Ghostlands mt-3

by Marc Scott Zicree

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Cal said, not unkindly. “But we’re going to have to take a rain check on that.”

  “Well, that’s all right, dear,” she replied demurely. “I suppose you’d know best about that.”

  Mama Diamond caught Larry Shango’s eye. Did she detect amusement there, or just imagine it? More like he had been there before, and knew her better than that now.

  She stepped back. Cal Griffin gave her a shy smile-ah, there was that boy on the roof again-and walked into nothingness.

  In an instant, Colleen Brooks, Herman Goldman and Doc Lysenko followed him, then Larry Shango and Enid Blindman and Howard Russo were gone into the mist.

  The hum of the massive generators rose up, and Mama Diamond became aware of a sharp metallic smell in the air. It brought to mind the electric Fender guitar Arnie Sproule used to play from time to time; his old tube amp smelled like that when he turned it on after lengthy disuse. Only this was about a thousand times more intense.

  Mama Diamond’s heart was pounding like the hammer on her rusty old alarm clock, like John Henry’s sledge right toward the end before he dropped; she could hear it in her ears, feel it in the veins in her temples.

  It was talking to her, had been talking to her since she had first seen Mr. Shango standing over her on that train platform in Burnt Stick, since she’d encountered Griffin and his friends as she had crouched beside that fear projector in the night-kissed outskirts of Atherton.

  Staring into the shifting curtain of light, ringed by her own glowing treasure, Mama Diamond knew with surety those young ones would need her, desperately and soon.

  Better to ask pardon than permission, Mama Diamond thought, and leapt through the portal of the Spirit Radio.

  THIRTY-SIX

  CITY ON THE EDGE

  Sometimes, Larry Shango thought as he moved cautiously through the glowing fogbank, rifle at the ready, what’s new is old again.

  At least, that’s how it felt to him now, deja vu all over, exactly the way it was when he’d been all by his lonesome, Sheep Mountain Table faded to invisibility behind him and Fred Wishart, that humorless spectre, about to appear and dispatch him to the land of Emiliano Zapata and cactus soda pop.

  Only this time, Shango had Cal Griffin and his retinue of Colleen Brooks, Doc Lysenko, Herman Goldman, Enid Blindman and Howard Russo along for the ride-which didn’t mean they had any more of a clue as to where they’d landed or were headed in this glowing, impenetrable soup.

  Shango glanced at his watch, which he could just barely make out in the shifting, multicolored light. Eighteen minutes to go…

  “Welcome to South Dakota,” Goldie murmured.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Cal said.

  Colleen let out a cry. Shango wheeled to see that Mama Diamond had appeared out of nowhere and collided into her from behind. Shango smiled to himself; at least, this was one thing that was no surprise.

  “Come on in, the water’s fine,” said Goldie, utterly unperturbed.

  Cal sighed but said nothing, indicating his acceptance. He continued forward-then halted abruptly, raising a warning hand.

  Shango squinted into the mist ahead of him.

  A figure was appearing.

  It drew closer, gained clarity and solidity.

  But unlike Fred Wishart, this was no phantom assembled from the atoms, from the mist itself….

  Simply a boy, or something a good deal more than a boy, who strode up to them, intent on keeping an appointment.

  “Let me show you the Bridge,” Inigo said.

  Theo Siegel found himself sweating profusely, even though the room was outright frosty, the air circulators keeping the atmosphere at an even low temperature. He wanted everything to go smoothly, for Cal Griffin and his friends to emerge unscathed, for no mishaps to befall them on the other side.

  The dangerous side…

  Which might well have been this side, too, had not Griffin interceded and replaced Jeff Arcott’s hand on the wheel with his own.

  Theo cast an anxious glance Jeff’s way. Jeff glared back at him, finally willing to acknowledge his existence, at least. Theo realized this felt neither better nor worse than Jeff’s initial response of ignoring him entirely.

  Theo chose not to look at Melissa, however, not wanting to risk a second encounter with those accusing eyes, that wounded voice.

  How he wished he could somehow demonstrate to her what dreadful thing he feared would have happened had Jeff’s plan come to fruition.

  In later times, Theo would recall that errant thought and add ruefully, Be careful what you wish for-you might just get it.

  “Ten minutes and counting,” Krystee Cott said to Rafe Dahlquist.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of rending metal, and the bolted steel lab door tore clear of its hinges.

  Flame erupted into the room.

  Amid the screams and pandemonium, Theo heard Krystee Cott shouting orders, saw gunfire erupt toward the doorway. Mike Kimmel grabbed the extinguisher, unleashed it futilely at the growing blaze. The others in the room were dashing this way and that, trying to get clear. As far as Theo could see, no one was seriously hurt-perhaps a deliberate choice on the part of their attacker-

  But the damping equipment, my God…

  It was aflame, melting to slag.

  Through the smoke, Theo became aware of a vast, bony form striding into the room, sweeping people and machinery aside, tearing wiring loose in great, taloned handfuls.

  He had seen this one before, in the night, at the train siding.

  Jeff Arcott had called him by name.

  With claw and fang and fire, the man in black, the dragon thing, destroyed all that held the Infernal Device in check.

  Unhindered now, tendrils of insane purple light shot out of the Spirit Radio’s riotous maw, uncoiling into the room like living things, spreading outward to infect and corrupt all they touched.

  Arcott’s laboratory was alive with energy. Huge sparks, like phantasmal blue lightning, arced between the portal and the laboratory walls. The portal itself was as bright as a sheet of sun-a mirror of flame.

  The source of this energy was clearly no longer the massive diesel generators in the physics building’s basement. This energy came from elsewhere, and Theo realized there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Out! Everybody get out!” That was Krystee Cott, shouting to the others over the din, helping them find their way as they flailed and crashed about, blinded by the blaze, gagging on the smoke.

  Through the roar and fumes and glare, Theo could just make out a handful of others clearing the room; from their dim outlines, he thought he discerned Rafe Dahlquist and Al Watt and Mike Kimmel, moving under Krystee’s urgent direction. He saw others, too, furtive smoke shadows, frantic silhouettes of vapor, but could not identify them. The bulk of the destroyer, the dragon thing in the shifting, thick plumes of smoke, seemed unconcerned about them now.

  Theo cast wildly about for Melissa, heedless of his own welfare. His eyes located Jeff Arcott against the far wall, falling back and screaming horribly just as one of the tentacles of pure power seized him and whipped him about, hurling him into walls that threw off great plumes of sparks with each impact, as the tendril expanded to cover Jeff entirely, consuming him whole.

  Sickened, Theo turned away and dove deeper into the room, crying out Melissa’s name.

  He found her on the sidelines, wavering in the smoke like a heat phantom, a dreamy mirage. She was staring with a quizzical, unfocused gaze, mouth half open, at the wildly pinwheeling gateway.

  “Melissa! Melissa!” She made no sign of hearing him, registered nothing at all.

  Desperate, Theo grabbed her up and slung her over his shoulder, noting only momentarily the effortless strength that seemed to fill him-and the curious fact that there was no pain issuing from his injured leg, that he needed crutches not at all.

  He plunged with her toward the exit as the demon power surged up out of the portal, gaining ever m
ore purchase here. A bolt of shimmering plasma passed perilously close to Theo’s head, singeing his hair and causing Melissa to twitch against him as if she were gripped in a nightmare.

  Stumbling, choking, he carried Melissa out of the laboratory. The corridors of the Physical Sciences Building were likewise blazingly bright, as if someone had cranked up the voltage to the ceiling lights. He felt dreadfully strange, ached in every part of his body. Looking over at Melissa, he could see that she still seemed dazed, her gaze dull and removed. In the pitiless glare, her body seemed more fragile than ever. Her rib cage fluttered with her breathing like an ancient bellows, and her body was as light in his arms as a butterfly or a moth.

  He reeled out of the building with her, lost his footing rushing headlong down the stairs and nearly fell, narrowly gaining his balance on the greensward of Philosopher’s Walk.

  He heard a shattering of glass and looked back just in time to see the skylight of the physics lab explode upward into the night, followed by a monstrous dark shape.

  Ely Stern, having accomplished what he had set in motion so many months ago, the elaborate series of events he had planned and directed and now at last achieved, unfurled himself and took wing.

  He vanished into the starlit sky.

  III

  STRONGHOLD

  You have to know what your center is, so you can stand everything.

  — Ann Cedarface

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  STRAWBERRY FIELDS

  Normally, it’s considered sound advice, when intent on not drawing unwanted scrutiny, to be as quiet as possible.

  But then, these were hardly normal times.

  So when Cal Griffin advised Enid Blindman that it would probably be advisable for him to start playing anytime now, everyone concurred that was mighty fine idea.

  Enid began strumming softly and singing low to himself as the nine of them moved cautiously forward through the mist, its cool dampness like the gentle kiss of a cadaver on their skin, the grunter boy Inigo leading the way.

  Upon encountering him in the fog, Colleen had been inclined to skewer the little blue-gray rodent, seeing as how his advice on leading them toward sanctuary hadn’t exactly been five-star up until now. But Cal stayed her hand; they wouldn’t have gotten this far without the boy, and even though Inigo undeniably played a very close hand, he had taken no action so far that Cal sensed as treachery.

  “Besides,” Goldie added with his characteristic glibness, “it’s not easy being blue.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” chimed in Howie.

  Colleen made no reply, although she ordinarily would have. A sidewise glance at Goldman, shimmering insubstantial as a mirage beside her, revealed a face set in a humorless mask. His mouth might be on automatic with feigned levity, but his mind was elsewhere, and intent on a grimmer purpose.

  Not surprising, really, considering their present environs. For they all knew in this frigging haze they might as well be marching down the throat of whatever monstrosity called the Source Project home; might, in fact, be forging blissfully unaware straight on through to the acid-pool of its cavernous belly at this very moment.

  But, fatalist that she was on most occasions, Colleen didn’t really think so-not yet, at least.

  As she inched through the fog, the midnight-blue chords and harmonies of Enid’s song lulled her, brought calm and reassurance. It hadn’t always been thus. When she and Goldman first encountered him roaming among the tall cedars in that river valley along the Ohio/West Virginia border, Colleen thought Enid a malevolent Pied Piper and had predictably gone on the attack-a typical berserker stunt that succeeded only in landing her upside down in a tree, skewered by a branch (she still had that jagged, lightning-bolt scar down her right side, which Doc-adorable diplomat that he was-said merely added to her charms).

  But if she’d learned anything from their travels with Enid from there to Chicago and beyond, it was that his music had power not only to soothe the savage breast but also to block out whatever lurked at the Source from seeing him and his friends, from reaching out its long, invisible tentacles and plucking them away.

  At least, that was the story back then, when they’d been one hell of a lot farther away from it. Still, the best they could hope for now was to play the odds and hope they caught some breaks along the way.

  “Fourteen minutes and counting,” Larry Shango reported.

  “When will we come to the Bridge?” Cal asked Inigo.

  “We’ve been walking along it,” Inigo said, and drew to a halt. Before him the misty streaks of neon vapor were swirling concentrically as if spiraling down a drain. Colleen could just now make out the sky beyond, which held a rosy glow of late afternoon or dawn; hard to tell which in the overcast sky. The landscape began to clear, to resolve itself into a body of cool blue water, flanked by rolling green hills. Narrow flat rowboats were tethered together at the shore, a gentle wind nudging them against each other.

  Colleen knew this lake well. As the fog dispersed even more, she could see the flower-bedecked rise ahead of her known as Strawberry Fields, and to its left the wedding-cake structure of Tavern on the Green. A glance ahead to her right showed her the vast Romanesque stonework of the American Museum of Natural History, and beside it the Hayden Planetarium.

  “Oh my God,” Colleen whispered.

  She, Cal, Goldie and Doc all knew this place for a certainty, although only Inigo had truly been here before.

  It was Central Park.

  “I thought you said we were in South Dakota,” Cal said to Goldie.

  Goldman was squinting intently at the vista ahead. “We are…” he replied hesitantly.

  Doc stepped to the forefront, peering at the solidity of the structures before them. “Colleen, Calvin, Mr. Shango-your visors, please.”

  Colleen lowered the visor on her helmet, and peered through the tan membrane covering her eyes. “I’m still seeing Big Apple,” she said.

  “Me too,” Cal concurred. They glanced at Shango, who nodded his agreement.

  Doc mulled this over. “Offhand, I would say that the likelihood is what we are seeing is not an illusion but rather solid matter, a replica of some sort.”

  “Great, we’re in a diorama,” Colleen muttered. She wondered where all the flares might be hiding, knowing that the Source had abducted thousands, if not millions of them. At least in Chicago, the Ruby City, the glow of them had lit up the skies. It had been a beacon, making the myriad of those that powered Primal distinctly easy to find.

  Cal turned to Inigo. “Why is this here?”

  Inigo peered up at Cal and said meaningfully, “Because it’s her home.”

  Colleen saw Cal’s eyes register surprise, then fill with a comprehension far deeper than the words the boy had uttered.

  And despite all his months of preparation, despite his determination to keep a cool head, to be the leader they all needed him to be, Cal took off running full-out across the manicured grassland, darted over the bicycle path and out onto the street and the city beyond.

  East to the broad thoroughfare of Columbus, and north to the weathered but well-maintained brownstones of Eighty-first.

  To home…and Tina.

  “After me!” Cal cried, knowing they would follow.

  He could hear Colleen pounding after him, and the others behind her; it was no more than he expected, what he counted on. But Cal didn’t have time to look back nor slow his pace. There were only thirteen minutes or so left, and he knew he could no more return to the portal without discovering if Tina were here than he could tear out his own heart.

  He dove past the variegated street denizens of Manhattan, who remarked on him not at all, past the gleaming parked cars and trucks. It registered on him that this was a simulacrum of New York City before the Change, but one muted, damped down, with none of the clamor nor haste, as contemplative and unchanging as an aquarium.

  Then he was on the familiar street, bounding up the short flight of stairs to the heavy oak door he k
new so well, the one whose original had been there in the time of Fiorello La-Guardia and Al Smith and before. He threw it open, bounded up the stairs.

  But at the same time, he was no fool; he knew where he was, or rather where he wasn’t. He drew forth his sword-he felt sure that at least would still work; let those behind him wield their rifles-and vaulted up the stairs two and three at a time.

  He hit the landing, turned hard right and found himself facing the apartment door that was identical to his own, a perfect replica. He could hear the others thundering up the stairs behind him, felt the reassurance of their presence, their constancy. He tried the knob, felt it turn. The door was unlocked. He plunged inside.

  The curtains in the living room were drawn tight, casting the room in dimness, and for a moment Cal couldn’t see detail in the gloom. He looked about wildly, spied illumination coming from the hall. He bolted for it, his feet making cushioned, echoing thumps in the worn carpet as he ran. He saw his own room, dark and untenanted but incredibly exact in what detail he could discern, then he spun toward Tina’s room. Its door was slightly ajar, and light was pouring forth from within.

  God, let her be there, he pleaded to the unseen, uncaring deity that had taken their mother’s life and gifted them with an abhorrent, fugitive father, had cast him and his sister onto the foreign shores of Manhattan and then split them apart. I don’t care what she is, what inhuman, damaged thing. Just let her be alive, let me care for her and get her home….

  He opened the door and stepped inside.

  The girl sat in her chair by the bed, in the rocker (or cunning replica of it) that had been bought on the day of Cal’s birth, that his father had torn the runners off of in a fit of rage before Tina was born. A reading lamp sat on a shelf above her head, glowing like a halo, shining its radiance down on her glistening hair.