THUGLIT Issue Twelve (7 page)

"Depends. You should discre
etly slide a hundred bucks across the bar. And then you should stop fucking talking to me."

Nobody talks to Banyon O'Shaunessey like that. I felt the color rise up my neck and toward my face. The bartender shook his head.

"Swing and I'll pull the trigger on the scatter gun under the bar. You'll be a little paler from asshole to appetite."

Well. That had a calming effect. I put five twenties on the bar.

"Look, seriously. I'm just looking for somebody."

"Well don't look at me. I'm just a two-dimensional character here to try and convince the folks reading the author's not a racist."

"What?"

"I said try the hotel across town and have fun with all the other racists."

"Okay." I looked out the door, all that distance and gunfire in the street. "Think I could get drunk first?"

He poured more rum and I watched the fellas playing knife darts come close to losing fingers, listened to the gunfire. For a few hours at least, I forgot I had a job to do. Rico, as the bartender turned out to be named, didn't tell me anything else, but he had a heavy hand with the booze and was fairly nice about throwing me out at dawn. I could see why a man could stay in a place like this
—an adventurer's town where fortunes were made by sweat and nerve. I could see myself setting up shop.

The hotel was tallest nearby building, easy to find. I p
assed block after empty block. Even gunfire and revelry have to sleep sometime. Yep. A man could get used to mornings like this.

Around the next corner I found the mercs from the bar, remembered them playing darts with their knives, drunk on camaraderie and cheap rum. The four losers had the winner braced against the building, knives rising and falling, red and rhythmic. They cut off his middle fingers before I looked away.

On second thought fuck this place.

At thirteen years old, the hotel was one of the oldest buildings in town
—and much like a teenager, it was mostly gangling bits and craters. Inside the lobby, a corpse was splayed across the front desk, its hand covering the service bell. I looked around for somebody, anybody else.

"What?" A voice asked.

I dropped into a crouch, hand twitching toward the .45 under my arm.

"Asshole, I'm right here."

It was the corpse. Either that or a ventriloquist with a hand up its ass.

"You alive?" I asked.

"Yeah I'm alive, motherfucker." One finger on the hand moved, managed to ring the bell. "Find my wheelchair. These pricks think it's funny to steal it."

"You're paralyzed?"

His index finger twitched. "Wow. Nobody told me Einstein was visiting."

"Uh. Can I rent a room?"

He rotated his head to look at me out of the corner of one eye.

"I'll send up sixteen dancing boys, a case of Pacifico and a burlap
sack of kittens and grenades. Shit, I'll even throw in clean sheets if you find my wheelchair. These drunk fucks usually end up riding it. Check the second floor, I think I saw that fat schwanz Carlos head that way."

I unholstered the Kimber.

"Try not to shoot him too badly. He's one of the few actually pays his rent."

I found Carlos in a collection of stinking fatigues and body armor too small to cover his center mass
—emphasis on the mass. He was passed out in the motorized chair, the most modern thing I'd seen here other than guns and tattoos. I wished for a bucket of water, an air horn, some random noise to wake him so that I didn't have to. I took his weapons one at a careful time and placed them on the floor several feet away. When I'd made Carlos as safe as possible, I grabbed him by the back of his belt and heaved, sending him cartwheeling out of the chair.

He l
anded in a pile. Still snoring.

Whatever these guys drank was worth every penny.

I looked down into the seat of the wheelchair and dropped, banging into the wall and cowering with my arms around my head. When nothing happened I took another look. The chair's seat was a kind of toilet bowl, which I guess makes sense. The grenade made less sense. The pin was still in place and I followed a strand of fishing line from it through a series of stays up to the headrest. At the end was a leather tab covered with teeth marks.

I
wheeled the chair down the makeshift ramps and to the front desk.

"Aw, you're the best. Mind helping me?"

"Sure. Fair warning, Carlos left a grenade in the seat."

"Oh, that's mine."

"What happens when you…"

"Grenades are waterproof."

"Okay…" I slipped my hands under his arms and levered him into the chair. He moved his neck around and sighed, his fingers twitching toward the controls.

"See?" He asked, reaching his head around to grab the end of the fishing line with his teeth. "Awr I gorra do ish purr."

Great, a Stephen Hawking suicide bomber, but I guess if I was crippled in a town like this I'd have a contingency plan too.

"Name's Rudy, Rudy the Gimp. What can I do for you?"

"O'Shaunessey. I need a room and I'm looking for somebody. Maybe he's staying here?"

"Who?"

"An archaeologist."

He started chuckling. "Man, I don't have any idea what one of those would be doing in this dump."

"What are you doing here?"

"Used to be an accountant for one of the mining companies."

"Why would you..?"

"Why would a gimp live in a backwater shithole like this to begin with?"

"Yeah."

"When the mining companies were running shit, I was like a wizard. Got taken good care of, local whores used to give me sponge baths." His eyes went glassy, mouth slack and I let him have his moment while I stood around and twiddled my thumbs until he snapped out of it.

"Anyway, when the shit hit the fan it's not like I could drive to the border."

"Guess not."

"I'll get you that room, and just to show my thanks I'll throw one of these in for free." He tossed a padlock and thick chain onto the desk.

"The fuck's that for?"

"So you can lock the door."

Sure enough
, the door to the room was just a piece of steel on hinges. I looked at the crumbling sheetrock and wondered why anybody would try and take out the door when they could hire a chihuahua to chew through the wall. After I heard the mattress rustling, I decided to sleep on the floor. I didn't want to disturb my roommates.

If I'd known what was gonna happen next, I'd have invented a time machine so I could slap the shit out of myself for taking this job. It would've been easier.

One. Fucking. Week. In. This. Shit. Pile.

A week and no sign of that asshole nerd or a stone fucking tablet. I'd become the funniest thing in the town, the mercs think I'm a trip. You're looking for what? A rock? And not gold or silver?

Yeah. That's me. Banyon O'Shaunessey. Funny as fuck.

T
hey started calling me Indiana.

Dickheads.

When I found that archaeologist I was going to beat him to death with that tablet and tell Debonaire those "any means" had been necessary.

I sent email updates from the bar's Wi-Fi when it was actually working, and he assured me of his absolute faith. Meanwhile I could actually hear this end of my payment trickling away on booze. I tried my hand at knife darts, but lost most of what I won. I remembered what happened to the last winner. I behaved like the locals
and did my best to stay drunk.

Which is why I thought that first hooded figure was a product of my hangover. I'd wandered out of the hotel into the brutal sunlight only because my room smelled worse than the town or my breath. I was heading to the bar to get breakfast when I saw him walking from the main gate, hands in his sleeves and this swaying, heavy walk. Only faith could make a man wear that robe in this heat.

I rubbed my temples while he walked past, face lost in the shadow of his hood and an actual rope for a belt.

"Uh," I said, "Good morning, father?"

He ignored me and continued into the town.

Rico nodded as I entered the bar, a new height in familiarity. He put down a steaming mug of coffee, dumped in a liberal amount of rum.

"Thanks, but I think I need to sober up."

"I didn't have time to boil the water first."

"Oh." I sipped, "Is there a monastery in this town?"

"Used to be. This big old building at the center, old mission. Mercs rolled in and turned it into an ammo dump."

"What happened to the monks?"

"Thing's been empty for decades. Indians killed them a long time ago, I guess."

The rum was warm, the coffee was warm. I became happy.

"Why you asking?" Rico asked.

"Because I just passed a monk out in the street."

"You been eating the paint chips in the hotel?"

"Not unless the roaches have been feeding them to me in my sleep."

He paused, giving the idea actual thought.

"Want some more coffee?"

"Probably a good idea."

"You find that rock yet?"

"Since I'm still sitting in your bar, that'd be a strong fucking no."

"You search the hotel?"

"Are you nuts? I'm not wandering around in there. Whatever's living in the walls sounds like it's starting a band."

"You should search the hotel. In case you're wondering, this is a combination of foreshadowing and deus ex machina."

"For-what? Deuce what?"

"I said I'm gonna re-apply my eyeshadow and then go drop a deuce. You should have more coffee. Think your hearing's fucked up."

I had more coffee and wished bloody, fiery doom on this entire rancid shithole of a town.

Silver lining? It turns out wishes do come true.

Heh. Silver lining. That's a mine pun. Get it?

No?

Fuck you.

After it was all over, when the smoke from the last fire had gone out, people would talk about how they saw the monks, but only one at a time and so naturally assumed that was all there was. Naturally is another word for complacent or just plain dumbshit.