“How can I be meant to go to a city I’ve never heard of or know where is?”
“Of course you do. You were on your way there when you fell,” Bartholomew persisted. “This road leads to Janus, the city of gateways. Our meeting is God’s will. I am meant to bring you to Janus where you will battle to destroy the Red Knight and his witch before they can bring about Armageddon. It has all been foretold in the book of Prophets and Revelations. Well, all except the part about our meeting, but I’m certain God planned that as well. A minor incident in the greater scheme; not worth mentioning, to be sure, though a footnote would be swell. ‘And one of the gray warriors fell by the way, and was aided by the Lord’s servant, Brother Bartholomew, and together they entered the city of gateways.’ Yes, that does have a nice sound to it, doesn’t it? Maybe for the next revision?”
Alex shrugged uncomfortably. This was wrong. He was no warrior, and the incident at the Saloon proved it. If Oversight hadn’t stepped in and saved him, he and the others would be dead. He was a hero by accident only, and not a very good one.
“Brother Bartholomew,” Alex said, interrupting the man’s reverie. “How far to the city, Janus?”
“Oh, not far, not far at all. I expect we should make it there by nightfall if we start right away. I’d anticipated a more leisurely trip, but I see we need to get you there as quickly as possible.” He flashed a broad smile then started scaling the crumble of scree back to the road. “I knew God had a plan for me. I knew it.”
* * *
Brother Bartholomew set a determined pace, making better time than Alex would have imagined. It was all he could do to keep up, the weight of the weapons heavy, a cruel testament to a life he was expected to live.
Or had been living for some time.
The afternoon gave way, and fog gathered in the shadows, reducing distant landmarks to featureless shapes. The road they followed snaked along the canyon wall, winding steadily downwards. After half a mile, the topside landscape disappeared from view. Good riddance, Alex thought. Just a featureless desert for as far as the eye could see. The sometimes-cobblestone, sometimes-packed earth road crossed numerous dry washes like the one he had woken up in, the road crumbling away from neglect. More startling was the occasional appearance of guardrails, steel-reinforced concrete and cables hinting to a world too modern for cobblestone and wandering friars. Like the Glock that rode above his old six-shooters, Clint Eastwood meets the Terminator. Jack’s handiwork; somehow, the Caretaker was responsible.
But if that was true then Jack was crazy.
Brother Bartholomew regaled him with the tale of his Call to God, and his conclusion after wandering the edge of the great desert—what he assured Alex was the wasteland from which he came—to come to Janus and help the goodly people there overcome; that was the word he used. “The Third Book of Revised Prophets and Revelations is quite clear about the coming of the Red Knight who will precede Armageddon. There can be no stopping what He has set in motion. But in finding you, I am sure that God has seen something worthy in us. Why send those to fight for goodness, if there is no goodness to be saved, and no fight to be won?” He did not wait for an answer. “We shall endeavor to overcome, and, in so doing, prevent Armageddon. God willing.”
Alex paused, not for consideration of Bartholomew’s quandary over the flexibility of prophecy, but because the road turned, affording him his first glimpse of the legendary city of gateways.
Janus spread across the whole of the canyon floor, a thick, mountainous clog in the cracked earth, pushing from side to side and from the bottom of the canyon all the way to the top. Tiers and layers and towers and buildings all jammed together like an intricate mash of toys, the sole purpose seemingly to jam the way through the valley so that none could pass save by going through the city. A collection of walls and scaffolds glittering with torches and window lights against the encroaching darkness, its rusted steel laid bare by wounds in its concrete flesh leaving brown stains of corrosion against the white limestone, metal surfaces blackened with grease and soot. Alex’s first thought was of something cancerous, a malignant growth that needed to be excised, cut from the channel of the living rock, sealed in a bag marked “biological waste,” and burned somewhere with no due humanity.
“Magnificent!”
Alex turned, unaware until Bartholomew had spoken that the man had stopped his pace, stopped his incessant babbling, and was now standing beside him, tourists at a scenic overlook.
“That’s Janus?” Alex asked, thinking it belonged on a heavy metal album cover or in some bad, post-apocalyptic B-movie where science fiction and fantasy were swirled together in a blender. It was not what he imagined for the final battleground in a holy war. Bristling with pipes and girders and half-finished buildings, it hunched before them on powerful legs of stoutly constructed buildings like all the skyscrapers of a single mega-city tumbled over the edge into a glom and held together with epoxy and bailing wire. The city was an affront to the senses, an abomination, a…
(It’s where you’re supposed to be.)
The realization ignited in his brain, undeniable, like his intimate knowledge of weapons he had never seen nor held. There were things to be done here before he could go on; go elsewhere. This absurdist’s Tower of Babel was his destiny, a fact he knew both intuitively and absolutely.
“Jack,” he whispered, the word little more than a hiss of breath.
“What was that?”
(remember … remember …)
“Have you ever heard of the lady of dark November?” Alex asked.
“No,” Bartholomew said, “I can’t say as I have. What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” Alex said. “It’s just something I’m trying to figure out. How soon before we get there?”
“Half an hour, if we hurry,” Brother Bartholomew offered.
“Then we hurry,” Alex said, and started off down the road leading to the base of the sprawling city.
Brother Bartholomew trotted up behind him. “I understand,” he said. “I have felt the urgency of His call as well. But if you work up a sweat now, you’ll be cold when we reach the bottom. Cradled in the earth as it is, Janus is well protected, but the nights are very cool.”
Alex pressed on, actually walking a little faster. “I have to get down there. Tonight.” He could not explain his certainty, but could not deny it either.
(Tomorrow will be too late—)
“—too late,” Bartholomew was telling him. “Janus has a curfew, after which pilgrims like us must wait until the following morning. See there.” The friar pointed at something dotting the area outside the city gates, specks of light and small shapes. At the foot of Janus lay a tent city, a makeshift squatter’s settlement. “Janus is already closed for the night.”
Alex stared more closely, gaze following along the length of the friar’s arm to the massive iron gateway that led inside. It was shut tight, Janus closed to all newcomers until the morning.
“Before the signs, before the mist and the blood-colored moon, Janus was open day and night, receiving messengers and statesmen and pilgrims and all manner of traders and traveling salesman and carpet-baggers through all hours.” Bartholomew shrugged apologetically. “These are hard times.”
Together, they stared down upon the darkening city, pilgrims swimming in the darkness like insects before the enormous gates that shown back at him like a tiny mouth upon the city’s mass, lips pursed over tightly clamped teeth. It was as if the city of Janus was caught in a snarl that would last until dawn. Staring, Alex could almost hear it, the low, threatening rumble that could turn so quickly if the beast was roused, cornered, threatened.
Brother Bartholomew worked to console him. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine, you and I. We’ll find some goodly pilgrims willing to part with some of their stew and a seat by their fire, and we’ll camp this night under the spread of heaven. And before the dawn’s light settles upon the valley floor, we shall be entering the city of gateways.” He smiled ge
nerously, and clapped Alex on the back. “Come on. There’s nothing we can do about it now. Let’s hurry before this mist gets any thicker.”
Alex nodded, still unable to quell the impression that he should be inside of the city—not tomorrow, but tonight! Tomorrow was too late; too late by forever.
But Bartholomew was right. Unless he could scale ten-story walls, he was stuck waiting outside Janus until morning.
“We’ll be all right, you’ll see,” Bartholomew said, teeth white in the darkness, eyes glittering motes. “And tomorrow, the city will welcome us with open arms.”
Alex said nothing, allowing Bartholomew to lead the way, their pace slowing to something more cautious for the gathering darkness and obscuring fog of nightfall. He rummaged through the large satchel as he walked, searching for something to ward off the cold. But the only thing in the bag besides bullets was a scarf; not of any great help, he supposed, but better than nothing. He could already see the first frosty hints of his breath clouding the air, the sweat upon his neck and forehead prickling coolly on his skin.
He looped the scarf around his neck, and immediately felt better; not simply warmer, but better. The foreboding sense from the city was gone as if he had just found a suitable charm to shield him against its dark presence, an amulet no different than the collection of medallions and crosses the wandering friar wore, that desperate reassurance for the faithful when faith was in doubt. It made him feel better, less afraid for the future. Like the weapons he wore, somehow this was a part of his new reality.
The scarf was red.
FOUR: PLIGHT OF THE
COMMON MAN
For Leland Quince, the trip through reality was neither drawn out nor elaborate: one moment, he was aboard a subway car, staring through grime-smeared windows and trying to ignore the stench of underlying urine beneath old vinyl and dirt, and the next he was curled on his side in a fetal ball getting the shit kicked out of him.
How the world turns.
“How many times do we have to explain this to you, Quincey?”
Leland tried to look up and was rewarded with a hard blow to the cheek, a punch from a thickly gnarled fist that felt like a knot of solid oak. His head rocked down, bounced against pavement, and he saw only a brief flash of stars before managing to bury his head back under his arms.
So they kicked him in the stomach.
“It’s really very simple,” the speaker continued. “The city’s a dangerous place. You pay us to keep you safe, make sure no one fucks with your cab or knifes you while you’re takin’ a piss in an alley. You understand how that works don’t you, Quincy?”
Leland spread his elbows apart, peering through the gap. A tall, lanky man wearing round, black lenses stared at him, fingers caressing a long, black baton. Beside him was the man’s opposite: wide as an ox, broad shoulders and a shelf for a brow, a brutish expression of pleasure on an enormous horse jaw complete with a grotesque underbite and jutting teeth. The only thing they had in common was police uniforms.
“I asked you if you understood, Quincey?” the tall man pressed.
When Leland didn’t answer, the lanky man nodded to the other, who immediately punched Leland in the groin.
He felt the air rush from his lungs, his neck and face bulging as if to contain an explosion. For one moment, he was blind, his vision a sheet of black and gray, the world disappearing behind an envelope of pain so great that it overloaded his nervous system. His throat gagged and choked emptily, wanting to vomit or maybe just to die. Maybe both in no particular order. Just pain pulsing upwards, slow at first, as if the nerves had been overloaded, old circuits temporarily offline. Then the pain turned into something greater than the word itself could describe, and he actually did gag, throwing up a gout of air and something bitter and yellow that dribbled down his cheek. His hands fell away from his face in a belated effort to cover his crotch, their movements slow and tremulous. He wanted to scream, but their was nothing in his lungs and no impression on even the most primitive level to suggest it would do anything but prolong his agony.
The lanky man leaned over, hands on his knees, a smile on his spectacled face. “I guess I’ll have to take that strange mewling sound you’re making as a yes, hey Quincey?”
Without knowing it, Leland’s neck creaked in a nod; a reflexive response, the pain bidding his body take over where his rational brain had so completely failed.
“We’re really a couple o’ good guys, me and Grude.” The hairy brute behind the smaller man smiled, displaying even more of the protruding lower teeth, some pointed like an animal’s. “We’ll keep the junkie’s off your cab, make ‘em stick to mugging old folks for flop funds. And we’ll make sure the hops and doormen don’t blow you out for parking near their buildings without kickbacks. We’re a full-service operation, Quincey. We look after our members, twenty-four/seven. Thirty-five a week’s not so bad when you think of it that way. You hustle, you can make that in a couple days. The rest is all gravy. Ain’t that so, Grude?” The large cop nodded his agreement, saying nothing.
The businessman could only stare, his face bright red, shivering from alternating flashes of fever and cold. What was he doing here? What was going on? Could this actually be…?
“Jack?” the word slipped past his lips like a breath, a singular curse above all other forms of profanity or sacrilege.
The gangly cop’s hand shot out snake-quick, catching Leland’s collar and jerking him to within a bare six inches. His breath smelled of cigarettes and garlic, the reek of bad aftershave barely covering an animal stink. “Don’t you make the mistake of trying to report us again, Quincy, or you might find yourself with real problems; you got me? It’s a dangerous city. Lots o’ people. And no one gives a shit about what happens down here in the cracks. You might find yourself jumped in an alley just like this one. Perp might gut you and leave you to die with your bowels hanging out of a hole in your belly. Slow and messy. And ain’t nobody gonna regard your death as anything more than another job-opening, relief for the big pool of the unemployed, so to speak.”
The large cop reached into Leland’s pocket and pulled out his wallet. He tipped it open and shook it, disclosing six dollars in greasy, tattered ones and a couple pieces of paper, sales slips and business cards that had likely spent their lives in there and would leave as fragments of lint, worn away a little at a time until they simply disappeared. He dropped the empty wallet and retrieved the bills, thick fingers ending in yellowed, claw-like nails.
“Have the balance by tomorrow night, Quincey, and you’ll be a member in good standing again.” The large one was already leaving, the other following close behind. “Remember, if you’re not inside, you’re outside. And no one wants to be outside.”
Then he was alone.
Leland Quince crawled to his knees, new agonies alluding to blows he did not remember receiving; ones suffered before he actually arrived, while he was still aboard the train. But somehow he had been here—he had always been here!
It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense!
He gathered his wallet and the errant scraps. Besides a driver’s license and a cab permit, he had several small notes scrawled on worn and folded slips, more of the same pieces that had fallen to the ground. He recognized the information as stock tickers and prices, but saw nothing familiar. Several were crossed out. Maybe failures, or maybe he’d bought them already. But if so, what had he bought them with? His empty wallet and cabbie permit, the heavy flannel shirt over a T-shirt, his tasteless, brown, bargain shoes worn nearly through in the sole all spoke to his financial position. He might have a few dollars at home, likely stashed in a coffee can because stuffing it under his mattress would seem … cliché.
“Bet you think you fucked me over real good, Jack.”
The alleyway offered no reply.
Leland climbed slowly to his feet, wall at his back. His pants, threadbare khakis darkened with mismatched splotches of unremembered residue, pulled tightly at his crotch. He tugge
d the fly, trying to give his aching testicles some relief; enough so that he could shuffle out of the alley before the two cops decided to return. He felt all the stabs and twinges of someone who had been badly beaten. His mouth tasted like salted copper; roving his tongue around it revealed a swollen lip mangled on the inside near the ridge of his teeth. He desperately wanted a drink, though he doubted he could afford it. But it would be worth it just to dull the pain for a short while.
Anything was better than this.
He made his way across the empty street to a small diner, the sun just cresting the horizon, pale in an overcast sky, frozen and lightless and promising many more miserable days just like this one. The bite in the wind suggested winter was not far away, and it would be very cold.
Sandwiched between vintage automobiles—not vintage here—was a yellow-checkered taxi—his cab! —the OFF DUTY sign lit up on the top. He knew just by looking at it that the heater didn’t work very well, that the brakes were beginning to slip; it didn’t always turn over right away when it was cold, and winter mornings were always brutally cold here (wherever here was?). The front seat smelled like a dozen different car fresheners, none of which fully concealed the stale smell of human excretions saturating the fabric, haunting his cab (his cab?) forever.
Despair crept at the edge of his thoughts, and he turned quickly and went into the diner. There was nothing in the cab that could help him, the certainty of that scaring him more than anything or anyone he had encountered so far. It was not the lack of aid, but that he knew it. He knew it the same way he knew where he was. He was not misplaced. This was exactly where he was supposed to be, where he had always been—where Jack put him. And he would stay here until the day he died.
“You think you got it all figured out, don’t you? Well nobody controls me, Jack; you least of all.” He would free himself from the insanity the Caretaker devised, get himself back to where he was before, use those stock picks and get back to … well, back to…
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 37