Ghostwalkers Read online

  “By the Queen’s sacred bloomers,” said Looks Away. “That’s bloody charming.”

  Grey slid from his horse and walked in a slow circle around the post.

  “Over here,” he called, and Looks Away jumped down and came over to see. On the far side of the pyramid were two heads that were much fresher than the others. They both wore their skin and hair, both still had milky eyes in their sockets. Withered lips were peeled back from their teeth as if the owners of these heads had died laughing, which Grey knew was a lie. Skin contracts as the moisture is leeched away.

  Looks Away cursed softly as he squatted down to peer at the heads. Both of them had long black hair. Both had prominent noses and wore red cloths around their foreheads. Their skin was a slightly ruddier shade than Looks Away’s.

  “Apaches,” said Grey quietly.

  “Yes,” murmured Looks Away. “And I sodding well know them.”

  “You what?”

  Looks Away bent forward and spat into the face of each Apache. He took his time, hocking up phlegm and firing it off with great accuracy and velocity.

  “I take it you weren’t friends,” said Grey. “But since when did the Sioux and the Apaches have trouble brewing between them?”

  “They don’t. Not as such. They are no more representatives of their people than I am of mine. This was entirely a personal dispute.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The one on the left there was known as Horse Runner. His companion was Dog That Barks. Rather an obvious name, don’t you think? All bloody dogs bark. It’s like saying Cow That Moos.” He sniffed. “They were renegades from their tribal lands and when last I saw them they were working as hired muscle.”

  “For who? That Deray fellow?”

  “No. They worked for a land syndicate run by a right bastard of a man named Nolan Chesterfield, a nephew of one of the rail barons.”

  “Which baron?” asked Grey.

  Looks Away caught something in his tone and gave him a sharp look. “Why does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Not a chum of the barons, I gather?”

  “Hardly,” said Grey bitterly. “I worked for a couple of them once upon a time. Got well paid, but somehow I always seemed to come up short on the deal. First one I signed on with was that Chinese fellow, Kang. He was my boss for six months.”

  “Kang? I thought he only hired his own people.”

  “His own people don’t always blend in with people outside of his own crowd,” said Grey, shrugging. “And he needed someone solid to protect his lawyers when they went to dicker with some of the other barons. That was me, for a while anyway, but we had some differences of opinion. So … then I worked for that witch Mina Devlin.”

  Looks Away wore a wistful smile. “Ahhh … Mina Devlin. I’ve seen pictures, heard tales. Reliable tales, mind you. I always wanted to make her acquaintance.”

  “No,” said Grey, “you don’t. She may be prettier than a full moon over the mountains, but she will gut you and leave you to bleed just for the fun of seeing it. And people say she’s, you know…” He tapped his temple.

  “I believe the phrase is ‘touched by God.’”

  Grey snorted. “Touched by someone,” he said sourly, “but I don’t think God was doing the groping.”

  “Ah. Even so. She is supposed to be a truly passionate woman.” He cut a sly look at Grey. “You … wouldn’t know anything about that now, would you?”

  Grey felt his face grow hot and he immediately changed the subject. “You said these Apaches were providing muscle. Muscle for what?”

  “Oh, for whatever needed to be done. If Nolan Chesterfield wanted a tract of land so he could lay down some tracks, he had these two fellows—and a couple dozen others who worked with them—drive off anyone who lived there. Drive off or bury.”

  “Ah. I’ve met the type.”

  Looks Away turned to his companion. “I daresay you have. I’ve been wondering about that. When you say you’ve met the type it makes me wonder if you are, in point of fact, the same type?”

  Grey smiled. He could feel how thin and cold his smile was. “That’s a strange question to ask, friend. Especially after what we’ve been through and how many miles we’ve ridden. You slept ten feet from me for twelve nights and now you wonder if I’m some kind of badman?”

  “Actually, old sport, the thought has occurred to me before,” admitted the Sioux. “I’ve been trying very hard to figure you out. You have a charming demeanor when you want, but mostly you keep a distance. And your face gives nothing at all away. I’d hate to play poker with you.”

  Grey shrugged. He was very much aware that he let very little of his personality show through in either word or expression. He generally played the role of a saddle-weary but competent gunhand, and that was true enough in its way. There were layers of his soul he did not want peeled back. He dreaded the thought of anyone seeing the real him. The man who had failed, who had betrayed. The man who was certain that his true road led downhill to somewhere hotter even than this desert. Nor did he want this Sioux, or anyone, to see the fear that was always vying with his courage for control of his life. So, as he had done for so many years now, he kept his face wooden and his gaze flat.

  “Besides, the moment always seemed a bit wrong for bringing it all up. Manners, don’t you know.”

  “And mutual protection, let’s not forget about that.”

  “Let’s not. However let’s not let a shred of self-interest cloud this particular conversation.”

  “Okay then. If you have a straight question, ask it.”

  Looks Away sucked a tooth for a moment. Grey noted that the man’s hands hung loosely at his sides, well within range for a quick grab for the pistol butt in his stolen holster. The Sioux’s fingers twitched ever so slightly. Grey shifted his weight to be ready to dodge as well as draw if this all turned bad.

  “I’ll ask three questions,” said Looks Away, surprising him.

  “Shoot.”

  “That’s a rather unfortunate choice of word, wouldn’t you say?”

  They smiled at each other. They kept their gun hands ready.

  “What’s the first question?” asked Grey.

  “Have you ever been to the Maze before?”

  “No,” said Grey flatly. “Second question?”

  “Abrupt, aren’t we?”

  Grey just looked at him.

  “Very well,” said Looks Away. “Are you hunting for ghost rock?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re telling me the God’s honest truth?”

  “Is that your third question?”

  Looks Away shook his head. “No.”

  “Then I’ve already answered it once. I’ve never felt the need to repeat myself.”

  “Fair enough, and therefore I must take you at your word.”

  “Seems so. What’s your last question?”

  Looks Away took a breath. “Are you now, or have you ever been, in the employ of Aleksander Deray?”

  “I never heard of the man before you told me about him the day we met. And that,” said Grey, “is the God’s honest truth.”

  They stood and studied each other, and Grey felt as if something shifted between them. Looks Away had an almost comical way of speaking, which Grey figured was more than half put-on, but there was nothing funny about the keen intelligence in the man’s eyes. They were hard, cold, and sharp as knifepoints. Grey would not have wanted to stare into those eyes on a bad day if he didn’t have a well-oiled gun within grabbing distance.

  “Well then,” said Looks Away.

  He watched a slow smile spread across the Sioux’s face. It looked genuine, and the man appeared to be relieved. Probably not so much at what Grey had said in answer to those questions, but at whatever Looks Away had seen in Grey’s eyes.

  And Grey found himself making a similar decision about the strange Sioux renegade.

  The sun beat down on them and the horses blew and stamped. />
  “If I’ve offered offense, my friend,” he said, “then please allow me to apologize. I would take it as a kindness and a pleasure if you accompanied me on my little mission. I will, in fact, pay you for your services and would value both your protection and your company. Here’s my hand upon it.”

  Grey couldn’t help but return the smile. “You don’t even know how much it costs to hire me.”

  “Are you expensive?”

  “I’m a little saddle-worn but I’m not bargain counter.”

  “Then by all means state me a price.”

  Grey did and the Sioux’s smile flickered. “Dear me, you think very highly of your skills.”

  “Others have in the past. I’m giving you my last rate with only a five percent increase.”

  “Ah,” said Looks Away. “Well … done and done.”

  “All right then.”

  Neither of them moved. Not until the moment had stretched between them. However it was Looks Away who broke the spell and held out his hand. Still smiling, Grey took his hand and shook it. Before he let it go, he asked a question.

  “What would you have done if you didn’t like my answers to your questions?”

  “Shot you, I suppose.”

  “What makes you think you can outdraw me?” asked Grey.

  “Oh, I have no doubt you’re a faster draw than me.”

  “Then—?”

  “I anticipated a moment like this, so I took the liberty of emptying your pistol while you were sleeping last night.”

  Grey’s smile vanished and he whipped the pistol out of its holster, pivoted and fired three quick shots at the mound of skulls. The bones exploded as heavy caliber bullets smashed through them.

  Thomas Looks Away shrieked. Very high and very loud.

  The echoes of the gunshots rolled outward like slow thunder and faded into the desert shimmer.

  “And I reloaded them this morning, you mother-humping son of a whore,” said Grey.

  Looks away took several awkward steps and then sat down heavily on the sand. “By the Queen’s garters!” he gasped.

  Grey opened the cylinder, dumped the three spent casings, and thumbed fresh rounds into the chambers. Then he slid the pistol into his holster.

  “And that,” he said quietly, “is why you’re paying the extra five percent.”

  He turned and walked back to his horse.

  Chapter Twenty

  They entered into the broken lands of California and rode into the hills. As they climbed away from the desert floor they left the relentless brutality of the Mojave behind and found small surcease in the shadows beneath green trees. All around them, though, were remnants of what had been and hints of the new realities. Some of the most ancient trees had cracked and fallen, their roots torn by the devastating quakes and aftershocks of the Great Quake of ‘68. There were deep, crooked cracks torn like ragged wounds through the rocks. Mountains had been split apart. Massive spears of rock thrust up through the dirt. Forest fires had swept up and down the hills, turning forests to ash. Rivers and streams had been changed by the new complexities of the landscape. And not very far across the border from Nevada lay the edge of the world. Instead of the miles upon miles that had once stretched to the bluffs and beaches west of the Camino Real pilgrims’ road, a new range of shattered mesas had risen up as most of the rest of California had cracked like dry biscuit and tumbled into the churning Pacific. Millions had died in what anyone within sound of that upheaval must have truly believed was the true apocalypse warned about in the Revelation of Saint John.

  Even now, a decade and a half later, the land still looked like an open wound. Grey fancied he could feel the land moan and groan as it writhed in agony.

  And yet …

  And yet, the ash from those burned trees had enriched the soil and now there were new trees reaching up to find the sun. Riots of flowers bloomed in their millions, and even the desert succulents were fat and colorful.

  At least that was how Grey saw it for the first day of their journey.

  All of that changed the deeper they ventured into the broken lands. The lush growth waned quickly as they climbed a series of stepping-stone mesas that marched toward the shattered coastline. The soil thinned over the rocks and was more heavily mixed with salt from ocean-born storms. The flowers faded to withered ghosts and gasping succulents and austere palms replaced the leafy coniferous trees.

  As the hours burned away, Grey found himself sinking into moody and troubled thoughts. His life had taken some strange, sad paths since he had gone to war. And stranger still since he’d tried to leave that war behind. No matter how far he rode the world did not seem to ever wash itself clean of hurt and harm. And everything seemed to get stranger the farther west he went.

  Not that the south was any model for comfort and order. That’s where his luck had started to go bad.

  That’s where he began to dream that the dead were following him. That he was a haunted man. That maybe he was something worse.

  Doomed, perhaps.

  Or damned.

  Maybe both.

  Even now, as he drowsed in the saddle he could catch glimpses of silent figures watching him from the darkness beneath trees, pale faces that turned to watch as he passed. It would be easier, he thought, if all of those faces belonged to strangers. If that was the case he could resign himself to accept that it was the land that was haunted. He’d heard enough stories—and recently had enough experiences—to accept that any definition of the word “death” he once possessed was either suspect or entirely wrong.

  After all there were those things that had been raised by the explosion of Doctor Saint’s strange weapon. Surely if the hinges of the world were breaking, then the door to hell was already torn off and cast into the dust. It made him wonder about all those wild tales he’d read in dime novels about the lands of the Great Maze. Monsters and demons, angels and goblins. He’d enjoyed those books as exciting and absurd fancies.

  Now he wondered.

  And he feared.

  If even a fraction of them were true, then dear God in Heaven why was he riding west? Why had he agreed to this job? Why was he moving toward the lands of madness and monsters?

  As if in answer, the voice of that woman—that witch or vampire, whatever Mircalla was—whispered inside his memory.

  You do not know what you are, man of two worlds. The man who lives between the worlds. Yes … that’s what it says about you. You do not belong to either life or death. That means that I and my sisters cannot have you, Greyson Torrance. You are exempt, pardoned. Not from your crimes but from my web.

  And when he had demanded to know what she meant, Mircalla had confounded him more.

  It means that the universe, for good or ill, is not done with you. I am forbidden to claim you. Your journey is not over.

  But the thing that had frightened him most was what she said about the ghosts he dreamed about every night. He had never spoken of them to anyone, but she had either plucked the thought from him, or possessed a true second sight.

  The dead follow you, Grey Torrance.

  “No, goddamn it,” he said between clenched teeth.

  Looks Away glanced at him. “What’s that, old chap?”

  “Nothing,” mumbled Grey. “It’s nothing at all.”

  The lie fit like thorns in his mouth. Looks Away studied him for another few moments, then shrugged and turned away.

  They rode on.

  Two hours later he and Looks Away stopped there and stared out at what lay beyond. The horses trembled and whinnied. Grey felt his own heart begin to hammer while his skin felt cold and greasy.

  “Suffering Jesus on the cross,” breathed Grey.

  Beyond the mesa was madness.

  Beyond the mesa was the world gone wrong.

  A world where sense and order had drowned along with mountains and fields.

  There, shrouded in drifting clouds of gray mists lay the bones of the earth. Tall spikes and shattered cliffs. Great
gaping holes. Monstrous caverns that gaped like the mouths of impossible beasts. And through it, swirling and churning, the ocean reached into the tortured land, slapping at the rocks, smashing down on newborn islands, sizzling into steam as it flooded into deep pits.

  Grey had once read a book by a man named Dante that described the rings of Hell.

  He was certain he and Looks Away stood looking at the outermost ring.

  “Welcome to the Maze,” said the Sioux. “And God help us both because that is where we’re going.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Where exactly are we heading?” asked Grey as their horses picked their way down through a series of crenellated canyons. Juniper and eucalyptus trees leaned drunkenly over them, their damaged roots clinging desperately to the shattered rocks. “Does your Doctor Saint have his workshop up in these hills?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Damn, son, have you ever considered giving a straight answer?”

  “Life’s not that easy,” said Looks Away.

  Grey thought about it. Nodded. “So—?”

  “We’re going back to where this all started.”

  “You mean to the laboratory where those guards were killed?”

  “Yes. Maybe there was something I missed, something that would give me a new trail to follow.”

  “Worth trying. What’s the town?”

  “You won’t have heard of it,” said Looks Away. “Sad little place called Paradise Falls. Way out on the edge of the Maze. Dusty little nowhere of a town.”

  “Sounds charming.”

  They pushed on and Looks Away brought them along a chain of trails that linked former trade routes and newer traveler’s roads. There was no longer such a thing as a straight and reliable road. Not since the quake. Many times they had to dismount and lead their horses on treacherous paths along the sheer sides of mesas, or in the darkened hollows at the feet of crumbling mountains.

  “A goddamn billy goat wouldn’t take this road,” complained Grey more than once. Looks Away offered no argument.

  By the afternoon of the third day they emerged from a canyon and paused on a promontory beyond which was a sight Grey Torrance had never before seen.