In the Deadlands

by David Gerrold

  The Boje was a veteran, so they buried him in that cemetery by the freeway, where uncurious drivers could look down and see him, just one more marker in the rows of many that flickered silently past and then abruptly were gone as each car hurtled itself up that long slope into the hills. Long rows of even white markers, they sprawled across the green, green field.

  And at the edges were trees, tall and graceful, but giving no shelter at all. They provided shade only at the very end of the day, when the sun would filter yellow through them. Long, blue-black shadows lay across the upright stones, gleaming even in the late afternoon. Here lay the seeds of man, each planted carefully in the ground, each at the proper depth, and each with a neat white marker to locate and identify it—each a seed that would never sprout, and the whole a field of ungrowing.

  Bojo’s marker was identical with all the rest. Nothing to say, “Here. Here is the man who stood on a car and exhorted other men.” Nothing to say, “Here. Here is a man who died for his country.”

  But then, there was no need to say it. Each of those silent white markers indicated the same thing. Each of them said, “Here. Here is a man who has died for his country.”

  It was here at last that, if not in life, then in death, all men were “created” equal.

  The sun disappeared below the tops of the trees and behind the houses and the hills to the west, behind the silent rushing susurrus of the nearby looming highway. I hefted the case of my clarinet and began crossing the loamy earth to where the others waited with Bojo.

  It was going to be one for the Boje. He had given us our start and we couldn’t allow him to be sent off without some of the music he had helped to make.

  Loamy was already peeling his bass out of its cover. Earlie had only his snare drum. It was all he needed; it hung on straps from his shoulders. He had a bandage on his forehead, and for some reason I was reminded of another group, a trio, and one that had played long before I was born. Earlie looked as if he should have been flanked by a man with a flute and another with a flag.

  Jack looked glum without his piano. It isn’t that the piano is the only instrument he plays, but it’s the only instruments he plays—you know what I mean. Instead, he had a portable electric organ, a poor substitute—but in his mind he had to be here, and this was the only instrument that might do.

  We set up our instruments in silence. Not that there was much to set up or much to talk about while we did it. I fitted the pieces of my clarinet together slowly. The whole atmosphere was heavy—too heavy—and it’s best to leave a man alone with his thoughts at a time like that. I tested the keys of the soul stick and then tested them again. I still wasn’t sure what we should play, but I had an idea what the Boje would like. Or would have liked.

  Finally, when I could delay it no longer, I blew out a Duffy squeal, my trademark—a sort of a rebel yell on the clarinet. It’s kind of like saying, “Here we are and we’re ready to go and tonight we don’t stop until we wake the dead.” I always begin a set with it. It’s an attention getter.

  I lowered the instrument and looked at the boys. They were easy to see in the bright moonlight. Behind them stretched the even white markers of the silent men, all those who had given up their lives for their country—only to have their country given up by those who stayed behind.

  There were just the four of us—and all the dead. If I had thought this was going to be a private blow-off, I was wrong. It was as private as the main floor of Hell.

  An interesting analogy that.

  We started off with the spirituals—the songs from Bojo’s childhood, the ones he had grown up with. We played them for the Boje and we played them simply—the way they were written—and without the little touches of style that would identify us in particular.

  It was a warm-up for us, and more than that, it was a way of saying, “This is God’s music, boys—not ours. It’s not for us to lay a claim on these. We’ll play our stuff, though. You wait.”

  As the last notes faded into the shadows, and even as the echoes fell away, the silence returned. It was an almost silence; only the distant murmur of the highway hinted at anything more. But all else was still. They were waiting.

  We lifted our instruments again. This time we were going to play our music. This time, Bojo would know who it was standing above him and sending the notes sobbing into the night.

  “A set of three, the way the Boje liked it. This is Your Land, first. Then, the one about the hammer. And after that, the Battle Hum—and we’re gonna wake the dead with that one. We’re gonna do some blood stirring, an’ old Boje is gonna climb right out of that grave when he hears it.”

  And we did.

  We swung into the first one, This is Your Land—a song with one of those melodies that grabs you in the blood and makes it flow, a sweet and sour tingle that swells inside you until it shatters your walls and bursts out as a shout of joy.

  Earlie laid into it with a bite, and Loamy found things that the bass could do that I’d never heard it do before. Jack picked it up easy and rolled the melody up and down his keyboard. He had a hornlike sound, but at the same time soft and plaintive all around.

  I picked up my stick and started hurting. It’d be nice to say how it squealed and hollered and howled, how the notes hurled themselves across the lawn, shrieking even as those white markers scraped at the belly of the sound. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t like that at all, and if I had expected it to be, I was surprised.

  The clarinet sobbed. It wailed, it whined—it did all the things a man wants to do and can’t—because a man’s not supposed to do them. So I let my soul stick cry for me instead. It did that with a passion.

  Long mournful wails of melody rolled out into the night. The warm dark air seemed to swallow the sound even as it was born. Like into a vacuum.

  We played it like a dirge, and then we took out the stops and swung into a big beat sound for the close. Earlie caught fire then, and those hammering drumbeats boomed and doomed. That organ seemed to be alive, and the bass was under and around it all. It was a good one; it said what we wanted it to.

  No pause and we swung easily into The Hammer, which I knew the Boje had always liked, and that’s when I began to hear the sound. I’d heard it before, only once, but I recognized it immediately. It was an echo, and it wasn’t. It was a distant wail, mournful and sobbing, not so much a sound as a presence.

  It lay under The Hammer and hinted at things other than.

  I tried to ignore it, tried to play above it—but it was there, and the more I played the more definite it became. I still couldn’t identify it—it came from no instrument I’d ever heard. Except perhaps the throats of a choir, one million strong.

  I tried to blank it out and concentrate on my music, but after a while it was as if a new instrument had been added. Somehow, it seemed to fit in.

  The Hammer is one of the ones I like to use the horn with. There are passages where only a horn can rightly grab hold of the sound and give it that special fury. Only the horn can shriek some of those phrases at the world.

  But I didn’t have my horn with me that night. I had the clarinet. So we played it soft—muted it down and did it like a dirge. For Boje.

  I knew Earlie was getting restless with it; he was doing things with the beat. We started climbing. (I could hear that distant choir—louder than ever now. And there were words, but too fuzzy to make out.)

  We blew it out big for the close, and then the silence swept back in.

  We paused then. I held my hand up—nobody say a thing—and listened.

  There was nothing there. Only the quiet steady rustle of the highway, and I knew that hadn’t been what I’d heard.

  I looked from face to face. Sweat was dripping off Earlie, and Loamy was radiant. Jack looked exhilarated. If a cool wind whispered through the night and across our backs, we didn’t feel it.

  I picked up the clarinet again. And this time we were going to do the Battle Hum. For the Boje. For all of them.

  T
he moon disappeared behind a cloud, and we were lost in the dark. But no matter. Earlie began with the drumbeat, one hundred to the minute, and Loamy was there with his bass tickling in on the edges. Without being told, Jack began at just the right time.

  —and then as I lifted my stick, I heard it. That sound. That deep distant mournful chorus wailing...

  A cold wind swept through me—a sudden dreadful feeling. I knew exactly what was making that sound. I knew what it was, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I closed my eyes and blew.

  I submerged into that music, became lost in it, played it, and became one with it. But whatever it was I did, I knew I mustn’t look back. I mustn’t. I was afraid of what I might see.

  We played that Battle Hum as it had never been played before—and likely as it’s never going to be heard again.

  Creeping into it slowly—slow and easy—again beginning like a dirge—but not a dirge, more of a march—then picking it up, a piece here and a piece there. Loamy came in and did a bass solo based on his own counterpoint, and yet was more than that. Then, just as easily, he crept out and Jack was in there doing things that only a piano knew how to do, and I had to keep reminding myself that he didn’t have one tonight. And always, Earlie was there with the drums. Always. One hundred to the minute. A march. A march and a dirge.

  I waited then, waited while they played for the Boje, waited and listened as they sobbed their hearts into their sound. And I wondered all the while if they could hear it, that slow low rumbling, grumbling, from deep within the bowels of the Earth.

  They must have been lost in their music, for it seemed as if I was the only one aware of the trembling beneath my feet, the fear creeping up my soul. I moistened my lips, began again to blow—blow my lungs out, trying to drown out that dreadful sound.

  I played my solo to a counterpoint from Hell.

  I don’t remember signaling, but there was Earlie, under me with the drums, all the way, lifting and shouting and all of a sudden we were rising together. I could sense the bass—I was beyond hearing—the bass was there and adding its own mournful harmonies. And Jack was there too, sobbing into his machine.

  I played on, my eyes shut tight against the night. Only the music mattered, the notes, the sound. That sound. That low, slow, rumbling grumbling. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to know what was going on in that graveyard behind me.

  “Boje!” I played. “Boje! This is for you. I’m sorry I let you down, Boje! I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry!”

  The moon hid behind its cloud and waited. Other sounds began to add themselves. Strange sounds. I became curiously detached—caught up in the experience and yet, at the same time, aware of the totality of it all. The new sounds were proper, correct, and never discordant—they seemed to point up our every meaning.

  There were rustlings, as if of movement. Dry dead leathery rustlings. Silent whisperings and a shambling murmur and the sense of something passing through the night—something slow and massive and ponderously invincible rolling up and out into the world; something spread out and made up of many lesser, but no less powerful, units of itself. It whispered across the night and across our sound.

  We swung into the last movement of the Battle Hum, a battle in itself. The clarinet shrieked. It does that on the high notes if you’re not careful—but here it seemed somehow right. The bass pounded, the drums boomed and doomed, and through it all was Jack holding us somehow together. We rode through it on a cresting wave, with a whole world shouting, “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!” Singing it out with the music—the Battle Hum crashed across our sensibilities. Only the fear of that other sound kept us from flying out into a million brilliant stars.

  Under and around and through it was that rumble and rustle, that grumbling bustling tremble of something big and busy moving through the night. It was something not benevolent; it had a feeling of ruthless deliberation as it went about its business. Yet it knew we were there and never touched us. It just went on with its own fearful task, taking care not to break the spell of our sound. Something that we had awakened, but not quite unleashed.

  “Boje!” I played. “Boje! This is for you. I’m sorry I let you down, Boje! I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry!”

  And then there was silence.

  And the dawn.

  The graveyard was still. The ground was smooth—unbroken and unmarked. Dew gleamed wetly on the grass, blue-green and glistening. Whatever had happened last night had not happened here.

  The city was empty.

  The people came out into the streets and the soldiers were—gone. Their tanks lay empty in the intersections, their rifles still leaning carelessly where they had left them, their jeeps still with motors running.

  Only rarely was an empty uniform discovered—baggy-green shirt, trousers and heavy boots casually discarded as if they no longer held any meaning.

  But of the soldiers, never a trace was found.

  There are those who claim to know what happened. It was a strike, they say. The soldiers took off their uniforms and they were no longer soldiers, they were men again. And the men went home.

  Perhaps. It is an easy explanation to accept. Perhaps it is the truth. Or perhaps—

  I had said our music could raise the dead, but I had used that only as an expression. I had never thought—

  But we played the Battle Hum—

  They say that killing is a mortal sin; that it is against the laws of God. If that is true—and I know now that it must be—if that is true, then every man who has ever taken a human life has been, from that moment on, damned for all eternity. No matter how many men or nations say that it is all right for a man to take up arms against an enemy, it does not change that one basic fact—killing is a mortal sin.

  And every one of those simple white markers we had stood among represents a soul condemned.

  A nation had sentenced her sons to damnation so that she might survive.

  There’s no such thing as a “moral war.”

  How must those men have felt to discover that they had been betrayed? How must each have realized he could not abdicate the authorship of his own crimes? What would he feel toward the leaders of his nation—the generals, the politicians, the mothers, wives, and brothers he had left behind, each urging him onward to kill in their names...?

  And yet—

  When that same nation had been betrayed and rough-hewn soldiers abused the citizens, those same sons had returned, once more.

  Greater love hath no man?

  I wonder....

  Is this how one repents for making war? By rising up and fighting again? By repeating the sin?

  Or was it something else; some other reason that made them rise up in the night?

  Could it have been to protect us from ourselves? To keep us from condemning more of our young to Hell?

  Was it so that we might learn to live for our ideals instead of having to die for them?

  AFTERWORD:

  This is the only ghost story I’ve ever written.

  Yes, the ending is heavy-handed. It was a product of the moment—my raging frustration with the ongoing collisions of ideology and morality, and how quickly those became the justifications for escalating violence.

  Politicians create war too easily. And those who say nothing in opposition are accomplices to the carnage and brutality that follows.

  If it’s true that ghosts only hang around the living because of unfinished business, then this seemed the only logical conclusion.

  How We Saved the Human Race

  I’m not in the business of predicting the future, but sometimes it happens anyway.

  This story may have been one of the most prescient things I’ve ever written. No, not the specific details—but the social effects that followed.

  TEST TRANS CODE

  ALPHA ALPHA TAU

  QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM1234567890

  THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOGS.

  END TEST

>   MESSAGE BEGINS HERE

  DATE/2037.05.14

  FROM/THE UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO BRAZIL

  TO/THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  FILE/BRZ9076THX

  CODE/ALPHAALPHATAU/20370514.475FGH

  STATUS OF DOCUMENT/CLASSIFIED/CODE 475FGH

  MR. PRESIDENT, IN PLAIN TERMS, THE ANSWER IS NO. THE GOVERNMENT OF BRAZIL ABSOLUTELY REFUSES TO RELEASE THE BODY. THERE CAN BE NO POSSIBLE NEGOTIATION ON THIS. THIS IS AN INTERNAL MATTER—THEY CLAIM—AND NO OTHER POLITICAL BODY WILL BE ALLOWED TO INTERVENE. OF COURSE, THIS IS A BLATANT GRAB ON THEIR PART, BUT THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. I AM AGAINST MAKING ANY KIND OF FLAP.

  FIRST OF ALL, WORLD OPINION GENERALLY FAVORS THE BRAZILIANS. ANY ATTEMPT BY US TO PRESSURE THEM WOULD ONLY PRODUCE HOSTILE REACTIONS, AND THAT’S THE LAST THING WE WANT NOW. SECONDLY, THEY WANT TO TAKE CREDIT FOR LEDGERTON’S CAPTURE. THEY FOUND HIM AND THEY EXECUTED HIM. OR RATHER, THEY ATTEMPTED TO. IT WAS UNFORTUNATE THAT THE CROWD BEAT THEM TO IT. THERE ARE THOSE WHO SUGGEST THAT THE POLICE DELIBERATELY LET THE LYNCH MOB IN, BUT I WOULD DISCREDIT THAT STORY. THEY LOST TWELVE OF THEIR OWN IN THE DISORDER.

  I THINK WE OUGHT TO LET THE BRAZILIANS HAVE THE CREDIT. THIS IS NOT TO SUGGEST APPEASEMENT, BUT WISDOM. THIS GOVERNMENT IS THE FRIENDLIEST ONE BRAZIL HAS HAD IN TWELVE YEARS AND WE WANT TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. ANY PRESSURING ON OUR PART WOULD DEFINITELY COOL RELATIONS, AND PRESIDENT GARCIA WON’T BEND TO PRESSURE ANYWAY. POLITICAL REASONS. THE MILITANT RIGHTISTS WOULD USE SUCH ACQUIESCENCE AS A LEVER AGAINST HIM. SO I THINK WE’D BETTER JUST MAKE INEFFECTUAL NOISES FOR NOW, LOUD ENOUGH TO PLACATE OUR OWN PEOPLE, BUT NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO ANNOY JUAN PABLO GARCIA.

  BY THE WAY, THE BODY WILL REMAIN ON PUBLIC DISPLAY FOR ANOTHER DAY AND A HALF. YES, STILL HANGING FROM THE GALLOWS, BULLET HOLES AND ALL. I’VE SEEN IT AND IT’S A GHASTLY SIGHT. NOT EVEN LEDGERTON DESERVED WHAT THEY DID TO HIM. YOU KNOW OF COURSE THAT THEY CASTRATED HIM TOO.

  IN ANY CASE, I HAVE IT FROM GARCIA HIMSELF THAT IT WILL BE TAKEN DOWN TUESDAY AND CREMATED. THE ASHES WILL BE SCATTERED AT SEA. NO, WE CAN’T STOP THAT EITHER.