Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  Grey wondered if it had been a dream.

  But the smell of her was there. Perfume and sweat and natural musk.

  It was no dream.

  For a long time he lay there and stared at the ceiling and thanked whoever was running the universe that the world was not so broken that it had run out of perfection.

  Like Jenny Pearl.

  Then he got up, washed, dressed, strapped on his guns, and braced himself to face whatever the new day offered.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The morning was bright and cold. A wet wind whipped in off the ocean but there were no storm clouds anywhere to be seen. Grey stood on Jenny’s porch with a cup of coffee in his hand and a bellyful of eggs and grits. He watched a boy walk up the street leading Picky and Queenie. Looks Away walked with him, and he had a large canvas slung over his shoulder.

  “Penny for your thoughts, cowboy,” said a voice and he turned with a smile to see Jenny Pearl standing in the open doorway. She wore a yellow dress that was buttoned primly to her throat, and a light wool shawl that was the exact color of her blue eyes. Her hair was tied into a loose tail by a ribbon that was the same color as her shawl. She also wore a knowing smile, but almost at once her throat and cheeks flushed a brilliant scarlet.

  “What I’m thinking is worth more than a penny,” he said. “Maybe as much as a whole dollar.” He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You’re something else, Miss Pearl.”

  The moment was sweet and they smiled at each other for the span of maybe three heartbeats before it suddenly changed, turned, became incredibly awkward. It was immediately clear to Grey that this kind of thing was new to Jenny. Maybe not the sex, because that was no virgin who’d swept like a ghost into his dreams, but maybe the rest of it. The tenderness after the fact. The intimacy of conversation that followed those times when the passion was right, when the connection was correct.

  It had been a long time for Grey, too. He’d loved many women but had only been in love once. A sweet girl named Annabelle. She was dust and bones now. Though, sometimes at night, he feared that her ghost was part of that shambling horde that followed just beyond his line of vision. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he caught a glimpse of her as he’d last seen her—bloody and broken—staring accusingly from the corner of his eye. One of the many people he had failed and left behind.

  Now here was Jenny.

  Was he in love with her?

  Last night was sweet and pure in its way, but had it ignited something important in both their hearts? Could love possibly blossom that quickly? It seemed perverse that it could happen in the midst of tragedy and horror.

  Or maybe that meant something. A thing that was important to know when all other knowledge fails or is proven false.

  These thoughts tumbled like an avalanche down the slopes of Grey’s mind as she stood there with her, feeling a tender moment turn sour.

  “I—,” he began, but she just nodded and walked past him to stand at the edge of the porch to watch Looks Away and the boy lead the horses.

  He tried again. “Jenny, about last night…”

  “Last night?” she echoed softly. “Last night was a dream. Don’t you know that?”

  She did not look at him as she said it, and before he could assemble a response, Jenny stepped down off the porch and went to meet Looks Away.

  Grey resisted the urge to bang his head on the porch column, though it seemed like a reasonable choice. Instead he thrust his hands into his back pockets, pasted on an expression that he hoped looked entirely casual, and followed Jenny.

  “I think I have everything we’ll need,” said Looks Away brightly. He set down the canvas sack and knelt to open it. His mouth tightened momentarily as he did so.

  “How’s the back?” asked Grey.

  “Medium rare. Brother Joe was kind enough to give me more of his entirely offensive-smelling salve.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Hard to say, though considering the amount of animal fat in it, I will probably attract every hopeful carrion bird in this end of the state.”

  “You do smell … interesting.”

  “Please go and stick your head in an ant hill.”

  “It’s not that bad,” said Jenny. “And don’t worry—Brother Joe’s salves and poultices do a power of good. They work like magic.”

  “Magic,” said Looks Away, “is not a word I want to hear just now.”

  From the bag, Looks Away produced the Kingdom M1 rifle and its ammunition, along with a spare ghost gas cylinder. “We don’t have any rounds so if we use it, we should probably keep to single shots. And … besides, I’ve never fired it so I don’t know what kind of kick it has. Quite frankly the ruddy thing scares the bejeebers out of me.”

  “That’s comforting,” complained Grey.

  “Then take comfort in this.” Looks Away produced a conventional Winchester .30-30 and handed this to Grey. “Courtesy of Deputy Perkins. I found his horse and this was in a saddle scabbard. I doubt he’ll need it henceforth.”

  Grey took it and checked the action. It had clearly been cleaned and oiled since the rain.

  “I had the guns seen to,” said Looks Away. He removed a double-barreled shotgun from the bag, too. It was a snubby little thing with both stock and barrels hewn short. It came with a modified pistol holster.

  Grey smiled. “Where the hell’d you find that?”

  “It was among the weapons taken from the undead. Twelve gauge with lots of shells.”

  “You expect me to carry that frigging thing?”

  “No,” said Looks Away, “I expect me to carry that frigging thing. You’re the crack shot of this outfit. I’m okay on a good day with a stationary target, but overall I’m an indifferent shot. Scatterguns fire in a wide spray, so I’m likely to hit something useful.”

  “It doesn’t have a stock. You can’t use your body to brace for the kick. Gun like that’ll knock you on your ass.”

  Looks Away sniffed. “Then I’ll reload while sitting.”

  “Fair enough. What else you got in there?”

  “A pair of excellent hunting knives, a compass, and lots of ammunition. Two boxes for your Colt as well.”

  “Nice.”

  They shared the supplies between them, stowing the extra boxes of shells and cartridges in their saddlebags. Jenny watched all of this without comment. She stood with her arms folded, head cocked to one side like someone at a gallery appraising art. Or, Grey thought, someone judging pigs at a county fair.

  As they swung up into their saddles, she broke her self-imposed silence. “I still think I should be going with you.”

  Grey crossed his wrists on the saddle horn and leaned forward. “And for two pins I’d take you along.”

  “But…,” she said, glancing at the boy from the stable and then past him to the center of town.

  “But,” he agreed. He smiled at her, but her returning smile was filled with so many emotions that Grey couldn’t catalog them all. Doubt and anger, passion and compassion. Love, too? He didn’t know if he saw it or merely wished for it.

  Looks Away glanced from Grey to Jenny and then down at his fingernails as if suddenly finding them deeply fascinating.

  “We’re burning daylight,” he said quietly.

  “Be off with you, then,” said Jenny, stepping back. “You boys come back quick and you come back safe, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Grey, and Looks Away pretended to doff a hat that he wasn’t wearing.

  “As your ladyship commands,” he said, “so shall it be.”

  They tugged the reins to turn their horses toward the road that led past the Pearl farm and out toward the east. But Jenny suddenly ran up to Picky and took the bridle, stopping the animal. Then she tugged the ribbon from her hair and tied the blue length of it to the head collar.

  “For luck,” she said.

  Grey smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  “A lady’s favor on the steed of a knight aboard o
n a mission of errantry,” said Looks Away, rolling his eyes. “Good Lord save me from romantic fools.”

  He kicked his horse into a gallop.

  Grey winked at Jenny and cantered after.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  They rode in silence for much of the way.

  Grey pointedly ignored the occasional amused glances aimed his way by his companion. The one time Looks Away tried to open a conversation about Jenny, Grey laid his callused hand on the butt of his holstered Colt.

  “Point taken,” said Looks Away.

  The miles fell away beneath their horses’ hooves.

  The land was clearly broken and in places it still looked raw. A game trail through a grove of trees would suddenly end at a jagged cliff to which the fractured trunks of dead trees still clung. Then they’d have to pick their way through boulders and rotting logs and between towers of splintered granite. At one point they crossed a gorge along a slat bridge that was so new the lumber was still green.

  “Grey,” said Looks Away during one of the times they had to dismount and lead the horses, “I’m sure you recognized some of those walking corpses that night.”

  “You mean Perkins and the deputies? Sure.”

  “I can’t rough out any scenario where that makes sense. I mean … we’re going on the assumption that Deray created the undead, or controlled them, with these magic bits of ghost rock. Right?”

  “Yup.”

  “But Perkins worked for Deray. We saw him less than half a day before those deputies turned up dead and reanimated. What happened to them? How did they die? Why did they die? And why were they brought back?”

  “All important questions,” agreed Grey. “And my considered opinion is that it beats the shit out of me.”

  “Ah.”

  They remounted and rode along a deep cleft at the bottom of which lay the smashed remains of a farmhouse, barn, and corn silo. The bleached bones of at least a dozen cattle were scattered among the splintered wood.

  Grey was about to ask if Looks Away knew if the farmer family had survived the Quake, but then they passed a line of crudely made crosses standing in a row. The paint was faded after all these years, but Grey could see that everyone buried there had the same last name. From the birth and death dates it looked like grandparents, parents and young kids. Eleven graves in all.

  He wondered why any of the survivors would stay in such a place as this. Death, the wrath of an insane planet, and the villains who mingled science with sorcery. What could make someone like Lucky Bob and his daughter think this land was worth fighting for?

  The nomad in Grey’s soul was so practiced at riding away whenever troubles got too big that he no longer felt able to understand any other choice.

  As if reading his thoughts, Looks Away said, “It’s hard to walk away penniless from something you’ve put your whole life into.”

  “What?”

  “Jenny. It’s why she stayed after her father died. It’s why most of the families here want to fight this out. If they left, where could they go? And how could they start something new without funds or resources?”

  “That’s not a decision, it’s a trap.”

  “It’s a choice for some,” said Looks Away. “They love this land. Their family members are buried here. That ties them to the land.”

  “Is that Sioux wisdom?”

  “It’s human nature, Grey. People want to put down roots.”

  “Not everyone.”

  Looks Away nodded, but he wore a knowing smile.

  A mile later Grey said, “I take it you and Chesterfield’s wife—.”

  “Veronica.”

  “—Veronica, are friends?”

  Their horses walked nearly a dozen paces before Looks Away answered. “There are a lot of lonely people in this world, my friend. Is it wrong to offer comfort? Is it wrong to provide a shoulder to cry upon or an ear to listen? Is that a moral crime? Is that a sin in your world?”

  “You’re asking the wrong fellow. I don’t study on sin very much. Not anyone else’s. My own sins—and they are many—provide me with enough to think about.”

  “So you don’t judge?”

  Grey sucked a tooth. “I’m not saying I can’t or won’t form opinions. For example I’m of the opinion that Nolan Chesterfield and Aleksander Deray would do the world a power of good if they stood in front of a fast-moving train.”

  “We’re of a mind in that regard.”

  “Beyond that?” Grey shook his head. “It’s a cold, hard world and if someone can find a little warmth and comfort, then good on ’em.”

  That seemed to satisfy Looks Away, and he said no more on the subject.

  They reached the top of a series of broken foothills, and there they paused. Beyond the ridge, stretching out for miles, was a green and lovely valley. Long, broad fields of blowing grass, orderly groves of fruit trees, and a stream as blue as Jenny’s ribbon wandering through it all. Beyond the stream was a dirt road that ran in a slow curve toward a mansion that would have fit better on a Georgia peach plantation. Three stories tall, with a row of white columns along a deep porch.

  “By the Queen’s sacred knickers,” said Looks Away, even though he had presumably visited the place before.

  “Is that the Chesterfield place?” asked Grey.

  “It is.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Indeed.”

  It was not the obvious wealth or the ostentatious splendor that made them both stiffen in their saddles. It was not the nearness of a potential enemy that made their hands stray toward their guns.

  It was the state of the place.

  The trees lining the driveway were nothing but blackened stumps. Some had fallen, their trunks split by what looked like lightning strikes. Horses and cattle lay everywhere.

  Dead.

  All dead.

  There were long, black trenches running back and forth across the grounds. They looked like the kind of mark Grey made when he scraped a match on a doorpost. Except these were a yard wide and some of them ran for a hundred feet across the lawn, through hedges, and even through parts of the house’s big slope roof. Anything in the path of those burns had been incinerated.

  The front of the house was blackened with soot and part of the shingled roof had collapsed inward. A thin curl of smoke rose into the wind and was dissipated into nothingness by a steady breeze blowing inland.

  “What the hell could have done that?” demanded Grey.

  Looks Away said nothing, but his face was pale and he stared with naked horror. He silently mouthed a word. A name.

  Veronica.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Looks Away started forward but Grey clapped a hand on his arm and held him in place.

  “She’s in there,” insisted Looks Away, trying to tear his arm free.

  “Okay, we’ll go in and find her,” said Grey as he drew his pistol. “But let’s do it the smart way. Not the I-want-to-be-dead-way. You understand me? We do it smart or we go back to Jenny’s place.”

  Looks Away glared at him, but then he snorted air out of his nostrils and nodded. “Very well, damn you.”

  “Good. Let’s go, but keep your eyes open.”

  They rode down the slope into the green valley. The closer they got the worse it all was. There were huge burn spots on the grass, and most of the dead animals had been charred. Some had burst apart, or been torn asunder. Some of the trees looked like they had been torn from the ground by some force Grey could not comprehend. They lay on their sides trailing roots that snaked away into the troubled dirt.

  Looks Away touched Grey’s arm and nodded to something that glinted in the trampled grass.

  “Shell casings,” he said. “Lots of them.”

  “Heavy caliber. Gatling gun?”

  Looks Away nodded. “Or something with a heavy rate of fire. There are two or three weapons manufacturers with newer, faster models than the Gatling. Want to guess what makes them work so fast?”

  Grey sighe
d. “Makes me long for the old days. I mean … is anyone trying to use ghost rock for something other than war?”

  “Of course they are, but science tends toward warfare first and humanitarian purposes later. Airships and faster trains will carry food, goods, and people as easily as guns and cannons.”

  “Mm. Nothing humanitarian about what happened here.”

  They dismounted and studied the house.

  “You see any bodies?” asked Grey. “People, I mean.”

  “None.” And under his breath the Sioux added, “Thank god.”

  “Under any other circumstances that could be a good thing,” said Grey. “It won’t be here.”

  “No,” agreed Looks Away glumly. He slung the Kingdom rifle over his shoulder and slid the chunky sawed-off shotgun from its hip holster. They tied Picky and Queenie in the shade of one of the few remaining unburned trees, nodded to each other, and approached the house. Grey checked the loads in his Colt, and then held it down at his side as they moved in.

  As they did so, Looks Away shifted off to the left of the main entrance and Grey went right, both of them moving without haste and making maximum use of cover. Aside from smoke and heat-withered grass, nothing moved at all.

  Grey gestured to indicate that Looks Away should cover him as he approached the door. The Sioux ran low and fast to the front wall and knelt beneath one of the fire-blackened windows, holding the shotgun in both hands. Once he was in position Grey walked straight up to the door and only angled to one side as he got within twenty feet. The big oak doors were pocked with bullet holes and splashed with blood. Grey used the toe of his boot to ease the door open. It swung inward with sluggish reluctance.

  Grey waited.

  Nothing. No voices. No shots.

  He nodded to Looks Away, steeled himself against whatever might be waiting, and then went in low and fast, the Colt held out in a firm two-handed grip. He immediately cut right and swept the room with the gun, his eyes tracking in concert with the barrel. Looks Away dashed in a heartbeat later and went right, the shotgun stock braced against his hip.

  The entrance foyer had been smashed apart and was open to the hall on Grey’s side and to a drawing room on Looks Away’s left. The walls were shattered. Bricks were shattered, exposing the wooden bones of the house. The red foyer carpet was singed black by ash and a figure lay half in the hall and half in the drawing room. Perhaps it had once been human, though whether man or woman was beyond telling. It was a set of bones wreathed in crisp layers of ash. The tendons, shrunk by heat, had contracted and pulled the corpse into a fetal position. Though clearly an adult, the posture called to mind one of the cruelest aspects of death. To Grey it looked like a dead infant rather than a grown man or woman, and in his mind he imagined he saw the newborn baby, the tottering first steps, the simple joy of a toddler at play, the full potential of a life unsullied by influences, choices, or actions. Snuffed out now like a match, and discarded by whoever had done this.