The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (11 page)

Jack Lantirn was not a figment
of Ellen Monroe’s imagination, not simply some character in a book.

At least, he didn’t think
so.

Well … not anymore.

It had been some time
since he destroyed the Sanity’s Edge Saloon, since he last saw Ellen Monroe—saw
her, not simply dreamed of her. Dreaming was as common as breathing; reality
like water on the moon.
But how long?
That was the question. And the
answer kept slipping through his fingers.

Just like everything
else.

He was the Caretaker now
, had been ever since Ellen left,
sent away into that other reality where everything was normal—or nearly normal.
He was alone, everything else lost or destroyed in the final confrontation. No
more Saloon. No more Wasteland dregs. No more Cast Outs. Everything was gone.
He was the last, the uncontested ruler of the Nexus, the dream-to-reality
machinery of the universe, that crossroads of all time and space, dimensions
and realities ever before and since, Hallelujah!

He was the king of
nothing.

There was no telling how
much time had passed since she left. Time was different here. Everything was
different here. Caught on the edge between dreams and madness, time meant
nothing and everything both. Adrift in the present, no past or future to hold
him, he was outside of time and space with nothing but himself and the
Wasteland and the endless sky to mark the passing of time.

His hold upon sanity was
beginning to slip.

If you were trapped
alone on a deserted island, what three books would you bring with you to read?

I’m sorry. I didn’t
have time to pack.

Then I expect you are
supremely fucked.

I expect that may be
so.

I suppose you’ll just
have to write your own book and read that.

I suppose you may be
right.

He was going just a
little bit insane.

Is that like being
just a little bit pregnant?

Let’s not go there.

Pregnant? Or insane?

Insane. And I’d rather
not go down that road.

Afraid you’ll
recognize the landmarks?

“Yes,” he whispered,
voice harsh from disuse and desert air, so alien to his ears it sent his mind
into a panic, a fear of others having returned against all odds.

But of course there was
no one but himself. He had destroyed everything and everyone. Rebreather was
the last. How long ago he was killed, Jack could not remember, time meaningless,
rendered immaterial by the lack of anything to govern: the endless sky, the
endless Wasteland, and himself, Jack Lantirn.

Days passed eventually,
an endless succession of moments that warped into forever, each a separate
slice of eternity. The nights were better. He would drift into an exhausted
sleep where time passed without notice.
This is what it feels like to be
dead; it doesn’t feel at all.
Eventually, the nightmares would come and
remind him that all of this was his fault: the outcome, the lives he upset the
way a bull upsets teacups in a china shop. Sometimes he woke up screaming,
unable to fall back asleep for fear of their return.

But sometimes, in that
brief slice of twilight before dawn, there would be good moments, dreams where
Ellen would come to him, where they would talk like long-time lovers, speaking
of things of no consequence that are somehow important and meaningless both at
once, and are almost always forgotten after being said. He kept those moments
close, a shield against the madness. And where he could not mark the passage of
days, the paradox of the sun rising and setting in an eyeblink composed of
seemingly endless, consecutive moments that lasted forever, each to itself,
these dreams were precious and sacred and remembered in near-perfect detail.

She would not fault him
his little inaccuracies. For love’s sake. No, she would not fault him for those.

The dreams he kept like
those first moments in the Wasteland when he discovered his mistake, pearls of
time polished over and over again, moments only, but ones he traveled down like
a ribbon of forever highway.

He thought Rebreather was
dead; he was wrong.

The fall from the
stairway, three stories to hardpan as unforgiving as concrete, had not killed
the Cast Out. Hatred powered his shattered body forward like a damaged machine
grinding towards complete destruction, the remnants of his fragmented sanity
drowning beneath animal compulsions to slaughter and kill. Rebreather was
Jack’s first forever moment, a scar he would carry for eternity, their final
encounter branded into his memory, its raw edges waking him in the night,
leaving him sleepless, eyes watching the unshadowed Wasteland for signs of the
Cast Out who simply would not die.

Nights in the Wasteland
were long and cold.

Jack chased the train, hoping to somehow cheat a fate he had written
himself to enable this very moment, to enable Ellen’s escape. It was folly, but
the realization could not assuage the fear, the uncertainty.
Had he done
right? Would she be free? Would she forget the Wasteland, forget him, forget
everything?
Limping from the wreckage of the collapsed stair, the stink of
Hyde’s burning flesh like burnt pork and fried electrical insulation. Above
him, the agonized screams of the sorcerer, Gusman Kreiger, snared in Jack’s
trap, doomed and knowing it. And over his plaintive howls, the countdown,
mechanical and meticulous, counting away reality and sanity both. It was down
to seconds.

And he was afraid. Afraid
of the reality he set into motion. Afraid of being alone. Afraid he would never
see her again.
She doesn’t need you. She never did. She will
forget
you. She will forget everything, King of Nothing
.

He wanted Ellen, wanted
to sink into her embrace, wanted to kiss her lips, run his fingers upon the
smooth skin of her throat and down the small of her back. He wanted to lose
himself in the smell of her hair, to have her forgive him and tell him that
everything would be okay. So what if it meant this reality, this Wasteland
hell, would go on forever. He could endure if she would stay. He wanted her. Needed
her.

If he could just reach
her, if he could just get to the train. If Ellen never left him then the story
would never end, and if the story never ended, he and Ellen could stay here …
forever
.

All rationales for fear
are but empty justifications.

You have gone quite
mad, you know.

Hobbling after her, knee stiff from the fall, ankle hurting
from the day before, that yesterday that felt like a lifetime ago—
yesterday,
Rebreather murdered Nail
—he saw into the train. Ellen, hands pressed
against the back window, eyes filled with tears, lips shouting words to him
that he could not hear over the countdown and the metal-on-metal squeal of the
wheels, sparks flying as it fled this reality, taking Ellen with it.

He had to catch the
train; he had to try.
Ellen, don’t leave me!

“Three … Two … One …”

The last remnants of
reality exploded.

Ashes to ashes, dust
to dust.

With a horrendous
whump
,
the Saloon disappeared within a cloud of smoke and debris, a roiling cloud of
dust spewing out in all directions. Jack faltered only once, that first
ear-splitting boom that made his muscles lock, his back peppered with splinters
and grit. Then he was running; nothing left behind him and Ellen so close, her
hands pounding the glass, bleeding into the web of cracks.

You knew how this
would go down. She must be set free, or you are not the Caretaker. And only a
Caretaker can use the Nexus. You had five tickets out of here. Four are already
gone. She must go, Caretaker, and you must stay. You know this. If she stays,
you will both be trapped in a spent world, a wasteland, the Nexus refusing your
petitions. You will join the Cast Outs, mad and powerless, the desert made
whiter for your bones. And Ellen will die too, victim of your inadequacy and
cowardice. You don’t want that; you know you don’t want that. You know what you
have to do. You’ve already made your decision. Now live with it.

But he couldn’t. Between knowing and doing lay a chasm of uncertainty.

In some strange way, he owed his life and Ellen’s to Rebreather. So what
if the Cast Out’s motivation was only to kill him. His bloodlust had tipped
Jack’s hand, made him the Caretaker instead of a victim to his insecurities.

He remembered the horror on Ellen’s face a fraction before Rebreather
grabbed him from behind, sending them both crashing upon the tracks. Jack struck
the ties, flesh clawed over by sharp stone, splintered deadwood hacking into
his forearms and palms, racked against his knees and chest. And Rebreather fell
upon him, the Cast Out writhing and squirming in an effort to raise himself up,
free a weapon.

Jack remembered looking up and seeing the endless track running out
before him, empty. In that split second of distraction, that moment of attack,
the train had pulled out of the Wasteland like a bullet from a gun. Gone. Not
disappearing into the distance, just gone. The train had left for distant
realities, and taken Ellen Monroe with it.

And it was not coming
back.

He understood Rebreather
then. Understood how the Cast Out could drive his flesh to superhuman feats,
his hatred sacrificing piece after piece of his sanity and soul to the roaring
fires of madness, holding off the grave a little longer with coins carelessly
flung in the devil’s direction. Powerful and destructive, the rage asked only
for a direction…

… like a bullet from a
gun.

Jack threw the Cast Out
aside as easily as one throws off an old blanket. Then he turned and lunged,
bloodied hands tight upon the giant’s neck, fingers finding their way through
the grime and dust-saturated fabric to the grizzled, scarred flesh of
Rebreather’s throat.

Once Rebreather could
have fended him off easily, shrugged him aside like an annoying insect. But
that time—separated from this one by only minutes—was forever ago, and
impossible to retrieve. Since that forever-ago moment, Jack had shot away most
of Rebreather’s left knee. The fall from the Stairway dislocated the Cast Out’s
shoulder, his arm smashed so that it hung awkwardly, loose and twitching with
spasms of pain that Rebreather’s madness short-circuited before they could
reach his brain lest he be paralyzed with agony. He wheezed and rasped beneath
the canvas gas mask, the inside covered with blood coughed up from
rib-punctured lungs. Once undefeatable, Rebreather was now a limping cripple
driven solely by his deep-rooted insanity and all-consuming hatred. It might yet
prove sufficient to dispatch a new Caretaker, one unfamiliar with madness.
Rebreather knew psychotic ambition like his own hand.

He struck Jack in the temple, sending
him sprawling, and crawled slowly to his feet, all of his weight balanced upon
the still-good leg.

Jack’s hand groped the
edges of the track, closing upon a stray spike. A small detail, really; the
kind of thing forgotten by workers repairing the rail—
workers who never
existed repairing a rail that existed since the beginning of time
. A detail
Rebreather would not even have noticed; it was for this sin that the madman was
condemned to walk the way of the Cast Outs.

Jack’s fist tightened
upon the rusted steel and he turned, burying the point into Rebreather’s good
knee.

The Cast Out collapsed,
pitching forward upon the tracks with nothing to break his fall. There was a
terrific howl of pain, Rebreather’s voice a desert-hardened rasp, and Jack fell
upon him, a predator attuned to the killing. He caught Rebreather’s coat in
both hands, holding him by the collar and driving the man’s head at the rail.
There was a terrific
chunk
sound as the Cast Out’s skull banged against
the steel, a kind of pulpy smack like a piece of half-thawed meat striking a
metal countertop. Rebreather’s right arm battled furiously between trying to
free the spike from his leg, trying to lever himself up off his shattered left
side, and trying to stop Jack from killing him.

In his indecision, he was
lost.

Jack drove Rebreather’s
head against the rail again.
Chunk!

And again.
Chunk!

Chunk!

Chunk!

He continued to bash
Rebreather’s head against the steel until the man’s arm stopped flailing,
falling as silent and still as a rag doll’s limb. That was all he was now.
Rebreather was gone. The monster had vanished in Jack’s mind and left behind
nothing but a raggedy doll, a smelly sack of old clothes and dry bones and
blood. Complete mental disconnect.

The track turned red and
wet. At first, only a smear, a leafy pattern of crimson upon the rail that
evolved into a splatter, which soon ran down across the steel and into the
cracks in the blackened ties. And the pulpy smacking noise was buried beneath
the Caretaker’s screams. When he started; he wasn’t sure. What he meant; a
mystery. But as he fed the Cast Out’s blood to the greedy Wasteland dust, he screamed
one word over and over: “
Wait!
”