Eastern tip of local civilization. Vince had gone straight to work finding a buyer for the herd. Raxx and Wentworth had disappeared into the local bar.
The waiter came over to bring them another pitcher and ask for the tab. He was short and disproportioned, with an enormous jaw. His face looked like a plough. It wasn’t clear whether his slurred speech was due solely to the deformity or if retardation was playing a part. Wentworth was thankful that they managed to pay without incident.
Raxx was staring across the bar, watching a pair of blind musicians on the bar’s stage. One played a broken beat on bongo drums, while his partner shook a tambourine like a rattlesnake.
Wentworth nudged him again.
“If anything I’m surprised there aren’t more cases like him,” he looked towards the waiter, “genetic damage.”
“The midwives usually catch ’em,” Raxx was leaning back against the wall with one leg stretched across the bench, “Take ’em to the river. His probably showed up a few years too late.”
They were sharing a room at the inn Vince had recommended; a favourite with merchants for the dining hall that served breakfast and dinner. It was a three story affair with a stucco exterior, but the local water tower — the source of Hope’s water pressure — was only two stories high, so the third floor was empty. The walls were streaked with dark rivulets from the infrequent rains, and the garden which had once circled the building was long dead. The earth was dry and pockmarked.
Vince was staying with a friend named Maria.
Their room had no bed frames, just a couple of mattresses with faded covers. Two low-wattage bulbs, one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom, turned on at sunset and turned off at midnight. The local power — confusingly referred to as ‘Hydro’ — had no billing system so it was effectively free, but that didn’t mean that the citizens of Hope would be overly generous with visitors.
Outside a sign of cracked and sun-bleached plastic lay in the center of the dead lawn. In stylized letters it read off a ubiquitous, forgotten name. It lit up red during the night.
After Tracy’s Roadhouse served last call they returned to their room at the inn. They lay on their respective mattresses passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth staring at the stars through the window. They drank in silence.
Wentworth knew this feeling. In front of him the ground had fallen away. Behind him paranoia whispered that a bulldog was circling; profound apathy with flashes of adrenaline. Depression and fatigue closed around his heart like a purple glove.
“It was the rai’tion sickness ‘t did it,” he slurred, speaking to himself, “The deaths. Stuff in the air, stuff in the barrels. It got ’em way before we showed. Hah. Lotta good… I saw you after, after the fight. Did as much as you could. Did good.”
Raxx responded. “I was shakin’, man. I was shakin’ bad. I couldn’t hardly stand.” He took a heavy swig from the bottle and passed it back to Wentworth, “Is fucked. Just fucked, man. Like they never ex-sisted…”
They continued to stare at the sky through the sandblasted window. The moon was rising.
“… like they’s gone from history.”
How many days had he been like this? Three… four? He’d lost count.
The dream was unexpected. The events were long passed yet here he was in their midst. Confusion, yelling, rising tensions — the locals were screaming out their cries, confrontational and inflammatory; the meat of their protest was vague and unimportant.
He could smell the armpits of the man next to him. Sweat beaded on his brow.
The order came down. He and his fellows raised their rifles, taking a point of aim. The cries continued with a fierce determination.
The first crack of gunfire came from the protestors — at least, that was how he remembered it. Somehow he was aware of this factual ambivalence, even in the midst of things. Instinct drove him to a kneeling position as he reflected on it. Spent casings rained down around him in slow motion, bouncing off of him, hot where they struck his face, a
The locals jerked into silence with the squeeze of his trigger.
He awoke with a start, reaching for a rifle that wasn’t there. Looking over he saw it lying in the corner where he’d left it days ago, uncleaned. Raxx was already up, sitting in the room’s only chair, smoking. He looked freshly showered. Above him the ceiling fan spun lazily, dispersing the light.
Wentworth looked down and noticed that his right hand was covered with dried blood. With his left he felt his face for tender spots, but couldn’t find anything aside from his hangover.
“Did we get into a fist fight last night?”
Raxx shook his head, “You got angry on the way back from the bar. You saw an old newspaper box and decided it was everything wrong with the world.”
“Huh. How’d I do?”
Raxx managed half a smile. “You kicked its ass, man.”
“You’re all fucked up.”
Wentworth looked over to see that Vince had sat next to him at the breakfast table. The other residents had been decent enough to sit a few seats away.
“How’s your hand?”
“It’s okay.” He’d cleaned and bandaged it a couple days back. There didn’t seem to be any tendon damage. “Just cut it up a bit.”
When he didn’t say any more Vince spoke again. “You’re all fucked up.”
Wentworth put down his fork and stared at his plate. He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair, “Sure I am.”
“I meant both of you. I heard you’ve been drinking your skulls off each night at the Roadhouse. Where is Raxx, anyway?”
“Sleeping. He finished a bottle of rum to himself last night. I said something that upset him. Not sure what.”
Vince sighed, “I suppose you know there ain’t nothing more you could’ve done for those folks?”
Wentworth nodded. Vince was a million miles away.
“Lad — I didn’t know what to think of you at first. I’d heard the rumours… but you showed me different. You ain’t what they say you are. Least, not to those that don’t deserve it.
“You done everything you could — and you hardly knew those people! What happened afterwards weren’t your fault. So why are you killing yourself over it?”
Vince’s plaintive tone stretched out, ruining his digestion, and interrupting his thoughts. It hadn’t been the deaths; it hadn’t been the violence; it hadn’t been the blame, spoken or otherwise — as if Blackstock would keep him up at night, even if it were. All Blackstock had done was underscore the sheer meaningless of it all. It had been meaningless back then, before he’d struck out on his own, and it was meaningless now.
He could see the broken puppet strings. Raxx had been right — the Hellhounds were nothing more than remnants of the war, as were he and Vince, as were the citizens of Hope, as was everything that was left…
Vince hadn’t stopped talking. “Now I ain’t trying to pry, or tell you what to do, but I hope you’ll listen to a bit of advice from an old man who’s knocked around a bit and might have seen a thing or two. Taking on the Hellhounds the way you did… even if I didn’t know the rumours, it’s obvious this wasn’t your first fight, aye? You know what this is, then — you’ve got the battle shakes.”
Wentworth had a different word for it, but Vince was essentially right. He nodded, impassively.
