Jonathan Maberry - Ghost Road Blues

Part I
Down at the Crossroads

Authors who write long books need lots of help (take that any way you care to), as well as technical advice. I want to thank the following folks for their generous assistance in writing Ghost Road Blues .

Chief Pat Priore of Tullytown, Pennsylvania, for technical info on police procedure. If any of the law enforcement information is incorrect, the error rests purely with the author.

Arthur Mensch and Randy Kirsch for reading the book and giving me their unreserved and unflinching opinions.

My web design team, David Kramer and Geoff Strauss of www.careerdoctorforwriters.com who are equal parts strange and wonderful and who created a terrific website for me.

John West for too many things to list.

The Bucks County Center for Writers in Doylestown, Pennsylvania (formerly the Writers Room of Bucks County) and my colleagues in the Philadelphia Writers Conference.

My agent Sara Crowe of the Harvey Klinger Agency.

My many friends and colleagues in Horror Writers Association, and the satellite chapters: the Garden State Horror Writers and the NJ-PA Horror Writers Association.

And as always, for my wife, Sara Jo and my son, Sam, for their constant support and enthusiasm during the processand after.

To all: countless thanks!

(1)

The last thing Billy said was, Oh, come ontheres nothing out there.

And then two sets of bone-white hands arched over the slat rails on the wagon and seized him by the shoulders and the collar and dragged him screaming into the darkness. He tried to fight them, but they had him and as he rasped along the rail, feet flailing and hands scrabbling for some desperate purchase, other white figures closed in and he was dragged away.

Claire screamed at the top of her lungs. Everyone else screamed too. Even the guy driving the tractor screamed.

Billy screamed louder than all of them.

Claire launched herself forward from the hay bale on which shed been sitting just a moment ago holding Billys hand; she leaned out into the darkness beyond the rails, her fingers clawing the air as if that could somehow bring him back. Thirty feet away six figures had forced Billy down to the ground and were hunched over him, their white hands reaching down to tear at him with hooked fingers, their black mouths wide with slack-jawed hunger, their bottomless dead eyes as vacant as the eyes of dolls.

Billy! she screamed, and then grabbed at the others around her, pulling at their sleeves, slapping at the hands that tried to pull her back. She wheeled on themon eighteen other kids, most of them from her own high school, all cringing back against the wooden rails of the flatbed, or trying to hide behind bales of hayshe begged them to help. A few shook their heads. Most just screamed. One boya big kid who looked like he might be a jockmade a halfhearted attempt to move forward, but his girlfriend and his buddies dragged him back.

Claire spat at them and spun back, screams still ripping from her throat as she watched Billys thrashing arms and legs. She looked up at the man driving the tractor, but he was white-faced with shock and was frozen in a posture of near flight, half out of his seat.

Then one of the white-faced things bent low toward him and because of the angle Claire could not see what he was doing, but Billy gave a single high, piercing shriek of absolute agony and then his legs and arms flopped to the ground and lay still.

The moment froze.

Slowly, the creature raised its head from Billys body and turned toward the tractor with its towed flatbed of schoolkids. It snarled at thema low, menacing growl, the kind a dog would give when another animal came close to its food. The creatures white skin peeled back from its teeth and there, caught between those yellow teeth, was a drooping tube of purple meat that trailed back to the red ruin that was Billys stomach.

Claires scream rose up above the darkened road, above the vast seas of whispering corn on either side, far up into the swirling blackness that spread like a shroud from horizon to horizon. Flocks of nightbirds cried out and took to the air. The driver stamped down on the gas and the tractors engines made a guttural roar as the flatbed was jerked forward.

Three of the creatures rose at the sound and turned to face the tractor, their faces painted with crimson, their jaws working as they chewed. As the tractor inched forward, the wheels still churning in the mud that had stalled it there a few minutes ago, the creatures began moving toward the smell of fresh meat. Of living flesh.

Everyone screamed again and they shouted and cursed at the driver to move, move, move! The man at the wheel kicked down harder and with a great sucking sound the wheels tore free of the mud and the whole masstractor, flatbed, and kidslurched forward, picking up speed with every second. The white-faced ghouls staggered out into the road and began to follow. Slowly, awkwardly at first, and then faster as they saw their prey gaining ground.

Move! the jock roared, and others shouted with him.

The ghouls were trotting now, their awkward gait becoming more orderly as they gained momentum. They were gaining.

Up ahead, the road bent around past a stand of old weeping willows and the driver shifted gears and kept kicking the gas pedal.

Theyre coming! Claire shrieked.

The tractor was moving faster and faster now, the cold air whipping past the faces of the kids. The ghouls were thirty yards back. Twenty-five.