by Tom Abrahams
The barkeep looked past Zeke, toward the second floor of the cantina. Zeke turned to follow Pedro’s gaze to the balcony that wrapped around the bar.
Zeke looked at room twenty-nine. It was behind him and next to his room. The door was closed. He stared at it for a moment, almost expecting it to open. When it didn’t, he turned away and took his beer in his hand.
“Is she ready?” asked Pedro.
Zeke took a long pull from the glass. The scent of whisky traveled into the back of his nose, and he could almost see the barrel in which the ale had aged. It was heavenly. He swallowed, the chill of the beer running through him, and he shook his head.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “She won’t get out of bed.”
Uriel rolled her eyes. “It’s been how many days?”
Zeke held up five fingers.
“It takes some longer than others,” said Pedro. “Coming to terms with where we are and who we are isn’t easy.”
“Especially when you won’t tell new arrivals where they are or who they are,” said Zeke. “I’m not sure I have a handle on things.”
Pedro waved a hand at Zeke. “Come with me,” he said. “I have something to show you.”
Zeke regarded Uriel for guidance. She raised her eyebrows, shrugged, and downed half the glass of beer.
Pedro walked back toward the bar, and Zeke followed. Despite the crowd in the bar, the way parted for Pedro as he moved. He didn’t have to excuse himself or ask for passage. People instinctively got out of his way.
Zeke rode the wake. He strode confidently across the space, this place growing on him by the day, and adjusted his belt, shifting the weight of the large six-shooter at his hip. It was snug in its holster.
They arrived at the bar at the far end of the room, and Pedro eased behind it. The old man ran one hand along the centerpiece of the establishment. It ran wall to wall. Its rich oak finish was worn with age; the ornately carved face was scratched and gouged. Behind it, reflecting Pedro’s image, was a wall-sized mirror aged with black veins. On the shelf to the left of the mirror, Pedro wrapped his meaty hand around the spine of a book. He pulled the volume out and brought it to the oak bar, dropping it with a thud. A cloud of dust plumed from the binding.
Pedro ran his fingers across the face of the cover, almost tracing the gold-leaf lettering. He took in a deep breath and sighed.
“Have you heard of Enoch?” he asked.
Zeke glanced at the book. “Yes.”
“Uriel tell you about him?”
“No,” he said. “It was Gabe.”
“Gabe?”
Zeke nodded. “Yes.”
Pedro stepped back from the bar and called out, “Gabe! C’mon over.”
Gabe, like Uriel, was among a group of mercenaries who called themselves the Watchers. They worked for Pedro. They were powerful, loyal, and they were, as best Zeke could tell, immortal.
“What’s up, boss?” Gabe asked.
Gabe was a muscular man with a barrel chest and a chiseled physique. On his neck was a tattoo that read “Do Not Fear”. Zeke pulled back his own shoulders and puffed out his chest as Gabe sidled up next to him.
Pedro patted his hands on the book. “You talked to Zeke about Enoch?”
Gabe shrugged. “Maybe. I think Phil spelled it out for him.”
“Phil,” Pedro said flatly.
“Maybe it was Phil,” said Zeke. “I think Gabe talked about him too though.”
Phil was another Watcher. He was busy playing cards at a table on the other side of the cantina.
“What did Phil say about Enoch?” Pedro asked.
Gabe shrugged. “I think he said Enoch was a traveling man. He saw good and evil. He saw imbalance and worked to fix it. Some people think we’re real. Others don’t.”
“Thank you, Gabe,” said Pedro.
“Sure. Need anything else?”
“That’ll be all.”
Gabe returned to the jukebox, where a slinky woman dressed in tights awaited him. Zeke didn’t know the woman’s name or how long she’d been around. Her body language told him she liked Gabe. She took hold of one of his biceps when he reached her. She giggled. He laughed.
“Back to the book,” said Pedro, refocusing Zeke. “And Enoch.”
Zeke cleared his throat and bellied up to the bar. He leaned on it with both elbows.
“Enoch,” Pedro went on, “was Noah’s great-grandfather. You know Noah?”
“The ark,” said Zeke. “But I thought that stuff was a legend made up to warn people to be good. Like a…like a…”
“An allegory.”
“Yes,” Zeke said. “An allegory.”
“It’s whatever you want it to be, Zeke.”
“Okay.”
Pedro opened the book. The spine cracked.
“Enoch,” he said, “believed he could see the future.”
“Like a prophet?” Zeke asked.
The corners of Pedro’s mouth lifted into the hint of a smile. “Not exactly. He thought he could see. That doesn’t mean he could. This book, his book, is not a religious text. Not officially.”
Pedro ran his fingers across a page. He lowered his chin.
“The first thirty-six chapters of this tome is called The Book of The Watchers,” he said. “Watchers is a loose translation of the original text. Literally the words mean ‘the awake ones’ because Watchers never sleep. At least, they don’t need sleep.”
“Is the book about Uriel, Gabe, Phil—”
Pedro interrupted Zeke with a hearty laugh. “No,” he said through chuckles. “This long predates any of the Watchers around here.”
He waved his hand in a wide arc, like a magician revealing the end of a trick. His eyes remained on Zeke.
“Watchers have guarded the balance of good and evil for a very long time, Ezekiel. A very long time.”
Zeke shifted his weight on the barstool. The noise of drinking, dancing, and game playing grew muted behind him. His attention was rapt.
“There were Watchers long before Uriel, long before you, and, balance willing, Watchers will exist long after you’ve done your duty,” Pedro said.
“Balance willing? What does—”
A commotion from the opposite end of the cantina disrupted their conversation. Bar patrons were gathering at the swinging door entrance. They looked outside; their faces bathed in bright sunlight. The chatter swelled in volume. Phil was at the front of the group. He waved Pedro over with a slight sense of urgency.
Pedro closed the book and replaced it on the liquor shelf. He snapped his fingers and the music stopped. The cantina fell quiet. Everyone watched Pedro move around the bar and stride with purpose toward the entrance.
Zeke hopped from his seat and followed, finding his way in the human wake that Pedro created wherever he walked. The crowd at the door was virtually motionless. Only the shuffle of their boots scraping and shuffling against the wood plank floor broke the silence.
Pedro pushed his way through the doors. They creaked on their hinges as they swung back and forth.“What is it?” Zeke asked.
He posed the question to everyone, anyone. Nobody answered. Zeke pushed his way to the entrance, squinting against the glare from outdoors.
Before his eyes adjusted, he heard what sounded like water splashing. He stepped past Phil and Gabe onto the wide front porch of the cantina and started for the steps. Pedro put an arm out to stop him.
Zeke blinked his surroundings into focus and his jaw dropped. The desert wasteland surrounding the cantina, with nothing but with a narrow strip of two-lane highway leading to it, was gone. At least, he couldn’t see it. Instead of arid land stretching for endless miles, there was an endless ocean. The water was deep blue, reflecting the cloudless sky above. The horizon looked a million miles away.
It was unlike anything Zeke had ever seen. A briny scent filled his nostrils. The salt air clung to the back of his throat.
Waves lapped at the porch, and splashing toward them was a man who see
med to thrash as much as swim. On his heels was the same horde of men who’d first chased Zeke until he’d found refuge at the cantina. Rather than pursue on motorcycles, trucks, and muscle cars, the angry mob rode in long boats. They rowed hard and in rhythm, driving oars deep into the water and surging with each coordinated pull.
They launched spears and shot arrows at the swimmer. The projectiles pierced the water around him. One hit his shoulder and the man shrieked. He kept moving though. Spitting water from his mouth as he worked his body inefficiently from side to side. He was almost there.
Zeke stood, wide-eyed. His pulse quickened. Without taking his gaze off the hunt in front of him, he spoke barely above a whisper. “What is this?”
“Not now,” Pedro said.
Another arrow struck the swimmer. This one hit his arm as he lifted it from the water. Blood spilled from the wound. The man went under for an instant, gurgling and groaning in pain.
The skiffs closed in on him. The swimmer struggled. His forward momentum stalled as he somehow kept his head above the water.
Meters away from the steps, he pushed his torso up with a strained grunt. Face reddened and squeezed tight with pain, he lunged at the porch.
Pedro squatted and extended his meat hook of a hand, just far enough to reach the swimmer. He clasped the man’s wrist and tugged, heaving him onto the hewn wood porch.
The Horde stopped paddling. A last spear, thrown before Pedro’s grab, drilled into the railing and stuck with a reverberating thwang. Then the longboats, canoes, and skiffs slowly drifted forward. The warriors aboard all stared in silence at the cantina, at the quarry missed.
Zeke spotted the long, thin face of their leader standing on the bow of the closest boat. A chill ran through his body. He remembered him. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air like a wild dog on the hunt.
He sneered, revealing yellow teeth filed into fine points. His tongue ran across the front of them and he smacked his lips. The sound echoed across the water.
The swimmer was facedown on the deck. His back heaved, watery blood like thin creeks running down it and his arms. He grunted softly as he breathed.
Pedro released the man’s arm and stood over him. Then he motioned to the Horde.
“That’ll be all, gentlemen,” he said. “You know the rules. My friend here is on sacred ground.”
The Horde didn’t respond. None of the boats moved. They drifted in the current, yet Zeke realized they somehow came no closer to the island cantina.
“C’mon,” Pedro said. “Help me with him.”
Together Zeke and Pedro lifted the man to his feet. Each of them took an arm over their shoulder. The man squealed at the movement, two arrows buried in his battered body.
They crossed the threshold of the cantina with the swimmer dragging his feet more than walking. The crowd parted.
“Let’s get you upstairs,” said Pedro.
The swimmer gasped for air. His voice was raspy. “Where am I?”
Zeke wanted to ask the same question.
How had the desert turned into an ocean when in his world all of them had dried up? he wondered. Why? When? What did it mean?
To Zeke, this was a place of unanswered questions. Every time he thought he understood the afterlife, he learned how little he grasped.
The swimmer whispered hoarsely, “What is this place?”
Pedro said nothing and eyed Zeke with a glare that told him not to answer. They found the stairwell and slowly began their ascent one step at a time. The swimmer’s virtually dead weight put a strain on Zeke’s legs and back with each push up onto the next highest step.
The swimmer’s head hung low, his chin on his chest. He reeked of seawater, sweat, and blood. Zeke held his wrist for leverage. The skin was wet and cold. His pulse was weak.
The man lifted his head toward Zeke as they rose another step.“Who are you?” he whispered.
The barkeep answered for Zeke. “I’m Pedro. This is my place.”
They reached the top of the steps and helped the man to a room at the far end of the second floor. Zeke sensed the watchful, interested eyes of everyone in the cantina below as they moved along the balcony.
No music. No darts or cards. No clanging glasses or conversation.
Zeke wondered if this was what had happened when he’d arrived not that long ago. He couldn’t remember the time between his arrival and the moment he woke up in bed, miraculously healed.
When they reached the room, Pedro pushed open the door and led them inside. He motioned toward the bed with his chin, and Zeke assisted in getting the swimmer onto the mattress.
It was then Zeke noticed the swimmer was unconscious. Between his last question and now, he’d lost his fight to stay awake. Zeke wondered if it was the pain or the exhaustion that had slipped the stranger into an uneasy sleep. Probably both.
They laid the swimmer on his side, the two long arrows protruding from his body.
“We’ll need to cut these out,” Pedro said. “Could you call down to Uriel? She knows where to find my tool kit.”
“Tool kit?” Zeke replied.
Pedro wiped his hands on the sides of his leather vest. “Medical kit.”
Zeke stood there for a moment and appraised the unconscious man on the bed. He was the first stranger to arrive at the cantina since Zeke had shown up, however long ago it was. A few days? A couple of weeks?
Zeke’s girlfriend was here now too, recovering down the hall in a room just like this one. He hadn’t witnessed her arrival, though; she wasn’t a stranger. Did that mean something?
Pedro raised an eyebrow. A warm smile spread beneath his thick mustache.
“You’ve got a lot of questions, don’t you, Ezekiel?”
“Always,” Zeke replied.
“Any I can answer before you go get me the tool kit? We have time for one or two.”
“What the hell just happened?”
Pedro stared at Zeke for a moment before answering. He rubbed his beard as if considering the best way to answer.
“New arrivals bring parts of their worlds with them,” he said. “A familiar landscape helps with the shock of the transition.”
“This man came from a world covered in water?”
“Yes.”
“Is it Earth?”
“Of course,” said Pedro. “Everyone here came from Earth. They came from different times, different versions.”
Zeke wasn’t sure he’d heard Pedro correctly. “Different versions?”
Pedro smiled again. This time, it was the knowing grin of a parent teaching a child about something so obvious the child should have known the truth without being told.
“There is more than one Earth, Ezekiel,” he said. “That’s what makes keeping the balance so difficult.”
Zeke didn’t know what to ask. He was light-headed, almost disoriented by this new information. He thought about the water, about the Horde, about his own arrival into the no-man’s-land. His gut clenched.
“What about my car?” he asked.
Pedro cocked his head to one side. “The Superbird? What about it?”
Zeke shot the barkeep his best incredulous glare. “The water? Everywhere? My car is out there.”
“It’s fine, Zeke.”
The tension in his body relaxed. He didn’t know what to think. A part of him thought his brain might explode if he tried hard enough to comprehend what Pedro was saying. He stared blankly at the stranger on the bed—a man from a different version of Earth.
“Who is he?” he asked.
Pedro pivoted toward the bed and took a step closer to the swimmer. The man’s breathing was quick and shallow. His bloody body trembled almost imperceptibly as he lay on his side.
“His name is Lucius Mander,” Pedro said. “And he is your first mission.”
Chapter Three
Desmond Branch stood on the edge of the rocky beach. The rain had stopped, but the air was thick with moisture. Behind him, the wash of the surf slapped against the
uneven shore. In front of him, a dozen men and women were on their knees. Some of them whimpered. Others were stoic, their eyes cast somewhere far away.
“I know someone on this island has information,” he said. “I will keep killing you, one at a time, until nobody is left.”
A thin woman at the center of the kneeling villagers scowled at Branch. Her eyes bore a defiance that Branch rarely saw.
“Do your worst,” she spat.
Branch took an uneven step toward her. The rocks shifted and scraped under his weight.
The woman was young. Her skin was pale, almost alabaster. High cheekbones dominated otherwise delicate features. Streaks of seaweed green colored her otherwise long golden hair. If not for her insolence, Branch might have thought her weak. Instead, she was a leader. She had guts.
I can work with this, he thought. She knows something.
Branch stopped in front of her, his eyes cast down in an attempt to intimidate her. She wouldn’t look at him. Her gaze was straight ahead, her scowl intact.
Lowering himself, he squatted onto his heels and balanced his weight on the balls of his boots. A thin smile wormed across his face.
“And who are you?” he said.
Her expression, sour and angry, held as she met his glower and answered him.
“I’m the one who will kill you,” she said, venom dripping from each word.
Branch lifted his chin and laughed. He rested his arms across his thighs and scanned the line of cowering people in front of him. Soft cries punctuated the crashing surf.
Rather than speak to the angry girl, he reached out and touched the wizened man beside her. He flinched and blinked at Branch, but said nothing. His face looked like a topographical map. The tears running along his cheeks followed the wrinkles like water through dry creek beds.
“What’s her name?” Branch asked.
The man’s chin quivered. His mouth opened and closed. His frightened eyes darted back and forth between the pirate and the girl.
“You can speak to me,” said the girl. “Don’t have others do your bidding. That’s a sign of weakness. Are you weak, Desmond Branch?”
She said his name like it was foul on her tongue. Branch raised an eyebrow in surprise. Most cowered before him. Few stood tall against him. Never was it a girl.