No Man's Land (10 page)

Chapter Twelve

“We never had us a chance,” the man with the bandaged side was saying over his cracked mug of beer. “Not one fucking chance at all.”

The beer looked like piss and no doubt tasted much like it. The gaudy around them was the sort of gaudy to serve beer like that.

Which was to say, the Deathlands’ standard gaudy: dark, dank, low-ceilinged, reeking of spilled booze and vomit. It was the sort of place where one or two dozen lost souls gathered by the light of stinking lanterns fueled by river-fish oil or turpentine, and tossed back booze in hopes of getting drunk as quickly as possible.

There was a reason why Snake Eye always paid the premium for booze from the bottle. He might not know where it really came from, but at least he could see what he was pouring in his shot glass.

“You talking about life as a citizen in the Association,” Snake Eye said, sidling down the bar to where the man sat a little apart from what may have been companions, but were unlikely to be friends, “or did you have a specific incident in mind?”

He was pretty sure he knew the answer to that question before he asked it. That was his favorite kind of question, of course. He had tracked several of the survivors of the ambushed convoy’s wag drivers here to this nameless dive, in an equally nameless settlement of rasty shacks tacked together from scabbie planks and sheet metal a dozen miles or so west of the ambush site.

He doubted it would be far enough if the Association, or their individual masters, got it in their heads to hunt them down and punish them for desertion. Or for their carelessness in losing a whole convoy worth of luxury goods for the baron at Protector HQ. Their fear of punishment was likely why they’d simply deserted in the first place.

Barons were all alike. They never took the blame for their own losses or failures. That’s what underlings were for.

But Jed Kylie had some bigger fish to fry just now, not least being the almost-certain perpetrators of the raid. And if the baron in command of the Protector Army had more important things to do than hunt runaway wag drivers and outriders, his lesser barons did, too.

“Ease up, there, Norvell,” said one of the men standing by the bar next to him. “It’s not good to talk to outlanders.”

Snake Eye chuckled indulgently. “Ah, but I’m no outlander,” he said, sidling right up to the wounded man, who was visibly the most inebriated.

His drunkenness suggested a pair of things to the mercie. One, that he might well prove easiest to get answers out of, although admittedly
sense
was a different thing altogether. And second, that he might well feel extra motivation besides the pain in his side for wanting to get more hammered than his buddies.

“I’m a benefactor,” Snake Eye said. He pushed over a tumbler and poured a couple of fingers of murky brown liquid into it. “House’s best. Drink up.”

Norvell grabbed the greasy tumbler with both hands, threw back his head and shot the drink straight back down his throat. As Norvell shuddered, Snake Eye reflected that he might have been offended at the treatment of the whiskey, but for the fact he had sampled it himself. He reckoned the less risk that any of it might splash on one’s taste buds, the better for all concerned.

“Ah,” Norvell said, slamming the glass back down on the uneven bar with unnecessary force. Then he turned a bloodshot but cagey look on Snake Eye.

“Look, mister, I don’t know what you want in return, but I got to tell you, I don’t swing that way.”

Snake Eye laughed indulgently. Of course his life made normal men blanch, as Norvell’s reluctant companions did, which was fine with Snake Eye. He reckoned he had his mark.

Norvell, of course, wasn’t a normal man. Norvell was a very drunk man.

“Just answers to a few questions, my friend,” Snake Eye said. “That’s all I want from you. Such as how did you wind up here in the ass end of nowhere in the first place?”

Norvell’s two buddies gave the mercie narrow-eye looks over that query. It wasn’t the sort of place you asked a question like that of a man. Not that the Deathlands offered many such places.

The tiny settlement, hard even in today’s terms to dignify it with the name
ville,
lay out on the fringes of the no-man’s-land between the warring confederations. But not completely out of it, either. It was plain as day to a man with an eye much less keen than Snake Eye’s trademark yellow one that its sole reason for existence was to service the illicit trade that inevitably went on despite the generations-long conflict. It was too much trouble for either side to try to close down all such concerns. So they seldom tried at all. The fact was, both sides had reasons of their own for wanting such trade to continue.

All the same, the sort of people you’d encounter in an illicit trading outpost would be even touchier than usual about questions regarding who they were and what they were doing here. For example the three young men glowering at Snake Eye from the darkest corner of the badly lit bar room would probably react poorly at the first syllable of any such question Snake Eye aimed their way. Deserters, he took them for. There was nothing uniform about their assorted duds, aside from general dirt, rumpledness and general raggedy-assedness. Not that they had any exclusive claim on those things. But for most soldiers of either Alliance or Association, shedding the “uniform” took no longer than stripping off the green or blue armband and chucking it in the weeds.

To Snake Eye, they just had that look. Not that he cared. But he routinely sized up everyone he came into a room with. Just as he never entered a place without knowing a good and fast way out. It just made good sense.

“Why do you...wanna know?” Norvell said. It really had taken him the better part of a minute to frame the question. Snake Eye had practically heard the gears grinding in his head.

“Friendly curiosity, partner,” Snake Eye said, reckoning the man was drunk enough to take that for the obvious lie it was. “I’m a businessman, independent entrepreneur. Always on the scout for a new opportunity.”

Which, at least, was as true as Snake Eye’s heart was hard.

“Well, I done fell on hard times,” Norvell said, “and that’s a fact.”

He stopped, clearly waiting. After a moment he looked to his benefactor, wagged his eyebrows like caterpillars dry-humping a leaf. When that action didn’t make his meaning clear he rattled his now-empty glass on the bar.

Laughing, Snake Eye poured him another. Given the liquor’s quality, it was better in every way that it went into Norvell’s gut than his.

“Ambushed,” he said. “That’s what happened. T’me and my friends here.”

“Include us out, Norvell,” said the younger and leaner of his companions. “Dammit.”

“There we was, driving a convoy of luxury goods for the baron and his pals,” Norvell continued obliviously. “And outta nowhere—bang, bang, bang! Coldhearts ever’where, shooting our asses off. Escort troopers droppin’ like flies. And then this wild-ass mutie kid with white hair and red eyes—
red fucking eyes
—jumps up on the board next to me and starts stabbing the shit outta me.”

He’s not a mutie, thought Snake Eye, who knew what an albino was, and also a thing or two about mutants. He said nothing. It wasn’t his business to correct Norvell’s inconsequential view of the world.

Norvell held up forearms wrapped in bandages. “I fought him off best I could. But he was crazy like a catamount. I thought I was done for until his boss coldheart called him off. There was a scary dude, I tell you, and I never saw him lift a finger against nobody, although he was carrying a longblaster with a scope that looked like it had seen some recent use. Tall dude, lean as a wolf. Just one blue eye and a patch on t’other. Like yours, except ice-blue insteada yellow. Seemed to stab right through a body.”

“Did he have black, shaggy hair, the one-eyed man? The other one, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Norvell nodded convulsively. To encourage him Snake Eye poured him another drink. “That’s the man. Friend of yours?”

Snake Eye laughed at that. “Not a friend, no. I do know his reputation. His and the white-haired youth’s. What about the others?”

“Others?”

“Focus, now.” He moved the bottle away. Norvell’s eyes followed as if attached by strings. “Who else did you see among the coldhearts?”

“Coldhearts?”

“Who ambushed you.”

“Oh. Them. Well, there was a brown slut with her hair all done in beaded braids and titties out to
here
. And then another woman, hair like fire, built like a brick shithouse, brought up the horses and pack mules.”

“Pack mules?”

“Uh-huh. Raiders loaded up some high-value shit, like primer caps, meds, bottles of triple-prime hooch. Weps, including some off the dead guards. And boots off the chills. Everything else they burned. Or blew, in the case of the powder wag.”

Snake Eye nodded. “All right. Who else?”

“Who else?”

Snake Eye held up the bottle enticingly. “The one-eyed man and the white-haired man. Surely they had some other dudes with them? Not just the two women.”

Speaking of women, in a manner of speaking, a gaudy slut had slouched in and was trying to peddle her wares in a halfhearted way. She wore a patched red dress, which may or may not have been silk and may or may not have been lingerie, but didn’t do much to conceal those wares. Not enough, in Snake Eye’s opinion.

“Oh,” Norvell said again, “yeah. The others. Lessee. There was a tall, gawky oldie with a cane. A little Mex-looking kid, come out of the bushes by our backtrail holding a funny kinda longblaster with a thick barrel. And a sawed-off little runt with a shotgun, wore specs and a fedora.”

“Very good.” Snake Eye poured another drink.

The gaudy slut approached the three deserters in the corner and was rebuffed without so much as a glance her way. Looking around the bar, she spotted Snake Eye and made right for him.

“Ah,” Norvell said, having pounded his drink as if it was the last he’d ever get. He wiped his mouth. “Yeah, we’re lucky we made it outta there alive. Them was some stone brigands, I tell ya. If it wasn’t for me swapping the tale to them of the secret place my aunt found, don’t think they would let us leave on our pins.”

“Oh, bullshit, Norvell,” the older driver said.

Snake Eye sensed the approach of the gaudy slut on his right side, the side away from Norvell. Felt her warmth.
Smelled
her.

“Hey, honey,” she said in a voice like sandpaper.

“Back off,” he snapped without looking around. “Keep your stink away from me.”

“Aw, honey, that’s just the smell of my love juices flowin’ at the sight of you. A hard man like you is good to find. Let’s me and you—”

She put her hand on his arm.

His reaction was immediate—he whipped around, as fast as a striking rattler, and backhanded her onto her bony ass. She stared at him, her eyes murky green pools amid incongruously black and blue paint, her mouth a scarlet smear, her hair hanging in her face like bleached seaweed.

“I told you to keep away from me!”

“Here, now,” the bartender said, bustling up behind his important leather-clad gut.

Snake Eye turned a hard yellow look on him. That was enough. The bartender stopped short, as if bumping his nose on an invisible force field, and found some glasses that needed the grease and muck smeared around on them with a rag as foul as his gaudy slut.

The drivers with Norvell made protesting noises. One made as if to move toward Snake Eye.

Snake Eye turned his left side away from the bar to face the two sitting men. His hand swept back the tail of his coat, revealing the black steel gleam of his left-hand blaster. The driver, his eyes huge, backed off.

“Now,” Snake Eye said, still looking at the two, “what was this about your aunt’s discovery?”

The older driver moistened his bearded lips. “It’s just a crazy story, mister,” he said. “We don’t want no trouble with you. But no reason to let you think there’s anything to it. Folks who hit our train, they didn’t buy it for one little second.”

Snake Eye nodded brusque acknowledgment, but he turned back to Norvell.

“I want to hear more of this story of yours anyway, Norvell,” he said. “I’m a collector of curiosities as well as an independent contractor. So I’d like you to tell me all about it.”

He gave a final glare to the slut who was scooting her skinny rump backward across the floorboards away from him, throwing up a sort of bow-wave of sodden sawdust. It was purely for show now.

Though for a fact Snake Eye wasn’t interested in any woman degraded enough to be attracted to him. Even for a commercial transaction. When he needed that sort of relief he bought the services of high-class sluts at one or another place he knew here or there—paid handsomely, as he could well afford to, for the privilege not only of using her sexually, but also of letting her know in intimate detail what a worthless bitch she was. Like all women.

As long as he paid—and left no marks—the proprietors and proprietresses of those high-class houses reckoned there was no harm done.

“Somewhere else,” Snake Eye said, clapping Norvell on the shoulder, “where we won’t be subject to so many rude interruptions.”

* * *

“I
N
HERE
,
MISTER
?” Norvell asked at Snake Eye’s after-you gesture. “But this is just an old alley. Nowhere particular.”

“Nowhere particular is fine with me, Norvell,” Snake Eye said amiably. “It will ensure privacy for me to hear the rest of your story in peace.” Actually, the alley was no darker than the street, to call it that. But its narrow walls did restrict sight lines, which was the effect Snake Eye was looking for.

The drunk looked back uncertainly over one shoulder.

“One thing you oughta know right out the gate, mister,” he said. “I ain’t into no funny stuff.”

Then a dim light of calculation lit his eyes. “Unless you got the jack, of course.”

“Rest easy, my friend,” Snake Eye said. “I have jack. But all I want from you is the rest of the story.”

“All righty, then,” Norvell said, and stumbled into the alley.