Desolation Row

Billy Coyote was dead, so that was one item crossed off my agenda. I strode out into the empty street, where the moon shone in a rare puddle, and the wind drove dust devils between the shuttered inns and hotels.

I was aware of hunger growling in my stomach, but the idea of food still made me feel sick. Indeed, the stench, however distantly related to edible things, that had hung about the Bar had turned my stomach more than the screams and gunshots, or the sight of blood. Those things I was used to.

So, food was off the menu for the time being- I chortled, allowing myself that little joke.

I regretted it almost immediately. My teeth ached like nails beaten crudely into my tender gums, and any movement I made with my mouth felt like gargling rocks. I guessed that meant the feeling was coming back to the finer nerves in my face, and the blood was finally reaching all the tiniest vessels. It certainly tasted like it. Perhaps that also meant I’d stop looking like a grinning Death Day mask, capable of only two or three expressions.

Good, I thought.

I hoped that would be the case. I longed to feel the nuanced touch of a smile curving my lips- just the tips of them. I longed to be an avatar of cruelty and irony for everyone who had wronged me. I was going to be a mirror for sin, and, God, were there a lot of sinners in that town.

Of course, I’m not a strictly religious person, but everything is relative. In a place as drought-stricken Desolation, a handful of raindrops can be mana or hellfire, depending on where they land.

Water.

The thought plopped into my consciousness like a fat, delicious droplet. I might not have a fully functioning gut yet, but every fibre of my desiccated body thirsted. I was shrivelled up and leathery, like vulture meat baked into chewy strips by the hot sand. I had practically been mummified, after all.

Something shimmering caught my attention, and I gravitated towards an oasis in a barrel. Black and smooth like oil, it rippled in the breeze that snatched away precious moisture from its surface. A rusted pip ran down from the shingled wall and dipped into its contents like the neck of a drinking animal, dripping enticingly.

Automatically, I plunged my cupped hands into salvation, and drank it down in deep gulps. Water splashed from my mouth, cleansing the dust from my face, and dribbled from my slack chin. I had never been so parched in my life. By the time I had drunk my fill, I could feel my insides sloshing like the contents of a canteen pouch, but I was still not saturated. I was still not satisfied.

Now that it was tangible, I realised what else I wanted.

With a shifty glance along the street, I confirmed that nobody else was around, or apparently watching. I wondered idly whether I would have cared if they were. I laid my pants aside and stripped off the remainder of my rags, peeling them in the places where blood, sweat or other fluid caked them to my skin. The stink made me glad that my senses weren’t sharp yet.

I had nothing clean enough to mop myself down with, and so I scooped further handfuls of water and threw them inexpertly at my limbs and torso. It was enough to wash the worst of the grime away. With my bare hands, I was able to scrape away most of the rest. I even dunked my head in the barrel, leaving a cloud of silt swirling on the disturbed surface of the water, where the dust that wouldn’t sink remained. I didn’t care whose drinking water I was ruining –men’s or horse’s. Everything here was polluted anyway.

Finally, I was satisfied with my improvement. I let the nighttime air dry me as I composed my thoughts. Water ran down my chest, arms and legs in sheets and rivulets, then in thinning steams, and at last in trickles and steady drips. Each drip that fell marked a second I had been in contemplation.

I shot a man.

Well, that was something. You didn’t do that every day. From where I stood, it almost seemed like an achievement, and in a way I guess it sort of was. It was more than that, though. It was a necessity, and the first step along a gruelling path.

Where was I going next?

Fester.

Jim Fester, another man who had made a name out of the Trade. Fester. Well, you know what they say. When you like the sound of something...

He seemed like a good place to start. He was the last person I knew Billy had been with before I’d died. Maybe I could find out something about that, besides the obvious- that I had outlasted my usefulness, and inhabited a first body full of fresh parts. If I couldn’t find out what I needed to know, then at least Jim Fester wasn’t somebody I would mind much about taking down a peg -or a leg- or two.

So, that was the easy part sorted. The hard part was going to be tracking him down...

‘Oi, you!’

I spun around, and found myself face to face, or close enough, with a total stranger. Having interrupted me in the course of my brooding, he had the pleasure of finding himself face to face with me, and, a little way over where I’d hung them on a railing, my pants. I grabbed these casually and pulled them on without much hurry.

‘Yes?’ I said, my voice having improved from grating to guttural. I figured my best bet was to seem confident. That would unnerve the intruder, who wasn’t really an intruder, when I thought about it. That would be me.

At any rate, I clearly wasn’t armed, and he didn’t appear to be either. He was skinny for a vocal fellow, and a battered hat hid reddish hair longer and less scraggly than anyone in Desolation typically wore, if they knew what was good for them in that Godforsaken heat. He wasn’t somebody I knew, which meant that he wasn’t a resident, but he also didn’t look Trader- he had the look of a man who could still be surprised, as, indeed, he had been.

So, then, what did he want from me?

‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, more honestly than I’d intended. ‘You tell me.’

This seemed to throw him for a second. Then, ‘I’m not kidding,’ he retorted, drawing himself up to his full height, which wasn’t much.

‘You’re a brave one,’ I remarked, sensing an opportunity, ‘so I’ll tell you. The name’s Eliza. Eliza Lee.’ I extended a wet hand, leering monstrously, I assumed.

He backed away warily. Something about the way he blanched told me it wasn’t just my appearance that unnerved him.

‘Mean anything to you?’ I snarled, albeit unintentionally.

‘That’s a dead girl’s name, mister,’ he stammered.

I chuckled again. ‘Nice try,’ I said. ‘I know it doesn’t shock you. Well, it does, but not for the reason I would have expected. You don’t honestly think I’m the villain, here, because somebody already told you that a fella ‘round these parts might have my name- my real name, mind. You know what I am, and you just don’t like it.’

‘They never said they put you in a body like this,’ he offered, but too late.

I lunged at him, or rather fell, because I was so uncoordinated. My larger bulk was enough to pin him down, and I wrestled an arm around his neck, flexing it experimentally. ‘Don’t yell,’ I warned him. ‘You know there’s something special about this corpse. I could pop your head off like a bottle cap, if I wanted to. I already killed one man tonight, and the way I figure it, I can’t go to Hell twice. I got the gun that did it in my pocket.’

He made no protest, and so I continued. ‘Good,’ I commended him. ‘You’re a fast learner. I like that, because something you learned at some point is mighty interesting to me. You knew Billy was planning to put me in another body when he was done with me?’

He squirmed just enough to loosen my arm around his throat, and shift my elbow off his chest. I must have been crushing him. ‘They never told me they was making you a man,’ he spewed out, and I moved to interrupt him. ‘Not... that body.’ I must have been forcing the air out of him again.

‘What’s wrong with this body?’ I demanded. ‘Fine body, if you ask me. Plenty strong.’

He nodded over-eagerly. ‘Yessir- I mean, ma’am.’ His eyes, which were blue like desert skies, were frightened, as though he couldn’t think of a title that wouldn’t earn him reprimand, or a beating. ‘You’s a girl, though.’

‘It’s nobody’s business what I am,’ I said sternly. ‘A body’s a body. If a body meet a body, you know? The thing’s a body’s own.’ This only confused him more, as I had predicted, but at least it kept him still. ‘The thing is, Billy put me in another body. Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered.

‘Why?’ I pressed him.

‘I don’t know!’ He was breathless, and tears were forming in the corners of his eyes. My own were focused enough now to notice the bloodshot lines there. I eased my grip.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, less brutally.

‘I’m- I’m just a f-friend of Billy’s.’

‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s a friend of Billy’s.’ At this, he almost smiled, although it might have been a hint of madness. It’s hard to tell sometimes. ‘Who are you really? I want the whole truth.’

‘Jake O’Hare,’ he answered. ‘I’m not really anybody, if you want to know the truth. I ran away from the War.’ This time it was me who regarded him warily, or maybe just with concern. It takes guts, desperation or a lot of foolishness to admit around Desolation that you don’t know anybody. It’s a great way to turn up dead. In any case, he sounded honest.

‘I just want work,’ he continued. ‘Any kind of work. I run into Jim Fester the other day, and he says he’s got work for me. I don’t know what kind yet. I only heard your name in passing. I’ve only been here two days, and I find a lot of weird stuff in this town already. I saw you at the drinking water, nary any clothes on, and it made me paranoid. I got a bad enough feeling as it is. More freaks than you can poke a stick at here, and I don’t even know what else!’

My expression must have softened throughout his speech, because by the time he finished, and I released him entirely, he was more stricken than fearful. I think that even as a newcomer, he must have realised the implications of what he had revealed.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, probably to no effect, ‘I won’t kill you. You say you know Jim Fester and you’re looking for work?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to mess around with the likes of Jim. Boy like you,’ I’d only just noticed it, but he couldn’t have been older than eighteen, ‘you’ll end up spare parts within a week if you hang around with Jim. I guarantee it.’

I wasn’t sure how much he understood about the Trade, but the audible gulp he gave told me that my mention of ‘parts’ might have cleared up a few mysteries for him.

‘I’ll offer you a choice,’ I continued, feeling fairer than I ever would have dared to be, if I’d been sensible and not messed around by a long day of being resurrected from the dead. ‘You can tell me where Jim is, and I’ll let you go free, to get out of this place as fast as you can, and hopefully not wind up on a butcher’s table.

‘Or,’ I paused, emphasising that this was the better, as in the only feasible, option, ‘if you like running errands, and you don’t like getting shot, you can work for me.’

As I’d predicted, he wasn’t a fool. ‘I’ll work for you,’ he decided, and had more sense than to ask right away what he was being employed as. That was the kind of instinct you had to have if you’d held out for two whole days on the Dry Frontier and kept all your own arms and legs. ‘What should I call you?’ he asked, which was more pragmatic.

At first, I didn’t know how to respond. I hadn’t given much thought to an alias, and I wasn’t especially attached to my old name. Attachment was another quality that didn’t bode well for survival.

Eventually, I chose the closest name to Eliza I could think of. It wasn’t creative, I’ll admit, but it would serve as a reminder of my true identity to those who’d known me or known about me in my original state. It was a resurrected name, like everything else I had.

‘Errol Lee,’ I said, ‘and no more questions asked.’