And strangely, on the heels of this desperate craving, the urge to pee.
Jack walked unsteadily from the poker table to where four red-leather stools lined up before an L-shaped bar, abandoned and coated in a fine layer of powdery dust, the desert’s slow, inexorable effort to conquer the Sanity’s Edge Saloon, take down the last building and drag the entire world into the nothingness that existed everywhere else but here. He walked behind, ears pricked for the first indications of someone approaching; someone who might misconstrue his curiosity and confusion for thievery; someone who might be carrying a shotgun.
Below the bar, he found a toaster oven, a hot plate, a variety of beer and shot glasses, a few odd plates and bowls, and even a cardboard box of mismatched flatware. There were bottles of liquor—less the stock of an actual bar than someone’s liquor cabinet, sufficient for entertaining and personal consumption. Below a pair of tarnished beer taps, neither apparently hooked up to anything, he found a small refrigerator. When he opened it, a waft of cold fog fell out to reveal shelves empty but for a single bottle of Corona and a lime wedge sitting on a plate.
Again, that high, strange laughter.
Jack clamped his mouth shut against the lunatic noise, and ogled the contents of the refrigerator in wonder, cold air gushing out over him where he crouched. He had wanted a Corona and a lime, but what were the odds that the last thing inside the refrigerator would be that, really? A part of his mind was shrieking uncontrollably, that last nail in the coffin of his once-understood reality, while another part was busy remembering an old Star Trek episode, one of the originals that you could still catch on some of the more obscure cable networks, where the Enterprise crew was stranded on a planet that read their minds and immediately manufactured their wants and desires. Somehow, that seemed relevant. Personally, he would not have manufactured a deserted western world with little, if any, amenities, and where the first song off the jukebox was an old Cream hit, but the appearance of the one thing he wanted most of all only a moment ago seemed more than a little coincidental.
Take the beer. Take the lime. Drink it and be done with it and be glad that you aren’t trying to find that rusty pump in the back where the water is fifteen arm-breaking minutes from being drawn to the surface, and probably a sure source of botulism. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?
This time, Jack chose to listen. He took the Corona and the lime from the refrigerator, and he was happy.
He fished around for a bottle opener, but gave up after a couple fruitless minutes of searching. If there was one in the Saloon, it wasn’t behind the bar; so much for life duplicating an old Star Trek plot where he got everything he wanted…
Wait, didn’t the Writer say something about that; about the special place and how it would give him everything he needed … and some things that he wanted. He wanted a Corona and lime, and found both. He also wanted a bottle opener, but he didn’t really need one. He could just as easily knock the cap off on the edge of the bar like he learned to do in college—just one of the many skills that he routinely left off his resumé.
Curiouser and curiouser, Alice. But hadn’t you better be searching for that white rabbit?
He popped the top on the bottle and sent the cap flying off somewhere to disappear just as the song was ending on the jukebox. He dismissed it and jammed the wedge of lime down into the bottle’s neck, and took a drink.
It was the most satisfying experience he could have imagined, marred only by a sense of urgency in his bladder. Well, you found a drink. Now find a bathroom.
A set of stairs led up out of the main floor, turned a sharp corner, and disappeared from sight. There was also an open doorway leading under the stairs to a utility room, little more than a large closet with a deep sink and dish rack on one wall, a complex tangle of plumbing on another, and a door leading outside. A mop, broom, and bucket leaned in one corner amidst the jumble of plumbing, some pipes enormous, others no bigger in diameter than his little finger, copper and iron and stainless steel coiled and twisted and jointed to one another in a conceptual artist’s plumbing fantasy. A large red wheel was mounted on a twelve-inch pipe running floor to ceiling, a small plaque hanging from the wheel by a chain with a tantalizing warning: MAIN LINE—DO NOT TURN.
He glanced out the backdoor, but the only thing behind the Sanity’s Edge Saloon was the desert and the railroad tracks stretching away into nowhere. Above the door was a small, peculiar addition like a room pasted upon the finished structure, and frankly, what he could see of it suggested that the glue-job had not been all that satisfactory; small pieces along the edges appeared to be breaking away. He decided to look upstairs.
As it turned out, the bathroom was the first door at the top of the stairs, the strange add-on that he saw from below. Its open door was thick and stately with a brass lock plate and frosted glass transom, but it looked as if some nether world giant had cleaved half of the bathroom away with an axe: most of the ceiling and the opposite wall were gone along with some of the floor. A claw-footed tub kept one appendage perched precariously out in space where the tiles had broken away beneath it, and anyone using the toilet could freely wave to passengers on the train.
Jack weighed his need to pee against his fear of plunging through unstable floorboards and possibly being killed. In the end, necessity won out over caution.
He moved slowly, testing each step along the way, but never heard so much as a groan or squeak. He made one final, self-conscious look around then allowed himself to relax. It would have been impossible for someone to stare into the bathroom without being seen themselves. And the view from the second floor revealed that the desert went even further than he had imagined, an endless expanse of flatness running to the horizon in all directions, … except, of course, in the direction of the large cliff, and that was on the other side of the building so he had no idea what advantage height would have on seeing what might lie beyond … or below.
He finished and retrieved his Corona, then opened the medicine chest over the sink. It was attached to part of the missing wall, one corner floating over empty space, lathing strips visible beneath missing patches of plaster thickly painted in white. Behind the mirror, he found some basic amenities: toenail clippers, a small pair of shears, a straight razor, an old-fashioned jar of lather, a bristle brush, a box of Band-Aids and a tube of antiseptic ointment. On the edge of the sink was a glass. Not a bit of it appeared to have ever been used, however. As if all of it was waiting for him.
He looked more closely at the missing sections of floor and wall, the exposed lathing strips and underlying studs. He had assumed damage, but realized that this was actually planned. No giant had cleaved the bathroom into an open sun porch; the builder had simply ceased parts of the project along the way, abandoning pieces in various stages of completion. All of the exposed studs were neatly cut, the lathing strips unbroken, ragged only by virtue of being abandoned during construction. Even the tiles surrounding the hole in the floor, the tub’s foot dangling over it like some pale reptile slithering up from the dark earth, were neither chipped nor cracked. The more he looked at it, the more Jack became convinced that the bathroom was simply incomplete, the designer having pushed it along from the door outward, not in stages, but in complete advancements like the spreading of a mold patch. And then, without rhyme or reason, construction stopped.
In the corner behind the door was a large, seated frog made of brass, his wide-open mouth holding a washcloth and a new bar of soap in a small dish. Its outstretched hands, turned up in a curiously anthropomorphic act of supplication, held a set of clean white towels.
All the accommodations of home, Jack mused. And none of the familiarity.
The next door along the hall hid a small, corner bedroom, perfectly plain and incapable of answering any of his questions. The last doorway opened into a large master bedroom with lots of windows and a set of French doors leading out to a narrow, roofed balcony. A tightly spiraled iron stair led up to the third floor, a red v
elvet usher’s rope cutting off access with a tiny sign reading simply, “No Unauthorized Personnel Permitted Beyond Rope.” He glanced up the stairs then decided to leave its exploration for later.
In the far corner of the room stood a large bed draped in filmy curtains, an homage to the gothic romance-novel. In another corner hung a basket chair, the inside cushioned with dark-blue satin pillows. Up against one wall was a large crate secured with iron chains and locks, a message stenciled on the side reading “Arctic Expedition, June 23, 1823.” Atop the crate was an enormous metal birdcage still containing the bones of some former captive: a multi-legged creature with a long tail, a broad flat skull and wings. Jack found an unusual grandfather clock with thirteen numbers on its face and five functioning hands; hours, minutes and seconds ticked inconsistently along with a fourth hand shaped like a crescent moon and a fifth resembling an off-center brass boot. Through the glass case below the face, he saw a strange collection of counterweights on blackened chains: a claw hammer, a flat-head screwdriver, a bottle opener, an old flintlock pistol, a sharpened sickle, and even a hook and blade like some kind of martial arts weapon.
On the far wall, a small sign reading Heaven pointed up another set of stairs that worked their way up the back wall of the saloon before switching back on themselves, turning outward though there was nothing outward to turn upon! The stairway hung out over empty space, losing steps, risers, and banister spindles as it worked its way ever higher towards nothing. The top, such as it was, simply ended; like the bathroom, the materials were seemingly exhausted before anyone could complete wherever the stairs were leading to. The stairway to heaven led to nothing but a three-story drop, its reality fading out of existence one piece at a time.
Jack stood on the landing and looked out over the desert. No matter where he looked, there was nothing; a million, million miles of dust. He saw a widow’s walk atop the small room on the roof that would have afforded an even better view, but to what end. All anyone would ever see was a thin gray line on the horizon and the long thread of rails. No utility poles or buildings or water towers, no trees or grass. Not even a rock to stand upon in the vast sea of dust. Nothing. Just an empty track rolling into the distance …
… empty track? …
And that was when Jack realized that the train that carried him here had vanished as certainly as if it had never been.
THE TRIBE OF DUST
Far across the Wasteland, from atop a rift of stone—the gray line on the edge of Jack’s horizon—Rebreather watched the Nexus, a battered telescope held to one goggled eye. The saloon sat like a blight on the bone of the Wasteland, the torso of an engorged tick, head buried in the very artery of the universes as it sucked the blood from all the realities that had been or might ever be.
The Nexus was under new management.
Rebreather collapsed the telescope and dropped it in a pocket of his long coat, the once Confederate-gray bleached nearly white by the sun and the saturation of the ever-present dust. It was the way of the Wasteland. The air stole the life from any who stayed too long, who dared to survive. It began like consumption; death followed shortly thereafter. And the sparse waters of the desert offered little relief, heavy with rust and lime and sometimes arsenic; they encrusted the bottom of his cup, scales of orange and white on tin.
For too long he called this place home.
He should have lived within the glow of the Nexus, but all attempts to wrest it from the Caretakers had met with failure. The Nexus was the throne of God, and reality was as soft clay to its possessor. A Caretaker who knew how could easily repel any outcast aching for what the Nexus offered—outcasts like himself.
Ache was too mild a word, truly. It was agony, a pain that overrode reason and sanity, filling the mind with an all-consuming need to possess what could never be held.
But all of that was about to change. Rebreather had found God, and God promised to help him destroy the Caretaker. Not alone this time, God promised him soldiers; soldiers over which his control would be absolute. And the pleasure this brought after centuries of impotence and isolation was … indescribable.
There were few pleasures in the dead air of the Wasteland.
Some made light of the consequences of breathing Wasteland air; the sand was whiter for the dust of their bones. But no matter how hard he tried, the air still crept in, penetrating his lungs, permeating his flesh. He used to shave to keep the fit of the mask tight, but the stubble always grew back. And exposing himself to the Wasteland risked breathing in more of its air, or opening his skin with the blade and succumbing to sepsis.
The solution was obvious; he set his face on fire. Now all that remained was a nerveless paste of thickened scar tissue. No hair grew there ever again, and the mask’s integrity was preserved.
But now the air was starting to slip past the mask, find its way through the air filters and into his lungs, making him old. He tried taping his gloves to the sleeves of his shirt, tying the cuffs of his pants tight around his boots, but the wasting of the desert infected everything, drying the tape and making it peel, or wearing the cloth into flimsy, threadbare fabric. If he controlled the Nexus, he would never want for fresh air, or clean water, or fine clothes. He would dine upon the finest of foods, and never again be forced to eat things that scuttled and crawled upon the sand, or gnaw the flesh from the bones of fresh kills like a cannibal.
But he did not own the Nexus. He was a victim of the Wasteland. His gloves were torn through in the fingers, and try as he might, Rebreather could not mend them or keep the yellow-nailed tips from tearing through, his flesh sickly and pale, appearing as bones emerging from the rot of a corpse. Knots of gray hair shot from the edges of the mask like sidewalk weeds restrained only by the straps bound tightly around his head, and the wide-brimmed hat he had pulled down upon his skull, once bright black, now the color of rain-sodden ashes, the remnants of some long-forgotten fire.
He would never live to see another Caretaker. If he could not reclaim the Nexus now, the Wasteland would claim him as it claimed so many others before; not as a god, but as a nameless victim forgotten for his mediocrity.
And it was in his most desperate hour that God came to him, unclothed, the dust and the dead air incapable of touching Him. And that was how Rebreather knew that this was God; He walked across the desert, feet never touching the hardpan. It was weeks ago, and time in the Wasteland was not constant—years evaporated as quickly as sweat while minutes under the merciless sun were each small pieces of eternity unto themselves—but he remembered clearly the day God chose him to be His general.
God stood before him holding a glass of water. He saw ice cubes—something he had not seen since coming to the Wasteland—and condensation running from God’s hand to sprinkle the bone-white ground. Wondrous! For such a gift, God could have demanded obeisance to His mightiness, commanded Rebreather to kneel before Him and ask forgiveness for his sins.
Instead, God simply handed him the glass, remarking, “You look thirsty. Drink this.”
Rebreather felt the cold through the holes in his gloves. Not since his exile had he seen so much water all at once—and so pure! Water in the Wasteland was not what it was on Earth—not any of the Earths along any of the lines. Here, dust was the rule, mud was as gold, and rain as impossible to find as a unicorn or the virgin who brought such a beast to bay.
But God mistook his reverence for doubt. “I assure you it’s safe. Drink. When death comes, he will not offer you water. He will only laugh while you choke on your own dried and blackened tongue.”
So Rebreather removed his mask, let his hat fall to the dusty earth, and drank greedily. He did not spill a drop, and even sucked the dampness from the sides of the glass and the skin of his fingers. Let nothing be wasted.
Then God amazed him anew by taking back the glass and filling it again, the water catching and magnifying the brilliance of the noon sun until it pained his eyes, too-long protected by the smoked-glass of his mask. The water did not win
k into existence—for such was the way of a mesmerist and not of God at all—but simply refilled the glass as if drawn from an invisible fountain.
God handed the glass back to him without remark, and Rebreather drained it just as quickly; it would have been blasphemy to forsake the gift, or pause in the acceptance of His bounty.
“We could probably do this all day, but it would grow tiresome and I have things to do. The Nexus must be taken back from the outsiders. You understand this, don’t you? The sun can drive a man mad, as can eating the black meat of certain giant centipedes. Tell me your wits are not poisoned beyond repair?”
“No,” Rebreather answered, voice a cracked whisper from decades of disuse and dry, water-starved air.
“Good because I will send an army against these outsiders to drive them from the Nexus, and I will need someone to lead it. For too long, the Nexus has played servant to them, childish, immature simpletons with no conception of the power they are playing with, totally undeserving of what they wrongfully possess—”
God faltered, teetering upon the brink of rage or epiphany; Rebreather did not know which. He was an angry and vengeful God, and Rebreather trembled before His might, and thought that this was good. What use had he for a weak or compassionate God? Who amongst the Cast Out could want for anything but blood and vengeance? What else was there, really?
But God’s control was absolute, His wrath brought quickly to heel. “Do not fear me. Not yet. You are to be my general, and I will raise you up above all other creatures that infest the Wasteland. I will gather my forces from the desert, and you will drive them against my enemy as the hammer is driven against the nail. We will walk together against the outsiders, and together we will crush their sweet hands beneath our boot heels like crystal spiders. Do you understand?”
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 8
