“What is it?” he asked.
“They’re gone.”
Jack followed her stare into the Wasteland, the sand empty; neither the Cast Outs nor the dregs were anywhere to be seen, an eerie silence settling over the desert. The Tribe of Dust had disappeared. For the first time in days, Jack could almost believe that the Wasteland was as barren and lifeless as it appeared on its surface.
“Did the barrier fall?” Ellen asked suddenly. “Are they inside?”
Without knowing how he knew, Jack answered straightaway: “No, the barrier’s still intact.” It was smaller now, too small, but it still held. So where did they all go?
“I can’t tel—”
Ellen’s reply was cut off by a piercing wail from the east. Jack’s first thought was of an animal puling out its dying breath in an agonized shriek, a victim to the appetites of some mindless Wasteland monstrosity. But the sound grew louder, the pitch deafening. No sense of pain in the horrific wailing, just an autonomic tone, more mechanical than organic: the sound of tires over hot pavement or the whine of an engine cycling up higher and higher; something happening, something being set in motion that could no longer be stopped.
Ellen was next to him, flinching away from the sound, ears covered. “What is that?”
He was shaking his head, eyes searching the horizon for some kind of explanation. Then he pointed out into the Wasteland and the mile-long shadow cast by the saloon. “Maybe that.”
A lone dreg raced across the bone-white dust, impossibly fast, its mouth gaping wide as it bore down upon them. From the widow’s walk, Nail snarled and lunged, flying out to intercept it. Ellen ducked to keep from being hit by him, but Jack was less surprised. He knew Nail would attack the dreg; charged with protecting the Caretaker, he would attack anything that breached the barrier.
Others knew it also.
“Nail, stop!”
But the gargoyle would not be deterred, focused solely upon the dreg, Jack’s words useless even as he spoke them. And the Caretaker felt his limbs turn wooden, terror lodging ice-cold in his spine and branching outwards, turning him to stone. He wanted to run, to look away—anything not to see this. He could already feel the pattern, a sense of the written future. He could not stop what was about to happen; he could only watch it unfold.
A gunshot exploded, and Jack saw Rebreather knee-deep in a shallow cut of the Wasteland—So close! How could the barrier have shrunk so far, and you not notice? —his long rifle to one shoulder, the barrel still smoking. White sand spilled from his coat and hat as he stood, water sheeting from a rising leviathan.
Nail twisted abruptly upwards, sensing the trap too late—the dreg was bait! Bait to draw the Guardian close—but it was simply momentum and nothing more. One wing hung by a shred of ragged, bloody skin, the bone shattered by Rebreather’s bullet. The appendage shook like a wind-tattered sail, and the gargoyle crashed gracelessly into the Wasteland in a cloud of bone-white dust.
From the far side of the barrier, Rebreather ejected the spent shell, snapping back the cartridge to load a second bullet. He leveled the rifle at the gargoyle’s head just as Nail staggered to his feet, favoring the ruined wing while blood ran down his fur to splatter the parched sand.
And for one sickening moment that stretched out before him in a long ribbon of time winding away into eternity, there was dead silence. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. The world was a still-life, a grainy photo etched upon Jack’s retina, burned forever into his mind. He heard Rebreather pull the trigger, a soft click that made him flinch, not from surprise, but because he expected it, knew it, saw it.
But there was no second shot. The rifle hissed like a splash of hot metal as orange sparks burst from the chamber … and nothing more.
Rebreather cast the weapon aside, the rifle shattering upon the sand: wood rotted to powder, metal pitted and collapsed beneath the weight of its own rust. It existed upon the ground for seconds only before being reduced to a shadow of discolored dust in the featureless desert. The tall Cast Out drew the long sword from across his back, and the stillness fell before it. The dust around his feet exploded in a charge of dregs, their bodies boiling from the sand as they scrambled after Nail. They bore into him, grappling and dragging and pulling him further and further from the Saloon, closer and closer to the barrier’s edge. And even as he struck them down one after another, the outcome seemed inevitable. Rebreather stood waiting, sword ready, Gusman Kreiger and Reginald Hyde to either side of him.
Jack barreled down the steps, leaping two and three at a time to reach the bottom, to save Nail. The gargoyle had looked after him all this time, stood by him when all others assumed he was wrong, misguided, or simply crazy; a useless dreamer in over his head. He had to save Nail; had to somehow stop what was happening out on the Wasteland, change the outcome. He was the Caretaker. He was supposed to take care of things. He was supposed to run reality. What good was he if he couldn’t do this?
He was dimly aware of someone yelling his name, screaming it over and over, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t wait to find out who or why. He had to save Nail; he had to!
More steps, three at a time, four! Over thundering footfalls, the horrible sounds from without assailed him, boring through the slat boards and wall planks to cut straight into his brain like knives. Snarls and howls and screams of death. He turned through the waiting room and burst out upon the platform, leaping over the tracks in a desperate bound, narrowly missing his head on the platform overhang.
Nail!
A trail of mangled corpses led to where the gargoyle was making his final, desperate stand. Jack watched a gerrymander catch him about the waist, powerful legs driving into the sand, gouging great furrows as it pushed Nail backwards another four feet. Nail’s fist crashed down, smashing its spine. But as the dreg fell, limbs twitching like a crushed insect that has not yet discovered its own failed mortality, another immediately replaced it. Every victory cost the gargoyle ground, and the Tribe of Dust was waiting.
Jack stumbled, falling to the sand, and when he tried to get up, he felt a sharp lance sheer up his left ankle and calf.
Nail!
The gargoyle was buried to his knees in the sand, dregs clawing up from below the dust to tear at him, drag him under, back down below like corpses’ hands thrusting up from the briny deep. And he was covered in blood. The mangled wing had been completely torn away, and something protruded from one of his forearms, possibly the splintered end of a bone. Nail continued ripping and smashing at the Wasteland creatures, fur bristling, wisps of blood fluttering from his nostrils. But still he was being pulled away, drawn closer to the Tribe of Dust and Rebreather’s sword.
“Nail!” Jack screamed.
The gargoyle seemed to hear over the din, and turned. One eye had been slit open, a jagged gash tearing the side of his face leaving him partially blind. But the other found Jack’s, and for just a moment, Nail stopped fighting, stopped resisting. The eye simply stared back at him, the Caretaker of the Nexus and the Guardian of the Caretaker.
“Nail?”
Rebreather lifted his sword high over his head, and Jack was tackled from behind, caught around the waist and dragged down amidst the mangled and fallen bodies of countless slaughtered dregs. He looked up to see Ellen on top of him, favoring one arm that he was dimly aware she must have fallen on while taking him down. “Jack, don’t!” she begged, trying to catch her breath and speak. “They’ll kill you!”
“But Nail—”
Rebreather’s sword cut the air, striking the gargoyle between the shoulder and neck, cleaving down at an angle that split the Guardian nearly in half. For one moment, the gargoyle’s arms shot straight out, hands open as if in astonishment … or surrender.
Then Nail’s body sagged under its own weight and was consumed by the Wasteland, dragged beneath the surface, gone.
The last remaining dregs bent to the desert, and were sucked back below. Rebreather similarly disappeared. It was as if the sand itself had t
urned instantly to liquid, returning the netherworld demon from whence he came. Reginald Hyde leaned his head back to laugh and the white ground swallowed him whole. The mounded dead dissolved into dust, little more than vague shapes, empty outlines on dead sand to mark their passing. In time, the wind would erase even that.
Only Kreiger remained, locked in Jack’s stare, eyes glimmering with something like merriment, but which Jack saw only as the smug delight of a gloating devil. For one brief moment, he saw an expression of absolute hatred in those different-colored eyes. But the mask fell quickly over Kreiger’s skin, leaving only his mocking stare as he slid back down into the Wasteland.
Ellen was clinging to him, not holding him back any longer, but simply holding him close, her fingers tangled desperately into his shirt. In the twilight of the Saloon’s lengthening shadow, she wept softly, whispering over and over: “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. He hadn’t been able to stop it. He hadn’t even seen it coming until it was too late. Kreiger was a stone’s throw from the Nexus, and Jack knew he was no closer to being a Caretaker now than he was eight days ago. He was not the Caretaker. He was just a hapless dreamer.
Nothing had changed for him.
Nothing at all.
Except now Nail was dead.
FOOL’S PARADISE
The vending machine in the waiting room had not disappeared, still buzzing and flickering with uneven consistency, but more than half the shelves were now empty. Neither Ellen nor Jack felt much like eating, anyway.
Jack sat on the floor. Ellen slouched at the bar on the remaining stool and watched his vacant expression. Her wrist hurt from the fall out on the Wasteland, and her elbows and palms were scraped raw in places from the sand. Nothing a little cold water couldn’t fix. She ran them under the faucet until her hands were nearly numb, the wounds run clean. The icy water even made the throbbing in her wrist retreat to a dull ache.
Jack was more complicated. How did you fix a wounded soul? Did he even realize how much of the Saloon had disappeared? She did not recall the morning exactly; was more gone now than before? All that remained in this room was the ticket booth, the bar, a single barstool and the coffee machine. There was nothing behind the bar: no glasses, no cups, no bottles of liquor or beer or flat soda-pop. Even the spill of broken glass and coins was gone off the floor. Maybe this really was just a dollhouse, and the little girl who owned it—owned them, too—had grown up. Too old for toys, she was taking it all away one piece at a time, wrapping each carefully in tissue paper and placing them into neatly molded storage trays. They weren’t going to die, not any of them. They were simply going to be put away, to disappear to some dark oblivion where all useless, unwanted things eventually go.
But, however despairing or surreal, Nail’s death cast a measure of doubt on that notion. They were going to die. She had seen where Rebreather stood, and knew that for all of Kreiger’s bluster, this threat was neither empty nor exaggerated. The barrier was going away and Nail was the only one who could have protected them.
The thought of Nail made her heart ache; it was like watching someone shoot a wounded dog. In many ways, that was Nail: an over-protective watchdog … with six-inch fangs.
And now he was gone, cut down and torn apart while protecting them.
Jack blamed himself. Not just for Nail, but for everything. She glanced over at him, trying not to stare at the redness of his eyes, the tears he worked to conceal. It would only make him self-conscious, and she didn’t want to hurt him further. “Jack?”
He looked up, his face tired and confused: old, worn-down and haggard; young, lost and bewildered.
“Is there…” She faltered, unsure exactly what it was she was trying to say. There were so many things, half-formed, insensible. The only thing she was certain of was the emptiness in her heart. “Is there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. If I knew what to do, maybe, but I don’t. I just don’t.”
An uncomfortable silence grew between them, and Ellen realized for the first time in a week how big the Saloon was; she was lost in it, small and frightened and alone. Once she relished the open space, the solitude; so peaceful, so perfect. Every romantic’s unspoken fantasy: alone in a deserted place with the man of your dreams, nothing but the warm sand and the blue sky.
But it was different now. Everything was different. The silence felt oppressive, a beast in the shadows ready to pounce; always ready. And the solitude was no longer liberating, but lonely and frightening and cruel. What had been so wrong about that first morning that it couldn’t have lasted a little longer? Was it too much to ask?
Apparently it was.
The setting sun blazed through the window behind her, lighting Jack’s face with bars of crimson and black, shadows etched deep into his features. It burned the polished brass and copper of the coffeemaker into a molten thing, hell’s furnace, a witch’s crucible. Jack threw an almost careless glance at it, and a low bubbling sound came from within, a faint gurgling like the hiss of a gargoyle’s breath.
“What are you doing?” Ellen asked, hoping it did not sound too much like a reproach.
“I know what I have to do,” he said. “And I’m running out of time. Oversight was right. I let myself get distracted by things around me instead of doing what I was supposed to do. And now Nail is dead.”
“Nail is dead because Kreiger and the Cast Outs killed him,” she said. “They were afraid of him. Even if the barrier fell tonight, they could never have defeated Nail, and Kreiger knew that. So they killed him.”
“I should have seen it coming. I didn’t.”
“You can’t blame yourself for Nail’s death, Jack. And you can still beat Kreiger.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Nail was,” she said, searching for a way to reach him. Jack was the natural Dreamline, only he was afraid, too uncertain of himself to just let go of the ledge. “Nail was supposed to protect the Caretaker of the Nexus. He died protecting you … protecting the Caretaker.”
Jack circled around to the back of the bar, and fished out a mug along with a spoon, some sugar, and non-dairy creamer. These things he found. He couldn’t have found two chairs for them to sit on, a table to sit at, or much of a meal to eat, but Jack could always find the fixings he needed for a cup of coffee.
“You can’t be serious?” Ellen said. “You’re barely awake now. You’re eyes can’t even focus, and you want to fry up your brain again? You may not survive this time, Jack.”
He looked up at her and she saw the anger in his expression, the thin veil of his fear. “What do you want from me? There’s only one way I know how to get out of here. It may not even work, but it’s the only chance we’ve got.”
“Not this way.” She was looking at the steaming cup in front of him, the contents like black poison.
“It’s the only way I know,” he confessed. “I drink coffee and I play the same song over and over until my mind loses its grip on reality and the story is released. I don’t control it; I don’t direct it; I don’t even know anything about it until it starts to unfold. I don’t make the story; I find the story. I wish to hell I could turn it on and off, aim it like a gun and just pull the trigger. You don’t think I’d like to be able to just sit down and write from eight until noon every day and spew out a New York Time’s best-seller at the end of six months—or this reality’s living equivalent? But I can’t. This is the way I know. This is the way that works. And it’s the only way that—” He halted abruptly, swallowing hard as though about to choke. “—that we can get out of here.”
“And if it doesn’t work, how will you find the story then?” she asked. “If caffeine and the poor boy’s nutmeg high doesn’t get you on the Dreamline, what then? Drop acid? Chew mushrooms? Boil a mix of Wasteland dust, powdered scarabs and toad skin that will trip you out and blow holes in your brain tissue? There’re no answers there, Jack. I know. I’ve tried. I won’t let you do that to
yourself.”
“I’m trying to get you out of here!”
Ellen jerked back as if slapped, Jack only staring at her as though he had actually hit her. Both their faces were flushed, dark with emotion and failed daylight. The words hung between them in the silence, and nothing could take them back.
“I thought you were trying to get us out of here,” she asked.
“That’s what I meant,” he amended, looking away.
“Was it?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
Ellen slid from the stool and walked up the stairs, leaving him alone in the dark. She stopped at the top of the landing, standing in the doorway of the room she shared with Lindsay. Everything, she realized, was turning against itself in paradox: she hated the loneliness, but was glad for it also; there were places to flee where no one would see her, see the expression in her eyes, the tight fists she had made out of her hands, knuckles white as paper. She didn’t want anyone to see; wanted to throw up at the thought that someone might know, might find out that Jack made her mad enough to want to punch him, and hurt enough that she wanted to cry over him, and happy enough that she would have forgiven him all these transgressions if he would only agree to stay with her.
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 50
