Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  The worm burst the ground apart as it rose and rose. Grey felt his mind tumbling, fracturing, disassembling. He was unable to process the size of this thing. It was taller than any building he had ever seen. Taller than the redwoods up north. Grey backed away from it, but with each step he could feel his sanity fragment. The worm seemed to draw back, to tense as if ready to smash itself down and shatter the world. There, inside its shadow once more, the two men stopped trying to run away from something that could not be escaped. The monster blotted out the sun and darkened the sky. All they could hear was the lunatic laughter of Lucky Bob Pearl as the worm from the heart of the earth … exploded.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Grey felt himself falling.

  Except that he was falling the wrong way. His body was in the air, moving fast, propelled by a force like a hurricane wind. However the landscape was not rushing up to meet him. It blew past him. At the same moment that his dazed brain was able to grasp that he was flying sideways, hurled by the explosion of the giant worm, gravity played her card. His lateral flight turned into an arc. And then he was falling. The ground seemed too far away for anything but a crippling impact.

  He closed his eyes.

  He hit the ground. But there was still so much force pushing him sideways that he hit at an angle and went slipping across the desert floor like a skipping stone. When his body finally came to rest, he was half buried in a nest of loose sand and dirt, twigs, pinecones, cactus, and sagebrush. The tumble had twisted him around so that he was looking back the way he’d come. He saw the worm.

  What was left of the worm. Forty feet of it still protruded rudely from the ground. The rest, though, had been torn apart. Massive chunks of it were scattered across the landscape. Smaller red pieces continued to fall for a long time, and a thin red rain fell across everything as the last of the monster’s blood fell down to paint the place where it had died.

  Grey could not understand what had just happened. The shot Looks Away fired had done damage, but not enough. What, then, could have done this? It made no sense to his shocked and battered brain.

  Then he saw someone. A man. A stranger. A black man of about sixty, with a grizzled white goatee and sideburns. He was short, round but not fat, dressed in brown tweed despite the heat, wearing a tan top hat and leather gloves. Instead of spectacles, the man wore a leather band set with wide, flat lenses that were tinted the same eerie blue as the lightning Grey had seen when he first met Looks Away. The man approached him in a series of quick, nervous steps. When he was ten feet away, he asked the very same question Looks Away had asked him back in Nevada.

  “Have I killed you, white man?”

  Grey tried to say something. Anything. He felt the moment needed some kind of commentary, something to anchor it to common sense and ordinary understanding.

  What he said was, “Uhhh.”

  Then he felt himself falling again. Into darkness this time.

  He never felt himself land.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  He was awake before he opened his eyes.

  Grey accepted that he had been unconscious. Not just asleep, but totally out of it. Why, and for how long, were mysteries. Where he currently was provided another mystery.

  In a bed, though. He could feel a mattress under him. A pillow supporting his aching head. A sheet over him.

  He couldn’t feel his clothes.

  I’m naked, he thought, and even though he knew that this was an accurate assessment, it felt strange to think it. Then he realized that he was focusing on that more than on the fact that he was alive.

  Alive.

  He didn’t want to move until he was sure he was somewhere safe. Once, when he had been briefly captured by Confederate soldiers in the last days of the war, he had feigned being unconscious while he assessed his situation. He did that now.

  If he was naked then he did not have his weapons.

  On the other hand he was in a bed rather than in shackles.

  He focused his senses on his chest, searching for any ache or strangeness that might indicate that he had been taken by Deray and turned into a mindless walking corpse. Or one of the more conscious but no less dead Harrowed. But there was nothing that hinted at the presence of a ghost rock implant.

  Which meant that he was alive and he was himself. So where was he?

  There were no sounds. But there were … smells. He realized with a start that he was smelling coffee. Biscuits. And bacon.

  Grey opened his eyes just a fraction and immediately knew that he was not alone at all.

  She sat there.

  Lovely. Her blond hair pinned up, a smoke-colored shawl around her shoulders, her eyes filled with questions and concern. And in the slanting light of late afternoon, she looked so much like that other woman. The lost one. The one he’d failed.

  Like Annabelle.

  She even sat like her, the same posture and angle. The same depth of thought in those beautiful blue eyes. The impression was so powerful, so intense that Grey began to doubt whether it was her. Had everything else been a dream? The years on the road, the battles, the endless lonely nights? Was meeting Looks Away part of that dream? Was Paradise Falls and Deray and all of this madness nothing more than the product of some fevered dream? Grey had been helpless once in Annabelle’s house. Recovering from a bullet wound to the chest, he had lingered in a fevered haze for weeks while she tended him. He remembered that morning, waking up after the fever broke, seeing her sitting there, exactly as she was now.

  As Jenny Pearl was.

  If it was Jenny at all.

  If anything was real at all.

  He tried to pull himself back from the edge of dreams, of fantasies. He made himself say the right name.

  He said, “Jenny…?”

  But her face clouded with doubt, and like an after-echo Grey realized that, despite all of his determination, he’d spoken the wrong name.

  He’d said, “Annabelle…”

  He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Then he felt soft lips kiss his closed eyelids. Then his forehead. Then his lips. “No,” she breathed, “don’t be sorry.”

  “I—.”

  “Did you love her?” asked Jenny.

  Grey was not a man much given to tears but he felt them burn his eyes beneath his lids. He wanted to turn away from Jenny, to push her back, to flee this moment. He could feel her breath on his skin. It was strangely hot.

  “Tell me,” she asked, her voice soft but insistent. “Did you love your Annabelle?”

  He winced. “Yes,” he whispered. “I loved her and … I…”

  There was a sharp knock on the door, and Jenny jerked backward. Grey opened his eyes and turned as Looks Away and the black man entered without invitation. Looks Away had a bandage wrapped around his forehead and another around his right arm. He was dressed in clean clothes, though. More of Lucky Bob’s castoffs.

  “Ah,” he said brightly, “you’re alive. Jolly good.”

  He hooked a wooden chair with his foot and dragged it over, sat down and waved the older man to a rocker in the corner. Grey nearly whipped the sheet away and stood up, but remembered that he was naked. Instead he pushed himself to a sitting position as Jenny stood up and went over to stand by the foot of the bed. The Sioux seemed to be excited to the point of enthusiasm. He leaned his forearms on his knees and grinned. “Now we have a real chance at this, eh, old boy?”

  “Chance at what? What are you talking about?” demanded Grey.

  The smile flickered. “Why, at fighting Deray, what else?”

  “What are you talking about? We barely got out of there with our heads attached. If you hadn’t shot that worm we’d be dead.”

  “Me? Ha! You saw what happened when I shot the beast. It barely twitched.”

  “Then…?”

  “The victory,” said Looks Away, “belongs to the good doctor.”

  He gestured to the older man. Which is when Grey’s bruised brain put two and two togethe
r. He pointed at the stranger in the tweed suit.

  “You’re Doctor Saint!”

  The man smiled and bowed his head. “I am indeed. Percival Saint at your service, sir.”

  Saint had a deep, cultured voice that still carried soft undertones of the deep South of his youth. He leaned forward and offered his hand, which Grey shook.

  “I hear you’ve had quite the series of adventures, Mr. Torrance,” said Saint. “Looks has told me the whole story, and anything he might have overlooked was filled in by Brother Joe and Miss Pearl. I’m sorry that you’ve become embroiled in our little war out here in what’s left of California. That said, I’m sure we’re all glad to have a capable gunhand on our side.”

  “Thanks, and I’m glad they filled you in,” said Grey, “but how about you folks filling me in on what the hell’s going on? The last thing I remember is that worm exploding. If Looks didn’t kill it, who did? Was that you? If so, how?”

  Saint nodded and leaned back. He fished a pipe from his jacket pocket and filled the bowl with tobacco, then leaned forward as Looks Away struck a match and held it out for him. The scientist puffed for a few moments, taking his time before launching into his tale.

  “Looks Away told you that I have been doing some consulting for the Confederate States of America.”

  “Yes.”

  “You look surprised.”

  Grey shrugged. “You escaped from the South.”

  “It was a different South back then,” said Saint. “And I was a child. The world, as has been noted by philosophers, has moved on since then. America is no longer the emerging, young nation it was when I was a lad. Now it is a fractured and troubled place. There are grave threats to this great land. Some from without—because there are many countries who would love to conquer the New World, England among them. Germany is on the rise. Russia would like to build a new global Empire. And we need to be cautious of Spain ever since they began building their new Conquistador Fleet with ghost rock engines.” He shook his head. “The Great Quake may have changed America, but as a result ghost rock is changing the world. We are poised on the brink of the greatest industrial revolution since the invention of steel. Maybe even since the invention of the wheel.” He shook his head. “You look skeptical…”

  “Actually I’m not. I saw enough down in those caverns to make a believer out of me,” said Grey. “What bothers me is what we can do about it. Deray has an army. We don’t.”

  Saint’s reply was a smile. He had heavily lidded eyes and they were useful, it seemed to Grey, for the scientist to keep his thoughts to himself. He was a hard man to read.

  Grey turned to Looks Away. “Tell me about—,” he began, then snapped his mouth shut. He had almost asked what had happened to Lucky Bob Pearl. But, Jenny was right there. Instead, Grey said, “Tell me about the worm.”

  “That was all Doctor Saint,” said Looks Away. “Look, I have to back up a little. After we left town yesterday morning, we missed Doctor Saint’s return by less than two hours.”

  “Unfortunate timing,” said Saint, nodding.

  “I wanted to ride after you,” said Jenny. “But—.”

  “But I convinced her to stay here in town,” said Saint. “Once she explained what was happening I realized that we needed to step up our preparations for what was inevitably going to happen. She told me about the undead attacking the town.”

  “Did she tell you about the flying machine?” asked Grey.

  Jenny blinked. “Flying…?”

  Grey explained what he’d seen, though his description was sparse. Looks Away nodded, and added, “I think it might have had a gas-envelope and motors to drive it. I only saw it for a few moments, but that was my impression. The body was like a frigate, but it had a balloon instead of sails.”

  “A frigate of the clouds,” mused Saint. “How elegant.”

  “It scared the hell out of me,” said Grey. “It’s unnatural.”

  “Unnatural? No. Only primitive minds regard science as something to be feared. Surely, Mr. Torrance, you are not so dim as that. This is an age of invention. What you saw was a lighter-than-airship. There’s no magic to it. There are several already in use around the world. Lovely things. Like whales in the air.”

  “Not sure ‘lovely’ is a word I’d paint on the side of what I saw,” said Grey.

  “I expect not,” agreed Saint. “If I were to encounter one over a battlefield, I suppose I would use a completely different set of adjectives. However my comment stands. The designs for such machines are elegant. It’s something that has been in trial-and-error stages for centuries. Da Vinci, bless his heart, designed one, although it was unworkable. Nice thought, though. I have my own sketches somewhere…”

  “Doctor,” said Looks Away gently.

  “Ah, yes, yes, my boy,” said Saint with a grandfatherly chuckle. “The airship you saw was very likely the command vessel used by Deray. From what I’ve been told, the storm seemed to accompany the attack, correct?”

  Grey nodded. “It was a weird storm. Like the undead were using it as some kind of camouflage.”

  “Very likely they were. There have been a number of very interesting papers on using the properties of ghost rock to seed the clouds, and there is sufficient energetic discharge to initiate lightning.” He stopped and smiled self-consciously. “I do go on, don’t I?”

  “Short version of that,” said Grey, “is that Deray can control storms, raise the dead, and fly through the air.”

  “Well … that’s oversimplified, but…”

  “But yes,” said Jenny.

  “Yes,” agreed Looks Away.

  “And he has those mechanical carriages. Tanks, he calls them,” said Grey. “And rifles a lot like your Kingdom guns.”

  “That’s very disturbing,” murmured Doctor Saint. “Making the weapons is not complicated, not for a scientist. Mass-producing the ammunition for it … well, that’s the thing. Either Deray has found a limitless supply of ghost rock, or his research is driving his designs in the same direction as what I came up with.”

  The room fell into silence.

  Then Jenny said, “And that metal man? Samson?”

  “Yes,” said Saint, “please tell me about that again. Describe it in as much detail as possible.”

  They did, with Grey and Looks Away taking turns to fill in what little they knew. Saint did not look happy.

  “That is most troubling. A mechanical soldier powered by the rock would be a formidable thing.”

  “You don’t say,” murmured Grey.

  “No, what I mean is that building such a thing is difficult enough. Many engineers and scientists have tried. The Wasatch Railroad has been using mechanical workers for years so they can keep pace with the vertical expansion of cities like New York and Chicago. With land acreage at a premium, everyone knows that we have to build up in order to grow. Steelworkers who are themselves made of steel would be invaluable. Metal men make for a new kind of slave labor force that never complain and no one will ever go to war to free them. Why should they? They’re steam and iron and gears. But, Grey, those machines are crude and even clumsy in comparison to this. Samson is beyond anything I’ve ever even heard about. Something like that could not possibly have been built simply for labor.”

  “No argument. I don’t think Deray is trying to build affordable office space,” said Grey sourly. “Samson is a killer.”

  “I agree,” said Saint, “and that’s what is so troubling. One of the problems we’ve faced when considering either mechanical armor or independently operating machine men is the speed. They are simply not fast enough to be of use in combat because a field piece—a howitzer, say—could take them down.”

  “Samson was faster than goddamn lightning,” said Grey.

  “Right. That is the key. Deray has discovered a way to make his machines move at great speed. That is a truly, truly frightening thought.” Saint puffed his pipe and for a moment he did nothing more than stare at the smoke.

 
Grey said, “You still haven’t told me about the worm.”

  “Ah,” said Looks Away with a grin. “Remember that Kingdom cannon I showed you at the doctor’s shop?”

  “Oh,” said Grey. “How’d you—?”

  “It took twenty men and a lot of sweat to put that son of a whore on the back of my best wagon,” said Jenny. “And then it took us all damn night to drive out there. We got halfway to Chesterfield’s spread by dawn.”

  “What made you risk it?” asked Grey, alarmed. “That road is treacherous.”

  “This young lady,” said Saint, “has eyes like a cat. She can see better in the dark than I ever could. She found paths that a goat wouldn’t take. I must admit that I was sweating lead ingots all the way.”

  Jenny gave him a small enigmatic smile and glanced down at her hand for a moment. “I’m a lot like my pa,” she said. “He was always a good night hunter, too.”

  “You brought the Kingdom cannon out there, and you shot the worm?”

  “Yes,” said Saint, “and yes.”

  “And not before time, either,” said Looks Away. “I thought we’d bloody well had it.”

  “We should have had it,” said Grey. “We’ve been coasting on borrowed luck since the attack on the town.”

  Again Jenny looked down at her hands. Again there was that small half-smile. Grey wondered what it meant.

  “If we have the Kingdom cannon,” said Grey after giving it all some thought, “doesn’t that mean we stand a chance? Even against Samson?”

  “A chance?” mused Doctor Saint slowly, tasting that concept. “A small chance, perhaps. The Kingdom cannon is a prototype. I have enough ghost rock for maybe five rounds—and even then it’s likely the internal works will overheat after the second or third shot. It’s also an unwieldy thing. We would need to direct Samson into its direct line of fire.”

  “Damn. What about the Kingdom rifle? That thing was pretty handy.”

  “Yes, and the fact that it did not overheat is encouraging,” said Saint. “It’s never been fired that many times before.”