Mike Stackpole - Ghost Book One - The Earth Transformed

“You’re a goddamn liar, Finster!”

He tittered. “It was just a little white lie.”

I reached for my pistol, then stared at it as I drew and aimed at the spider. Why the hell did I have my gun in here? I wasn’t really here. Not physically. But now that I looked down at myself I saw I was dressed like me. All my cuts and bruises were where they were supposed to be. My boots were still covered in dust from Finster’s fake landscape. But that was all just me remembering what I looked like and transplanting it into this artificial reality because I desperately needed a point of reference, right? None of my gear would actually work.

The spider swiped at me again and I jumped back just in time.

Time to find out.

I dodged another claw and fired. The space echoed with the shot, and a hole appeared between the spider’s eight eyes. It sank to the ground, dead.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” I said. “That shouldn’t be possible. This isn’t reality. That wasn’t a real bullet.”

“Neither was the spider,” said Finster. “I told you.”

I stepped up the webs. “So these aren’t real either?”

“Of course not.”

I pushed against them. They flexed, but didn’t break. “Feel real to me.”

“That’s because you aren’t real either.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

I pushed against the webs with all my might, and with a sudden twang they broke apart and I was in.

I stepped through the next opening, shaking my head and thinking how crazy it all was, then knocked the dirt from my cleats with the tip of my bat and crossed to home plate. I looked out toward the pitcher’s mound and saw my old foe, Christy Matthews, grinning at me. I gave him a nod back. It was always a battle when old Matty and I crossed paths. The home run king versus the strikeout king. The bleachers cheered us both. Equally divided.

I raised my bat.

Matty leaned in, watching past me as the catcher gave his signals behind my back. Finally he stood, threw his arms over his head, twisted almost completely away, then turned and fired his first pitch like a cannonball.

I swung at the white blur but missed by a mile and heard the slap of leather on leather as the catcher caught it.

“Strike one!” called the ump.

“You feelin’ okay, slugger?” asked the catcher. “You don’t usually miss by that much.”

“Just warming up,” I said.

But the next pitch was just as fast, and I swung just as poorly.

“Strike two!”

Sweat started to trickle out from under the brim of my cap, and it wasn’t from exertion. I was letting down the side. I was losing the game.

I spat tobacco juice into the dirt beside the plate, then squared up again, trying to shake off the jitters. I was the best there was. There was no reason I should be choking like this. What was wrong?

As Matty went into his windup I suddenly noticed that the bleachers were empty. Somehow, between that first pitch and this one, the stands had cleared. Was I that bad? Where had everybody gone? Why had the light changed color? What was that roaring sound?

A white blip flashed past me and then a smack.

“Strike three!”

I hadn’t even swung.

“What the hell got into you, son?”

I slumped on the bench in the locker room as Joe gave me a hiding.

“It was like you weren’t even there!”

“I’m sorry, coach. Something… I saw something in the stands. I got distracted. Give me another chance.”

“Another chance? You cost us the inning there, boy! We had bases loaded!”

“I know, I know, but you gotta let me make it up. I got my head on straight now, coach. I can win this game. I promise.”

Joe folded his arms and gave me a hard look, then sighed and shrugged. “All right, all right. But you better not let me down. A lot’s riding on this game, son. We lose and robots kill everybody and take over the world.”

I stood, grinning. “I know, coach. Don’t worry. You can count on me.”

He chuckled and held the door open for me and I walked out into a room filled with more spider webs.

It wasn’t until I was halfway to the webs that what had just happened hit me. I’d been playing… what was it called? Baseball? In a pre–apocalypse stadium. Were those Finster’s memories? I doubted it. What were the odds he’d played professional sports and had also been a world–renowned scientist? Maybe I’d somehow stumbled the fantasy portion of his brain. Bizarre.

I pushed through another screen of webs and kept going. There were more ahead of me, but before I could reach them, someone said, “There you are!”

It sounded like Finster, but it looked like some kind of android. It was also shooting at me. I dodged behind the screen of webs and fired back.

“Come on, Finster! I thought we agreed none of this was real. Just let me through.”

“There you are!” He fired again.

I sighed. How was I supposed to talk sense into this guy when half the time he wasn’t even there?

I leaned out and squeezed off three shots. One glanced off the android’s noggin, but the other two found his torso and it started to smoke and hiss.

“You are! There…”

It was crawling now. An easy shot. I fired and it toppled onto its back.

“Are you… there…”

It died.

I stepped over its body and explored the rest of the space. I didn’t see a door anywhere. Maybe it was behind the webs. I leaned on them and eventually they gave way. Nothing. The area behind them was empty. Dammit! After all this craziness, had I reached a dead end?

I turned, disgusted, and found myself face to face with another Finster, this one holding the biggest pistol I’d ever seen.

“Wait!” I shouted, and dove to the side as he fired.

I heard a barrier open somewhere behind him as I rolled to my knees and fired back. The bullets tore his flesh, revealing him to be an android too.

“Poor Irwin J. Finster,” said Finster. “Made a deal with the devil.”

It fired again, but my bullets seemed to have ruined its aim, and the shot went wide.

“What devil?” I asked, still firing. “What deal?”

“Eternal life.” The android slumped to the ground, black fluids spilling from its guts. “But Finster voided the contract.”

The pistol slipped from its fingers. “Now he is void.”

None of that made any kind of sense to me, but that pistol looked like a logical thing to take. I picked it up with my left hand and kept going.

Finster was waiting for me again in the next room. He looked like shit this time, nearly as bad as one of the Night Screamers.

He held pleading hands out to me. “Please, I beg of you, kill me. I cannot live insane in my own mind!”

By now the weirdness of it all was wearing thin and I just wanted to get to the part where I found the sec pass.

“Happy to.”

I shot him through the forehead and stepped through the next barrier. Two more Finsters stood there. These looked a lot more like Finster after he had transformed into the android — metal spikes and spines and guns sticking through their tattered flesh.

They spoke in unison. “I begged you to kill me! Now you create us!”

I didn’t slow down. My stolen hand–howitzer spoke twice and they flew back with craters the size of dinner plates in their chests. One of them hit the floor so hard his head broke off. There was no way a pistol — not even one as humongous as the hoss I was holding — should have been able to make holes that big, but maybe I was getting the hang of this whole “nothing is real” thing. The guns shot bullets that big because I thought they should. It wasn’t gun against gun, it was mind against mind, and from the easy way Finster’s creations were toppling, his mind seemed to be getting weaker while mine was getting stronger.