The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree (36 page)

“Spread out and look ferrim,” said Brains. “I want to stage here. The shipment will be along in a couple of days, and I want to get set up. I doon’t want any extra angles, any wildcards, to have to worry about when the time comes, savvy?”

A scorpion the size of a hamster scuttled across the dirt in front of me. I managed not to react.

“Man, what makes you think that train’s not going to have any of Kaliburn’s boys on it? I feel like we rode all the way out here for nothing.”

“I got my saurces,” said Brains, and I could hear him walking up the stairs to the second floor, leaving Red and Bowler with me. I took off my crested satchel and left it in the shadows under the front porch, then belly-crawled to the corner of the building and selected a stone from the narrow ditch under the rainspout.

Red and Bowler both jerked in surprise when a window across the street shattered.

“The fuck?” said Red.

“Go see what it was,” Brains called from upstairs.

I heard Bowler draw a revolver and the both of them started toward the front door as I went around the side, but then Bowler said, “Uhh, no. You go check that out. He could be out there waiting to pick us off.”

“Oramoz damn you both,” said Red, and he loped out the front.

Where I crouched at the back corner of the saloon, I could see him kick up dust on the road as he went over and stepped onto the boardwalk. He raised the rifle and pie-cut the doorway, then stepped inside, aiming to his severe right, and moved in, fading into the darkened interior.

That was battle tactic. They were not rookies.

I went around to the back door, which was already hanging off the hinges, and grabbed the leg of a table from a pile of smashed furniture out back.

I crept into the bar from the rear. Stepping inside the back door, I was in the pantry behind the bar, the trap door open at my feet. I slammed it shut and danced backwards into the shadows of the windowless little room, turning sideways to hide behind a narrow shelf.

Bowler stormed into the pantry, flung open the hatch, and fired a round into the tin cellar, shouting, “Come out of there, you son of a bitch!”

You ever been poked in the face with a ball bat?

I came around the shelf and leapt at the man in one fluid motion, spearing him in the forehead with the end of the table leg as he looked up at me. The bowler hat flew straight up like Donald Duck doing a double-take and his legs crumpled; he fell onto his knees and swore in a venomous hiss.

Before he could recover and shoot me, I clubbed the gun out of his hand, sending it clattering into the cellar.

He snarled in pain and swung at me. I wasn’t fast enough to dodge the punch and he clipped my eyebrow. My head bounced off his knuckles, the world stepped seven inches to the left, and I lost my bearings just long enough for him to snatch the table leg out of my hands and throw it on the floor. For a split second I could smell the pain.

I tried to punch him back, but he caught it and tried to twist my arm.

I stomped his foot and attempted to hip-toss him but since I was already standing on his toe, this only resulted in me collapsing and him falling on top of me like two turtles fucking. We grappled on the floor for a few seconds, grunting and crawling around, and then I managed to grab his lapels and get behind him.

I used the leverage to put my arm around his throat and my legs around his waist, tightened my grip, and tried to pull off his head with the crook of my elbow.

The man began to choke and spit, and tried to shout but all that came out was a strangled
“Ffffcccck ynnn!”

I held on until he went limp.

His face was a horrible shade of magenta, and the veins on his forehead were swollen.

I tipped his unconscious body toward the trap door and he collapsed like a Slinky into the cellar, tumbling loudly down the ladder, landing at the bottom in a heap of limbs. I bent to grab his revolver off the floor and a loud bang startled me. A bullet hit the wall in front of me, flicking splinters against my face.

I didn’t look to see who fired. I ran out the back door and cut to the right.

I was standing next to the stoop when Red came running out.

As soon as the rifle barrel cleared the doorframe I grabbed it and shot him in the face with his friend’s pistol. A hole the size of a dime appeared next to the bridge of his nose and the wall behind him was splashed with a fine spray of blood and brain matter.

His inertia carried him the rest of the way down the stairs—he took two more steps and dove bonelessly into the dirt.

I’d never shot a man before. It wasn’t what I expected.

I couldn’t afford to stand around and get messed up over it. I took his rifle away and ran back to the corner of the saloon, meaning to hide under the porch again and snipe Brains when he came out to look for me.

Somehow he’d expected something of that ilk. A pistol round traveled the clapboard siding next to my face with an insectile whir and I ducked, doubling back, jumping over Red’s corpse. I felt a hot thump on my right shoulder like I’d been slapped with the flat of a hot sword.

Luckily, the saloon was only flanked by an alley on one side. The other side was flush up against the structure next door.

I hurdled a fence, almost twisting my knee, and ran as hard as I could. Brains cursed as he turned the corner, ran across the back of the block, and caught up with me, but unless he was particularly imaginative, he would never find me where I was hiding.

I peered through a crack in the wood panels. He was no more than ten feet away from me.

“Where did you go, Kingsman?” he bellowed into the desert afternoon, staggering to a stop. He panted, looking around, checked the rounds in his chamber, and slapped the cylinder shut.

He stood there for several minutes, listening, waiting for his breathing to slow.

About the time I got tired of watching him listen for me, he turned and walked the way he’d came. I remained where I was, however, unwilling to give him the chance to trick me, and grateful that the outhouse I was currently hiding underneath hadn’t been used in a very long time.

I looked down at the dried shit-mud pit I was standing in and vomited again, croaking up a mouthful of bile as quietly as I could manage.

_______

I waited until I hadn’t heard anything from the outlaw for a couple of hours or so, and then lifted myself out of the latrine, clambering out of the seat-hole. I looked at my bare arm, sleeved in a grimy craquelure of blood. I needed to get back to my shirt and vest, and rinse the cut on my shoulder where his bullet had grazed me.

The sun was low and fat on the western horizon, the shadows were tall and stringy, and the shredded clouds were tinged with the bruise-purple of settled blood.

I couldn’t get the image out of my mind of shooting the other man in the face, the rangy red-headed man, couldn’t stop thinking about him. I’d never shot anyone before, not even during my time overseas.

I wondered if he had family. Children.

The thought transfixed me, had paralyzed me while I sat in the dried-out shitpit in the dark, sweating my ass off. I could see him in my mind’s eye, stiffening facedown in the dirt as bugs explored his motionless body.

Did someone somewhere love that dead man?

I wondered if the guy in the cellar that I’d clubbed was still alive. If he was, he couldn’t be a happy camper at all. I thought about checking on him, but the idea seemed counterproductive. If he was still conscious, he’d for sure have a broken neck. He’d landed on his head when he went into the hole.

It was heartless, but I put it out of my mind.

He would have killed me if given the chance.

There was no reason to trouble myself over it, let the guilt eat at me, or get myself into a situation where I had to fish a broken man out of the cellar and force myself to worry about taking care of him. I told myself that he was an outlaw, probably a wanted man. I had prevented a train robbery.

The knowledge that I’d killed a man rooted me to the spot; the revelation that I’d prevented a serious crime released me.

I sat in the outhouse, listening, trying to ignore my arm, waiting for the boot-scuff that would tell me Brains was waiting for me, waiting to see where I was, where I had been hiding.

I tried to calm myself and pass the time with thoughts of Memne, tried to reminisce about her smell, the peculiar feel of her soft skin, but nothing seemed to work.

I abandoned the tactic. I didn’t want to taint my memories by trying to use them here in this place of death and stink.

I crooked my neck so I could see the oblong hole in my upper arm, a divot the size of a spoon-head. Looked like someone had taken a bite out of me, but it wasn’t as bad as it felt.

Once I’d had time to calm down, the adrenaline drained from my system and the cut felt like someone was holding a branding iron to my skin. I tried to put it out of my mind, but everything I did aggravated it.

I checked both Red’s rifle and Bowler’s pistol. The former was empty, but the latter had four rounds out of seven chambers. I would have to make do with the pistol, but if I wanted to use the rifle, I would have to go check Red for more ammo.

I crept around the side of the saloon and retrieved the satchel from where I’d hidden it behind one of the support columns under the front porch. The contents were still there and intact.

I put the fountain pen in my trouser pocket (I did not want the fungus touching me), looped the strap of the bag over my shoulder, and went back to the rear door of the saloon where Red was lying on his belly in a pool of congealing blood. I turned him over and massaged his shirt and jacket, looking for ammo, and found several cartridges tucked into the loops on his belt.

As I was slipping them out, the world crackled in a flash of light and I heard a dull boom of thunder that shook the dust off my boots.

I fell over next to the corpse, and the last thing I remember thinking was that I’d forgotten my umbrella.

It couldn’t be helped; the No-Man had forced him to seek refuge in the strange cave. He could still hear the incredible thunder of it walking around on the street above, looking for him. Normand threw a sheet of metal out of the way and descended into the dark burrow. Someone had crafted a stairway, and even lined it with tile, like a bath-house.

A sign on the wall in the Etudaen language told him where he was going, but he couldn’t understand it.

Several times he had to crawl on his belly or climb through junk to get past the wreckage, but once he was in the pit, he felt better. Safer.

He took out the Etudaen device and depressed the button on the side, illuminating his surroundings with the weak lamplight. Roaches scattered from his presence, scuttling out of sight. He was in a large sort of atrium, and gates barred his progress. He climbed over them, hoisting his exhausted body through the wreckage, and picked his way down another flight of stairs until he found another unnatural cavern.

At the foot of a tiled platform, an eldritch tunnel extended to the left and right.

He went left. He lowered himself down onto the tunnel floor and found a set of railroad tracks! The familiar sight comforted him. An underground train! Incredible!

—The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 7 (unfinished) “The Gunslinger and the Giant”

I Remember You

I
REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS WITH A
tremendous headache, a terrifying, piercing agony like I had an arrow through my face. I was sitting in a barber chair in a dark room, and by the light of an oil lamp I could see my reflection in a mirror on the wall. My beard was a scratchy mask of black felt, oiled with crimson. My scalp and arm were plastered in sheets of blood; I looked like I’d been shot in the head.

I flexed, trying to free myself, but it was useless. The sheets from the saloon’s bedrooms were twisted as tight as ropes, and looped around my arms and legs and waist. I was completely immobile.

Someone was standing behind me.

Brains cupped my left cheekbone with the palm of his hand, pressing a straight-razor against my throat. He leaned in and whispered in my ear.