The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (24 page)

Leland endured all of this with
remarkable patience, not deriding Alex or pursuing the issue of the tickets,
only drinking coffee, black, and gnawing a piece of dry-toast; neither butter
nor jelly could be found. But he paid particular attention to Oversight, noting
her careful remarks with Alex much as Jack did, and working meticulously at his
palm as if massaging a cramp in his hand.

It was a quiet breakfast, mostly.

Afterwards, while Jack and Alex
carried the dishes to the utility sink, Lindsay sat on the edge of the bar,
fishing out six pennies from the enormous glass jar. Done, she hopped down and
went out on the porch, then reappeared almost instantly. “Who moved the gumball
machine?”

It was not the first thing to
disappear; it was only the first thing that was noticed. It would not be the
last.

CONNECTIONS

As a group, they stared at the empty
space on the porch where the gumball machine once stood.

“Maybe a dreg carried it off,” Alex
suggested.

“No,” Jack said. “Nail wouldn’t have
allowed it.”

“Maybe it snuck in under the sand,”
Alex said.

“No,” Oversight said. “Kreiger
stores
them beneath the sand; they cannot move.”

“How do you know that?” Ellen asked.

Oversight crouched down beside the
shadowed track of the gumball machine, fingers lightly touching the darker
section of wood. Then she straightened. “You don’t have much time, Caretaker.”

Jack looked at her. “What do you
mean?”

“Just that. You don’t have much
time.”

“What does this mean?” he asked,
gesturing vaguely at the place where the gumball machine was the day before.
“And how do you know about it?”

The woman in black did not answer.

“If you know, tell me.”

“You’re the goddamn Caretaker,” she
said. “You figure it out.” Then she turned and walked out into the sand.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Alex followed.

“Well, Jack,” Leland turned,
expectantly. “Why are things disappearing?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Leland’s eyes narrowed, his mouth
turning in a faint smile as he went back inside. “Like the lady said, you’re
the goddamn Caretaker.”

Jack glanced out at the sand to
Oversight then back at the darkened cross on the weathered wood. He didn’t
understand. Maybe he never understood anything. But unlike before, he wouldn’t
suffer alone for his ignorance. There were others; others who needed him;
others he would fail.

“Dammit,” he grumbled, going back
inside.

Ellen glanced down at Lindsay. “What
say you and I see if we can’t find something to do? Maybe there’re some games
or puzzles up in the closet.”

Lindsay nodded and followed Ellen
back inside, stopping at the bar to dump the useless pennies back into the
pickle jar.

*     *     *

A hundred paces from the Saloon, Oversight
stopped. She crossed her arms and stared out across the vast expanse of
nothingness. A few steps behind her, Alex stopped as well, uncertain what to
do.

“Why are you here, Alex?” she asked.

“I wanted to make sure you were all
right. You … you sounded upset.”

“I’m fine.”

Alex shrugged uncomfortably, a
gesture she missed with her back turned, and could only think to say, “It’s
dangerous out here.”

“For you.” Then she toed a mark in
the sand about a foot from where she stood. “Stay back of this line. It’s the
barrier.”

He stared at the line then at the
empty air, but could see nothing. “How do you know?”

“I can feel it,” she replied. “The
Cast Outs can’t cross it. Neither will the dregs.”

“How do you know so much about the
Caretaker and the dregs and that?”

Oversight turned, her stare
deliberate, cold. “None of you understand. Even the Caretaker refuses to
understand. I know about the Cast Outs and I know about the dregs. I know about
the Wasteland and I know about the vermin that live out their lives in the sand
like sparks scattered from a dying fire. I know because I have never been
anywhere but the Wasteland. It is the only home I have … I have ever known.”

Alex thought she would say more,
thought she wanted to, but instead she turned away. Finally, he asked, “So you
knew about Kreiger and the Tribe of Dust?”

Silence from her. Then, “Ask me again
… another time.”

Alex considered this, unsure where
the conversation was going. He never thought much about the future, but he was
suddenly afraid of where he was headed and how little he knew about it. How did
that line go?
Out of the blue, and into the black
. “You hesitated a
moment ago when you were talking about the Wasteland and home. What was it you
were going to say?”

The woman in black was silent. Alex
waited.

And waited.

Then, as he was about to give up and
walk away, certain the conversation was at an end, she said: “Alex?”

“What?”

“Why did you step between me and
Nail?”

Did she really not know, not
understand that someone might actually give a damn? Might actually care? Might
actually like her?

“Don’t ever do that again,” Oversight
said. “I can take care of myself a lot better than you can. Against the
Guardian, I would have stood a chance. But he would have killed you. I don’t
want that.”

She started walking, her path a
gentle arc circling the Saloon, toeing the sand every third step to mark the
edge of the barrier.

Alex caught up to her. “Why is it so
hard for you to admit that it would be easier if someone helped you?”

She turned back to him, eyes set with
grim determination. “This place has no respect for life, yet I have spent over
twenty lifetimes here. My knife is made from the thighbone of a Cast Out who
thought to use me like his left hand; his error was the last lesson the
Wasteland taught him. There isn’t a single plant out there, Alex; not the
smallest blade of grass, not the tiniest desert bloom. The entire Wasteland is
one giant carnivore, every insect the regurgitated spit of the Nexus. And each
is eaten in turn by the next larger, stronger carnivore. There is no base to
the pyramid, and thanks to Kreiger and the Writer and even Jack, the system is
collapsing upon itself; there is nothing else for the animal to eat, so it’s
devouring its own flesh in a failing effort to stay alive. That’s what Jack has
to deal with. That’s the dilemma. How does he fix a system so completely broken
that it can’t ever be fixed—maybe it should never
be
fixed? The problem
is, Jack isn’t even aware of it himself, and the only people who can tell him
are the ones he can’t trust. There are only two ways out of the Wasteland:
death or the Caretaker, and Jack has only a limited number of passes to the
other side of reality.”

Alex found her stare uncomfortable,
but he was no less eager to take in the vast bone-colored sands of the
Wasteland. The sun burned down, baking his skin, sizzling his hair, scorching
him like a piece of dry, roadside grass

(…
not the smallest blade of grass
…)

in the summer sun. He wanted a drink,
and wanting it made him realize how simple it was for him to get one—
just go
back to the Saloon, get a glass, turn on the tap, and get a drink; easy as pie
—and
how impossible it would be out there in the broad stretches of nothingness.
Like some purgatorial plane, there was no redemption for the souls lost in the
Wasteland; there was only the quiet misery of forever, and the promise of
eventual death.

“I … I’m not sure what you want me to
say.”

“There’s nothing to say, Alex,”
Oversight said, her tone uncharacteristically gentle. “Do you know what I did
this morning?”

He shook his head, steeling himself
for some horrifying anecdote, the only purpose to remind him that, in her eyes,
he was just a boy, ignorant and incapable, of no help to her or even himself;
useless and inadequate.

“I touched varnished wood,” she said,
her tone betraying the wonder she felt. “I drank the juice from a fruit I have
never seen, enough to last me a day. I sat on something that was not sand and
felt shade over my head for the first time ever. I hope you never come to
understand why that matters.”

Alex wiped self-consciously at the
beads of sweat on his lip and forehead, a part of him relieved, a part of him
angry. “I just want to be your friend.”

“I’m sorry, Alex,” she said, stepping
back. “There are only five tickets. Regardless of who wins, Jack or Kreiger,
one of
us
will not be leaving this place alive.”

Again she walked away. Only this
time, Alex did not follow her.

*     *     *

Lindsay was rummaging in the closet
on hands and knees when Jack came down to the foot of the iron steps.

Ellen looked over at him. “Writing?”

“Trying. Gathering my thoughts just
now.”

She nodded, unsure what to say to
that. She didn’t really know anything about writers
per se
, how they
thought, how they did what they did. It seemed like a lot of bullshit mostly,
especially when you considered how much they got paid for the stuff they dumped
into movies and television and book racks. She tried it once; nothing grand or
glorious, just trying to invent a story in her head. It was like trying to invent
a lie, and that wasn’t really that hard, was it? Only it was. After meditating
for a couple wasted hours on vague storylines lifted from movies and television
shows about characters like badly written soap-opera stars, she surrendered and
went to the store to buy a paperback. No, she did not really understand
writers, and she didn’t really understand Jack. But she wanted to, and that
should count for something.

“Wasn’t there a hanging basket chair
in that corner?”

Ellen looked at the empty space.
“Maybe. I think so.”

Jack nodded uncertainly, wandering
over to where she stood. “Any luck?”

“We’re still looking.” Actually,
Lindsay was looking; Ellen was hoping that whatever was found proved no more
arduous than
Uncle Wiggley
, or a pack of
Uno
cards. And nothing
that required going outside. The Wasteland felt dangerous, hostile, a trembling
animal starved and injured and angry, lying in wait for anyone unwary enough to
venture out.

Distracted, she failed to realize
Jack was asking her a question.

“Ellen?”

“What?” she said, startled.

“Do you know where Leland is?”

“Downstairs, last I saw. He was
reading an old magazine, I think.”

Jack shook his head. “He isn’t any
more satisfied with being here today than he was yesterday,” he said softly.
“But instead of being pissed off, he’s as chipper as a clam this morning. It’s
like he’s hiding something.”

“Maybe he is,” Ellen replied, careful
to keep her voice low.

Jack nodded. “I don’t think his mood
and Oversight’s arrival are coincidence.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Gut feeling, I guess.
I trust her, and I don’t. I don’t exactly know how to put it. I don’t think
she’s like the rest of us. I don’t think she belongs here.”

“None of us
belong
here.”

“That’s not what I mean. I think she
belongs with Kreiger, but I don’t know how, or even why I think so. If she was
a threat, I think Nail would have kept her out, or tried to. But he didn’t. So
I have to assume she’s not dangerous by herself.”

At least, no more so than any of the
rest of us
, Ellen
thought darkly. “She’s keeping secrets.”

“I know,” Jack said. “But we’re all keeping secrets.”

“Not like her,” Ellen replied. “Most
of us keep secrets to protect ourselves. Hers protect the truth she’s hiding. I
used to know people who hid secrets like that, drug dealers, mostly. They were
all smiles and hellos, good shit, good price, no problem. But they were always
hiding something: stepped-on, tainted, narc-wired bag of bad shit that you
won’t know about until you’re vomiting blood in an ER somewhere, cuffed to a
gurney while a doctor competes for space with an arresting officer trying to
Mirandize you while a tube is forced down your throat.” She shrugged, an effort
to cover the shiver running up her back. “She reminds me a little of Mr.
Quince.”

Jack nodded, giving a vague remark of
agreement.

“Look,” Lindsay announced, crawling
back out of the closet, strands of hair sticking to the sweat on her forehead.
She was holding a large, cherry-red ring, a modernized variant of the Frisbee.
“We can play catch.”

Jack was already retreating up the stairs.
“I’ll join you later,” he said, and Ellen knew he had no intention of doing so.
Jack was bad around people; it was one of the few things about him that she
understood completely.

“Ellen, do you wanna play catch?”

She could already feel the uncomfortable
trickle of sweat gathering and running down her spine, memories of a baseball
rocketing into her skull appearing over and over in her mind as she stared at
the large red ring, and pushed down the urge to vomit.

“Can you ask Alex?” she said
distantly, her mind suddenly retreating from the gray meat of her flesh,
tripping backwards out of her skull in a too-quick effort to escape the
diseased meat puppet fighting her. “I don’t feel very good.”