“No!” pleaded Saint. “You must listen. You must!”
“Get him inside,” warned Grey as he shifted to block the stairs. He pushed a few people back, and though they were angry, he was bigger and stronger.
Finally Saint tore free of Looks Away, shoved the Sioux away from him, whipped the strange pistol from its holster, and wheeled on the crowd. “Shut up!” he roared.
Grey had his hand on his Colt in an instant. “Whoa! Whoa now, Doc.”
“No,” snapped Saint, “I want you and everyone to listen to me.”
The crowd fell into an uneasy silence, everyone casting glances at the gun clutched in Doctor Saint’s hand.
“Now you people listen to me,” he growled. “I bring you hope and you turn on me? You ungrateful—.”
“Careful now, Doc,” warned Grey. “If you have something to say, then say it.”
Doctor Saint gave him a withering stare, but then nodded. Holding the gun in his right hand, he dug something out of one of the voluminous pockets of his topcoat. He held out his hand to show a small metal box not much larger than a pack of playing cards. It was gold and had a black dial mounted on the top and several buttons along the side. He turned the dial with his thumb and then pressed a button. Nothing appeared to happen, but then a shadow moved across his face and everyone looked up to see one of the balloons — a bright blue one — come drifting back down. It stopped ten feet above the scientist and despite the wind it did not blow away. That’s when Grey saw that there was a tiny box attached to its base, and on the box were two sets of little blades that spun like windmills during a hurricane.
“Do you fools think I came out here to play with children’s toys?” said Saint, and the scolding tone in his voice was reflected in the looks of doubt that now clouded the faces of the crowd. “I’m not a toymaker… I am a maker of weapons, and these are something I designed for warfare. Modern warfare. Behold the Little Disaster. Do you even know what that word means? Disaster? It’s a Greek word that means ‘bad star.’ A pejorative, I’ll admit, but in this case the ill fortune it carries is meant for our enemies. Watch and learn what I have made for you, for this fight.”
With another turn of the dial, Saint made the balloon move away. It rose to the very top of the house and then wafted over toward an old cottonwood tree that had died from lack of water. The Disaster entered the network of withered branches and then stopped again. Grey could not guess what the little maniac was up to with all this.
Then Doctor Saint raised the control box and pushed a different button.
Bang!
The balloon exploded into a fireball of painfully intense blue-white light. Electricity writhed like snakes in the air. The tree flew apart, showering the crowd and the street and everything around it with splinters that burned to ash before they landed. The shock wave knocked fifty people flat on their faces and broke the windows of every house for half a block.
Grey and Looks Away were plucked off their feet and slammed against the side of the house, and even Saint was sent sprawling. The echo of that blast knocked all other sound out of the world and left the entire crowd dazed.
It took a long time for Grey to make sense of who he was and what had happened. The blast had been that intense. He sat down hard with his back to the wall, legs splayed, mouth opening and closing, eyes blinking, ears ringing.
He watched Doctor Saint get back to his feet. The little scientist was chuckling even though he had a small cut over his eye that ran with blood. Beyond him, fixed hard against the storm clouds, the other balloons seemed frozen into the moment.
Disasters, waiting to happen.
One by one the townspeople climbed back to their feet. Shocked and wide-eyed, they picked up their weapons and stared with a mix of shock and wonder at Doctor Saint.
“Lord a’mighty,” repeated the farmer who had been complaining a minute before.
The scientist held the control box out. “I have spent many years attempting to rediscover the secret of Greek fire — that most elusive of the weapons of war. The incendiary that struck terror into the hearts of anyone who dared attack the Byzantine Empire. I have long suspected that the ancient Greeks found some substance similar to ghost rock and employed it as a weapon of war. I have done the same. Each of my little disasters is filled with ghost rock fumes and balanced with other chemical combinations of my own devising. I made fifty of them,” he said, then with asperity added, “It is unfortunate that you made me waste one to prove that you should trust what I say. Let’s all hope we won’t have needed that last one.”
As if in response to those words, thunder boomed on the edge of town. Lightning forked the sky, silhouetting the ugly shapes of flying creatures that were larger and more terrible than any birds. Legions of them were coming. And behind them, a ship rose in the east, seeming to come from nowhere, rising up between the peaks of two broken mountains. It was like a frigate from a painting of old pirates, with a deep keel and a fanlike rudder. Instead of sails, a vast envelope of silk and canvas, distended with gas and painted with the hideous face of Medusa the Gorgon. A thousand serpents writhed around her image.
On the plains below the ship, a line of machines rolled on clanking metal treads. And lines of armed men marched in squadrons, each of them carrying a strange rifle. Grey could not tell if Deray was supported by the foreign generals or if these were his own men. Not that it mattered — there were hundreds of them. Scores of living men, and hundreds upon hundreds of the walking dead. All of the corpses they’d seen heaped in the train cars. Soldiers from all over the divided country, including dead Sioux. Behind the column of tanks strode the metal giant, Samson, legs sweeping, arms swinging, lightning striking fire from its chest.
Grey got to his feet and turned to see the looks on the faces of the people of Paradise Falls. Even with the remaining Little Disasters hanging in the sky, even with the promise of the Lazarus pistols and Kingdom guns. Even with their own determination, they were few and marching toward them was an army the likes of which had never before been seen on Mother Earth. An army of science and magic, an army of flesh and steel, an army of the living and the dead.
“By the Queen’s…,” began Looks Away, but words failed him and he simply stared.
“Good God,” whispered Grey. He glanced around at his friends, at the town, and then at the approaching army. This was going to be a slaughter. Everyone knew it. Jenny Pearl came out onto the porch and stood next to Grey. She slipped her cool hand into his and interlaced their fingers.
“Don’t worry,” she said softly. So softly that only he could hear her. “Death isn’t the end.”
The storm growled and the winds howled with the voices of the damned.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Grey forced himself to shake off his shock and despair. He let go of Jenny’s hand and slapped his hand hard on the rail. It sounded like a gunshot and people jumped.
“They’re coming,” he barked. “You see it, I see it, we all do. They’re coming. This is happening. You wanted to stay here and make a fight of it. Then by God that’s what we’re going to do. As of now, you’ve all seen what we’re facing. You’re shocked. Okay.” He paused and in a harsh, cold voice said, “Now get over it.”
The crowd stared at him.
“We know what they have to throw against us,” he continued. “They don’t know what we have. Doctor Saint’s gadgets. Our unity. The fortifications. And… something else I have cooked up. We’re done being helpless. This is a war, God damn it, so let’s stop gaping and go fight it.”