Ghostlands
( Magic Time - 3 )
Marc Scott Zicree
Robert Charles Wilson
Marc Scott Zicree, Robert Charles Wilson
Ghostlands
If anything is taught here, it is simply the charting of the life of someone who started out to somewhere-and went.
— Ray Bradbury
We make our own ghosts, and then give them permission to haunt us.
— Magic Time: Angelfire
PROLOGUE
Grant Park, Chicago
Life is loss, Cal Griffin thought, standing in the chill wind off Lake Michigan, the dawn light like a held breath. Magic hour.
Magritte’s flames were dying to embers now, the ashes whipping in the breeze to dust their hair and shoulders and eyelashes. Another friend gone: Magritte, the flare, who had found sanctuary of a sort with Enid Blindman, then a true home in Goldie. Magritte had known much of the streets and of loneliness, and little of trust.
She had trusted Cal.
Cal and Doc and Colleen had set the wood and primed it, and Goldie himself had laid the empty husk of the girl-sprite-still nearly weightless-onto the pyre. A new use for Grant Park, Cal reflected, as so many places and things had found new use. No more antiseptic Forest Lawn, where they carted the bodies off and sanitized them and put them on pristine display. No, death is its true self here, and no one keeps clean hands.
The somber-sweet a cappella of Enid’s funeral song trailed away, his face turned to heaven, shining like cherrywood in the rose light. He moved off with Venus, who gulped back her tears, and Howard Russo, who bunched his shoulders and squinted his big grunter eyes against the pallid glare, despite his sunglasses.
A last stop for them as autumn waned, before they returned to the Preserve, to Mary McCrae and Kevin Elk Sings and the other strays and changelings. All the new combinations, the surrogate families, the desperate, brave attempts to find security and belonging in a world that had shattered to fragments.
Cal glanced at Doc and Colleen, grouped together in the unspoken way that declared a country with borders all its own. Cal felt a pang of loss, and yet was not surprised. They were right together, she so hard on the outside and sensitive within, he with his air of gentility and subtle inner strength.
They would need that in the days ahead. They would need each other.
As for Cal, whatever longings he felt or imagined futures he might once have entertained, he knew he needed to relinquish. He could little afford encumbrances now, attachments to slow him or bring hesitation or doubt.
He had an appointment in the West.
In the early days of last summer, a world away and a lifetime ago, a shock wave had spread out of the unknown heart of the country, a tremor that had stilled all machines permanently, had leeched away their energies to power other dread forces, and left its mark on every man, woman and child.
Most had stayed human-pitifully, inadequately human. A few discovered they had strange new powers to move objects at a distance, or cast fear, or otherwise alarm the populace.
And a minority-the outcasts, Cal recognized, the most fragile or emotionally distanced-found themselves changed physically in ways that reflected their inner natures. Some-like his own lost sister, Tina-metamorphosed into ethereal, radiant creatures that came to be known in some parts as flares or angelfire. Still others were compacted into grunters; loathsome, powerful homunculi that ran in packs and kept to the dark places of the earth. But even here there were eccentric loners, like Howard Russo, who eschewed the more repugnant pursuits of their fellows and who could be trusted-who could be friends.
Then there were dragons.
Ely Stern, lawyer supreme and Cal’s former boss, had transformed into one of those appalling rarities, back in Manhattan, where Cal’s long pilgrimage had begun. A brilliant man, Stern, and a monster, really, even before the Change laid its weighty hand on him.
Stern’s extreme makeover had unshackled him, freed him at last to do things he had previously only dreamt of. So he had tried to kill Cal on several occasions, perhaps out of some sick need for payback, some attempt to quash traits he sensed in Cal that he himself could never have.
Or it might not have been that at all. Cal realized he had never truly understood Stern, that the man-the dragon-had in the end been a total enigma to him.
At any rate, Stern had been the first to abduct Tina, when she was wracked by fever in the midst of her transformation, mistakenly believing that only the two of them were changing, that somehow she was fated to share his road. Stern had spirited her away to an aerie atop the dead office building where he and Cal once worked, had oddly been something of a midwife to Tina during the final stage of her rebirth. Incredibly, in his twisted, halting way, Stern had been gentle with her, even solicitous.
Stern, who, to Cal’s knowledge, had never spoken kindly of any woman-or man, for that matter. Who, as far as Cal had observed, had no kindness within him.
In the end, to get his sister back, Cal had been forced to put a sword through him, and Stern had fallen eighty stories and more onto a Manhattan sidewalk.
Cal stared up into the swirl of smoke from Magritte’s funeral pyre, imagined it had taken on a dragon shape. Dead now? You would think so after a fall like that. But it was a world of cruel miracles and surprises.
Cal had been able to keep Tina with him for a time, as they had cobbled together their own makeshift clan out of friends and strangers: Colleen Brooks, who had been a mechanic in Cal’s office building and a neighbor down the block (though Cal hadn’t known it); Doc Lysenko, sidewalk hot-dog vendor, former physician, and veteran of Chernobyl; and finally Herman Goldman, Goldie of the subway tunnels, odd foragings and unreliable wonders.
They had set off in search of the source of the Change, to see if they could somehow staunch it, unmake what it had made. In the woods of Albermarle County, they’d come upon Secret Service agent Larry Shango, on his own urgent mission, and he had gifted them with the forbidden knowledge he carried-that the disaster that had upended the world had possibly stemmed from a classified program known, ironically enough, as the Source Project, its precise composition and location unknown. After his many tribulations, Shango had emerged with nothing more than a partial list of names of the scientists manning the project, and the towns and cities they had made their homes before relocating to the Source.
In Boone’s Gap, West Virginia, Cal had ultimately met up with one of them, Dr. Fred Wishart, who was no longer human but something immeasurably more pitiless and powerful, single-mindedly bent on maintaining the life of his comatose twin brother, Bob, even if it meant draining the life force from all who lived within the town.
Cal and his friends had succeeded in saving Boone’s Gap, but at a terrible cost-both Wishart and Tina had been yanked back to whatever dwelled at the Source, the malignant Awareness that seized not only the two of them but seemingly all flares anywhere not protected by some countering force.
As for the other scientists at the Source Project-Dr. Marcus Sanrio, who spearheaded the effort, his immediate subordinate Agnes Wu, all the other diverse talents who had likely unleashed this maelstrom on the world-Cal didn’t know the least thing about them; whom they loved, who grieved for them, what had made them, in the end, living human beings.
Whoever or whatever they might be now.
After Tina had been seized from him, Cal had known only one goal, one drive-to find her, to safeguard her. Colleen and Doc and Goldie, bless them, had thrown in their lot with him, set off in search of Tina and the Source, carried where it beckoned, rootless as dandelions in the wind.
It had led them to the remarkable blues guitarist Enid Blindman and his
companion Magritte, by whose symbiotic relationship each kept the other safe. They protected numerous other flares, as well, shielding them with a bizarre melange of music and magic while they led them to a place known only as the Preserve-a place that had its own arcane defenses against the Source.
But Enid’s gift brought with it a curse, and in trying to dislodge it, Cal and his friends, along with Enid and Magritte, and Enid’s former manager, Howard Russo, had journeyed to Chicago. And in that journey, Magritte and Goldie had forged a bond as strong as it was unlikely. Neither had dreamed it possible-the manic-depressive transient and the hooker turned angel.
Cal thought for a time that own his answer might lie here, that he would find his sister and the end of the road, whatever that end might be. But he had found only a bizarre and terrible puppet called Primal-a puppet whose strings were pulled by Clayton Devine, former Maintenance Crew Chief of the Source Project. Maintenance and security had been his specialties, and he had maintained and secured Chicago, held sway over it for himself and his followers for a time, until Cal and his friends brought it all tumbling down…and Magritte sacrificed her life to save Goldie-to save them all.
Another soul distorted by the dark energy of the Source, Devine had disguised himself in stolen power-insulation from the scrutiny and reach of the more powerful Entity at its heart. A futile attempt in the end, as futile as Fred Wishart’s last stand in Boone’s Gap, West Virginia.
And who knew how many other last stands across the country, around the world, how many lives stolen or smashed or snuffed out?
There’s a power in the West, calling to us, Ely Stern had told Tina on the roof of the world, the skyscraper summit to which he had flown her on that lost summer night.
And Stern had said too, Soon it’s gonna own the world.
So there was a clock ticking inside all of them. Tick. Tock. Find it. Stop it.
If they could.
The fire was all but dead now, and Cal shivered against the chill that had seeped into his bones, despite the Gore-Tex and layering.
Goldie stood nearest the pyre, seemingly untouched by the cold. Cal and the others had let him keep his distance, and his silence. His eyes met Cal’s, but what was behind them kept its own counsel. His jaw muscles were taut, his head cocked at an angle as if listening to a distant conversation. To the West.
Of all of them, Goldie was the least changed without, still had the hectic, beautiful black curls, the straw cowboy hat with the five aces in the brim-very much the worse for wear for having been lost, trampled and rained upon-the cacophonous ensemble of Hawaiian, plaid and paisley shirts. But he was the most changed within. The playfulness, the antic spirit that had greeted Cal at their first and subsequent meetings, was quelled now, seemingly extinguished, to be replaced by…what?
Grimness, and darkness, and a growing power.
How much Magritte-and her loss-had been a catalyst for this, Cal didn’t know. But he suspected it played a great part.
Love was both a shield and a sword; it could protect and it could wound. The same emotion that bled Goldie drove Cal to find Tina. And it would determine the choices Colleen and Doc made, or failed to make, when the fire rained down on them all.
The sun was higher now, cresting on the stark branches as the city shifted and stirred and discovered itself. The last remnants of blackened logs fell in on themselves, threw up a firefly swarm of sparks and became still.
“We need to get the horses saddled and packed,” Cal said.
They nodded, and turned from the lake to the road again.
I
Medicine and Storm
Tomorrow never happens. It’s all the same fucking day.
— Janis Joplin
ONE
East Of Storm Lake, Iowa
“All right, I admit it. Radio Goldman is stone-cold dead.”
Herman Goldman stood like an iron spike driven into the rutted blacktop that had once been Route 169 heading north to Blue Earth-technically still was, Cal Griffin reflected, although no car had driven it in the nearly half year since the Change. No car could have, since cars ran nowhere on the face of the earth as far as anyone knew, as any of them had heard.
Horses, though, were a hot commodity again; and Cal and his friends had been hard-pressed to retain Sooner, Koshka and their other steeds from the depredations of roving smash-and-grab gangs that had lain in wait at numerous rest stops and Kodak moments along the way. “Horse thief” was no longer a quaint term out of a Western-it was a job description.
And we’ve got the scars to prove it.
You can’t go through life without making enemies, his father had told him when Cal was barely four. That was just before Dad’s first abandonment of the family, cutting out for the territories, the apogees and perigees of a roving life that had made enemies of his own family.
Now I’m the rootless one, Cal thought, and his collection of scars, both physical and emotional, formed the road map of his travels.
“Maybe you need new batteries,” Colleen said, jolting Cal from his reverie.
Goldie glowered at her, stuck out his tongue. There were no radios, of course, and batteries didn’t do shit. They were both speaking metaphorically, baiting each other as they tended to do when most frustrated. When it grew too barbed, veering into real venom, Cal would step in as he always did, smoothing their rough edges, reminding them of what held them together, of what bound them on this road. He was their moderator, their governing influence, and he knew well why they thought of him as their leader, despite how reluctant he had once been to accept that role.
Goldie tilted his head quizzically, as if listening for a distant, staticky station, and Cal realized that “radio” wasn’t just a metaphorical term, after all. Goldie had been their crystal set even before the Change, catching the twisted music and voices on the winds of the Source, coaxing and wheedling and beguiling them on the daunting path that had begun that sweltering day in Manhattan when Cal had saved Goldie from being pulverized by a truck on Fifth Avenue-and Goldie had tried (unsuccessfully, of course) to warn him of the coming Storm.
Since Chicago, Goldie had led them by fits and starts through the blasted terrain of western Illinois and Wisconsin, past Rockford and Beloit, skirting the horror of Madison, where cholera and a newborn smallpox raged. In general, the most populous areas were hardest hit, and best avoided.
On the outskirts of Sauk City, by the banks of the Wisconsin, Goldie had found a cliff face with a faded petroglyph that he’d been able to coax into opening a portal that emptied onto the Effigy Mounds in Iowa. It had been murder getting the horses through-they grew frenzied at the prickling feeling of being transported-but it had saved several hundred miles of rough traveling.
They had continued west, drawn by the elusive call of the Source. Until now.
Goldie shook his head. “Nada. K-Source is not on the air…which certainly does not mean it’s not still out there, doing it’s nasty best.”
“Great,” Colleen enthused. “So we’re stuck in this beauty spot.” The afternoon light had turned long, the shadow of a bleached FOOD GAS LODGING sign stretching out toward the horizon, browned prairie grasses tossing in the frigid wind. Route 169 opened ahead like a mottled black ribbon, and despite the signage, there was no food, no gas, no lodging anywhere in sight.
“Patience, Colleen,” Doc advised from atop Koshka, looking every bit the brooding Russian horseman in his fleece-lined greatcoat. “I won’t try to tell you it’s a virtue, but it will save wear and tear on the stomach lining.”
Goldie remounted his steed, took the reins from Cal, who was straddling Sooner. Goldie’s horse had originally been called Jayhawk, but he’d taken to calling it Later. He’d wanted Colleen to rechristen her horse Further, but she had so far resisted the idea, merely commenting on an increase in Goldie’s annoyance factor.
Not that it was inappropriate, actually. According to Goldie, this was the name Ken Kesey had painted on the psychedelic bus the Merry Pr
anksters had driven across America back in 1965. Cal dimly recalled reading the Tom Wolfe book on the subject, years ago. The irony was explicit. Kesey and friends had seen themselves as divine madmen embedded in a staid, magicless reality. And we’re the opposite, Cal thought. Reality has gone mad; we cling to sanity. Such sanity as we make for ourselves.
Colleen pressed her heels to her gelding’s flanks and the four of them moved ahead at a brisk trot. She turned to Cal. “How ’bout you, Cal? Anything off your map trick?”
Cal reached back and pulled a Triple-A map booklet from his saddlebag to open it across the pommel of his saddle. He had unearthed it in the looted ruins of a convenience store outside Osage. On their passage from Boone’s Gap to Enid’s Preserve and beyond, he had gained a fitful ability to read a map in a new and frequently useful way, to sense the changed terrain ahead, discern some of its tweaked geography.
But that skill had utterly deserted him since their showdown with Primal. And now, looking at the creased paper with its tangle of red and blue lines like arteries and veins of a body, he knew he had no special clue as to what lay before them. Only that Tina, if miraculously still alive, was somewhere due west of them, and that they had to keep moving.
Perhaps as they drew nearer the Source, it was leeching away such powers, drawing to itself the life forces of this new world, as it had seized Tina and the others like her. Or maybe Cal was generally tone deaf to such abilities, and his tin ear had simply returned.
Cal closed the map book, returned it to his saddlebag. “All I can say is Sioux Falls is about a hundred and fifty miles down the highway. If it’s still there.”
“And not somewhere in Luxembourg,” Goldie added.
No telling.
They paused to let the horses drink from a roadside pond, dismounting to give them respite. It had rained yesterday and they’d collected the water in buckets, pans, whatever containers came to hand, transferring it later to bottles and canteens. The water was fresh-with any luck, not too contaminated with stale automotive oils or last year’s pesticides. Had this land once been cultivated? Hard to tell. The prairie grasses had come back this summer, conjured out of the ground like ghost buffalo.
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