The Waste Lands (Page 123)

“You …” the dying man whispered. “You . . . gunslinger?” “That’s right,” Eddie said. His eyes surveyed the remaining Pubes grimly. “Cry your . . . pardon,” the man with the frizzy red hair gasped, and then he fell forward onto his face.

“Gunslingers?” one of the others asked. His tone was one of dawning horror and realization.

“Well, you’re stupid, but you ain’t deaf,” Susannah said, “and that’s somethin, anyway.” She waggled the barrel of the gun, which Eddie was quite sure was empty. For that matter, how many rounds could be left in the Ruger? He realized he didn’t have any idea how many rounds the clip held, and cursed himself for a fool . . . but had he really believed it could come to something like this? He didn’t think so. “You heard him, folks. Drop em. Recess is over.” One by one, they complied. The woman who was wearing a pint or so of Mr. Sword-and-Kilt’s blood on her face said, “You shouldn’t’ve killed Winston, missus—’twas his birthday, so it was.”

“Well, I guess he should have stayed home and eaten some more birthday cake,” Eddie said. Given the overall quality of this experience, he didn’t find either the woman’s comment or his own response at all surreal. There was one other woman among the remaining Pubes, a scrawny thing whose long blonde hair was coming out in big patches, as if she had the mange. Eddie observed her sidling toward the dead dwarf—and the potential safety of the overgrown arches beyond him—and put a bullet into the cracked cement close by her foot. He had no idea what he wanted with her, but what he didn’t want was one of them giving the rest of them ideas. For one thing, he was afraid of what his hands might do if the sickly, sullen people before him tried to run. Whatever his head thought about this gunslinging business, his hands had discovered they liked it just fine.

“Stand where you are, beautiful. Officer Friendly says play it safe.” He glanced at Susannah and was disturbed by the grayish quality of her complexion. “Suze, you all right?” he asked in a lower voice. “Yes.”

“You’re not going to faint or anything, are you? Because—” “No.” She looked at him with eyes so dark they were like caves. “It’s just that I never shot anyone before . . . okay?”

Well, you better get used to it rose to his lips. He bit it back and returned his gaze to the five people who remained before them. They were looking at him and Susannah with a species of sullen fear which nevertheless stopped well short of terror.

Shit, most of them have forgotten what terror is, he thought. Joy, sadness, love . . . same thing. I don’t think they feel much of anything, anymore. They’ve been living in this purgatory too long.

Then he remembered the laughter, the excited cries, the lounge-act applause, and revised his thinking. There was at least one thing that still got their motors running, one thing that still pushed their buttons. Spanker could have testified to that.

“Who’s in charge here?” Eddie asked. He was watching the intersec-tion behind the little group very carefully in case the others should get their courage back. So far he saw and heard nothing alarming from that direction. He thought that the others had probably left this ragged crew to its fate. They looked at each other uncertainly, and finally the woman with the blood-spattered face spoke up. “Spanker was, but when the god-drums started up this time, it was Spanker’s stone what come out of the hat and we set him to dance. I guess Winston would have come next, but you did for him with your god-rotted guns, so you did.” She wiped blood deliberately from her cheek, looked at it, and then returned her sullen glance to Eddie. “Well, what do you think Winston was trying to do to me with his god-rotted spear?” Eddie asked. He was disgusted to find the woman had actually made him feel guilty about what he had done. “Trim my sideburns?” “Killed Frank ‘n Luster, too,” she went on doggedly, “and what are you? Either Grays, which is bad, or a couple of god-rotted outlanders, which is worse. Who’s left for the Pubes in City North? Topsy, I sup-pose—Topsy the Sailor—but he ain’t here, is he? Took his boat and went off downriver, ay, so he did, and god rot him, too, says I!”

Susannah had ceased listening; her mind had fixed with horrified fascination on something the woman had said earlier. It was Spanker’s stone what come out of the hat and we set him to dance. She remembered reading Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” in college and understood that these people, the degenerate descendents of the original Pubes, were living Jackson’s nightmare. No wonder they weren’t capable of any strong emotion when they knew they would have to participate in such a grisly drawing not once a year, as in the story, but two or three times each day.

“Why?” she asked the bloody woman in a harsh, horrified voice. “Why do you do it?”

The woman looked at Susannah as if she was the world’s biggest fool. “Why? So the ghosts what live in the machines won’t take over the bodies of those who have died here—Pubes and Grays alike—and send them up through the holes in the streets to eat us. Any fool knows that.” “There are no such things as ghosts,” Susannah said, and her voice sounded like so much meaningless quacking to her own ears. Of course there were. In this world, there were ghosts everywhere. Nevertheless, she pushed ahead. “What you call the god-drums is only a tape stuck in a machine. That’s really all it is.” Sudden inspiration struck her and she added: “Or maybe the Grays are doing it on purpose—did you ever think of that? They live in the other part of the city, don’t they? And under it, as well? They’ve always wanted you out. Maybe they’ve just hit on a really efficient way of getting you guys to do their work for them.”