Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

Melissa had bolted up off the bench, and ran to Arcott as he climbed from the passenger side. Now Theo levered himself up, working the crutches the medic had supplied him with as an auxiliary leg.

“Welcome home, Jeff,” he said. And although he couldn’t really march anymore, not on that twisted, dragon-mangled leg, he waited for his marching orders.

All the while knowing, too, that soon enough he would seek out Cal Griffin and his companions and have a word with them.

Virtually the first thing Cal Griffin asked Agent Larry Shango and Mama Diamond when he got them alone was, “What brought you here?”

And the first thing that astonished him was when they answered, “Ely Stern.”

The three of them sat in the Insomnia Cafe, along with Colleen Brooks, Herman Goldman and Dr. Viktor Lysenko, sipping lattes and espressos at a table decoupaged with images torn from a Time-Life history of the twentieth century-Hitler and Eleanor Roosevelt, Joseph McCarthy and Mahatma Gandhi. These heroes and villains of the century past, gone, all gone, and their world gone with them….

“Lord, son,” said Mama Diamond, surveying Cal’s ashen face. “You look like someone just walked on your grave.”

“Not on mine,” Cal murmured, as the past unfurled like a banner bolted onto the present, shifting fiendishly in its weight and measurements.

He had thought Ely Stern most likely dead and long rotting on a Manhattan pavement, his lungs and hopefully his sadistic heart, too, skewered by the same sword that rested now against Cal’s thigh.

If anyone had deserved to die, it was certainly Stern, who had left desolation and murder in his wake; who had attempted to spirit away Tina before the Source had at long last succeeded; who had done his level best to kill Colleen and Doc and Goldie-and Cal himself, into the bargain-before he had finally been sent spiraling down into the darkness between the spires of New York.

Yet why had Stern stolen Tina in the first place? Cal had long wondered about that. True, he had clearly thought she was transforming into the only other one of his kind, but that wasn’t sufficient explanation.

From what Cal had learned since, it seemed obvious that whatever lived at the Source hungered for the flares’ unearthly power, and so had gathered them in Its net.

But as for Stern, the reason seemed more personal….

Upon Cal’s saving her and on the journey southward to Boone’s Gap, Tina had chosen to speak little of it. So Cal could only speculate from what he’d briefly overheard Stern saying to her on that distant rooftop.

There had been a tone in his voice Cal had never heard before, in all his years working for this pitiless man, before Stern’s dragon self had erupted outward and revealed him for what he truly was.

His words to Tina had held tenderness…and longing…and loneliness.

Previously at the office, whenever Stern had spoken in passing of women, it had always been with derision and rage. But here was a new thing, something Cal had only had moments to wonder at before Stern had turned his killing gaze upon him, and Cal had been forced to save himself and destroy Stern.

Or at least, so he thought.

Another passing player in Cal’s life, another purveyor of scars, physical and mental, safely relegated to the past, gone but most assuredly not forgotten.

But Cal knew now that Stern was alive, not a hideous ghost of memory but an active presence just out of sight, no longer in Manhattan but on the move, a restless wandering spirit like themselves….

But no, Cal corrected, not like themselves, nothing like themselves. He had stolen Mama Diamond’s gems, had brought them here, much the same way-Shango now informed him-that the scientists at the Source Project had coveted and accumulated such stones….

With Jeff Arcott utilizing the gems that Stern delivered.

But why? How had this come about, this unlikely alliance, this grand design whose architecture was so elusive?

And what was in it for Stern, that consummate manipulator of self-advantage? Whose interests was he serving?

Arcott or the Source…or both?

Certainly himself, that was always the case. But how, to what end?

No telling, at least not yet.

Stern had removed himself to parts unknown. While Jeff Arcott was closeted behind locked doors with his armed guards and his work crew and Rafe Dahlquist, the new resident genius on the scene, all speeding toward their goal.

While I don’t even know, Cal thought bitterly, where my goal is.

Until, that was, Agent Shango uttered the second astonishing statement that morning.

“I don’t know how to get there…but I know where the Source Project is.”

“It’s-you could say it’s an unholy place.” Larry Shango continued, scowling. “I saw things….” Shango’s face clouded with the memory.

“I was turned away,” he said finally. “I was turned away in a fashion I do not understand.”

“You tell me where it is,” Cal reassured him, “and we’ll figure out how to get there.”

“In the Black Hills, beyond the Badlands, outside Rapid City, South Dakota.”

Cal drew in a sharp breath, glanced over to Herman Goldman, who nodded agreement, sipping his Yogi tea. Hadn’t he once said it might be there, back when they’d been en route to take on Primal in Chicago, to win back Enid Blindman’s contract, and his freedom? But then Goldie had quickly added that he couldn’t be sure, that Radio K-Source was an unreliable font of information. Now they had confirmation, at last.

Shango noted that Herman Goldman had changed little in the months since he had last seen him; outwardly, at least. There was something much altered beneath, he could sense though not define it, a hardness there.

He noted, too, the new thing between Colleen Brooks and Dr. Lysenko, the relationship that had grown like a fresh sapling following the winter chill. A good thing that, something for them to hold on to.

And what of Cal Griffin? He’d retained all the qualities Shango had admired on their first meeting, that so reminded him of President McKay, the calm and the wariness, the qualities of leadership that could be honed but not acquired. He was, if anything, more impressive now that he was this much farther along his road; he wore his responsibilities with less doubt.

Griffin had sent his other acolytes to their new housing and to grab some food, leaving just his core of lieutenants to compare notes around the table.

With one addition-Mama Diamond looked about her at these warriors Larry Shango had told her about back in Burnt Stick and during their long journey here-when they weren’t fighting off wolves and panthers and marauders and cops, that was. It was clear from the old prairie rat’s expression that she found them far less formidable than his descriptions had led her to believe. But she’d learn soon enough, he knew. Not everyone was as mild as their appearance, as she herself had amply demonstrated.

Cal Griffin leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and looked deep into Shango’s eyes.

“I want to know what you saw…and how it turned you back.”

You cross the path of the Devil in your travels, li’l love, you keep right on walking, Shango’s great-grandmother-whom everybody called Aunt Sally whatever their relation to her-had cautioned him nearly thirty dead years back. He sat on her lap then, small and attentive and anything but intimidating, as she shelled sweet peas with long fingers like hickory branches, the wind coming off the bayou like the hot wet mouth of hell had opened up somewhere in there and was breathing out low and slow.

“And you don’t tell no one who you met,” she added, her twisted strong hand caressing his cheek, leaving heat trails in his skin. “’Cause he jes might hear you and come right on back….”