Ghostwalkers (48 page)

The crowd stared at him.

“We know what they have to throw against us,” he continued. “They don't know what we have. Doctor Saint's gadgets. Our unity. The fortifications. And … something else I have cooked up. We're done being helpless. This is a war, God damn it, so let's stop gaping and go fight it.”

It wasn't a great speech, Grey knew that, but it broke the spell. He saw eyes harden and jaws grow firm. He would like to have seen heroic resolve and confidence, but that was too much to ask. Too much. People began moving away. First walking and then running to take up their positions. Finally the whole crowd scattered like leaves. Some few were even laughing with some strange kind of mad battle glee as they ran off.

Jenny and Looks Away came down to stand with Grey; and after a moment, so did Doctor Saint.

“Well,” said Looks Away, “that wasn't Henry at Agincourt, but it got them moving.”

“Going to be a long day,” said Doctor Saint. He cut a look at the others. “Should be fun, though.”

“Fun?” echoed Jenny.

“Sure. This is how history is made. A bold few standing against many.”

“We happy few,” said Looks Away. “We band of brothers. Let's just hope its closer to Henry V than the Leonidas at the Hot Gates.”

He tipped an imaginary hat to Jenny, punched Grey lightly on the arm, nodded to Saint, then walked off to take up his post.

“Once more into the breach,” said Saint, still smiling. He nodded to the waiting boys to bring his second wagon. They headed off toward one of the sandbag barriers. The cloud of brightly colored Little Disasters followed in their wake.

That left Jenny and Grey standing alone for a moment. He wanted to say something to her. The atmosphere of the day seemed to require it, but no poetic words occurred to him. Not even lines from Shakespeare. Instead he took her in his arms and kissed her. It was a long, slow, sweet kiss.

“Jenny, I—,” he began, but she stopped his words with a second kiss.

“Whatever you have to say,” she murmured, “tell me after this is all over.”

“What if there's no chance to tell you? What if—?”

“No,” she said. “Find me and tell me. No matter what happens, I'll be waiting for you.”

She released him, picked up the gun belt that lay on the porch rocker, examined the Lazarus pistol, snugged it back into its holster, nodded to herself, and strapped it on. She paused for a moment, looking back at him with those blue eyes.

Thunder rumbled again and a cold rain began to fall.

“Be careful,” he said.

Jenny nodded slowly. The rain looked like tears on her cheeks.

“It's been a long, strange road since Ballard Creek,” she said, and her words stabbed him.

“How did you—? Oh … you talked to Looks Away, didn't you?”

“War is a hungry, hungry monster, Grey. It feeds on life and love.”

With that she turned away and walked into the swirling rain, leaving Grey standing there. He was more profoundly confused than he had ever been.

“This is all a goddamn nightmare,” he told the storm. The cry of a pteranodon far above him seemed to agree.

“Madness,” said Grey as he drew his gun and went to find someone or something to kill.

 

Chapter Eighty

Grey took up position at the main barrier on the desert side of town. He had forty of the town's hardiest fighters with him, and a solid wall of sandbags. Less able townsfolk huddled behind the row of shooters, ready with ammunition, water, and bandages. The women among them also carried knives hidden in their skirts. It would be up to them to cut the throats of any enemy wounded. Taking prisoners was not part of the plan.

Brother Joe and a few of his most devoted followers—those whose beliefs would not permit them to fight—were ready to tend the town's wounded.

Deray halted his advance a quarter mile beyond the edge of town. His troops stood in ordered lines, indifferent to the rain. The tanks formed in a half circle on the far side of Icarus Bridge. and Grey could see two small figures creeping along the structure, bent close to study it. Engineers, he judged, deciding if the bridge would bear the weight of the war machines.

Grey fetched his field glasses from Picky's saddlebag and studied the opposition. A closer look did nothing to increase his confidence. Grey searched the sky for Deray's sky frigate, and saw it fading like a ghost ship into the storm clouds. He caught one brief glimpse of the necromancer, standing at the forward rail of the airship with a heavy cloak pulled around him and a wide-brimmed hat to shield his eyes from the rain. Deray raised a cup of coffee to his smiling mouth, then paused and raised his cup in mock salute. Although the distance was too great for Deray to see him, Grey swore that the man had directed that gesture directly to him.

And for some reason he could never thereafter explain to himself, Grey nodded and touched a finger to the brim of his hat.

Perhaps it was some kind of salute between enemies. Maybe it was two of the damned acknowledging each other from opposite sides of the Pit. Grey didn't know and suddenly there was no time to think about it.

With howls of predatory glee, the swarm of pteranodons came hurtling down from the clouds.

“Guns up!” bellowed Grey, and a line of rifles, muskets and shotguns rose toward the oncoming flock of monsters. “Kill the bastards!”

They fired, throwing their own thunder against the storm.

The pterosaurs were in full dive, spiking downward at full speed and there was no chance to avoid the volley. Three of them suddenly twisted in midair, blood bursting from chests and heads. They twisted artlessly into screaming deadfalls, slamming into others of their kind, bringing two more down.

The rest kept coming.

“Fire!” yelled Grey. He squeezed off a shot with the Lazarus pistol and the round struck one of the monsters and exploded with enough force to tear the wings from three others. The men at the barricade fired again, and those with repeating rifles got off a third round before the flying monsters crashed into them. The lead pteranodon opened its beak and with a snap took the head off of the man at the end of the barricade. It swept past his corpse as a jet of blood shot upward from a severed neck. Five others hit the line of fighters even as the guns fired, and there was a confusion of screams and blood and falling bodies.

The defenders panicked and scattered as more and more of the pterosaurs struck them. A few huddled down behind the sandbags, firing as quickly as they could. Grey fired shot after shot, and the Lazarus bullets detonated in balls of blue fire that burst flesh and vaporized bone. The pterosaurs flew apart into ragged chunks.

Seven of his people were down, leaving twenty to fight a remaining dozen of the flying reptiles. Panic was in full fury, though, and most of the people were unable to cope with the terror of what they were facing. Grey pushed off from the sandbag wall and waded among the melee. He fired and fired and fired. The blue explosions rocked the street, knocking the fighters onto their backs, bursting the sandbags, but doing worse damage to the monsters.

One pteranodon landed atop the makeshift barrier and stabbed at him with its beak, and when Grey twisted away, it grabbed his gun arm with the bony fingers that sprouted from its leathery wing. The grip was extraordinary and Grey cried out. The Lazarus pistol fell from his hand. With a cry of pain and anger, Grey used his left hand to tear his Bowie knife from its sheath and he slashed with the heavy blade, cutting through tendon and bone. Then he was free, the alien hand still locked around his wrist but no longer attached to the beast. The pterosaur screeched in pain as blood pumped from the wound. Grey slashed at it again, but it leaped into the air to evade the blade. However the leap turned into a tumble as the mangled wing buckled. The monster thumped down onto the dirt. Grey dove atop it, smashed the beak aside with a powerful blow with the side of his right fist, and slashed the thing across the throat with the knife. It gurgled as its scream of pain was drowned in a tide of blood.

Grey shook the dead hand from his wrist and then dove to the ground as another pterosaur swooped low to try to decapitate him. He flattened out in the mud as the thing passed only inches above him. His Lazarus pistol was five feet away, lying on the wet ground as rain pounded on it. He wormed his way toward it, snatched it up, rolled over onto his back, and brought it up, all the time praying that water and mud would not do to it what they would to an ordinary pistol. The pterosaur swung around and dove at him again, and Grey fired, praying he wouldn't blow his own hand off.

Little red lights made the garnets pulse with light as the pistol bucked in his hand.

The pteranodon exploded above him, showering him with bloody debris.

He rolled sideways and got to his knees, spitting gore from his mouth.

Around him the fight was going badly. Only a dozen of his people were still fighting, and the last five of the pterosaurs were swirling and swooping. The animals were learning from the deaths of their fellows; they watched for the raise of barrels, then they wheeled in the air to avoid the shots.

“Defensive circle!” cried Grey, rising and firing at one of them. He missed as the monster tilted to let the storm wind shove it out of the way of the shot.

The people were too mad with fear to listen. Grey slammed the Bowie knife into its sheath and got to his feet, firing again and clipping a wing. Then he was among the survivors, yelling at them and shoving them toward the barricade.

“Huddle up! Guns out. Don't let them get behind you. Protect the man to your right. No, damn it, your
other
right. That's it. Fire. Fire.”

Two of the pterosaurs fell as the men, now in a circle, fired at Grey's direction. The animals still darted out of the way, but Grey saw a way to use that. He waited for the volley to fire and then aimed his shot to the natural escape angle and as a pteranodon veered to avoid the bullets Grey destroyed it with the Lazarus handgun.

Again.

And again.

As each monster fell, the people at the barricade became more confident. Their aim improved, although some still shot wild and too soon. The next monster fell to a hail of bullets, and the last one, realizing that it was alone, attempted to fly between two buildings, but that was a mistake. Everyone fired.

Every bullet hit it and tore it to rags.

The men burst into cheers.

But Grey looked around. There had been twenty-seven fighters with him at the barricade, and now there were eleven.

Sixteen dead.

The cheers of the survivors died away as this truth sank like poison into their stomachs.

This was not a victory. It was a slaughter.

And all they had so far fought were Deray's monster pets. The army, the machines, the metal giant, and the undead still waited.

As Grey stared over the wall and across the Icarus Bridge he felt his heart sink.

We're all going to die here,
he thought. And he believed it, too.

A voice—screaming his name—tore through the air, and he whirled and ran.

 

Chapter Eighty-One

The cry had come from Jenny. Terror and desperation mixed in equal parts.

Grey raced down the street toward the far end of town; back to the place where he had first met her. The well.

He saw her there. She was backing away from the well. Two of the townspeople lay sprawled and bloody in the rain, their bodies strangely swollen and discolored. Both corpses had deep punctures on their faces. Jenny had the Lazarus pistol in her hand, held out straight as she fired at something that came crawling over the edge. The thing was long and low, and as it moved the lightning flashed on each of its black, chitinous segments. A thousand hairy legs carried it up and over the lip of the well. Antennae whipped back and forth and a hundred tiny eyes gleamed like specks of polished coal. It was a centipede. Thirty feet long if it was an inch, and it flowed out of the depths and moved toward Jenny.

On the ground between it and Jenny were two more of its kind, their bodies blasted to fragments, steam rising as rain struck the exposed guts. Their pincers glistened with a purple venom. Another giant insect emerged from the well. And another.

“Grey!” screamed Jenny as she fired. Instead of a deafening blast, there was a hollow click. She cursed and squeezed the trigger again and again; each time yielded nothing but that empty and impotent noise. Then on her fourth pull the weapon fired. But it was already too late. The centipede was nearly upon her. Grey fired as he ran. Not a perfect shot, but it scored, and the insect was buffeted sideways as a yard-long section of its side erupted in flame. The blast threw Jenny backward, and Grey caught her with his free arm, steadying her.

“The damn gun doesn't work!” she snapped, squeezing the trigger again and getting only the empty click.

“Stay back,” he warned, and pulled her clear as the injured centipede lashed at her. There was a barb on its tail as long and sharp as a pirate's cutlass. Grey crouched and steadied his gun for a careful shot and blew the monster's head off. It flopped backward, but immediately the other two crawled over it. Grey fired again and this time Jenny's gun fired, too. One of the creatures was killed outright, its head and first ten segments bursting into balls of blue fire. The second was mortally wounded and staggered off, half its legs crippled and many of its segments ruptured. Grey holstered his pistol, grabbed the heavy wooden bucket from beside the well, and swung it up and over and down onto the monster's head. The bucket shattered, but the impact smashed the centipede's head to bits of shell and green blood.