Feathers flew. Blood erupted. Tissue parted.
It fell forward onto its wing-like arms, but immediately tried to rise. With a savage howl, Grey raised his foot and began stomping on its head. Once, twice, again and again until the bones shattered and his heel mashed the shards into the creature’s brain. All at once it sagged down into death.
Grey staggered back from it, then turned as he heard a series of heavy thuds.
It was Looks Away pounding at the head of the last of the reanimated dinosaurs. Or at the pulpy mess that had been a head. But Looks Away kept hammering and his face was a mask of fear that hovered near the flame of madness.
“Looks,” said Grey. “Whoa, now… it’s done. You killed it. Ease back now.”
The Sioux froze with the bloody shotgun raised for another strike. His wild eyes looked at Grey, at the dead creatures that lay everywhere, and then down at the mess beneath him. He lowered the shotgun and sagged back onto his heels.
“God save the Queen,” he breathed. The mad light faded from his eyes, replaced by shock.
There was a squeak and they both whipped around to see the dinosaur with the gunshot wound to the eye staggering slowly away. Black ichor ran sluggishly from its nostrils. It was clearly dying and it left a trail of splay-toed prints identical to the ones that had been on the stairs.
Looks Away got up, cracked open the shotgun, and dumped the spent shells, fitted two new ones in, and walked up behind the dinosaur. It turned to look up at him with its one remaining eye. It tried to hiss. It tried to slash at him. But it was too far gone.
“No,” said Looks Away as he placed the barrel against its head.
The blast was huge and wet and it echoed off of the darkened walls.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The last of the booming echoes disintegrated into the sober silence of death. Gun smoke hovered like a chorus of phantoms in the still air.
His face turned to emotionless wood, Looks Away replaced the spent shell, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and began methodically wiping the blood of monsters from his shotgun. Grey said nothing. He limped over to retrieve his Colt, checked that it was undamaged, and reloaded it.
Then he addressed his wounds. The creatures had done their best to eviscerate him. Only the toughness of his jeans and the leather of his gun belt had saved his life. Even so, there was a bad gash on his hip and it bled freely. The pain was searing and he clamped his jaw shut as he used strips torn from his shirt to compress and bind the wound. It was a sloppy job, but it would serve. Luckily the talon had torn only skin and not the muscle beneath. He could still move easily and he set his teeth against limping. That would wear him out too quickly and besides, it was only pain. Grey had maintained a long and passionate affair with pain. He knew all her secrets.
Once he was finished he wiped his bloody fingers on his thighs and waited for Looks Away to speak.
When he did, the Sioux’s voice was filled with both stress and wonder. “These are — or, at least were—dinosaurs.”
“Yeah, you said that, but I don’t know what that means. They’re animals, right? From where? They from Africa or—?”
“They’re extinct,” said Looks Away. “All we’ve ever seen are bones and paintings done to try and reconstruct what they might have looked like. Dinosaur. It means ‘terrible lizard.’”
“Fair enough as something to call them,” muttered Grey. “Ugly sonsabitches works for me, too.”
“The term was coined by Sir Richard Owen. I met him twice — when our show played in Lancaster, and then again in London. He was a surly, contentious old git who thought Charles Darwin was completely wrong about his theories of evolution.”
“Darwin? I read about him. A lot of folks said he was trying to say God didn’t make the world.”
“That’s not precisely what he said. Darwin believed that our world is much older than suggested by the ages of the people named in the Bible, and that long before humans came along there were ages and ages of natural development. The animals and plants that we know today are there because they were the ones best able to survive those long millennia of growth. He also believed that before there were the animals we know about, there were others before them. This was about the only point he and Owen agreed upon, though Owen tended to think that Darwin simplified the process too much.”
“Did he?”
Looks Away shrugged. “I studied rocks, not animals. I’m not qualified to judge.”
He squatted down and studied one of the dead creatures. Grey joined him.
“So, what are you getting at? Were these things the ancestors of alligators and horny toads?”
“Maybe. I’ve heard arguments to that effect, and I’ve heard arguments that they evolved into birds.”
Grey ran his fingers along the feathers. “Seems pretty likely. But if they’re the ancestors of birds and such, why the hell are they here? How did Deray get his hands on them?”
“That is a very, very good question, old chap,” said Looks Away. “I have a theory, or part of one at least.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Well, look around,” said Looks Away. “Ever since the Great Quake all sorts of strange things have been happening. Reports of flying lizards and sea serpents. These things are strange, I’ll grant you, but surely they’re not the strangest things that have been said to come out of the Maze. Not if even a tenth of the reports are true.”
Grey grunted. “Before I came out here I was of the mind that all of those stories started at the bottom of a whiskey glass. Now… well, I mean, does something really actually need to bite you on the ass before you take it as Gospel fact?”
“For my part, my friend, I shall henceforth endeavor to keep a very open mind.”
Looks Away grabbed the shoulder of the creature and rolled it onto its back. The chunk of ghost rock embedded in its chest was small, about the size of a grape. The white lines seemed to shift and flow like restless worms, though Grey told himself that it was just the flickering lantern light or his own imagination. “I think that maybe these creatures were trapped down here. See how pale their flesh is? That suggests a life lived away from the sun. When Deray came down here he must have encountered all sorts of strange creatures. Encountered them, slaughtered them, used his sorcery to bring them back to life, and then found a way to enslave them with ghost rock.”
“I didn’t think ghost rock could do that.”
Looks Away shrugged. “It can’t, as far as I know. As I said, this is as much alchemy as it is ghost rock science. Maybe more so.” He shook his head. “And God only knows what else Deray has waiting for us. If he can command the dead… the possibilities are staggering.”
Grey rubbed his jaw and looked back the way they came. “There’s always a war going on somewhere. Countries fighting, land wars, rail wars. Lots of dead people to be had. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, then we are in deep, deep shit.”
“My friend,” said Looks Away as he reloaded, “I believe that without a doubt we are in very deep shit indeed.”
“Deray,” muttered Grey. “More and more I’m getting the feeling that I need to park a bullet in his brainpan.”