Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

But now so was the fact that Mama Diamond was possessed of a truly distinctive new social skill.

Not possessed in the Salem inquisitor’s sense of the word. No, when she spoke to the animals, it was she, Mama Diamond, who had done the talking. She felt- knew -that she had spoken from the deepest and truest core of herself, the most authentic part of her, and that was the most unsettling thing.

Because, if that was the case, Stern hadn’t actually given her this power. It had merely been dormant and, deliberately or inadvertently, he had simply awakened it.

Sleeping Beauty waiting for her kiss.

And Stern was the handsome prince? No way, Jose. Mama Diamond shuddered at the thought. She had sworn off men since Danny, her fiance of fifteen minutes back in ’62, and at this late date (when, if she was going to be a pinup girl for anything, it would be arthritis) Mama Diamond sure as little green apples wasn’t going to be spliced to some hell-spawned T. rex imitator.

Still, Mama Diamond didn’t get the feeling she could reject this wild Dr. Doolittle, talk-to-the-animals (or more like screw-with-the animals’-ability-to-discern-reality) facility within her so readily.

She pondered once more what her parents might have made of this, and it occurred to her it would have astonished them at least as much as it astonished her. Not for what it did, but that Mama Diamond, known to them only as Judy Kuriyama out of San Berdoo, their rebel-without-a-cause tomboy of a little girl, had manifested it.

This was the kind of spooky crud only a Zen master might pull.

Did that make her a Zen master?

Hoo boy, don’t go there, Mama. You get cocky, you end up stepping on the wrong stone and sliding right down that cliff face into an arroyo. End of story. This newfound capacity guaranteed her nada, it was no get-out-of-jail-free card.

She learned that in a train yard at a junction town outside Sioux Falls, just across the border into Iowa.

The brittle, clear skies had given way to a raft of cloud, which yielded up, at dusk, a cold and dispiriting drizzle. Shango had told her the name of this town but Mama Diamond had already forgotten it-some largely abandoned town skirting a quartzite quarry, as bleak in the rain as a rusted automobile.

They camped in the train yard under a tin-roofed shed, the smoke from their campfire rising through a broken skylight to hang in the damp, still air. Marsh and Cope stood tethered in a far corner, restless in the shadows.

Mama Diamond was restless, too. She had noticed a sooty gas station-cum-general store on the ride in, and she offered to walk there now, maybe scavenge something interesting for dinner.

Shango agreed. “But be back before dark,” the federal agent admonished, gathering more scrap lumber to feed the fire.

Of course, the tiny shop had already been looted. All that remained of any interest was a single can of vegetarian chili half hidden under a stockroom shelf. Slim pickings. But Mama Diamond dutifully picked up the can and dusted it off and carried it back through the wet grit and gravel to the train shed.

She heard voices before she entered and was wise enough to stand a moment in the shadows, icy rain trickling down her collar. Voices. Strangers. Perhaps not friendly.

She didn’t feel much like a Zen master just now. She felt old and wet and a little bit frightened.

One harsh voice ordered Shango to stand aside and keep his hands away from his body.

Mama Diamond quietly maneuvered herself to a place where she could see into the enclosure. Three men had gathered around Shango. A fourth stood by the horses and was rummaging through the saddlebags-looking for food and dry goods, probably. He discovered Mama Diamond’s tube of Polident and threw it aside with a snort of disgust.

The men were seedy-looking, drifter types. Such scavengers had had a relatively easy time of it after the Change, living off the stored fat of civilization. But times were leaner now. Most scavengers had learned to trade for food. Some had resorted to raiding and stealing.

The three men around Shango, two of them armed with baseball bats, were demanding to know where Shango’s partner had gone.

“I don’t have a partner,” the federal agent said coolly.

“So? That’s your fuckin’ Polident, I suppose?”

“I trade in small goods,” Shango said. “Amazing what people will barter for denture cream, toothpaste, aspirin, hemorrhoid ointment-”

This was not a cooperative answer. The questioner jabbed Shango’s belly with the handle of his bat. Mama Diamond saw real pain on the government man’s face.

Enough is enough, Mama Diamond thought. She tried to recall the energy that had risen in her veins back at the wolf encounter. That sense of command. Of seniority, power, wisdom-whatever you wanted to call it.

How do you summon such a thing?

She tried. It even seemed to her that she succeeded. But was she truly feeling the energy or just remembering it? Elusive, this skill.

Nevertheless she stepped forward, until the light of the fire made her plainly visible. “Stop that,” she said.

It didn’t sound like the voice of command. It sounded like her own customary croak. Worse, it sounded almost timid.

The thugs looked at her for a long, startled moment. Then the vocal one laughed out loud. “Calm down there, Grandma,” he said. “You’ll pop your dentures.”

This was not a token of success, but Mama Diamond resolved to keep trying. “Don’t get smart with me,” she said. “If you know what’s good for you-”

She wasn’t allowed to finish. The scavenger who had been looting her saddlebags took a couple of steps closer and swung at Mama Diamond with a wooden billy club that had been strapped to his belt.

Mama Diamond took the blow in the ribs. The pain was agonizing. All her breath went out of her at once, and she fell to the grimy floor like a bag of rocks.

“There’s no need for that,” Shango said immediately.

“He speaks,” the chief thug remarked.

At which his two buddies held Shango’s arms behind him and the chief began to beat him with his fists. Mama Diamond, writhing on the floor, wondered whether all this might be a dream…or whether she had dreamed her conversation with the wolf and the panther.

Or maybe her skills only worked on animals.

The scavenger who had clubbed her went back to the saddlebags. He pulled out a pair of Mama Diamond’s long johns and held them up. “Winter drawers,” he remarked. “Shit, I thought these went out with black-and-white TV.”

Nearer the fire, the beating of Shango continued methodically.

“Marsh,” Mama Diamond groaned. “Cope.”

The horses regarded her with rolling, fearful eyes.

“Help,” she said.

Cope let out a trumpeting cry-in seeming acknowledgment, or was that wishful thinking? — then lashed out with his rear legs. Both hooves hammered the small of the unsuspecting vandal’s back, propelling him several feet through the air. He landed on his face in an ungraceful sprawl and lay motionless, but still drawing breath.

He was lucky, Mama Diamond thought. Lucky to be merely unconscious. Lucky to have been standing so near the big horse that the beast’s powerful hind legs hadn’t gotten fully extended.

It was all the opening the government man needed. Shango did something Mama Diamond could not quite follow-bent and twisted himself free of the men who held him-and delivered two or three kicks of his own, barely less powerful than Cope’s.

The horses yanked and fought their tethers. “Calm down,” Mama Diamond whispered, struggling to her feet. Her upper body burned like fire, but she didn’t believe any ribs had been broken. That was a mercy.