Leland’s lip curled into a snarl. “This is so typical of you, Jack. You talk all about your second chance, but that’s just another word for running away. That’s all you did; all you’ve ever done. You run away. The Saloon wasn’t an opportunity for you to fulfill your dream. It was just an excuse to run away from a shitty life that you were failing at. But instead of trying to fix it, you ran away, just like you always have. And now you’re taking it out on me.”
“No, Mr. Quince. I chose the Saloon over my old life, and I’m letting you choose as well: save her or don’t. Stay or don’t. You know the stakes. Keep all of this, or try for what’s behind door number two. But don’t take too long to figure it out.” The Caretaker tapped the watch crystal meaningfully. “You have less than two minutes.”
Leland glared accusingly at Jack, his hand folding over the watch. “You call this a choice?”
“Yes. The problem is you see choices too narrowly. You think a choice is filet mignon or Chilean sea bass. A choice can be as simple as whether you eat, or whether you starve. All choices have motivations behind them that make the options unequal. Sometimes, they hardly feel like choices at all. But they always are.”
“You’re fucking insane!”
“I doubt it. But you really are running out of time.” Jack returned to his half-finished breakfast, remarking only, “Fifty seconds, Mr. Quince. Time’s wastin’.”
Leland rose slowly, skull throbbing, an overwhelming urge to start bashing the young man with his fists, to beat the smugness from his face, to beat him like he had been beaten. The Caretaker was twisting him around like a puppet, playing with him, trying to break his spirit like an insolent child breaking so much expensive china. And what he hated most about it all was the deep-rooted sense that Jack was right, that Jack understood him, knew what he wanted, what he needed, and what it would take to break him. Jack had cut him open, spread him out like a book, and read his secrets, saw all of his flaws. He had found the way in through Leland’s armor to the things Leland hated and feared most: mediocrity, poverty, helplessness, powerlessness. Leland’s secret demons, Jack sentencing him to an eternity of life with them as his tormentors, furies who would dog his miserable life to an indigent’s grave. Leland Quince wanted to beat Jack to death, plain and simple, not for doing this to him, but simply for knowing this about him.
The watch in his fist cut at his palm.
“Fifteen seconds,” Jack said absently, shoveling up a gravy-laden biscuit trimmed in sticky yellow egg.
Leland fled the diner, turned left, and ran.
Through the glass he saw the booth where he sat with Jack only a second ago. It was empty; the Caretaker was gone as if he had never been.
* * *
She stood on the edge of the sidewalk, a little girl with dark, curly hair staring at the DON’T WALK sign across the street. Leland tried to shout, tell her to wait, but running a block left his lungs aching and turned his words weak and non-specific. He could not even remember her name. It was on the tip of his tongue only a moment ago, but no longer. The world fell out of step, the second hand no longer its regular rhythm, but one degrading, slowing, running down. The world was caught in a thick molasses that made it all draw out before him, each movement, each moment, a lifetime typified by desperate inadequacy.
The traffic light blazed a stark amber color. The DON’T WALK sign flashed red. The little girl—what the hell was her name? Think, damn it! Think! —stared down at her feet, or maybe something in the gutter. A car sped towards the intersection, polished black with gleaming chrome trim that glinted small arrows of early morning light.
The signal changed to red, naked and accusing.
Across the intersection, the sign changed to WALK.
The little girl—Lindsay! Her name is Lindsay! —looked up at the sign across the street as if startled from a daydream, and started forward.
The Mercedes zoomed through the first second of the red light without slowing. It all seemed so clear now: the trademark insignia, wide silent tires; good for traction and reduced road noise. She wouldn’t hear it. The driver behind the tinted windshield, cell phone cradled between his head and shoulder, distracted; he wore dark glasses, useless in the early morning twilight. Did he see the red light or the little girl? Did he care?
A car blew its horn—too late!—and the girl stopped, looked up.
Leland sprang from the sidewalk, nearly colliding with a metal light post as he leapt straight at Lindsay and the onrushing car. He snagged the back of her coat with one hand and pivoted, literally throwing her at the curb, his own momentum carrying him into the path of the oncoming car.
The black car swerved, its side mirror striking him from behind, knocking him to the gutter. He sucked air painfully, wondering exactly what differentiated the pain of broken ribs from that of a ruptured kidney. I’ve changed my mind, Jack. I don’t want this.
The Mercedes skidded to a halt and the driver stepped out: crisp white shirt, vermilion tie, useless shades, a cell phone in his hand momentarily forgotten. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Leland glared venomously at the man, unable to reply as he tried to catch his breath. Suddenly, this was his fault?
“You ran a red light you stupid jerk,” Lindsay hollered from behind, a child’s shrill, petulant complaint. Leland turned and saw her, her eyes glistening with tears of pain, anger and fright. Her mouth was set in a firm pout that might just as quickly dissolve into hysterical sobbing. She was rubbing one elbow and there was a very small cut on her forehead that trickled a thin line of red towards her left cheek.
The man from the Mercedes stared at her a moment, his mouth reduced to a narrow, indecisive crease. A horn blatted from the car rounding the corner into the newly blocked lane, the driver gesturing angrily at the Mercedes man, a pantomime of impotent obscenities. Leland rose, a little unsteadily, glaring at the Mercedes driver whose discomfort over the rapidly devolving situation was growing more apparent.
Finally, in what Leland guessed was an effort to save face, the Mercedes driver yelled, “Look before crossing the street next time.” Then he ducked into his car and punched the accelerator, tires screeching as he pulled away. The new car followed without stopping, and fifteen seconds after it began, it was over, leaving only the wounded behind to testify.
“He woulda killed me if you hadn’t pulled me outta the way,” Lindsay said, coming over to him. “Are you okay?”
Leland hunched over, hands on his knees, sucking deep, painful breaths. The agony in his right side had diminished a little, less sharp than a broad flower of anguish. He would probably live—if you called being run down and left in a gutter living?
“Mr. Quince?”
Jack said she knew the way out of this madness, but what did that mean? What was he supposed to do? “What?”
“Thank you.”
He looked back at her, sucking at the tattered inside of his lower lip. She’d obviously been hurt when he threw her out of the way, but she didn’t cry. He admired that. He didn’t cry when the car hit him, and she didn’t cry either. “Are you badly hurt?”
“I hit my head,” she replied. “But I think its okay. You?”
“I think I’ll be all right. Come on. Help get me out of the street before some other asshole tries to finish what that guy started. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Uh-huh.” She placed an arm around his waist, little more than a steadying effort; she was too small for anything more.
“‘Cause your head’s bleeding.”
She placed a hand to her forehead and winced, the small cut already slowed to a few tiny, jewel-like beads of blood. She took her fingers away, examining the red smear between her thumb and index finger. “I’m okay,” she repeated mechanically, and for no reason he could fathom, sucked the blood from her fingers.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got a first aid kit in my cab.”
She nodded and together they walked down the street in silence. A dented, meta
l box was under the cab’s passenger seat, a red cross painted on the lid. It was exactly where he knew it would be. And the realization of that fact made him want to run away screaming. How easy it would be to slip into this reality, accept this new role as his own, these new thoughts as his own, even as his former life—his real life—screamed in agony over the sufferings it was forced to endure, and the slow, agonizing death that was overtaking it. Leland Quince, Wall Street’s Wrecking Ball, was dying the long, painful death, the erosion of his being, a consumption of his identity. And when that body was dead and gone, he would be left with Leland “Quincey” Quince, cab driver and professional loser. There would be nothing else then but blind, bitter acceptance, and dreams that would drive him awake in the middle of the night, screaming.
But Lindsay could save him; Jack promised she would.
Seated in the open door, feet swinging, she sat patiently while he fumbled with some topical ointment that looked like black axle grease. He daubed it into the cut, then covered it with the smallest bandage he had in the battered tin, one that would cover the cut and pull the least amount of hair later when it needed to be changed.
Who are you? he heard a voice asking over and over in his mind. A firm, angry voice. The voice of a winner that could not stomach losers. The voice of success that did not tolerate failure. The voice of a former life very much afraid that the future held no place for him. Who are you?
“Is that better?”
She nodded.
He stood up and had to steady himself against the cab. His legs ached from crouching, his right kidney felt like someone had punched it repeatedly, and he could still feel the agony in his groin if he moved wrong.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Mr. Quince?”
He sucked several slow, careful breaths. “No, I don’t think so. But I will be. I hope so, anyway.” Jack said there was a better place than this, a better reality than this. One more suited to him. Not easy, but more to his liking. And only one person could tell him where it was. “Lindsay?”
“What?”
“Do you know where we’re supposed to go from here?”
She shrugged. “Sort of.”
Leland scowled almost as a reflex, and hoped belatedly that she would mistake it for a grimace of pain. “What does ‘sort of’ mean? Do you know where we’re going? What we’re looking for?”
“I know … a little,” Lindsay confessed unhappily, searching for words that could more precisely describe the nature of her understanding. But there weren’t any, and what she found would only upset Mr. Quince. “I don’t know exactly where we have to be. Not yet. I just know which direction we have to head in.”
Leland nodded, closing the passenger door and circling around the taxicab. He climbed in, a slow process so as not to aggravate any existing pains, and looked at the little girl’s expectant face. “So, what way now?”
She looked away, face tight with concentration as if she was trying to wrestle something from memory. “We need to go south.”
“South?”
She nodded.
“South,” he repeated, and started working a knot of pain with his thumb and forefinger that felt like a nail driven straight between his eyes and left to rust. “And which way is south?”
Lindsay looked down the street where the glimmering disk of overcast sun lazed in the new sky, gray clouds already sweeping across the horizon to obscure it from view. “Go to the corner and turn right.”
Leland looked ahead to the sun, feeling like an idiot. If he had thought for even a moment, he would have remembered the points of a compass: he was facing the sunrise; south was to his right. He had been shown up by a seven-year old; a smart, defiant seven-year old with an understanding of how to escape this nightmare they were trapped in.
“Okay,” he said. “You navigate, I’ll drive. Just tell me which direction.”
The cab pulled away from the curb into morning traffic, the OFF DUTY sign on the roof lighted. At the next corner, Leland turned right, heading south.
They made every green light leaving the city.
ONE TOO MANY, ONE TOO FEW
“Jack?”
Slumped against the wall, his eyes working furiously behind closed lids, locked in some inescapable dream. His skin seemed almost normal in the early light, not the pallid complexion of toxic residue sweating from his pores; his hair not tangled with neglect, but tousled with sleep. Nothing to worry about.
But things weren’t what they seemed.
“I couldn’t help but notice that the two of you are still here.”
A chill ran up Ellen’s spine as Kreiger called cheerily from across the narrowing strip of Wasteland sand. The Tribe of Dust leered like pack dogs from forty yards away, Kreiger’s expression a mixture of triumph and rage all swirled and twitching in his crooked smile, dancing behind eyes hidden by the shadow of the rising sun, whispering of madness. She scowled and turned away, touching Jack’s cheek and forehead lightly; cool and clammy, slick with the rust-colored, spice-sweat.
“I only mention it because I counted four trains.” He turned to the others for confirmation. “Four, yes?”
“Four,” the necromancer agreed needlessly.
“And you and I both know there were only five tickets out of the Wasteland. Which means—and check my math in case I made a mistake—that the two of you have only one ticket left between you.” Kreiger clucked his tongue childishly. “It would seem to me that there is either one too many of you, or one too few of those confounded tickets. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Go to hell,” she grumbled, straightening Jack’s hair because it gave her a reason to keep her back to the Tribe of Dust. She didn’t want to look at Kreiger. More importantly, she didn’t want him to look at her, to see her in the naked light of dawn, emotions betrayed in her eyes.
But the Cast Out was not so easily put aside. “Been there. It looks remarkably like an endless desert of white.” He narrowed his eyes, saw the quiver along her skin and knew, an expert safecracker who had found that narrow flaw in the design. “What scares you most, Ellen Monroe? That Jack might use the last ticket for himself and leave you behind forever, or that he might actually sacrifice his own life to save yours, a useless chemical-junkie fleeing reality at every turn. You belong here with us, Ellen. Maybe that’s why Jack’s leaving you behind. Then again, maybe he’s not. Maybe Jack’s going to sacrifice himself, trade his life for yours. Maybe … he loves you.”
“I said, go to hell!” she screamed. In the golden light of morning, angry tears stood like veins of liquid copper against her skin.
The Cast Out smiled, chewing thoughtfully at the inside of his cheek. “Well, something to think about. I’m sure you’ll figure it out either way, depending upon which one of you gets left behind to die.” He turned away, and the others followed. “We’ll talk again soon. The barrier won’t last much longer.”
And they disappeared, one moment walking into the sun as it crested the eternal horizon, silhouettes of blackness moving towards the blazing fire, the next, vanished. Gone. Disappearing over their own event horizon.
“Come on, Jack,” Ellen said, pulling him by the wrists in an effort to get him back on his feet. “You’ve got to help me here.”
Jack did not answer, had not even heard. Ellen half-supported, half-carried him into the Saloon, wondering if he had any idea what was going on, or if this was all just random stirrings and noises, the outside burble of invading reality threatening to wake him from his dream.
The saloon had changed in the short moments they spent on the platform seeing the others board the trains, disappear from their lives forever. More things had vanished.
A lot more.
The waiting room was almost empty. Gone was the bench, the chair, the rack of magazines. All that remained was the candy machine, the mock train schedule, … and the horrible, serpentine tail protruding from the hole in the wall!
Ellen stared at it, eyes wide, mouth open, scarcely able to draw
breath as the urge to scream filled her brain.
The tail simply lay there, the smallest of its tips tapping gently against the bare wood floor: thut, thut, thut. The drum of expectant fingers, demanding answers, impatient and possibly dangerous.
Why? She hadn’t seen it since that first day, that first morning! Why was it back?
That’s the thing about tails, Ellen. They’re never truly gone. Always behind you … but never left behind.
She pulled Jack in after her, his feet tangling and nearly dumping both of them as she urged him quickly down the steps and into the near-empty room. The tail did not react, but continued its expectant thut, thut, thut. Like a ticking clock, a reminder that their time here was drawing to an end. They had come full circle, only the two of them now. Was the ride almost over, the tail a reminder that tomorrow morning she would awaken in a padded room in a canvas coat while a doctor (what the hell was his name?) started her on a regimen of drugs and shock therapy to burn all of this out of her mind? Was this what it was like to slowly become sane?
Jack weighed heavily against her.
“You have to help me, Jack,” she whimpered, clinging to him and tugging him along beside her as she followed the edge of the wall, keeping as far from the tail as possible. The candy machine pressed up against her, the plastic and metal warm like a thing alive, like too much of the Saloon. And what wasn’t alive had an animatronics quality like the artificial creatures that inhabited Disney World: jabbering dead presidents and creepy tick-tock animals, smiling and waving, but not real, just make-believe.
Like the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.
She shouted down the idea, a scream inside of her head that overrode the cynical voice trying to tell her things she didn’t want to hear.
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 39
