Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

The tapes were of an old radio show, ancient even then, from the thirties. Shango had recognized the voice emanating from the cassette player-it was that old fat dude from the commercials (“No wine before its time…”). But this wasn’t hokey or a fast hustle. It was simply wonderful.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…

The Shadow knows.

A man who could not be bought or swayed or corrupted, who stood for one pure, clear ideal, who could go anywhere, do anything…

Because he could cloud men’s minds.

So they couldn’t see him, didn’t know he was even there. Until he struck and struck hard, setting everything right.

Sometimes it’s just like a penny dropping into a slot, a lightbulb going on…and you know you’ve found that one right thing to give your life over to.

Shango studied and trained, entered the Naval Academy on an athletic scholarship, busted his ass getting his grades into the stratosphere, spent four years in Naval Intelligence working up to lieutenant commander, brushing up against all manner of government operatives.

All preamble, so he could apply to the one organization where he truly belonged.

Why do you want to join the Secret Service? the form had asked. And of course he had not said, Because I want to be the Shadow, stupid.

What followed had been a grueling year at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, augmented by specialized training in Beltsville, Maryland. After that, five years’ duty in the New Orleans and Chicago field offices, working criminal investigations, identity theft, protective intelligence, proving himself outstanding, exemplary, without error or peer.

Until finally, he was selected for the elite, the Presidential Protection Division.

Where at last Larry Shango could fully become the Shadow.

The invisible man, the one no one saw, silent as a radio switched off, always-literally-shadowing the Big Man, numero uno, President of what was once laughingly called the United States.

Not so United anymore, and as for the President, well…if there was a heaven-a belief Shango’s mother had so fervently believed and Shango himself so fervently fled-McKay was there. And if not, at least McKay’s worries were over.

Which was hardly the case with Larry Shango. Since his moment of decision around the campfire with Cal Griffin and friends, Shango had been visible indeed on his rambling See the USA sojourn, more often than not in someone’s crosshairs. The long highway might as well have been paved with broken bones for all the damage he’d been forced to inflict with that ten-pound sledgehammer slung across his back.

It was a way to fill the time at least, to sometimes actually convince himself his life had a purpose…or at least hadn’t run out of steam.

But at night, camped in some high redoubt, his back to the rockface, carefully calculated to be secure against attack, he’d long for even a brief return to what he used to think of (though naturally never actually said ) as his Power….

Funny, because now all sorts of people had all kinds of power, way beyond what that funky old Shadow could ever have cooked up.

But Shango had stayed achingly unchanged-human, mortal, ordinary. As ordinary as any man who had walked his path and seen what he’d seen.

Griffin and his companions were probably dead by now, having gotten nowhere near the Source.

As Shango himself had failed.

But that was long after their meeting around the campfire. Initially, Shango had ignored Goldman’s warnings. He’d had an obligation-and more than that, a personal need-to verify that his Commander was indeed dead, that Shango had in fact deserted and condemned him (even if McKay himself had ordered Shango away).

On the grounds of the White House, beside the fountain and rose beds as Goldman had predicted, Shango verified that General Christiansen of the Joint Chiefs had seized power, and that McKay and his wife, Jan, and even their dog, Jimmy, were dead, murdered.

That had been the second crossroads, as Shango had been forced to choose-vengeance, or some other engine to drive his life. He chose the one remaining task he knew McKay would want him to fulfill-to find and safeguard the life of their son, Evan, if he could.

So Shango set off for Bar Harbor, Maine, where the boy had been vacationing with his uncle and cousins and a detachment of Secret Service agents. That had been one hairy journey, traveling overland through some of the densest and most desperate regions of the eastern seaboard. Factionalism had run riot. Rumors abounded that the President was dead, and it really hadn’t been possible to keep that soundbite a dirty little secret (even in a world that no longer had sound-bites). No one seemed to know the whereabouts and condition above- or belowground of the Vice President, so the position of head of state devolved to the Speaker of the House. Christiansen had somehow managed to sew up-or lock down-Senator Mader’s allegiance, or at least compliance, and thus declare martial law. But it was hotly disputed, and various National Guard units recognized widely divergent authority-if any at all. Pockets of civil war, civil disobedience and uncivil acts of every stripe were the order of the day.

The only thing to be thankful for-and it was precious little-was that munitions no longer worked.

But on the other hand, dragons flew and could shoot fire.

Shango arrived at Bar Harbor ten days late, to find that a contingent of Christiansen’s men had already tried to kill the boy there, as if he were the lost Dauphin or Anastasia or Bonnie Prince Charlie. The team of Special Forces assassins had overpowered and dispatched Jan McKay’s brother, her nieces and nephew, and all but one of the Secret Service agents.

Although bleeding her life out from internal injuries, agent Jaime Mintun had gotten the boy as far as Bangor, where a sympathetic older man and his wife had kept the boy hidden in a big sprawling mansion behind a spiderweb iron gate until Shango had arrived and convinced them of his friendly intentions.

Mama Diamond and Shango came to the decaying railway depot, and she led him into the equally decrepit cafeteria-refurbished for tourists once long ago-where they sat at a dusty table.

Mama Diamond had cleaned out the kitchen here shortly after the Change, had dumped the rotting perishables into an arroyo well out of town and swabbed the floors and walls with ammonia to kill the stench. With the doors closed against the breeze, it was another pleasant place to spend time. Or at least it had been. The black train, the dragon, had tainted it.

“Where’s the boy now?” asked Mama Diamond.

“With my aunts and sisters and cousins outside New Orleans,” Shango replied. “Oh, he’s got a different name now and looks a whole lot different. If any of Christiansen’s men decide to come after him, well, those old swamp-rat relations of mine know how to vanish into the bayou. And I suspect not even black-op hit men-or dragons themselves, come to mention it-would go in there without considerable trepidation.”

“But that put you back at square one,” Mama Diamond noted.

Shango nodded. “I could wall myself behind some fortress and spend the rest of my days raising turnips and fighting off monsters. Or I could put myself in the middle of it, like those folks I met, Griffin and the rest. Head for the Source and see if I could undo some of the badness…or at least learn if McKay’s suspicions were right, if it really was the origin of all this misery and upheaval.”

Shango was looking straight ahead, talking to himself as much as to Mama Diamond. “All I had was that rain-spoiled list of scientists’ names….”