The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (5 page)

And for the Writer, the world seemed
suddenly caught like a fly in amber, all the players reduced to bees struggling
through a honey jar, the air viscid and thick, every movement unbelievably
drawn out and impossibly long. The Writer saw his own numbed fingers squeeze
the burning hot cups, the plastic lids bending and popping loose exactly as he
was tossing them, splashing the still steaming liquid into the faces of the two
creatures barring his way. And then he was running, shouldering between the
dregs as they hunched over squealing and clutching at their scalded flesh with
clawed hands. He never slowed to see if either was hurt, or how badly. He
simply ran.

He had to get to Cross-Over Station;
it was his only chance.

Behind him, a scramble of thumping,
footsteps in pursuit accompanied by a thickened wheezing sound; the dregs were
unaccustomed to this world, to the water in the air. He had an edge.

Don’t be a fool, old man. You’re the
one not used to this world
, he thought darkly, and knew it to be true. Already he could feel the
rapid thumping of his heart against his chest, the sound of blood pressing
through his neck and behind his ears. Try as he might, he could not breathe
deep enough to keep running like this, reduced to short gulps of air like a
landed fish. He was too old; too old for Kreiger and his pet demons. How much
further to Cross-Over Station? Two blocks? Three?

He had to try.
He harbored no
illusions about what they would do to him if they caught him, especially when
they discovered that the ticket was gone.

I have to warn Jack!

Around him, no one looked up, or saw
him, or even moved, all trapped in the moment between moments, the last
battleground between the Writer and the mad wizard of the Wasteland. Or was
this all in his head, invisible monsters, the manifestations of his own secret
madness?
Will the world miss me when I die? Will they even know?

Must get to Cross-Over Station
,
he thought through a cloud
of exertion.

The dregs devoured his lead with
inhuman strides, lions charging across the savannah, single-minded in their
intent, eager only for the kill. If he stayed in the streets where the way was
straight and open, the Writer knew he wouldn’t make another block before they
dragged him down …
and started to feed
.

How could he have underestimated Kreiger so completely? How had he made
himself believe he could simply give the Nexus over to a successor of his
choosing without a challenge? Was Kreiger right? Had he become so arrogant as
to believe his own fiction? All he could do now was try to get to the station
and warn Jack before it was too late.

The Writer ducked into an alleyway,
hoping he could force the dregs to sacrifice speed for maneuverability. If he
could just reach Cross-Over Station, things would be different. Once there, he
would be able to show these damnable dregs what was what. Kreiger wasn’t the
only one who had picked up a few tricks over the years.
Fuck with me, will
you, charlatan? If I make Cross-Over Station, your last act upon this plane
will be eating your own entrails.

The black-coated creatures skidded into the alleyway, the speed of the
hawk-nosed one carrying it part way up the brick wall before it leapt back upon
the pavement, its pursuit undeterred. The blind one crashed face first into the
side of the building, backed away blood-spattered but unfazed, and paused only
long enough to smell the air anew before starting down the alley.

Disappointed, the Writer pushed
himself to run even faster, desperate to reach Cross-Over Station, that thin
spot—just one of many—where realities touched …

… and collided head-on with the
outstretched arm of a third dreg as it reared up from the alley debris like a
wolf spider pouncing from its hole, clothes-lining him.

The Writer’s head snapped backwards,
the world, gelid and impenetrable a moment before like bad stock footage of
slow-motion newsreels, instantly freed itself from the torpid ice. In a flash,
he found himself staring straight up at a blur of cool blue sky, a feeling in
the back of his head like he had cracked his skull.
Probably not
, he
reasoned,
or you wouldn’t think it so coherently. But you did lose your
glasses. And that feeling in your chest and down your arm, like you were
impaled upon a fence post … that can’t be good.

Something pale and shadowy loomed
over the Writer, then pressed closer, made itself clearer. He was again looking
into the blue and green eyes of Gusman Kreiger, the man’s face framed in
silver-white hair. Only the blue and the green were broader now, the man’s
pupils little more than pinpoints in the strange sea of color. And he was
making a tiching sound with his tongue. “You broke your glasses, Algae.”

Kreiger held the wire frames close to
the Writer’s face for inspection: one lens completely gone, the other so
spider-webbed with fractures that it would likely shatter with the lightest
tap. “If you can’t see me,” Kreiger said, “How will you know if I’m pleased
with what you tell me?”

Daylight disappeared, night gathering
around the Writer as the dregs crowded close to him, only the thinnest crack of
bright summer blue coming down from above. Algernon stared up into the seam of
sky, his voice a raspy hiss as his chest locked tight around air it refused to
draw or relinquish without a struggle. “The ticket’s … gone, Kreiger,” he
gasped painfully. “I’ve … passed it … on.”

“I know that, Algae. I know.” Beneath
the reasonable tone—so polite, so genteel—was something softly sadistic, a cat
toying with a dying mouse.

Kreiger pressed the bent frames to
the Writer’s face, letting him see through the fractured lens. The third dreg,
the strong one with black-in-black eyes and wolfish face, held the Writer’s
cane valise in sharp-taloned hands, the wicker torn apart as if sent through a
combine. It was also empty.

“You wouldn’t believe what my
gerrymander did to your agent,” Kreiger remarked, and the dreg dropped his
mouth open in a joyless grin, revealing thick rows of fangs, a jaw impossibly
large for its skull. “The question you need to answer,
Algernon
, is who
does
have the ticket, if not you?”

The Writer squinted, trying to focus
through the splits in the lens; trying to see the slash of brilliant blue.
Please
go to Cross-Over Station, Jack
, he prayed fiercely.
Believe, and go to
Cross-Over Station.

“I’m sorry, Algernon. I can’t make
out what you’re saying.” Kreiger leaned down, a cupped ear placed dramatically
close to the Writer’s mouth. “Or is the name caught in you’re throat? Shall I
have one of my dregs open it up and take a look?”

“Go back … Kreiger. The new Caretaker
… she’s already … gone ahead.” Would so small a piece of misdirection buy Jack
time? Time enough to learn about the Nexus and how it worked before Kreiger and
the other Cast Outs fell upon him like wild dogs?
Go to Cross-Over Station,
Jack. Please!

“What’s her name?”

The writer deliberately pursed his
lips and stared up at the sky, that brilliant shade of blue. Not the
sun-bleached color of the Wasteland sky, but a blue like that blue from so long
ago, the fields of France, staring up into the sky. So blue you could almost
dismiss the thick smell of cordite and the moldering stench of blood and
dirt—so much mud—the black silhouettes of branches overhead, the snarls of
twisted wire. Between the clouds of vanilla-smoke, the blue of the sky. You
could almost feel it against your skin like the splash of the sea. You could
escape into that blue if you tried, if you knew how, if you knew where to go …
if
…

“Her name?”

Such a brilliant shade of blue. New
summer. High June. The color of carefree youth and endless days and warm
nights, innocence and freedom and the boastful courage and spirit that
experience has not yet wrung to caution and cowardice. If I could take but one
thing, I would like to take the memory of that single, brilliant color …

“It looks as if I’m losing you,
Algae. And there are still so many secrets locked inside your head, caught in
your throat, balanced upon the tip of your tongue.” Kreiger looked to one of
his monsters. “Gerrymander, Algernon has something he’d like to share with us,
a secret he wants to tell. But he can’t find the words.”

And with chilling calm, he said:
“Look for them, won’t you?”

The Wasteland creature took
Algernon’s head in thick-clawed fingers, prying his mouth open until the bones
snapped and the flesh tore, the Writer’s screams lost in a thick, wet choke of
his own blood.

CROSS-OVER STATION

While an empty alleyway bore witness
to the death of the Writer at the hands of his ancient nemesis, Jack walked up
and down Main Street searching for a train station, oblivious. He had already
closed out his bank accounts and stopped for breakfast at a fifties-style
diner. Neither had taken as much time as he thought. Amazing how easily one’s
entire life’s savings could be collapsed into a simple debit memo. He carried
it to the teller window where it was brusquely exchanged for cash.

And just like that, his last
connection was broken, nothing holding him here but old habits.

Breakfast, what was to be the
glorious start to a fantastic day of unimaginable surprises, proved equally
unexciting. They served good coffee, he had to admit. Three cups later, he
found his nerve and left. But good coffee aside, breakfast was otherwise
ordinary.

As it so happens, it was the last
ordinary thing in Jack’s life.

He started at the corner of Main Street and Locust and headed towards Seventh, looking from side to side for Cross-Over
Station. Few businesses operated along this section of Main Street, and those
that did discouraged walk-in traffic. On one corner was the distribution center
for the local newspaper, a somewhat-battered dispenser chained to a post just
outside its doors, empty. On the opposite side of the street, a small nameless
bar with boarded windows and dead neon promises of three kinds of draft beer
and
live nude dancers
. It was closed.

Halfway down the block, Jack found
the newspaper kiosk that the Writer said he would meet him at. It jutted from
the corner of an alleyway, an afterthought forgotten like the empty newspaper
dispenser. A simple wooden box liberally painted in pine green, sun-blistered
and flaking, full of magazines and unattended. He thought that perhaps he was
somehow missing something; that the owner was simply crouched inside ripping
open newspaper bundles or inventorying candy bars. But after a couple minutes,
Jack was forced to conclude the stand was abandoned.

He scanned the headlines of
newspapers and supermarket tabloids, nothing catching his attention. There was
speculation about the extra-marital affair of Hollywood’s latest rising star.
The Dow fell yesterday. More gossip over the private life of a member of the
British royal family. One astrologer’s predictions about actresses currently
appearing in this month’s top-ten rated television shows. Magazines covered the
back wall, promises of in-depth stories on world events, business advice,
sport-fishing tips, golf hints, make-up suggestions, sexual pleasure. A buck
caught in a camera-man’s cross-hairs stared at him from across the stand. An
airbrushed woman, naked but discretely concealed by strategic banner boxes and
artfully placed hands, smiled invitingly. Her expression, like the eyes of the
white-tail—like the place itself—was empty.

“She’s not for you!”

Jack turned, startled by a man
standing not two feet from him in a filth-covered overcoat, scuffed work boots,
and threadbare pants that might have been faded brown or grime-darkened khaki.
The man’s face was shadowed with dirt and beard bristles in which he stored
bits of leaves and dried residue—maybe a previous meal, maybe phlegm, maybe
vomit; Jack didn’t care to know which. But the man’s eyes were as bright as
glacial ice, and more than half-mad.

“She’s mine! She’s not for you!” the
vagrant shouted again.

Jack stared back at him, hands
clutching tighter at the straps of his bags. “Okay.”

“Do you know where unicorns go when they die?” the vagrant demanded,
thrusting his grizzled face towards Jack like a tortoise stretching from its
shell. His breath reeked: rotting teeth, cheap wine, sweet junk gone bad. “Do
you?”

Jack slowly shook his head, no.

“Anywhere they want,” the vagrant
answered crisply. “Do you understand? Do … you …
understand
?”

Jack nodded, yes, but it was a lie.
He understood nothing.

Seemingly content with his
willingness to listen and nod in all the right places, the man’s lids drooped,
his face going slack, bright eyes fading to bloodshot and yellow. He turned
away and wandered off, disappearing around the corner while mumbling something
to no one in particular about the failure of the gold standard.

And Jack was alone again. He looked
up and down the street, feeling out of place, breakfast settling unpleasantly
in his stomach. He secretly wished there was someone he could look to, someone
he could trade quizzical glances with as they both wondered about the secret
insanity living and dying in back alleys all across America. Then they might
dismiss the observation altogether with the suggestion of coffee at a little
café down the street. But he was alone, this section of town completely
deserted, silent but for the distant caw of a lonesome crow.

Jack looked back at the empty kiosk,
feeling as though he had sneaked onto the back lot of a sound stage and was
prowling an empty movie set, the props set up but the extras yet to emerge from
the studio cafeteria, the stars still hiding inside their trailers, waiting for
their cue.

Jack let another awkward, silent
moment go by then decided that perhaps the scene had already been shot; that he
was not too early, but too late. He looked quickly at his watch: 10:53 a.m.
Then he peered down into the deep alcove that the kiosk guarded, and saw a pair
of very large, glass doors, art deco design with handles made of tarnished
brass piping, the glass deliberately soaped over to guard against curiosity.
Jack looked up quickly at the stone archway he was under, and saw raised
lettering in brushed-steel under a half-circle of ornately carved brick:
CROSS-OVER STATION
.

He looked again at the double doors,
out of place at the end of the shallow brick cave, as if at any moment, time
would suddenly pop the clutch, drop itself into gear, and he would find himself
caught in the midmorning rush of office workers, white-collar stock
speculators, and graveyard shifters bound for work or home, all filing through
these doors to reach their trains.

But Cross-Over Station, like the
newspaper kiosk, was a relic, an ancient uncovered ruin abandoned in time like
a leftover story-line prop. It was dead.

He started forward, the shadowed corners of the alcove wedged with a
thick layer of neglect and filth: discarded cigarette butts, flattened and
rain-soaked mats of paper, a lost glove, broken glass, something that resembled
a used condom. A small shadow slipped quickly into the darkness and
disappeared, a rat maybe. Jack reached for the brass handles and swallowed, arm
bracing for the possibility that this would all end in folly, that the door
wouldn’t budge, that the Writer was insane, and that he himself was the biggest
fool this side of heaven.

He pulled on the door, and was
actually amazed when it opened. He jerked his hand away almost reflexively, the
quick reaction to grabbing something hot, and watched as the door swung closed.

About this, at least, the Writer had
been telling the truth! Jack was only just realizing that up until this very
moment, and in spite of everything he had done so far, he still hadn’t entirely
believed him.

Maybe even more startling was the
discovery that some part of him, deeply rooted and terribly frightened by
everything he was doing in his newfound madness, actually wanted the door to be
locked, wanted this to end, wanted him to go back to his normal, ordinary,
usual existence.

But that could never happen now.

When he reached for the handle again,
it was with an anticipation that made his heart trip, the pounding in his ears
so loud he would have sworn that anyone standing next to him just then would
have heard it; would have known. Possibilities were unfolding before him.
Forget the broken bits of mortar around the entranceway. Forget the smashed
bottle of cheap wine still half-wrapped in a paper bag. Forget the condom and
the glove and the debris and the scurrying rat. Forget it all. Cross-Over
Station was real! And he never even knew it existed. Whole realms of
possibilities were opening up before him, waiting only on his willingness to
look. All he had to do was seize them.
Ever forward, never back
.

Precisely because there is no back. As the Writer pointed out, there was
nothing left for him to go back to except a place he did not want to be. This
was his second chance.

Not far away, the Writer’s lifeless
body sprawled in an alleyway under a broad sky of bright summertime blue, the
lower-half of his face destroyed.

Jack entered Cross-Over Station.

Whatever he imagined, whatever he
tried to prepare himself for, the station failed him. Beyond a small atrium was
a vast space where long wooden benches like church pews faced a single track—a
single
track! No arrivals, just departures. A world trapped in its beginning.

Your ticket did say “one-way.”

Perhaps that was why the station was
abandoned. Cross-Over Station was like stepping over the threshold of some
post-apocalyptic wasteland where everything was left behind but the people:
empty benches, discarded paper cups, the occasional newspaper. But no sign of
habitation. No spilled coffee, or smoldering cigarette butts, or hastily
discarded wads of gum stuck to the benches. Everyone had walked out of this
place a long time ago, and no one had ever come back.

Covering the ticket counter’s glass
front was a small sign reading,
JUST STEPPED OUT — BE BACK MOMENTARILY.
A pair of feet walked between the two
statements, the kind of friendly sign one could buy at any office supplies
store. Only this sign was ancient, the glue on the tape long ago turning to a
useless amber crust, the card dry and yellow, as brittle-looking as the Dead
Sea Scrolls. The sign might simply have been a relic, saved and reused for more
years than anyone cared to remember. But Jack had the impression that it had
hung there since before the Eisenhower administration, and whoever had stepped
out would not be back. Not ever.

Just like you, Jack.

In college, he read Stephen King’s
The
Stand
, a book about a plague that wiped out most of the population, leaving
behind all of the machines and buildings and relics of the modern society, but
none of the people. Whole towns silenced, an empty world of artifacts. A
reminder of how one’s entire life was composed not so much of places and
things, but the people relative to them. And standing here in the gloom of an
abandoned train station, a silver screen actor fifty years too late for the
scene’s final take, he was reminded of this fact.
Maybe not today, and maybe
not tomorrow, but soon; for the rest of your life …

Jack walked down the aisle between
the rows of benches, feeling as if he was entering a church of invisible
parishioners, the sound of his footsteps loud in the dead silence. He stopped
at the lip of the platform, the yellow caution line nearly gone now, rubbed
clean by the scuffing and dragging of a million passing feet boarding and
leaving the trains over the countless years that Cross-Over Station was in
vogue. Travelers moving back and forth, work to home and back to work again,
traveling salesmen, vacations to distant relatives. All gone now, erased with
the passage of time. Cross-Over Station was dead, an empty shell abandoned by
the creature that had outgrown it.

An enormous clock stood atop a wrought-iron
pole, its face at least eighteen inches across, large antique hands pointing to
black, gothic numerals. 10:57. Jack confirmed the station time with his
wristwatch, surprised that it was still running, much less that the time was
correct. It wouldn’t be long now.

So where was the Writer?

Jack glanced back at the doors,
hoping to see a shadow fall across them, hoping to see the Writer bursting in
at the last moment.
Ah, good to see you again, Jack. So glad you decided to
come. Didn’t have any problem finding the place, did you? The outside looks
like hell, but in its day … Well, time to reminisce later. Are you ready for an
adventure?

Yes.

But the Writer was nowhere to be
seen. Jack waited at the edge of the faded yellow line, reading and rereading the
sign on the opposite side of the tracks:
DO NOT STAND AHEAD OF THE YELLOW LINE UNTIL THE CONDUCTOR HAS
GIVEN THE SIGNAL TO BOARD
.

He looked again at the clock. 10:58.

Jack started patting his pockets to
waste time, making a mental inventory of the contents in an effort to reassure
himself that nothing was lost or missing—nothing other than what he already
knew was lost. He assured himself he still had his wallet, half of his life
savings kept inside, the rest stowed in his duffel bag. Beside his wallet, a
pen—what writer didn’t carry a pen? In his front pocket, some change and a
small jackknife. He suffered a moment of panic over his missing keys before
remembering that he didn’t have keys anymore. His apartment keys were in an
envelope on the windowsill, and his car key was lost in the parking lot of
Stone Surety Mortgage. There was nothing else. All that he had was what he
carried.