Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

Cal grabbed the rifle from where he’d cast it aside in the fresh snow. He looked it over, turning it in his hands.

Colleen came up alongside him, studied it more closely. She could see that it was a stock Remington hunting rifle, but one that had been curiously ornamented. The grip was inlaid with what looked like chips of quartz. The area around the firing mechanism was encrusted with beryl and agate; a line of garnets ran up the barrel, and the gunsight had been replaced with a sliver of gleaming opal.

Cal tossed it onto the passenger seat. He fished out the injured guy’s battered wallet, thumbed through the cards.

“Driver’s license…college ID…Domino’s Pizza buy-ten-get-one-free card…”

“Is this guy an optimist or what?” Colleen asked, slamming the hood.

She noticed now that Cal had pulled a folded paper from within some hidden pocket inside the wallet. He opened it to reveal a creased snapshot of a pretty girl with caramel skin and cascading hair the shade of autumn leaves, her brilliant dark eyes guarded but not unfriendly; wounded, perhaps.

The image was arresting, enigmatic, and-given where he had stashed it-something this young man undoubtedly didn’t want to share.

“His name’s Theodore Siegel,” Cal added, slipping the photo back into the wallet, and the wallet into Siegel’s pocket.

“Ring a bell?” Colleen asked Inigo.

Inigo shrugged. “I’m not from around here.”

“Really? And would you care to impart precisely where you are from?”

Inigo was a sphinx.

Cal turned toward Doc. “Care to ride shotgun?”

“When for once it’s actually literal? Certainly, Calvin…Er, in just one moment.” He hotfooted it over to where the dragon carcass lay crumpled in the grass.

Colleen caught the flash of Doc’s lighter flaring up. He held it over the dragon’s body, squinting closely at it. Then she saw the dancing flame glint off the metal blade as Doc pulled out his scaling knife and sawed at the beast’s dead shoulder a moment.

What the flaming blue hell…? Colleen thought.

Doc pulled something free, held it briefly in his palm, then pocketed it. Killing the light, he sidled back.

“Got something for show-and-tell, Viktor?” Colleen asked.

“Question me no questions, Boi Baba, ” he said airily.

“All I can say is, it’s a good thing Mr. Pottymouth Lizard’s gone and joined his trailer-park ancestors in the Happy Hunting Ground or you might be in the market for a replacement head, mi amigo. ”

“I am the soul of caution, Colleen.”

Colleen snorted so loudly the two of them nearly missed Cal loudly and pointedly clearing his throat.

Doc got the message. He slid in on the passenger side of the El Dorado, resting the rifle on his lap.

Goldman was still staring down into the valley, not moving a muscle, as if waiting to see who would blink first (and it sure as hell wouldn’t be him). Colleen nudged him in the ribs. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Into the Valley of-”

“No, Colleen,” Cal said. “You two go back to the silo, see how the others are doing.”

“In a pig’s knuckle, Cal.”

“I mean it. We don’t want to go down there en masse and be perceived as a threat.”

“Oh, I think we very much want to be perceived as a threat.” She thought of the late, definitely-not-lamented reptile on the wing they had just recently dispatched. Better than being perceived as an in-flight snack.

Cal unbuckled his sword and laid it in the passenger well beside Doc. He climbed in behind the wheel, nodded toward the folded, nearly spindled and somewhat mutilated Mr. Siegel. “We just saved their homeboy here. Hopefully they’ll see us as allies.”

“And if they don’t?” Colleen asked. “Are we supposed to bake a file into a cake? Or maybe just carve the headstone?”

And just what would that tombstone say? I’d rather be in Philadelphia? They’d passed by Philadelphia, and it was definitely a place you wouldn’t rather be.

She shot Doc an imploring look- C’mon, Viktor, don’t be the stalwart physician here, come down on my side, for God’s sake. But he was tending to Siegel, murmuring low words, urging him to stay awake.

“Hey, when the man’s right, he’s right, Colleen,” Goldman said. He had snapped out of his swami trance just at this inopportune moment, darn his big brown eyes. “Two’s company, four’s a convention. We’d just futz things up.”

“And what about Haley Joel grunter here?” Colleen snapped. She meant Inigo, but he had that spooky look that kid from The Sixth Sense had, when he was lit from beneath and the frosty breath was curling out of his mouth, right before the ghosts came by.

“You’ll go back with them and stick around till we return, right?” Cal asked Inigo.

“Sure,” the boy assured him, but Colleen could tell by the way his eyes avoided Cal’s that he was lying his little gray ass off.

She was gonna stick to him like leeches to Bogart in that movie with the African boat, like something superglued to a finger that you had to make a trip to the emergency room to separate.

And if anything happens to Cal or Viktor… She fingered the hilt of the brass-knuckle-grip, Eviscerator Three Special Superknife that Rory had bought at Hunter’s Heaven in Greenwich Village back in the life before, and which she had brought along and worn at her belt in her travels since-figuring now that Rory was MIA and not quite human anymore, he wouldn’t exactly be needing it. Whereas Colleen had had to protect a man or two that she’d grown particularly fond of lately. And yeah, dammit, all right, she’d admit it, Goldman, too.

Inigo was watching her intently, caught the motion with the knife. He swallowed hard.

Good, the duplicitous puny little tweak was nervous. She’d keep him that way.

“Here goes nothing,” Cal said, and turned the key in the ignition. The big V-8 engine roared to life like a dinosaur in the jungle. Now, wasn’t that an amazing sound?

On sudden impulse, Colleen ran around to the passenger side, leaned in through the open window and kissed Doc. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said.

He opened his mouth to make a joke, then thought better of it. “I’ll endeavor not to.” They looked deeply into each other’s eyes; she found some comfort there, a fact that no longer made her feel screechingly vulnerable.

He reached out and withdrew the chain from its place beneath her shirt, fingered the leather charm.

“If I may borrow this, for a short while. It may prove of use.”

“If you think so,” she responded, taking the length from around her neck.

“I think so.” Delicately, he unhooked the charm, removed the rough triangle of iridescent leather, then returned the chain with its Russian cross and dog tags to her.

Cal gave them their moment, let the engine idle, warming up. Inigo sidled up alongside the driver’s window.

“When you get down there, don’t believe everything they say,” he advised Cal. “And don’t let ’em dazzle you. Just keep an eye out for what you really need.”

“That your shopper’s tip for the day?” Cal asked.

“Nah, not mine,” Inigo murmured, and from the way he said it, Cal understood he could have added, It’s what I’ve been told to say.

Inigo bent his oversized head in the direction of the dead dragon. “You did good back there. You have a knack for saving people.”

“Thanks,” Cal said.

And though neither of them knew it, or truly knew each other yet, in that moment they had an identical hope, and the same thought.

Of Tina.

The road started out lousy, full of ruts and fissures Cal had to swerve wide to avoid. But as they continued down into the valley, it got better tended.