Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  Overhead, hung from the beams, were strange devices that looked like suits of armor from the days of King Arthur, but these were mostly made from woven materials unknown to Grey. Many had bulbous metal heads with wire-mesh grilles over glass faceplates. And against one wall was a mass of drilling and mining equipment. Wheelbarrows were piled high with pick-axes, shovels, sledgehammers, and coils of leather hose.

  Jenny stood gaping at it all, her lips parted. She turned in a slow circle like a child at the circus.

  “What is all this stuff? I thought Doctor Saint was working on weapons.”

  “He’s working on quite a lot of different things,” said Looks Away, then he gave an officious sniff. “Percival Saint is a great man, you know. He is an important man. He will be remembered long after we three are dust.”

  “Sure,” said Jenny. “Good for him. Where are the weapons?”

  “Please understand, Doctor Saint is not primarily concerned with destroying things. Most of his work is intended for the betterment of mankind and—.”

  Jenny gave him a sparkling smile that went less than a millimeter deep. “I don’t care if he can cure the common cold or turn chicken shit into gold. We need weapons.”

  “How eloquently you put it.”

  “Children,” said Grey mildly, “don’t make me cut a switch on both of you.”

  For that joke he received identical lethal stares that he was certain burned two full years off his life. He held up his hands and retreated.

  “My point,” said Looks Away with asperity, “is that not only don’t we understand the nature and dangers of most of this equipment, but we also run the risk of destroying crucial experimentation that could in very real point of fact benefit all of humanity. There is, after all, a world beyond Paradise Falls.”

  Jenny jabbed him in the chest with a stiffened finger, emphasizing each word. “I. Don’t. Care.”

  “Well, I bloody well do.”

  The ensuing argument slid down the side of a privy slope and soon the two of them were slinging words that made even Grey flinch and flush.

  He tried not to listen—though he was mildly impressed that Jenny Pearl seemed to have the greater vocabulary when it came to descriptions of disgusting liaisons with livestock and mishaps of the water closet. Looks Away was losing ground very quickly and clearly hadn’t brought the right bullets to this gunfight.

  Grey wandered over to the mining equipment, bent over to examine the tools, and selected a straight-pane sledgehammer with a twelve-pound steel head. He nodded to himself, hefted it, found the balance point, walked over to the first locked door, and while the argument raged behind him, raised the sledge and brought it down with a savage grunt.

  The padlock was undamaged but the hasp was torn from the wood with twin shrieks of protesting metal and timber. Splinters flew and the heavy padlock dropped, bounced once, and skidded to a stop by Looks Away’s foot.

  The argument stopped as surely as if he’d backhanded them both—which, in truth, he had considered—and they turned on him like scalded snakes.

  “Enough!” he barked before they could open up on him. “Enough talk. Enough bullshit. It’s been too long a night and I’m too exhausted to listen to you two squabble like cats. Looks Away, I’m sorry that we might be breaking Doctor Saint’s rules, and I’m almost sorry that we may mess with some of his inventions. But there are people dying in this town, and as far as I see it that trumps everything. And don’t even try to give me a speech about posterity or benefiting the future of humanity. It may be true but we don’t have the luxury to care about it.”

  Looks Away opened his mouth, but Grey turned to Jenny.

  “I don’t know you very well, ma’am, but I know you well enough to know that sometimes your mouth gets ahead of your horse sense. Whatever. Stop it. We don’t have time for that either.”

  He brandished the sledgehammer.

  “I’m going to knock every damn one of these locks off. That’s not an option and it’s not a discussion. It’s what is going to happen. Looks Away, I want you to go through every room and find whatever you can to help us. Jenny, you’re going to help him.”

  “Who,” asked Looks Away coldly, “the bloody hell put you in charge?”

  Grey raised the sledgehammer and brought it whistling down so that it smashed a hole in the floor between Looks Away and Jenny. They both cried out and jumped backward.

  “I did,” said Grey into the silence. “Now let’s get to work.”

  They got to work.

  Grey was so deeply exhausted that every time he swung the sledge he felt ten years older. He kept at it, though, and after only a small hesitation—perhaps for good form’s sake—Looks Away began invading the rooms as they were opened.

  By the time Grey had smashed all eighteen of the locks off, he was sweating and trembling. Jenny had run outside and returned with a bucket of cold well water, and she handed a full ladle to Grey.

  “Thanks,” he said, and dumped it over his head. Jenny gave him a refill, and this time he drank it, and two more besides. “God, that’s better than any whiskey I ever swallowed.”

  “Costs more, too,” she said. “More than the finest champagne.”

  “No doubt.” As he drank a fourth mouthful, he considered Jenny. He knew that he was probably seeing her at both her best and her worst. This was a time when great courage was called for, and she certainly showed that, but it was also the kind of thing that can shake a person to their core. And Jenny was undoubtedly shaken. First the loss of so many friends when the town was nearly destroyed, then her way of life as the farm failed, then the loss of her father, and now the corruption of her father’s memory. Even though Grey had no personal stake in this town or its people, he believed that he could sympathize with her. After all, his world had been torn apart by these events, too. Not in the same way, but in a way he knew he’d never shake off.

  And, he considered, maybe he was fooling himself about not having a stake in this town. Or its people.

  As Jenny took the ladle back from him her fingers accidentally brushed his.

  If, indeed, it was an accident.

  The look she gave him was not. Nor that knowing, secret smile that was certainly not meant for Looks Away to see.

  Grey ran fingers through his hair to comb it back from his face.

  This woman confused the living hell out of him. Not a handful of hours ago she’d stood in the rain while her dead father tried to gun her down. Now she was flirting and casting slanting glances at him. It made no sense. Either she was mad or …

  Or what? Grey didn’t know where else to go with that. What deepened his unease was how much this kind of whimsical play reminded him of his lost Annabelle. She was always playing saucy games no matter how proper she was on the streets or how dire the tension was.

  Wrestling with these thoughts was difficult and painful. He was starting to genuinely like Jenny Pearl, but he had to wonder how much of that was old longing transferred unfairly to this troubled young woman.

  “Jenny,” he said softly, pitching his voice for her ears alone, “I’m sorry I yelled and—.”

  She touched her fingers to his lips. “You hush now. I was playing the fool and we both know it. You hadn’t spoken up when you did I’d have done a nasty to Looksie. Or him to me.”

  He took her hand and held it for a moment. “Guess we have enough enemies without that.”

  The blue of her eyes was the blue of summer skies and blooming cornflowers. Her lips were without rouge but they were pink and delicious and he wanted very badly to kiss her.

  “Jenny,” he said, “when this is over I’d like to maybe invite you out for a carriage ride in the country.”

  “Well,” she said, a bit breathlessly, “wouldn’t that be nice?”

  He wanted to kiss those lips. Her lips parted and long lashes brushed her cheeks as Jenny tilted her face up toward his. Grey was actually beginning to bend down toward her when a voice shouted, “You sodding bastard!”r />
  Looks Away.

  Yelling from inside one of the rooms.

  Not directed at them, but clearly yelled for them to hear.

  Jenny jerked back from him, turned, and cleared her throat. Her face was flushed. “He … um, must have found something.”

  “I guess so,” said Grey. “Wish to hell I’d hit him with that damn sledgehammer.”

  Jenny turned and flashed the brightest smile he’d ever seen. Then she spun and dashed out to see what Looks Away had found.

  Heaving a great sigh, Grey followed.

  Chapter Forty

  They found the Sioux scientist in a large room at the very back of the barn. Inside there was a long mission table on which lay various pieces of Doctor Saint’s bizarre machinery. Set haphazardly around the pieces were notebooks, loose papers filled with handwritten notes, larger sheets of drawing paper covered with complex diagrams, and even some pages produced by one of those newfangled typewriting machines. On the wall across from the door was a big and very detailed map of this part of California. It was an older map, clearly made in the days before the Great Quake, but Saint had meticulously overwritten it with a carefully measured tracery that showed the new coastline and much of the Great Maze. Grey, who had always loved maps, was drawn to it and stood studying the details. It was by far the most detailed map of the Maze he’d ever seen.

  He found Paradise Falls on the map and spotted several notations made in Saint’s crabbed hand. One was the location of Nolan Chesterfield’s estate, situated in a green valley that had been left mostly intact by the devastation. Another was an old mining camp whose name, Dragon Wells, had been crossed out and the name DERAY written over it. The pen strokes of each letter had gouged into the thick paper. Clear evidence of Saint’s dislike for the mineral tycoon.

  There were other markings, too. Lots of places notated with “GR,” and Grey figured these were places where ghost rock was discovered. There were at least a hundred of these spread out over an area that encompassed all of the farmland around Paradise Falls. There were twice as many with “GR-?”, suggesting spots where either ghost rock was reported but not found, or where mineral scouts planned to look. And there were dozens with a slash mark through the GR. They must have been bad leads that yielded none of the ore.

  One notation struck Grey. In the broken hills between Chesterfield’s valley and Deray’s mine, Saint had written:

  HERE THERE BE DRAGONS

  It was a strange thing for so practical a man to write. That was something they used to put on maps to indicate the perils at the end of the known world.

  “Grey,” said Looks Away, “if you please—?”

  Grey turned away from the map and joined Jenny and the Sioux at the table. On the table in front of them lay something that looked like a rifle but wasn’t. Or at least not any kind of rifle Grey had ever seen. Apart from having a barrel, stock, and trigger the rest was entirely alien to him.

  The rifle was fashioned from highly polished steel and gleaming brass, with fittings of copper and silver. Crystals were inset into the body of the weapon and even in the bad light they seemed to glow with dark-red promise. The pistol-grip handle was wound turn and turnabout with gray silk.

  “Oh, dearie-dearie me,” murmured Looks Away nervously, “I hadn’t realized Doctor Saint had built a prototype.”

  Grey bent and peered at it, but did not touch the thing. “What is it?”

  “This is something very special,” said Looks Away. “And something very, very dangerous.”

  “It’s a gun, though, right?” asked Jenny.

  “Oh yes, it is very definitely a gun. And, if it works the way the good doctor theorized, it will be a dreadfully powerful gun. Even a small platoon of men armed with weapons like this would triumph over an entire regiment, and probably without the loss of a single man.”

  “How?” gasped Jenny.

  “Ghost rock.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” said Grey. “That’s tall tale stuff. Ever since they first found ghost rock people have been going on and on about stuff like this. The ultimate weapons of conquest. Weapons so powerful they would end all wars.”

  “You don’t believe that?” asked Jenny.

  “Not even a little. I mean, sure, someone will eventually create a better gun. Happens all the time. Double-action pistols trump muzzle-loaders. Flintlocks trump crossbows. Going all the way back to when someone invented the club and kicked the ass of everyone who was still using fists. The wonders of modern science. I get that,” said Grey. “What I don’t get is why anyone thinks that a weapon—any weapon—will end war. I mean, how the hell could a weapon end a war?”

  “When you conquer your enemies,” said Jenny. “That’s how.”

  “Really? And then what? There are always more enemies. My family lines come from England and Scotland. They conquered each other lots of times, and conquered other people. That didn’t end war. When white men landed at Plymouth Rock and started killing the red men, that didn’t end war. Soon as they cleared out the Indians, they started killing each other. And then we fought the British, and the French and the Mexicans. Look at all the ghost rock weapons out there now. Have they stopped the Rail Wars? Has either the North or South won the damn war? Uh-uh, honey, no weapon is going to end war. Can’t happen.”

  Looks Away sighed. “I tend to agree with you, Grey. Doctor Saint, for all of his brains and wisdom, is of a different mind, however. It’s his belief that if someone developed what he called an ‘ultimate’ weapon, then peace could be achieved. A lasting peace, I mean.”

  “How?” asked Jenny. “Grey’s right, people are plain contentious. They’ll find some way to pick a fight, no matter what.”

  “Contentious, yes, but are they suicidal? What if there was a weapon so powerful that to use it would insure the utter destruction of one’s enemy? Wouldn’t knowledge of such a weapon make any rational person choose to opt out of a conflict?”

  Grey and Jenny considered, then they shook their heads.

  “People aren’t that smart,” she said.

  “People are plumb crazy,” agreed Grey.

  “Hey,” said Looks Away, “don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say that I was sold on Doctor Saint’s idea of a weapon to end all wars. I’m saying that he believes it. He is rather emphatic about it. Dare I say obsessive?”

  Jenny tapped the rifle with a fingernail. “What is this and what does it do?”

  “This, dear girl, is a prototype of the Kingdom Mark One air-cooled, electric reload, ten-shot infantry repeating rifle. It fires iron-core, silver-tipped forty-caliber copper-jacketed chemical bullets powered by compressed gas collected by the discharge of the process of smelting ghost rock.”

  The silence following that explanation was crushing.

  Grey was the one to break it. “You want to take another swing at that, son? Maybe this time in English?”

  Looks Away gave them a crooked smile. “The Kingdom M1 is something entirely new. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world, of that I am quite certain. You understand, I hope, the concept of an electric motor?”

  “I read about it, sure,” said Jenny. “Even before the big ghost rock invention craze. Something about coils and such holding lightning?”

  “Not exactly,” said Looks Away, “but close enough for our purposes. Doctor Saint worked with a bright young naval officer named Frank Sprague from Milford, Connecticut. Mr. Sprague is part of the American Navy’s efforts to build machine-driven warships powered by ghost rock engines.”

  “Everybody’s navy is working on that,” said Grey. “Airships, too. I think Deray might have one, too. I saw something during the storm.”

  “As did I,” said the Sioux, “but I didn’t get a good look at it. That only reinforces the point that everyone seems to have a natural bent for armed conflict, even in an age of prosperity and discovery.” He gestured vaguely toward the town. “And by ‘prosperity’ I refer to virtually anyplace that isn’t Paradise Falls.”


  Jenny made a face.

  “My point,” continued Looks Away, “is that Doctor Saint was able to take some of Sprague’s designs and build a very compact version of a functional electric motor. He put that inside the Kingdom M1 and discovered a process of keeping the motor working at a perpetual rate of fire by something he calls ‘gas injection.’”

  “But you’re talking about ghost rock? How’s that a gas?” asked Grey. “I thought that when they smelted it all they got was a stinky cloud that tends to scream as it comes out of the smokestacks. They got all those smelting plants in Salt Lake City and the sky’s black with that smutch. People call it the ‘City of Gloom’ for a damn good reason.”

  “There are side effects, I’ll grant you. But what most people dismiss as merely gaseous discharge—waste products, if you will—Doctor Saint has discovered possess certain useful attributes. One of Doctor Saint’s … um … what’s the word I’m fishing for here? Rival? Colleague? Something like that but I can’t find the exact word. Anyway, one of the other scientists working on developing advanced military mechanics is based in Salt Lake. Dr. Darius Hellstromme. You’ve heard of him?”

  Jenny shook her head.

  Grey narrowed his eyes. “I have. Been some wild-ass tales coming out of Utah. I met a guy once who swore on his own mother’s grave that he saw a machine man walking down the center of Salt Lake, big as two men and clanking like fifty headaches. Of course, that fellow was a known drunk and his mother’s still alive, so who knows what he really saw.”

  Looks Away shrugged. “Machine men? Really? I doubt that. Though … I might be unfair. I suppose if machines can fly, then maybe they can be made to walk. But what concerns me, or rather what concerns Doctor Saint, is the Kingdom rifle. He explained it to me, but I’ll try to put it in simpler terms for you.”

  “That would be nice,” said Jenny. She gave Grey a knowing wink. “For the benefit of us lesser mortals.”

  “Hilarious,” said Looks Away sourly, but he was smiling. “The whole thing involves capturing the smoky discharge from the smelting process and then compressing it into small cylinders. The more gas that can be compressed into, say, a five-inch cylinder, the better. More gas pressure creates more energy when released. You follow?”