Ghostland

by Duncan Ralston

  If he did die today, Ben wondered how much of his memories, his essence, would remain when the Shōki inevitably absorbed him into his army of ghosts.

  CO-OP MODE

  THERE'S ONE!"

  Out front of the windmill, the newly formed ghost fled two large men in black and white uniforms. Ben recognized them at once: Niko, the security guard who'd told him he looked like he had a strong heart, and his partner, Leonard. The AR headsets jostled on their faces as they chased the frightened ghost.

  Niko raised his left hand and aimed what from a distance looked like a remote control. Blue and white sparks discharged from the end of it and Ben realized Niko was holding a stun gun.

  "No!" Allison cried out.

  The charge struck the ghost in the shoulder and for a moment he became brighter, a being made of pure light. Then each one of his billions of molecules exploded outward—Ben thought of a dying star—and vanished in wisps of thin multicolored smoke.

  As the two guards gave each other a high five and laughed, Allison hopped the fence and bounded up to them.

  "Why the hell did you do that?" she shouted, getting right up into Niko's face, standing on her tiptoes with her hands balled into tight fists. He was at least a foot taller than her and outweighed her by more than hundred pounds, but righteous indignation had overtaken her common sense. She was mad as hell and she wanted an explanation.

  The two men looked at each other as if Allison had lost her mind. "What do you mean?" Niko said. "It was a ghost."

  "He was one of us!" Allison shouted. "He wasn't going to hurt anyone!"

  Leonard, with his bald head and goatee, snorted laughter. "Is she for real? Lady, we been attacked by half a dozen of those things. How are we supposed to know which ones are friendlies and which ones want to take our damned heads off?"

  "Fallujah," Niko said to his partner, and Leonard nodded. Niko, the man Ben thought looked Hawaiian or Maori with his brown skin and tribal tattoos, looked over Allison's shoulder as Ben and Lilian approached the group. "Heyyy, little dude! How's your ticker?"

  "I'm okay. How did you know that would work?"

  "With the stun gun? It was just instinct, man. Those things scare the heck out of me, big time."

  "You're afraid of ghosts and you took a job at Ghostland?" Lilian asked in a condescending tone.

  Niko shrugged. "It's a good-paying gig. Never figured they'd get out of their cages, did we, Leonard?"

  Leonard nodded. "This was definitely not in the training manual."

  "You really shouldn't have done that," Allison muttered.

  "Look, lady—" Leonard began.

  "My name is Allison!"

  "Great. I'm Leonard." He wiped his right hand against his chest and held it out for her to shake. After a moment he retracted it, unshaken. "Good to meet you," he said anyway. "This is Niko. Now that we're all acquainted, let's see if we can come to an understanding. I'm sure we've all seen these things turn on people. One second, they're doing their thing and the next they're tearing someone's throat out. We don't exactly have the time to second guess."

  "You chased him," Allison said bitterly. "He was running away."

  "Technically he was floating, ma'am," Niko said.

  She flashed him a look so cold that he cringed and took a step back, raising his hands. "I, uh… I forgot your name," he said nervously.

  "Allison," she replied through gritted teeth.

  "Allison, right. Sorry. And sorry about the, uh… your ghost friend there. We kinda just got caught up in the moment, didn't we, Leonard?"

  His partner shrugged. "I just think it's pretty cool the way they—" He looked at Allison, who was staring daggers at him, daring him to continue. "I mean they kind of look like fireworks," he finished meekly.

  "Seriously, though," Niko said, scowling at his partner. "We didn't know. I just figured they were all… you know. Because the others tried to kill us. If I could take it back, I honestly would." At this he pressed the hand holding the stun gun against his heart.

  "What's done is done," Allison said, looking down at her hands as she rubbed them together methodically, as though she could still feel the ghost on her fingers. "Dwelling on it isn't going to help."

  "I agree," Leonard said. "Me and Niko were talking about that earlier, weren't we, Niko?"

  "That's right."

  "Tell them what you said to me," Leonard prompted.

  Niko gave his friend a look Ben couldn't decipher. "I was saying, we can sit around freaking out, waiting for someone to come save us, or we can fight our way out of this place."

  "That's what we're doing," Ben said. "But why didn't you guys just walk out the front gate?"

  The guards shared another indecipherable look.

  "Entrance is closed up tight, little dude," Niko said. "Security protocol. Big metal gate came crashing down, landed right on this dude's head, crushed it like a friggin' watermelon. Three feet thick of solid impenetrable steel. There's no way in or out of this park until the protocol is lifted by one of the big bosses."

  "Except for the service hatch," Leonard reminded him.

  "Right. That's where we're heading now."

  Allison looked up from her hands. "Service hatch?"

  Niko nodded. "In the basement of Garrote's house. It's supposed to lead out to the mechanical building on the other side of the fence, only…" He trailed off, looking askance at his partner. Leonard looked down at his own boots.

  "Only what?" Lilian asked.

  "Well, we don't have the door code," Leonard admitted.

  "But a mechanic buddy of ours does," Niko added hopefully. "We just gotta find him."

  "And hope to God he's still alive."

  "Right." Niko sighed, no longer sounding hopeful.

  Ben tried to put their plan together in his mind. It sounded like a longshot, a hail Mary that would only work if all the pieces were in the box and fit together perfectly. "So, you're saying the only way to get out of Ghostland is through a service hatch in the house of the guy who's trying to kill everyone… and we don't even know if we can open the hatch once we get there?"

  Niko and Leonard shared another look.

  "I mean, basically, yeah," Leonard said.

  Allison groaned. "Terrific. Do you happen to have any idea where this friend of yours might be at this moment?"

  Niko and Leonard both made to answer. Leonard nodded for is partner to speak.

  "Last we heard over the coms he got sent out on a service call," Niko said. "Something about the automated doors malfunctioning in the asylum."

  "Asylum?" she said, toying with the beads of her totem, her magic charm. Ben put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from him.

  "With all the places he could go," he said, "I don't think Morton Welles would be sticking around there."

  "I guess we'll have to risk it. No other way out, right? Not like we can walk out the front door or anything. No. The animals are out of their cages and they've got a stupid protocol."

  "Hey, don't you worry, pretty lady," Leonard said, cracking his knuckles. "You've got two big strong men here to protect you now."

  "Three," Ben said, his cheeks flushing with resentment.

  "She's seventeen," Allison said sternly.

  "Eighteen," Lilian corrected her.

  "Hey, hey," Leonard said, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Let's not jump to conclusions here. I was just being nice."

  Allison eyed him with suspicion. "Yeah, well be nice from a respectful distance."

  The big man took two paces back and grinned smugly.

  Niko eyed his partner. "Ma'am—Allison—we only want to get out of here, same as you all. We're all geared-up. You're better off sticking with us." He gave her a toothy smile. "So let's team up, huh?"

  They all agreed. Even Allison nodded begrudgingly.

  Ben wasn't sure how much they could trust Leonard, but Niko was right. Not only was there power in numbers but they could stand to have someone with weapons looking out for them
. If only there were enough stun guns for the rest of them, he would have felt a lot safer.

  Especially now that they were going back, straight into the belly of the beast. Garrote wouldn't let them walk right into his house without a fight. It wasn't going to be easy. But five lives were better than three. And even if Leonard and Niko eventually turned out to be redshirts, at the very least they might provide cover for the rest of them to escape.

  Ben didn't like to think in those terms but that was how things were now. The best he could hope for was for Lilian and himself to make it out alive.

  He didn't want to consider the worst.

  "All right," Niko said, hiking up his pants by the belt. "Let's get moving, huh? Maybe we can get out of this damn place before nightfall." The big man took a step toward the east.

  "The asylum is that way," Lilian said, pointing back the way they'd come.

  Ben nodded. "She's right."

  Niko squinted off in the direction he'd been heading. "Sure, of course it is. Why don't you lead the way? It's Lilian, right?"

  She started around the farmhouse fence. "That's right. And don't forget it."

  Niko chuckled, following along. "I gotta say, you three did a damn good job staying alive so far. You're the first living people we've seen since about ten minutes into the apocalypse."

  "And we didn't even have any weapons," Ben said, hoping to make his point without belaboring the fact that he was just as capable as the two security guards.

  Niko nodded. "That's pretty impressive."

  While they walked, he explained that he and Leonard had been stationed in Afghanistan—what he called the "Sandbox"—together before their battalion had been pulled out. Back in the States, the two of them left the Marines and drifted around taking any odd job they could find. By the time they saw the postings for Ghostland they'd already drifted apart and been living in different states for little over a year. Niko had called Leonard at Leonard's parents' house to tell him about the job. In a strange coincidence, Leonard had just circled the ad himself when the phone rang.

  "It was kismet," Niko said.

  "Or so we thought."

  Niko had taken the bus out from Florida to meet Leonard in Tennessee and the two of them had driven to Duck Falls together in Leonard's old family truck. They'd scheduled their interviews on the same day, a few hours apart. Niko had waited in the car during Leonard's interview, and vice versa. Leonard had been sure he'd botched it. Niko had felt hopeful. They'd stayed overnight at a bed and breakfast in town (Ben knew the owners through his mom—"Nice folks," Leonard said), and both heard back the next morning within minutes of each other.

  "After all that time drifting, we were happy as pigs in shit," Leonard said.

  Niko nodded. "And it was a pretty sweet gig for a hot minute. Decent hours, no night shifts, overtime pay. We rented a killer pad in downtown Duck Falls—"

  "That's where I live," Lilian said. "I've never seen you guys around."

  Leonard shrugged. "Truck's usually parked out back of Green's Antiques. We do most of our shopping in Hagerstown and we're on rotating shifts."

  She said, "I live right across the street from you."

  "Wow. Isn't that weird?"

  Ben noticed Allison watching the exchange with suspicion. Leonard caught her watching him and cleared his throat before busying himself by fiddling with his stun gun.

  The non-disclosure agreement had nearly gotten them into trouble, Niko told them. Everyone employed by Ghostland had been required to sign it, to declare they wouldn't reveal any "proprietary information" about what they saw inside or face legal action.

  "Man, I wanted to blab so bad," Leonard said. "Can't count the times I came close on a good bender at The Blind Duck—"

  "I hate that place," Allison said. "Always so rowdy out front, especially at night."

  "Well, me and Niko have been known to get a little rowdy whilst in our cups, hey, bud?"

  Niko chuckled like a man with a secret and the two of them continued their story. During one of these rowdy nights, Leonard had come closest to spilling the beans. They'd been "putting the moves," in Leonard's words, on a couple of local women when one of their colleagues had swooped in, asking the women if they had ever seen a ghost.

  "Just as this dude's making his pitch to drive the ladies out and show them this place, our supervisor walks up, out of nowhere," Leonard said. "I didn't even know she was in the bar."

  "In our defense, we were pretty hammered," Niko added.

  "And laser-focused," Leonard said, causing Allison to roll her eyes at the implication. "Anyways, this dude gets fired right there in front of us. I didn't feel like blabbing so much after that."

  "I think I read about that in the Squawker," Ben said. The men looked confused so he explained. "It's the town paper. The Duck Falls Squawker."

  "That's a pretty good name, actually," Niko said. Leonard agreed with a shrug and a nod.

  Once Ghostland had made the announcement the job had felt much more secure, Leonard told them. And Niko had never been required to deal with any of the ghosts personally. "They got these lab techs with silver spacesuits, if any of the ghosts start acting weird one of them gets sent in to take care of it," he said.

  "I saw one," Ben said. "In the hangman exhibit. How do those suits work?"

  Niko shrugged. "Beats me. Looks like one of Leonard's clubbing shirts when he forgets to add the fabric softener."

  Leonard chuckled.

  Talk of the lab techs brought Niko around to opening day and the chaos they'd seen before meeting up with Ben and the others. They'd watched people grabbed by flying ghosts—"Reminded me of those flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz," Leonard said—and dropped to the ground, people torn in half, people riddled with phantom bullets and slashed by knives and fingernails, hair pulled out, eyes gouged, intestines ripped from abdomens, skulls stomped, bodies set on fire—

  "Ugh, we get it," Lilian groaned.

  "My bad," Niko said. "I guess me and Leonard are kinda desensitized to it, after what we went through in the Sandbox. Anyways, we tried to help as many people as we could but once we realized it was pretty much a lost cause we got geared up and moving, didn't we, Leonard?"

  "Oorah!" Leonard grunted.

  Ben suddenly remembered the exchange the guards had at the gates with the guy wearing the No Fear T-shirt. "Did you guys bring that gun?" he asked. Niko and Leonard just looked at each other, oblivious. "The handgun," Ben prodded. "The one you confiscated."

  "Oh, the peashooter!" Leonard said. "Nah, we didn't bring that. Forgot all about it, now you mention it. Not that it would do us any good against these things anyway, right?"

  "Yeah, I guess so," Ben said, trying not to sulk. In a Rex Garrote book, if a gun was introduced in the beginning it would show up again at the end. He worried that sooner or later they would find themselves in a situation where a gun would be necessary, and they'd kick themselves for not bringing it along.

  "So where were you three when the shit went down?" Niko asked after a moment of dispirited silence.

  As they passed by the arcade going in the opposite direction, Ben told them about Demont, about the control center and Sara Jane Amblin and Rex Garrote's ghost virus. He told them about what had happened to the inventor and the programmer, and both men seemed genuinely dismayed.

  "So everyone in charge is dead," Niko said. "Anyone who could stop this, get those front gates open."

  Lilian said, "Demont might still be alive."

  Ben agreed that might be so, though he doubted it. Demont had been on his own when he'd left them. The chances of him having survived were pretty low.

  "What I don't understand is why isn't anyone coming to rescue us?" Allison said. "If there's a security protocol, shouldn't the first response be to call the authorities?"

  "Landlines are down," Niko said. "And you mighta noticed you aren't getting any bars on your cell phones—that's because the park tech obstructs cell networks." Lilian nodded at this as if she
had already noticed, and Niko continued. "The security system is supposed to autodial to the police during a shutdown but with the landlines down we're pretty much S.O.L."

  "What's S.O.L.?" Lilian asked.

  "Shit Outta Luck," Niko said.

  Lilian's shoulders slumped.

  "We're on our own here," Leonard said bitterly, watching his boots scuff the pavement. "Nobody's gonna save us but ourselves. The sooner we all get used to that the better."

  "You're right," Lilian said.

  Leonard looked up at her and she gave him a brief sad smile. He resumed looking at his boots, grinning to himself. Ben watched them and wondered if Allison hadn't been right to accuse the man of getting too friendly. Something about that shy, boyish grin troubled him.

  It must have troubled Allison too. She was eyeing the man in distrust and glanced askance to raise an eyebrow at Ben.

  ASYLUM

  EVENTUALLY THE SURVIVORS found themselves back on the now-deserted promenade, where Lilian pointed out the strange creatures congregating there. "Look! Fireflies!" she said.

  Ben had seen them a moment earlier and dismissed them as dust motes caught in the sunshine, a trick of light through the glasses. Looking closer, he realized they looked more like the embers of a nearby fire.

  "What are they?" Allison said, watching the colorful things pitch and yaw. There were dozens of them spanning the width of the promenade, maybe hundreds. Most were light blue, orange or peach but there were various other colors as well.

  "I think they're orbs," Ben said.

  Allison scowled. "Orbs? I thought those were hoaxes?"

  "Well, yeah, usually." Ben watched the strange creatures meet in a swirling mass at the center of the promenade, like a bright, colorful swarm of gnats. "But these are real. They're actually real."

  Lilian reached out to touch one.