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

by Mark Reynolds

  Even Jack.

  God, how she wanted to be flying. Wanted the Dreamline. Wanted a lot of it. Enough to kill, maybe. Enough to set her free. Enough…

  … to make the widening pool in the darkness something other than what it was, something that did not resurrect thoughts recently buried, easily exhumed.

  She stared across time; stared through eyes of days or weeks ago. And Lenny stared back at her. Lenny, her connection and sometimes friend—friend when she had money and wanted to get high, wanted to ride the Dreamline. Lenny looked back at her in amazement. It was almost comical, his mouth open, his eyes wide. It made you want to laugh, except there was nothing funny about the flat expression in his eyes. It was the stare of a fish lying upon the shore, choking in the air, drying under the sun. It was the stare of something dying, or maybe already dead.

  Yes, there was the flatness, the deadness in his eyes. But there was also the amber-colored handle of the screwdriver he held in his hand, the steel shaft still buried in his throat. Blood spilled out in thick gushes from the hole in his neck, spreading upon the floor in a widening pool of …

  … darkness.

  On a bathroom floor in a saloon on the edge of sanity, Ellen sobbed quietly, trying to pull herself back from the image, make it go away. But it chased her and she had nowhere left to run, nothing that would drive it away or set her free.

  The dead-eye fish stare looked at her, the pale, trembling fingers limply holding the screwdriver which Lenny used to crack vending machines, car doors, and even to mug people if he needed a fix really bad. For some reason, Lenny could not pull the screwdriver from his neck. He was too weak, or too stoned, or too something. Or maybe, she had sunk it in too far, wedged it too deep in the muscle, the artery, the gristle, the … whatever. Lenny was a dead man. He was staring at her with his dead eyes, one track-marked hand limply holding the screwdriver while the other dangled uselessly down by his shriveled penis. Lenny’s pants and underwear were around his ankles, his member slowly deflating, descending as she watched with strangely lucid fascination. The skin of his dick was blue-veined and marked with small red sores like towns on the blue highways of a road map. This way to Peterville, she thought, and remembered a hysterical sound in her ears, a sound like a choked laugh that might have been a sob or a muffled scream.

  She knew that she was also half-naked, her jeans wadded in a pile somewhere, her underwear … well, maybe she hadn’t been wearing any; she couldn’t remember and supposed it didn’t matter. She was simply standing there in a T-shirt, staring wide-eyed at the dead man in front of her who would not fall down in the widening pool of his own blood, knowing, in that secret part of her mind where all things are stored that she didn’t wish to deal with, that Lenny had gotten her high, had peeled off her clothes, and was preparing to enter her with that diseased piece of meat he called a dick.

  That was before she killed him.

  But the funny thing was he wouldn’t fall down. She must have put the screwdriver in his throat, though for the life of her she could not remember doing it. But he simply stood there, staring at her; staring with his dead fish eyes; staring with empty accusation. But he wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t drop down and die. He just stared. Stared.

  Welcome, a voice said from a deep corner of her brain, to the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.

  The brass frog in the corner, the one with the obscene phallus, was gone. The towels it held upon upraised hands, the mother-of-pearl soap dish that rested in its gaping mouth, lay upon the floor as if dropped suddenly, forgotten like the frog itself.

  * * *

  The Tribe of Dust stood waiting as he marched across the sea of sand changed to indigo by the night. The sky was lighter in the east; morning was near.

  Another day in the Saloon, and what do you have to show for yourself? Jack thought despairingly.

  If they’d let me alone, stop trying to steal the tickets and turn the others against me, I might be done by now.

  Or you might not, a voice thought back quietly. Excuses are for those who fail.

  Shut up!

  He stopped in front of them, somehow knowing just as they did where the line of the barrier stretched; where he was safe from them; where they could not reach—not physically.

  But it was closer than two days ago; maybe twenty-five yards closer. Looking back, he could read the flickering sign on the candy machine in the waiting room. Could he do that two days ago? He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure.

  What was happening?

  Beyond the Cast Outs, farther than he remembered, a single tent of black and crimson. Nothing else. No distant smell of fire or glow of light. It was as if the Wasteland was slowly taking them back, wearing to dust their magical creations, sucking the life from their self-made worlds.

  If that was true then what about the missing gumball machine? The missing basket chair? Were they all being reclaimed by the Wasteland?

  “Hello, Jack,” Kreiger remarked. “Nice night. The day promises to be hot, though. What do you think?”

  Kreiger knew; not the details, surely, but somehow he knew. The Cast Out was playing with him.

  “I found something of yours in my saloon,” Jack said, a quiver of rage in his voice like a steaming kettle forgotten upon the stove, boiling over, burning up. “I thought you might want it back.”

  The gargoyle stepped forward, unceremoniously dumping the wrecked carcass of the Dust Eater upon the hardpan, a dead sounding whump-thump as it fell into Kreiger’s part of the Wasteland, the empty part.

  The Cast Out stared down, lips pursed tightly together, a serious glare as if he were chewing back an outburst of rage and finding the slice too big to swallow. Hyde’s perpetual smirk melted away, and he looked to Kreiger expectantly. Rebreather’s mask left his feelings—if he had any—hidden. When Kreiger spoke, his words were pleasant but clipped, bitten off the moment they escaped his teeth. The leader of the Cast Outs was surprised.

  And outraged.

  “What do you mean your saloon?” Kreiger said, eyes never leaving the dead body before him, some rude sacrifice to a pagan god, or maybe simply a gauntlet tossed at his feet. “I’m closer today than I was yesterday, Jack. And closer yesterday than I was the day before. Your world is shrinking, little man. This silly wall of yours is drinking the energy from the Saloon faster than you could ever imagine—not that you imagine very well. I think that was made clear from our first meeting. No, you arrogant prick, it is not your saloon. It was Algernon’s Saloon. You’re living on borrowed time and borrowed property, and I’m here to collect. And if you think this won’t earn you a substantial penalty, you are sadly mistaken.”

  “The Saloon is mine. I’m the Caretaker.”

  “As were we once. Do you think we sprouted from the sand like those witless monstrosities that skitter upon the Wasteland, eating dust and blood and one another? No. We were all Caretakers, just as you are now. And soon, you will join us in the Wasteland. You will join us because you cannot hold the Nexus. You cannot bend it to your will. And those who cannot make it bend are broken.”

  “I don’t have time for your doublespeak, Kreiger. I just came out here to warn you. There won’t be any more night deals. No more cloak and dagger. You’re done with them. Your monster is dead. He’s been dying since the day he arrived in my saloon. Oversight’s no longer yours either. She’s mine now. Nothing stays in my Saloon and remains unchanged. So save your breath. No one else will be coming out to meet with you. And no more of yours will be coming in. Go back to what little is left of the Wasteland and the comfort you can dredge from it, and leave me alone.”

  Jack turned, prepared to leave without awaiting a reply. Instead, he got a question, both simple and horrible: “Has anything disappeared yet, Jack?”

  His feet rooted into the hardpan, his body become stone, his brain locked upon the words, trapped. Has anything disappeared yet, Jack? A part of him said he should keep walking; hell, he should start running! Kreiger knew! Like it or not, Kreig
er was wise to the ways of the Saloon and the Nexus and the Wasteland, and he knew exactly what was going on.

  And Jack knew nothing.

  He turned slowly, hearing tendons creak as he moved, muscles tight, joints locked. “What have you done?”

  “Nothing, I assure you. This is all your own doing, Jack.” Kreiger gestured absently to the sand then sat down upon the ground. The rest of the Tribe of Dust did likewise. “It’s good that we can meet like this at long last. No posturing. No threats back and forth. No more ‘this is mine’ or ‘I’m in charge.’ Empty and useless, eh, Jack?” Again, he gestured with his hand to the dust at Jack’s feet. “Please, sit down. The wall separates us, and you have the Guardian to protect you. You’re safe for now. Let us sit … and talk.”

  Cautiously, Jack sat down upon the sand, knees popping as he did so. His body felt like a coiled spring, compressed to the point of breaking, ready to release, to leap up and run like hell. But he didn’t. He crossed his legs, and faced the Cast Outs.

  “That’s better,” Kreiger said. “A gathering of Caretakers, old and new.”

  “You’re not Caretakers. None of you are. You were cast out.”

  “And just because you are in there now, and we are out here, you think that makes you better? You think that makes you a Caretaker?”

  Jack opened his mouth to reply, but Kreiger cut him off. “Don’t flatter yourself, Jack. You’re no Caretaker, either. You will become a Cast Out soon enough, just as we are.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack said, an unwanted waiver in his voice.

  “Don’t I? What have you done, Jack? Have the trains come and taken any of your charges away, sent them on to new lives, new realities? Have you been writing, or whatever it is that you pretend to call it? Or have you spent all of your time quashing the petty disputes that erupt around you? Figuring out what to eat for breakfast and where everyone should sleep? The bridge is burned behind you, Jack. There is no going back now. And in your indecision, the fire has caught up to you and left you swatting sparks while the timbers burst into flame.”

  Jack said nothing.

  “That sound you hear is the clock ticking, Jack, though you mistook it for your own pounding heart. This isn’t your second chance, it’s your only chance, and it’s slipping through your fingers. The barrier is collapsing around you. Your gilded cage is getting smaller as the vice tightens, gilt flaking away in toxic chips of lead-wash. The power is running out, and I’ll bet you don’t even know why.”

  Jack did not respond, afraid he would confirm what Kreiger was suggesting. Did the Cast Out know that he could not make the trains come back? That his attempts at writing netted little in which to send even one of the others, let alone all five? What had he accomplished with the supreme power available to him? Corona with lime, junk food from a broken-down candy dispenser, an updated sound system?

  As a Caretaker, he was failing.

  “It’s okay Jack,” Kreiger said sympathetically. “The deck was stacked against you from the start.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “No. But I will tell you some. Some is all you need, Jack. Enough to let you know that you can’t win. In the two thousand years that I have wandered the Wasteland, no Caretaker has ever been in a position the likes of which you are caught in now. Do you know what this is?” Kreiger patted the staff at his side, the sharpened piece of steel and copper with its rune-carved surface, the blue crystal ball caged in its middle. It hardly resembled a staff at all; nothing like he would have imagined from years of reading fantasy novels about wizards and their staves, no gnarled stand of ash or an elaborate device affixed with phoenix feathers and dragon’s claws. Kreiger’s staff was haphazard, almost comical.

  “It’s the Saloon’s lightning rod,” Kreiger said. “I stole it from the rooftop during one of Algernon’s excursions into your world.”

  And as Kreiger said it, Jack could suddenly place it. The small inset on the corner of the widow’s walk; he’d thought it a flag sconce when he’d seen it the other morning, but now its purpose seemed obvious. It was the fixture for a lightning rod.

  But what did it mean if Kreiger had it?

  “The lightning rod is not simply a lightning rod, Jack. There are no thunderstorms in the Wasteland.” He lifted the staff, inspecting the runes with casual interest. “The fact of the matter is this is just a symbolic representation of a focal lens, an allegorical construct of the Nexus by some long-gone Caretaker. It actualizes the point through which the energy of the different lines of reality enters the Nexus, and can, in turn, be utilized by the person closest to the Nexus: the Caretaker. If it makes it easier, think of this as a power outlet with a built-in voltage converter and the Nexus as the penultimate live wire.”

  Jack’s head was reeling. He understood the words, but couldn’t grasp their meaning. Kreiger had the lightning rod from the roof of the Saloon, the focal lens for the power of the Nexus, the means of capturing the power that the Caretaker would use, power he would manipulate, power he would create with.

  “The staff doesn’t work so well out here, I’ll grant you,” Kreiger said mildly. “It is out of alignment. I can draw in stray energy, even a little from the Nexus, but most of it is lost. It simply passes down through the lines of reality and proceeds on. Still, the little I gather is better than the little you have left. This barrier you have created to keep us out is drinking it all away, and there has been no new energy brought into the Nexus since Algernon fled to the other side to find you. Your power’s off-line, you’re on auxiliary batteries only, and you’re trying to run with full shields and warp drive.” Kreiger chuckled absently. “It can’t take it, Jack. The power is slipping away too fast. That’s why things are disappearing. First, things you didn’t notice, things you forgot about. Their matrix has been undone; their energy converted back to power the rest of the Saloon’s artifacts and structure. But it’s a stopgap measure only. A starving man will first discover his body converting fat into energy to survive. Then muscle tissue. And finally bone matter and portions of his own liver. But you can’t hold on forever, Jack. Sooner or later, you’ll run out. Your barrier is draining the juice too fast, not that you had a choice. Without the barrier, we’d have annihilated you.”

  Kreiger paused, and the two faced each other across the silent, dead sand.

  “But it won’t protect you forever, Jack. No, far short of that, really. And when it collapses, it will take most of the Saloon down with it.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me give up. You want the Nexus, and you need me to give it to you.” But Jack knew even as he said it that it wasn’t true. He didn’t even believe it himself. Kreiger was being honest; honest because lies were unnecessary.

  “Soon, there won’t be enough power left in the Saloon to make a soda cracker or a shoelace,” Kreiger remarked. “When that moment comes, the walls of Jericho will fall, and my creatures will storm over you like the wrath of God. We shall take back Babylon, me and mine, cast out the infidel that he may perish in the desert, and hang all of his servants from the high walls. Are you getting the picture? A Caretaker could recreate the lens, Jack, but you’re no Caretaker. Not yet. You’re still on trial. You need this back,” he motioned to the staff, “because all you have left to power everything in that fool place is the residual energy left behind by Algernon; his legacy of sorts. And you’re gobbling that up sight unseen.”

  Jack felt his mouth open, but nothing came out. No sound. No protest. No strong words of denouncement. There was nothing to say. Kreiger was telling the truth and he knew it. It all made sense now. The disappearing things; things he never really noticed or cared about. How soon before it was something more important? He needed the barrier to keep the Cast Outs away, but it was hastening his end. Kreiger forced the confrontation two days earlier knowing this was Jack’s only alternative; knowing he would win regardless of what Jack did. The endgame was never in doubt, only the timeframe.


  “Son of a bitch,” Jack murmured, attention lost to his own despair.

  “There, there, Jack. You fought a good fight. Remarkable, all things considered. I’m still willing to let bygones be bygones. Yield, and I’ll let you and the others go.”

  Jack looked up at him, beyond him, into the brightening Wasteland and the single, dark tent in the distance. Not the three tents of two days before with the smell of food and the smoke from their fires, just a single, lonely tent.

  “Your choice. Tell me where you and the others want to go, and I’ll send you there.”

  And why did he keep asking him to relinquish the Nexus? Why was it so important that he give it up? The power would run out soon enough. The barrier would fail, and the Tribe of Dust would take the place. It would be relatively simple to dispose of Jack and the others then, replace the lightning rod—focal lens—and power the Saloon back up. Like plugging the god machine back in. Why not simply wait for the inevitable?

  Because the Cast Outs are also running out of power.

  Jack stood up slowly, brushing the pale dust from the seat of his jeans. “Come on, Nail. Let’s go.”

  The gargoyle nodded indifferently, that dog-like expression upon his face that suggested he was merely waiting for Jack to say the word. He turned and started back to the Saloon.

  Kreiger leaped to his feet, the façade evaporating like desert rain, and his face twisted in the darkness, rage and hatred, the visage of a mad demon. “Dammit, Jack! If you play this out, you’ll lose. Give up now and I’ll let you go. Push on, and I swear you’ll beg me for death!”

  “Good night, Kreiger,” Jack said distantly, thoughts charging ahead on a different vein. He did not hear anything the leader of the Cast Outs said after that, not the shouted threats or snarled warnings. He did not hear and he did not care. He had to get back to the Saloon; back to the Nexus. He had to figure it out; figure out what it all meant. There was still time left, but could he do anything with it?