by Guy Adams
“Damn straight,” Yuma agreed. “I wouldn’t be without them.”
Phatter-Gee looked at the half-finished slogan on Yuma’s back. ‘MORTALS EAT MY SH’ it said, only a couple of letters away from a culinary suggestion. He thought about mentioning the mixed message but decided he’d likely only get one of his limbs bitten off. Yuma was not known for either consistency or restraint.
“As long as they know their place,” said Brinkle, happy to qualify his boss’s opinion without fear of losing body parts.
“In the stable,” agreed Yuma.
“What about Henry Jones?” Phatter-Gee asked, barely aware that he was saying it until the words had left his beak. Noticing that Yuma had bared his fangs, he decided to try and get his opinion in first in case it saved him a beating. “That fucker’s sure got a cheek ain’t he?” he said, “trying to lord it over the demonic castes.”
Yuma’s fangs didn’t vanish but the man nodded and Phatter-Gee decided he’d got away with it.
“He’ll soon learn,” said Yuma, “when he comes around here looking for his cut.”
“We’ll give him a cut, won’t we, boss?” laughed Brinkle.
“We certainly will,” Yuma agreed, climbing back onto the bench and gesturing towards his nearly-finished tattoo. Phatter-Gee returned to work, the needle hammering its way through the inch or so of hard scale. The ink hissed, cut with extra Snark venom in order to give it clarity on this rough canvas. Phatter-Gee had spilled a couple of drops of it earlier and last time he had looked it was still eating its way through the earth beneath his parlour.
“Hey,” said Brinkle, “you think we should try and turn some of his memories into Buzz? Imagine what it would be like to smoke the moment God got His.”
Yuma snorted. “You believe that spongy little half-life managed to kill God and you’ll believe anything,” he said. “Fucker’s full of nothing but shit and air.”
“Guess so,” Brinkle agreed. “He must have managed to take the Exchange out though. I know a guy in Golgotha who swears he was there when it fell. Saw that tower smack the earth like a felled tree. Way I hear it, he killed so many that day the Fundament’s still choking.”
“Yeah?” Yuma tried to stretch his leg, as it was cramping again. “Well, I reckon it’ll fit one more if he shows his face around here.”
5.
ON THE EDGE of Chatter’s Munch, Henry Jones brought his rakh to a standstill and took a moment to centre himself.
“What are you doing?” the Exchange asked, impatient to get business done. “We won’t get our due sat here.”
“According to Sister Franquesa I’m unlikely to get our due anyway,” Jones said. “These boys don’t like mortals. It’s a matter of principle to them. The only way we’re leaving this town with anything other than bullets in our back will be if we kill for it.”
“You think you’re up to the challenge?” the Exchange asked.
“With you watching my back.” Jones removed his guns from his holster, checked they were fully loaded and returned them. He hadn’t needed to be sure but it was part of the ritual, running his thumb around the cylinder, feeling each bullet in its chamber. A blessing, a little prayer to the God of Gunfighters. “After this,” he said, “it’s time we set down some roots. A base to work from. People need to see me setting up a crew, making a statement.”
“Perception?”
“Damn right. The most powerful force in the Dominion does not spend his days sleeping by the side of the road and getting sores on his ass.”
“I thought you wanted to visit each of the other gangs personally.”
“I do, and will, but we’re raising empires here and that means staking your claim on a patch of land.”
“You could have had a tower but you had us destroy it. I miss it.”
“I bet you do, but you’ll have a new tower soon. Something better.”
“That would take some building.”
“For an ambitious thing like you? You’ll love every moment.”
The Exchange smiled. “I grow to like you, Henry Jones. I hope you are not shortly to die.”
“You and me both.”
6.
THE TOWN OF Chatter’s Munch had once been little more than a dirt pit infested with vermin. Its oldest residents claim with pride that it’s never really changed.
While it may still have had a bacterial foot in the past it had certainly grown, like all good cultures do. It had become a thriving town, its streets radiating out from that central pit.
The pit itself was a place where nostalgists still liked to visit, tired of the sight of new buildings and businesses appearing on the outskirts, a seemingly bottomless hole where they dumped their unwanted shit. Over the next thirteen minutes its capacity was to be thoroughly tested.
The first four minutes were taken by Jones walking into town. That was how long it took for someone to recognise him and raise the alarm.
The next minute and a half saw Jones continue on his way towards the centre of town while Yuma rallied his gang together to intercept him.
The residents of Chatter’s Munch were only too used to the control Yuma’s gang extended over the town. It was, in effect, the gang’s town. They were the dominant residents and the rest had two choices: oppose them (end up in the pit) or work for them (earn some money before probably still ending up in the pit). Unsurprisingly, most opted for the latter.
Of them all, Phatter-Gee was the resident who had succeeded in avoiding the pit the longest. That’s not to say he hadn’t come close to expiration on a couple of occasions. Indeed, he had once been thrown in there and was only still alive to tell the tale because, possessing such an extended collection of limbs, he had managed to hold on to the brim. He had hung there for four days, long enough that Yuma forgot why he was so cross with him and fished him out, his reptilian heart set on the notion of a flaming skull being etched onto his perineum. “I want something for the man-pigs to look at while I’m squatting over their soft, pink faces,” Yuma had explained. Phatter-Gee had been back to work, scaly balls in one hand and iron in the other with nobody choosing to comment on his near death.
There were some, especially the younger folk, who looked to Phatter-Gee as a talisman of good fortune. To have spent so long in Yuma’s company and still draw breath, they said, that was charm beyond pure good fortune, he simply must be blessed in some way. His answer was simple enough. “Yuma loves his ink and nobody else in this place can draw for shit.”
Perhaps, however, for all his insistence to the contrary, there was something in people’s claims. An inflated sense of self-preservation. If so, it served him once more on the day that Henry Jones came to town. He was taking a piss break when the news came in and he was out of the toilet window, abandoning all but the clothes he stood in, before Yuma gave his first order. He was on the far side of town before he even bothered to tuck his dick away, patting it on its back and wandering off to pastures new.
Seven minutes in and Jones caught his first sight of the opposition. The Exchange had hung back but he felt her power with him, the hair on the back of his neck raised as if at the promise of a storm. She was the silent partner.
Two of Yuma’s gang had decided they could earn a little respect by taking him out on their own. One carried a stubby rifle, the other a crossbow of some kind, its string groaning in complaint as it was drawn back.
“Be sure that you want to do this,” Jones shouted, still walking, his hands hovering near the grips of his guns. “I ain’t here to kill unless that’s the way it has to be.”
The first gang member, a hatchling of twelve months, had decided it would be cool if he screamed “Eat lead, man-pig!” at Jones while pulling the trigger on his rifle. In actuality, he didn’t get further than the first syllable, his rifle at forty-five degrees, before Jones shot him, blowing his forked tongue out of the back of his throat. It flapped in a puddle of blood, trying to finish a whole word, and then fell still.
The second g
ang member had the sense to take cover before opening fire. The mortal man appeared blind and yet there were many unfortunate corpses who could attest to how little this had set him back. Squatting behind a half open door, he shot a bolt at Jones and had the opportunity of seeing for himself how well Jones could ‘see’ for a man who had no eyes. The gunslinger rolled to the left even as the bolt left the crossbow, dropping into a crouch from which he fired one shot, the bullet piercing the wood of the door and finding its target in a spray of blood and splinters.
Jones was back on his feet and walking.
Seven minutes and ten seconds.
Eight minutes and Jones reached the centre of town, strolling around the pit, knowing that he was being watched by both the residents and—inevitably—Yuma himself.
“I came for my dues,” he said, barely raising his voice. “I came in peace. I am still willing to leave in the same way, despite the fact that your men struck first. That is the first of only two kindnesses I am willing to offer.”
Yuma, only too aware that the longer he let this mortal talk, the more power he was conceding, shouted from the front door of Phatter-Gee’s parlour, a hundred yards away. “You are very kind, man-pig.” He took a blast of Buzz, mainlining the experience of an old man in India being shot with a rifle by British forces. Yuma hoped this wasn’t a bad omen. “And what is the second kindness?”
“That kindness is only offered if you’re stupid enough to want to fight.”
“You’re damn right we’re going to fight, mother fucker!”
“Then I don’t want you to come one at a time. That wouldn’t be fair. I want every single one of you, every man you have, to come for me like you mean it. It won’t do you any good but at least I can rest easy knowing I gave you some kind of fighting chance.”
“I’ll give you fighting chance, you piece of shit!” Yuma screamed, unable to tolerate another insult to his masculinity.
He ran at Jones, firing wild, anger and his running feet robbing his bullets of accuracy.
Jones sighed, raised his gun and fired once. The hand in which Yuma was holding his gun folded back on itself, until he was holding nothing more than a collection of half-severed digits. Still Yuma came running, partly because he was so high he hadn’t fully appreciated his situation and partly because there was no way he could stop now and retain an ounce of authority.
Jones fired again, this bullet hitting Yuma’s other hand.
By this time, Yuma was almost upon him. Jones waited until the last moment, turned and let a kick of a boot combined with Yuma’s momentum send him flying into the pit. He rebounded off the far side in a shower of dirt and curses and then fell out of sight.
Nine minutes.
Jones turned his back to the pit and addressed the rest of the town.
“Come on then,” he said, “let’s have this done.”
They didn’t all rush him, of course. While there was a good deal of stupidity in Chatter’s Munch, its reserves weren’t endless. The locals finally saw a chance at freedom and the rest of Yuma’s gang were roughly divided between feelings of ambition and terror. As a result, it was only twenty-nine reptilian, drug-addled, muscle-bound, bigoted creatures that bore down on him. They ran at him from the cover of shop doorways, back alleys, windows and parked vehicles. They roared, as much to fill themselves with confidence as him with fear. They knew he couldn’t possibly shoot them all, and he couldn’t, not if he’d been playing fair with the laws of physics, but Henry Jones didn’t really give a donkey’s dick about rules and he had the Exchange on his side. He reached into his coat and into the small pocket of the abyss that was stored there. His fingers touched ice and metal and withdrew a Gatling gun. He dropped to one knee, wedged the weapon against his foot and began to crank. Bullets embedded in flesh, plaster and brick as he described an arc. They took out windows in showers of glass, the locals diving for cover behind their shop counters or tables.
The gang’s only real chance would have been to keep running at him; they might have reached him before he could bring the gun to bear. But it’s hard to think clearly when the air is full of bullets, the natural response is to skid to a halt and panic, by which time you’re already dead.
Nine and a half minutes and Jones began the laborious task of dragging the dead and dying into the pit. After a couple of minutes, some of the locals emerged from their hiding places and began to help.
And that’s how Henry Jones became the new power in Chatter’s Munch.
7.
SOME MILES AWAY, Preacher, the one man in the Dominion who could tell Jones for sure where his dead wife was, sat in a bar and listened to the news coming out of Chatter’s Munch. He sighed, paid for his drink and then headed on.
WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?
(An excerpt from the book by Patrick Irish)
AGAIN, I EXPERIENCED that despicable pleasure in seeing these events unfold. A vicarious entertainment that brought me up short as I realised once again I was cheering on nothing less than slaughter. Of course, it would be a noble man indeed who would consider Yuma and his gang worthy of pity. They were terrible creatures, all and yet should I really take such enjoyment from seeing Jones despatch them?
Perhaps there was another truth here to appreciate. Rather than spend my time dwelling on the politics of Wormwood’s presence, the dull conversations in offices of power all over the world as man’s leaders tried to decide what they should do, I was following the simpler story. I was watching the tale of a man who wanted nothing more than to find his wife. Everything else in Henry Jones’ story was peripheral. The empire he was building—and yes, it grows still, thanks to the Exchange and the power it brought him; the Dominion of Circles, much like everywhere else in existence, would not be the place it once was—was nothing to him. He wanted Harmonium Jones, and once he had her, he would let the power and violence continue to build around him, relieved to finally have someone of worth he could share it with.
But was it important?
Should I not be concerning myself with Wormwood? With the talks between Lucifer and the powers of America? Or the simple lives being carved out by those I had once travelled with? Of Brother William, now a happy shop boy, or the unfortunate Father Martin, wrought by indecision and a moral complication that now dominated his every waking thought?
Perhaps I should. But those concerns were constants. They would be what they would be. The smaller picture, the—in the loosest sense of the word—human picture was the one whose threads I couldn’t help but follow. I wanted to know what would happen to the blind outlaw and his lady, the God Killer and the woman he would die for.
I would return to Wormwood soon enough, once I could bear to see the slow cogs of government grind out a miserable future for us all, the war that seemed inevitable, the pointless lives that would go on to be nothing more than footnotes in our history books. But first, I would see this one story through. I would see Henry Jones find his wife.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TWO CROSSES AT DANGER PASS
1.
IF ONLY ARNO had turned left. Not that it would have been easy; the trail would have led him to the Palace of Shines where the light had teeth and an unwary traveller could find themselves eaten by their own reflections. But even if the roaming Shimmer Queens had trimmed down the group’s number, it would have been better than what lay in the opposite direction. Adversity brings people together and if Arno had fought hard for his people—as he most certainly would have done—then maybe the day would have ended differently.
Arno turned right.
“The road looks easier this way,” he explained to Veronica. “I think the left hand fork was heading into higher ground and we’ve been breaking our backs enough today without a hill climb.”
This was certainly true, it had been a long day of walking with little to show for it. Arno’s hopes had been raised by stories they’d heard of the Crackling Field, a dark, moss-filled acre that, it was claimed, had been a
popular haunt for penitents. They would stake themselves to the ground and begin the long, nervous wait for the will-o-the-wisps to come calling, tiny, incendiary beasts who loved nothing more than to toast those they found loitering in their domain. While there had been a few charred bones, nothing moved there, those who had made use of its horrors having moved on to the Fundament for a further go at life.
The group was getting restless, he knew. It was time they made the trip back to the Dominion of Clouds—and the chasm that lay between them, a problem Arno and Veronica had kept from them, reasoning that it was, perhaps literally, a bridge they would cross when they had to.
He had suggested to a couple of the other, stronger members of the party that they might split into smaller groups, spreading the word in different directions, but nobody was comfortable with the idea of trying to get into Heaven without him. He was the key, as far as they were concerned, the man who had promised them access. He hadn’t pushed the point.
Perhaps it was best to stay together. The more they walked, the more he became unsure of how reliable his grip on the geography was. He had secured a map a few towns back and had begun the process of transcribing their progress, trying to form a clear route back to the Dominion of Clouds. After a few hours he had all but given up on the exercise because their route appeared to bear no actual relation to the map. Either they had repeatedly doubled back on themselves (and at one point somehow skipped a whole set of lakes and a forest) or the landscape shifted around. This seemed ludicrous but Arno wouldn’t put anything past the Dominion of Circles.
Luckily they still had the orb that had led them here and he was sure that if asked, it would lead them back. That night, he decided, once they had made camp, he would announce his intention that they were going to return to the Dominion of Clouds. If that didn’t improve the mood nothing would.
