The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (31 page)

Alex stepped back, not believing—not
wanting
to believe—but knowing what the businessman said
could
be true. And that
whisper of a doubt was echoed in Oversight’s eyes even as she protested her
innocence. “Alex, don’t listen—”

“Shut up!” Quince screamed. “Have you
forgotten why you were sent here?”

Oversight did not answer except with
silence.

“That’s right. So tell him you don’t
love him. Tell him you slept with him because I told you to.”

She started to shake her head no, but
could not look at Alex’s face, could not look into his eyes, or risk seeing his
pain.

“Forget it,” Leland snarled, turning
to Alex. “I already told you, I only want to go home. I’ll make Kreiger give
her to you, you have my word. Girlfriend, lover, wife, soul mate,
whatever
.
I just want the tickets so I can go home. Help me get them, and everything you
wanted can still be yours.”

Ellen had joined Lindsay at the
doorway, but kept back, afraid.

Yet in spite of everything, Alex was
not afraid. Maybe he should have been. Leland Quince might never be more
dangerous than right now, cornered and desperate and clearly insane. The veneer
of Leland’s polish had worn through to the hard, violent heart beneath—one
unafraid of maiming or destroying in pursuit of its ends. But Alex knew exactly
what he had to do. There was only one way to end this. His soul be damned,
Leland Call-Me-Sir-Or-Mister Quince would not have his way this time. The pry
bar rose, tip trained upon the businessman’s naked chest.

Leland glared, lip curling into a
snarl. “You’ve already made your share of mistakes tonight, Alex. That was your
last.”

Behind him, shadows flexed as a
chameleon of colors and fabricated textures scuttled forward to heel at
Leland’s feet, some kind of a misshapen primate with massive jaws and reptilian
eyes, slits of black in pools of dead white, its skin sloughing in huge, ugly
peels like softened clay. Its mouth gaped, a chasm of blackened teeth that
looked capable of grinding rock into dust, filling the night with a deep,
reverberant hum like the sizzling breath from a blast furnace. There was a
stench in the air like urine and rot.

“Alex, go! Please!” Oversight begged,
rushing to the door. “He’ll kill you!”

“That’s right, Alex,” Quince said,
voice dropping to a whisper. “Listen to the lady. She wasn’t the only thing
Kreiger gave me.”

The creature growled, eyes flexing,
holding Alex in the cold, blue-white beams like distant corpse lights. Alex
found a part of him begging to drop the pry bar and run;
run like hell!
But the red haze had returned, tightening his grip, judging the distance to the
monster’s knotted skull and wondering if it would split as easily as he
imagined a human’s would.

“Alex! Please!” Oversight shouted,
“Just get out of here! You can’t fight him!”

“I won’t leave you.”

“Forget about me, Alex. I don’t love
you!” she shrieked.

Alex felt his entire body jerk back
as if she had raised a hand to strike him. “But—”

“I don’t love you. Forget about what
happened earlier and just go! Go now!”

Alex turned away, not because she
told him to, or because she said she did not love him, or even because of the
monster writhing at Leland’s feet like some demon familiar. None of that
mattered. None of it. All that mattered were the tickets. They would solve
everything. With the tickets, Leland Quince would be normal again. And so would
Oversight. So would everything. The tickets were a way out, a way for all of
them to be free from the madness.

“I don’t believe you,” he said,
unsure if he had actually spoken the words or merely thought them to himself.
He staggered towards the other bedroom, his muscles like machine pistons
powered beyond the point of capacity, ready to split open in a horrible burst
of scalding rage.
The point of no return,
he thought with eerie calm.
There’s
no turning back now. Not ever.

He pushed past Ellen and Lindsay, his
gaze glancing across the little girl’s eyes.
I’m sorry,
he thought.
I’m so sorry. You don’t understand and I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to,
but I can’t let this happen. This isn’t our game; it isn’t a game at all. We
don’t belong here. Only the Caretakers do, and I won’t allow us to die for
them.

“Jack!”

“This won’t work, Alex,” Jack said from
the spiral stair, his secret sanctum, his coward’s retreat.

“Give me the tickets, Jack.”

“If Quince doesn’t betray you,
Kreiger will. What reasons do either have for honoring any deals they might
make with you?”

“Kreiger will honor our agreement. I
can force him to.” The argument sounded empty, but when doesn’t hope. “I can’t
let him have her like this, and I can’t free her without the tickets. She has
to be free from all of this, Jack. Just like I do. Like we all do. We’re not
yours to play with. We’re not the spoils of war. This isn’t about us, but we’re
the ones with everything to lose, and the only thing any of us has to win is
our crummy lives. We’re risking everything for your little game, Jack. Enough
is enough. Now give me the tickets.”

“I won’t give Kreiger the Nexus,”
Jack said, “for the same reason I won’t give you the tickets.”

“Even if you succeed, one of us will
be trapped here,” Alex said. “You know that.”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t care?”

“I don’t have a choice. And neither
do you.”

“I do have a choice!” Alex shouted,
pry bar swinging in a ferocious arc that caught the birdcage atop the crate and
sent it flying. It smashed with a reverberant clang and a scatter of hollow,
clattering sounds, the remnants of whatever had died there long ago. “We all
have a choice.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Stop it!” Alex swung again, the bar
clanging against the iron stairs, the vibration threatening to jar the weapon
from his fingers. His grip tightened, small jewels of blood from his palms
making the metal slippery, difficult to hold. “Stop talking like you have the
answers! You don’t! You don’t have a clue! If you had any idea at all, you’d
know that five tickets aren’t enough to send us all home. Someone has to be
left behind.”

“I know,” Jack said.

“Well you have no right to choose!
You’re not God!”

“Neither are you.”

“Just give me the tickets!” Alex
screamed.

“They’re already gone. I fed them
into the Jabberwock—the computer,” Jack said. “The only way to get them out is
for me to write the stories. Until I complete them and release you from this
world, the tickets don’t exist. Schrödinger’s cat; without a definitive form,
they don’t exist. It was the only way to keep them safe from Kreiger. And from
you.”

“You never trusted us?”

Jack shook his head.

Alex leaped at the steps, the pry bar
making another wild arc that only narrowly missed the Caretaker’s head. Jack
stumbled backwards and slipped, the bar passing inches from his skull as he
fell. It clanged against the center pole like a fire bell, and jarred loose
from Alex’s battered hands just as Jack slid into him, sending both of them
into a heap at the base of the spiral stair.

Alex untangled himself, orienting
immediately upon the pry bar. He snatched it up and turned on the Caretaker.

“Leave him alone!” Ellen screamed.

“You’re no different than us, Ellen,”
Alex shouted back. “You have nothing to gain by him succeeding, and everything
to lose if he fails.”

“Shut up! You don’t know everything!
None of us do.”

“I know the tickets are in the
computer,” Alex said icily. “Kreiger can have that, instead.”

He started towards the stairs and
stopped, a horrifying snarl from above, a deep growl like a dragon stalking its
prey.

Nail!

The Guardian’s muscles stood out like
cables, eyes burning crimson in the dark, but it saw neither the Caretaker nor
Alex, fixated upon something else, something the others were only just
realizing was there. The air turned faintly putrid, like something forgotten
and left to rot.

The Dust Eater.

THE DUST EATER

The Dust Eater hated the Nexus. He
had heard stories—who in the Wasteland had not? The Nexus was paradise, the
Promised Land, Nirvana, Elysium.

But it was none of these things.

The Nexus was
wet!

Water clung to him with every breath,
smothering him, drowning him. And the
colors
, too many, too complex;
overwhelming; it made his skin hurt, his eyes ache. Air should be dry. The
world should be dust and shadows. And the only textures should be grit and
sand.

God had sent him to Hell.

His eyes wept pus. His flesh itched
and crawled, desperate to mimic the ever-shifting patterns … and failing! Gone
was the meaningless whiteness of sand, now shadows and edges,
distinctions
.

And
water!

Skin that had never known rain, skin
crusted into leather against the burning sun and the stinging sand, skin that
protected him for years rolling back so far that memories of anything before
were lost, and he imagined himself immortal as God Himself—
a son of God
—had
turned
soft
within the Nexus. It sloughed and peeled in thick, gray
rolls that bunched and fell away.

He wrested the floorboards in search
of insects—
there were always insects living in places like this; unwanted,
unseen, unwelcome
—but met only with disappointment; a light coating of dust
all there was. Starving, he even tried swallowing his own discarded skin, but
it made him sick. Clinging to him like torn rags, rotted and sour, the stench
of his own decay burned his nostrils and left him half-blind, unable to smell
anything past his own putrefaction.

A poor example of God’s work, and he
knew it. He did not wish God to be disappointed with him; God, who could make
and unmake him, could make and unmake
worlds
. He sought only God’s love.

But God commanded he serve the stupid
man, the one who shouted at the constructs and the Caretaker, and never once
ordered Dust Eater to kill. All of this would be over if Dust Eater could kill.

But the stupid man ignored him,
ordered him to sit in the corner and …
fester
, staring at the walls and
clawing bloody furrows into his nettled flesh while the stupid man jabbered with
constructs and diddled Dust Eater’s sister.

But at last it was time. Time to do
what he was meant to do, created to do. And when it was done, the stupid man
might allow Dust Eater to eat from the corpses—so small a thing to the stupid
man, really. With his belly full, he could ignore the agony of his flesh, the
stench that made his eyes drip and slime, clotted his nose and hid the Guardian
from his senses.

Until now. The Guardian had revealed
himself, growling overtop the noisy infidel and his constructs. The Dust Eater
curled his lips and snarled back, the battle enjoined.

God’s mercy upon his soldiers.

*     *     *

The Dust Eater bowled Leland aside as
Nail leaped from the stairway to intercept the Wasteland abomination. Alex
threw himself out of the way, the pry bar clattering across the floor.

Then the two creatures collided like
freight trains, a crash of horn on bone, skulls like granite smashing against
one another. The Dust Eater’s limbs entwined the gargoyle’s, keeping itself
from Nail’s massive fists and slashing tusks. The pitch of snarling and howling
turned indistinguishable, slashing jaws and raking nails, the blur of limbs; no
quarter asked and none given. One of them—Guardian or Dust Eater—would not
survive.

Oversight grabbed Jack’s shoulder,
her grip painfully strong, expression hysterical. “Make them stop, Caretaker,
or the Guardian will be killed!”

Nail lunged for the Wasteland
monstrosity’s throat, but the Dust Eater bound the gargoyle’s arms up in its
own, rolling on its back and bringing its feet up to rake at the Guardian’s
belly.

“Nail cannot destroy the Dust Eater,
Caretaker,” she said, trying to shake him from his fugue. “The Dust Eater will
kill him! And without Nail, nothing can save you from the dregs. Make them
stop!”

“I can’t,” he shouted, knocking her
hand away. “I don’t know how. I don’t even know how that thing got here, or
where it came from.”

“It came from the same place I did,
Caretaker,” she said, looking over at Leland.

Nail let out a chilling snarl,
driving his teeth through the Dust Eater’s arm, skewering the muscle. The Dust
Eater screamed, thrashing so violently that it threw the gargoyle to the
opposite wall. Nail scrambled into a crouch, warily eyeing the Dust Eater. Rage
became frustration, the gargoyle’s features glistening with splashes of
crimson.

Oversight turned on Leland, shouting
over the Duster Eater’s wails. “Call it off!”

He looked at her as if she was
speaking in tongues, expression manic as he dug furiously at his scarred right
palm.

“The Dust Eater will kill the
Guardian!” she insisted. “And the Guardian is the only thing keeping the dregs
from overrunning this place. Kreiger will honor no bargain with you if his
dregs take down the Caretaker and kill everyone, you included. Now call it
off!”

He stared at her, a glaze of
comprehension and confusion both. “I can’t,” he said. “I don’t know how.”

*     *     *

Alex saw Oversight arguing with the
Caretaker, with Mr. Quince. The red haze that earlier gifted him with strength
and robbed him of reason was gone. He was just Alex now: zero prospects, no pot
to piss in and no window to throw it out of, wielding a pry bar like it was
fucking Excalibur.

Sometimes you don’t have choices.
Sometimes you do what you do because it’s all you know how.

The Dust Eater circled Nail, ignoring
the rest, assuming them harmless.

A mistake Alex would see it regret.

His hand found the pry bar, tightened
upon it, blocking out the pain in his battered fingers as he swung the steel
straight into the Dust Eater’s unsuspecting face.

The swing would have made even Babe
Ruth smile. A home run.

The Dust Eater slammed sideways into
the wall, and Alex had visions of the repulsive creature’s head reduced to
something like a picked-over bread bowl at the party’s end, crushed and sticky.
Jack would congratulate him. Lindsay would give him a hug, knowing he could be
counted on to do what was right. And Oversight would know—she would
know
—that
he could do what needed doing when no one else would. And she would love that
about him. And she would love
him
.

The dream ended almost as quickly as
it began. The monster scrambled to a low crouch, a streak of slow, dark blood
running lengthwise across its face, the mark of the pry bar’s edge where it bit
into the Dust Eater’s skin.

But that was all.

Alex’s next swing was sheer
desperation. The Dust Eater ducked it easily, raking the air just behind the
weapon, and nearly stealing it away. An eager hiss gurgled from the Dust
Eater’s throat as it advanced, forcing Alex back into the open space with Nail,
driving its enemies, narrowing their options.

Total fuck up!
Alex thought dismally.
Everything’s
ruined. Everything’s lost. What did she ever see in me?

He swung the pry bar again, fingers
aching, muscles trembling with exhaustion.

The Dust Eater turned into it,
massive teeth snapping down. The steel banged into the monster’s jaws with a
hard clank, a shiver reverberating up the bar and jarring it loose from Alex’s
hands. He sucked air between clenched teeth, looking first at his bleeding
hands then at the Dust Eater, a maniacal look of satisfaction in its
crocodilian eyes, the pry bar sticking from the side of its teeth like a prize
cigar. Alex backed down helplessly as the Dust Eater spat the weapon upon the
floor with an empty metal clang.

Then it closed in.

*     *     *

How had this happened?
Jack wondered.
What should he do?
With Alex? With Oversight? With Leland Quince?
If the Dust Eater killed
Nail, it was all meaningless, his life measureable in bare moments only. But
another part of him was frighteningly calm, a spectator to devastation,
non-responsive, a simple recorder of everything going on around him. Detached,
he watched as Alex attacked the Dust Eater, the
monster unphased. Nail
held back, confused by his inability to defeat the Wasteland creature and
awaiting an opportunity that might never come.

Oversight moved towards the Dust
Eater, knife in hand. Her intent struck Jack as comically insane: naked, armed
with nothing more than a blade, it was a scene off a bad fantasy
paperback-cover, one painted by Franzetta or Vallejo. He reached out
helplessly, a failed petition to stop her. He wanted to call to her, but no
sound came from his lips, no air from his lungs. Helpless.
Useless
.

The Dust Eater was not even aware of
her until it heard her set the knife aside on the iron steps.

She’s committing suicide
, Jack thought.

The monster turned, tendons in its
neck creaking as it averted its gaze to look at Oversight, assessing the nature
of this new threat.

“Dust Eater,” Oversight said, hand
extending slowly, palm offered for the creature’s inspection. The rest of the
universe was locked in ice, waiting. Jack heard the words echo in his brain,
trying to make sense of it, understand how she could speak to one of Kreiger’s
creatures with such familiarity, and what it said about her.

The Dust Eater sniffed cautiously,
then more deeply, its expression softening. It slowly lowered the side of its
face into her open palm, letting her rub it gently, soothingly, as if the Dust
Eater were a pet, a loved one in need of comfort. It growled softly as her
fingers stroked the sides of its face, and Jack could almost believe the
monster no more aggressive than a large, purring house cat.

Oversight’s other fist fired in a
blinding whip-snap of centuries-trained muscle, thumb sticking forward like an
iron spike as she drove a crushing blow into the Dust Eater’s left eye.

It never saw the attack—would never
see anything from that eye again as she reduced it to a sticky, pulp-filled
socket.

No sound could compare with the
horrible wail of agony that tore itself up from the Dust Eater’s lungs like a
diamond-saw carving granite. The monster sprang backwards, slamming into the
window on the front of the Saloon and crushing the wood to flinders, glass
exploding across the porch roof. But this was lost to the terrible screaming of
the Dust Eater as it tried to escape the pain of the lost organ it was only
just beginning to comprehend.

Nail’s enormous fists came down like
twin sledge hammers against the left side of the Dust Eater’s skull to drive
the beast into the ground, cracking the floorboards beneath its face.

The gargoyle danced aside as the Dust
Eater tried to right itself, staying within the creature’s blind spot. And from
there he struck again.

And again.

And again!

The Dust Eater staggered into the
wall, blood oozing from the left side of its head. It slashed out viciously,
claws raking the empty air, whistling as they gouged the nothing in its
desperation to find the Guardian. The calculated lunges and feints of
centuries-honed instincts were gone. What remained was desperate with pain, the
sporadic attacks of an animal trapped and wounded, in agony. Afraid for the
first time in its life, it wanted only to escape.
Forget the Guardian.
Forget his sister. Forget the Caretaker and the hero and the stupid man and the
yummy meats. Just run away! Run back to God and grovel before Him, beg
forgiveness for being weak, and eat the dust where He walks. And maybe, in
another thousand years, He will forgive you. Maybe. Maybe in time He will love
you again.

The Guardian’s fist came again, and though the Dust Eater squirmed to
avoid it—knew the attack from the smell and the feel of the air—the blow still
fell. There was a horrific crunch like a burlap sack of broken glass smashing
against the floor, and a redoubling of his agony. The Dust Eater’s left arm
sagged down from the shattered shoulder like a dead thing, a dead thing that
knew horrible pain but could do nothing about it. Its howls fell to pathetic
moans, and in the small, sane fragments of the Dust Eater’s mind—the parts that
were not entirely animal in nature—it knew it would never see God again.

The tears swelling in the
Dust-Eater’s good eye were not from the stench of its corrupted flesh.

“Nail.”

Though barely a whisper, Oversight’s
petition made the gargoyle step away. She knelt beside the quivering creature,
again reaching out to him, one hand to his face, the other holding her knife.
He flinched at her touch, but did not pull away, allowing her to gently stroke
his ruined flesh. “We have spent too much of our lives here. He has forsaken
us, and still He demands servitude. But even the lost souls of purgatory will
be freed in the end, and there is a heaven beyond this place, a heaven far
better than any imagined by Him. You are going there ahead of me.”