”

  The deputies did not draw their guns. Brother Joe let out a deep breath of obvious relief.

  “Well now,” said Grey affably, “how about someone tell me what in the actual hell is going on here? How is it that someone can claim water rights inside a damn town? Pardon my language, ma’am.”

  “I don’t want your damn apologies,” she fired back. “I’d rather you had the balls to shoot these shit-heels and be done with it.”

  Looks Away chuckled. “Ah, I do admire you, Jenny Pearl.”

  “And you can keep your mouth shut, too, Mr. Looks Through Windows,” growled Jenny.

  Looks Away affected to look like innocence offended. He said nothing, though, and Grey could see a ghost of a smile on his mouth.

  “Padre,” said Grey, trying to find a voice of reason in this pack, “what’s the story with this water rights thing? Surely you’re able to tell the truth. Kind of a professional requirement, as I understand it.”

  “Don’t listen to that old—,” began Perkins, but Grey shushed him. Not with a finger to his lips but with the barrel of his big Colt. That shut the deputy’s mouth.

  “You were saying, Padre—?” encouraged Grey.

  The monk cleared his throat. “Please, I don’t want any more trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” Grey assured him. “Just some folks standing around chatting on a sunny afternoon. So … if you please…”

  “Well,” said Brother Joe, “what Deputy Perkins says may be true in the sense of the local law. This well is technically owned by Mr. Deray.”

  “Tell him all of it,” said Jenny.

  Brother Joe nodded. He wiped blood from his broken nose and pawed it from within the tangles of his beard. There was a lot of it. “That’s the thing … Aleksander Deray has acquired the rights to all of the water in this part of the Maze. All fresh water, that is.”

  “All of it?” asked Grey, smiling at the absurdity of it.

  “Every drop.”

  “How’s that even possible? This well is inside the town limits. Surely it has to belong to the town.” Before he finished both Brother Joe and Jenny were shaking their heads.

  “Mr. Deray bought all of the water,” said Brother Joe.

  “You mean he stole it,” growled Jenny.

  “More like swindled,” suggested Looks Away casually. They ignored him.

  “All of it?” Grey asked. “What about on the farms? You can’t tell me there’s no water on any of the farms.”

  “There’s water,” said Looks Away. “Not a lot, but it’s there.”

  “Well, there you go, then—.”

  “Mr. Deray owns that, too,” said Brother Joe. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s what makes this all so unfair. People are dying for want of water. The livestock and crops are already withered down to nothing. At first Mr. Deray would sell us some. A gallon a day for a family of four. Then it was a gallon every other day. Then a gallon a week.”

  Grey gaped at him.

  Jenny Pearl’s eyes flashed with blue fire. “Now Deray says that we can’t even buy water.”

  “How does he expect you to live?”

  “That, my dear chap,” said Looks Away dryly, “seems to be the question. Perhaps one of these fine constables can furnish us with an adequate answer. Shall we ask them?”

  Grey took a step toward Perkins who, for all that he was afraid, held his ground. Grey had to grudge him that much. The deputy stiffened and stuck out his jaw in an attempt to look like the symbol of authority he was supposed to be.

  “Talk,” said Grey.

  “This ain’t your business, mister,” said Perkins. “Or the Indian’s.”

  “I beg to differ,” drawled Looks Away.

  Grey smiled. “I guess we’re making it our business.”

  “You know you only got the better of us because you snucked up on us and bushwhacked us.”

  “Snucked isn’t a word, you illiterate troll,” said Looks Away.

  “You’re saying,” Grey said to the deputy, “that things would have been different if we’d made this a fair fight?”

  “You’re damn right.”

  “Like the fair fight that was in progress when we arrived? Six men against a woman and a parson who clearly didn’t offer any resistance. Which means that it was six men against this woman. That’s your idea of fair? Is that what you’re trying to sell here?”

  Deputy Perkins turned as
red as a fresh bruise and wouldn’t meet Grey’s eyes.

  “They was breaking the law.”

  “You call that a law?” demanded Miss Pearl. “There are children wasting away in this town. People are getting sick.”

  “That’s not my concern,” insisted Perkins. “The law is the law.”

  Grey used the barrel of the Colt to turn Perkins’s chin, forcing the man to look at him.

  “When armed men enforce a law like that, then the law’s no law at all.”

  “You need to take that up with the sheriff and the circuit judge. They say it is the law.”

  “Fine. Tell me where they are and I’ll be happy to have that conversation.”

  Perkins faltered. “Well … you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The, um, sheriff’s down south in the City of Lost Angels.”

  “And the circuit judge?”

  “Well … he won’t be back around until March.”

  “That’s a long time,” said Grey. “What about Mr. Deray? Maybe I should go have a conversation with him.”

  Brother Joe gasped audibly. Jenny Pearl took a step back, touching her hand to her throat. They both looked deeply afraid.

  A slow and nasty smile crawled onto Perkins’s mouth. “Well, why don’t you?”

  Behind Perkins, out of his line of sight, Looks Away pursed his lips and quietly blew out his cheeks.

  Grey Torrance hoisted a smile onto his own face. It wasn’t the kind of smile he liked to show to people he thought well of. The smile on Perkins’s face leaked away.

  “Take your men and get the hell out of my sight,” said Grey. “Do it quick and do it now.”

  “And then what?” said the deputy. “Soon as we’re gone you’re going to steal some water. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Oh, you’re absolutely right. I intend to have a water party. Free water for everyone. Much as they want.”

  The other deputies milled around, looking at each other, looking at the well. Looking everywhere but at Grey or Looks Away.

  “C’mon, Jed,” mumbled one of the men. “This ain’t worth taking a bullet over.”

  Jed Perkins slowly slapped dust from his clothes. He bent and picked up a brown hat with a band of silver conches and screwed it down on his head. The motions were deliberate and exaggerated, as if cleaning himself up after a beating was somehow able to shift him to a moral high ground or some position of tactical superiority. Grey was unimpressed. He’d seen this sort of thing before.

  “Get gone,” he advised.

  Perkins stepped up and for a moment stood nose to nose with Grey.

  “You better watch your backtrail, mister,” he said coldly. “’Cause the next time I see you I’m going to—.”

  And Grey hit him.

  It was a left-handed blow. Very fast, and despite being short-range it rocked Perkins onto his heels, knocked the lights from his eyes, and then sat him down hard on his ass.

  The other men cried out and started forward and Grey turned smoothly, raising his pistol, pointing it at the closest man. Looks Away stepped out from behind the well and held his gun in a rock-steady brown fist.

  “Listen to me,” said Grey coldly. “Learn this for the future. If you’ve just taken a beating, that is not—I repeat not—the time to make a threat. Only a complete idiot does that. Like this sorry excuse for a human being.”

  He punctuated his words with a short, sharp kick that drove the square toe of his boot under Jed Perkins’s chin. The man’s eyes rolled up white and he flopped back.

  “Please!” begged the monk.

  Grey patted the air toward him. “It’s okay, Padre. This is over. Deputy Perkins dealt the play. Everyone here saw that. Now you fellows pick this piece of cow dung up and cart him off before I get really mad. Be best for all concerned if no one said anything smart while you were about it. Go on, get ’er done.”

  The other deputies did not say a single word as they hooked their hands under Perkins’s arms and knees, hoisted him up, and went creaking away in a puffing cluster.

  Grey and Looks Away held their guns on them until the men flopped Perkins over a saddle and the six of them rode out of town.

  The ugly bird suddenly cawed. It was so strange a sound. More like the plaintive cry of a lost child than any sound that could come from a bird’s throat. With a snap of its leathery wings it launched from the crossbar of the well, rose ponderously into the air and flew away to the northeast. Whether it was following the deputies or merely heading in a similar direction was unclear. The four of them watched it, and the fleeing men, until they were out of sight.

  Then, with a sigh, Grey opened the cylinder, replaced the single spent cartridge, and reholstered his Colt. Looks Away did the same. They turned to face Brother Joe and Jenny Pearl.

  Before Grey could say a word, the woman slapped him across the face with all of her considerable strength. It was a lightning-fast blow that rocked Grey’s head and spun him halfway around. Then the woman grabbed his shoulder, wheeled him back, grabbed his ears, pulled his head down, and planted a scalding hot kiss on his lips.

  Then she shoved him back. Gasping, blinking, totally confused, Grey staggered and might have fallen if Looks Away hadn’t caught his arm.

  “What,” he sputtered, “the hell was that for?”

  Jenny Pearl crossed her arms under her breasts and cocked her head. Her blue eyes seemed to ignite the air around them. “The slap was because you didn’t kill that murdering son of a bitch, Jed Perkins.” She paused. “The kiss was because you damn sure beat a pound of stupid off his sorry ass.”

  Brother Joe turned a suddenly scarlet face away and shook his head slowly. Grey heard Looks Away laughing softly.

  He rubbed his face and stared down at the woman and had no idea what to do or say.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Looks Away made formal introductions and that broke the spell of the moment.

  “Jenny Pearl,” he said, “I would like to formally introduce my new associate, Mr. Grey Torrance. Grey, this is Miss Jenny Pearl. She owns—.”

  “Used to own,” corrected Jenny.

  “—used to own a cattle ranch northeast of town.”

  “You’re a rancher?” asked Grey, rubbing the red welt on his cheek.

  “Why?” said Jenny with challenge in her tone. “Can’t a woman own a ranch?”

  “Sure. But you don’t look old enough.”

  A shadow passed behind the woman’s eyes. “It … it was my father’s place. I took it over when he…” She let the rest hang, then added, “I ran near three hundred head before that bastard Deray got here.”

  “Miss Pearl, please…,” said the monk.

  “Not talking about it isn’t the same as it not being the case,” said Jenny; but then she sighed and nodded, withdrawing her anger from the moment.

  “And this,” said Looks Away, “is Brother Joe, late of the order of the Brothers of Outcasts.”

  “I heard about you fellows,” said Grey, nodding.

  Those monks were all, in one way or another, failed shepherds of their herds. Drunks and sinners, thieves of church offerings, men who had broken their vows of chastity, and others who had dishonored their vows. Where such disgrace would drive most clerics totally away from the church, a handful of them had come crawling back and begged for a chance to redeem themselves.

  They were stripped of most of their priestly powers and allowed to serve without pay, without praise, and probably without much chance of setting things right. Grey had never met one before and didn’t give much of a damn for humility, but he admired their courage. As a man who felt the weight of his own sins and worried about the slim chance of salvation and the very real threat of celestial punishment, he hoped the Outcast Brothers would prove that even the most wretched had a fighting chance on Judgment Day.

  He said, “Thought you were all down Mexico way, trying to turn the last Mayans into good little Christians. What brings you up here? You a priest of a c
hurch ’round these parts?”

  “We missionaries go where the Lord sends us.”

  “God sent you here? Why? You lose a bet with him?”

  The joke fell flat and Grey was sorry he’d made it. The monk actually winced as if he was in physical pain.

  “Are you a Christian, brother,” he asked.

  Grey shrugged. “Not sure where I stand on that topic. God and me haven’t had any meaningful conversations in quite a long time.”

  “But you believe?”

  “That’s a complicated question,” said Grey. “The world’s big and strange. Maybe bigger and stranger than people thought it was. So … I guess I’ll keep an open mind. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to find me in a pew come Sunday morning.”

  Brother Joe nodded. He was as thin as a rake-handle, nearly bald. He wore a rough brown robe with the hood folded down on his bony shoulders, and rope sandals on his feet. His only extravagance was a beard that was full and wild. His voice had only the faintest echo of the Spanish that had probably been the language of his childhood.

  Brother Joe offered a thin hand and Grey shook it. The monk’s hand was like dry parchment stretched over fragile sticks.

  “Although I abhor violence of any kind,” said Brother Joe, “I thank you for what you did. Those men might have hurt Miss Pearl.”

  “They might have done worse than hurt her,” said Grey. “I know men like that. I know that type. Maybe I should have schooled them a bit more on how to treat decent folks.”

  Jenny smiled at that.

  But Brother Joe shook his head. “Judgment and punishment are for God.”

  “Sure,” said Grey, “forgiveness, too. But I’d rather be judged by the Almighty for doing what I think’s right than stand aside and let bastards like that make life hell for people. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  Grey put a hand on the monk’s shoulder. “Yeah, padre, I know. Maybe carrying a gun makes me a bad man, too. I’ll talk that over with Saint Peter if I get the chance. Or maybe my answer will come from a lick from the Devil’s riding crop, but I will be damned if I stand aside and do nothing. Some men can. I can’t.”