Ghostwalkers

by Jonathan Maberry

  Thomas Looks Away stepped out from the old bridge-keepers’ shack. He had his Kingdom Rifle raised, but the barrel was pointed not at the undead horde or even at Deray, but at the bridge on which they stood.

  Exactly as planned.

  They’d discussed this very moment back in Saint’s barn. What to do. How to fight. Killing Deray was a priority, but Looks Away, Jenny and Saint all feared that taking out the necromancer would not stop the slaughter and sack of the town. No, the fight had to be won at the bridge.

  Grey pointed down at the boards beneath his feet. “We have it rigged to blow. And before you think that we’ve planted ordinary dynamite, think again. Every inch of this bridge is mined with ghost rock powder and canisters of compressed gas from the smelting factories in Salt Lake. When it blows it will vaporize everything. Every bit of wood and rope and flesh. That gun fires a special round that reacts with ghost rock.” He tapped the stone in Lucky Bob’s chest. “All ghost rock. One shot and poof! You’ll all die. Now and forever. Me, too, but my soul, at least, won’t die with me. Maybe I’ll go to heaven. Maybe I’ll go to hell.” He winked at them. “It’s an even bet either way and I’m willing to take my chances, Bob.” He paused. “Are you?”

  Above them, Deray’s frigate was abruptly rising, moving away from the bridge. Grey saw it. So did all the walking dead.

  “Your lord and master believes me,” said Grey. “And look at him … running to save his own ass while his slaves burn.” He shook his head. “So tell me, friend, what’s it going to be, Bob? Do you stand with us, or do we all go down together?”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” said Lucky Bob. “You know what will happen if you destroy this bridge. You won’t just kill us, you doom everyone in town. You’d be trapped here. You’d all starve.”

  “Yup, I reckon so. Actually, I figure we’re dead no matter what happens. Either you kill us and maybe turn us into monsters, or we starve to death. You’re not giving us any cards to play but this.”

  “Who knows?” called Looks Away. “We might not starve. We might get rescued. The telegraph still works and we sent a pretty emphatic series of messages. Oh … and we told them about Deray’s plans, too. And about the foreign powers. All of it. Took forever and I fancy the telegrapher’s hand is rather worn out.”

  “Nobody will come,” called Deray. His sky ship was probably beyond the reach of fire and debris should the bridge explode, but he was well within earshot from his safe distance. He bellowed down at them in a mocking voice. “Nobody will believe you.”

  “Maybe not,” said Grey. “Or maybe they won’t have a choice. Maybe they’re going to have to send someone out to check. Just in case. I expect the Sioux will. They’ll want to know about all those dead red men. And the Rail Barons. The governments of the United States and the CSA. They’ll have to check because, again, you’re not leaving them a choice. And that, you incredible freak, is your problem. You think people will just bend over and take it. You must think everyone is as weak as Chesterfield. You have no faith in people. You don’t understand people at all. And that’s why we’re going to take you down.”

  “If I fall,” mocked Deray, “it will be long after you are dead and gone.”

  “Maybe. I don’t expect to make it out of this alive. No sir, I expect I’ve just about played my last good card. But I can guarantee, Deray, that you won’t find this country easy to conquer. People will stand up to you. They’ll fight.”

  “People are sheep.”

  “Think so? Look at this, look at us here in Paradise Falls. We’re ready to blow up our bridge and die to stop you. That’s just a handful of people. Good luck trying to conquer a world.”

  Deray’s answer was a mocking laugh that twisted inside the screech of the wind and seemed to shake the pillars of heaven.

  In a quiet voice Grey said, “You didn’t kill Jenny. She’s alive. I love her and she’s alive. Let her live, Bob. Be her father one more time.”

  Lucky Bob met his eyes, and for a long moment, as Deray’s laughter shook the world, they just stood there. “You don’t understand. He’s … too powerful. He owns us. We belong to him … heart and soul.”

  “Heart maybe,” said Grey. “But not soul.”

  With that he moved faster than he had ever moved in his life. He slapped the pistol aside with his left hand, and in the same instant, reached across his body and drew his Colt. It all happened inside of a fragmenting moment. Lucky Bob’s gun fired. Grey felt the burn in his side as the bullet ripped a trench in his flesh. Then he jammed his own gun barrel against the chunk of ghost rock over Lucky Bob’s heart and fired.

  Lucky Bob Pearl staggered backward two awkward steps. His gun fell from his grip, struck the bridge and bounced over the edge. For some reason nearly everyone watched it fall. Even the living dead. As if the fall of that gun meant something. Lucky Bob, though, did not watch his pistol fall into the thrashing water below. Instead he stared down at the black hole in the center of his chest. Smoke curled up from it, and fragments of the shattered ghost rock still clung to the ravaged flesh. His mouth opened and closed several times as if he wanted to speak, or wanted to scream, and could not determine which. If he felt pain there was none of it on his face. His expression was not one of fear or anger. It was one of wonder. Of awe. His face wore the half-smiling mask of someone who had heard the whisper of some great mystery and wanted to hear more. To know the secret.

  Lightning flashed and thunder erupted like a full broadside from a warship. The shock sent everyone staggering, and then a voice boomed like the voice of some dark god.

  “Kill them all!” roared Aleksander Deray.

  The horde of the living dead surged forward like a tide.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Grey whirled and raised his Lazarus pistol toward the sinister figure leering out over the rail of his sky ship. The craft was just beyond pistol shot, but it was close enough to see the madman’s face. There was such bottomless contempt there that it made Grey feel like an inconsequential bug. This man, hovering safely above the battlefield below, looked down on them all—the townsfolk and even his own people—with a comprehensive and uniform contempt. They were all nothing to him. A means to an end or a nuisance to be crushed underfoot.

  Behind Grey, on the bridge, he heard the sound of a body falling to the wooden boards. Lucky Bob. Dying. Free from the ghost rock, but with a bullet punched through his heart. From behind the barriers, Grey heard a voice rise in a banshee wail of horror and grief.

  Jenny.

  “Jenny,” her father said in a whisper of grief. “I’m so sorry…”

  “Kill them or burn!” bellowed Deray. Grey could hear the deaders behind him begin to move. The seconds of the hourglass had all run out now.

  With a snarl of inarticulate rage he fired at Deray.

  The walking dead on the bridge fired their guns. Some fired bullets. Others had the necromancer’s version of Kingdom rifles, but instead of ghost rock bullets they fired red flame in long, sizzling bursts.

  Everyone on the barricade fired. Everybody was firing, firing, firing. The world seemed to explode in burning gunpowder and hot lead.

  “Looks!” screamed Grey. “Now!”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  It all went wrong.

  It all went to hell.

  In the seconds before Looks Away’s blast detonated the ghost rock explosives, the undead swarmed toward the mouth of the bridge. Scores of them thundered over the creaking boards and flooded through the gates of Paradise Falls. Grey landed hard on the edge of the drop-off as the killers swept past and over him. He curled into a fetal ball as booted feet trampled him. His Colt went spinning from his hand and he saw feet step on it and push it down into the mud.

  Through the protective cage of his arms, Grey saw the destruction of the bridge. The middle of the span changed in the blink of an eye from wood and rope to a new sun that was born into searing brightness in the middle of the storm. Except instead of yellow, this sun burned
with sizzling blue light that roared and crackled and vaporized everything it touched. Grey saw undead bodies light up like candles and then fly apart like piñatas. He saw bodies and parts of bodies fly high into the storm, burning despite the rain, then fall like dying embers into the chasm.

  He saw the bridge itself burst apart. Torn ropes twisted like snakes of fire. Boards tumbled upward, spinning even as they became wreathed in flame. Then the whole mass of it plunged downward toward the spikes of rocks, and the unforgiving alien river that flowed outward from the depths of hell.

  Hundreds of the undead vanished inside a sheet of flame. Their bodies fell twisting and burning into the chasm. Hundreds of the uniformed human soldiers fell with them. They screamed despite the fire in their mouths, their lungs. They tried to hold on to the bridge, on to life, but there was no hope for any of them. The force of the explosion flashed outward with titanic force, slamming into the cliffs on either side of the chasm like the fists of the god of fire. The sandstone rocks of the cliff walls, already weakened, collapsed at once, dragging down four of the tanks and hundreds more of the waiting army of the mad necromancer. Screaming men and screaming manitou tumbled toward their doom with half a million tons of rock and the weight of those machines pushing them to destruction.

  The ground beneath Grey began to crumble, too, and he began to crawl, then to claw at the mud as it tried to fall away and send him to his death as well. He got to his hands and knees and crawled like a beaten dog, and then there was a hand under his armpit, pulling him up.

  Looks Away.

  They staggered together away from the collapsing cliff, and when they felt solid ground beneath their feet they ran.

  God did they run.

  “Jesus Christ…,” gasped Grey as they reached completely solid ground. Grey dropped to his knees again, gasping. He could feel blood running down his face and his whole body screamed in pain from all the feet that had kicked and stepped on him.

  “I know,” said Looks Away grimly. “How are you? Can you walk? Can you fight?”

  In the turbulent air, the necromancer’s frigate sailed toward Paradise Falls. Undead crouched behind the remnants of the shattered rails and fired rifles that shot streaks of red fire. Explosions rocked the town. Buildings went up in pillars of fire.

  Directly ahead of Grey and Looks Away, the undead swarmed over the sandbag wall. Through the sounds of shouting and gunfire they heard a woman’s scream. Jenny or someone else. A young voice filled with terror.

  Grey hauled himself back to his feet and spat mud and blood into the wind. He tore the Lazarus pistol from its holster. He saw movement and turned to see people standing in the shadows beneath a withered cottonwood tree. Men whose faces he knew. And a woman whose face he had dreamed about every night since he’d left her to die.

  “Annabelle…” he murmured.

  They were right here. His ghosts had caught up to him at last.

  “I tried,” he told her. “I tried to save him. I tried.”

  Annabelle said nothing. Her face shone as if she stood in bright moonlight.

  “Let me try to save the people here in town. Give me that. Let me do that much before you take me.”

  The ghosts of his men and the ghost of his lover said nothing. The rain slanted through the empty branches of the trees. It passed through the specters and struck the ground at their feet.

  “Grey—?” asked Looks Away. He stood beside Grey and followed the line of his friend’s gaze.

  “Please,” begged Grey. “Give me that much, and then you can drag me down to hell.”

  “Grey,” repeated Looks Away. “Who are they?”

  The question jolted Grey. “You can see them?”

  “Yes … but I don’t…”

  Then Looks Away stiffened and it was clear that he understood. “Oh … my God … your men. And … and … dear god in heaven.”

  The ghosts held their ground. The two men held theirs. Screams and gunfire filled the air.

  “Please…,” whispered Grey once more.

  Then Annabelle nodded. Once. A small thing. Despite the rain and clouds, the day seemed strangely bright. He could feel a snarl etch itself onto his mouth. He raised his gun and touched the barrel to the brim of his hat. A salute. An acceptance. He said nothing. There was nothing more that needed to be said. Together, brothers in arms, they ran toward the fight. Both of them knowing, deep in their hearts, that they were going to die. Neither of them cared. All that mattered was taking as many of their enemies with them as they could. This fight was no longer about winning.

  Now it was all about slaughter.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  The fight was brutal.

  Nearly two hundred of the undead had made it off the bridge before it blew. They ran howling at the barricade, straight into a hail of bullets. They fell by the dozen, some with wounds that their demons’ spirits would heal given time; others dropped back with head wounds that doomed them to nothingness.

  Grey saw Jenny Pearl standing with a foot braced on the pile of sandbags, her face set into a mask of mingled hatred and acceptance as she fired her Lazarus pistol into the heart of the swarm. The gun seemed to be functioning perfectly now, and one after another of the dead men exploded as the compressed gas inside the ghost rock bullets blew them to red pieces.

  Looks Away and Grey opened up as they caught up to the invading horde. The Lazarus bullets killed every undead they struck, no matter where they hit. Even a wound to a leg or arm set off a chain reaction with the fragment of ghost rock in their chests. Undead died screaming.

  The Kingdom rifle did far more damage, though. When one of its rounds struck, the resulting blast consumed everything inside a twenty-foot radius. Souls flickered to the wind and then were torn to emptiness as brains exploded from the monstrous pressure. It took the walking dead in the middle of the swarm only moments to realize that death chased them even as they sought to overwhelm the barricade. They laughed in the face of it, though. The red madness of slaughter was all they cared about.

  Other townsfolk deserted the other barriers and dashed through the ever-thickening rain to join the melee. Grey saw Mrs. O’Malley holding a musket by the barrel and laying about her like a warrior queen from some ancient legend. Old though she was, she put real power into her swings, and a heap of undead with shattered skulls attested to her ferocity.

  Grey fired his gun dry and paused to reload. He had already used half of his ammunition. One of the living dead rushed him before he could finish slapping the new cylinder in place. Grey pivoted and stamped hard on its knee with the flat of his boot. Bones snapped like dry sticks and the monster fell flat on its face, and even as it landed Grey stomped down with his heel, catching the thing behind the ear. The skull shattered and the neck canted inward. The creature stopped moving. Grey slapped the new cylinder into place and ran over the corpse to rejoin the fight.

  A series of explosions tore through the air and Grey wheeled around to see several of the little disasters—blue, yellow, pink, and purple—explode in the thick of the enemy.

  A split second later, a cry went up, and to his horror, Grey saw Doctor Saint fall as a line of red energy pulses punched downward from the railing of the sky frigate. Whether the scientist was dead or crippled was impossible to determine as the tide of battle swept over him, and he was lost to Grey’s sight.

  Grey fought his way to the outer edge of the barricade and launched himself into the thick of a battle between two youngsters—a boy and a girl of about seventeen who looked like twins—and five of the undead. The boy was on his knees, hands pressed to a savage wound in his stomach while the girl stood her ground and fired a Winchester, working the lever with fevered determination, hitting the enemy because at that distance there was no room to miss. One of the walking dead grabbed the smoking barrel of her gun and tore it from her hands and the creature behind him flung himself atop the girl, bearing her to the ground.

  Grey shot the dead man who had taken the Winchest
er, but he dared not shoot the one atop the girl. Instead he kicked it in the ribs with all of his strength, flipping it off of her and onto its back. The girl whipped a knife from her belt, rolled onto her knees and drove the point of the blade into the monster’s eye socket. The creature twitched once and then collapsed back, dead.

  Grey flashed her a wild grin. If life was kinder and if he had any chance at a future—which he knew he did not—he would want a girl like this as his daughter.

  The other three undead rushed forward, but Grey pivoted in the mud and killed them with three fast shots from the Lazarus gun. They exploded in blue fire and red blood.

  “Get him to safety,” Grey said, pointing to the girl’s wounded twin.

  But she shook her head and foraged among the dead for a new gun. “Safety?” she barked, then followed it with a mad laugh. “Where’s that?”

  “Grey!”

  He turned at the sound of his name and saw Jenny there. Right there.

  She was streaked with mud, blood, and rainwater, her hair was in rattails and her dress was torn, but she was more beautiful in that moment than ever before. She had her Lazarus pistol in one hand and a big Remington army pistol. The barrel of the Lazarus gun was pointed down, but the big, black mouth of the Remington was pointed at his heart.

  “You killed him,” she said.

  “Jenny—?”

  “You killed my pa.”

  “I … I tried to save him,” said Grey. “I begged him to stand down. I wanted him to tear the rock from his chest so that he didn’t have to die.”

  There were tears in her eyes. “You shot him in the chest.”

  “I—.”

  “Not the head,” said Jenny. “You didn’t shoot him in the head.”

  “Jenny, please…”

  “You killed him,” she repeated. Then she said, “You saved him.”

  Grey held his breath, frozen into the moment.

  “You saved his soul,” said Jenny in a voice that was strange and distant.