Once Upon a Time in Hell (20 page)

"You sure that's a good idea?" I asked.

"What's a good idea, boy?" asked Greaser, assuming, sensibly enough, I'd been talking to him. "In my experience any idea I have is, by its very nature, a good one." He leaned forward.

"I'm a clever little bastard you see, that's how I got to be where I am."

"Just do it," the old man said, "afore I have to listen to anymore of his posturing."

"I had hoped not to have to fall back on this Mr Greaser," I said, "but I'm not so stupid as to come in here unprotected. I have a man with a keen eye and an eager finger training his rifle on you this very minute. If I raise my hand then he will fire."

Greaser laughed. "Will he now?"

"He will. And let me reiterate: I have no wish to go that route, I just wanted to have a civil conversation, but if that's what it takes for us all to be able to leave this table intact then that is what I will do."

"Raise your hand," said Greaser, his voice low.

"I'm sorry?"

"You heard me, you little pissant, raise your goddamn hand."

"I can assure you..."

"Assure me, fucking nothing..." He turned to his henchman. "Braxis, you and the boys are to do nothing, understand? If this little pecker manages to have me shot you will let them walk on out of here. You will, in fact, wish them on their merry fucking way. Understood?" "Sir."

Greaser turned his attention back to me. "So, there you go, there's your escape route. All you've got to do is kill me and you walk out of here a happy little band. You can even take the woman with you," he gestured at Agrat.

"Who says she wishes to go?" Agrat asked. "I think you may be assuming a connection between us where there is none."

"I don't care what you think, either. You're all in the same boat as far as I'm concerned and you know how that worked out for you last time."

"I don't take kindly to being threatened."

"And I don't take kindly to being lied to." He turned back to me. "So. Raise. You're fucking. Hand"

"To hell with it," said the old man, lifting his gun and pulling the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled again. Silence.

"Raise it!" Greaser screamed and I did so, for all the good I already knew it would do me.

He got to his feet, turning around, holding his head up in the air. "Just so's they can get a clear shot. I wouldn't want them to struggle on that score."

After a moment he sat back down. "I am assuming either you were lying and there weren't no shootist in the first place. Or you were telling the truth and you now know precisely how much use he is to you. Nobody," he leaned forward, as if I needed this point hammering home, which it most certainly did not, "but nobody can hurt me here. This is my home. This is sacrosanct territory. This whole place exists in a state of fucking grace. It would take more power than you've got to break it." He turned to Agrat. "And that goes for you too, bitch. You may be one of the first family, all-powerful missy, wouldn't stain her knickers Agrat, but my friends are more powerful than you. I am dealing with the real power in the Dominion of Circles, hand in hand with the best, and he looks after his friends."

He leaned back in his chair, relaxed and amused. "So let's get back to our wonderful conversation about livestock shall we?"

Agrat got to her feet. "It seems clear to me that your disagreement is with this young man, not me. I shall forgive—albeit reluctantly—your threats upon my person but I certainly don't intend to listen to any more of them."

"Sit down, bitch," he said, his face still at utter peace with itself. "I made it clear enough, I think, you're staying with the rest of them."

"We'll see about that," she closed her eyes and muttered under her breath.

"What's that?" he asked. "Little incantation is it? Little translocation spell? I heard you could jump limited distances. Pretty impressive. Won't work either. The controlling focus here is my will, that's what the state of grace offers. What I say goes. If I don't want to be shot, I don't get shot. If I don't want you to leave, you don't leave. I can't actually control you, but I can block anything occurring that goes against my wishes. Useful."

"That sort of power isn't for the likes of you," she said.

"She's right," said the old man. "If he's got this sort of protection he's not bragging about his friends in high places."

"And doesn't it just piss you off?" he said, laughing. He looked at me. "See? You were offering your services as a business partner, I already have the best. Do you have anywhere else to go from there? Didn't think so. On your feet, I'd like to show you some stuff." We clearly had little in the way of choice, though Agrat was fair fuming at having been proven to be so powerless. She was not a woman you wanted to get on the wrong side of. Unfortunately.

"Thank you so much, young man," she said as she stepped past me. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate the situation you've put me in."

"With any luck," said the old man, "we've put her in exactly the position we need. Tell her if she wants to get out of this she needs to perform a Damnatio Memoriae reversal, when you give her the signal."

I nodded and whispered as much in her ear. She gave me a look that was half surprise, half disgust, but said nothing.

Meridiana took my arm. "You know how I said I wasn't going to come here with you?"

"Yep."

"I'm really wishing I'd not changed my mind."

"I know, sorry."

Greaser led us towards the stables, his henchmen parting to let us past, their hands never far from their guns.

We stepped through a pair of double doors, and the first thing that hit us was the smell.

Stables are never the nicest-smelling places but this was something else. A sharp, painful scent that had my eyes watering as soon as I was inside.

"Takes your breath away don't it?" said Greaser. "Never smell anything like it. Something to do with the process. Leaking memories, I guess."

Just inside the door I saw both Biter and Abernathy, securely tied and gagged. They seemed unharmed thus far, bar an eye that looked like it was going to blacken up a treat in Biter's case. I wasn't all that worried for them. I had no doubt that whatever Greaser had in mind would be worse for us than them. After all, they were almost beneath his attention.

Greaser pushed open another pair of doors and, finally, we were faced with the cause of the smell.

The room beyond was vast, bigger somehow than it had appeared from the outside. It was lined with row after row of narrow, almost coffin-shaped cages. Hundreds of them. Inside each cage, forced to stand upright, was a naked human—mortals like me I assumed, given what we knew of Greaser's business. The cages were too small to allow movement, the wires cutting into their skin and forcing it into puffy diamonds. Thin, rubber tubes ran from the heads of each of the prisoners, their tips forced into the skin of their temples, bulging from pink wounds.

"You see?" said Greaser, "I already have all the livestock I need. And this is just my private stock, where I play around and experiment. You may have seen my main farms along the way?"

I remembered the plain we had passed, filled with what I had assumed were cattle sheds.

I guess, in Greaser's mind, that's exactly what they were.

"What are you doing to them?" I asked.

"Milking them," he said. "You know about Buzz?"

"I've heard of it."

"It's my main business. Folks just can't get enough of that stuff. Crazy isn't it? All the power we have here in the Dominion of Circles and yet it's the experience of mortals, that momentary hit, that really fires my customers up. This is where it comes from. I siphon off the memories and experiences of the livestock," he waved at the tubes. "It's then trapped, condensed, distilled—some fucking thing... science is not my skill—and then turned into Buzz. I'm making oceans of the stuff."

I walked up to one of the cages. The woman inside was only being held up by the wire, her legs had grown a deep purple where the blood had settled.

"Hey," said Greaser, running over to me. "Watch this!" He reached up and pinched the rubber tubes with his finger tips. Immediately the woman began to shake, the wire cutting into her even further as she thrashed against it. The side of her head where the tubes went in began to swell. "It gets so that they're producing so much," said Greaser, "something blocks the pipes and they swell up like balloons."

"I get the picture," I said. "You can let go now."

"You get the picture? I don't think you do. I'm going to put you in one of these cages. I'm going to do shit like this to you every day. After a couple of weeks you won't have a fucking clue who you were anymore at which point I'm going to take you out, mince the fuck out of you and feed you to your buddy next door if he's still alive. T hat's the fucking picture."

"Ask who's helping him," said the old man.

But I couldn't get a word in, Greaser was on a roll. Now he had put his arm around Meridiana's neck. "And while you’re in there maybe I'll bring this little sweetness along and give you a little show. Would you like that? Just to liven your days up a bit. I could keep those memo ries of yours topped up a little longer, remembering all the times you'd seen me fuck your girl friend in her ass."

"She's not my girlfriend," I said, which was about the most pathetic thing possible but I was panicking. Really panicking. I could see that Meridiana was weighing up her response. Like Biter earlier, she was not the sort of person who would take a comment like that in her stride, she likely itched to force the threat back into Greaser's mouth, word by word. At the same time, she knew that she would be dead within moments if she were to try anything. Greaser could probably manage that all on his own, but if he was of a mind not to break a sweat he'd just have one of his henchmen do it instead. We had nothing up our sleeves. Well, possibly nothing, I guessed it would depend on what my old friend could do after Agrat worked her magic. I looked at the old man.

"Ask who's helping him," he repeated. "I want to know."

Greaser, however, was still talking. "Not your girlfriend? Oh, well that's no problem, I'll let you watch anyway." He looked at Agrat. "I may even take a go on you once in a while, though you're going to have to get really dirty if you want me to stay interested, you're a little long in the tooth for my liking."

"How dare you!" she screamed, running at him. She wasn't used to not having the upper hand, the pragmatism that kept the rest of our moths shut was lost to her.

Greaser laughed then punched her in the face. B a m! That's what he cared for any of us.

She fell back into the dirt, holding her hand up to her nose as it started to bleed.

"Ask him, damn you," shouted the old man.

"Who..." I stumbled on the word, my voice cracking, "who is it that's helping you? Who's your business partner?"

"Say what?" Greaser gave me a quizzical look. "What do you care? I'm telling you all the great things that lie ahead of you and you want to know who I work with?"

"If I'm going to be dead soon what does it matter?" I said. "It's not like any of us are going to be able to tell anybody." He stared at me for a moment longer. "Walls have ears," he said in the end, then turned to his henchmen. "One of you give me a gun? I'm beginning to think this little turd ain't taking me seriously enough."

"Now," said the old man as Greaser got a gun.

"Now what?" My legs were shaking and I stuck out my hand to stop myself falling over. I touched the protruding flesh of the woman in the cage and snatched my hand away.

"The signal. Agrat. Now, damn it!"

"Agrat," I said, but she was in a world of her own, unable to believe what had happened to her. She was staring at the blood on the palm of her hand. "Agrat!" I shouted.

"Right," said Greaser, the gun now in his hand, a heavy looking automatic that he was pointing right at Meridiana. "You say this isn't your girlfriend, yes? So you won't mind if I shoot her in the face? Because I'm happy to do it. Won't dampen my pecker, none. I'll fuck her anyway.

Way I look at it, I'm just shooting her a nice new snatch."

I saw Meridiana tense, ready to make a move to defend herself, however hopeless it might be. If she had to go down, she sure as hell wouldn't do it quietly.

"Please Agrat!" I shouted. "Do it now!"

"Do what, kid?" asked Greaser. "Haven't we already covered that you're shooting well be low your calibre? It would take more power than that old cunt can muster to make a dent in me."

Agrat began to mutter under her breath.

"So where was I?" Greaser said turning his gun back towards Meridiana. He poked her body with it. "Where do I want the hole?" "I can tell you where I'd like to put it," shouted Meridiana and slammed the heel of her boot down on his bare foot. It had no effect whatsoever. So she aimed a punch at him. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it, forcing her, cursing and spitting empty threats, to her knees.

"I'm beginning to think you people are retarded," Greaser said. "You just don't fucking listen."

He pointed the gun at her face and I ran at him. I knew there was nothing I would be able to do, Meridiana was probably a better fighter than I could ever hope to be, but I couldn't just watch.

Greaser turned to face me, grinning, no doubt full of the joys of what he was about to do to us all. Then Agrat finished speaking and, all of a sudden, the room began to burn. 

T
HE
G
EEK AND
his friends walked out into the snow to die.

The real world appeared to have retreated, leaving a small white stage populated by a handful of actors. As well as The Geek, there was Henry Jones; his wife Harmonium; Toby the Snake Boy; the simple-minded veteran called Soldier Joe and his nurse, Hope Lane. All spread out, all waiting for a bullet in the back courtesy of the Barbarossa sheriff, Garrity and Bryson, the barman from the local saloon.

"That's about far enough!" Garrity shouted and The Geek readied himself to run. It would all be about the timing. The visibility out here was so poor that their only hope lay in the time it would take the two men to gun them down. The Geek held his position, to run first was to invite a bullet. He could only hope that one of the others would be the first target, then he would run and hope that the snow and the wind would hide him quicker than the sheriff could draw a bead on him.