Ghostwalkers (11 page)

“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.

The land was as blasted and broken as it had been, but now, past the cathedral-sized boulders and spikes of sandstone a wide blue expanse spread itself out under the sun. The Pacific was sapphire blue and each wind-tossed wave seemed to glitter with diamond chips. White-bellied gulls wheeled and cried. Long lines of pelicans drifted on the thermals, changing direction, taking their cues from the flight leader. After the blistering desert and the heartbreak of the shattered lands, the deep blue of the rolling ocean was like a balm on the soul.

“God…,” breathed Grey.

Looks Away smiled faintly. “Looks lovely from here,” he said, “but I don't recommend taking a swim.”

“Why not? Are there sharks?”

The Sioux shook his head. “I saw a few sharks once. Big ones. Bull sharks, I think. Or Great Whites. Washed up on the beach. Bitten in half or crushed.”

“Crushed by what?”

“What indeed?” said the Sioux mysteriously. “This is the Maze, my friend. I'm afraid there are far more things that we
don't
understand than things we do.”

“What, sea serpents and cave monsters?” laughed Grey. “Those are just tales from dime novels. There's nothing to any of that nonsense.”

The Indian turned and studied him for a long moment. There was a small, knowing smile on his lips, but no humor in his eyes. “As you say.”

Grey could not draw him into an explanation. So, in another of the moody silences that seemed to define their relationship, the two men rode down a crooked slope toward a massive cleft in the ground. A rickety bridge spanned the chasm. They stopped at the foot of the bridge and the men slid from their horses to peer over the edge.

“This gorge runs for two hundred miles north and south,” said Looks Away as he and Grey squatted down on the edge. “It opened up during the quake.”

Below them was a raw wound in the earth. Far below, nearly lost in the misty distance, were spikes of jagged rock that rose from a threshing river. Fumes, thick with sulfur and decay, rose on columns of steam.

“The water comes from some underground source,” said Looks Away. “Not salt water, which means that it comes from inland, but I wouldn't dare call it ‘fresh.' Anyone who drinks it gets sick and some have died. They break out in sores and go stark staring bonkers.”

“Jeez…”

Grey stood and nodded to the bridge. “Is that thing safe?”

“It hasn't fallen yet.”

“That's not exactly an answer.”

“I daresay not.” Looks Away shrugged and pointed to the twisted remnants of a second bridge. All that was left was a pair of tall posts and some rotting tendrils of rope. “That one, the Daedalus Bridge, used to cross a lovely little stream of crystal clear water. It was destroyed in the Quake. A man named Pearl organized the building of a second and much longer bridge to span this chasm. Not sure who chose the name, but people call it the Icarus Bridge.”

“Wasn't Icarus the one who fell?”

“Yes,” said Looks Away, “charming thought, isn't it?”

They remounted. Beyond the far side of the bridge was a small town, though to Grey's eyes it looked more like a ghost town. A cluster of dreary buildings huddled together under an unrelenting sun. Everything looked faded and sunbaked.

“That's Paradise Falls?” he asked.

“Such as it is.”

“Swell.”

They crossed the Icarus Bridge very slowly and carefully. The boards creaked and the ropes protested, but it proved to be more solid than it looked. Even so, Grey was greatly relieved when they reached the far side.

“And we didn't plunge to our deaths,” murmured Looks Away.

“Oh … shut up,” grumbled Grey.

The road into town was littered with lizard droppings and the bones of small birds. They passed under a sign very much like the one they'd encountered in the ghost town in Nevada. The difference here is that the paintwork looked like it had been done with some sense of style. A little artistry, no less. But it was faded now and there were cracks in the wood and there had been no attempt to freshen the sign. Grey looked up at it.

PARADISE
FALLS

Beyond the sign were a few dozen buildings along one main street and on a few, smaller side lanes. Smoke curling upward from a handful of chimneys. Bored-looking horses hung their heads over hitching posts. Withered old men and women sat on porch rockers. A few grubby children played listlessly, tossing a wooden ball through a barrel hoop. They missed more often than made the shot, but their bland expression didn't change much no matter how the game turned out.