American Craftsmen (27 page)

A dozen dirty marching men and women gravitated toward me, and drew up into formation around me. I knew them all; they were my veterans, forgotten by all others because of the secrecy of our duty. They said nothing, yet the skin around my heart felt thin. Proud, yes, but I dreaded watching them fall all over again.

The grand scene was short-lived; we came within range of the enemy’s guns. The ectoplasmic artillery thundered like a hell-bound storm and blasted holes through the advancing line. The din filled my ears; they had no room for any other sound. The blasts made large areas suddenly visible; they threatened to expose my position.

I wanted to call for a change in pace, but the dead anticipated me. Under enemy fire, the advance across the middle of the clearing turned into a double-quick running charge.

Sakakawea and her living soldiers were not oblivious to my tactics. “He’s there,” she yelled. “Just spray the entire center.” The living fired scattered shots and the dead fired endless rounds into my spectral screen. The living rounds were harmless to the ghosts, harmless to me; the blind fire gave me more uncertain probabilities to play with.

But the ghost rounds took a horrible toll. Musket balls hissed, whizzed, and thumped. Sakakawea grabbed a spectral automatic from her guard. “Hey warrior, come out and play!” She sprayed death like summer fun ahead of her and laughed like a carrion flock. “Death, death, death!” How the hell could she use a ghost weapon? She murdered the ghosts with boundless love, a serial killer angel, ripping gaps in my protection as soldiers fell to the right and left in pools of plasmic gore.

Fortunately, the weapon couldn’t maintain an automatic rate of fire any longer, and she set it aside for her mundane rifle. We climbed over a fragment of stone wall, and skirted a segment of split wooden fence. Past all these deadly nuisances, we rushed for the higher ground.

Zanol couldn’t wait. Waiving an officer’s sword, he charged down. “Morton!” he bellowed, head turning left and right as he cut down soldier after soldier. “Where are you, coward?”

“My family has no cowards, sir,” said Grandpa, stepping forward with his own saber.

“You’ll do,” said Zanol.

Sabers clashed, but my guard and I were already past this duel.

We made our last crazy push up the high ground, my veterans roaring like feral saints. A final wave of fire, and my covering spirits were all but gone, retired for this day at least. My father and Joshua, against the odds, still moved with me, but could not keep me hidden.

“Ha!” From mere yards away, Sakakawea leveled her mundane rifle and fired at me.

I went down, face first into the damp earth.
Bleed
, I thought,
and don’t think so loud
, and I bled from the healing motel wound.

Sakakawea squawked with laughter. “Get up, Morton! This trick was ancient when old Thomas met his first Indian.”

I heard no bluff in her taunt. I sat up.

She stepped toward me. My father and Joshua fired at her. She waved the back of her hand at them, and they fell backwards to the ground.

She peered down at me, smiling with unlikely gentleness. “Joshua’s last descendant in the craft. I’ve waited for this day for a long time.” Up close, her collective transgressions resolved themselves. She had many, many sins, some of which needed more than initial letters. She didn’t look old enough to own all of them. But, as Grandpa had said, she did look
familiar
.

Bloody craft filled my eyes, poured into my brain. Something was supposed to happen now, but I couldn’t remember what. She held the rifle close to my head. Oh yes, that’s right, I was going to die.

“Goddamn it, keep your hands off me!” Her own hands bound, the Appalachian was pushed and shoved up the hill. “I’ve got rights. I’m not in your jurisdiction, GI.”

“Keep going, you,” said the soldier, giving another shove.

Oh,
I thought,
it’s just the Appalachian. She’s gotten herself caught. Hope she can avoid getting herself shot.

“Nice work,” said Sakakawea, eyeing the soldier with an unprofessional interest. “Now find the other one and I’ll personally raise your rank.” And whatever else amused her. “She shouldn’t be much trouble.”

She bent to greet her latest prisoner. “Hello, Pearl.”

The Appalachian spat at her. Point-blank range, but the spit missed, though some spray hit Sakakawea’s rifle.

“You, I’ll let watch when I do your land,” said Sakakawea. “I like it when someone watches. See?”

I took this as permission to turn. From up here, I could see the whole field. The battle had gone very badly for the free union troops. They were caving on the flanks. A scattering of medics tended the trail of wounded spirits I had left on my foolhardy charge.

Report from the field: we were screwed.

“Damn you!” Grandpa yelled, and he groaned in agony. Zanol had run his sword through him. When Zee pulled it free, Grandpa fell to the ground. A medic rushed to him.

Zee waved his gore-slaked sword in triumph and strode back up the hill.

“Good,” said Sakakawea. “I promised him that he could witness your death, and I don’t break promises without reason.”

Zee reached us. “Ready, dear ghost?” asked Sakakawea.

“Yes,” he said.

She again aimed her rifle into my face. “Wait,” said Zee.

“What is it?” she said, with a hint of dangerous impatience.

“There’s something you need to know,” said Zee. He smiled like nirvana, a beatific face of NCO payback. “You don’t understand this place at all.”

“
Ticking magic of death!”
Another voice, carrying a continent of outrage and loss, echoed through the battle as if from everywhere at once. But the simple words came from one woman. “
Leave the Sanctuary! Now!
”

As she spoke, the medic treating Grandpa stood up and threw aside her scarf and raised her gun. Grandpa jumped up behind her, flourishing his sword. Some counterghosts ran toward the medic to stall her, then ran away. The blood-dimmed craft was gone. With a banshee’s rebel yell and the ululation of a distant land, Scherie charged the hill.

The Gideon didn’t hesitate. First things first. She pulled the trigger.

Click!

“I spiked that first thing, dear,” said the Appalachian.

I dove into the Gideon, pounding at nerve points like old radio buttons, groping for her side arms. She was packing more than one weapon; I couldn’t let her use them.

She mirrored my blows like slapstick, stunning my limbs for a crucial second. “
Squad, to me
,” she said between gritted teeth. But instead of her living squad, a cordon of ghost soldiers had formed a ring around our struggle, as if they wanted to see it go all ten rounds.

Sakakawea threw me off like a clingy cat; I landed on my back. The Appalachian stuck her ass in my face. Her small caliber still there, tucked in her pants, craft-hidden from search. So much skill, and she still couldn’t manage to get the restraints off her hands.

I took the gun and spun. A shot missed. The Appalachian hit the dirt. I aimed and fired. The bullet curved away from the Gideon, a wild pitch into the dead crowd.

Zanol dashed in front of Sakakawea, interfering with her view. Here, protected by the Sanctuary from the curses of the living, Zee was the man he was supposed to be. “Treacherous clown,” said the Gideon. Without ceasing her hunt for me, she took a spectral pistol from a wounded spirit and fired it at Zee, hitting his side, but this only slowed him down. Other former countersoldiers joined his effort. She moved through, firing against ghosts with one hand and me with the other. The soldiers she often hit, but me she missed.

I zigged, zagged, willed away a Gideon bullet, and took another shot. My bullet curved again, but with less authority. Sakakawea’s craft remained amazing, but it was flickering, perhaps guttering.

Scherie finally arrived, the spirits parting for her like a frightened sea. The spectral weapon vanished from Sakakawea’s grip, but she kept the other gun pointed at me. Another broken standoff, but for these few moments, I held the advantage in firepower.
“Hit flesh,”
I whispered to the bullet in the chamber, and Sakakawea’s mouth moved as well. At this range with my craft, I could take the Gideon, but that move had a more than zero risk to Scherie, and I wanted information.

“Surrender, Gideon,” I said. “My word, you’ll live.”

“Surrender. Yes,” said Sakakawea, voice steady. “It’s time.” Her eyes ticked down at her empty hand. “Too old.”

I saw no deception, but wasn’t sure she was talking to me. Her eyes ticked at Scherie and Scherie’s gun, and her face vibrated for a second. “Oh dear me. Yes, past time!” She reversed her gun, holding it by the muzzle toward herself. She started to lower it to the ground.

Then she twirled the gun as she locked into a crouch. She was faster than light, quick as craft. She fired. “
Be ready for me, love!
”

Ba-bam!
My mind went black, even as my reflexes fired for me fatally. The guns’ reports merged like a severed echo. I did not fall.

Sakakawea had fired at Scherie.

She had chosen meaningless death for two. The world failed.

Craft-impelled and near point-blank, these bullets would not stop save for human flesh. No such stuff stood between me and the Gideon. Sakakawea’s stomach blossomed red.

I turned to Scherie. Before I had seen what would happen, the Appalachian had risen. She had moved, not just in her realm, but through it. The bullet had found her waiting, addressed
straight to the heart
. All the Sanctuary’s protective craft could only move that evil shot to hitting a lung. Collapse. The Appalachian’s blood spilled onto the land.

With a chuckle, Sakakawea folded to the ground.

Scherie knelt at the Appalachian’s side to treat her wound. A hundred years of medics circled them, shouting their assistance.

I bent over Sakakawea. Her wound would be slow; there was time for questions. “Stay with me. Who sent you?
Who the fuck sent you?
”

She smiled. “Endicott.” I saw no lie. She giggled blood, and trembled beneath me. Her last breath rattled out with a black-light explosion of craft. She was gone.

Material bullets pinged off rocks to my right. “That’s her squad,” said Zanol, supporting himself on another soldier’s arm. “They’re taking cover, talking over their next move.”

I looked in Sakakawea’s mouth. No black capsule. She was dead, dead of a gut shot. Of all the things today, that made the least sense. But the mortal threat was gone. If her ghost showed up, she’d be just one of thousands.

“They’re coming through,” said Zee. “Their weapons are standard issue. No Stonewall devices.”

Sakakawea’s strike force pushed on through the cluster of dead, weapons at ready. “Stand down, or we will shoot you.” They didn’t sound certain about any part of that.

With the external death craft expelled, I could work my assassin’s magic. I wanted to consult Joshua, but Joshua was down. I wanted to hesitate, but couldn’t.

“Do it to them,” said Zee. “They’re no good. Knew this mission stunk and they took it.”

“
Shoot yourselves
,” I said. I didn’t need much force—just the suggestion—and this place was ready to assist. The horror of history is diluted over centuries. Here it was concentrated, a soul-burning acid. They didn’t struggle long against their own hands, just a smooth movement of barrel to chest and head. A succession of cries and pops like fireworks, and they were gone.

No regret this time. I had taken the safest course for my comrades. That was moral enough for a battlefield.

On this field, another war cry, in the voice of a hundred native nations. The mounted Indians swept down on the flanks and rolled up the counterlines who hadn’t yet defected with Zanol to free union.

“Dale, I need you here, now,” said Scherie with pure desperation.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

Endicott surveyed the precipice. “Damned parking lot out here.” Tracking Sakakawea’s phone had led him to her bike and a government-issue van. He knelt and put his hand to the ground. A boring car had come this way. Its trail wanted to slip away from his grasp, but its stealth had run low. Its path went over the cliff. “Wonder what else is trying to hide.” He focused, and sensed the bridge without quite seeing it. “Oh great, the Sanctuary. Damned earth-worshipping, nature-and-native-fetishizing, hippie-craft and liberal-guilt nonsense. Lord, how could my day get any better?”

Click
. The unmistakable sound of a handgun being readied at the back of his head, then a Slavic cowboy accent. “Howdy, Major.”

“Hello, Roman. Guess my dad was right. You Russkies are still sneaky.”

“I’m Ukrainian,” said Roman.

“Met anyone lately who cares?” asked Endicott.

Roman snorted. “No.” A jingle of metal. “Put your hands behind your back, please. Do not touch your gun as you do so.”

Endicott felt the cuffs go on. “What’s your part in this shitfest?”

“I don’t want you bushwhacking my amigos,” said Roman.

“Hmm. Don’t suppose you’d believe we’re on the same side?”

“’Fraid not, pardner. Close is, how you say, no virgin.”

“Couldn’t you tell if I was lying?” asked Endicott.

“Oh, you not speak with forked tongue, Kemo Sabe,” said Roman. “But you want to take ’em someplace safe for heap long talk, and time is short. You just get yourselves killed good, yep.”

“Well, they’re in trouble,” said Endicott. “And you can’t go in there to help.”

“No furriners allowed,” agreed Roman. “Too late now anyhow. We see soon who comes out, amigos or killer-beetch.”

“OK,” said Endicott.

“OK, what?” said Roman.

“OK, I’m not going to kill you,” said Endicott.

Roman laughed. “Dagnabbit, you’re funny.”

Performing two prayers simultaneously was nearly impossible. Trying to execute three was just plain nuts. But this day just had to get better. So Endicott thought three things.

Drop gun, break cuffs, stay put.