Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry Page B

over.
    But the thing that had frightened him most was what she said about the ghosts he dreamed about every night. He had never spoken of them to anyone, but she had either plucked the thought from him, or possessed a true second sight.
    The dead follow you, Grey Torrance.
    â€œNo, goddamn it,” he said between clenched teeth.
    Looks Away glanced at him. “What’s that, old chap?”
    â€œNothing,” mumbled Grey. “It’s nothing at all.”
    The lie fit like thorns in his mouth. Looks Away studied him for another few moments, then shrugged and turned away.
    They rode on.
    Two hours later he and Looks Away stopped there and stared out at what lay beyond. The horses trembled and whinnied. Grey felt his own heart begin to hammer while his skin felt cold and greasy.
    â€œSuffering Jesus on the cross,” breathed Grey.
    Beyond the mesa was madness.
    Beyond the mesa was the world gone wrong.
    A world where sense and order had drowned along with mountains and fields.
    There, shrouded in drifting clouds of gray mists lay the bones of the earth. Tall spikes and shattered cliffs. Great gaping holes. Monstrous caverns that gaped like the mouths of impossible beasts. And through it, swirling and churning, the ocean reached into the tortured land, slapping at the rocks, smashing down on newborn islands, sizzling into steam as it flooded into deep pits.
    Grey had once read a book by a man named Dante that described the rings of Hell.
    He was certain he and Looks Away stood looking at the outermost ring.
    â€œWelcome to the Maze,” said the Sioux. “And God help us both because that is where we’re going.”

 
    Chapter Twenty-One
    â€œWhere exactly are we heading?” asked Grey as their horses picked their way down through a series of crenellated canyons. Juniper and eucalyptus trees leaned drunkenly over them, their damaged roots clinging desperately to the shattered rocks. “Does your Doctor Saint have his workshop up in these hills?”
    â€œYes and no.”
    â€œDamn, son, have you ever considered giving a straight answer?”
    â€œLife’s not that easy,” said Looks Away.
    Grey thought about it. Nodded. “So—?”
    â€œWe’re going back to where this all started.”
    â€œYou mean to the laboratory where those guards were killed?”
    â€œYes. Maybe there was something I missed, something that would give me a new trail to follow.”
    â€œWorth trying. What’s the town?”
    â€œYou won’t have heard of it,” said Looks Away. “Sad little place called Paradise Falls. Way out on the edge of the Maze. Dusty little nowhere of a town.”
    â€œSounds charming.”
    They pushed on and Looks Away brought them along a chain of trails that linked former trade routes and newer traveler’s roads. There was no longer such a thing as a straight and reliable road. Not since the quake. Many times they had to dismount and lead their horses on treacherous paths along the sheer sides of mesas, or in the darkened hollows at the feet of crumbling mountains.
    â€œA goddamn billy goat wouldn’t take this road,” complained Grey more than once. Looks Away offered no argument.
    By the afternoon of the third day they emerged from a canyon and paused on a promontory beyond which was a sight Grey Torrance had never before seen.
    The land was as blasted and broken as it had been, but now, past the cathedral-sized boulders and spikes of sandstone a wide blue expanse spread itself out under the sun. The Pacific was sapphire blue and each wind-tossed wave seemed to glitter with diamond chips. White-bellied gulls wheeled and cried. Long lines of pelicans drifted on the thermals, changing direction, taking their cues from the flight leader. After the blistering desert and the heartbreak of the shattered lands, the deep blue of the rolling ocean was like a balm on the soul.
    â€œGod…,” breathed