Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  Those terrible eyes.

  They glowed with fire. Actual fire. Its head was a furnace for burning ghost rock, and when it threw wide its jaws, the screams of the tormented damned shook the pillars of Hell.

  The generals—even those men who had witnessed the horrors of Deray’s caverns—recoiled in abject horror as the metal giant raised his fists and clenched them together. The squeal of steel cut through the air.

  The giant walked boldly forward and the soldiers broke ranks and fled. The bravest formed defensive groups around their officers. The brute clanked all the way across the field, and the prisoners fled in all directions and would have escaped had a few of Deray’s own men not beat them back.

  Aleksander Deray raised one thin hand, and the giant stopped.

  Just like that. He stood behind Deray and slowly, slowly closed his mouth so that the screams of the damned inside the burning ghost rock were muted. Not gone, but quieter, as if even those in Hell hung on whatever the necromancer would do or say next.

  Deray smiled. His lips peeled back from white teeth that looked too straight and too sharp to Grey.

  “This,” he said softly, “is power.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Grey leaned close and whispered in Looks Away’s ear. “We have to get out of here right goddamn now.”

  “And do what?”

  “Warn people,” said Grey.

  “Who?” retorted the Sioux. “The law in Lost Angels? They’re every bit as corrupt as these bastards.”

  “No,” said Grey, “I was thinking of warning people that could do something about this. The U.S. Army, for one. And maybe your people, too. You think Deray would hesitate for one second to march across the borders of the Sioux Nation?”

  Looks Away chewed his lip and did not immediately answer.

  On the plain, a general in the uniform of the Dutch army cleared his throat and nudged his horse a few steps forward. His men clustered around him, guns pointing at the metal man.

  “My lord,” said the general, addressing Deray, “I have heard rumors of some fantastical constructs but never believed that they were real. Even with all of the wonders we have seen since the discovery of ghost rock. But … tell me, you have sold us many millions in weapons and equipment and now you show us this. What are we to think? Have you saved the best for last, or have you kept the best for yourself?”

  Deray smiled. “A bit of both,” he said as he walked over and patted the steel giant on the shin, “and neither. Samson here is not for sale. Not yet, at least. He is a prototype. A one of a kind, the poor fellow. Quite alone in the world.”

  “Then this is—what? An entertainment?”

  “No, my friend,” said Deray. “Samson is a glimpse into the future. It will take years for me to build a legion of brothers for him. Years. During that time you and your fellow generals will conquer your lands. That will take time, even with my rifles and tanks.” He gave an elaborate shrug. “Let it take time. Revel in it. Bathe yourself in the blood of those too weak to defy you. Cleanse your lands of all who do not bend their knee to your will. If that takes years, then so be it. How much grander will be the stories that history will tell?”

  The generals exchanged looks with each other. There were doubts there, and suspicion, Grey could see that, but after a few moments they all nodded. After all, they had their guns and their tanks.

  “And when the wars are over?” asked an Italian general.

  Deray smiled at him. It was not a nice smile. “Then, my brothers, you will need to defend what you have taken. And that is where Samson comes in. He and his brothers. They will be the police who will guard your borders and crush any who raise voices against you. By the time you have conquered your lands, the Iron Legion will be there to maintain control.”

  The generals looked at the giant. Doubt was still written on their faces.

  The Russian general said, “Show us. He is impressive, yes, but he is large. He is an easy target.”

  “Is he?” asked Deray casually. “Is he indeed?”

  He turned to his sergeant and snapped his fingers. The man hurried over and snapped off as crisp and professional a salute as Grey had ever seen. “Sir!”

  “Arm the prisoners. Give them each a rifle. Make sure the guns are loaded.”

  The sergeant saluted again and called for their corporals, who were apparently prepared for this. The foreign soldiers buzzed and shifted, their guns tracking the prisoners, while the prisoners looked confused and frightened.

  Deray addressed them. “Listen to me,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “you are all in the employ of Nolan Chesterfield. Or you were. Some of you took my coin and yet answered to him, and for that I should feed you to the creatures in this cavern.”

  The men trembled as the corporals handed them their rifles. Most of the men held the weapons away from themselves as if trying to gain distance from whatever was about to happen. One man refused to take a rifle and the sergeant drew a wooden truncheon and began beating the man, shouting at him to take the gun. Bleeding and on his knees, the wretch took it and clutched it to his chest, weeping over it.

  “You each deserve to die, you know that,” continued Deray as if the beating had not happened. “And yet I will give you a single chance to live.”

  The prisoners looked sharply at him now.

  “Take those weapons. They are real and they are loaded. No tricks. Take them and use those guns to kill me. Do that and I promise you—I give you my word of honor—that you will be set free with no further harm and enough gold so that you can live like kings.”

  The men stared at him, and then down at the guns in their hands.

  “It’s not a trick, I assure you,” said Deray as he raised his arms to the side so that he stood cruciform before them. “Kill me and earn your freedom. Kill me and live out your lives in luxury and excess with all the whores and whiskey that money will buy. Kill me and you are free. Do it. Do it now.”

  Most of the men were too frightened to move. The gathered soldiers and their officers were clearly alarmed by this.

  “Don’t be a fool, man,” cried one of the generals.

  But in that moment a single prisoner raised his rifle and fired. He was forty feet from Aleksander Deray, and he snapped off four lightning quick shots.

  There was a blur and a fragment of a scream and then the air was filled with a red mist and pieces of torn flesh flew everywhere. The man with the rifle was gone. And in the spot where he stood was the clenched fist of Samson.

  It had been that fast.

  Too fast.

  Inhuman, supernaturally fast. Nothing on earth could move that fast. It had to be a trick.

  Had to be.

  The other prisoners stared in abject, uncomprehending horror. Their faces and bodies were painted with blood and dripping bits of meat.

  The generals stared slack-jawed, as horrified in their way as the prisoners were. The soldiers cried out and fell back.

  Then Samson was among the prisoners.

  He moved like greased lightning, swinging his fists, stamping with gigantic feet. The men fired at him and the bullets whanged off and whined high into the distance. One ricochet hit a Prussian soldier in the thigh and his comrades gunned the prisoner down.

  That was the only man the giant did not kill.

  One intrepid man dove away and tried to fire from the hip as he came out of a roll. The bullet missed Deray and punched a hole in the air above the place where Grey and Looks Away hid. A heartbeat later the man was gone, replaced by a crimson smear on the ground.

  And then it was over.

  All of the prisoners were dead.

  Only one was whole—the one who had been shot. The others were pulped into red ruin.

  Leaving a stunned audience.

  And Nolan Chesterfield.

  The man knelt there, drenched in the blood of the men he had hired, his eyes wild, screams piercing. He beat insanely at his own face, his mind broken.

  The gia
nt turned slightly toward Deray, but the necromancer shook his head. Instead he used two fingers to pluck a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket. He put it between his lips and blew. The sound was all too familiar, and a moment later it was answered by a screech from above. Then all of the soldiers fell back in fear as a pteranodon swooped down out of the darkness and plucked Chesterfield away.

  Not all of him.

  Just his head.

  The fat body knelt for a moment longer, blood geysering from the ragged stump of his neck. Then it fell slowly over, twitched once, and lay still.

  Silence, profound and massive, dropped over the plain.

  Then someone began clapping. It was the Prussian. He stood up in the stirrups and began pounding his hands together.

  After a moment the other generals joined in.

  The soldiers hooted and shouted.

  Deray, his arms still held out to his sides, turned in a slow circle as everyone applauded. The cheers rose above the plain and threatened to tear down the heavens.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  The demonstration of Deray’s power seemed to be at an end. Grey and Looks Away ducked even lower as the generals dismounted and went over to shake hands with Deray. Servants in white brought trays of glasses and there were many toasts to conquest and success.

  “That’s our cue to get the hell out of here,” said Grey. “Let them get drunk.”

  Looks Away nodded and began leading the way along the ragged line of boulders. When they were a hundred yards from the scene of slaughter, they paused. The last rock in the line was big enough to hide them both, and they could see a clear path that led down to the shoreline. If they could reach it, then they could try and make their way back to Chesterfield’s basement.

  The only problem was that between their rock and the safety of the distant shoreline was an open space of nearly five hundred yards. Crossing that without being seen was virtually impossible. The soldiers were at ease and still milling around. Some admiring their new tanks, others staring in wondrous appreciation at the gleaming hulk of Samson. Grey noted that no one looked at the smears of red. Was it cold dismissal? Indifference? Or were they afraid to see what these new machines could do to bodies as frail as their own?

  Grey had to believe it was the latter more than anything.

  He was a soldier, too. Maybe he no longer wore the uniform, but his life had been defined by warfare. He’d grown up during the age when machines were replacing men. There were factories in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia where machines clanked along day and night while the former factory workers starved. Metal warships were fast replacing wood and sailcloth. And now this. Horseless carriages that could bring cannons right up to the enemy’s gates, and metal monsters who could slaughter ordinary flesh-and-blood soldiers with impunity. It was ghastly.

  Some of this was the result of ghost rock and the scientific leaps that had occurred since its discovery. Some—perhaps much—was simply that the world had changed. It was no longer the one he’d been born into thirty-three years ago.

  “We have to warn people,” he said again.

  Looks Away nodded. “If it’s not too late.”

  The gap between shelter and escape seemed to stretch for a million miles.

  “I, um…,” began Looks Away nervously, “could cause a distraction. You could slip away…”

  “Nice gesture, but no. We both get out.”

  “How?”

  “I—,” Grey was about to answer when he saw a familiar figure walk out from between the gates. Tall, dressed in black, wearing a gun slung low on his hip. He walked with a pantherish grace and came to stand with Deray and the generals. Looks Away saw him at the same moment and seized Grey’s wrist in a crushing grab.

  “Look!” he cried. “That’s—.”

  “Lucky Bob Pearl,” finished Grey. The Harrowed accepted a glass of wine and sipped it, his dark eyes roving over the faces of the generals. Then they all laughed at something Deray said. Lucky Bob’s laugh looked and sounded genuine, but Grey wasn’t fooled. Those eyes were the eyes of the dead.

  They were demon eyes, and he could only imagine what things a manitou would find amusing. Certainly not a conversational witticism.

  Deray separated himself from his guests and stood apart with Lucky Bob, their heads bent together in private conversation. Grey and Looks Away were too far away to hear a word of it.

  “Well, they certainly seem chummy,” observed Looks Away.

  “Whatever they’re talking about, I don’t much like it.”

  They crouched there, tense and uncertain, for nearly half an hour. Then fortune dealt another card.

  It was one of the soldiers who spotted her. An Italian, who was standing atop the tank his general had bought. He happened to peer off toward the path that led down to the chasm. He frowned, cupped his hands around his eyes, and stiffened. He pointed and rattled off something in Italian. Other men turned. And eventually, so did Aleksander Deray and Lucky Bob Pearl.

  They all turned as a slim figure in sheer gossamer walked with languorous slowness toward them. Her body was ripe, her hair a mass of black curls, her eyes as dark as a midnight sky.

  Although they did not look it from that distance, Grey knew those eyes were green.

  The woman called out a name. “Deray!”

  The necromancer stiffened, and beside him Lucky Bob went for his gun, but Deray stayed him with a gesture. He shook his head and a dark smile blossomed on his face.

  Grey heard Looks Away utter a low moan of sick despair.

  His friend spoke her name.

  “Veronica.”

  The dead woman walked toward the gathered men who stood waiting for her as if this were all part of some prearranged drama. It was not, of course, and Grey found himself frightened by what Deray might do to the woman who wore the skin of the woman his friend had loved.

  “What’s she doing?” demanded Looks Away in a strangled whisper.

  Veronica did not walk directly to where Deray stood, but instead angled over to stand in front of the silent giant, Samson. All eyes were on her.

  “I think … I think she’s giving us a chance,” said Grey.

  To do what—?”

  “To live,” said Grey, then he amended it. “To get out of here alive.”

  “But why? That’s not even Veronica. It’s a mockery of her. A ghost or whatever damned thing she’s become. She’s in league with those sods. She’s come to tell them we’re here and—”

  “No,” said Grey, touching his companion’s arm. “I don’t think so. Whatever else she is, that woman is no friend to Deray, which means Veronica’s on our side.”

  “Impossible. Veronica is dead. Lost.”

  Grey glanced at him. The tone of Looks Away’s words was harsh and bitter, but the look on his face told a different story. There was a complexity of emotions warring on the Sioux’s features. Anger and gried, pain … and something else.

  Love?

  Grey did not know what his friend truly felt for the dead woman, but he suspected that Looks Away had been greatly underplaying his affection for Veronica. That made this all so much more terrible.

  Everyone on the plain had turned to stare. Veronica had become the center of all attention. Of course she was. Tall and beautiful, with a voluptuous body clearly visible through the sheer fabric and each curve accentuated by the blue-white light that burned within. Grey imagined that many of the soldiers would be afraid of her, repelled by her, but nevertheless enthralled. He hadn’t known the woman in life, but in death she was magnificent.

  Aleksander Deray, flanked by Lucky Bob Pearl and the cluster of generals, approached her but they did so without haste and perhaps with a bit of understandable caution.

  For the generals, Grey assumed it was fear and caution. For Deray? Probably curiosity and maybe some appreciation for whatever was about to happen. He had that kind of look on his ascetic face.

  Lucky Bob was smiling a cold, cold smile as he followed his m
aster.

  So many smiles. As if this was something wonderful, as if it was something unlooked-for but delightful. Like an improbable meeting of old friends on some unlikely street.

  He took his companion’s arm and began pulling him toward the open space they needed to cross.

  “We have to go.”

  “I can’t leave her there,” said Looks Away, tugging his arm free.

  “We have to.”

  On the field Veronica and Deray now stood a dozen paces away. Grey could hear a faint murmur of their conversation, but he couldn’t make out a single word.

  “Looks—come on,” snapped Grey.

  “No! They’ll kill her.”

  Grey grabbed his shoulder and turned him around roughly, then he bent close. “They already have. Don’t you get that? They murdered Veronica and now whatever of her is left of her is trying to save us.”

  Looks Away stared at him. Conflicted and appalled.

  “It’s not her,” said Grey in a kinder tone than he’d used a moment before. “Listen to me, brother, she’s gone. Veronica’s gone. Now her ghost is giving us a chance…”

  Looks Away still didn’t move. Grey tightened his grip on the other man’s shoulder. “Do you want Veronica’s death to mean nothing? Do you want Deray to get away with this?”

  “No…” was Looks Away’s almost soundless reply.

  “Then we need to get more men and more weapons. We can’t win this fight. We can’t even fight this fight. Not now. Smart soldiers know when to retreat from the battle so they can re-engage when they have better odds.”

  “I’m no damn soldier,” said the Sioux, slapping Grey’s hand away.

  “Yeah … you are. We both are. We’re at war with Aleksander Deray,” said Grey. “We have to make a choice. Fight now and almost certainly lose. Or fight later when we have a plan and a chance, and maybe actually kill that evil son of a bitch.”

  Looks Away unslung the Kingdom rifle. “I could kill him now.”