Ghostlands

TWENTY-TWO

“Little gray guys,” Inigo said. “A lot of them.”

He could smell them, thick and foul and musky everywhere about him. Their traces lay on the paving stones and hitching posts, on the sign heralding GENERAL STORE and the horse-drawn fire wagons dormant in their station, on every ratty, gone-to-mold plush toy in the Emporium and amid the broken glass cases of the candy shop and the rusting stools of the ice-cream parlor.

He wondered if he smelled like that to the others he’d brought along with him, felt sure he didn’t…at least, hoped he didn’t.

“So where are they?” That was Colleen, whose eyesight had completely returned. Goldie’s lightning burst may have been intense, but fortunately its effects had proved shortlived.

Not that twenty-twenty-the human version of it, at least-was much good here in the balmy autumn night. But at least there was a moon casting its silver radiance.

“More importantly, where’s Goldie?” Cal Griffin added. Across his back, he carried the gem-emblazoned rifle he’d retrieved from the El Dorado, the one he could carve a dragon-shaped notch in if he so desired. One-Shot Griffin, with the dragon carcass now moldering in the high grasses to prove it. One thousand miles or more to the east, and two time zones away.

Thank heavens the portal had still proven malleable (if spongy), or Inigo could never have gotten them here.

Welcome to Southern California….

When Inigo had burst in on them at the grain silo, Colleen had been suspicious, and Doc cautious. But Cal had instantly seized the moment. Assigning Krystee Cott and a party of three to keep tabs on Jeff Arcott as he consulted with Rafe Dahlquist over the schematics, Cal demanded Inigo lead them to where he had taken Goldie.

Inigo sniffed the air, pointed to the distance ahead, where Main Street opened onto a once-manicured, now-weedy circle of parkland that branched off to the various lands, like a roundabout. He inclined his head to the left, toward the frontier land.

“They’re down there. All of them…” Inigo breathed deeply through his nose, speculatively, weighing the subtle, variegated constituencies in the air. “And one other…human, I think, and wearing…” He tried to place the scent, recalled it from long ago, in the time before the Change, when he and his mom and dad all lived in Ithaca, and Janet Hirschenson’s mother had come along on a field trip, and he’d asked the name of her perfume. “Shalimar.”

“So it is a woman,” Doc noted.

“Or a guy with gender issues,” Colleen countered.

Cal unslung the rifle, held it at the ready. “Off to work we go….”

Taking point, Cal advanced cautiously, the others falling in behind. The cheery, ruined buildings looked on as they passed, and nothing beyond the four of them moved.

“Why do I so often feel I’m in Aliens 3-D?” Colleen inquired, warily surveying the awnings, corners and doors.

“Because you have selected a life of activity,” Doc answered.

“So that’s what you call it.”

“You know,” Cal said softly, peering at the silhouetted spires of the castle beyond, “I always wanted to come here.”

“Is it all you envisioned?” asked Doc.

“Less expensive,” Cal said, and tried to make it sound light. But in his heart he knew there were forms of payment more dear than money, and that before the night was out, he might give lie to his words.

Waving them to silence, he angled off, the others following. They passed through the gate of the fort, its perimeter wall of thick timbers still straight and relatively unchanged.

A sound of water drew his attention and he looked to his right, saw the artificial lake with its small island, the water choked with algae and the big paddlewheeler at anchor abandoned and listing to starboard.

“Where now?” Cal asked Inigo in a whisper.

The grunter boy started to answer, but there was no need.

For at that moment, from the square ahead, with its curclicued railings and its Spanish moss, from within the dark mansion fronted by gravestones, a wail rose up that stopped them dead and wrapped them in a cemetery chill.

It was the grunters, in their dozens like a nest of cockroaches, cheering for blood.

And one man, screaming.

Well, this is shaping up to be even worse than the first time I came here, Herman Goldman thought with a curious detachment as the hideous spectres tore at him.

But then, he’d always felt most removed from himself when in the deepest guano, and on this particular occasion it was looking like he had really painted himself into a brick wall.

There were maybe eight or ten of the damn things (hard to keep count when he was being thrashed about so), their grimy, dusty clothes in tatters, flesh rotting off their faces and limbs, death’s-head grins like the “before” pictures of scraggly, nightmare teeth in his periodontist’s office. At the Bitch Queen’s nod, they had vomited forth from the big pipe organ, flown shrieking at him, reaching long skeletal fingers that snatched at his padded electric-blue vest and Tommy Bahama shirt with its palm trees and China Clippers, yanked his tangle of curly black hair back hard, dug cracked sharp nails into his autumn-browned skin. They lurched him spinning up into the air as they gripped and twirled him like a maypole.

And geez, these weren’t even real ghosts, just stupid caricature animatronics, the repli-spooks of this ride that he had once upon a time been unprescient enough regarding what was someday to be his fate to actually think was cool.

The grunters on every side were stomping their feet, banging fists into walls, just eating it up-which, considering what they intended to eat next, Goldie supposed, could be called the appetizer.

“My little pals dig their meals,” that Bitch Queen in Goth regalia, with her weight of piercings, hoops that would set a metal detector yammering, her tattoos like the tendrils of amorous creepers reaching out to embrace her, called out over the cheers of the grunters. “But they had a request. They asked if I could turn the meat inside out, so they could get at all the juicy bits.”

She chuckled then. “We aim to please….”

That’s when the ghost-bots really went to town, like he was a big rubber glove they were intent on removing-reversing. And okay, so maybe in retrospect he could say it was all part of his plan (only it would be bullshit, because really what sort of plan could you prepare for something like this), that he was setting up a vocal tone like a meditation to focus his energies and chakras and whatnot.

But truth to tell, he was just squealing like a girl.

Which wasn’t to say he didn’t do anything, because in the middle of this delightful little Iron Chef vs. Norman Bates ringside event, Herman Goldman did have the presence of mind to marshal his forces and summon every bit of talent and juju at his command. And like a Holy Roller at the peak of his gyrations or some peyote-tweaked shaman in the smokiest of sweat lodges, he could really and truly say he saw flames shooting right out of his skin.

Which, of course, happened to be precisely the case.

Herman Goldman was his very own Fourth of July pinwheel, a whirling maquette on goddam hallelujah fire, consuming but not consumed, setting alight every soulless haunt that had dared lay hands on him, their clothes and hair and skin and eyes volatilizing into glorious, blast-furnace luminosity.

The grunters gasped and fell back, shielding their eyes from the glare. Then, as they saw through squinting slits just what was happening, they began to applaud.

Because these weren’t real ghosts, after all, just machine duplicates, and when everything was burnt away that could be burnt away, their metal armatures remained, still hanging from their wires in simulation of flight, still gleefully ripping away at him.

In what he supposed was his last coherent moment on this side of the veil, words came full blown to him that turned his shrieks to wild laughter born of hysteria.

Dinner’s on me, boys….

Then the head of the metal thing nearest him-which had only moments before been Marie Antoinette by way of Burke and Hare-exploded with a deafening thunderclap.

The other metal harpies instantly went dead and fell to the floor with a sound like a giant’s silverware set being dropped. Released, Goldie hit the ground with a thump, landing square on his tuchis.

The grunters let out a shout, and Queen Bitch sat knocked back in her throne, emerald and mascaraed eyes wide with surprise (and, of course, it was her being startled-not the spooks themselves-that had rendered them inert).

The haunted house had some new arrivals.

“Guys,” Goldie crooned, getting to his feet, “am I glad to see you.”

“This doesn’t have to get complicated,” Cal Griffin said, stepping deeper into the room, the still-smoking rifle leveled at the young woman on the throne. “We’re just here for him.”

Colleen and Doc flanked him, crossbow and machete drawn and ready now. Out of the corner of his eye, Cal could see Inigo hanging close behind Colleen, casting fearful glances at the grunters along the walls, who were staring daggers at him. Traitor, their eyes said, and it was clear to Cal that Inigo would not last long among his fellows here.

By now, Her Highness was beginning to recover a bit of her elan. “Well! Dan’l Boone’s got him a shootin’ iron! Better skedaddle on back to the Golden Horseshoe, Dan’l….” Her arms widened to take in the roomful of grunters, all glowering and baring hyena teeth. “Or go home, and come back with an Uzi.”

Growling low, the grunters started toward them.

Nausea surged in Cal’s stomach and he urged it down. You have been here before, if not in this specific place, in many a place like this. He went within himself, found that core of certainty he was coming more and more to trust, that tranquillity where ego fell away and the static was quelled.

It was a purification of self or, more accurately, a selection of certain parts of self, those that could be big enough, that could open to a process of decision beyond deliberation where instinct held sway. Cal felt his attention focus in, like a deadbolt sliding into a lock plate. He was intensely present, aware in the moment.

In one fluid motion, he raised the rifle and fired.

The Punk Queen cried out as the bullet punched a hole like a big fist in the wall to the left of the throne. The grunters retreated a pace.

“That could as easily have been a foot to the right.” Cal spoke quietly, addressing the girl and her malformed legion. “Now, we disagree on a lot of things, but I think every one of us would just as soon survive the night. So chill, okay?” They seemed to consider it, or at least took no immediate action. Still holding the rifle in his left, Cal beckoned with his free hand. “C’mon, Goldie.”

Goldie took a step or two toward him, then, glancing at the Punk Queen, hesitated as if a thought had seized him.

“Um, just a sec.”

Oh no, Goldie, Cal thought queasily. No embellishments now.

But Goldie was Goldie, after all, as Cal well knew. Who but Goldie had seen the Storm coming? Who else cast spells out of rock oldies, laid snares for grunters in the tunnels under New York, kept Excalibur lodged in a junk pile in his sanctum sanctorum?

Only Goldie could summon lightning in his hands, walk through walls, lead them to this mad, exhilarating, insanely dangerous place.

And only Goldie would have the nerve, the improvisational knack for the inappropriate, the utter chutzpah to choose this moment to walk up to the Evil Queen and plant a long, lingering kiss on her Goth black mouth.

The girl sat bolt upright at the moment of contact as though a million volts were coursing through her, then eased back limply into the throne.

As for everyone else in the room, it wasn’t often that such a disparate group all wore the identical look of incredulity.

Finally, Goldie broke the clinch. The girl looked at him dazedly, in that moment of vulnerability seeming far younger than she had. Goldie straightened, and Cal caught the expression of contemplation on his face, as if he were trying to weigh something elusive, as fleetingly insubstantial as…well, a kiss.

But somehow, Cal knew there was nothing the least bit romantic about any of this.

Then the Bitch Queen blinked, and started to come back to herself.

“Uh-oh,” said Goldie. “Time to be moseying on.”

With that, he took off toward Cal-and the door behind him-at a dead run.

The Bitch Queen yelled only one command, which, after Goldie’s grand gesture, was no surprise.

They burst out of the house of the dead with every grunter and his mother on their heels.

“Man oh man, Goldman,” Colleen gasped out, their feet pounding the pavement as they ran through the night-they were passing Tarzan’s treehouse now-“you’ve pulled some weird stunts in your time, but that just took the Emmy.”

“It’s not what you think,” Goldie replied, and, damn him, he seemed utterly calm.

“I don’t know what to think.”

“Well, quit it.”

“Children, children,” Doc interjected, and Colleen recognized that while he might indeed be her ideal of a man, he could also be a patronizing asshole. Such was love. “I would suggest we not bicker at this precise juncture.”

“Oh, I think any time is generally the right time,” she shot back.

Before Doc could reply, if he intended to, she saw Cal stand his ground and stonily start firing at the onrushing horde.

He dropped a good many of them before he ran out of ammo. He hadn’t thought to bring more from the college town, hadn’t suspected he’d be embroiled in this grunter reenactment of the Little Big Horn, with the five of them stand-ins for Custer and his men.

He slung the rifle back over his shoulder and drew his sword. Close encounter time.

Colleen leveled her crossbow and nocked a bolt into it. But just then Inigo darted past her, nose in the air, sniffing. For what? she wondered, and realized it might be for a path devoid of grunters.

“This way!” Inigo yelled, diving into the bushes behind them. What the hell, Colleen thought, and dove after him, with Cal, Doc and Goldie close behind.

She abruptly found herself up to her thighs in frigid, slimy water and saw that she had plunged right into a narrow, twisting waterway. Casting about in the moonlight, she spied a group of boats with ratty awnings clumped at a dock.

“Oh great,” Colleen muttered, “the jungle cruise.”

She could hear the mob of grunters tearing through the foliage, coming after them.

“Here!” Cal cried, and led them running around the bend, keeping to the middle of the shallow river, where they would be harder to track, by smell at least. The grunters were keeping up such a racket they’d be hard pressed to find Cal and company by sound.

On the move, Cal drew alongside Goldie. “Where’s the exit? Get us back to Iowa.”

“No problema, mon capitaine.” Goldie paused, looked about uncertainly. “Only I’ve gotten the teeniest bit turned around.”

“Splendid,” Colleen said. Beyond the massive, vine-strangled face replicating Angkor Wat, she could hear the grunters hotfooting it in the distance. It sounded like they were getting closer, they must have caught the scent. “Tell me, Goldman, was it worth it?”

“I’m not sure yet. I think so.”

“Hey, it was rhetorical.”

“Those are the ones I always make it a point to answer.”

“C’mon!” Cal led them onto the opposite shore, through the dense growth onto the pavement again. “We need some high ground.”

Colleen glanced about, saw the silhouette of a craggy mountain, realized with a postcard shock of recognition that it was the Matterhorn-or a reasonable amusement-park facsimile thereof. But it was clearly too far away to reach, if the caterwauling of their pursuers was any indication.

“There,” Cal said, and she followed his gaze to stairs that led to an overhead track. Not ideal, but the best they could do…

They bounded off at full clip, the grunters right behind like a starving pack of hounds (which wasn’t that far off, if the hounds were rabid and crazy-strong and butt ugly, to boot). As Inigo bolted up the stairway like greased lightning, Cal and Doc on his heels and Goldie behind, Colleen wheeled and fired off a bolt, catching the lead little creep in the throat. He fell like a sack of wet cement and the ones behind him tumbled over him, screeching and yelling in frenzied rage.

Colleen turned and clambered up the stairs. By now, Cal had found handrails to climb onto the roof of the aluminum train that sat silent and stilled and remarkably unworn.

It was the highest point around, and it allowed them, cursing and firing and swinging their metal cutting blades, to drive the monsters back, to hurl the demonic little brutes screaming down to smash on the hard walkway below.

Not a purpose its designers had ever envisioned, but hell, all things considered, just about now it was a damn good use for a monorail.

Suddenly, a piercing whistle rent the air and the grunters fell back, vanishing into the night.

Colleen heard the shuffling odd footsteps first, before she saw their owners.

“Bozhyeh moy,” Doc whispered, and crossed himself.

It was that punk bitch, that crazy queen in her haunted mansion, who’d done this, just like she’d summoned those ghosts that throttled Goldman.

The army of the undead-or more accurately, the automaton non-living-shuffled slowly forward on metal feet. The pirates, the spooks, the smiling children of foreign lands.

And at the front, leading them on, Abraham Lincoln.

Colleen hadn’t had a night to match this one since her prom.

And like that ghastly, long-ago night-in fact, exactly like it-she knew by the end she’d be covered in mud and blood and oil.