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 comm
itting 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.”
He nuzzled her hand, a child not comprehending the swirl of words surrounding him, but sensing their intent.
“Forgive me,” she said, lifting his chin, thumb brushing the tears below the creature’s only eye as she placed the blade against his throat.
The Dust Eater only stared, a lamb that knows in that last moment what is to come.
Her blade sawed upwards in a quick, glimmering arc.
A slow wheezing breath, and for one moment, Jack thought Oversight had spared the Dust Eater’s life; thought she could not bring herself to kill something so pitiable. But the shuddering breath that filled the silence did not come from the Dust Eater. It came from Ellen. She pushed away from him, running into the hall, the bathroom door slamming behind her.
The only sound from the Dust Eater was a damp thud as it pitched forward, dropping to the floor amid a widening pool of blackness.
THREATS, WARNINGS, AND
ULTIMATUMS
Jack stared around the gloom, eyes touching on the others and moving away, heart slamming in his chest. Darkness edged in around his vision and his legs felt like jelly. The monster from the Wasteland lay in a pool of its own blood, the night transforming it into something less serious: a large stain of black paint or spilled ink, nothing more. Dawn would reveal otherwise.
How had this happened? How had everything spun so out of control, and I never even saw?
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus on nothing. Just blackness. Blackness. Breathing in. Breathing out. Slowing his heartbeat. Not screaming out loud. Not dying. Not going mad.
“Jack?” Alex said.
His eyes opened, hand rising sharply to cut the young man off. “Shut up! Whatever you have to say, I don’t care.”
It was impossible to forget that only minutes ago Alex had been looking to split his skull open with a pry bar and steal his computer, hand it over to Kreiger and doom them all. Impossible to forget, and maybe impossible to forgive. He expected it of Quince, though not to the extent the businessman had gone: a deal with the mad wizard, promises and the offer of servants. No, he hadn’t foreseen that. Not Quince, not Alex, not Kreiger or Oversight or this thing called the Dust Eater. So what did that say about him as a Caretaker if he couldn’t even take care of four desperate people who only wanted to go home? Not a Caretaker at all, really. More like a victim … like them. Leland had tried to sell him out, the man’s loyalty bought with nothing more than empty promises and a couple slaves. A better deal than Alex, which only made the young man seem foolish by comparison.
Quince stood in the hallway, looking less a man caught in a lie than a man whose intentions were foiled and was already working on something new, a way to salvage the situation.
He felt so tired. He just wanted to sleep, a long, lazy sleep that lasted into the cool of the morning, Saturday mornings of old. But he doubted he would get it—not today or tomorrow; maybe not ever. This insanity had to stop, and he was the only one who could stop it.
He was the Caretaker.
“Nail, are you all right?”
The gargoyle, fur matted and tangled with gore, looked up and nodded.
“Good,” he gestured at the Dust Eater. “Pick that up and follow me. Everyone else stays here. No exceptions.” His gaze leveled on the businessman. “I need you, Mr. Quince. I’m sure you’ve guessed that by now. But I won’t let you sacrifice all of us, either. Cross me again, and I’ll have Nail smash your legs. You can live well enough locked in a closet screaming in pain, and it won’t interfere with my plans at all. Do you understand?”
Leland narrowed his eyes, jaw working in silence.
“This is my Saloon,” Jack said, taking a small chess piece from his pocket, the black queen, and tossing it at the businessman’s naked chest. He caught it reflexively, hands knowing what it was, what it meant, even before his eyes saw it. And that look of knowing almost made Jack smile. Almost. “Never forget that.”
Slowly, Leland Quince nodded.
“The same goes for you, Alex.”
Lindsay seemed on the verge of tears, and
Jack wondered what he must look like to her—what they all must look like; a masquerade of children playing adults, fighting with playground rules. How much had she seen that she would never forget? Monsters tearing at one another, adults screaming at each other like schoolyard bullies, Oversight slicing the Dust Eater’s throat and leaving him facedown in a pool of his own blood? Or was it that when everything was over and the blood spilled, nothing was resolved? Threats were still being made, posturing and defiance. It wasn’t over. To a child needing answers, wasn’t that the most terrifying thing? It simply wasn’t over.
“Lindsay, come here,” Alex said, holding out an arm. She fell into his embrace, clinging to his neck and sobbing quietly against him. “It’s going to be all right.”
Jack wasn’t so sure. And therein lay the problem.
“Come on,” he said, the gargoyle following with the Dust Eater’s corpse over one shoulder like a sack of laundry. As he passed Leland Quince, he felt the man’s eyes upon him and found himself wishing that somewhere in all the chaos, Leland Quince had been wounded, even crippled.
Jack stopped before the bathroom, knocking lightly. “Ellen? Are you all right?”
There was no answer.
* * *
Ellen lay curled on her side, face pressed to the tiles, cold and hard. The door to her back was locked. No one could get in. Not even Jack, though the concern in his voice was plain.
Not now, Jack. Please, not now.
She wrapped her hands over her ears, muffling all sound, and curled herself tight, a developmental reversal, a reversion back to the fetus and beyond. Back in time. Back in the world. Back to a point of simplicity. Singularity. The sounds from without would eventually fade and go away. Eventually, everything would fade and go away.
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 29
