Ghostlands

TWENTY-SIX

It took considerable coaxing and smoothing of feathers to convince the cops (especially the one with the spanking-new, hammer-shaped bruise to the belly) to let the big black guy and his Asian old-lady companion just sashay on into town. But then Cal Griffin put in the word with Jeff Arcott, and Arcott spoke with the cops, and that was all she wrote.

After all, Jeff Arcott was…well, Jeff Arcott.

In the old days, sports heroes and movie stars held sway, but now the one swinging the big stick was the guy who could get things done.

And say what you would about Arcott’s people skills-or notable lack of them-Theo Siegel had to admit that, without him, Atherton would look a whole lot less like it had in the old days and a whole lot more like the far side of the moon. Which was to say, barren and picked clean and utterly devoid of appreciating real estate values.

Even though dawn had come and gone, and he hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep, and his ill-used left leg was screaming like a caffeine-wired blue bastard, Theo Siegel was there waiting for them on the bench in front of the Nils Bohr Applied Physics Building when Arcott and Cal Griffin pulled up in the El Dorado, followed by a road-hardened assortment of men and women, several atop horses and others pulled in a wagon they must have secured from some antique shop or Mennonite farm community along the road in their travels.

Melissa Wade sat beside Theo on the concrete bench. She’d sought him out around seven, brought coffee and fresh bagels, kept him diverted with airy conversation. It had been thoughtful of her, and Theo was glad of it, although as always it left him with a pang of privation, of longing.

Still, she was lovely to behold in the cool morning sun, her hair with its gradients of flame like warm coals glowing, of hammered brass and pale wood, her eyes dark-sparkling as the light sought out their subtleties. Her lips were slightly parted as she looked off lost in thought. She was lush in all the right places, but also fine-boned, delicate and fragile somehow; as always, captivating.

He knew, of course, that as soon as Jeff appeared she would hurry to his side and Theo himself would fade back in her consciousness to a shade, a wisp of memory, if anything at all.

Yet in spite of this, he held an unspoken wish, locked in the stronghold of his heart, alongside all the keepsakes he cherished of her, that Melissa might someday awaken from the spell of Jeff’s brilliance, might look around and see things fresh, things that were right in front of her face.

College romances could be like that, could ignite white-hot then burn out like roadside flares. He’d seen it a million times with his older brothers and sisters (scattered to the winds before the Change, who knew where they were now…).

Why couldn’t it work out that way in this case? Why the hell not?

Because wanting something, even wanting it with all your soul, almost never made it happen. Because there were lead actors in this world and supporting players, and Theo Siegel knew precisely which category he fell into.

Even if Jeff Arcott could never love anything as straightforward as a body sharing a concrete bench on a fall morning.

A memory of an old movie bubbled to the surface of Theo’s mind, of Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo, of Bogart asking Robinson, who was playing Rico the mob boss, if Rico knew what he wanted.

“More,” Bogart told him. “You want more.”

Jeff wanted more. More knowledge. More power.

And what would he do with them when he had them?

As the Cadillac drew to a halt before them, he and Melissa peered at the faces of the newcomers. Theo spotted the bulky man first, there in the backseat of the El Dorado, looking much as he had in the profile Discover Magazine had run on him last spring before the Change, if a little more care-worn and rough around the edges.

He gave Melissa a nudge. “That’s him, Dahlquist.”

So it was true, after all. And it explained why Jeff had allowed all these new arrivals. Hell, for that level of experimental physicist, Arcott would’ve let the entire roll call of the Veterans of Foreign Wars parade into town. Not to mention chew off his own left arm. Or Theo’s, if it came to that.

Process had never been Arcott’s thing, nor patience. Results were all that mattered, the endgame. Which was a good thing, Theo supposed, if you wanted to have piping hot water and CD players and all the swankest luxuries this extremely post postmodern world could afford.

Now things could really get moving, in earnest-whatever those things might be. For although Jeff had allowed both Theo and Melissa a glimpse into some of the details of what he was building-the parts he needed them to machine and fabricate, the marching orders he required them to delegate to the rest of the work crew-he was playing a very close hand. No matter how much Arcott tried to conceal his inner workings, however, Theo had detected his frustration at how things were proceeding, knew the new work had grown becalmed, despite all Jeff’s best efforts. But Dahlquist would put an end to that.

More wonders of the New Science aborning…

Pandora’s box, slowly cracking open.

Theo knew that his own curse-beyond that of unrequited love, and loyalty beyond all reason-was an endless, insatiable curiosity to see what precisely would happen next.

Which, thanks to Jeff Arcott, in recent times and local environs, hadn’t been all that damn bad.

So why then, watching the big black car roll up like a hearse, did Theo have such a queasy feeling about the next day and the next?

He shivered, and felt the hairs on his neck rise, felt the cold dark lump under the skin there, the alien object that kept everything in check, that kept him in check.

Or at least, the him that he knew.

Theo envisioned all the evils of Pandora’s box flitting off, flying out into the greater world, as the Storm itself had spread. Then he remembered the one thing that had been left in the box when all else had fled.

Hope.

Looking now at Cal Griffin (who had literally saved him from the jaws of death, and from its talons, too) as he emerged from behind the steering wheel of the Caddy, Theo Siegel thought he might have just enough faith left in him to believe in something more than Jeff Arcott and Melissa Wade, and the siren call that beckoned them.

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….”

And although Larry Shango knew in the vault of his heart that she was as right as right could be, and though he had never spoken of these things since they had happened, never seen them since but in the shrieking corridors of his dreams…

He told them everything.