The Glass Mountains: The Saboteur Chronicles Book 2

by J. V. Roberts

  “Now I’ve definitely got to meet him.” Dominic pulled away with a quick twist and sent Ronan stumbling into the crowd.

  Ronan caught his balance against a couple of puke covered caravan riders; they were too drunk to shove him off, so they let him sag there.

  Dominic broke through the final layer of the crowd and found the man he was looking for. The triple-chinned monstrosity on the other side of the table was wearing a white suit, soaked in filth, and dotted with black and brown patches where the fabric had been pushed past its breaking point. He was picking at his teeth with a sliver of bone; human or animal, Dominic couldn’t tell. Behind the two-ton titan stood a pair of spindly, hunchbacked individuals, almost identical in appearance. They were carrying small submachine guns and wearing black bags over their heads, with tiny holes cut out for the eyes. Dominic leaned over and planted his hands firmly against the tabletop. The eyes behind the masks followed him. Dominic noticed that their trigger fingers were gnarled and red, almost skeletal in their appearance.

  “My, my, my, you look simply delicious.” A swollen purple tongue rolled from his mouth.

  “You Randall?”

  “Perhaps,” he leaned towards Dominic, moving the table with his belly, “you looking to buy or sell?”

  Dominic shook his head. “I’m here for work.”

  “Work?”

  “Axel, the bartender, he said you have work that pays.”

  “I think he was mista—”

  Ronan appeared beside Dominic, out of breath, puke now staining the front of his shirt. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Randall. He made a mistake. We were just leaving.”

  Randall’s face lit up. “No, please stay.” He gestured to the masked man standing over his left shoulder. “Get our new friend settled.”

  The masked deformity shuffled around the table. It pulled out a single chair and motioned for Dominic to take a seat before returning to its post.

  “You should have told me you were friends with Ronan. A friend of Ronan is a frieeend of mine.” There was something unsettling about the way friend slithered from his lips.

  Ronan’s laugh sounded more like a pleading whimper. “Friends? I wouldn’t call us friends, no, me and Dominic, we just met…mere hours ago. Figured I’d show him the town, get him out of the elements.”

  “You know his name. Out here, that practically makes you family.” Randall folded his hands over his belly and settled into his seat, the wood groaning beneath him.

  “So why is it that they call you the Cannibal?” Dominic kept his back straight, one hand on the table, the other in his lap, close to his waist and the pistol.

  Randall’s eyes vanished behind folds of pale flesh as his mouth rolled into a grin. “Ronan’s been talking out of turn.”

  “It was Axel, actually.”

  “Ah, a pity,” Randall pouted. “I suppose I can’t suck the skin from his twitching corpse; he keeps my glass full. Besides,” Randall leaned in, his voice a strained whisper, “you seen that hand cannon he keeps strapped above his pecker?”

  Dominic nodded. “He took the time to introduce me.”

  “That thing is a day ruiner if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “So, why the name?” Dominic lit another cigarette while Ronan paced the floor behind him.

  “I’m a man of particular tastes. Out here in the Wastes, the palette doesn’t have much to choose from. If we want to stretch the taste buds, then we’ve got to get creative. I am not alone in my desire to…taste. There are many out here, just like me, and they’re willing to pay good money for the experience.”

  “And what experience might that be?” Dominic was expecting him to continue hiding behind carefully plucked words.

  “Tasting the flesh of another, of course.” Randall snapped his fingers and one of the skeleton guards placed a gleaming silver box on the table. Randall opened it, quivering with excitement, the saliva falling in torrents from the corners of his mouth. No one else seemed to exist in that moment, just whatever was in the box, and the pleasure it ignited. He reached in and plucked out a piece of triangle shaped meat, blackened on both sides. “Braised thigh.” He held the wobbling flesh in the air and then slurped it down, licking his slimy lips.

  “I’m assuming that little morsel once belonged to a person.” Dominic turned the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, staring at the ember as it flared.

  Randall sucked at his chubby little digits, one-by-one, eyes closed, savoring the flavor. “You’re wondering if I killed him?”

  “More or less.”

  “He’s still alive and walking…well, limping.” Randall closed the box and handed it back. “I’m a businessman, not a killer.”

  “A businessman flanked by masked men with guns. A businessman that dines on human flesh.”

  “Precisely. We live in sparse times, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Only times I’ve ever known.”

  Randall pulled a cloth from his pocket and dabbed at one of his sweaty chins. “You make a fair point. What I’m trying to say is that men have exotic tastes, always have, so far as I can tell. Two days north of here, there’s this little settlement with one hell of a whorehouse, best I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve experienced most of what this land has to offer.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “They’ve got every flavor: light and dark, dainty and voluptuous.” He lifted his own ample bosom to drive home the visual. “But these girls are common, you can find them in any settlement and, for a little coin, they’ll spread their legs; it’s quite redundant, with one wet spot being the same as the next.” He let his laughter settle before continuing. “But this whorehouse I speak of, men come there for one reason and one reason only: Kayla.”

  Dominic stamped his cigarette out and immediately replaced it with another. “So, this Kayla, she some dwarf, got two heads, two pussies?”

  “On the contrary. She is a quadruple amputee, by choice.”

  Now it was Dominic laughing; an involuntary reflex. “The hell you say?”

  “I swear it, on my honor,” Randall threw one hand over his heart and the other in the air.

  “I don’t know much about your honor, but that is the damndest thing I’ve ever heard. I knew men during the war that could hardly tolerate the loss of a limb, never mind four.”

  “Those men you speak of, they were soldiers. War and death, that was their business. They needed every appendage intact and in working order to effectively conduct their business. Kayla is a businesswoman, the best I’ve ever met. She lost her family and one of her legs to the Union. After that, she had to support herself, so she began to offer men pleasure for coin. She worked on her own for awhile, traveled with the caravans, and eventually got picked up by a whorehouse; a permanent roof over her head and food in her belly. It wasn’t long before she was the most requested name in their stable. Every man that came through the doors wanted to fuck the one legged whore.”

  “One leg and two arms, to no legs and no arms, is a hell of a leap to make.”

  “Not if you have me in your corner.” Randall’s eyes turned a shade darker.

  “You hold her down and chop them off?” Dominic was considering putting a bullet in Randall’s head, depending on the answer he got.

  “No, you can relax that pistol hand. I told you, I’m not a killer, I’m a businessman. She’s a businesswoman. We made a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Which was?”

  “It’s not so hard to see, is it? They wanted to fuck her because she was different, something they couldn’t get anywhere else, the one legged whore. I simply helped her see the breadth of possibility before her.”

  “You talked her into chopping off her limbs and…what? You ate them?”

  “You make it sound like I conned some poor, helpless girl.” Randall paused to shake the hand of a drooling boozer as he stumbled towards the exit. Dominic couldn’t help but notice the man was absent three fingers. “She broached the subject with me. Cam
e to me with the idea of enhancing her appeal. In return, I paid her good coin. I also spread her legacy. Wherever my travels take me, I boast of the limbless whore.”

  “So, you ate her?”

  “No. I told you, I’m a businessman. If I ate my product, that would not be good for business. I’d be out there, scraping in the dirt, selling my own flesh for coin. I take my taste, but I buy to sell and I sell to survive.”

  “Looks like business is good.”

  “You just have to know where to look. Not all men have the taste. But the ones that do are willing to pay good coin to see it satiated.”

  “I imagine that finding men with good coin is even harder than coming by someone willing to part with their flesh.”

  Randall acknowledged this fact with a big nod. “You’ve got to know where to look. They sure as hell ain’t out there holding signs. It’s mostly word of mouth that sells my product. I started small, pushed my wares to the more successful merchants and caravan riders. But now I sell to mayors and Rebel leaders; if they can pay, they can eat. There are enough folks out there that are tired of crow and potato.”

  “How do you find people willing to separate with their flesh?”

  “Same deal. I started small, word got around. A lot of folks out here don’t have shit else to sell, and they’re desperate. Like I said, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “You get a lot of angry customers?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dominic dipped his head towards the frail statues with the masks and machine guns.

  “Oh, yes, Samael and Saleos, they are my dogs. Have you noticed their fingers, absent flesh?”

  Dominic exhaled smoke through his nostrils. “I have.”

  “They are brothers. Sadly, they owed me a debt of flesh that they could not pay. But I found another use for them. Being in my particular business, sometimes it’s wise to have protection. So I took what flesh I could: their fingers and toes, some of the fat from their cheeks, and I pulled their teeth and ground them into powder. After some mending time, I put a gun in their hands and they’ve been with me ever since.”

  “Touching.” Dominic stubbed the cigarette out on the table and thought about lighting a third, but relinquished the pack, sensing the conversation was drawing to a close. “So, you’ve got work. What is it?”

  “A collection.” Randall rolled his head over to one shoulder, observing Dominic with keen eyes.

  “I have a feeling that it’s not coin you’re looking to collect.”

  “You’re a sharp-witted man. No, it most assuredly is not. Man goes by the name of Higgins. He promised me a hand in exchange for a sack of coin. I gave him an advance and here I am, sitting across from you, absent Mr. Higgins’ hand.”

  Something shattered near the bar. It was followed by an eruption of inebriated laughter. Axel’s voice broke the riotous merriment with threats of violence.

  Dominic ran his fingers through his shallow beard, something wasn’t adding up. “You’ll have to excuse me, but you don’t really come off as the sentimental type.”

  “I’m usually not, but this piece of shit is my cousin. He’s fallen on tough times.”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “He wanted a loan. I refused. So he offered to sell me his hand. Of course, I agreed.” Randall paused; he seemed to be struggling to breathe. He tried to push himself up in the seat, but he just seemed to be sliding further under the table. Finally, he gave up and held out his arms. The masked brothers swooped to the rescue, grabbing him under each arm and tugging him upright. “I keep telling myself I’m going to lose some weight. Anyway, he asked if I’d give him part of the money up front. Told me that things were desperate at home and his family really needed it. Promised me that he’d come right back and let me take the hand.”

  “I’ve got to say, Randall, that doesn’t sound like the mark of a successful businessman.”

  “The little heart I’ve got left overpowered my good sense. Me and my associates went to pay the little shit a visit. But he and his two boys had rifles and his wife had a blade. I barely got out of there. Lord knows, I’m no runner. He could have shot me in the back, easily. Guess it was his way of thanking me for the loan. He said if he ever saw me again, he’d kill me. So, here I am, absent coin and a hand.”

  “What settlement?”

  “They call it Newmire. Exit east and just keep walking. It’s about a half-day out.”

  Dominic turned sideways and prodded Ronan with the heel of his boot. “You know where Newmire is?”

  Ronan looked up, squinting towards Randall as if he were a bright light; he was clearly shaken by the man. “Yeah…I know it.”

  “Good. You’re taking me there.”

  “I’ve got a schedule.”

  “I’ll pay you for your time.” Dominic faced forward again, ending the debate.

  “Excellent, it’s settled.” Randall rubbed his blood stained palms together.

  “How old are his sons?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to know whether to give them a bullet or a beating.”

  “Ah, a man of principles.”

  “I try not to kill kids.”

  “They’re old enough for a bullet.”

  “Alright then,” Dominic stood, “I’ll pass the night here and we’ll leave out first thing in the morning. When I get back with the hand, you pay me, no bullshit.”

  “No bullshit.” Randall extended his hand.

  Dominic’s stomach turned at the thought of touching the man, but he steeled himself up and gripped Randall’s hand, good and tight. “You have access to weapons?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. I’ll be looking to buy a few.”

  “You’ve got it. Anything else?”

  Dominic shook his head. “Let’s go, Ronan. Show me where I can find a room in this shithole.”

  Outside, Ronan finally let loose, “Randall the Cannibal! Are you going to work with Randall the goddamn Cannibal? Are you out of your mind? The man eats flesh! Do you understand? He cuts off people’s hands and feet and he eats them! He’s a psychopath!”

  Dominic stopped in the middle of the porch and stretched, yawning loudly into a closed fist. “He’s a psychopath that pays. That’s all I care about.” He heard some commotion to his left and looked over to find the same idiot messing with his horse. The guy had his cock out and was shaking it across the railing.

  “Be careful, he’ll bite it off,” the man was standing behind his bottomless friend, slurring his words, and dribbling beer down his chin.

  There were only three of them now. Their group had dwindled considerably.

  “Hang on one second.” Dominic reached under his shirt and handed his pistol off to Ronan.

  “What’s this for?”

  “If you don’t take it, I’m likely to shoot these idiots.” He strode towards the group, his hands already balled into fists. “Hey, asshole, the horse isn’t interested.”

  “Fuck off! We’re just having a bit of fun.”

  “It’s my horse. I stole it. So you fuck off. Make me tell you again and I’m going to break you.”

  The man that was dribbling beer across his chin lumbered up to Dominic, holding his half full bottle of brew against his chest as if it were a suckling babe. “Well go on and do it, big boy. I’m standing right here.”

  Dominic didn’t wait for a second invitation. He planted a fist in the center of the man’s face, shattering his nose and blinding him. He pulled the bottle from his hand and smashed it across his head, knocking him out cold.

  Dominic turned and dodged an incoming blow from the second man in the group. The punch had good form, the fist was tight, and he threw it from the balls of his feet; probably the sober one of the bunch. In a bar fight, he’d probably be one of the last men standing. But he wasn’t in a bar fight. He was up against a Saboteur. Dominic made quick work of him, using the momentum from the punch to pull him off balance and smash his face against a wooden p
ost.

  The one that had been shaking his cock at Dominic’s horse was no longer laughing. He was staring at the crumpled bodies of his drinking buddies, his pants around his ankles, his hands above his head in surrender. “We were just having a bit of fun. I didn’t mean nothin by it.”

  Dominic wrapped his hand around the man’s dick and balls and squeezed.

  The man squealed.

  “Did I warn you?”

  “Yuh-yes…yes…you warned us…me…I’m so…suh-sorry, please, let go!” The man’s knees were giving way. Every time he sank down, Dominic yanked him back up by his pecker. “Shit! Please! Let go!”

  “You’re sorry?”

  “Yes, so sorry!”

  “Good.” Dominic palmed the man’s face with his free hand and shoved him backward over the railing. He turned and retrieved his pistol from Ronan. “So, where can I get a room around here?”

  14

  Amanda had been taking a nap when the kids came storming into the room, hollering for her. She’d been taking a lot of naps since her husband was killed. It was the only time she didn’t hurt; the only time she was more than just Captain Perkins’ widow. It wasn’t just her heart that hurt, it was everything: her arms, her legs, it even hurt to speak. Since she’d gotten the news—delivered to her by an emotionless, uniformed, robot of a man—her steps had become a labor of necessity. The kids needed her. They were the only thing pumping her heart. The only thing keeping her from hurling her body from the Sky Bridge.

  “Mom! There are men at the door!” Her daughter leaped onto the bed, crushing one of her feet. She was too tired to cry out.

  “What men?”

  “They’re dressed like Daddy.”

  A lump formed in her throat at the mention of her late husband. “What do they want?”

  Her daughter shrugged.

  Amanda groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. “What have I told you to do when you answer the door?”

  “Ask them what they want.”

  “Then why can’t you tell me?”

  “I did ask. They just kept saying they wanted to talk to you.”

  Amanda kicked her covers off in frustration. They rose into the air and landed on her daughter’s head. She rolled off the bed and came to her feet, unsteady; her liquid lunch still hadn’t completely digested. She moved down the small hallway and through the living room; dirty dishes, discarded clothes, and the kid’s toys greeted her every step. She made it to the front door and found it already propped open, one of the two soldiers was holding it in place with his foot. She pulled it back and crossed her arms, eyelids fluttering as she struggled to focus on their faces; they were vaguely familiar, but she didn’t know their names.