Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

“Goldie, get over here!” Cal cried out. Goldman seemed frozen in place beside the pale figure.

Abruptly, the buildings and sky and people shivered, and hunched, muscled figures burst through, screeching hideously and rushing toward Cal and the others.

Grunters, hundreds and hundreds of them.

“Hoo boy, some time for a family reunion,” moaned Howard Russo.

“They’re real,” said Inigo.

“Yeah, I figured that,” Cal said, drawing his sword while the others unslung their rifles and Howie pulled the Tech Nine from his belt. Cal glanced over to Goldie, just in time to see him rush up to Sanrio and embrace him.

Cal heard him scream as the world exploded in light.

Too late, far too late, Herman Goldman realized that something was terribly wrong, that he had miscalculated and this pillar of fire he was embracing, this mocking dark entity, was not Marcus Sanrio at all, at least not his physical self, but merely a projection, like the voice at the end of a telephone line, and Goldie could no more kill him than smacking a receiver against a wall would give the caller a concussion.

But hell, that didn’t mean taking a bath with the phone couldn’t electrocute you.

He had intended to draw all the power out of Sanrio, had in his hubris assumed he could do it as readily as he had sucked the ability out of that E-ticket Bitch Queen, and then hurl Marcus Sanrio into the distant reaches of nothingness, where he could be one with the space between particles until hell froze over and there were no innocent fragile ones for him to fuck with anymore.

But instead, grasping this radiant nonbeing, it felt to Goldie pretty much like someone had thrown lighter fluid on the hibachi of his mind and dropped a match.

The last conscious thought he had was, Oh Magritte, forgive me….

But if there was an answer, he didn’t hear it.

“No!” Cal shouted, and ran forward as Goldman fell. The others were right behind him. His eyes still strobing from the flash, Cal saw that the army of grunters had halted in their charge, too, blinded and momentarily dazed.

Goldie lay crumpled on the ground, his straw cowboy hat fallen away. His eyes were rolled back, unseeing. Currents of energy were coursing and snapping all over his clothing and skin, making the hair on his head snake about as in a blow dryer; in fact, his hair was the only part of him that seemed even remotely alive.

There was no sign of Sanrio, or whatever part of Sanrio had been there.

Doc bent beside the still form, reaching out a hand to touch his neck.

“Be careful, Viktor,” Colleen urged.

His fingers grazed Goldie’s carotid artery, and Cal could hear the arc of electricity as it bit at Doc. Doc winced, but kept to his task.

“No pulse,” he said, ashen.

“Get back,” Cal said and pulled Doc clear, for he saw now that the energy was surging up to envelop Goldie entirely. In an instant, there was nothing to be seen of him but the manic light playing all over his body. Then all of a sudden, he crumpled in on himself and turned to winking bits of dust, which the air seized and whirled away.

He was gone.

“Oh, dear God,” Colleen breathed, and Cal could hear her voice crack.

Then, with a cry that tore at their ears, the grunters were upon them. Cal drew Christina behind him, and turned to face the foul creatures, sheathing his sword and unslinging his rifle. He saw that Howard Russo was likewise shielding Inigo.

Colleen and Doc began firing, then Howie, too. Cal joined in their fusillade, choosing his targets, firing again and again, as the tang of gunpowder stung his nostrils and gray smoke swirled about them. White anger rose up in him, for what had been done to his sister, to Goldie, to all of them, and he felt a savage, guilty pleasure as the bullets found their mark, tore meat and gristle and flesh away from the brutes. Shrieks of agony rent the air, and blood was everywhere. The grunters that weren’t hit slowed in their advance but did not stop.

Enid was firing, too, and made a curious sight, rifle leveled and guitar slung over his back. Cal noticed that Enid’s gun had a fixed bayonet; he knew that blade well. Enid had wielded it back in Chicago, and told Cal of its heritage-Enid’s great-grandfather, the Lakota warrior Soldier Heart, had taken it off a cavalryman at the Little Big Horn.

Cal glanced at Inigo and saw that the boy was baring his teeth and growling at their attackers, his muscles taut steel waiting to spring. Cal put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, restraining him.

“Not yet,” he said. Inigo mastered himself, and nodded.

As for Mama Diamond, Cal could see that she held no weapon but was instead speaking in a low voice to several grunters who faced her. He couldn’t make out the words, but saw to his amazement that the grunters she was addressing were backing away from her in terror. Now wasn’t that interesting….

They kept firing until their ammo was gone, and still the little monsters kept coming, until it was close work now. Cal swung his sword in wide, practiced arcs as the others wielded machete and crossbow and razor, and whatever else came to hand. The grunters, for their part, brought their hideous strength to bear, reaching out with long arms to claw, darting their heads in with gaping, snapping mouths full of scalpel teeth.

Cal realized that he and his companions were outnumbered ten to one, that the grunters were driving them relentlessly back, until their backs were literally to the wall. Cal kept Christina (who was staring out in mute horror) behind him. It occurred to him that the grunters were making no effort to reach her, as if somehow she were exempt, or of a nature they preferred not to come in contact with.

Cal unleashed Inigo at the last and the boy threw himself into the fray with fang and claw, fighting with surprising ferocity. But he was clearly outmatched.

Three of the grunters leapt at Cal, brought him down hard. His sword went skidding away along the ground. They tore off his helmet, shredded the rough leather leggings and tunic over his clothes and ripped them away.

“Get the hell off me, you little creeps!” Colleen cried from nearby. Out of his peripheral vision, Cal could see they were doing the same to her, deliberately stripping her of the dragon armor.

As if they were ordered to.

Cal rolled and managed to throw the fiends off himself, scrambled for his sword and brought it home into the neck of one as it again leapt at him. He then dove for Colleen, kicking and slicing at her attackers, sending them scurrying away.

But then more were on them, burying them, hauling them down again. All Cal could see now were grunters in closer detail than any sane person would ever want to, their foul breath filling his lungs and nostrils. From the cries of Doc and Enid and Howie, and even Mama Diamond now, he assumed the same was true of them.

Suddenly, Cal heard a new commotion from some distance away, low squeals and shouts of pain, bones cracking. The grunters grappling with him paused to look up, and Cal did, too.

Larry Shango, grunters hanging off his arms and from around his neck, his armor torn clean away, was wading into the mass of grunters, hammer flailing. He pulled several clear off Doc and Mama Diamond, hurled them into a mass of their fellows.

Then he threw the homemade grenade at them.

It exploded magnificently, made mincemeat of them.

And okay, so maybe it was a double standard and, unlike their moment of horror with the flares, they felt little squeamishness about blasting these puny bastards to smithereens. But then, these guys were just plain nasty.

Shango, his face sweaty and glorious, turned to face the grunters still wrestling with Cal and Colleen, with Howie and Inigo and Enid.