The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (25 page)

Ellen turned quickly and walked to
the bathroom, not entirely certain her eyes were even seeing the floor, the
walls, the furniture that leaped out at her. Except, of course, the furniture
that had already disappeared.
No danger there
.

Not for the first time, Ellen
wondered if she wasn’t losing her mind.

Behind her, Lindsay watched her go, forgotten.

GAMES

Ellen thought Leland was reading a
magazine.

She was wrong.

He sat at a small table in the main
room, its surface inlaid with a chessboard, and glanced perfunctorily through
an outdated
Life
magazine, the game on the tabletop commanding his true
attention. The mongrel chess set incorporated pieces from a variety of
different sets, some pieces missing altogether and replaced with ordinary
household items: a black checker for a missing pawn, a salt shaker for a white
bishop. Leland found the ragtag assemblage emblematic of the Saloon’s single
greatest flaw: indifference. He pushed the pieces around, different strategies,
different results, a foundation of maneuvers leading towards a single outcome:
the black queen drawing off the white knight and leaving him vulnerable to
black’s rook. The white king would fall immediately after. The endgame was
never in doubt; all that remained was controlling the moves leading up to that
point.

Alex walked into the saloon, glanced
at the businessman then made his way to the back of the bar. He searched the
refrigerator first then looked under the counter, no sign of what he was
looking for in part because he had no idea what he wanted. A part of him wanted
a beer, another part wanted something stronger, and still a third thought
anything but water would have him throwing up inside of an hour.

Mostly he wanted answers. And the
Saloon had none of those. Outside the large window at his back, Oversight stood
like a dusty, black statue alone in the barren sands, surveying everything and
seeing nothing. Alex slammed his hands down on the bar.

“Girl troubles?” Quince remarked
absently, moving another chess piece.

Alex scowled. “No.”

“You’re a bad liar.” The businessman’s eyes never left the chessboard,
seemingly indifferent to the conversation he had instigated.

“What do you care?”

“I don’t much,” Mr. Quince answered,
studying the board. “But if it helps, she’s interested in you.”

“Why do you say that?” Alex asked.

“You’re the only one she tries to be
indifferent to.”

“And that’s supposed to help?”

Leland moved one of the chess pieces,
a white knight advancing on the black queen, vulnerable. “She doesn’t care
about the rest of us enough to even try.”

Alex pulled a
chair from the large poker table,
straddling it opposite the businessman. “Are you sure?”

“I make deals for a living; I know
when someone’s interested the way I know when someone’s lying. No matter how
much they argue otherwise, there’s always a tell that gives them away. You want
to know what interests her?” Mr. Quince picked up the black queen, rolling it
delicately between his thumb and forefinger as if it held value beyond measure.
That he would not look up convinced Alex that Mr. Quince’s indifference was
deliberate, a ploy to bring him over, gain his trust. Worse, knowing did not
make him any less interested in what he had to say. And where was the harm in hearing
him out?

The answer would have surprised him
.

“I’m listening,” Alex said.

Leland looked up from the chessboard,
setting the small piece of plastic aside. “Are you? Because I’m not in the
habit of repeating myself or wasting my time. If you’re serious, I can help. If
you’re not, go away. I’m not your wingman, and I’m not a pimp. But if you
really care about her—”

“I do. She’s … she’s a friend.”

“A friend?” Leland looked surprised.
“I have lots of friends; I wouldn’t die for any of them, and I wouldn’t kill
for them either. I’m not sure you appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

“What do mean?”

“Well far be it from me to point out
the obvious, but so far everyone has been talking about five tickets. The only
way out of this place is to have the five tickets. Only there are six of us in
the Saloon now, so the question you have to ask yourself is who stays behind while
the rest of us go free?”

Alex did not answer—could not
answer—his head still wrapping itself around a premise that, once spoken out
loud, seemed so obvious he didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it already.

“Forget that for the moment,” Mr.
Quince said. “Let’s focus on another question: who wanted to come here, and who
came here against their will?”

When Alex didn’t immediately answer,
Mr. Quince looked at him, head bent, studying him. “It wasn’t a trick question.
Who got here first? Who had a job to do here, a purpose that gives him the
power over all of the rest of us?”

“You’re talking about Jack?”

“The Caretaker himself. The rest of
us are just poker chips in a game he’s playing with Kreiger and the rest of his
insane lot. Each is betting everything they have on being the one to control
the outcome. But people like you and I don’t have a say. Jack wins, he goes
home, sending you, me, Lindsay and Ellen on our way. Kreiger wins and the Cast
Outs take over the Saloon and kill us all. I suggest you enjoy your time with
her while you can because it won’t last, and when it’s over, one of you will be
dead.”

Alex remembered Oversight saying
something similar.

“There may be another alternative,”
Leland said contemplatively. “One that neither the Cast Outs nor the Caretaker
considered.”

“What would that be?” Alex asked.

“Consider this. Jack is blinded by
ignorance. He only knows what he’s been told. He has to complete the five
tickets and send you, me, Lindsay, Ellen and himself back to the world. He
doesn’t know any other way. Kreiger and his cohorts don’t even want to go back
because they want this place. They think it will turn them into gods. And who
knows, maybe they’re right. But the only way they can get it is if Jack fails,
and they take the Saloon from him. So they don’t want Jack to finish the five
tickets, but they don’t care about the tickets either because they don’t want
to leave. That means Kreiger would have five tickets, but he doesn’t care who
goes home on them. What does that suggest to you?”

When Alex didn’t answer, Mr. Quince
pressed on. “We could deal with Kreiger directly. All we need are the tickets,
and we could negotiate our own terms. Me, you, Oversight, Ellen and Lindsay, we
could all go home. Five passengers, five tickets. Jack wants to stay behind, so
let him stay.”

“The Tribe of Dust would kill him.”

“As I said, Jack wants to stay
behind, let him stay. There are only five tickets. You get bumped from this
flight and it’s all over. No one goes home on stand-by.”

Alex was slowly shaking his head.
“But—”

“Someone has to be sacrificed, Alex.
Jack wanted to come here. He accepted this risk. But not you and not me. Not
Ellen or Lindsay or even Oversight. Let the Cast Outs and the Caretakers play
their games; we shouldn’t be a part of it.”

“But how do we do that?” he asked,
the question turning over and over in his head, the results unpleasant.

The businessman closed the magazine
and placed it down upon the table, the chess game forgotten. “We take the
tickets and make our own deal with Kreiger.”

Alex jerked back at the businessman’s
suggestion of betrayal. Beneath the clean-cut, calculating exterior, Leland
Quince’s true nature, self-serving and remorseless, was that of a killer.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Leland
said leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, the coach before the big
game:
Do it for the team, Alex. You understand? It’s the team we’re talking
about here. The team!
“But hear me out. Five tickets. You. Me. Lindsay. Ellen. Oversight. Kreiger will deal because he wants the Nexus, and that’s
all. None of us asked to come here—except Jack. Jack came here because he
wanted to, just like the Cast Outs living out there. They all want this place.
So, let them have it. Let them kill each other over it. Not our problem. We’re
the bystanders caught in the crossfire. The five of us should be allowed to go
on with our lives, to make them better. And with the tickets, we can force that
outcome.”

“Why should Kreiger agree to any of
this?”

“He will,” Leland said confidently, a
bit of the mask slipping away to reveal something unnerving. “He told me he
would.”

*     *     *

Lindsay stood outside the bathroom
door, half-expecting Ellen to reappear. But she did not. There was no sound
from inside. The little girl waited, Frisbee in hand, wondering why everyone
was so unhappy. The Saloon wasn’t so bad. It could have been worse. It could
have been cold and wet, and smell …

… like the sour rot of wood, damp
mildew of pine needle floor pricking the bare skin of her back and legs, and
darkness under the smothering canopy of trees, tall and uncaring and cold…

Lindsay swallowed, wishing the
bathroom door would open so she could get a glass of water. She wished Ellen
would come out and say she was all right, offer to play catch instead of
looking all pale like she was sick and wanted to puke. Lindsay remembered being
sick well enough to know that it wasn’t any fun. Once she was even so sick she
had to go to the hospital. Her mother told her she had ammonia, or something
like that; she didn’t really remember. She just remembered being sick. She
remembered being in a small white bed in a big white room, being alone, being
scared. She didn’t like hospitals. They were definitely no fun at all.
Everything was white, and lonely, and cold, and smelled like…

… moldy leaves rotting in blackened
mud, the stinging pine-smell that pricked the nose, a stink of sweat…

No, hospitals did not smell like that
at all. They smelled like—

She stopped the thought sharply.
There was that smell again, an actual smell in the air, vaguely warm and swampy
like a parking lot in the summer time after a thunderstorm. All the worms would
come out of the ground, gathering together in sodden, ratty piles. They smelled
bad. They smelled like mud and rotting leaves and pee. She remembered once picking
one of the worms up, thinking it was dead. It wriggled in her fingers, and she
shrieked, dropping it back into the puddle in the driveway where it squirmed
and flinched. She watched it writhe there for a time. When it finally stopped,
she knew this time it was really dead.

That was what it smelled like in the
hallway. Dead worms. Dead things.

The smell was coming from Mr.
Quince’s room.

She looked at the closed doors: first
the bathroom, then Mr. Quince’s room, then back. The one would not open. The
other she was afraid might. It would open and show her what was concealed
inside, the source of the dead worm smell. There was something in Mr. Quince’s
room that wasn’t supposed to be there; something that had not been there
before.

Pinching her nose closed, she ran
down the stairs, Frisbee ring in hand. Alex would play Frisbee with her. And
Alex would know what to do about the bad smell in Mr. Quince’s room. Alex was
her friend. He never talked down to her the way grownups sometimes did, the way
they talked to a pet or a little baby. She wasn’t grownup like Ellen or
Oversight, but she wasn’t a dumb, little baby either. And Alex knew that. He
wouldn’t be too busy to play catch, and then she would tell him about the smell
behind Leland’s—
No, Mr. Quince’s
—door. He would know what to do.

She stopped at the foot of the
stairs, caught by the sound of voices, Mr. Quince and Alex.

“Jack and I don’t get along. That’s
no secret. But he trusts you, Alex. He has no reason not to. You’re the one who
has to get the tickets from him.”

“That’s crazy,” Alex answered.

“No, Alex. Crazy is sitting around
drinking flavored coffee and eating pop tarts while someone else decides your
future for you; decides who deserves to live and how well, and who deserves to
suffer and die. We’re not a part of this. None of us are. It’s the Caretakers
against the Cast Outs, and we’re just pawns to be bartered and sacrificed.”

Lindsay didn’t hear anything else.
She slipped unnoticed around the corner and into the waiting room. It was an
innate talent all children shared and eventually outgrew; the ability to slip
away unnoticed—not unseen, simply unnoticed, below the scope of concern for
those of the adult world. Alex was sitting with his back to her, blocking Mr.
Quince’s view, so neither saw her slip around the corner and sneak up to the
glass door. She could also be very quiet when she wanted to be. And just now,
she very much wanted to be. She did not like Mr. Quince, and he didn’t seem to
like any of them.
She
had not forgotten the way he smashed
his glass against the wall yesterday. If it was necessary to avoid Alex just
now in order to avoid Mr. Quince, then that was exactly what she would do.
Later, maybe, she would tell Alex about the smell in Mr. Quince’s room.