Ghostwalkers (6 page)

Grey thought about it, nodded.

“To the settlers who crossed this continent in covered wagons barely half a century ago,” continued Looks Away, “what would the steam locomotive have been like? Twenty years ago the thought of a horseless carriage was an impossible pipe dream, and now, with the power of ghost rock, you can see them on the streets of New York and Philadelphia and Boston.”

“I see where you're going with that.”

“Now, step back and look at ghost rock through the same telescope. It screams when it's burned. Sure, we all see that and it's rather shocking. The weak-minded always want to ascribe something supernatural to the things they don't understand. History tells us that. But what if all we're witnessing is merely an aspect of science that has not yet been measured and quantified.”

Grey thought about it, but he slowly shook his head. “I'll buy that as an explanation for why ghost rock sounds like the screaming damned. Chemicals hiss and pop and make all sorts of sounds. Everyone knows that. But that?” He stabbed a finger toward the corpses that were now laid in a row and weighted down with rocks. “Tell me how your science—or alchemy, for that matter—explains dead men getting up and getting rowdy? I shot one of those fellows in the heart and he didn't blink. You hear me? He did not even blink. He just kept grabbing at me, trying to bite me. If that's science and not magic, then everyone's been calling it by the wrong damn name all these years. Maybe it's all magic. That or this is a madhouse and we're all inmates.”

Looks Away nodded. “And now you get to my problem.”

“Pardon?”

“Until tonight I was fully invested in the camp of people who believed that the qualities of ghost rock were nothing more than science that was not yet understood.” He paused and regarded the corpses, then shuddered. “Now I don't know what I believe.”

“Welcome to the rodeo,” said Grey. “We're both riding the same bucking bronco here. Want to tell me what was the blue flash, and could it have caused this?”

“That's the point where all of my beliefs trip and fall on their face, old chap,” said Looks Away. “You see there was a man I met while at university in England. An American scientist and inventor. Rather a brilliant fellow by the name of Percival Saint.”

Grey frowned. “Why's that name so familiar?”

“He was an advisor to President Grant,” said Looks Away.

“Oh, hell yes. He was a slave as a kid, but he escaped. Took a bunch of other slaves with him and went north.”

“That's the man.”

“The papers said he went to college and got himself a degree. Went back down South after the Confederate States of America abolished slavery and helped build some factories and design some new farm equipment. I heard that he's been making weapons, that he's a gun maker.”

Looks Away sniffed. “Calling Percival Saint a ‘gun maker,'” he said with asperity, “is like calling Michelangelo a ‘house painter.' Doctor Saint has more doctorates and degrees than you've had hot dinners. He is a great, great man.”

“Well pardon the living hell out of me.”

“I met Doctor Saint when our Wild West show visited Sweden. We gave a special performance in October for the birthday of his friend and colleague Alfred Nobel.”

“Dynamite Nobel?”

“The same. Our show was held at the Bofers Ironworks factory in Kariskoga where they make the steel for certain types of cannons. The factory used several of Nobel's metallurgic techniques there, and there is a rumor that he plans to buy the company. We gave a show for the staff and several hundred guests. I had arranged with Doctor Saint and Mr. Nobel to use some of their experimental chemical combinations to create a fireworks display that served as our finale. It was all quite exciting.”

“And you're drifting away from getting to the damn point,” growled Grey.

“Not really. It was during my discussions with Doctor Saint and Nobel that the subject of ghost rock came up. This was a few years ago, mind you, during that big surge to find the stuff. Naturally both men had a great interest in the rock and its potential. They both saw it as a great weapon of war. They had each done some, shall we say, casual experiments with it.”

“
Casual
?”

“Did you hear about the big fire in Chicago some years back?”

“Who hasn't? The Great Fire they call it. Back in '71.”

“The very one.”

“What about it?” asked Grey. “I thought a cow started it. Kicked over a lantern…”

“Balderdash. There was no cow in the story at all. At least not one that mattered.”

“I don't—.”

“All of the reports by those who witnessed the start of the fire,” continued Looks Away, “described a great flash of light that was like nothing they'd ever seen.” He smiled. “Care to guess what color that flash was?”

 

Chapter Eleven

Grey narrowed his eyes. “Now we're getting somewhere. This blue flash … it's some kind of ghost rock weapon? Is that what I'm pulling from your mosey-round-the-mountain way of getting to a goddamn point?”

“In a word,” said Looks Away, “yes.”

“Shit. A weapon that raises the dead?”

“Ah, no … that would be what Doctor Saint and Mr. Nobel refer to as an unfortunate and unforeseen side effect.”

“Unfortunate hardly seems to come close to it.”

“No,” said the Sioux, cutting another uneasy look at the corpses, “it does not.”

Grey got the fixings for coffee from his saddlebag. “Might as well have something to keep us up while we talk this through,” he said. “I sure as hell don't plan to get any shut-eye while the sun's down.”

The Sioux made a face. “I seriously doubt I will ever sleep soundly again.”

“Blue light,” prompted Grey.

“Depending on how pure a sample of ghost rock is, it can burn with different colors,” explained Looks Away. “If there are trace amounts of calcium chloride the fire will burn orange, if lithium, it will burn red, and so on. What Saint and Nobel did was combine ghost rock with chalcanthite, which is a copper mineral. They found that by compressing tiny bits of ghost rock in a ball of cupric chloride, they get a burn of very short duration but with an exceptionally high energetic output. This discharge of energy can be directed through a metal tube such as a rifle barrel lined with copper to make a projectile. It can also be super-condensed within a sphere made of alternating layers of copper and steel to create a high-impact aerial grenade. Are … are you following any of this?”

“I'm limping along your backtrail, but, sure, I get the sense of it. Put a bead of ghost rock in a copper ball and you get a big bang.”

“Because chalcanthite is pentahydrate—meaning it contains elements of water—the resulting discharge creates a vapor of a distinct azure hue.”

“It's blue. Got it. Stop showing off,” said Grey, “and get to the part where it raises the dead.”

“Ah,” said Looks Away, “that's the part that neither Doctor Saint nor Mr. Nobel quite understand.”

“Are you messing with me, son?”

“Not at all, my good fellow. I am in earnest. And that is where this whole thing began. As with many of the great discoveries in the field of explosive compounds, this revelation began with a bang. A rather large bang, to be precise. It blew out an entire wing of the factory in Sweden and killed sixteen men.”

“Jesus.”

“The rescue crews were picking through the rubble—and both Saint and Nobel were right there with them,” said Looks Away, “as was I … when one of the dead men sat up.”

“Shit.”

“Everyone was delighted at first because they had counted the man as dead and here he was, clearly still alive.”

“Except he wasn't.”

“Just so. As Mr. Nobel's assistant rushed to help him, the injured man grabbed him and … well…”

“Well what?”

“He bit the man's throat out. And, um, swallowed it.”

Grey was bent over with his arm extended to pour coffee into Looks Away's cup and instead poured it on the Sioux's foot. The Indian screamed and jumped back, and Grey jerked the pot away.

He did not apologize. Instead he stood there, slack-jawed and horrified.

“You said there were sixteen men killed?”

“Yes,” said Looks Away, wincing and slapping at his soaked moccasin.

“Did all sixteen—?”

“Yes.”

“Mother of God.”

“I seriously doubt either God or His mother was there that day,” said Looks Away dryly. He pulled off his moccasin and set it on a rock near the fire to dry.

“What happened?”

“There was a bloody great fight, what do you think happened? Sixteen corpses got up and tried to eat everyone in sight. They killed eleven rescue workers and three of Nobel's laboratory staff before they were brought down by a Gatling gun. It took many, many rounds to do the job, too.”

Grey just shook his head. “Those fellows who were killed—the second bunch I mean—did they—?”

“What? Oh, no. They stayed dead. Apparently it's only someone who is killed by this new compound that reanimates.”

“
Reanimate,
” said Grey, tasting the unfamiliar word.

They sat there and looked at the line of corpses.

“What was up on those rocks?” asked Grey. “What blew up?”

“A cache of weapons made to fire the Lazarus rounds.”

“The what?”

“The chalcanthite bullets. After the, um, incident at the factory, Mr. Nobel gave the compound a name. Lazarus. Named for the—.”

“—fellow in the Bible Jesus raised up from the dead. I went to Sunday school. Why the hell would Doctor Saint invent a gun that raises the dead?”

“Oh, dear me, no … the gun doesn't do that. It's powered by the gas and, well, somehow that name got attached to the weapon. It's one of several radical designs the good doctor devised. There are others, too. Better weapons. The Celestial Choirbox, the Kingdom rifle—.”

“Now you're just making shit up.”

“I wish I was. Although I could hardly be described as a pacifist, I prefer to avoid violence whenever possible. I came out here to find these weapons because I have some friends who could use some help. But … the cache was clearly booby-trapped and when I opened the vault built into the rocks, it exploded, as you saw. I was behind the lead-lined hatch when the bomb went off and was thrown into a Joshua tree, so I survived. The others did not. And, well, there you have it, old chap. That's my story.”

“No,” said Grey, “that's only part of a story. How'd you get from Sweden to Nevada? Who booby-trapped the cache? Hell, who put it there in first place? And why was that posse after you?”

“Ah, yes, that's a much longer tale,” said Looks Away, “and to tell it I really would like two things.”

“What?”

“Some of that coffee. In a cup this time.”

Grey poured it. “And—?”

“I would feel far more comfortable sitting in the dark telling tales if I had my gun back, there's a good fellow.”

Grey considered the request as he poured his own cup. Then shrugged. “Sure.”

Looks Away fetched his Smith & Wesson pistol and knife. He removed a cleaning kit from his saddlebag and commenced cleaning and oiling the .44 American. Grey thought that was a smart idea and did the same with his Colt.

The rest of Looks Away's story was long and he rambled through it much the same as he had with the first part. After the disaster at the factory in Sweden, Doctor Saint and Mr. Nobel made a private agreement to do some quiet but intense research into the qualities of this new ghost rock compound. Doctor Saint returned to the United States and asked Looks Away to accompany him as his laboratory assistant, guide, and bodyguard. They traveled west as far as the rails would take them and then Saint hired a wagon and horses for the rest of the trip to the broken lands of what had once been California. There, at the edge of the new badlands known as the Maze, they set up shop in a tiny town called Paradise Falls. It was a wretched place of poverty, crime, drunkenness, and near starvation. Water was desperately short and Saint made himself a local hero by paying to have several wagons laden with water barrels brought in. And he used his knowledge of geology to locate several promising underground water sources. Those underground wells, unfortunately, ran through lands owned by a rich and reclusive man named Aleksander Deray, about which nearly nothing was known.

Saint worked for many months to mine ghost rock and develop the new Lazarus weapons. The work was slow, painstaking, and more often than not met with frustration and failure. However he did manage to make a few weapons and seven months ago held a public demonstration of his Lazarus rifles. Dignitaries and military officers came all the way from the Confederate States of America to witness the demonstration. Saint had very little of the proper compound to spare, but the brief demonstration he put on was quite impressive. He was asked to accompany the Southern bigwigs down south to meet with the War Department and President Eric Michele himself. The invitation was very flowery, and there were many gifts and medals bestowed upon Saint. There was no actual apology from any of the CSA or even an acknowledgement of the years Saint had lived as a slave when he was a child. No mention of the generations of Saint families who had lived, toiled, suffered, and died on the plantations. The current administration of the CSA was all about the future, and making friends with learned men like Doctor Saint was part of their attempt to move a solid step out of the dark ages of slavery and into the enlightened era of the coming twentieth century. After all, as one of the dignitaries kept saying, our great-grandkids will be alive to see the New Millennia, and by then no one will ever remember anything as old-fashioned as racism and oppression.