Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

One of the thugs fled past her, out into the drizzling rain and the dark of the rail yard. The thugs who remained were unconscious on the ground. Shango took a length of rope and bound them methodically to a standpipe. Then he helped Mama Diamond closer to the fire.

“I doubt we’ll have any more trouble tonight,” Shango said. “These types tend not to have a whole lot of friends. But we should move out pretty hastily come dawn. And keep watch till then.”

“I could have used the sleep.”

“So could I,” Shango admitted. He was bleeding from a cut beside his right eye, dark blood on dark skin. He winced when he smiled ruefully.

Mama Diamond took a fresh handkerchief from her saddlebag, cleaned out the cut with a little water and taped it shut with a Band-Aid. She cast a satisfied glance at the unconscious men-the one Cope had dispatched at her bidding, the other two the result of Shango’s efficient handiwork.

“Well, Mr. Shango,” Mama Diamond said, “it appears I have a way with animals…and you have one with men.”

Come morning, the air was cold but the rain of the night had gone. Sunlight came through the cluttered junk of the train yard at slants and angles like the strings of a cast-off harp.

Mama Diamond had hardly slept, even during her off-shift. Her eyes were raw and her chest ached dully. Stubbornly, she refused Shango’s offer of aspirin. This pain had come hard-won; hell, she might as well feel it.

The three captive vandals continued to moan against their gags-Shango had gagged them around midnight, when they took to emitting loud verbal obscenities-and squirmed against their restraints. Mama Diamond said, “We just leave them?”

“Their buddy might come back. Even if not-you know how hard it is to tie a man up so effectively he can’t work himself free? If we’re not here to kick ’em when they wiggle, they’ll soon enough be undone.”

“I don’t want their lives on my conscience,” Mama Diamond said.

“Neither do I,” said Shango, “though it wouldn’t be such a heavy burden, would it?”

“I suppose not,” Mama Diamond said. But she was relieved it was a subject she didn’t have to fret over.

Shango rigged a device whereby the horses could be harnessed to the rail bike, one rider per horse, and supplies strapped to the bike itself. It worked well enough that Shango was able to learn the basics of riding, and it seemed like an economical division of labor, at least where the land was level, the berms not too high, the rails unobstructed.

As the day’s ride dragged on, Mama Diamond smiled to herself as the thought occurred what some passing stranger might remark upon seeing their passing parade, this weird assemblage like a land catamaran with horses instead of pontoons.

“Well, that’s certainly different.”

I know what it’s like to be different, Mama Diamond thought, glancing over at Shango as he rode atop Marsh, his solemn level gaze on points east, the destination ahead. Even as a child, Mama Diamond had been alone more often than not, secretive and self-absorbed, an outsider. The camps did that to you, even if you were a kid; you’d listen to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio, One Man’s Family. All those normal folks who were able to go where they wanted, do whatever they chose, just get in a car and drive …

But there you and your folks were, and all those thousands of people who looked just like you, locked up in an internment camp in the middle of nowhere, a hot flat desert ringed by glowering, unsympathetic mountains. An alien.

Her mother told her the authorities said it was for their own protection. But if that was so, then why were the machine guns in the guard towers pointed in rather than out ?

Mama Diamond remembered the baking summer night-she couldn’t have been more than seven, if that-when she’d fired an improvised arrow out of her homemade toy bow up and up into tower number three. Boy howdy, she’d set those alarms yowling !

So Mama Diamond well knew that inside every quiet, self-sufficient loner was one hell-raiser just waiting for an excuse to bust out.

Shango shifted in the saddle, gave a low grunt. The tenderfoot way he was riding, Mama Diamond could tell he’d be plenty sore tonight. Not that he’d complain…

She knew he’d been different, too; it hadn’t taken a Change to make him the Cat Who Walked Alone. She wondered what message the Cold Old World had sent him as a kid to cut him away from the herd.

Now here they were, the two of them, two loners spliced together on the road, on a treasure hunt-and who could say whether the treasure they’d find would be Mama Diamond’s gemstones or the dark new heart of the planet?

Certainly not Mama Diamond. Nor could she say, if two loners were together, that they could truthfully be called loners anymore.

Mama Diamond felt the music of the power within her, felt her strange new talent-and this other thing, this new good feeling she could not name.

It made her uneasy, this feeling, this new situation, all of it. As a rule, she distrusted the good even more than the bad; after all, as she’d told her old friend Arnie Sproule on many a starless night, happiness was dangerous…while misery, well, they never could take that away from you.

Still, for all its danger and its newness, Mama Diamond thought she’d work on standing this good patch a while longer, trying it on for size.

Because even if she knew what it was like to be different, Mama thought as a few bright clouds rolled high and far through the frozen blue of the sky…

She didn’t know what it was like to be this.

Grunters, dragons, piles of plague victims that appeared and vanished, guns and cars and everything stinking to high heaven.

It had been one cocked-up day, Colleen Brooks told herself, and it was shaping up to be an equally charming night.

At least it wasn’t snowing anymore, and the evening had turned surprisingly mild. But it was small comfort, considering.

The five of them stood edgeways to the Valley of Mystery, the rotting dragon corpse not fifty feet off, the sun sunk beneath the horizon and the moon not yet high enough to be much help.

Colleen had asked that friggin’ undependable Herman Goldman to whistle up some of his glowing blue balls (and no wisecracks here, please) to shed a little light on the situation. But all he’d done was stood staring freakily off down into the valley, even though now you couldn’t see any of the bodies, just still smell them.

So Colleen fetched the ready-made torch from Big-T’s saddleback and fired it up with her Bic. They were still dependable when you could find them, thank the Lord for small favors.

She jammed the torch into the snowy ground beside the dusty El Dorado convertible, where Doc and Cal were loading the groaning newcomer-just now starting to come around-into the backseat.

The grunters they’d saved from that white-trash dragon had all hightailed it into the tall grass-or wherever the hell they came from. But that snarky little tweak Inigo remained.

“I can’t go into town with you,” Inigo told Cal. “I mean, maybe eventually, but not right now. It should be safe, like I told you. Only don’t mention I sent you.”

“Now, that’s a trustworthy statement, if I ever heard one,” Colleen observed acidly. She had the hood open and was inspecting this golden oldie. Internal combustion engine, eight valve-and-piston job, no surprises-if you ignored the big red, green and blue gemstones running along both sides and atop the engine block, solidly bolted to it.

Oh, mama, but did she have a million and one questions…