The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (9 page)

“What are you?” he asked. He did not
really care as such, interested only in how he could use her in his attack upon
the Caretakers.

“He never gave me a name.”

Rebreather considered this, and said,
“You are Oversight. Wait where you will. He will come to us when we are
needed.”

“He will come when he jerks himself
off, which I’m sure he—”

Her blasphemy took him off guard, and
he lashed out reflexively, a blow so hard that for a moment he feared he had
broken her neck. She collapsed upon the rock, shocked into silence. But she did
not cry, or shriek, or even look up at him, staring useless daggers of hatred.
And she did not continue to denigrate Gusman Kreiger, the avatar of God. She
simply sat there upon her knees, defiant, refusing to look at him, one
delicate-fingered hand gingerly staunching the flow of blood from her nostrils.

“Do not speak against God, or by His
own hand you will be struck down,” Rebreather said quietly, hoping she would
not bleed too much. It would draw spiders and beetles eager to feast upon the
sand where it fell, the smell driving the dregs into a frenzy. And he had no
desire to spend his morning housecleaning. God was moving, and he had things to
take care of. If she planned to bleed, he might still have to kill her.

God’s gathering of the animals and
the subsequent arrival of Oversight were the signs Rebreather had been waiting
for, as clear as the sounding of the Horn of the Apocalypse. No longer did he
send stars shrieking from the heavens. Gone were the days of salt pillars and
raging columns of fire to guide addle-minded prophets. Gone even were the
saintly images of God in the spilled coffee of a roadside diner. God manifested
his miracles in subtle smells that had the ability to burn through the fog of
decades of exile in the tasteless dust world of the Wasteland. These olfactory
signs awakened something inside of him like the butterfly chewing free from its
self-created prison of silk and spit. He could feel the anticipation squeeze at
his stomach, and awaken thoughts and aspirations long forgotten. It coursed through
his blood, pumped rapidly at his heart, and tingled into his loins, so long
unused he thought himself incapable of such things. But it was God’s sign, like
so many others happening around him now. He felt the life flow back into his
manhood, felt it rise as he would rise to crush the Outsider that usurped God’s
throne and kept His servants forever in exile.

He looked at Oversight, wondering if
there still might not be a use for her. His mind kept memories of pleasure
locked deeply away, but not so far that he had lost all notion of what soft
skin felt like, blood-warm and smooth.

It was the sound from the desert, the
screaming whistle of the approaching train that brought his head around,
notions of Oversight forgotten just as her name foretold.

Rebreather raced along the gray
plateau towards a pinnacle of rock that stood above all other places on the
Wasteland. He leaped at the stone, clearing a rift nearly thirty feet across,
spent pistols and rusted knives that he kept belted to his waist clattering
against the stone, metal digging sharply into his belly and hips. But feeling
was meaningless, time having hardened him: mentally, spiritually,
physically
.
Yellowed nails clawed into the soft stone as Rebreather pulled himself hand
over hand to the summit of the rock. And there he stood, taking full advantage
of his height to see as far across the Wasteland as possible, the telescope
pressed to his masked eye.

And there he stayed as the sun rose
towards noon and began to lean into what he continued to think of as west,
though such a term truly had no meaning. He saw only one person emerge from the
train; not the old Caretaker, but someone
new
.

This would be so much easier than he
had imagined. How God overpowered the previous Caretaker, Rebreather did not know;
such was the wonder of God. But so long as the old Caretaker could not
accompany his scion to the Nexus as they had done before for as long as
Rebreather had watched the trains come and go, the new Caretaker was
vulnerable. Perhaps God had chased the Devil back to one of the Earths and
killed him, leaving this new Caretaker without benefit of the knowledge that
would save his life.

There would never be a more perfect
time to take back control of the Nexus. And whosoever controlled the Nexus
controlled …
everything
!

God would show favor upon him,
opening the way between the worlds, sending him …

…
home
.

The word blazed once again with
connotations he had diligently stripped away, casting them aside in his years
of living in the Wasteland because they were useless and confusing and they
made him cry dry tears of sand as if he were no more than a common witch. But
he remembered sorrow and tears, and that was more important than crying real
water anyway. The body was simply a vessel that safeguarded the mind, and so
long as the mind remained, all was not lost.

He stared at the distant Nexus and
the speck that wandered about it. And the longer Rebreather stared, the more
enraged he became. This small thing, so far away and insignificant, was all
that denied him his real world, all that kept him prisoner in the Wasteland.
How unjust that others could come from outside when so many were already here,
wanting only to go …

… home.

He stood there upon the rock, his
imagination running freely. He could hear in his mind the sound of the distant
Caretaker screaming, a scream neither male nor female—he had not yet decided
upon the new Caretaker’s sex, and eventually, after enough pain, all screams
sounded the same. But the androgynous sound was an even more pure pleasure than
he had received from striking down Oversight, or imagining her cowering naked
before him. This was power; power without limit, power oozing from his flesh
like sweat, and spiraling from his nostrils with every breath as if he was a
living volcano.

He glanced at Oversight on the
distant plateau, small and insignificant. Like the Caretaker at the Nexus.
Whatever she had been moments ago—whatever she had even
hinted
at being
moments ago—she was no longer. His mind slammed shut upon all of it, burying those
things back into the graves from whence they crawled. And in those same tombs
he buried the memories of pleasure and home. He was God’s chosen messenger, and
his message was war.

The woman-child was meat now, nothing
more; she was to be used and disposed of in whatever manner God saw fit.
Henceforth, Rebreather would exist only as an instrument of slaughter and
hatred. It would be the water he drank, and the food he ate, and the fire that
warmed him. Hatred and the burning need to satisfy its hungers with pain.

Staring at the sharp-tongued
temptress, pondering her slender body, stringy muscles beneath a thin layer of
soft skin—truly, a poor soldier for God’s army—he hoped Gusman Kreiger would
bring him better. Perhaps an army of Wasteland dregs, mindless brutal beasts
good only for ruthless, instinctual slaughter. Surely, anyone who could wring
water from the Wasteland and bring down a Caretaker could gather better
soldiers than a lone girl and three dregs. Surely.

But then, who was he to question the
wisdom of God.

*     *     *

Not all had the benefit of seeing
God—or one who called himself God, leastwise—appear physically, calling them to
service. For some, manifestations were unnecessary, a ridiculous deception
easily penetrated. It was enough to know that there was another out there who
promised salvation from the Wasteland; a means to take control of the Nexus and
use its powers to create a heaven on earth, the promised pleasure dome of
Kublai Kahn, a Shangri-La of blue opium smoke and writhing flesh, naked and
supple, pressing tightly against him,
smooth and slippery and …

A shudder of ecstasy passed through
Reginald Hyde, a flicker of the impression that he had been contemplating. The
words that covered every spare inch of stone and earth from floor to ceiling of
his underground burrow, words he had written himself not with ink—which he did
not possess—but a mixture of guano and charcoal, blood and feces, had
momentarily captured one of the live lines of power coursing through the
Wasteland. And for that one brief moment, the words he had so diligently set
down had channeled the power that converged upon the Nexus from all times and
worlds and realities, and made the Word real.

The infrequent capture of pleasure in
its purest form distracted him, and he ejaculated like a youth in the grips of
a pubescent wet dream.

Reginald Hyde had lived in the
Wasteland for years beyond count, and by all reckoning except his own, he was
quite mad.

Actually, he lived
under
the
Wasteland. To live on the Wasteland was to be a victim to the blistering sun
and the sucking wind that robbed water from the flesh as surely as a kiss from
a succubus robbed a man of vitality and strength.

Ohh, but for the soft-lipped kiss of
a succubus once again.

But the words would not bend the
lines of power to his will this time. Anywhere outside the Nexus, it was catch
as catch can. You latched upon the cable and chewed off the insulation like a
sewer rat, hoping like hell to complete the circuit without getting fried for
your efforts. Anyone not in the Nexus was at the whim of the power and its
imprecision; fitful bursts followed more often than not by long periods of
melancholic absence.

He knew of Rebreather’s obsession to
regain the Nexus. What Cast Out did not? But what Reginald Hyde knew most about
Rebreather was that he should be
feared
. Rebreather was insane. The
Wasteland had destroyed Rebreather’s mind and left a psychopathic shell behind
in its place; a shell filled by a demon that waffled unpredictably between
catatonic indifference and manic savagery. Rebreather was, to use the idiom, as
crazy as a shit house rat and all the worse for not knowing. Some nights Hyde
woke up screaming, his nightmares the simple hiss of Rebreather’s filter, and
the click of the madman’s hammers as he ferreted out Reginald’s hiding place
under the dust where the water still trickled and insects ran free for the
eating, and power—with diligence and words and luck—could still be bent to the
Cast Out’s will. Rebreather would shoot Hyde in the belly if he found him, then
eat him alive and screaming.

Reginald Hyde was an enormous,
corpulent man, fat hanging from him in thick layers that the years in the
Wasteland seemed unable to affect. His arms and legs were portly hocks that
would fill a butcher with envy, and for that reason, he hid. The waddles of his
chin excited the Wastelanders like raw meat excited wolves or sharks. But he
was smarter than they were. He could still forge reality, as Rebreather once
had before he went mad, his imagination shackled by the rituals of a
psychotic’s crazed
mojo
until he actually believed it was the air of the
Wasteland that would kill him.

Shit house rat
.

Of all the Cast Outs still living
throughout the Wasteland, and there were others, only Gusman Kreiger was a
match for Reginald Hyde. Kreiger might even be superior, but that thought also
made Hyde wake up screaming.

Unlike Rebreather, Kreiger only
affected madness. He was not insane, but he found it amusing to act as if he
was, and that annoyed Hyde … and frightened him. He had seen what Kreiger could
do, knew that the man had perfected his craft over two thousand years, and now
eagerly awaited the opportunity to free himself from the barriers of the
Wasteland. He was like many of the Wastelanders who had come here over the
centuries to forge reality, and been found … lacking. He was cast out. And now
he wanted the Nexus back.

And Kreiger just might get it; he was
that strong. God? No, but as close as a mortal might come without burning out
the fragile coil of flesh.

But Kreiger lacked the simple
pleasures in his work. He was lofty and grand, as God had been. But God turned
to Lucifer for guidance in creating the subtle pleasures and the simple
details. Like God, Kreiger was deficient; the smell of the rose escaped him in
the act of creating the plant itself.

And, as it happened, the sensual
world was Reginald Hyde’s area of expertise. He had indulged his flesh in all
manner of pleasures, both subtle and gross, before seeking out the Nexus. The
Nexus could make his imagination reality—or so it was promised—and his
imagination, however dark, was a fine, fine place.

He ran his hands—soft, small and
effeminate—over his naked head, his skull as bald as a newborn’s for as long as
he had been in the Wasteland. Sweat made it oily like it made the rest of his
body. His belly was so enormous that he had long ago forgotten the appearance
of his own penis. But while he could no longer see it, he knew of it, felt its
warm sensations, the tingling messages it created in his mind, wants it ached
to have fulfilled. And after he had invented the narrow caves to protect
himself, and the water that dripped milky white with lime from the ceiling, and
the pool of blind fish that he ate when the bugs and the lizards proved too
hard to catch, or too sickening to stomach, he spent the rest of his time
creating fantastically vivid images to tease and arouse his mind, accentuations
of his own perverse longings for a return to a life of endless pleasure.