Ghostwalkers

Chapter Sixty-Four

They went slowly, taking time because neither of them wanted to arrive at Deray’s door out of breath and unable to fight.

But the steps did not lead directly to a door.

It led instead to a gate.

They emerged from the stairway on a flat plane that Grey presumed was on the same level as the underground sea. The roof here was not as high, however, suggesting that they had reached one end of the massive cavern. The stalactites reached down like fangs above their heads, and stalagmites rose around them to complete the disturbing illusion. There was a rough natural wall of some dark stone that ran all the way across this end of the cavern, broken only in one spot. This gap, clearly the result of the same earthquake that had destroyed most of California, was bridged by a stout wall of blocks fitted neatly together and fixed with lines of cement. In the middle of the blocks a gate made from tall crystal spikes stood on end and was bound, turn and turn around, by massive iron bands set with huge rivets.

A set of new-looking steel railroad tracks ran past the gates and then curved away to run along the distant underground sea, heading opposite to where Chesterfield’s house lay. Halfway to the black waters sat a still and silent locomotive to which was coupled ten hopper cars laden with some cargo they could not identify and then twenty empty flatbed cars. No steam rose from the train’s chimney.

Grey ducked down behind a boulder and pulled Looks Away into the shadows beside him.

The crystal gates stood open.

But the gateway itself was not empty.

A line of men were walking in orderly lines from beyond the gate. Dozens and dozens of them.

No. Hundreds.

“Who are they?” whispered Looks Away.

Grey shook his head because the men were too far away to see clearly. He gestured to a spill of rocks to their right, and they moved off, keeping low and being careful to make no sound. The rocks were the debris from a fallen natural pillar, and they offered excellent cover as the two men drew close. Then Grey pulled his companion down again as the first rank of marching men went past them at no more than a stone’s easy throw away.

The men wore uniforms. They were soldiers. That much had been clear from a distance. But up close it was evident that they were not Americans.

The men in the front ranks wore dark blue jackets set with red trim and brass buttons. Dark trousers were tucked into gleaming black boots, and on their heads they wore tapered leather helmets topped with spikes.

Looks Away grunted in surprise, then very quietly observed, “Dunkelblau waffenrock.”

“What?”

“Those are the uniforms of Prussian infantry.”

“But…,” Grey let the rest hang as more of the soldiers passed by. He estimated that there were at least a hundred of the Prussians. Behind them came other soldiers, and as they passed, Looks Away identified them.

“Polish… French… Italian… Swedish…”

The men marched in precise lines, with resplendent officers riding horses and sergeants barking out commands. On the chest of each officer were medals and ribbons from the many wars of their several nations. Grey had seen pictures of some, but most were unknown to him.

When the foreign soldiers had all marched out, a different group followed them. They were hard-faced men dressed in a uniform unlike any Grey had ever seen. Black trousers and jackets, with bloodred sashes embroidered with some kind of strange magical symbols — swirling stars and planets, mathematical notations, and the stylized gears like those inside a clock. Deray’s bodyguard, perhaps, mused Grey. Or… his private army?

Most had Winchester ’73s laid against their shoulders. The sergeants, however, carried guns of a kind Grey had only recently come to know. Weapons he did not expect to encounter down here. These were exotic-looking long guns with wide-barrels made from brass and mirrored steel, with gemstones set into frameworks from which coils of copper seemed to loop and feed back into themselves. Strange guns.

And strangely familiar.

Grey turned to face Looks Away, to accuse him, to demand answers, but from the look of shocked horror on Looks Away’s face it was evident that his friend was as startled as he was.

“Those are…,” began Looks Away, then tripped over the words. “Those are… Kingdom rifles.”

Grey nodded, feeling a hollow space open up in his chest. He grabbed a fistful of Looks Away’s shirt and pulled him close. In a fierce, tight whisper he hissed, “How?”

But all Looks Away could do was shake his head.

They crouched there and watched as the soldiers marched past. The strange blue light of the fungi gleamed on the polished brass and rare jewels of those deadly guns.

Then Grey noticed something and he looked closer still. The guns were very similar to the Kingdom Rifles, but they were not exactly the same. He glanced back and forth from them to the weapon slung over his companion’s shoulder. The same materials and a decidedly familiar design. And yet… the gun designed by Doctor Saint had a cylinder for the compressed ghost rock gas and a magazine for the oversized bullets, but the guns carried by the sergeants did not. Instead they had ratcheted dials on the sides of slightly longer magazines. And the glowing jewels set into the frames were of different sizes and cuts.

Grey bent close and said all this to Looks Away, and somehow that helped the Sioux shake off his shock. He narrowed his eyes and bent closer to study the weapons as Grey had.

“Are they Doctor Saint’s stolen weapons?”

“No. There are too many of them. And I’ve never seen this design. There’s no gas capsule. Besides, it would make no sense for Deray to arm his people with weapons that could destroy the souls of his own undead servants. Mind you, he may have used ghost rock’s energetic properties for some other purpose, perhaps to increase rate of fire or perhaps to achieve greater range but—”

He didn’t finish because a sound made them both start and then turn.

It was the cry of a man in terror.

Not one man.

Many. A dozen at least.

They came running and staggering through the gates, their hands bound before them, their shirts torn away to reveal bodies crisscrossed by the red marks of the whip. The men stumbled into each other, they fell and staggered, and crawled away from the gate, fleeing in mad, blind terror.

As they ran onto the broad plain, the ranks of soldiers — Confederate and foreign — split apart and at the bellowed orders of sergeants, they trotted left and right to form a large ring around the prisoners. In perfect unison the soldiers drew bayonets and fitted them to the ends of their rifles and within minutes had formed a ring of needlepoint blades and the black mouths of gun barrels. The prisoners wailed and collapsed into a huddle, most of them begging and weeping. One man buried his face in the dirt and cried out for his mother to come and rescue him.

The soldiers stood their line, faces hard, mouths hard, eyes harder yet. Even from a distance Grey could tell that there was no trace of mercy on any face that wasn’t holding a gun.

Not a trace.

Then there was a great rumbling and for a moment Grey thought that he was hearing the sound of a locomotive. But it was something far stranger. From the shadows beyond the gate came a machine that Grey had once seen demonstrated on a military base in upstate New York. It was a carriage made entirely of metal but it was not pulled by horses, nor did it have wheels. Instead it rumbled forward on bands of linked metal plates that squeaked and clanked. Steam rose from twin pipes mounted aft of a kind of crow’s nest, and from the center of this structure sprouted a long cannon barrel.

It was what his old commanders had called a “tank,” and it thundered across the plain. Grey saw that the flag of Prussia was painted on the side of the cannon turret.

A second machine followed that one out through the gates, this one marked with the flag of Denmark. A third came. A fourth. For each ground of foreign military there was one of these monstrous tanks. The stink of their engines filled the air and beneath the weight of their clanking treads and grinding gears Grey could hear the tormented shriek of ghost rock.

“Are you seeing this?” whispered Looks Away.

“Yes,” answered Grey.

“Deray is arming them for war. Good lord, Grey, Deray isn’t merely experimenting with these forces, he’s selling his goods to the madmen of this world. He’s an arms dealer on a level I’ve never seen before.”

When the last of the tanks was in position, a sergeant in the livery of Deray’s private army raised his saber, let it stand glittering above him, and then swept it down. The engine roars and their accompanying screams died away.

Then the sergeant nodded to his colleagues among the various armies, and the foot soldiers stepped forward and raised their rifles to their shoulders, all barrels facing the prisoners.

Looks Away muttered, “Damn poor positioning for a firing squad. They’ll bloody well shoot each other.”

But Grey shook his head. “No… I think they’re going to—.”

His theory died on his tongue as another sound made them turn once more toward the gate.

A man walked slowly out of the shadows, and his feet made no sound. However behind him, still cloaked in darkness, something else moved. There was the hiss of a steam engine and the clank of metal, but whatever it was did not yet follow the man out onto the plain.

The man was very tall and very thin. He wore a suit of the finest cut and quality. Black pants and a jacket of such a dark purple that the color could only be seen in the bulges of creases as he walked. His waistcoat was gray with moon-colored silver traceries embroidered onto it. The stitchery flowed in the same pattern of planets, mathematical symbols, and gears as on the sashes of his troops. In another place, on another man, Grey would have thought it too posh and even silly. Not, however, on this man.

No, there was nothing silly about this one.

He wore a low top hat with a silk band that matched his waistcoat. His shoes were polished to a gleaming finish.

The man walked with a decided limp, though somehow this infirmity did not suggest weakness. Rather it seemed to mark him as one who had been through Hell and walked out, likely alone. He leaned on a slender walking stick whose copper head was fashioned into the snarling face of a kraken — a creature Grey had seen in his books. The tentacles of the beast curled downward and wrapped around the shaft of the stick.

Grey did not need Looks Away to tell him who this was. Who it had to be.

His mouth formed the name but he did not dare speak it aloud.

Aleksander Deray.

A hush fell over the entire plain and the mechanical sound from within the gates likewise ceased. Even the weeping prisoners held their pleas.

Except for the man who still cried for his mother.

The weeping man was fat and lacked muscle; his blubbery skin was covered with coarse hair but his flesh was pale and unhealthy. He clawed at the ground and banged his forehead on it until his skin broke and blood fell like tears.

Looks Away suddenly gasped.

“What is it?” demanded Grey.

“By the Queen’s garters — that’s Nolan Chesterfield.”

Deray approached the circle of soldiers and they parted without hesitation to let him through.

As Deray entered the circle the soldiers closed ranks once more.

The prisoners recoiled from Deray and tried to back away, to flee, but no matter where they turned they encountered a wall of bayonets in the hands of merciless soldiers. In helpless defeat they stopped and stood their ground, chests heaving, faces streaked with tears, eyes empty of all hope.

Deray walked in a slow circle around the men, and they cowered back from him, clustering into a tight knot, their eyes following every movement, every step. The man’s path took him to within a dozen feet of where Grey and Looks Away crouched, and it gave Grey his first chance to study their enemy.

And enemy seemed to be a perfect word for him.

Aleksander Deray had a thin, aquiline face, with the full lips of a sensualist but the narrow nose and hooded eyes of an ascetic. He could have been a monk from some remote monastery, or a composer of dark and dangerous music. His hands were large, the fingers long and white. Grey noted that he wore a star sapphire ring on the index finger of his right hand and an emerald on the other. Both stones were as large as robins’ eggs.

The expression of his face was not haughty or arrogant, which Grey expected to see on so powerful a man. Instead he appeared to be calm, introspective. His eyes roved over the prisoners without apparent animosity, his lips did not curl into a sneer. They were before him and he observed them, nothing more.

Somehow that chilled Grey all the more. For someone to command such power and to have both science and sorcery at his fingertips it would have been more comforting to see the gleam of madness. Instead Grey saw intelligence and insight. This was not a man who could be provoked into some foolish action. Here was a man who calculated the odds and took chances only when the cards were falling his way. Grey had played poker and faro with such men, and he invariably lost.

“Where is he from?” asked Grey, who doubted the man was American.

However Looks Away shook his head. “He claims to be a descendant of Egyptian pharaohs, which I very much doubt. Doctor Saint thought he might be a bastard son of Italian nobility, or maybe a legitimate nobleman who fell out of favor and changed his name. There are a hundred stories about him, and all of them contradict.”

“Not an American putting on an act?”

“Not a chance.”

Deray walked past where they hid and stopped in front of Nolan Chesterfield.

“Look at me,” he said in a cultured voice and Grey could hear the cultured European accent. It didn’t sound Italian, though. More like someone from Eastern Europe. Grey had met a Balkan once. Similar accent, similar cold and imperious bearing.

The quivering man did not respond to Deray’s command.

“Nolan!” said Deray sharply. “Do as I say. Look at me.”

Chesterfield flinched back from the sound of his name. Sobs racked his body, shuddering through his pale skin. He did not raise his head.

With a sigh of disappointment, Deray turned away and looked around him. The officers attached to each foreign army bowed to him from the saddles of their horses. Mounted, they towered above him but everyone there knew that it was he who was the giant here. Everyone was tense, waiting, watching, listening.

“My friends,” said Deray, pitching his voice to address the crowd but not shouting. The spectators who could not hear leaned forward. The effort was theirs to do, not Deray’s. Another sign of the man’s subtle power. “The land that was once America was not born on a quiet bed. It was born in fire and blood. As all great nations are.”

The officers nodded. The soldiers remained stock-still.

“When war split this nation, first in half and then into many parts, the weak were consumed while the strong were forged in those fires. Those who rule earn that right. It was true of Alexander and Genghis Khan. It was true of Alaric the Visigoth and Attila the Hun. Greatness is earned through conquest. Hannibal knew this as did Scipio Africanus. Read the histories of Cyrus the Great and Sun Tzu, of Julius Caesar and Thutmose III.”

The officers kept nodding. These were clearly the saints of their church. The warlords and conquerors.

“And for our generation? How many of us here will write our histories in the blood of those we conquer? Who among us has that greatness burning in their hearts? Who here will ascend to their throne on a stairway of corpses? Tell me, my brothers, who?”

A dozen swords instantly flashed from scabbards as every officer cried out his own name, bellowing loud enough to imprint their arrogance like a tattoo on the flesh of destiny. Every soldier echoed the name of his general. They crashed their rifle butts onto the hard ground and they all spoke with the thunderous voice of conquest.

Deray let it go on and on until fragments of crystal and rock fell like rain from the ceiling. Then he raised his hand. A simple gesture, palm out, at shoulder height. Silence crashed down around them.

Grey heard Looks Away very softly say, “By the Queen’s perfumed knickers.”

The silence held for ten long seconds before Deray broke it.

“Ghost rock,” he said, putting the words onto the humid air. They seemed to hang there, burning. “Earth herself tore open her flesh and vomited it into our world. A stone, ugly and useless to the unenlightened. But to those with vision, to those who dare—?” He paused so that his next word would eclipse what he had already said. A simple word, filled with so much meaning. “Power.”

On the ground, Nolan Chesterfield whimpered.

“Since it was discovered, the wisest, the most devious of our engineers and scientists have labored to unlock its secrets, and much have they discovered. Much have we been able to accomplish. Weapons capable of mass destruction. Machines that will work day and night, and at speeds never before imagined. Warships that can sink any wooden fleet without risking the lives of their own crews. Mechanical wagons with cannons that can chase down mounted cavalry and grind them into the dirt.” He paused and repeated the word. “Power.”

He began walking again, circling the prisoners without looking at them.

“My brothers,” he continued, “you have come thousands of miles and traveled deep beneath the earth to join me on this propitious day. You have already seen many of the weapons that I am willing to share with you. The new generation of small arms that will let a few conquer many. As you travel home with your purchases, I will watch the news with interest as the houses of the weak fall to the guns of the mighty.”

Once more the generals and their soldiers bellowed, and once more the cavern shook.

And once more Deray held up his hand for the silence that fell immediately.

“Now I want to show you more. So. Much. More.” He spaced the words out. “Now I will show you the new age of warfare.” He held a hand theatrically to his ear. “Listen. Can you hear the future coming? Can you hear the gears of this world grind into a different gear? Can you hear it?”

They could all hear it.

Everyone there could hear it.

From beyond the gates came the machine sound Grey had heard earlier, and in the shadow he could see something move.

Some.

Thing.

It walked like a man.

Tall, on long legs, with its head held high.

But it was not a man.

No.

With clanking footsteps that struck the stone like artillery shells, it strode out from between the gates. The generals’ mouths dropped open as something came out through those crystal gates. This was not a soldier, nor was it one of the ghost rock-suborned dinosaurs or pterosaurs, nor even one of the undead or a Harrowed. This was something much bigger, vastly more frightening. Thirty feet high. Gleaming. Steel and copper, bronze and platinum. Jewels the size of Grey’s fists were set into its metal skin. Thick bundles of armored wire ran along its flanks and up into sockets on its neck. A massive chunk of ghost rock was half buried in its chest, and the stone seemed to throb, the white lines writhed and twisted. And the eyes…

Those terrible eyes.

They glowed with fire. Actual fire. Its head was a furnace for burning ghost rock, and when it threw wide its jaws, the screams of the tormented damned shook the pillars of Hell.

The generals — even those men who had witnessed the horrors of Deray’s caverns — recoiled in abject horror as the metal giant raised his fists and clenched them together. The squeal of steel cut through the air.

The giant walked boldly forward and the soldiers broke ranks and fled. The bravest formed defensive groups around their officers. The brute clanked all the way across the field, and the prisoners fled in all directions and would have escaped had a few of Deray’s own men not beat them back.

Aleksander Deray raised one thin hand, and the giant stopped.

Just like that. He stood behind Deray and slowly, slowly closed his mouth so that the screams of the damned inside the burning ghost rock were muted. Not gone, but quieter, as if even those in Hell hung on whatever the necromancer would do or say next.

Deray smiled. His lips peeled back from white teeth that looked too straight and too sharp to Grey.

“This,” he said softly, “is power.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

Grey leaned close and whispered in Looks Away’s ear. “We have to get out of here right goddamn now.”

“And do what?”

“Warn people,” said Grey.

“Who?” retorted the Sioux. “The law in Lost Angels? They’re every bit as corrupt as these bastards.”

“No,” said Grey, “I was thinking of warning people that could do something about this. The U.S. Army, for one. And maybe your people, too. You think Deray would hesitate for one second to march across the borders of the Sioux Nation?”

Looks Away chewed his lip and did not immediately answer.

On the plain, a general in the uniform of the Dutch army cleared his throat and nudged his horse a few steps forward. His men clustered around him, guns pointing at the metal man.

“My lord,” said the general, addressing Deray, “I have heard rumors of some fantastical constructs but never believed that they were real. Even with all of the wonders we have seen since the discovery of ghost rock. But… tell me, you have sold us many millions in weapons and equipment and now you show us this. What are we to think? Have you saved the best for last, or have you kept the best for yourself?”

Deray smiled. “A bit of both,” he said as he walked over and patted the steel giant on the shin, “and neither. Samson here is not for sale. Not yet, at least. He is a prototype. A one of a kind, the poor fellow. Quite alone in the world.”

“Then this is — what? An entertainment?”

“No, my friend,” said Deray. “Samson is a glimpse into the future. It will take years for me to build a legion of brothers for him. Years. During that time you and your fellow generals will conquer your lands. That will take time, even with my rifles and tanks.” He gave an elaborate shrug. “Let it take time. Revel in it. Bathe yourself in the blood of those too weak to defy you. Cleanse your lands of all who do not bend their knee to your will. If that takes years, then so be it. How much grander will be the stories that history will tell?”

The generals exchanged looks with each other. There were doubts there, and suspicion, Grey could see that, but after a few moments they all nodded. After all, they had their guns and their tanks.

“And when the wars are over?” asked an Italian general.

Deray smiled at him. It was not a nice smile. “Then, my brothers, you will need to defend what you have taken. And that is where Samson comes in. He and his brothers. They will be the police who will guard your borders and crush any who raise voices against you. By the time you have conquered your lands, the Iron Legion will be there to maintain control.”

The generals looked at the giant. Doubt was still written on their faces.

The Russian general said, “Show us. He is impressive, yes, but he is large. He is an easy target.”

“Is he?” asked Deray casually. “Is he indeed?”

He turned to his sergeant and snapped his fingers. The man hurried over and snapped off as crisp and professional a salute as Grey had ever seen. “Sir!”

“Arm the prisoners. Give them each a rifle. Make sure the guns are loaded.”

The sergeant saluted again and called for their corporals, who were apparently prepared for this. The foreign soldiers buzzed and shifted, their guns tracking the prisoners, while the prisoners looked confused and frightened.

Deray addressed them. “Listen to me,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “you are all in the employ of Nolan Chesterfield. Or you were. Some of you took my coin and yet answered to him, and for that I should feed you to the creatures in this cavern.”

The men trembled as the corporals handed them their rifles. Most of the men held the weapons away from themselves as if trying to gain distance from whatever was about to happen. One man refused to take a rifle and the sergeant drew a wooden truncheon and began beating the man, shouting at him to take the gun. Bleeding and on his knees, the wretch took it and clutched it to his chest, weeping over it.

“You each deserve to die, you know that,” continued Deray as if the beating had not happened. “And yet I will give you a single chance to live.”

The prisoners looked sharply at him now.

“Take those weapons. They are real and they are loaded. No tricks. Take them and use those guns to kill me. Do that and I promise you — I give you my word of honor — that you will be set free with no further harm and enough gold so that you can live like kings.”

The men stared at him, and then down at the guns in their hands.

“It’s not a trick, I assure you,” said Deray as he raised his arms to the side so that he stood cruciform before them. “Kill me and earn your freedom. Kill me and live out your lives in luxury and excess with all the whores and whiskey that money will buy. Kill me and you are free. Do it. Do it now.”

Most of the men were too frightened to move. The gathered soldiers and their officers were clearly alarmed by this.

“Don’t be a fool, man,” cried one of the generals.

But in that moment a single prisoner raised his rifle and fired. He was forty feet from Aleksander Deray, and he snapped off four lightning quick shots.

There was a blur and a fragment of a scream and then the air was filled with a red mist and pieces of torn flesh flew everywhere. The man with the rifle was gone. And in the spot where he stood was the clenched fist of Samson.

It had been that fast.

Too fast.

Inhuman, supernaturally fast. Nothing on earth could move that fast. It had to be a trick.

Had to be.

The other prisoners stared in abject, uncomprehending horror. Their faces and bodies were painted with blood and dripping bits of meat.

The generals stared slack-jawed, as horrified in their way as the prisoners were. The soldiers cried out and fell back.

Then Samson was among the prisoners.

He moved like greased lightning, swinging his fists, stamping with gigantic feet. The men fired at him and the bullets whanged off and whined high into the distance. One ricochet hit a Prussian soldier in the thigh and his comrades gunned the prisoner down.

That was the only man the giant did not kill.

One intrepid man dove away and tried to fire from the hip as he came out of a roll. The bullet missed Deray and punched a hole in the air above the place where Grey and Looks Away hid. A heartbeat later the man was gone, replaced by a crimson smear on the ground.

And then it was over.

All of the prisoners were dead.

Only one was whole — the one who had been shot. The others were pulped into red ruin.

Leaving a stunned audience.

And Nolan Chesterfield.

The man knelt there, drenched in the blood of the men he had hired, his eyes wild, screams piercing. He beat insanely at his own face, his mind broken.

The giant turned slightly toward Deray, but the necromancer shook his head. Instead he used two fingers to pluck a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket. He put it between his lips and blew. The sound was all too familiar, and a moment later it was answered by a screech from above. Then all of the soldiers fell back in fear as a pteranodon swooped down out of the darkness and plucked Chesterfield away.

Not all of him.

Just his head.

The fat body knelt for a moment longer, blood geysering from the ragged stump of his neck. Then it fell slowly over, twitched once, and lay still.

Silence, profound and massive, dropped over the plain.

Then someone began clapping. It was the Prussian. He stood up in the stirrups and began pounding his hands together.

After a moment the other generals joined in.

The soldiers hooted and shouted.

Deray, his arms still held out to his sides, turned in a slow circle as everyone applauded. The cheers rose above the plain and threatened to tear down the heavens.

Chapter Sixty-Six

The demonstration of Deray’s power seemed to be at an end. Grey and Looks Away ducked even lower as the generals dismounted and went over to shake hands with Deray. Servants in white brought trays of glasses and there were many toasts to conquest and success.

“That’s our cue to get the hell out of here,” said Grey. “Let them get drunk.”

Looks Away nodded and began leading the way along the ragged line of boulders. When they were a hundred yards from the scene of slaughter, they paused. The last rock in the line was big enough to hide them both, and they could see a clear path that led down to the shoreline. If they could reach it, then they could try and make their way back to Chesterfield’s basement.

The only problem was that between their rock and the safety of the distant shoreline was an open space of nearly five hundred yards. Crossing that without being seen was virtually impossible. The soldiers were at ease and still milling around. Some admiring their new tanks, others staring in wondrous appreciation at the gleaming hulk of Samson. Grey noted that no one looked at the smears of red. Was it cold dismissal? Indifference? Or were they afraid to see what these new machines could do to bodies as frail as their own?

Grey had to believe it was the latter more than anything.

He was a soldier, too. Maybe he no longer wore the uniform, but his life had been defined by warfare. He’d grown up during the age when machines were replacing men. There were factories in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia where machines clanked along day and night while the former factory workers starved. Metal warships were fast replacing wood and sailcloth. And now this. Horseless carriages that could bring cannons right up to the enemy’s gates, and metal monsters who could slaughter ordinary flesh-and-blood soldiers with impunity. It was ghastly.

Some of this was the result of ghost rock and the scientific leaps that had occurred since its discovery. Some — perhaps much — was simply that the world had changed. It was no longer the one he’d been born into thirty-three years ago.

“We have to warn people,” he said again.

Looks Away nodded. “If it’s not too late.”

The gap between shelter and escape seemed to stretch for a million miles.

“I, um…,” began Looks Away nervously, “could cause a distraction. You could slip away…”

“Nice gesture, but no. We both get out.”

“How?”

“I—,” Grey was about to answer when he saw a familiar figure walk out from between the gates. Tall, dressed in black, wearing a gun slung low on his hip. He walked with a pantherish grace and came to stand with Deray and the generals. Looks Away saw him at the same moment and seized Grey’s wrist in a crushing grab.

“Look!” he cried. “That’s—.”

“Lucky Bob Pearl,” finished Grey. The Harrowed accepted a glass of wine and sipped it, his dark eyes roving over the faces of the generals. Then they all laughed at something Deray said. Lucky Bob’s laugh looked and sounded genuine, but Grey wasn’t fooled. Those eyes were the eyes of the dead.

They were demon eyes, and he could only imagine what things a manitou would find amusing. Certainly not a conversational witticism.

Deray separated himself from his guests and stood apart with Lucky Bob, their heads bent together in private conversation. Grey and Looks Away were too far away to hear a word of it.

“Well, they certainly seem chummy,” observed Looks Away.

“Whatever they’re talking about, I don’t much like it.”

They crouched there, tense and uncertain, for nearly half an hour. Then fortune dealt another card.

It was one of the soldiers who spotted her. An Italian, who was standing atop the tank his general had bought. He happened to peer off toward the path that led down to the chasm. He frowned, cupped his hands around his eyes, and stiffened. He pointed and rattled off something in Italian. Other men turned. And eventually, so did Aleksander Deray and Lucky Bob Pearl.

They all turned as a slim figure in sheer gossamer walked with languorous slowness toward them. Her body was ripe, her hair a mass of black curls, her eyes as dark as a midnight sky.

Although they did not look it from that distance, Grey knew those eyes were green.

The woman called out a name. “Deray!”

The necromancer stiffened, and beside him Lucky Bob went for his gun, but Deray stayed him with a gesture. He shook his head and a dark smile blossomed on his face.

Grey heard Looks Away utter a low moan of sick despair.

His friend spoke her name.

“Veronica.”

The dead woman walked toward the gathered men who stood waiting for her as if this were all part of some prearranged drama. It was not, of course, and Grey found himself frightened by what Deray might do to the woman who wore the skin of the woman his friend had loved.

“What’s she doing?” demanded Looks Away in a strangled whisper.

Veronica did not walk directly to where Deray stood, but instead angled over to stand in front of the silent giant, Samson. All eyes were on her.

“I think… I think she’s giving us a chance,” said Grey.

To do what—?”

“To live,” said Grey, then he amended it. “To get out of here alive.”

“But why? That’s not even Veronica. It’s a mockery of her. A ghost or whatever damned thing she’s become. She’s in league with those sods. She’s come to tell them we’re here and—”

“No,” said Grey, touching his companion’s arm. “I don’t think so. Whatever else she is, that woman is no friend to Deray, which means Veronica’s on our side.”

“Impossible. Veronica is dead. Lost.”

Grey glanced at him. The tone of Looks Away’s words was harsh and bitter, but the look on his face told a different story. There was a complexity of emotions warring on the Sioux’s features. Anger and gried, pain… and something else.

Love?

Grey did not know what his friend truly felt for the dead woman, but he suspected that Looks Away had been greatly underplaying his affection for Veronica. That made this all so much more terrible.

Everyone on the plain had turned to stare. Veronica had become the center of all attention. Of course she was. Tall and beautiful, with a voluptuous body clearly visible through the sheer fabric and each curve accentuated by the blue-white light that burned within. Grey imagined that many of the soldiers would be afraid of her, repelled by her, but nevertheless enthralled. He hadn’t known the woman in life, but in death she was magnificent.

Aleksander Deray, flanked by Lucky Bob Pearl and the cluster of generals, approached her but they did so without haste and perhaps with a bit of understandable caution.

For the generals, Grey assumed it was fear and caution. For Deray? Probably curiosity and maybe some appreciation for whatever was about to happen. He had that kind of look on his ascetic face.

Lucky Bob was smiling a cold, cold smile as he followed his master.

So many smiles. As if this was something wonderful, as if it was something unlooked-for but delightful. Like an improbable meeting of old friends on some unlikely street.

He took his companion’s arm and began pulling him toward the open space they needed to cross.

“We have to go.”

“I can’t leave her there,” said Looks Away, tugging his arm free.

“We have to.”

On the field Veronica and Deray now stood a dozen paces away. Grey could hear a faint murmur of their conversation, but he couldn’t make out a single word.

“Looks — come on,” snapped Grey.

“No! They’ll kill her.”

Grey grabbed his shoulder and turned him around roughly, then he bent close. “They already have. Don’t you get that? They murdered Veronica and now whatever of her is left of her is trying to save us.”

Looks Away stared at him. Conflicted and appalled.

“It’s not her,” said Grey in a kinder tone than he’d used a moment before. “Listen to me, brother, she’s gone. Veronica’s gone. Now her ghost is giving us a chance…”

Looks Away still didn’t move. Grey tightened his grip on the other man’s shoulder. “Do you want Veronica’s death to mean nothing? Do you want Deray to get away with this?”

“No…” was Looks Away’s almost soundless reply.

“Then we need to get more men and more weapons. We can’t win this fight. We can’t even fight this fight. Not now. Smart soldiers know when to retreat from the battle so they can re-engage when they have better odds.”

“I’m no damn soldier,” said the Sioux, slapping Grey’s hand away.

“Yeah… you are. We both are. We’re at war with Aleksander Deray,” said Grey. “We have to make a choice. Fight now and almost certainly lose. Or fight later when we have a plan and a chance, and maybe actually kill that evil son of a bitch.”

Looks Away unslung the Kingdom rifle. “I could kill him now.”

“From this distance? Not a chance.”

“If we got closer—.”

“They see us coming and wipe us out. Don’t be crazy.”

The Sioux chewed his lip. “What about a chain reaction? If I shot the nearest undead, the ghost rock bullet would explode the rock in him, and perhaps that would cause a chain reaction.”

“Would that even work?”

“I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”

Grey thought about it, then he shook his head. “No. It’s too risky.”

“God rot you, we have to do something. Don’t be a coward.”

Grey turned to him. “Easy now, my friend,” he said coldly. “I know you’re upset seeing Veronica and all, but try to use your brain for a minute. If you set off a chain reaction, you might kill half his army — and that’s great — but Deray’s so far away, and the men closest to him look like ordinary soldiers. They don’t have ghost rock implants and they won’t explode. If anything, their bodies would shield him and the bastard would slip away. That would leave us with no ammunition left and the rest of the army, and all of Deray’s allies, coming down on us like the wrath of God. And that’s even if the explosion doesn’t bring down the fucking ceiling. No… much as I wish we could, I don’t think we can guarantee that Deray would die. Anything less than that would be us throwing our lives away and failing everyone in Paradise Falls. Think it through, man, and you’ll see that I’m right.”

Down on the plain Veronica said something that made Deray clap his hands and laugh out loud. It was not a pleasant laugh.

The Sioux shook his head and fingered the outside of the copper trigger guard. Then he turned his face to a mask of stone, reslung the rifle, and nodded.

“I will kill him,” he said. “You hear me, white man? His life is mine. And I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way.”

Grey nodded. “Fair enough. Now let’s go.”

Like silent ghosts they crept from behind their shelter and began moving across the plain toward the sea. They stayed low and moved with many small light, quick steps instead of at a full run. That kept their bodies and equipment from jiggling and making unwanted noise.

Deray’s laughter seemed to pursue them.

It drove knives into them.

And it threw fuel on the furnaces of hate that burned in their hearts.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Their path to freedom took them past the railroad tracks and the massive train. They went to the far side of it and ran along the row of empty flatbeds, and then reached the first of the hoppers.

What they saw in the shadows of the hoppers stopped them dead in their tracks.

They hadn’t seen this side of the train from their earlier hiding place, but now they could see everything. Too much.

Laid along the ground, one between each of the endless rows of wooden ties, were corpses. They were soldiers.

Some were dressed in the smoke grey or butternut brown of the Confederacy. Others were dressed in Yankee blue. Hundreds of them. All dead.

The stench from their rotting flesh was appalling.

The bodies were clearly battlefield dead. Every man carried evidence of the wounds that had killed them. Black bullet holes. Ghastly shrapnel wounds. Knife slashes. They lay there, face up, their uniform blouses torn open to expose their bloodless chests.

“What is this?” said Looks Away, recoiling from the stench and the gruesome violence.

Grey could not answer the question. Instead he stood there, not looking at the bodies on the ground but instead staring in abject horror at the mound of cargo on the nearest hopper.

He had originally thought it might be coal or raw ore heading for the ghost rock smelting fires.

He wished that was true.

What he saw was far, far worse.

The hopper was piled high with more bodies.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

Every hopper was full. Mountains of the dead were crammed into the cars. The corpses had been dumped in with no thought to the people they’d once been. They were — what?

Surely Deray had not brought them to bury them.

Then what?

Even as he asked himself the question, he realized that he already knew the answer.

And it was a terrible answer.

“Grey—?” asked Looks Away softly.

Grey didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

“Grey, do you understand what this is?”

He nodded.

He had thought he’d seen the depth of horror, that he knew its outer boundaries. That he was aware of its rules.

All of that was wrong.

Deray had no rules, no limits.

Grey dragged his wrist across his mouth.

“How many?” he murmured.

Looks Away glanced up at the hopper, then at the others, then down at the corpses laid in a long row here. “Two thousand? Three? Maybe more.”

Grey shook his head. “I think it’s a lot more.”

A gleaming black beetle crawled across the face of the nearest corpse. The soldier was from the South. A boy, no more than sixteen. He had a bullet hole in his abdomen and the crust of dried blood. A gut shot and proof that he hadn’t died right away. Dead men don’t bleed. Bullet wounds to the stomach kill slowly and the pain is enormous. This boy had fought for his flag and probably died screaming and alone. Probably called for his mother rather than God in those last hours. Men do that. They know their mothers will mourn them; God seems to enjoy the slaughter.

Looks Away moved down the line of hoppers and then Grey saw him stagger as if struck. He hurried over.

“What’s wrong?”

All the Sioux could do was point. The side door of the last hopper was open and a mass of bodies had fallen out to form a ragdoll mound that spilled across the rail bed. These were not soldiers. Instead of blue or grey, they wore buckskins and breechcloths. Their ruddy skin was now pale from loss of blood. Their hair was black and much of it was caked with dried blood.

They were Sioux.

All of them.

With a trembling hand, Looks Away reached for the nearest corpse and saw the distinctive body painting of the Sioux. However there were a few dots of black paint on the left side of the man’s face.

“See those marks? They were with the border patrols,” he said.

Behind them, on the far side of the train and across the plain, Deray laughed again.

“This is madness,” growled Looks Away. “Madness.”

Madness it might be, but Grey thought he understood the genius buried within the madness. All of these cars were heaped with rotting corpses from the War Between the States, and the border conflicts with the Sioux Nation. Maybe even some from the Rail Wars. A few of the corpses on this car wore dusters. Deray was clearly having bodies shipped to him here in this forgotten, hidden place. He had his dark magicks, and he clearly had his dreams of conquest. He had the weapons and a vast supply of ghost rock.

He wasn’t just supplying the armies of the world. He was building his own army.

An army of the dead.

For the third time Grey said, “We have to warn people.”

Looks Away nodded. “I have a terrible feeling we are too sodding late.”

“We have to try.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. “Yes,” said Looks Away. “We bloody well do.”

They turned and fled. But as they ran, Grey thought he saw movement off in the shadows, back near the rocks that had served as their hiding place. He fancied he saw a group of people there. Not trying to hide, but apparently not being seen. They looked like figures seen through a fog. Hazy, indistinct, nearly featureless. Except for one. A woman. Not Veronica, but like her she was someone lost to violence.

Annabelle.

Grey swore that he saw her standing there with the others.

With the ghosts.

But for once — for this one moment — they were not looking at him.

Each ghostly face was turned toward the spirit of Veronica and the necromancer.

Then Grey and Looks Away passed behind a row of stalagmites and when they emerged from the other side the ghosts were nowhere to be seen.

If, indeed, they had been there at all.

Deeply troubled, Grey ran faster, desperate now to find the tunnel, the basement, the house, and then the world. He needed to feel sunlight on his face before he lost all hope that he would ever see daylight again.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

It took them hours to find their way out.

Care and caution take time and they could not risk being found out. Apart from the simple truth that they were ill prepared to fight an army of men and machines, they did not want Deray to know that they had witnessed anything. There was no way of telling how that madman would react to the threat of having his plans — his alliances — discovered.

Grey was certain that the necromancer would leave the earth scorched and barren where Paradise Falls now stood.

They did not speak of this. They said nothing at all until they reached the tunnel that had been burrowed through the bedrock into Chesterfield’s basement. Only then did they pause. Looks Away touched the slimy walls and shook his head.

“As a geologist I’ve come in contact with some of the world’s strangest creatures,” he said. “Those dinosaurs and pteranodons and all that — frightening as they are, they belong to some part of the natural world. Things that once lived and were believed to be extinct. But this…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know what could have done this. If this were something tiny, a little hole, I would speculate that it was some kind of worm with highly acidic secretive glands, but… no worm ever lived that could make a tunnel this size and cut it through solid rock.”

Grey nodded. He didn’t touch the walls and didn’t want any of that slime on his skin.

They looked back the way they’d come and for a moment Grey felt a deep sadness sweep through him. It was a stew made of equal parts dread and acceptance. Deray was coming, that much was clear. He had the weapons, the numbers, the science, and the bloodlust.

What did Paradise Falls have?

A few hundred farmers. Most of them old people and children. Some men who could probably handle a gun. Some women, too.

And what else? What did they really have that could be used to mount a defense against Deray? What was there in town that could stop one of those tanks? What could even hope to stop the metal giant, Samson?

And even if the impossible could be managed, there were still whatever that flying machine had been that Grey had seen during the storm, the soldiers, the dinosaurs.

The undead. The Harrowed Lucky Bob.

Any of these would, alone, probably be enough to destroy the town.

Together? Grey doubted even a nation could stand against a surge of power like that.

Get out, whispered the part of his mind that had kept him on the road since the deaths of his men and Annabelle. Get out while you can.

Grey thought of the ghosts of his abandoned friends, and of the way Jenny Pearl looked in the sunlight this morning before they’d ridden away from her place. He thought of the pain in Brother Joe’s eyes and how that man had come back from the brink of personal hell to stand with the people of his town. He thought of that good man, Lucky Bob, and how he had been turned into a monster.

He thought about the deep pain in Looks Away’s voice and in his eyes when they’d found Veronica dying on the stairs.

Get out?

“Go to hell,” he murmured.

If Looks Away heard him he made no comment.

Together they went into the basement.