Ghostwalkers (19 page)

Brother Joe cried out. “Blasphemy! This is black magic.”

“Necromancy,” said Grey. “I … think that's what they call it. Necromancy.”

Looks Away knelt next to him and very carefully touched the edges of bloodless skin around the stone. He did not touch the stone itself.

“Ghost rock,” he said. “Not very pure, but definitely ghost rock.”

“I don't understand,” said Jenny. “What
happened
?
”

It was the little girl who answered. “The monsters came in through the window.”

Every eye turned toward her.

“
Monsters?
” echoed Jenny. “God … are there more than one?”

The night, as if listening with dark humor, once more held the answer. There was another scream. A man's this time. It rose higher and higher, losing gender and identity until it was nothing more than a shriek of unbearable agony. Then it suddenly stopped with wet finality.

The little girl screamed into the ensuing silence and broke from the shelter of Jenny Pearl.

“
Dad!
”

She ran toward the sound of certain death.

And Grey, Looks Away, and Brother Joe ran after.

 

Chapter Thirty-Two

It was immediately apparent that it was not merely a single home that had been invaded.

The town of Paradise Falls was under siege.

Figures moved in the gloom. People, heedless of the rain, ran into the street, screaming, pleading. Some of them had weapons. A shovel, a broken table leg. One woman held a frying pan. Fewer still had guns. Mostly shotguns, fowling pieces, and one old-time muzzleloader.

However there were other shapes moving through the rain.

The other deputies.

And several men Grey had never seen.

They were all dead men. Each of them had a ruined chest in which a black stone was fixed. Blue light sparkled in the hearts of each stone. Blue had always been a good color to Grey. Lucky. Happy. Summer skies and deep water. Cornflowers and a woman's eyes.

Now blue was the color of hate and hurt, of harm and horror.

Grey knew that these men were all dead. Risen dead. Torn from the earth. They laughed as they chased the fleeing townsfolk.

“No…,” whispered Looks Away.

There were so many of them.

Of
them
.

The word rose like bile to Grey's mouth.

“
Undead
.”

Looks Away opened fire at the closest of them and Grey saw black holes appear in bloodless flesh. However the creatures kept advancing. Their wild laughter tore the air.

Grey reached out and pushed Looks Away's gun arm down, forcing the Sioux to turn his wild eyes away from the walking dead.

“What the bloody hell are you playing at?” cried Looks Away.

“The head—aim for the head. Nothing else stops them. Remember the posse? That's how we stopped them. Aim for the brain.”

The memory of that terrible night was too clear to make it a chore to convince Looks Away.

“The whole sodding world is mad,” the Sioux muttered as he reloaded. “Stark staring mad.”

Brother Joe edged around the crowd and gathered the little girl into his arms. Then he retreated, watching the monsters as they watched him.

While Looks Away finished reloading, Grey raised his pistol in a steady two-handed grip and stepped into the path of the running corpse. They saw his gun and laughed.

Maybe they don't know,
he mused, and prayed that it was true.

The closest of them was thirty feet away. It was one of the other deputies.

“Go back to Hell,” said Grey Torrance as he pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit the dead deputy right above the left eyebrow and exploded the back of his head. The undead's legs kept running for three more steps before the dead, slack weight of the dying body dragged it down.

The other grinning corpse ran past.

But the ones out front were no longer laughing, and their smiles seemed frozen onto their dead faces.

They didn't know,
thought Grey.
But they sure as God know now.

The undead all froze for a moment, and a dozen pairs of burning blue eyes turned toward Grey and his friends. Grey could not tell if they hesitated because one of their own had been killed and it gave them pause, or because all of their murderous rage was suddenly now focused on the two men and one woman with the guns.

In either case Grey knew this could only end one way.

In death.

Knowing that he was being watched, he used his thumb to draw the hammer back to full cock, and narrowed his eyes to sight down the barrel at the face of the closest monster.

“Come on, you ass-ugly sons of bitches,” he said. “Come and take us.”

They came.

Howling with red delight, they came.

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

Grey, Looks Away, and Jenny all fired. The bangs of their guns were simultaneous—two pistol cracks and the boom of the shotgun.

The front line of abominations tried to dodge out of the way. Grey's shot blew the jawbone off of one, but he spun away and kept upright. Still running. Looks Away put his round through the temple of a second, but the round must not have hit the right part of the brain. The creature staggered and began wandering off, as if confused.

However it was immediately clear that Jenny Pearl's shotgun wasn't packing birdshot. A big deer slug fired from the small-bore weapon smashed through the bridge of the third undead's nose and its head seemed to fly apart. The creature collapsed and two other monsters behind it tripped over it and fell.

Grey stepped forward and fired shots at both of the fallen things. Looks Away snapped off three shots and dropped two more.

Six down.

The rest of the monsters scattered. Like cockroaches fleeing the light, they fled from the firestorm of hot lead. Some raced up onto porches and hurled themselves through glass windows or kicked in doors. Screams burst from within each house. Other undead ran for any cover they could find—a side alley, behind a parked wagon, or into a darkened store.

Grey fired at them until his gun was empty, but he only killed two more. Looks Away fared less well, killing one. By the time Jenny reloaded her single barrel shotgun, there were no targets left on the streets. Nothing left to kill.

Inside the houses, though, the slaughter had begun.

“We have to do something,” cried Jenny. “They'll kill everyone.”

“I know, damn it,” said Grey as he broke into a run. He jumped onto the closest porch, shouldered through the door and saw a walking corpse struggling with a one-legged old man. Grey kicked the monster in the ribs as hard as he could. He knew the blow wouldn't do the thing any harm, but the force of it sent the creature crashing into the wall.

Grey swung his pistol down and was a hairsbreadth from pulling the trigger when the creature spoke.

“Don't!” it begged. “Please. For the love of God, don't kill me.”

The mocking smile was gone and in its place was the terrified face of a man. Still dead pale, but now there was no trace of the demonic presence that had owned this flesh seconds ago.

The old man whimpered and began crawling toward the hall, his face battered and bloody. His face was stricken as if the presence of these monsters had cracked something in his mind. Grey couldn't blame him. His own mind felt like it was hanging from one broken hinge.

“What are you?” demanded Grey as he pressed the barrel of the Colt against the dead flesh.

The creature tried to shrink back, and it was impossible for Grey to tell whether this was some kind of ploy or not. He had far too little to go on.

Behind him he heard gunshots and more screams.

“Tell me why I shouldn't send you straight to hell,” he said to the thing.

A tear broke from the corner of the man's eye. Grey would not have thought that a dead thing could weep. The blue light from its eyes turned the tear into liquid sapphire.

“I am in hell,” said the monster in a hoarse voice. “I—I died. I mean, I think I died. I remember falling. I remember seeing my own blood. And then … and then…”

His voice disintegrated into sobs.

Grey adjusted his hand on his pistol grip and had no idea what to do.

“Why are you attacking these people?”

The undead looked surprised. “Attacking? I didn't … I mean … I … I…”

“You ran in here and tried to kill that old man.”

The thing cut a look sideways at the old man crawling along the hall toward the kitchen. A deep frown of confusion grooved his brow.

“Mr. Chalmers? Is that you? It's me. It's Bobby Sandoval. You know me. I used to work at the sawmill with Tommy. You know me. I … I … I swear it's me.”

Grey glanced over at the old man to see how he was reacting.

It was the wrong thing to do.

With the speed of a snake, the monster's left hand flashed out and slapped the pistol from Grey's grip. The expression on its face changed from confusion and horror to malice in a heartbeat.

But it was a long heartbeat, and even as everything became crazy, Grey's mind pulled apart what he had just seen. The hand moved, and the thing attacked, but the face registered what looked like genuine surprise at what its body was doing. It was like a horseman who was reacting to a mount suddenly stumbling. The expression did not match. Not at once. Only after the creature reached for Grey did the confusion melt away to be replaced by that malicious leer. The undead kicked up with both feet, catching Grey in the thigh and chest and sending him staggering backward. Then the dead man—Sandoval—arched backward and reverse-jackknifed forward so that he flipped onto his feet like a circus tumbler. The azure fires in his eyes flared as he rushed Grey.

Grey hit the edge of the sofa and sat down hard, but as Sandoval threw himself at him, Grey flung himself sideways. Sandoval hit the backrest and the whole sofa rocked onto its back legs and crashed over. By the time it hit, Grey and Sandoval were already locked in a deadly struggle.

Unlike Riley Jones and the dead members of the posse, this monster was a skilled and tricky fighter. There was none of the vacuous blankness in Sandoval's eyes. There was hate, there was malice, but there was also sly cunning. And the son of a bitch could fight.

Sandoval tried to knee Grey in the crotch, head-butt him, box his ears, and bite. He fought like someone who had been in more than his fair share of big-ticket scuffles. It was like fighting three people at once. The man attacked with total commitment and ferocity.

But Grey Torrance knew a few tricks of his own.

He turned his hip inward to take the knee thrust on his thigh instead. It hurt, but not nearly as much. Grey ducked his head to take the head-butt on the forehead instead of the nose. That hurt, too, but he caught Sandoval exactly as he didn't want to be caught, and the lights momentarily flickered in the killer's eyes. That spoiled the creature's attempts to box his ears, too, and as Sandoval tried to recover and bite, Grey hit him across the chin with the heel of his palm. He put a lot of heart into the hit. A lot of muscle and fear, too. And he twisted his hip as he connected.

He got it just right and he followed through with a scream and all his rage.

Sandoval's jaw slewed sideways amid an audible crunch of cartilage and bone. Grey pulled his hand back six inches and hit him again. Same place. Twice as hard.

The jaw lost all shape and nearly tore loose from the tendon and muscle that held it to his face. It sagged down, flopping against Sandoval's chest. Fear ignited in those strange eyes.

Grey liked to see it there.

He wanted to see more.

With a grunt, he hip-bucked and turned, throwing the man off of him. As Sandoval fell flat on his back, Grey rolled over and knelt on him, pinning one knee into the undead's crotch and bracing his other foot against the floor for stability. From that vantage point he schooled Sandoval—and the demon inside of him—about the niceties of gutter-fighting done right.

He short-punched the man in the nose, the throat, both eyes. Grey knew how to punch with snaps instead of powerhouse thrusts so that he didn't bust up his own knuckles. He grabbed the dead man's lank hair, picked his head up, and slammed it against the floorboards again and again. That knocked all of the fight out of the thing and it lay there, twitching and terrified. Grey did not understand that fear but now wasn't the moment to try and sort it out. Instead he reached into his boot, removed a short knife, held the monster's head down with a flat palm against his forehead, and drove the point of the blade deep into the thing's eye socket.

The blue light in its other eye—and the glow deep in the heart of the stone lodged in its breast—flared and then went out.

Grey sagged back, gasping.

No blood welled from the punctured eye socket, and Grey wasn't sure if he was relieved or even more disgusted. It was proof of how unnatural this truly was.