Ghostwalkers (52 page)

The Kingdom rifle did far more damage, though. When one of its rounds struck, the resulting blast consumed everything inside a twenty-foot radius. Souls flickered to the wind and then were torn to emptiness as brains exploded from the monstrous pressure. It took the walking dead in the middle of the swarm only moments to realize that death chased them even as they sought to overwhelm the barricade. They laughed in the face of it, though. The red madness of slaughter was all they cared about.

Other townsfolk deserted the other barriers and dashed through the ever-thickening rain to join the melee. Grey saw Mrs. O'Malley holding a musket by the barrel and laying about her like a warrior queen from some ancient legend. Old though she was, she put real power into her swings, and a heap of undead with shattered skulls attested to her ferocity.

Grey fired his gun dry and paused to reload. He had already used half of his ammunition. One of the living dead rushed him before he could finish slapping the new cylinder in place. Grey pivoted and stamped hard on its knee with the flat of his boot. Bones snapped like dry sticks and the monster fell flat on its face, and even as it landed Grey stomped down with his heel, catching the thing behind the ear. The skull shattered and the neck canted inward. The creature stopped moving. Grey slapped the new cylinder into place and ran over the corpse to rejoin the fight.

A series of explosions tore through the air and Grey wheeled around to see several of the little disasters—blue, yellow, pink, and purple—explode in the thick of the enemy.

A split second later, a cry went up, and to his horror, Grey saw Doctor Saint fall as a line of red energy pulses punched downward from the railing of the sky frigate. Whether the scientist was dead or crippled was impossible to determine as the tide of battle swept over him, and he was lost to Grey's sight.

Grey fought his way to the outer edge of the barricade and launched himself into the thick of a battle between two youngsters—a boy and a girl of about seventeen who looked like twins—and five of the undead. The boy was on his knees, hands pressed to a savage wound in his stomach while the girl stood her ground and fired a Winchester, working the lever with fevered determination, hitting the enemy because at that distance there was no room to miss. One of the walking dead grabbed the smoking barrel of her gun and tore it from her hands and the creature behind him flung himself atop the girl, bearing her to the ground.

Grey shot the dead man who had taken the Winchester, but he dared not shoot the one atop the girl. Instead he kicked it in the ribs with all of his strength, flipping it off of her and onto its back. The girl whipped a knife from her belt, rolled onto her knees and drove the point of the blade into the monster's eye socket. The creature twitched once and then collapsed back, dead.

Grey flashed her a wild grin. If life was kinder and if he had any chance at a future—which he knew he did not—he would want a girl like this as his daughter.

The other three undead rushed forward, but Grey pivoted in the mud and killed them with three fast shots from the Lazarus gun. They exploded in blue fire and red blood.

“Get him to safety,” Grey said, pointing to the girl's wounded twin.

But she shook her head and foraged among the dead for a new gun. “Safety?” she barked, then followed it with a mad laugh. “Where's that?”

“Grey!”

He turned at the sound of his name and saw Jenny there. Right there.

She was streaked with mud, blood, and rainwater, her hair was in rattails and her dress was torn, but she was more beautiful in that moment than ever before. She had her Lazarus pistol in one hand and a big Remington army pistol. The barrel of the Lazarus gun was pointed down, but the big, black mouth of the Remington was pointed at his heart.

“You killed him,” she said.

“Jenny—?”

“You killed my pa.”

“I … I tried to save him,” said Grey. “I begged him to stand down. I wanted him to tear the rock from his chest so that he didn't have to die.”

There were tears in her eyes. “You shot him in the chest.”

“I—.”

“Not the head,” said Jenny. “You didn't shoot him in the head.”

“Jenny, please…”

“You killed him,” she repeated. Then she said, “You saved him.”

Grey held his breath, frozen into the moment.

“You saved his soul,” said Jenny in a voice that was strange and distant.

“This wasn't his fault,” he said simply. “He didn't deserve this.”

She looked down at the dead men whose bodies lay in pieces. “But you killed him.”

“What choice did I have?”

Jenny shook her head, then stared up at the frigate. “Deray is a monster,” she said. “He is the Beast of the Apocalypse made flesh. He turns flesh against flesh and hearts against hearts. He is the defiler.”

Her voice was so strange now. Not like Jenny's voice.

“Jenny—?”

She lowered the pistol and began to turn away. Then she paused and turned her head, looking over her shoulder at him.

“We love you, Grey,” she said. “We both love you.”

Then she raised both guns and rushed back into the fight.

We both love you.

A sick wave of horror washed through Grey's soul.

“No…,” he said aloud.

No,
he screamed in the empty halls of his breaking heart. He heard a chorus of despairing cries rise up from the defenders and he turned to look. What he saw nearly crushed him. The sky frigate had moved back across the chasm, past the blackened ruin of the bridge, to the far side. The undead aboard the frigate had cast down a dozen ropes, and the remaining soldiers on the far side of the gorge were lashing them to the arms of the metal giant. Then the ship rose again and bore Samson into the air.

Across the chasm.

Toward Paradise Falls.

Samson. An invulnerable engine of destruction. Coming. Not to join the fight, but to end it. To exterminate. To prove that the beast that was Deray was truly the conqueror that would crush the world under foot.

If there had been any part of Grey that was still sane, still undamaged by all that had happened over the last few days, then it broke in that moment. Understanding is a fist, a hammer, a bullet, and it smashed through him.

We both love you.

We.

With a scream so loud it tore blood from his throat, Grey followed her into the fight.

 

Chapter Eighty-Seven

If war is hell, and if wars are fought on Earth, then Earth itself is hell. At least it is when the flames of war burn hottest. Grey felt his humanity drain away as he fought. Fatigue and pain went with it, leaving behind something else. A construct as cold and inhuman as Samson, who now hung suspended from the airship. Grey saw Deray at the rail, a sword in his hand and a demonic smile on his face.

“Do it, you bastard,” whispered Grey. As if he could hear those words, Deray turned and slashed at the ropes that held Samson. The giant seemed to hang for a moment longer than he should, like a fist poised to deliver a death blow.

Then it fell.

Fell.

Like a comet.

Like the hammer of some ancient god.

Like the footfall of the antichrist.

It fell.

Tons of gleaming metal dropped through the swirling rain directly down toward the barricade. Undead and humans screamed and scattered, falling back as the colossus streaked downward.

Only Grey stood his ground, his Lazarus pistol raised. He had one shot left. One.

He pointed it at the giant and fired.

Knowing that it could do no good, but needing to try anyway. Needing to. The ghost rock bullet struck the bottom of the giant's foot.

And then …

There was a sound, like a hammer striking a great gong. A ringing, crushing noise that sent Grey flying through the air once more. Flung again like debris.

The sound was accompanied by a flash of blue.

Massive.

Incredible. Greater than anything Grey had ever seen. Bigger than the blast out in Nevada that had torn apart the hills. Bigger than the thunderbolt that had destroyed the great worm in the desert.

Brighter than the sun. The blue fireball seemed to open like a mouth and then clamp its jaws around the giant in the instant before it would have crushed the sandbag barrier. Then, like the fist of God, it punched Samson away. Far away. Away from the barrier. Out toward the chasm in an arc that trailed azure flames. Samson, a crumpled, blackened, twisted parody of the invincible giant it had been, fell into the cleft and vanished from sight. Everyone stood or sprawled in stunned silence. In this moment the world made no sense at all. Not to the living or the dead.

Above them, the sky frigate tilted into the wind, its great balloon ruptured, the hull cracked and splintered. It slid lower in the sky, trailing smoke and gas as it dropped down, yard by yard until its keel bumped against the roof of big barn that stood on the edge of town. The barn that held the late Doctor Saint's laboratory.

Grey Torrance climbed to his feet, unaware of the blood that ran from a dozen cuts, some of them deep, crisscrossing his frame. He had no weapon now, and his clothes hung in rags.

Everyone else got slowly to their feet. Undead and townsfolk. One by one they turned toward the town, staring at the thing that loomed there in the middle of the rainswept main street.

A wagon.

Ordinary in most ways. Two mules stood trembling in the traces, their ears back and teeth bared in terror.

On the wagon, looking like something from a nightmare invention from the mind of some fevered tinkerer, sat the massive shape of the Kingdom cannon. Blue smoke leaked from its barrel. Leaning against it, small, round, dripping blood, was Percival Saint.

He smiled weakly at the sea of faces. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he pitched backward off the cart to land bonelessly in the mud. He did not even try to break his fall.

“No!” cried a voice, and Thomas Looks Away staggered from the press of the crowd and took a tentative step toward the fallen scientist. Then he stopped and hung his head. He turned slowly back to the barricade and raised his Kingdom rifle. Grey had no idea if the Sioux had any rounds left, but there was pain and murder in his friend's eyes.

None of the undead moved. There were still nearly two hundred of them. There were fewer of the townsfolk. Maybe a hundred left. Corpses were everywhere. The rain mixed the blood with the soil and mud. Grey saw movement on the sky frigate. Aleksander Deray was still alive. He had a bag of tools slung over his shoulder and was climbing a section of netting to reach the tear in the gas envelope.

“No,” said Grey. “No goddamn way.”

He took a step toward the barn and nearly fell. There was something wrong with his leg and pain exploded upward into his back. He didn't care. He ate the pain and let it feed his desire to reach Deray. He needed to grasp a throat in his hands, to feel its structure crumble, to hear the rattle of a last breath. He forced himself on. First in a staggering walk, then as he feasted on his own pain, he broke into a run. Behind him, the battle—stalled by shock—began again.

He heard gunfire and screams.

As he ran he saw the ghosts again. No longer under the dead cottonwood. Now they stood in the road that led up to the barn. All of his men, everyone who had died at Bailey Creek. His sergeant, the corporals. All of his friends. Everyone who had trusted him.

And Annabelle.

Of all of them, she was the least substantial. Her shade was like something painted on glass. He could see through her. Her eyes, though, they were intense. Grey braced himself, thinking that they had come to intercept him, but as he ran toward the barn they stepped back to let him pass. The dead giving license to the doomed to fight the damned. He almost laughed. It was comedy. The kind the gods would enjoy. They were perverse enough to find all of this to their liking.

The barn door was closed but Grey launched himself at it and kicked it inward. It flew backward and he landed hard and stumbled inside. The stairs were in the far corner, and Grey ran past the tables filled with strange devices designed by Doctor Saint. He had no idea what any of them were. There were no Kingdom rifles, no Lazarus pistols. Nothing that he could use. All he had left were the Bowie knife on his belt and his fists.

That would have to be enough. If not, then he really would use his bare hands. Or his teeth, if it came to that.

He heard a dull
thump
as the frigate bumped once more against the roof.
Still there,
he thought.
Good
.

“I'm coming,” he said as he climbed the stairs.

At the top of the second flight there was a ladder that stretched up to a trapdoor. Grey pulled it down, took a breath, and then climbed. The trapdoor had a simple slide bolt, which he shot as quietly as he could, then he raised the door an inch. The pitched roof of the barn, with its rows of black tarpaper shingles, stretched all the way to the edge thirty feet away. The frigate bobbed in the rain just beyond it, turned stern-on to the barn. All of the windows in the stern gallery had been smashed out, and Grey could see the wreckage of what had been an elegantly furnished captain's cabin. The oak and teak from which the ship was built was ruined now—cracked and warped, singed and fractured. He saw dead men slumped over debris. Instead of a suit of sails, the ship had its big gas envelope, and Deray clung to the nettings and used what looked like a mop to smear some glistening goo along the edges of the tear. Every few seconds he paused, held the swab in one hand, and used the other to press torn sections of the canvas envelope into place. The substance he was applying must have been some kind of glue, because the fabric stuck fast. There was very little of the rupture left, though gas poured out of the diminishing hole with great force. Grey marveled at the strength of the man as he forced the pieces into place against that pressure. Deray must be fantastically strong.