by Guy Adams
INSIDE THE LAND Carriage, Father Michael was only too glad they couldn’t see what was happening. The noise was more than enough. The weapon hammered against the roof above them, the whole carriage shaking with the vibrations as it fought to break free of the bolts holding it in place. The sound of metal tearing its way through stone and flesh echoed back along the pass. The horses screeched as they died en masse, the wail of the slaughterhouse or of the very pits of Hell.
He began to cry, pressing his hands against his ears.
THE STOCK OF shrapnel was beginning to dwindle, but Forset could see he would have no need of it. The effect on the riders had been so sudden, so shocking, they hadn’t even had time to offer counter-fire. The Land Carriage tore through the panicked remains of their number, the heavy nose of the traction engine throwing the crucified body of Brother Samuel up in the air before grinding it once more beneath their wheels. It was impossible to differentiate between the snapping of wood and bone.
Forset kept firing, swinging the barrel from right to left, knowing that the fight had gone out of the riders but too frightened and angry to stop.
Eventually the tank of shrapnel was empty, the firing mechanism grinding against itself as Forset’s hands clutched the trigger.
“Enough!” shouted Billy as the Land Carriage surged on, the widening of the pass just ahead. “It was a massacre! A goddamned massacre!”
BILLY’S WORDS, SHOUTED at the top of his voice, filtered through into the dining car and Father Michael found himself nodding. God damned...
As they rode the last couple of miles to Wormwood, his despair was total.
“Cheer up, father,” said Quartershaft. “We’ve made it!”
“Mr Quartershaft,” the monk replied, “in my faith there are certain moral pre-requisites for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I cannot help but think we have failed in every single one of them.”
THE ROAD TO
WORMWOOD
THE CHILDREN
OF DR BLISS
CHAPTER TEN
THE UGLY ONES
ON REFLECTION, THOUGHT Obeisance Hicks, dabbing at his broken front tooth with his tongue, telling Henry Jones which part of his long-dead mother he should bury himself in may have been an error. He always had been quick to cuss when taking a break from talking for the Lord, and this was hardly the first time it had got him in trouble. Though, considering his current circumstances, he supposed it might be the last.
“I asked a civil question,” said Jones, cocking the hammer, “and I would appreciate a civil answer.”
“I can see that,” said Hicks, attempting to add a more conciliatory tone to his voice, difficult now that Jones had forced the gun barrel into his mouth. “And I can only apologise for my un-Christian outburst, but it has been a mightily trying day.”
“It’s about to get worse,” advised Jones’ colleague.
“Well now,” Hicks replied, “that would be a shame, given that we have an opportunity to turn things around and make matters right between us. My dearest, most holy charge is obviously of interest to you, and he never utters a word without my encouragement.” A lie, of course, but Hicks would have told these two he could shit gold if he thought it would extend his life expectancy.
“Is that so?” asked Jones.
“Most assuredly, he’s a shy man with his fair share of health problems. Outside of myself, the girl and the Lord God Almighty, he’s really not one for conversation.”
Thankfully, the object of everyone’s attention chose that moment to pipe up again.
“Wormwood!” he shouted. “Out west, the door comes!”
“That’s right,” said Hicks, “you tell your good friend all about it, so these kind folks can hear.”
Hope was holding Soldier Joe as he thrashed around, seemingly in the throes of delirium. “He’s burning up,” she said, not in the least concerned about the safety of her employer.
“Well, cool him down then,” said Hicks, looking up at Jones and smiling around the barrel of the gun. “What say we all start again and see if we can’t find some common footing?”
Jones withdrew the gun from the preacher’s mouth, wiped the spittle from the barrel in the man’s hair and then slid it back into his holster.
Hicks brushed at his hair, as if finishing off an act of grooming that Jones had started, then offered the two gentlemen a smile. “That’s better,” he said. “A potential friendship is a beautiful thing, and not something that should lightly be cast away.”
“I’m not interested in friendship,” said Jones. “Just information.”
“Well, that’s fine,” said Hicks, trying not to stare at the patch of skin the man had instead of eyes, turning his broken-toothed smile towards the other who, he assumed, might at least be able to see it. “I can be friendly enough for all of us.”
“I bet,” the other man said, and for a moment Hicks was confused. He looked closer at the gentleman in question and his confusion deepened. Either this man was a woman, or he had the most beautiful lips Hicks had ever seen, and the preacher was about to experience a hitherto unknown type of lust.
“What’s wrong with him?” Jones asked Hope, looking down on Soldier Joe as he writhed on his cot.
“He is so full of the blessings of the Lord that it’s lifted his spirit to a higher plane,” said Hicks.
Jones turned towards him. “I wasn’t asking you. Shut your mouth for a minute, unless you want my gun back in it.” He looked back towards Hope.
“Civil War,” she said. “He was shot, and left a chunk of brain somewhere near Gettysburg.”
“He’s a simpleton?”
“He’s a war veteran.”
“Said like he couldn’t be one and the same? Your sense of loyalty is sweet, girl, but not helpful.”
“Wormwood,” Soldier Joe whispered, beginning to settle back down. “Out west.”
“His head is curdled, Henry,” said the other gentlemen, moving past Hicks. “He’s of no use.”
“Maybe,” Jones replied, clearly unsure.
“Out west, thirty miles, bear left at Serpent’s Creek,” said Soldier Joe before promptly falling asleep.
Jones smiled. “Or maybe not.”
HOWEVER MUCH HOPE Lane’s employer might begrudge this change of plan (and begrudge it he clearly did, sat in the coachman’s seat with a face like thunder, necking at his whisky jug as if it had a leak), at least he didn’t have to ride in the back with the rest of Jones’ party.
She could stomach Knee High, the dwarf. His sanitation habits were clearly not of note, and he had a habit of scratching at his groin that made her suspect infection was at work, but he showed her no interest and took up little space.
She didn’t even mind Toby the Snake Boy. His skin, some kind of medical ailment rather than actual scales, was far from pleasant to look at, but she’d seen worse. The glimpses she caught of his forked tongue—the result of home brew surgery, at a guess—were grotesque, but elicited sympathy rather than disgust.
It was The Geek she couldn’t stand. He was surprisingly thin, rattling around inside a pair of dungarees stained with the fluids of his work. His skin was covered in tiny tattoos. “The bill of fare,” he explained, his voice cracked and uneven. “When I eat a thing I ain’t eaten before, I draws it on there. My memory ain’t so good, and it would be a crying shame to forget a single one of them.”
She tried not to look, but inevitably her eyes were drawn, taking in the predictable chickens, beetles and worms before stumbling over a cat, an armadillo and a horse.
“I’ve known lots of people had to eat their horses,” she said, “when food got scarce.”
“While still alive?” he asked. “It don’t count unless they still kicking at the first bite.”
The thought repelled Hope, though she had seen her fair share of sideshows in her time. “But why?”
“No geek would eat a dead animal,” he said, “’tain’t the way it’s done.”
“But... a horse?
”
He grinned, and for the first time she noticed his teeth: polished steel, wedged into swollen gums. “Pretty little smile, ain’t it? I lost the originals years ago, snapped off on hoof and bone.”
Hope could hardly bear to look at him.
She gave all her attention to Soldier Joe, even though he continued to sleep. Better that than any more conversation with her new travelling companions.
She had always been at home with the sick, since a childhood of nursing her brothers.
“I sometimes think,” her mother had said to her just shy of her tenth birthday, “that you ain’t ever happy unless you have bandage in one hand and a needle in t’other.”
As far as Hope was concerned, there was no better person to be. People had a habit of breaking themselves, and the world would always need those who could fix them. Her skin colour kept her out of any legitimate medical profession. Slavery may have been abolished for twenty years, but anyone thinking that meant the blacks were truly free needed a lesson in reality. Having travelled from the South, she had still lived under an atmosphere of segregation, suspicion and disgust. People hadn’t unlocked the chains with good grace; they had lost what they considered a God given right, and the idea of employing a nigger, for actual money, seemed to them to be adding insult to injury. Why else would she tolerate the abuse of Obeisance Hicks? Her life on the road was only a hair’s breadth away from the servitude of her parents, but at least she got to see a little of the country and eat regular meals. And then there was Soldier Joe, a man whom she would never have met otherwise. She loved him, of course, though she wasn’t dumb enough to think him capable of loving her back. He was comforted by her, he needed her, and that was reward in itself when you were used to so little.
“Wormwood,” he said, dreamy and indistinct, the words bubbling up from sleep.
“Yes, honey,” she replied. “We’re going.”
“IT SEEMS TO me,” said Obeisance Hicks, settling back in the coachman’s seat and trying to reassert some level of authority, “that we’re in the same business.”
Henry and Harmonium Jones were sat alongside him, neither of them fools and only too happy to swap the enclosed stink of the caravan for the open air.
“We have very little to do with God,” Jones replied, his glasses now back in place so as not to draw undue attention from anyone else they met on the road.
“You and me both,” admitted Hicks. “But it’s all theatre, isn’t it? We both swap cash for a glimpse of the freakish.”
“You would be advised,” said Harmonium, “to avoid the word ‘freak.’ It is not one to which we take kindly.” She was still dressed as a gentleman, though less concerned, now, to disguise her voice. Hicks, relieved that his lustful instincts had not been in error, took this as a sign of trust. He was quite wrong in that regard; Harmonium Jones had simply decided that it was likely they would kill the preacher before they parted company, so why worry?
“Oh, I mean nothing by it,” Hicks replied, quite unaware that his use of the word had brought him closer to death than at any other time in his miserable life. “It’s just a word.”
“Words have weight,” said Jones, stretching his arms out in front of him and working his fingers. He liked to keep them supple, ready to pull a trigger. “Don’t use it again. Or we’ll shoot you in the head and leave you by the side of the road.”
“Fat chance you’d have of getting my little messiah to do his work then.” Hicks chuckled. “You need me, friend. Still, I’ll mind my tongue. Never let it be said that Obeisance Hicks can’t watch his manners.”
THEY REACHED SERPENT’S Creek by dusk, but the dim light did little to improve the town’s beauty. It felt, as so many towns did along that trail, like a home that had been abandoned, unloved and ignored. Several of the shops stood empty, their windows boarded up. The street was uneven and dirty, potholes left to gather water and brew mud.
“I’ve seen more accommodating mule dung,” said Hicks as they rode down the main street. “Still, as long as it has a bar and a bed, I guess we can make ourselves comfortable.”
“We would prefer to keep travelling,” said Jones. “We’re not a group for company; people talk, and that is rarely in our best interests. Or theirs.” He inclined his head towards Hicks at this point, but the preacher was far too lacking in self-awareness to pick up the hint.
“Well, if you plan on staying in the caravan, you can do it on the edge of town as easy as anywhere else. We’ll have few enough places on the road where we can lay our head on a proper pillow, and I don’t intend to pass up the opportunity of this one.”
Jones sighed, then nodded. “Mayhap it would be sensible to pick up a few provisions, too.”
“Now you’re thinking straight!” Hicks laughed.
“But the soldier stays with us.”
Hicks hadn’t anticipated that, which was stupid of him. He cursed himself for his sloppy thinking.
“And what’s to stop you just driving off while I’m asleep? I don’t think so, Mr Jones, I surely don’t. He and the girl will be staying with me. You can keep the caravan. We won’t get far without it, so you needn’t worry about us giving you the slip.” He tried on another charming smile. It wasn’t half bad; you didn’t get to his station in life without being able to offer the pretence of affability. “Besides, why would we want to? You think there’s something worthwhile at this Wormwood place? Hell, I’m a man of the road, and my life is my own. I’m as happy to take a look at it as you are.”
“Worthwhile?” Jones smiled, and it wasn’t remotely charming. It was the sort of smile an alligator wore when convinced its meat was just about rotten enough to chew. “It’s the greatest miracle you’ll ever see.”
“And miracles are my business, so I’m a happy man.”
Hicks stopped the coach and handed Jones the reins. “We’ll get off here and you can head out to somewhere more circumspect, miserable and cold with my blessing.”
He jumped down and moved around to the back of the caravan.
“I’m surprised at you, Henry,” his wife said, once the preacher was out of earshot. “Since when did you get so reasonable?”
“He’s going nowhere,” Jones replied. “And I’d relish a few hours of silence and privacy while we plan ahead.”
Hicks yanked up the canopy at the rear of the caravan, coming face to face with Hope.
“Get him up and out,” he told her. “We’re taking our leave of these folks for the night.” He lowered his voice. “And pass me my satchel, I’d trust these ugly bastards with my gold about as willingly as I’d poke my pecker in a dog.”
She didn’t argue, only too happy to put distance between herself and their new companions.
Hicks took his satchel—enjoying, as always, the way it pulled on his shoulder—and wandered back to the front of the caravan, leaving Hope to manage the steps and Soldier Joe on her own. That, after all, was what he kept her for.
“I’ll even get the provisions,” he said to Jones, “so you lot don’t have to worry about showing your faces. See what a reasonable man I am?”
Jones nodded and whipped at the reins.
Hope had only just raised the steps; she cried out as they were snatched from her hands by the departing caravan. “I do not like those people,” she said to Soldier Joe. “They are not good folk at all.”
“Neither are we, darlin’,” said Hicks, joining them. “Neither are we.”
IT TOOK ONLY a few minutes for Hicks to wonder if they should have stayed in the caravan. Serpent’s Creek was silent, and as they walked up the main street, he began to suspect there was nobody in the town at all. He’d seen ghost towns in his time, places that had sprung up at the promise of gold or oil that then dried up, or settlements founded on buffalo herds or horses that were farmed and winnowed out. In the early days of the expansion it seemed that people had set down root at the slightest provocation, not thinking for one moment that the security they clung to could be fleeting. Camps had
become towns, the towns had flourished briefly then, as work and money grew scarce, the people began to leave. Once a few gave up on the place, the exodus was never far away. One thing this world had taught people was that home could be anywhere. If things weren’t working out, then you upped sticks and tried again.
It seemed to Hicks that towns were like marriages. You either decided to stick them out and make them work, or you cut your losses and ran. He was a man of the road, and he’d been married five times. His feelings on the matter were clear.
“Well now,” said a voice from the doorway of the Great Rest saloon across the road. “If it ain’t a bunch of tourists. Now I’ve seen everything.”
“Just travellers passing through,” said Hicks, heading over, “and much relieved to see this town ain’t as empty as it appeared.”
“Oh, it’s empty alright,” said the man, scratching at the dried skin flaking from his bald scalp. Little flurries of white powder fell onto the shoulders of his vest like snow. “Some of us just haven’t quite finished packing.”
“What happened?”
The man didn’t answer, just waved them inside, where they found themselves in a bar that, like the rest of the town, had seen better days. The tables were dusty and disordered, the floor not swept for quite some while. It wasn’t altogether empty, though; a woman and child occupied one table.
“Sit yourselves down and I’ll pour you a drink,” the man said, gesturing vaguely towards a table as he stepped behind his bar. “I don’t have much in the way of choice, but I can do you whisky or beer.”
“Both sound good to me,” Hicks replied, in the mood for softening the night up with booze. He was always in that mood. “These two would likely be happy with water. She don’t approve of drink, and while he likes the taste right enough, he just can’t handle it. One mouthful and he’ll be singing for the rest of the night.”