Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  Looks Away softly murmured some lines of poetry, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree, where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.”

  Grey gave him a sharp look. “Wait, you know this place?”

  “No, old boy,” said Looks Away, his eyes alight with wonder, “that is an old poem. Coleridge, and it was written about a mythical place far, far away. It’s just that it seems to fit, does it not?”

  “I guess … but I wish it had stayed in a poem.”

  Looks Away walked over to the closest rock pillar and bent to peer at the glowing fungi. He sniffed at it. “Grey … come here and see this.”

  With great reluctance, Grey joined him. The fungi looked like tiny cabbage leaves, but it rippled like sea anemones.

  “This is so strange,” said Looks Away. “This is some form of panellus stipticus—what most people call ‘bitter oyster.’ But bioluminescent fungi emit a green light. This is blue.”

  “And it’s a pretty damn familiar blue,” said Grey.

  “Indeed it is. The fungi must pick up trace amounts of ghost rock. Not enough to react to the flame of our lanterns, but enough to change the color of the bioluminescent glow.”

  “That’s not much of a comfort. And, damn, but it’s hot as hell in here,” said Grey. “Could there be a volcano down here?”

  “Anything’s possible in the Maze,” said Looks Away. “Whatever it is, there’s some form of geothermal activity. You can smell the sulfur in the air.”

  “All I smell is batshit and dead fish.”

  “No, there’s more. That rotten egg smell. That’s sulfur.”

  Grey sniffed. “Oh, right.”

  They looked around. Far off in the distance and up near the inky darkness of the roof, they could see small birds flapping or drifting on thermal currents.

  “This is all so—” began Looks Away, but a sudden sound jolted them to silence. They raised their weapons as something seemed to detach itself from the stem of one of the gigantic mushrooms. At first it looked like part of the stalk was sliding off, then with a thrill of mingled terror and disgust Grey saw that it was something far worse. The thing—for thing was the only word his mind could conjure—was as long as an alligator but it was no reptile. It had a narrow body that seemed composed of hundreds of banded segments, and from the sides of each of these segments sprouted a pair of jointed legs. The shell was the same dead-white color as the mushrooms, but the legs were black; and the whole thing glistened wetly.

  “Dear … God!” cried Looks Away. “Are you seeing this?”

  “I wish to Christ I wasn’t.”

  The creature crawled out onto the floor of the cavern and began moving toward them on a thousand feet, and it uttered a weird, high-pitched, chittering sound.

  “Is that … is that a…?” Grey began but couldn’t finish.

  “It’s a whacking great centipede,” said Looks Away.

  Grey shoved the lantern into his hand, took his pistol in a steady two-hand grip, and fired three spaced shots into its head. The impact of the hot lead punched through the chitinous shell and exploded the first three segments. However the body kept moving forward.

  “Shite!” yelped Looks Away. He quickly set the lantern down and took aim with his shotgun.

  The blast was enormous and it rang through the cavern. Masses of bats broke in panic from beneath the mushrooms, and the air was filled with the thunder of ten thousand leathery wings. All around them came the cries and chirps and clicks of creatures seen and unseen, and Grey knew that they were surrounded by more things than they could possibly fight.

  What was left of the centipede twisted and thrashed on the ground like a worm on a hot rock. Even with three bullets and a round of buckshot the thing was somehow still alive.

  “Is that thing one of those undead sonsabitches?” demanded Grey.

  “No. I don’t think so,” said Looks Away uncertainly. “There’s no ghost rock implant. I think this is something that was always down here. Maybe no one would ever have seen something like this had it not been for the Great Quake.”

  “I wish I’d never seen it.”

  “I tend to agree, old chap,” said Looks Away. He was sweating badly and his hands trembled with fear and disgust.

  “Tell you what, Looks,” said Grey as they crouched beneath the storm of hysterical bats, “I’m having some serious second thoughts about this. Maybe we should fall back, regroup, get drunk, and talk ourselves out of this.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” muttered Looks Away. “We may need different equipment for this kind of expedition.”

  “Fifty armed men as backup, a Gatling gun, and a shitload of dynamite would be at the top of my shopping list.”

  They rose slowly and began edging back toward the door when they heard another sound. A sharp, piercing cry that echoed through the caverns and stabbed painfully into their eardrums. It came from above, but it was neither a bat nor a bird.

  They looked up and once more terror filled Grey’s heart. Above them the small birds were swooping down, but Grey immediately realized how wrong he had been. They were not small at all. They were merely very far away.

  Now they were getting closer and with each fragment of a second they grew larger, and larger.

  And larger.

  “What the hell are they?” cried Grey, raising his gun.

  “By the queen’s garters!” whispered Looks Away. “I read a paper on these things not five years ago. They were just discovered in Kansas by Sam Wilson.”

  “What are they?” growled Grey as the creatures swooped lower and lower. Just as the dinosaurs they’d fought had been covered with features, these birdlike monsters were scaled like reptiles. They had vast leathery wings that stretched twenty feet across, long spike-like beaks and sickle-shaped crests protruding from the backs of their skulls. Even at that distance Grey could smell the dead-flesh stink of them. Unlike the centipedes and bats, they were reanimated corpses. Their cries threatened to crack Grey’s head apart.

  Just as the two men broke and ran, he heard Looks Away speak a word he had never heard before. “Pteranodon!”

  “Terra-what?”

  “Never mind … just kill the bastards.”

  Grey fired three shots at the closest one, but he had no idea if he hit it. At that range there was no certainty of a head shot. He whirled, bolted, and ran toward the tunnel.

  But he instantly skidded to a stop as two of the monsters swept down and cut him off. Looks Away fired his shotgun, but the distance was against him. The pellets peppered the monsters, and they screamed more in rage than pain. Maybe they couldn’t even feel pain. Grey grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and shoved Looks Away in the opposite direction.

  “Run!”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  They ran.

  The living dead pteranodons flocked after them, screaming for a meal of living flesh. The beat of their wings was like thunder, and all the bats whirled away and vanished under the mushrooms once more. Grey thought that was a smart damn idea, so he dragged Looks Away toward the forest of towering fungi. A gust of wind buffeted him from behind and he staggered down to one knee just as something snapped the air where his head had been a moment ago. Grey rolled to one side to see one of the monsters sweep past, its beak empty but not for lack of trying. Grey’s gun was empty, so he shoved it into his holster, scrambled to his feet, and raced on as another of the monsters snapped at the ground on which he’d been lying.

  “They’re too big to fly under the caps,” yelled Looks Away, who was now ten yards ahead, picking his way through the forest. Grey raced to catch up. They crunched ankle deep through pools of bat droppings and insects, and then squeezed between two mushrooms that had become twisted together as they’d grown between spears of crystal.

  “Reload,” ordered Grey. “Reload.”

  They reloaded as the pteranodons flapped over the mushrooms, shrieking in fury. The cap above
them suddenly tilted and groaned and Grey realized that one of the beasts had landed atop it. He saw the rest of the flock rise and arc away into the shadowy sky, then wheel and come rushing back.

  Several of them landed in the clearing beyond where the two men huddled. They looked so alien, like nothing that should ever have been allowed to trouble the world of living men. On stubby legs and clawed hands attached to their wings they crept forward, searching for a way in to get at their feast.

  “They’re coming,” breathed Looks Away. “Christ!”

  Four more of the pteranodons dropped to the ground and began approaching on different sides of their narrow haven. A huge one landed on the spear of quartz above them and stabbed downward through a narrow gap, trying to spear them with its beak. Grey hammered the side of the beak with his fist and then fired past it, trying to hit the monster’s eye in hopes of punching through to the brain. The angle was bad and the bullet merely scored a deep groove on the top of its skull. Even so the impact knocked the creature backward.

  Grey pivoted and fired four shots at the approaching pteranodons, the rounds punching through folded wings and hitting one in the chest. The creature roared and reared up, then staggered against another monster. Wounded or dying, Grey couldn’t tell.

  “What about that damn fancy rifle of yours?” he gasped. “Seems like a good goddam time for it, don’t you think?”

  “Shite!” cried Looks Away. “I’m a bloody fool. I’ve been carrying it all this time and forgot about it.”

  Looks Away slid the loaded shotgun into its holster and jerked the strap to swing the Kingdom M1 rifle from his back and into his hands. He began fumbling with small brass and crystal switches and dials.

  “Do you even know how to work that thing?” demanded Grey.

  “In theory, in theory…,” muttered Looks Away under his breath. A series of small green lights sparkled to life along the gun’s sides and Grey could hear a low hum as the rifle began to vibrate.

  “Should it be doing that?”

  “Probably not,” said Looks Away nervously. “But we have to try. I just hope the bloody thing doesn’t blow up in my hands.”

  “Is that likely?”

  Looks Away answered with a sour grunt.

  “How many rounds do you have?”

  “Two magazines. One full one, which has five rounds; and one with only four. Plus two gas canisters. That should be enough to fire what we have.”

  One of the pteranodons began chopping at the mushroom caps in order to get at them. Two of the others watched for a moment, and then they joined it. Their sharp beaks tore at the spongy fungus.

  “Will it stop them?” Grey said, backing away.

  Looks Away shook his head. “I have never used it before. I’m not one hundred percent certain it will work at all.”

  Pieces of the mushroom cap began to rain down on them as the monstrous pterosaurs hammered away. Grey could already see the faces of the monsters. Their eyes glittered with hunger and bloodlust.

  “Come on, damn it … we’re out of time!”

  Looks Away was still fiddling with the dials and controls. “I don’t know where to set the gas pressure,” he said between gritted teeth.

  “Then take a wild goddamn guess and—oh, shit.”

  Grey shoved Looks Away to one side as a huge beak stabbed down through the ragged gap. It speared the air a scant inch from the Sioux’s unprotected back. The gun fell and slithered halfway out of their niche. Looks Away dove for it, scrabbling with fingernails as the stock slid away. He caught the very end of the brass butt-plate, but then he snatched his hand back as a savage beak snapped at him.

  Grey grabbed his collar and hauled him back to safety as the beak of one of the monsters locked its powerful jaws around the stock of the Kingdom rifle. It lifted the gun up, and with a mighty jerk of its head flipped it into its mouth and tried to eat it.

  “Grey!” cried Looks Away.

  “I know,” he snapped. He leaned halfway out of their niche, dug the barrel of the Colt into the throat of the pteranodon, and fired. Deathless monster or not, the bullet tore a big red hole in the leathery flesh and exited at a sharp right angle, sure evidence that it had ricocheted off of heavy bone. The pteranodon’s head suddenly canted sideways and flopped onto the creature’s upper wing, and Grey knew which bone his bullet had struck. With a broken neck and two bloody holes in its throat, the giant creature toppled slowly sideways. The other pterosaurs sent up an ululating cry of indignation and fury.

  “Did you see that?” yelled Looks Away. “A head shot and trauma to the spinal cord will do for those buggers.”

  “Great, we’ll throw a party later. You lost your damn gun.”

  As the dying beast struck the ground the Kingdom rifle fell from the yawning beak and landed hard. The rows of little lights flickered, flickered, flickered … but then they steadied.

  The rifle lay ten feet outside of their niche.

  “Oh …

  Above them the two mushroom caps that formed their ceiling were falling to pieces beneath the renewed assault of the pteranodons.

  “They’re going to get us,” cried Looks Away, fumbling for his shotgun. His hands were shaking badly, and Grey could not blame him. His own trembled with the palsy of genuine terror.

  “We need that gun,” he growled.

  As if in conscious defiance of their needs, one of the pteranodons placed a foot over the weapon. Grey knew that it couldn’t be more than happenstance, but it felt like a statement to them.

  You are our meat.

  It terrified him.

  It infuriated him.

  As he reloaded he thought about what Mircalla had said about his life. He thought about what Veronica had said. The martyr.

  Martyr.

  The gun lay there, ten feet away. He could reach it. If he could get it away from the monster then maybe he could throw it to Looks Away before the pteranodons killed them both. They would kill him, of that there was no doubt.

  No doubt.

  Was this it? Was this the moment predicted by the witch and the manitou? Was he destined to sacrifice himself and to die here in the fetid darkness, the meal of monsters? Was that a tragedy or would it redeem him in the eyes of the universe? And what then? Would he join the band of wandering vengeance ghosts and drift along the fringes of the living world until the sun burned itself out and time ran down to its last few ticks?

  Those thoughts flashed through his mind even as he felt his body moving.

  Moving.

  Rushing toward the cleft, toward the gun.

  This is a better death than I deserve, he thought.

  And then he was falling sideways.

  Something buffeted him and sent him crashing against the tree-like stem of a giant mushroom. He fell hard and saw Looks Away throw him a madman’s grin as he dove through the cleft.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  “No!” cried Grey as he struggled back to his feet.

  When Looks Away had shoved him out of the way, Grey had dropped his gun. He scooped it up now and prayed that the barrel was not clogged.

  It all happened fast.

  So fast.

  Looks Away had his shotgun in his hands and as he dove he fired both barrels into the face of the towering pterosaur. The creature towered ten feet above him, but the spray from the sawed-off barrels spread wide, and the entire flight of pellets struck beak and eyes and throat and head, and all of it exploded into a cloud of pink mist. The recoil from the poorly braced weapon hit Looks Away in the center of the chest and sent him into an awkward, crashing fall. He landed hard and his head banged against the ground as the headless pteranodon toppled the other way, slamming into two others and dragging them down.

  There was one single moment of absolute stillness.

  The Kingdom rifle was five feet from where Looks Away lay, but he lay there, shaking his head, dazed, hovering on the edge of blacking out.

  “Looks!” shouted Grey as he flung himself out the n
iche just as three huge beaks stabbed down. He opened up with the Colt and fired at the pteranodons who were recovering from their shock to realize that fresh and helpless meat lay there for the taking.

  Grey scooped up the rifle and thrust it at Looks Away, who had managed to prop himself up on one elbow. His nose was bleeding and he was wheezing like a dying trout.

  “Here, damn it!”

  Grey fired his six rounds, unable to miss at that range.

  Beyond the closest pteranodons there were more.

  So many more.

  At least fifty of the living dead things were crawling through the forest or perched atop the mushroom caps. More circled in the humid air, jealous of their brothers who were close enough to join the impending feast. The stench of their rotting flesh was stifling, overwhelming.

  Grey fumbled at his belt for fresh cartridges, knowing that there was no time left. This was it. All of his roads had led here and this was where he was going to die. Consumed and forgotten.

  “God damn you all to—!”

  That was as far as he got and the world seemed to explode.

  The four closest pteranodons flew apart as if they were straw dolls in a tornado wind. Blood and leather flew everywhere, slapping the other creatures in the faces, painting the mushroom caps with red, and filling the air with the smell of strange blood. A boom, like the echo of a great thunderclap rolled outward toward the sunless sea, and once more the frightened bats fled their refuge and fled like a dark cloud toward the fungi-covered columns.

  The force of the explosion drove Grey to his knees and knocked the gun from his hand. He clapped his hands to his ears and wheeled around, staring at the figure that stood behind him.

  Thomas Looks Away, covered in bat guano and lichen, blood streaming from his nose, teeth bared, eyes wild, stood wide-legged with the Kingdom rifle in his hands. Then he whirled around, raised the weapon again, and fired at the pteranodons atop the mushroom caps that had formed their refuge. The round hit the closest of the beasts, and there was another shocking boom of thunder, and a shockwave picked both men up and flung them against another of the towering mushrooms.