Chapter 1

Desert of the Dead Things

STEFAN ROLAND SQUINTED INTO the blowing dust and sand, trying to see the source of the distant sounds of gunfire without luck. His cheeks above the handkerchief tied around his face had turned red and peeling from sunburn. His white suit was wrinkled and stained after the long trip to Afghanistan. Hardly the stuff of legends, but he knew it’d all look good on the camera, and he needed the film to relaunch his faltering career.

Nearby his team huddled together in the blowing sand, their shapes and details obscured. Craig Marshal, carrying the new camera that had nearly emptied Stefan’s bank account, was a tall figure wearing dark payraan tumbaan and even a turban, like a local. But his height and lack of a beard gave away his American origins. Using him as a wind-break was their new sound wizard, the petite Roan Collins, with her spiky blond hair, clearly out of place in this country with her blue jeans and t-shirt that she insisted on wearing.

“If they don’t like it,” she had told Stefan. “They can kiss my ass.”

With more muscles than either Stefan or Craig, he pitied any man that gave her a hard time.

Again the sound of gunfire, muted by distance and the wind. Most likely the Soviets, but unlike the other journalists, Roland wasn’t here to cover the Soviet invasion. He and his team had come because his tip line had finally produced reliable information that someone here was waking dead things. Some warlord was apparently planning a surprise for the Soviets and Stefan planned on getting to him before the Inquisition swooped in and took over. In every other incident in the past five years, since he had released Mall of the Dead Things, the Inquisition had gotten to the witch first. If his career or his bank account had any hope of surviving he needed this trip to pay off.

“How far away is that?” Stefan asked of the other member of their group.

Nabeh Sesay their guide, was a thin man with dark eyes and quick smile standing beside a worn sand-colored jeep. He flashed white teeth at Stefan. “Many miles distant, no worries.”

“Is it where we are going?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Hard to say,” Nabeh shrugged. “En shaalaa!”

“We’re supposed to meet an United States Army group stationed here.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Nabeh said. “The CIA. We know all about them. They bring many weapons to the mujahidin.”

“Not CIA, army. I’m sure they are army observers.”

“Yes, yes. CIA, we know.” Nabeh laughed. “Wink, wink. Right?”

“Sure, sure,” Stefan said, letting it go. He’d been told Army observers, but as far as he knew Nabeh could be right. The word he got was certainly that the CIA was backing the rebels, supplying them with weapons and training. “Let’s get going.”

“Right away,” Nabeh said. He climbed into the driver’s side of the jeep and again flashed his bright smile. “Come, come. Let us be on our way.”

Stefan turned and faced the camera, giving Craig a chance to catch a shot of him before he climbed into the jeep. His people were good and all set with the gear. Stefan smiled and spread his arms.

“This sun-drenched desert might not look it, but it is home to dead things. It was on this ground that many armies have fallen to their enemies and the inhospitable terrain, where even now Soviet forces press inward against the forces of democracy. We’ve been told that in the midst of this conflict is a witch, a necromancer, one who wakes dead things to fight the invaders and their supporters. And we’re here to document the truth of those rumors, here in the heart of Afghanistan.” Stefan paused and looked at Nabeh in the jeep. “Our guide has promised to show us where these dead things walk. Come with us into the desert of the dead things.”

He turned and walked over to the jeep and climbed in. A second later Craig gave him a thumbs up and lowered the camera. “That’s great, man.”

“Roan?”

She came over to the jeep and climbed easily into the back with her gear. “Sounded great. There’s quite a bit of wind noise but I picked you up fine. We can clean up some of the wind when we get back to the studio.”

“I don’t want it all gone,” Stefan said. “The audience is going to want to hear that.”

She started at him until he raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Sorry, I know I can trust you to take care of it.”

Craig climbed in the other side of the jeep and then repositioned his camera so that he could shoot footage on the drive. Stefan clapped Nabeh on the shoulder. “Alright then, let’s go find us some dead things.”

“Many dead things in Afghanistan.” Nabeh laughed. “Many, many. En shaalaa, we will find them.”

The jeep started up with a loud rattling and a couple backfiring coughs. A cloud of exhaust fumes blew past Stefan reeking of the dirty diesel fueling the jeep. Nabeh gunned it and the jeep roared forward, kicking up a dust cloud behind. He spun the wheel, and they slid around a large rock that had blocked their path, then skidded onto a pitted road leading off into the hills. Stefan looked for a seat belt but saw nothing. He clung to the door instead as the wind blasted his face. Nabeh drove like he was on an interstate, flooring the gas pedal. Stefan looked in the back but the others seemed fine. Craig had the camera up, filming the landscape as they tore through it. Roan had closed her eyes, her head back, impossibly looking like she was going to fall to sleep despite the shaking and the noise. Stefan held on and tried not to look panicked. Just then Nabeh slid into another skid to miss a large crater in the dirt road.

Stefan clung to the side of the jeep and tried very hard not to get sick.

The road went on up higher into the rugged, scrub-covered mountains. It twisted in and out of gullies with sharp, crumbling corners. That Nabeh managed to keep the jeep on the road seemed nothing less than a miracle. Stefan was just glad that the cliff was on Nabeh’s side. Bad enough that he couldn’t see anything except air and a long fall past Nabeh. He didn’t need to see the wheels running right on the side of a steep drop off. Sometimes the road dropped out from beneath them so suddenly that Stefan felt a moment of free fall before they crashed back down onto the rocky road with a metal crashing sound. Each time it happened he was sure that the axles on the jeep would break, or the whole thing would simply break apart.

Nabeh looked at him and laughed each time it happened. “Much fun, yes?”

“As long as we don’t get killed!” Stefan shouted to make himself heard.

Nabeh laughed hard at that, hardly looking like he was paying attention to the road. They skidded around a sharp corner in a cloud of dust. God help anyone that got in the man’s way. Nabeh snapped the jeep out of the skid.

“En shaalaa, my friend. En shaalaa!”

Right. Stefan clutched the door hard enough he thought he might dent the already battered metal. A hole in the door caught his eye, the metal peeling out away from it. A bullet hole? His stomach lurched as the jeep rattled across a series of washboard bumps. Maybe coming to Afghanistan to film dead things wasn’t the best decision he had made.

The ride went on and on. An hour in the terrain didn’t look significantly different than what they’d already seen. So far there hadn’t been many signs of people at all. They passed few buildings, none in great condition, with people that stared at the speeding jeep. So did their goats. If the buildings represented farms he couldn’t see what they were farming.

Finally Stefan couldn’t resist. He had to know. “How much further is it?”

“Not far,” Nabeh said loudly. He gestured at the peaks ahead of them. “Up there, not far now.”

There was no other choice but to hang on and hope that he survived the trip. Unbelievably, Roan was still sleeping in the back. While he was looking the jeep hit a large bump, but Roan’s head rolled with it, and she stayed asleep. Incredible.

It took another hour of bone-rattling road before Nabeh spun the jeep around a sharp corner and a large military truck blocked the road ahead. Brakes screamed and their own dust cloud caught up with them, enveloped them and hid the truck from view. Stefan’s heart pounded. Before the dust made it impossible to see he was sure he had seen turbaned men with automatic weapons. Nabeh killed the jeep’s engine and stuck his hands up in the air.

“Up, up!”

Stefan copied him just as dark shapes ran at them through the dust. Men shouted in Pashto. Nabeh answered back. The exchange sounded tense and hostile but the guns pointed at Stefan could shade the meaning.

Nabeh gestured at Stefan several times and each time the looks he got weren’t very friendly.

“What are they saying?” he asked, still holding up his hands. He didn’t dare look back and see what Roan and Marshal were doing.

“They are official toll collectors for the government. I am negotiating the amount.”

The exchange went on. Stefan wondered just how official these men were, but their guns rendered that question pointless. If they wanted they could shoot everyone in the jeep, dump the bodies, take their belongings and the jeep. He couldn’t help but wonder if some of them were thinking those same thoughts.

Nabeh laughed at something the man he’d been talking too said and lowered his hands. He looked at Stefan. “Fifty thousand Afghani. You pay and we go.”

Fifty thousand? It sounded like a lot until Stefan did the conversion in his head. Then it didn’t sound like so much, especially not compared to their lives. Feeling self-conscious with the men still around them, he took out the Afghani he carried and peeled off fifty, one-thousand Afghani notes. It felt like a lot, but he handed it over to Nabeh.

Nabeh took the money, handed it over. “Another note, gratuity for negotiating.”

Stefan peeled off another and gave it to Nabeh, who immediately pocketed it in his own pocket. He and the man he had talked to laughed and exchanged a few more words. Then the men with guns all fell back away from the jeep. The dust had drifted enough that Stefan could see the truck. Its engine fired to life, black smoke blowing out of the exhaust pipes. The drive sounded a loud horn and immediately started backing up. Men scrambled out of the way as the truck backed up and straightened out. It only left a narrow strip on the cliff side of the road.

Nabeh didn’t hesitate. He started the jeep and gunned it for the gap. Stefan squeezed the door. It wasn’t possible that the jeep could fit in that gap. This was where his career and his life was going to end. They’d tumble right down that cliff into the ravine. He opened his mouth to protest but there wasn’t even time. The jeep shot into the gap. The truck was right there beside the jeep so close that Stefan snatched his fingers off the door for fear they’d get scraped off. He heard dirt crumbling and rocks cracking against one another. The jeep tilted toward the cliff and Nabeh gunned the engine. They kicked up dirt and rocks as the engine revved, and they shot around the truck back onto the road.

Stefan twisted around, saw Marshal doing the same thing with the camera, and saw rocks and dirt sliding down the ravine from the side of the cliff. They’d started a mini rock slide and taken out a chunk of the road at the same time. He slid down in his seat, bracing his feet and held on to stop himself from covering his eyes. After a couple more bends in the road it dropped down into a valley that opened up in front of them. A small lake or large pond sat at one end of the valley behind a rock dam. Nearby was a walled fortress with armed men on the walls. Outside the fortress was an assemblage of buildings made of available materials without any building plans. Shacks, for the most part. It looked like paradise after the ordeal of riding in the jeep up that road. Stefan wondered if there was any way to get a helicopter in here to fly them out. Anything not to find themselves on that road again.

Nabeh drove the jeep like a missile at the fortress walls. Men with guns ran across the walls and dropped down, aiming their weapons at the jeep. Stefan tensed, expecting gunfire any second. The gates opened a crack and several men ran out with weapons ready. He glanced back and saw that both Roan and Marshal had their equipment running.

Well, if he was about to die at least it’d be caught on film. Stefan hung on as Nabeh brought the jeep to a skidding, dusty stop. He looked over at their driver, wondering if the man had double-crossed them somehow.

Nabeh’s teeth flashed as he smiled. “Here we are, see? No problem. Very safe road.”

“What is this place?” Stefan asked.

“We rest here, meet the CIA observers. Inside.” Nabeh climbed out of the jeep and walked toward the men with the guns. He called out, speaking loudly with many gestures back at Stefan.

The men lowered their guns. Nabeh turned around and came back to the jeep, beckoning with both arms. “Come, come. These are friends. We rest here, meet your CIA, yes?”

Hardly believing it possible, Stefan opened the jeep door and got out. Everything hurt. He stifled the groan that threatened to escape and shut the door. The air felt hotter here, but dusty still from the cloud that the jeep had kicked up. Marshal climbed out of the back while managing to keep the camera balanced. Roan jumped out the other side. Stefan noticed some of the men muttering to one another as she walked up around the jeep. She ignored them and came around to Stefan.

“Quite the ride, right boss? What now?”

“Come, come,” Nabeh urged.

Stefan raised a hand. “Yes, one moment. We need a shot, okay?”

Nabeh beamed. “Of course, yes!”

Marshal had the camera up and filming. Roan got her equipment going and joined Marshal. Stefan used a handkerchief to wipe the worst of the dust from his face. He looked at his team. “How do I look?”

Nabeh appeared at his elbow. “Very handsome!”

“Thanks.”

“Fine, boss,” Roan said. “Let’s shoot this and get a drink.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

Marshal raised three fingers and counted down.

Stefan smiled at the camera when Marshal pointed. “We’ve reached this unbelievable location deep in the mountains. In the fortress behind me we are supposed to meet the army observers assigned to the region who have offered to take us deeper into this ancient and war-torn country.”

Nabeh stood a couple feet away grinning at the camera. Behind him many of the men had also started grinning and aping about. Stefan hurried to wrap up before they ruined the shot.

“It is a land of much mystery and secrets. A place where the dead may walk.” He paused for the break. “Okay. Get a shot of the men as we go in. Let’s see what we have here.”

Stefan turned to Nabeh. “Thank you, we’re ready.”

Nabeh bowed and headed toward the fortress doors. On the way he passed the jeep’s keys to another man who immediately ran to jump in the driver’s side. As they walked up to the massive wood gates to the fortress the man spun the jeep in a circle, kicking up dirt and rocks, and then shot off into the village.

Stefan picked up his steps to catch up with Nabeh as they reached the doors. “Where’s he going with the jeep?”

“He will use it while we rest. No worries,” Nabeh said. “We shall have the jeep back when it is needed for our return.”

“Okay.” Stefan followed Nabeh through the doors, motioning for the others to hurry up and follow.

On the other side of the doors they entered a wide courtyard that was unlike anything Stefan had seen outside. A fountain shaped like a large urn bubbled cheerfully at the center of the courtyard in the center of an oval pool of water. Green plants abounded in planters around the courtyard. A group of men in desert-colored fatigues were waiting for them beside the fountain. These men clearly weren’t locals. They looked like the Army observers that Nabeh claimed were actually CIA operatives. Stefan fell back beside Marshal.

“Film everything. Unless they stop you, I want it all.”

“No problem, man.” Marshal hoisted the camera up to his shoulder.

Stefan glanced at Roan and didn’t even bother saying anything when he saw the look that she gave him. He turned his attention back to the men. Nabeh stood between them, smiling broadly, looking back and forth. Men from the fortress moved around the edges of the courtyard, holding their guns and watching the group. Stefan walked forward.

“I’m Stefan Roland. This is my cameraman Craig Marshal and sound wiz Roan Collins. Are you Colonel Anders?”

The guy in the center, not tall, he probably wasn’t over five seven or so, moved forward. He wore a dark, scruffy beard and had his sleeves rolled up. There was a rifle slung across his back and a gun on his hip. His broad shoulders strained the fabric of his shirt. A hand-twisted cigarette dangled from his mouth, the thin trail of smoke rising up into clear blue sky. He didn’t offer his hand.

“Right. The film guy. I’ve seen your work. Thought you might have some advice to help us with a situation here.”

“What’s the situation?”

Anders looked past Stefan at Marshal. He took out his cigarette and pointed it at Marshal. “He gonna film everything?”

“That’s why we came,” Stefan said. “That’s the deal.”

Anders squinted at Stefan. For a couple of seconds they stared at one another. Just when Stefan started to wonder what he’d gotten himself in for the colonel nodded. “Fine. You can film, unless I say otherwise. I tell him to stop and that camera goes off or it becomes scrap. Got it?”

Stefan shook his head. “No deal. We film what we decide to film. We don’t need to do this, Nabeh can take us back to the airport if you don’t like it.”

Nabeh’s smile broadened. “Yes, of course. Anytime.”

Stefan’s heart beat faster. His throat felt dry and choked with dust. Going back with nothing would ruin him. He couldn’t afford to go back, but he also couldn’t let Anders direct what they shot. That had the potential to kill any film too.

“Is that so?” Anders asked.

“Yes.”

Anders chuckled and then took a long drag on his cigarette. Finally he gave Stefan a small nod. “Got to respect a man that stands his ground. Okay. Film whatever in the hell you want. Why do I give a fuck? Let’s get out of the sun and we’ll talk about what’s going on.”