A God of Many Tears (Hawker's Drift Book 4)

by Andy Monk

  “Sometimes things get so broke there’s nothing you can do to fix them.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But I sees you both love each other and you should hold on to that, life can’t offer more.”

  She was staring at him, her eyes dark and gleaming in the warm light of the afternoon sun shearing out of the faultless cornflower sky. She wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come, or she didn’t let them. Instead, her hand went to Amos’ arm and she turned away from him.

  The eyes lingering on him, however, were filled with so much sadness that it caught his throat.

  Amelia shuffled away into the grass on Amos’ arm. He didn’t call out and all the questions that had been buzzing around his head shrivelled to cinders in the heat of the final expression he had seen on the old woman’s face.

  She knew his future and suddenly he didn’t want to know a damn thing about it.

  *

  Cece was rummaging through her saddle bag. Her horse shuffled and snorted, perhaps sensing her temper.

  He did too. So he stood behind her, hands on his hips and waited for her to find what she was looking for. It didn’t take long for the quantum mapper to appear in her hand accompanied by a grunt of satisfaction. She almost bowled into him as she whirled around.

  She muttered something under her breath that he guessed wasn’t a compliment and breezed by, her head down examining the screen.

  “Cece…”

  “You’re not buying this, are you?” she didn’t look up. Her face was obscured by her wide-brimmed hat and falling hair, but he could still see her scowl well enough.

  “I dunno…” he pulled off his own hat and scratched at his scalp.

  Cece made a little snorting noise.

  “She knows too much.”

  “And you were the one who scoffed at the Mayor being a Something Else.”

  “How’d you explain that old lady then?”

  “I don’t know either,” Cece looked up and flipped the mapper screen at him, “but she didn’t come through a fissure.”

  He squinted at the screen and the clouds of colour laid over the surrounding topography, everything was pale and muted. No resonance, no afterglow. If Amelia had stepped through a fissure from a different world then the matter of this reality should still be resonating with the exotic materials making up the strange non-reality that separated the infinite existences of the multiverse. Cobar-Kline Particles, or CKP, was the official name, but everyone at the Facility had simply called it the Wonder Stuff.

  He glanced towards Amelia and Amos, the gunslinger’s head was bowed as he listened to the old woman, who still clung to his arm with one hand while the other gripped her walking stick.

  “It doesn’t matter where she came from…” he muttered, turning his attention back to Cece.

  “It doesn’t matter?” she mouthed as if he’d just claimed the moon was made of blue cheese.

  “We shouldn’t go to the Mayor’s ranch, whatever’s there, we don’t need to see it.”

  “There’s a way out of this world there. Of course we’re going! We’re just not going to blow anything up.”

  He looked out towards the horizon and the sea of grass moving in the breeze. The light was softening as the sun fell towards the night.

  “What’s so wrong with this world?”

  “It’s full of killers. For a start.”

  “There’s a lot of empty out there. We could find somewhere, build a cabin, have-”

  “Since when did you want to be Davy bloody Crockett?”

  He shrugged, “We can’t go back to our world and this is as good as any other.”

  “I don’t want to live in the nineteenth century, John. Even if we can’t get back to our world we can still find one a lot closer to it than this.”

  “I’ve lived here a long time. It ain’t so bad…”

  “Then you can stay, I’m certainly not stopping you. I asked because I need your help, not because I want you to come with me.”

  Her eyes burned and so did her words. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and bit down on his urge to either snap back at her or walk off. Anger wasn’t going to solve anything.

  “We shouldn’t go to that place…” he finally managed to say, keeping his voice calm despite the way his heart thumped and his stomach churned.

  “Why? Not because of an old woman’s ramblings about God, surely?”

  “I think she is who she says she is.”

  “You’re not answering the question,” Cece’s nostrils flared, she was steaming mad and wanted to lash out at him again. He wasn’t going to persuade her of anything just now.

  He wanted to say, “Trust me,” but that wasn’t going to work. Neither was saying what he’d glimpsed in Amelia’s old eyes either. The sadness and regret. If she was who she said she was, then the little girl back in Hawker’s Drift was going to live through this. She was going to know what happens and in that one look he’d seen as clear as the sun hanging big and bright and burning in the vast blue sky that she was sending them to their deaths.

  But Cece was never going to believe that. She was going to go because she thought the ranch and what the Mayor had there was her only way out of this reality. And because he still loved her he would follow her there regardless.

  Cece was still looking at him, expecting an answer.

  “Tell me, if Amelia didn’t come through a fissure, where did she go?”

  Cece followed his gaze to where Amos was standing alone, the grass up to his waist and staring off towards the north.

  Towards the Mayor’s Ranch.

  The Deputy

  His world had become pain.

  Of course, his world had always been filled with pain. It had just always been other peoples’ before.

  The bitch had shot him. He still wasn’t sure how she’d managed it. She wasn’t supposed to. That wasn’t how it worked. Of all the women he’d killed he’d never suffered more than a few scratches. None of the men had put much of a mark on him either. Now, in the space of a few days the nigger and the ginger bitch had both, somehow, managed to put hurt on him.

  It was a sign. He’d gotten soft on the Mayor’s leash. Gotten used to letting someone else make decisions for him, living from scraps where once he’d dined royally whenever he chose.

  He didn’t believe in God or any other divine force. Not the one with the white beard at any rate, the one who preached love and forgiveness and filled the world with suffering. That was for fools. But he’d been taught a lesson right enough even if he wasn’t exactly sure who the teacher was. The God of Tricky Fellows maybe. A good a name as any for whatever force of nature had moulded him from a different clay to the rest of humanity.

  Still, he wasn’t dead, which was something. Not many men could take a bullet in the face and still be walking.

  The slug had punched through his cheek, taking out a chunk of tongue and shattering teeth on the way. If the bitch had got the gun straight it would have blown his brains out, but the angle of the muzzle had sent the bullet into his open mouth and out the side of his face. The pain was indescribable. It had been quite a shot. She could have tried it a hundred times and not pulled it off again.

  He’d managed to get away, somehow. He didn’t remember how. He thought she’d fired another shot at him, but it was all a pain-racked blur. He’d just run, like an animal without thought or reason, knowing he had to keep moving or die.

  He hated it. The loss of control, the loss of dignity, the loss of everything.

  Most of all he hated the fact it was all his fault.

  All the years of living behind his mask had kept him safe, but caught between what the nigger and the Mayor had done to him, he hadn’t been able to contain his rage when the McCrea bitch and the brats had shown up while he’d been waiting for Katie to get home and it had cost him. Cost him dear.

  He wanted to make them pay their dues. The old nigger, the ginger whore, the Mayor, Katie. All of them. But it wouldn’t be today. If h
e did, he’d die. The brats would have got to Shenan, the old fool would come a scurrying and he’d get the boys out looking for him. He’d always been the Mayor’s man, just like all the other deputies, but he was under no illusion the Mayor would help him now. He’d thrown off the leash and the Mayor would see him as a rabid dog in need of putting down.

  So he wouldn’t get them today. Maybe not this year or even next year. But he would be getting them. He was a man who always finished his business. He just had to get out of Hawker’s Drift till the heat died down. It was that kind of town of course. People forgot shit real quick and easy here.

  When he’d finally regained his senses, he’d found himself in one of the little alleys hidden between the neat little wooden houses the sheep lived their neat little wooden lives in. They’d always been so useful for getting about town without pulling in too much notice.

  His face was afire and blood stained the front of his shirt. His tongue burned and felt thick in his mouth, the sharp jagged edges of his broken teeth grating against it. His nose had been shattered by the bitch’s boot too, and his nostrils were thick with congealing blood. He guessed he didn’t look too much of a picture. He even had the bitch’s teeth marks in his wrist where she’d bitten a chunk out of him. He’d need to get it cleaned, no knowing what kind of shit he could catch of a whore’s bite.

  He spat out blood and tooth splinters.

  The God of Tricky Fellows had taught him to learn his hunting ground intimately, so he knew the town well. Normally, he’d be able to cross town without attracting much attention if he wanted. But now his face was a bloody ruin and no mask he could conjure was going to stop people noticing.

  He’d stashed his gear in an empty house on the South Flats after checking out of the Thurlsten’s (and checking the Thurlstens out). Some old codger had died there the previous year and nobody had been in it since. It had the advantage of a small stable at the back and he’d moved his horse there from the livery in expectation of slipping away after doing his business on Katie and the old nigger.

  If he could get there unseen he reckoned no one would come a looking before nightfall and he could get away. There were lots of little nooks and crannies in town a man could hide himself in and he reckoned it’d take a good few days for Shenan to have them all checked out. And if any of the boys did come calling he’d deal with them.

  No hard feelings boys, just doing business.

  He moved as quickly as he could, focusing on keeping his feet moving rather than the pain that lanced through his head with every step. All he wanted to do was curl up in a ball, but he couldn’t, if he did he was a dead man. Nausea was washing over him in waves and the sunshine seared his eyes. He kept moving. Slow and steady as he could.

  He stuck to the alleys and lanes where possible, when he had to cross a larger road he straightened himself up and walked as steady and straight as any man going about his business might and hoped nobody got close enough to notice the blood or ruined face.

  Nobody did.

  Perhaps the God of Tricky Fellows was still looking out for him. The only people he saw were in the distance and none of them paid him any attention. The streets were strangely deserted, like they were when the carny was in town. Maybe something was going on, whatever it was, it wasn’t him. News went around quick enough in a small town, but not that quick.

  Once he made it down The Tear and onto the South Flats he felt better. Not his face, that still hurt like being buggered by a bear, but that he was going to make it. The South Flats were full of yards and warehouses scattered with the humble homes of the town’s poorer folk, many of whom did seasonal work on the surrounding farms, or stayed home all day getting themselves shit-face drunk. Either way, nobody much was about save a few skinny dogs and old-timers dozing in the sun.

  He’d nearly reached his bolt hole on the corner of Hudson Street, a nondescript collection of unremarkable little houses splintering off the South Road, when he heard a couple of women yacking and he had to dodge behind some old barrels stacked next to a shit hole shack with its windows open. Grubby curtains billowed in and out with the wind’s breath.

  Two fat women waddled past and he doubled over holding his face. Without moving to distract his mind the pain was even worse. Their words buzzed by with no more meaning than that of a bug droning.

  He stayed where he was even after their brainless chatter was lost in the thick summer air. He was sweating profusely and his vision swam a couple of times. He sucked in air that tasted of copper and hot dry ashes which sent further spasms of agony through his head.

  Nearly there. Nearly there. Nearly there.

  The house was on the other side of the road, on the corner of Hudson and South. It was bigger than most of the homes on the South Flats and backed onto a collection of dilapidated warehouses that both the town and businesses used to store shit in. Probably why it had remained empty, people who could afford a house that size chose a better part of town and the people who lived here couldn’t afford it. The codger who’d died there, who had been known as Old Beevoir around town, had been something of a recluse and the house had been boarded up since his death to keep vagrants out.

  He’d long since replaced the padlock on the back door with one of his own after identifying it as a potential bolt hole. He had several such hiding places scattered around town, but had picked this one after deciding his days of keeping law and order were over to use as it sat near the edge of town and therefore would be easier to ride out of Hawker’s Drift from once his business was done.

  A Tricky Fellow always had to be prepared after all. Admittedly, he hadn’t expected getting here in the first place would be such a difficult and painful experience. There had been closer places he could have hid in, but his horse and gear were stashed here now and it would have been even harder to have crossed town once more people were out looking for him.

  He straightened up and buried his pain. He just had to cross the dusty street and slip down the side of the house. He’d got this far and wasn’t about to pass out now.

  The street was deserted and he crossed it as calmly as his abused head allowed, his boots crunching the grit with each pain filled step. It was oppressively hot, the sunlight fierce enough to feel like a weight on his skin. If he got out of this shit hole he was gonna go north and find someplace that stayed cold all damn year. He was sick of sweating all summer under blue fucking skies. There were smears that looked like smoke in the east, but otherwise it was another cloudless day in Hawker’s Drift. His last. At least for a while. When he returned to finish his business, he’d come in the winter when he could swaddle himself in thick clothes, scarves and a hood. He’d grow a bushy beard to disguise his ruined face and nobody would recognise him.

  He cheered himself at the thought of what he would do and who he would do it too as he crossed the road and swivelled down the side of Old Beevoir’s place. No one was about. The God of Tricky Fellows was still on his side.

  He slipped into the backyard. The door to the little stable was locked but he didn’t check on his horse. It would be hot as hell in there, but he’d left plenty of water. If some bastard had stolen his ride there wasn’t much he could do about it now.

  Out of sight of prying eyes he staggered up the back stoop, almost dropping the key he fished out of his pocket. He fumbled the lock a couple of times before finally slipping the key in. He was making a low mewling noise he realised, like a wounded animal. Which was what the McCrea bitch had reduced him too.

  The back door squeaked in protest as he let himself in. With the house boarded up it was mercifully gloomy inside once he’d slammed the door after him.

  The silent house smelt of hot stale air and forgotten lives. It felt like he’d found his way inside a tomb. The only scuff marks in the dust were those his own boots had left that morning. He’d been whistling happily after killing the Thurlstens and tingling with excitement at the thought of raping Kate and taking her head for the old nigger to see before he did h
is last bit of business in Hawker’s Drift.

  He wasn’t whistling now.

  The bannister swayed as he pulled himself up the stairs, trying to find comfort in the shadows where all Tricky Fellows felt most at home.

  Most of the house had been stripped of its possessions, but Old Beevoir’s bed and a stained flat mattress remained in the bedroom and he’d stashed his gear under it.

  Part of him expected it to be gone. Another part of him expected the Mayor to be sitting on the bed, one boot hooked over the other, looking mightily disappointed in him. The room, however, was empty and his gear was where he’d left it.

  The window was boarded up, though hateful sunlight still snuck through the gaps to illuminate the dust motes floating in the air and the discoloured, decaying plaster that had fallen away from the walls in places to reveal the lathing beneath.

  He wanted to curl up on the mattress Old Beevoir had died upon, but he fought down the urge. He had to attend to his face. It was gonna hurt worse than anything else in his life, but if he left it the wound could go bad and he’d die a slow and hurtful death as his body rotted.

  With shaking hands, he pulled open the bag and rummaged inside until he found his doctor’s kit. It actually had belonged to a doctor, who he’d strangled with his own necktie in a nameless town half-ruined by some petty war.

  He’d gone to see the quack after turning his ankle and wanting to be sure he hadn’t broken it. The old man had taken a look even though it was late and he was closing up, told him it was fine and had done a nice job of strapping the ankle so it could take some weight. The doctor had told him to stay off his feet for a few days, but he hadn’t paid that advice much heed and his ankle had held up just fine when he’d beaten the man and then strangled him.

  He'd helped himself to some of the doctor’s supplies, including a couple of bottles of chloroform that had been useful in knocking out women he’d wanted to take someplace quiet to work on in a leisurely fashion and a set of scalpels and other surgical equipment that had proved to be extremely satisfying.