Ghostlands mt-3

by Marc Scott Zicree

  Looking back over the long line of these specimens-like an evolutionary chart that never got much beyond Australopithecus-Colleen reflected that the only thing she could count on with them was that she couldn’t count on them…and that, whether they stayed or went, she knew she wouldn’t have much taken from her because she never gave them the keys to her heart.

  Not so with her sad, competent, loving father, whose face she knew as well as her own, even after all these years. In dying he had left her, and torn away a piece of her that was precious and core.

  That was when she had first learned that love was a wound, and without ever putting it in so many words, even to herself-especially to herself-had determined to lock her heart away from further harm.

  And yet, she marveled, here she was all over again. With a man so admirable, so much finer than herself…and so dangerous to the self-protection she so prized.

  Love was a wound, and an enduring, foolish risk…but then, hell, so was everything now.

  She kissed the scars on Viktor’s chest, and on his rib cage and his arms, and drew him with her into the shower, then to the bed, where for a time it was sweetness and immediacy and flow, and neither of them thought of the future or of the past.

  As day eased into night, she released herself into his keeping, and slept.

  Later, when they were both awake, he held her in the darkness, skin touching skin.

  “What was it like,” she asked softly, “there in the reactor?”

  He was silent a time, thinking of Chernobyl, and then he said, “I never was in the reactor. I only saw those who were. They paid out their lives, knowing they were dead men already, keeping the hoses trained on the core, buying others time. I cannot conceive of such courage.”

  And yet you have it, Viktor, she reflected, I’ve seen it so many times. How can you not know that? But then, she supposed, it was always most difficult to see one’s true self.

  “Why do you ask this?” he said, and she could make out his eyes in the dark, studying her.

  “Once, when we were talking about the Source, you said, ‘Into the reactor.’ I think we’ll be there soon….”

  He held her tighter, and nodded. “Yes, I think so, too.”

  “Funny, you know, I can’t wait…even though it’s gonna-”

  He put a finger to her lips. “Shh…” No need to say it would assuredly kill them; they both knew.

  Later still, she said, “I always figured I was kinda like a toaster. It shorts out, it’s done, it goes in the trash. It doesn’t move on to some higher plane.”

  “Your resemblance to a toaster is somewhat remote.”

  “Don’t be obtuse.” She fingered the cross on the chain around her neck, the gift Viktor had given her long months back, after he had saved her in the frigid waters en route to Chicago. It was the only thing she wore now, along with the dog tags, and the dragon scale he had returned to her. “Do you believe in an afterlife, Viktor?”

  He pondered it. “I would like to, yes. But who can say? I’ll know when I get there…or I’ll never know.” He kissed her on the head. “Or perhaps I’ll merely be a toaster beside you on the shelf.”

  That begged the question, but she didn’t press him further. Anyway, it wasn’t really the question she’d wanted to ask….

  The one that spoke in her heart, that thrust like sheared metal off a car wreck, like the screams of a mother and daughter dying in the frigid waters of a swollen stream outside Kiev.

  If there were an afterlife, who would you choose to be with?

  Feeling his lean, scarred arms around her, lying back against his wounded self, Colleen Brooks felt haunted by a woman she had never known.

  TWENTY-NINE

  DRAGON SKIN

  “I want you to take a look at this,” Doc Lysenko said.

  They stood beside him in the morgue, Cal and Colleen and Goldie, in the hour before dawn, on their second night in Atherton. (Mama Diamond and Larry Shango were still getting some shut-eye up in their separate rooms in what had formerly been the Ramada.)

  When they made their delivery here, the work crew had been forced to improvise, shoving twelve tables together and rigging a block and tackle to hoist the big carcass up onto their surface.

  But then, nobody had said this would be easy.

  Observing him now, dressed in hospital blues, covered from head to toe in blood, Colleen Brooks reflected that her lover looked in all his equanimity like some maniac physician in a splatter movie-Dr. Bloodhappy, or Surgeon Kill-Scalpel, or something equally sanguinary.

  In reality, though, he’d merely been following a line of inquiry…which, among other things, just happened to involve taking a chainsaw to a dead dragon.

  Fortunately, Dr. Waxman and the rest of staff at the college Med Center, the nurses and interns and student volunteers, had been all too happy to provide Doc with the equipment and elbow room necessary to perform this most singular operation-or autopsy, to be more accurate-although the brute strength required to open up the body and heft the organs seemed more befitting butchers at work on a steer, or even some Hemingwayesque safari taking souvenirs off a fallen bull elephant, than your standard sawbones examining a cadaver.

  When Doc had first set about cracking open the rib cage and extracting and weighing the internal organs, the room had been filled to the rafters, SRO with medical staff and the panoply of grads and undergrads who had heard what was going on in the subbasement. It was the first such autopsy ever performed at this facility; possibly performed anywhere in the world, because dragons were rare as hen’s teeth and one gave them a wide berth when crossing their shadow. Besides, no one-not a man nor woman in attendance there as the bone and fluids, scales and gristle flew under the screaming metal blades wielded by the surprisingly serene Russian-had ever seen one of the big flying reptiles dead, or met anyone who had killed one. Incredibly, examples of both were in their town tonight, two miraculous visitations at once.

  Now, many hours later, the component parts had been disassembled and notated, placed in their separate receptacles of glass and metal and plastic. Young and old, accomplished and callow, hardened and untried, the observers had found themselves hushed and wide-eyed…and finally, one by one, had drifted away to pursuits less gaudy and brutal.

  Until Doc, alone and sure now, summoned his friends.

  He gestured at the enormous fretwork of the skeleton atop the joined tables. “Truly a remarkable structure, an edifice as elegant and durable as a Gothic cathedral.”

  “Yeah,” Colleen said, “but a cathedral rarely tries to bite your head off and swallow you whole.”

  “Only some of the clergy within do,” Goldie commented, but no one rose to the barb.

  “So what have you got for us?” Cal asked Doc.

  “Some preliminary data, Calvin, and some educated guesses. Upon close inspection, I verified several long-standing suspicions. See this structure, and this one here? They are human in their lineage, undeniably so. Oh, amended and built upon and added to; in some cases to an astonishing degree. But any knowledgeable scrutiny reveals that this is, in fact, a man-changed, most assuredly, capable of much a normal human being could not do. But still a man.”

  Doc leaned back against the wall and rubbed weary eyes. “The organs bear this out, too. And I feel certain the DNA resequencing I’m having performed will again verify these findings, down to the molecular level…. It confirms what we ourselves have seen firsthand, and although one must be cautious when drawing conclusions from only one sample, I would express a conviction that were we to cross-section another dragon, or any of the grunters”-and here Doc’s voice dropped down and grew more gentle, eyeing Cal-“or the flares, they would all be clearly derived from human beings; would, in the truest sense, still be human.”

  None of them spoke for a long moment, then Colleen said, “Okay, so that’s reasonably creepy…. Where does it get us?”

  “Do you recall the devices set into the ground at the edge of town? The ones we
encountered when we returned and found Mr. Shango and his lady companion? They told me of their belief that these were the instruments that projected the appalling false landscape of corpses and plague.”

  Colleen shuddered, remembering the ghastly landscape that had nearly driven them away from this place before they had learned the wonders it held (which, of course, had been the whole idea); and she thought of her amulet, the dragon scale she wore, that had allowed her to pierce the illusion and behold the truth.

  “Dr. Waxman was kind enough to substantiate that this was indeed their purpose, and that there was a spare apparatus being stored at a facility nearby. A new friend of mine, an intern named Lewis, was good enough to fetch it back here. And I removed this from it.” He opened a drawer and withdrew a dark object, held it out in his open palm.

  Colleen recognized it instantly, knew it as well as she knew the feel of what rested on its chain against the soft place at the base of her throat.

  It was a dragon scale.

  “Dr. Waxman tells me that each of the devices has one of these scales embedded in it,” Doc continued, “along with the gemstones that focus its power.” He glanced at Colleen, and there was tenderness there. “I have examined it under the electron microscope, and it appears a match with the one you wear around your neck. Again, DNA analysis would confirm this.”

  Cal’s face was grave. “If I understand you correctly, Doc, you’re saying that the scale that saved us back in Chicago, and the ones in the devices here…are from the same dragon.”

  “Yes, that’s a strong likelihood.” He nodded at the dragon bones on the tables. “And a different individual from this gentleman here.”

  Colleen had only known one dragon up close and personal (where they’d actually had a word or two, between the bastard’s attempts to incinerate her), and that was Ely Stern. She herself had seen Cal put a sword clean through him, seen the monstrous lizard plummet a thousand feet to the New York pavement, to an almost certain and grisly end.

  But Mama Diamond had told them only yesterday that Stern had not stayed put. He’d survived and hit the road….

  “It’s Stern,” Cal said coolly, and Colleen somehow knew in her bones it was so. “Shango and Mama Diamond followed him here. He stole her gems and brought them to Atherton.” Cal took the leather scale from Doc, weighed it in his hand. “It’s a reasonable bet he left these behind, too.”

  “Yes,” Doc agreed. “But then, that would mean-”

  Cal finished it. “That he tried to kill us in New York, then saved our lives in Chicago.”

  They fell silent, meditating on the imponderable flow of events. Like so many things down these crazy long days, it was impossible…but that didn’t mean it wasn’t so.

  And how did Papa Sky fit into all this? Colleen wondered. The mysterious jazzman who had given her the scale in the smoky thick atmosphere of the Legends club in Chicago. Where might that old blind man be, if he wasn’t dead by now?

  Still hanging with dragons, or one dragon in particular…?

  “But why would Stern do that?” Colleen asked. “I mean, I can’t see him particularly giving two rats’ asses about saving our bacon. So was it to bring down Primal, so the Source could get at all those flares he was protecting?”

  “I don’t know,” Cal said simply. “It’s possible he was serving the Source there, and here, too.”

  “Lovely,” Colleen said. And yet, something didn’t sit right. Stern was a rotter through and through, it didn’t take a degree in advanced physics to figure that out, but she hadn’t gotten that vibe off Papa Sky, not at all. And for all her flaws, Colleen prided herself that she usually read people pretty right (despite her choices in men).

  So why would Papa Sky be helping Stern?

  Questions, with no answers…

  What else was new?

  Cal handed the scale back to Doc. “Tell me everything you’ve learned about this.”

  That was the lawyer part of him, the pragmatist, Colleen thought admiringly. File away what you can’t deal with now, and get on with business.

  “It would appear to have several unique properties,” Doc noted, “whether on the living dragon or not. First, as we witnessed when Colleen utilized it against Clayton Devine in Primal’s palace, it has the capability of repelling both the flares and the powers they wield.

  “Secondly, given the way Colleen’s charm allowed her to pierce the illusory tableau outside of town, I would venture that the dragon scales have the power both to project an illusion…and let one see through it.”

  “Any notions on how we might apply this knowledge?” Cal asked.

  “I thought to design this.” From the same drawer, Doc pulled out a strip of yellowish, translucent material, about the thickness and texture of parchment.

  “I will not tell you which part of our friend here I obtained this from.” Doc held it up before his face; Colleen could make out his eyes blurry behind it. “I tested it myself on the loathsome panorama. It dissolved like a tissue of lies in a cleansing flood.”

  Cal pondered it solemnly. “So you think we might be able to avail ourselves of that ability, and the other properties, too-”

  “Yes, exactly,” Doc responded. He strolled over to a big vat immediately adjacent to the skeleton. “Although it will require us to set aside any qualms we might have.”

  Walking after him, Colleen saw that its label read EPI-DERMAL TISSUE. Oh brother…

  “Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Colleen said, facing Doc. “You’ve just said this monster on the slab is actually a human being…then you’re proposing we cut him up and use his skin.”

  “Not precisely how I might word it, but that is the gist of it, yes.”

  “Okay, I just wanted to be sure,” she said, and tried to make it sound light. Because she knew there was no room in the future that laid itself out before them for anyone to be squeamish, or allow false scruples to deny them a tool that might give them the edge, tilt the balance enough for them to do some good (she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury to add, even in her thoughts, And maybe just save our lives).

  But in the turmoil of her thoughts, in the craggy inner landscape of her mind, she wondered which of them-Ely Stern in his fierce, unfathomable actions, or the dead thing on the slab, or she and her friends standing around discussing its cannibalization-were truly the monsters.

  Doc replaced both the scale and the parchment strip in the drawer, slid it shut. “An effective material,” he said, “and they’ve put it to remarkable use here. Which gives me pause.”

  “How so?” Cal asked.

  Doc sighed. “Perhaps when Ely Stern delivered his inventory of gems, he informed Jeff Arcott of his ability to repel energy, to cast illusion. But to design an instrument to project an illusion such as we witnessed…?”

  Cal understood. “Stern’s no scientist.”

  “No,” Doc concurred, “and it’s not plausible to believe the physicists here in Atherton were embarked on such a line of research prior to the Change. It’s a true melding of the old science and the new.”

  “Arcott spoke of a new physics,” Cal said.

  “A convenient turn of phrase, Calvin, but truly there has not been sufficient time for such a thorough melding of theory and application to have arisen-not within the scope of human research and development, at least.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that Jeff Arcott is…how do you say it? Talking through his buttocks.”

  Colleen snorted (which was something she really hated to do). “Do you possibly mean talking out of his ass?”

  “Out of his ass, yes.”

  “You mean lying,” Cal added.

  “Indeed.”

  “So who’s the man behind the curtain?” Colleen asked. “The guys at the Source Project? I mean, assuming they are guys, and not…” She mimed something with tentacles.

  Doc shrugged. “What would they have to gain?”

  “Depends on what Arcott�
�s working on now,” Cal said. “That supersecret project of his.” He gestured at the overhead bank of lights, the refrigeration equipment and, by extension, all the restored machinery in the town. “The reason for all this preamble.”

  “I suppose we might ask him,” Doc offered.

  “Yeah,” Colleen said. “And his security goons might dance the Nutcracker.”

  “Mm.” Doc agreed. “Of course, we can presume he has allowed Dr. Dahlquist into his confidence, if only for expediency’s sake, to get the project completed.”

  “Maybe so,” Cal said. “But we’re not going to know anything till we find some way past Arcott’s guards.”

  Which seemed like a perfectly good occasion for Goldie-who had not said a word for a good deal of this-to reveal just what nifty little knack his lip-lock with the Bitch Queen in the magic kingdom had given him.

  THIRTY

  THE HOLE IN THE WALL

  Rafe Dahlquist was having the dream about Neville Chamberlain and Anna Paquin again, when a sound startled him awake.

  He opened his eyes just in time to see the door in the air appear and Herman Goldman step through.

  “Don’t try this at home,” Goldie said quietly, so as not to alert the two guards just outside. Then he led Dahlquist back through the portal to where his friends waited.

  “Arcott calls it a Spirit Radio, but it’s a damn sight more than that,” Rafe Dahlquist told Cal Griffin and the others, as they sat in the kitchen of the cramped lodgings in Married Student Housing, where Melissa Wade had assigned Colleen Brooks and Doc Lysenko.

  “What exactly does it do?” Cal asked.

  “Not much, at least not yet. We’ve only got it up to about one-ten-thousandth strength. Believe me, that baby takes a mother lode of power, not to mention calibration so exact it could give you hives.”