Introduction
This story takes place in the world of my first novel, Empty Shells, and its (at time of writing) upcoming sequels. You don’t need to know all that much, but to summarise what’s relevant here:
Hell isn’t a punishment; it’s just the default. People arrive in Hell in a place called “The Great Labyrinth”. The labyrinth is not a nice place. Demons don’t permanently die; they just regenerate and get back up once their body works again. If a demon of the formerly human variety has their body destroyed to the point there’s nothing to rebuild from, they respawn in the labyrinth after a while.
You can probably imagine all manner of deeply unpleasant scenarios that could arise from immortality without death as an option. This is why one of the few universal laws in Hell is summarised thusly: “the fight ends when the heart stops beating”. That doesn’t mean you have to kiss and make up, just that when your opponent is dead the immediate conflict is considered resolved. At the very least until everyone’s alive again and has had some time to put their affairs back in order and decide whether they really want to be going on with whatever dispute led to their recent demise.
The Story
Demons don’t die. Not permanently, anyway. Eventually, though, if you live in Hell, you’re going to die at some point, and then once your body has sufficiently regenerated itself for you to stop being dead, you’ll be alive again. The experience has been somewhat euphemistically likened to waking up. In some cases, that’s even true. If you died in a way that didn’t do that much damage, then you might get lucky and wake up just feeling a bit groggy, as if you had just had a lousy night’s sleep.
This wasn’t that, or it certainly didn’t look like that from Tally’s perspective.
It was only chance that she’d found the corpse. She hadn’t been looking for corpses, after all. She had been on a backroads route between towns in the middle of nowhere when she had caught sight of a plume of thick black smoke in a rocky patch off a little way from the road.
Being a civil-minded sort, she’d pulled over to check if someone needed assistance. Being a practical sort, before getting out of the converted double-decker bus she called both home and workplace, she had pulled the concealed kill switch and taken a shotgun down from a rack just beside the driver’s seat. It hadn’t been necessary this time, but it always pays to be prepared, out in the wastelands.
What she had found was a trail of debris, twisted metal, and glass, leading up to the burning wreckage of a car. Or at least the bits of the car that hadn’t gone flying off in what looked to have been a truly impressive crash. Among that debris was what she assumed to be the corpse of the driver, broken and mangled but fortunately for him thrown clear of the wreck.
He looked human enough for the most part, other than a pair of long curled black horns that matched his scruffy mid-length black hair. Well, one and a half horns. It appeared one had broken in the crash, ending in a jagged stump. That aside, though, he just looked like any other man in his mid-to-late thirties. A little tanned, dressed in jeans and a plain tan shirt, all now a little bloodied and worse for wear.
After a cursory search of the wreckage for anything of value that hadn’t caught on fire yet, Tally had dragged the corpse through the dust and into the bus. He’d been precautionarily tied up, chained to a sturdy mounting point, stowed out of the way and left to regenerate.
Tally had gone about her business for days, while the carcass slowly repaired itself. From time to time, she checked in on it. Partly to make sure it didn’t leak everywhere, and partly to speed it along a little. A broken neck reset here, a shrapnel chunk and some bullets pulled from wounds there. Once she was sure he had stopped leaking, she changed him into a spare t-shirt and a pair of old sweatpants. But mostly she drove from town to town as she otherwise would have, did her work, and minded her own business.
It was the best part of two weeks later when the corpse had begun to revive, its first rasping breath so startling Tally that she nearly knocked the pan off the RV’s gas stove. She’d paused her culinary endeavours to check on him, but he was most definitely not conscious yet. She fed him a generous handful of painkillers to tide him through the worst of a rough looking reanimation and got back to her cooking. It wouldn’t be long now.
…
Even with the painkillers, it clearly wasn’t a pleasant awakening.
‘Are you with me, now?’ Tally asked, sat at the RV’s table, picking at her dinner.
The man let out a long groan, and with some evident discomfort tried and failed to sit himself upright.
Tally sighed, got up, and heaved him upright, sitting him against the wall.
‘When is it?’ he asked, hoarsely.
‘September fifth,’ said Tally. ‘I’d guess you’d only been out a few minutes when I found you. Car was still burning.’
He nodded, then broke into a fit of coughing.
‘Could I trouble you for a drink?’ he managed, after a few seconds. ‘It feels like I’ve been deepthroating barbed wire.’
Tally opened the fridge.
‘What’s your poison? I’ve got water, fruit punch, half a dozen different fizzy things with stupid names1, and a big pitcher of lemon iced tea.’
‘Iced tea would be perfect, ma’am.’
‘Sorry about the ropes, and the chain,’ Tally said, handing him a glass. ‘But it pays to be cautious.’
‘I quite understand. When you find someone in the middle of nowhere, full of bullets, I think you’re entitled to a little suspicion. Frankly I’m just grateful to be waking up here and not in a wreck, or worse. Oh, that hits the spot.’
‘I’ve got food on the stove,’ said Tally, sitting back down. ‘I cooked extra, figured you’d be needing it. Undying takes it out of you. But first, and before I think about taking off those ropes, I want some assurances. I want to know who you are, why you were dead and all shot up, and that I’m not going to have someone hunting me down. No offence, but this is my home, and I’d drop you on the side of the road before I saw it end up a wreck like whatever you were driving.’
‘Completely fair,’ he said. ‘My name is Everett. You have my word you have nothing to fear from me. Not least because I think some of my bones are still not entirely solid.’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘And as to the nature of my demise, it’s no big deal. Wasn’t even my car. Jacked it when I realised who was after me, but that’s all over now. It would have all been a lot less messy if I hadn’t lost control of the car, although I rather blame the owner for the state of their tyres. I practically did them a favour by taking the thing off their hands. Absolute deathtrap.’
‘You are remarkably calm for a man who just revived. How can you be sure whoever did it isn’t going to come after you again?’ asked Tally.
‘Because it’s my turn now,’ Everett said, calmly, before taking a sip of his tea.
‘I’m sorry, your turn?’ Tally gave him an appraising look. ‘Are you sure you don’t have some residual brain damage?’
‘I don’t think so, although in fairness it’s not always the easiest thing to tell. But no, I am very confident we have nothing to fear from my assailant. We’ve been engaging in a back and forth for a while now. It’s my turn to take a shot at him next, and we usually wait a few months between attempts. Besides, we tend to frown on collateral damage these days. It’s just carelessness, not the spirit of the game at all.’
‘Okay, roll back here, I’m going to need the large print version,’ Tally said. ‘Give me some context here. I’ll trade you context for food.’
Everett chuckled.
‘I have had this conversation a great many times. I and another individual take turns hunting or assassinating each other. We have been for a long time now. We go about our business for a few months at a time, until opportunity or creativity strike, we make our attempt at the other, and then we part company again until the other chooses to take their turn. He got me this time. In a few months’ time, I’ll take my shot at him again. But for now, we’re all square.’
‘I have two questions. For now, that is. There will be more later. But two questions, then you can have something to eat. Question one, just how long have you been doing this? Question two, is this a sex thing?’
Everett burst out laughing, only to abruptly stop himself at the realisation that he definitely still had fractured ribs.
‘Ow, ow, still tender,’ he said. ‘No, it is most assuredly not a sex thing. To the best of my knowledge, we are both entirely heterosexual and entirely male. And as to your first question that depends somewhat on how you’d define the start. I would say around a hundred and fifty years, but a fair case could be made for longer.’
‘Well now you have my interest. No one would come up with something that insane as a cover story.’ Tally got up and started untying Everett’s ropes. ‘For the record that chain around your neck is staying for now. Good luck shifting it, I welded the lock shut. You’ve got enough reach to get to the bathroom, the kitchen, and the couch, but not my workshop at the back or the controls at the front, or upstairs for that matter. That’s mine.’
‘No argument here,’ agreed Everett. ‘Again, I’d rather be here, wherever that is, than waking up at the side of the road.’
Everett stood up, gingerly, and set about stretching his limbs and assessing the damage. While he was at it, he made a discreet examination of the chain around his neck. It was indeed sturdy, and he didn’t think it was going anywhere. He shrugged and eased himself into a seat at the table.
‘I’ve woken up in a worse state,’ he admitted. ‘So where are we, anyway?’
‘Right now? Parked up in the wastelands about a hundred miles from anything. I’m doing a scavenging run through a half dozen little drift zone towns, including a couple of ghost towns just for fun. In about a week, I’ll be rolling into Parastaxia to sell off the good stuff. Does that work for you?’
‘Parastaxia, huh? Yeah, I can live with that,’ Everett said, nodding along. ‘I know some people there. They’ll put me up for a couple of days, until I figure out whatever I’m up to next. I’m kind of between jobs at the moment.’
‘I’m told dying can have that effect,’ Tally said, nodding.
Everett chuckled and shook his head.
‘I’m not big on the whole “regular employment” thing. It’s too stifling,’ he said.
‘No disagreement here. I drive around selling half-imaginary junk. Alright, a deal’s a deal. You hungry?’
‘Absolutely famished, ma’am.’
‘Good thing I put extra on. It’s nothing special,’ Tally said, stirring the pot on the stove.
‘It smells pretty special,’ Everett said. ‘What is it?’
‘Sausage, bacon, chicken, beans, veg, and a bunch of other stuff. Technically I think it’s a cassoulet, but I feel a bit pretentious calling it that.’
‘Miss, if it smells like that you can call it whatever you like,’ Everett said.
‘It’s Tally, by the way,’ she said, putting a generous serving and some bread in front of him.
Everett’s attempt to maintain some kind of dignity ended about two mouthfuls into the bowl. Regenerating from a fatal injury burned up every bit of spare fuel a person had and more.
‘That’s so damn good,’ he managed about halfway through shovelling it away. He didn’t even need to ask before a second and third bowlful appeared in front of him.
…
By the time Everett woke up the next day, in his place on the bus’s couch, they were back on the road.
‘What time is it?’ he asked.
‘Two in the afternoon. Thought I’d let you sleep in,’ Tally called back from the driver’s seat. ‘Help yourself to leftovers and whatever else is in there.’
Everett thanked her and set about making himself some breakfast. His movements were still somewhat tentative, as he worked around the bus’s little galley kitchen. Now, though, in daylight, and with himself no longer being the centre of attention, he allowed himself some time to look around.
The front half of the bus’s ground floor was a kitchen, bathroom, and a small lounge (mostly just a table and a couch). The entire back half was storage and what appeared to be a workshop of sorts. The whole place had the vibe of a comfortable living room which belonged to a collector. Not a hoarder, the place was quite neat, but a collector. As to what exactly his host collected, he didn’t think there was necessarily a theme beyond “things she liked”. There was a desk which doubled as a workbench, above which there were racks of tool storage. On the desk were a handful of odd pieces of metal which were clearly in the process of being made into something.
The ceiling was lined with storage netting, and there were shelves of books and oddities, all in addition to the cupboards and obvious hidden storage under every seat and in every bit of spare space.
He sat back on the couch with his plate and took a moment to relax. A few days on the road wouldn’t be at all amiss. Especially with a host that could cook. Even if he was chained to the floor. He couldn’t really hold that against her, though. In her position he’d probably have done the same thing. It was just good sense.
There was a little shelf of books by the couch, and he reached over and took one down at random and opened it to its first page. The text was unreadable, rows and rows of little letter-like squiggles. He turned back to the cover, a photo of a country mansion in some disrepair with a van parked in front of it. It looked almost normal, until you looked at the details. Odd perspectives, strange smoothness here and overly bold details there, a building layout that made no sense, a van that on a second look was no model he’d ever seen. All topped by a title that looked a bit like “CTRAHSTROG” in big bold almost-letters.
‘What the hell?’ muttered Everett, turning the book over in his hands.
Tally laughed from up in the driver’s cab. Everett looked over and noticed, for the first time, the convex mirror mounted beside the cab. He held the book up and gave the mirror a confused look.
‘They’re nonsense,’ she explained. ‘They spawn in the garbage piles. They’re called dream books. I pick them up whenever I see them. There’s a whole collector market for them.’
‘People want these things?’ Everett asked, incredulous.
‘There’s a buyer for anything if you look hard enough.’
‘You’re a scavenger, right?’ he asked. ‘It never really appealed to me. Scrabbling around in the garbage. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Tally said. ‘I won’t lie; there’s a lot of garbage. But you never know what you’ll find in it.’
‘I’d ask if there was much money in it, but if it paid for this bus…’
‘It took a few lucky finds to save up for this thing,’ Tally admitted. ‘But you put the effort in and there’s always enough to get by on top of the stipend. Scrap metal’s a common one, and you can shift that by the kilo. Tools, parts, household crap, toys, you can sell that bulk to junk shops. Keeps the bus fuelled and the fridge full.’
‘And, what, the weird stuff like this makes the real money?’ suggested Everett.
‘Bingo,’ agreed Tally. ‘Dream books make decent money. Even more if you find a readable one. Sometimes you get one that seems to have turned up from somewhere else. I’ve found a couple of novels that there’s no record of them ever existing, a weirdly convincing atlas of Earth, except it has like an extra continent, even a few actual books that really exist but different in some way. Story a little bit different, or names changed, or whatever. I made a small fortune once on a copy of The Stand with a completely different ending. That was quite the read.’
‘And that’s before all the weird little bits of art and novelty stuff. I’ve picked up so many weird knick-knacks down the years. All you have to do is find the right buyer, someone who likes their oddities, and in comes the cash.’
‘And I bet,’ Everett said, ‘that you know where to find those buyers?’
‘You know it. It’s why I prefer the town-to-town style of scavenging. I can see all the funny little specialist collectors. Gets the best prices when you can hang onto stuff for a while and get it to the right buyer.’
‘Sounds kind of fun,’ mused Everett. ‘No boss. Just going where you fancy. Hell, everywhere you go is home, too. Not going to lie, I like the bus.’
‘The bus rules. I can just park wherever and make it home,’ said Tally. ‘Best purchase I ever made. Priciest too, this isn’t an old clunker.’
…
That evening Tally pulled the bus up on the outskirts of an abandoned town right on the edge of where the wastelands began to blur into the outskirts of a country sized patch of woodlands. The somewhere they were had ceased to be anything but nowhere decades earlier, so she felt fine neatly parking the bus behind an old building. Still, she didn’t quite relax until the motion sensors and alarm systems were all turned on, and the reinforced doors locked.
‘Busy day tomorrow,’ she told Everett. ‘You never know what you’ll find in these old ghost towns, but there’ll be plenty to poke through. Manifestations love dusty old places like this. People expect them to be full of old junk and Hell’s only too happy to oblige.’
‘And you’re right there to profit,’ agreed Everett. His mood had been improving all day as he’d grazed on the contents of Tally’s fridge and the aches in his bones had begun fading.
They ate, enjoyed a couple of beers, and chatted over some of the more interesting curiosities in her collection. The binders of notes and coins that had never quite existed, like the John Brown twenty-dollar bill and the nineteen forty-one German imperial mark. Tools in measurements that never existed. Street signs to places that didn’t exist, or in more of the dream lettering. Warning signs for scenarios that had never happened (her personal favourite of these was warning sign that was simply a round mirror with a red circle around it, and the word “NO” in bold block letters in the centre. She called it a personal fuck you from the universe to the viewer).
‘Now, enough about me,’ Tally said, after showing him a binder full of posters for concerts and movies that had never happened, or with the wrong cast. ‘How about you tell me just how you got into this, what shall we call it, what’s the opposite of friends with benefits? Murder-buddies. Yeah, how’d you get into this murder-buddies situation?’
‘Alright, fine, I suppose I owe you that much at least,’ Everett said. ‘But it’s not all that grand a story.’
‘My man, you’ve been killing each other for a century and a half. This is not normal, even down here.’
‘Point taken. But, well, it started not all that long after I died. I went out in the eighteen thirties. I’d like to pretend it was something heroic, you know, but if I’m being entirely honest, I’m pretty sure it was something I ate. Real Oregon Trail shit. Literally, sadly. Rocked up in the labyrinth like everyone else, although it wasn’t quite so dangerous back in my days. Less people. Less guns.’
‘Still sucked,’ Tally said. ‘There’s not one of us that had a nice time in that hellhole.’
‘Very true,’ Everett agreed, nodding. ‘Still, I found my way out, wound up in the border cities just like everyone else. Lost Mercy, specifically, decided it was far too metropolitan for a frontier country boy type like me, and got on the first train going a long way away.’
Tally snorted.
‘Sorry man, but Lost Mercy and metropolitan are not words I’d associate,’ she said, stifling a smile.
‘Hey, it was the nineteenth century, and I’d just shat myself to death in a log cabin in what I don’t think was technically Colorado yet, forgive me for finding the city a bit much.’ Everett almost made it to the end of the sentence without laughing. ‘Anyway, I ride that rail until the rail runs out. Got off at the very last station on the line and started asking around for work.’
‘Well, you’d not be surprised to hear that where the railroad went, so went expansion. It’s Hell, after all. There’s never a shortage of people. I was in this little cluster of towns. Agricultural type of area. Farms, ranches, all that sort of thing, and with a side of logging and mining. Felt kind of more like home to me, back in those days.’
‘Well, following me a lead I make my way over to the local trading post. It was this little fortified town right where the major roads met the Lethe, and it had the only ferry for miles in either direction. And in those days, we didn’t quite have the telegraph yet, and the mail only ran as fast as a guy with a horse and cart. So, instead of hauling cartloads of stuff between the towns, they’d come to the trading post, sell what they didn’t need and buy what they did. And the post ran this kind of middleman service. They’d buy your wares at a fairish price, very few questions asked, so you could always guarantee shifting something. Which meant the place was always loaded with goods, valuables, and cash. So, they always needed more security guys.’
‘I turn up, they hire me, and there I am. It’s a nice enough place, and the work’s usually just hanging around keeping things orderly, generally making myself useful, and guard duty for caravans. I’m feeling right at home.’
‘I drop into the odd place like that even now,’ said Tally. ‘There’s usually a few of the more eccentric traders loitering around who’ll buy some of my stuff. And they’ve always got a decent mechanic or two on hand.’
‘Well in my day we had a farrier and a cobbler, but the same applies. Anyway, for a couple of years everything’s quiet. I’m getting along well, saving myself a little nest egg. Most of the guys and girls in my line of work tended to blow their money on drink and company, but at the time I had this idea about getting a little plot of land like I had back on Earth. Just with less dysentery, and maybe a few more comforts.’
‘Then we start to have a bandit problem. I mean they were nothing new as such, they were always around to a degree, but we dealt with them. Only now they were getting an edge on us. Whenever they hit a caravan, they always managed to evade us or take out the guards nice and quick. We started putting guards on every caravan, constant patrols of the trading post, sentries at all hours. And we held our own, you understand. We weren’t useless.’
‘There was a back and forth. They’d hit a caravan, we’d take out one of their camps, you know the deal. But the rule’s the rule. I suppose we could have torched the bodies and sent them back to the labyrinth, but they had every chance to do that to us and they never did. It was considered unsportsmanlike. Whichever side won would dump the bodies somewhere out of the way to revive. Leave some supplies if you could spare it. It was only polite.’
‘We went back and forth for a few years, and this might sound preposterous, but everyone kind of got into it. Well, the guards, like me, that is. It became a game. We tried to predict their ambushes, or set our own, or to hunt them down between raids. They tried different ways to raid the caravans, to sneak into the trading post, to infiltrate. The works. At first the bosses complained we weren’t taking it seriously. Then they got smart. Realised the more we got into the game, the harder we tried, the more creative we got, the more caravans got through.’
‘You got to motivate your people, right?’ Tally agreed.
‘Exactly! The first time I ever saw him, their boss that is, I was riding guard on a fake caravan. The wagons were loaded up with armed men. Except the one that had a cannon in it. The bandits come in out of the woods, just where we thought they would. Dozens of them, this time, all coming at us at full gallop. And then we drop the sides of the wagons, deploy the riflemen and start firing back with a cannon load of grapeshot.’
‘We break their charge, their riders scatter, and the guys are all set to start celebrating a win. That’s when I spot their boss rallying some of them to sneak around the side through the woods and come at us from a different angle. I decide to take a shot at him and ride after him with a few of the guys. And we win. I take him down, only a few of his people escaped, they’re all scattered. We bought ourselves weeks of peace.’
‘Dump the bodies?’ Tally asked.
‘Yeah, someone chucked them in a wagon, and we dropped them off a few days ride away. A few weeks later, once they were back on their feet they trojan horsed some of their guys into the trading post in potato sacks in the back of a wagon, jumped out in the night, offed half of us and looted the equivalent of a good few tens of thousands of crowns worth of valuables. The back and forth went on, and increasingly often I started seeing him. I got him, he got me, there were swordfights, horseback chases. It was, in a strange way, fun.’
‘Things went on like that for a while, and eventually the bosses beefed up the defences, hired more guards, really decided they’d had enough. Things went quiet for a few months, barring the odd caravan raid. Balance had shifted enough that things were going our way. The local towns were growing; we had more guards. The railroad had carried on right past us and we weren’t even the frontier anymore.’
‘Then, one day, when we’re minding our own business there’s the biggest damn explosion I’ve ever heard. Once I’d picked myself up off the floor, I get out of the bunkhouse and half of one side of the compound wall is just gone. It’s still raining chunks of stone everywhere. Everyone that can handle a gun is rushing to get barricades up and defend the breach, the bandits are already attacking. I run back inside, grab my weapons, and then I just stop.’
‘Something feels off?’ suggested Tally.
‘Bingo. This wasn’t their style. So, when everyone else runs for the breach, I get sneaky and head deeper into the compound. And what do I find, grappling hooks and ropes and a dead sentry on the wall. The strongroom, where most of the cash and most valuable stuff was stored was underground, and you guessed it, they’ve come over right near the basement entrance.’
‘Everyone else is beyond busy, so I follow them underground. I knew where they were going. Found them picking the lock to the strongroom. There were three of them. And he was one of them. I drop one with my rifle before they see me and put the second down with a nice tidy bayonet rush.’
‘God, am I glad I never had to deal with single-shot guns,’ Tally said, shaking her head. ‘Give me a nice semi-automatic any day.’
Everett shrugged.
‘It was what it was. There were already breech loaders and revolvers starting to make their way into Hell, but they hadn’t got to us out in the middle of nowhere yet. It was old school around there. I’m glad in a way. Yeah, we could have done with a Maxim gun, but, well, it would have turned every fight into a massacre. There’s no joy in an arms race. No sport.’
‘Still, the other two are down, and it’s just me and their boss. I drop the rifle and we both draw swords. We were in a basement storeroom by lantern light. Shelves and crates everywhere. It wasn’t exactly the most cinematic of swordfights, but it was a damn fine one. We’d both been fighting for years, so we’d gotten good.’
‘It’s a back and forth. He’s the better swordsman, I’ll give him that, but I’m no slouch and I know the room better than he does. I’m moving around better in the half-light. I’ve got a pistol, but he’s too close for me to draw the thing. It was probably all over in thirty seconds. I dodge him, grab a crate and smash it over his head, I nearly get him as he staggers. He parries me, I lose my footing a tad on something loose, then he throws something at one of the lanterns. Some powdered chemical concoction. Goes off with this almighty flash, blinds me for a second.’
‘It’s months later when I revive. Takes a long time to regenerate a new body from having your head lopped off, and we didn’t have any of those fancy regeneratives like these days.’
‘Anyway, by the time I’m alive again, the place has been fixed up, and they tell me it’s been dead quiet. The new guards were in place, the compound had been rebuilt and expanded, the bandits were gone. By the time anyone had found me, he’d got into the strongroom and looted a couple of hefty bags of coin. After that they hadn’t seen so much of a hint of banditry.’
‘I stuck around for a couple of weeks but I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. I had the cash I’d saved up, plus months of death on duty pay. So I decided it was time for a change. I’d been doing the one job for a few years at that point. I wasn’t the only one, a few of the old gang had already gone. I didn’t know half the people there any more.’
‘So I say my goodbyes, pack my gear, and get on the next wagon heading to the railroad. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with myself, so I get the train to the nearest city. Not exactly a metropolis, but it had grown a lot since I last passed through it. I stop off, get a room for the night, stow my stuff, and decide to have a drink.’
‘I find this saloon, nice place. Last time I’d been in a city I’d been this penniless ex-peasant farmer. For a second it kind of came back to me, then I realised that wasn’t who I was any more. I had cash, confidence, and a sword on my belt. I go straight on in, sit down at the bar, and order something potent.’
‘I sit there for a few minutes, and I’m just about to order my second drink when the barman brings it over and points out who sent it to me. I look over and guess who it is. By blind luck, it’s the guy who cut my head off not all that long ago. I shrug, take my drink over and sit down, and for the first time we actually talk.’
‘He’s with a couple of friends, and a quite attractive lady he was trying to charm, and before I can say anything he’s introducing me to them and talking me up. Tells me his name’s Alonso. He was Spanish back in the day, died a few decades earlier at the siege of Gibraltar.’
‘So we sit, tell a few stories. The time he and his guys rode for the river ferry to escape with a load of loot and me and some of the guards chased him down on horseback and sniped them out at a full gallop just before they could get away. The time he brought a canyon wall down on us to get away after a raid. That kind of thing.’
‘I usually like to reminisce about slightly nicer events,’ Tally said.
Everett laughed.
‘Okay, I admit to the average person it might come across as a bit odd. But it had never been personal, it wasn’t malice. We were both just doing a job, and if you get a few story worthy adventures out of it so much the better.’
‘In the end we spend half the night drinking and laughing. Eventually it gets to closing time, we’re all kind of wasted, and when we go to head off. We’re at the emotional stage of being drunk, at this point, you know? We say our goodbyes, he tells me it’s been fun, gives me a hug and then he’s on his way with his lady friend.’
‘I wander back to my hotel room, which seems to have been put on some kind of turntable since I was last in there, and I crash out. Wake up the next day, about six hours after I’d planned to start walking the town and looking for a new job. I wash up, get dressed, and just as I go to walk out the door I put my hand in my coat pocket. There’s a scrap of paper in there, and all there was on it was one word. Latalia.’
‘Nice place,’ Tally said. ‘Right by the sea. Haven’t been for a few years. Dated an aquatic for a few weeks last time I was there. That was an experience.’
‘It was smaller in those days, but it was still a big city, all built around that lighthouse on the outcropping over the sea. I got there a few days later. Got off the train, walked straight to the sheriff’s office and asked for a job. I had the qualifications. Even had a nice letter from the old boss.’
Tally smiled.
‘Would I be right in guessing that you didn’t mention the bandit king apparently moving into the city?’ she asked.
Everett laughed and shook his head.
‘Would you believe it, no I didn’t. A little bit cheeky of me, I know. But it’s not like I didn’t intend to do the best of the job. It wouldn’t have been fun if I’d let him off easy. And it’s not like he was the only person that would cause trouble in a city that size. It was weeks before he even showed up, and by then I was in good standing with the sheriff and the other deputies.’
‘The whole… vibe of the thing was different this time. It seemed he’d gotten bored of caravan raids. This time he was playing a bank robber, gentleman thief type act. First I saw of him was him rocking up in town and throwing a lot of cash around to make himself popular. Most of it, I assume, belonging to my old bosses.’
‘Doing the whole Capone act?’ asked Tally.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Everett. ‘Prop up the needy, invest in popular small businesses, be seen at society gatherings. Works great. Especially the first time you rob a bank and all the witnesses swear you weren’t there.’
‘The game carried on from there. Just with rooftop chases, gunfights in the street. All that good stuff. We were there for about three years. I got commendations and bonuses; he got cash and all the kind of women who find wanted posters to be an aphrodisiac. Things escalate, just like before, the fights and the chases and the heists get bigger and more dramatic. Then one day, out of nowhere, while I’m doing my rounds walking around the city he appears out of the shadows in this alleyway. Says he wants to talk.’
‘We exchange a few pleasantries, and then Alonso, he says to me “Everett, buddy, I’m getting a bit tired of the bad guy act. I’ve been playing it for a few years now and I feel like a change. I’ve had my ear to the ground for a while, and I heard that Mallinar is in need of a new lawman. I applied, with a little blagging, I’ll admit, and I just got my letter of acceptance in the mail. So, I was thinking, how about we swap places for a while?”’
‘Now, you can imagine this set me aback a little. When I was human, I was just a normal guy. Kept myself to myself, worked the land…’
‘Got dysentery,’ Tally added.
‘Then,’ he continued, trying to look serious, ‘I die, and I throw myself into being on the serious side of the law. It had never crossed my mind I could do something else. It’s not how I saw myself. But the idea gave me pause. It’s not like I hadn’t learned just about all there is to know about being a bandit from fighting Alonso for years. I wouldn’t even be making things worse, net anyway, since we’d only be swapping places.’
‘Alonso told me he’d understand if I wasn’t interested, but he was planning on being in Mallinar for a fair while. If I decided to take him up on it, he said, he’d find me soon enough. And I did, after a few weeks. I gave my notice in good order, stashed my savings in the bank, bought a horse, provisions, and some decent guns, my were things advancing quickly in those days, and got on the road.’
‘I took a ride around the town, scoped things out, then I found myself a nice place to set up a hideout in the woods a few miles away from town. I spent a month just exploring the place. Watching and learning. How cash and goods were moved around, where things were kept, where I should steer clear of. Didn’t want to go blowing up someone’s house by mistake or robbing some struggling small business.’
‘How very public spirited,’ Tally said, drily.
‘Well, it’s not like I was some heartless bastard,’ Everett said. ‘And I didn’t really want the guilt. I was in this for the fun, after all. And that’s why, after a month, I made my first hit. I went for stealth. One day, I know there’s a cart carrying cash from the office of one of the big mining firms to the train to be sent to head office and banked. Well, I know the route they’ll be taking, so I arrange a little distraction, hide on a roof, drop onto the wagon, and swap a couple of sacks of coin for stones. Climb out at a handy spot and slip away. Then laugh my ass off while I watch them load rocks onto the train.’
‘That gave me enough cash to hire some backup, and from there it all started again. Just the other way around. We swapped around a few times, moved around Hell. Then, by the time the twentieth century was on the horizon, we met up again, and decided the whole act was getting a bit tired. Like it was fun, but it was, how do I put it… Unnecessary. We’d got to a point where what we enjoyed was the hunt.’
‘So, you, what, just abandoned the lawman bandit roleplay thing and started killing each other?’ Tally said, incredulously.
‘Well, in a manner of speaking you could describe it that way. We’d both accumulated a fair amount of money; we could do pretty much whatever we wanted. So, we did. We talked it out, set a few rules, and went on our way. It’s just the game for the game’s sake now.’
‘And you enjoy this?’ she asked.
‘I do. We do. It’s… look, think about it like this. This is Hell, right? People play skirmish football even though they get limbs hacked off or disembowelled or whatever. Duelling sports. Wargames. I mean, damn, do you ever watch descent racing? I’ve seen races where the winner is a bag of mince in a ball of metal by the time they get to the bottom.’
‘I love those!’ exclaimed Tally. ‘Only thing that’s better is when they do uphill and send maniacs in buses and tanker trucks and the like down from the top to stop them.’
‘See what I mean?’ Everett said. ‘The only difference is that what Alonso and I do is personal. It’s just him and me. And it’s only every few months. It might sound perverse, but with the way things can be down here, it’s kind of nice having this constant. Whatever else is going on, there’s always the game.’
‘So that’s really it?’ said Tally. ‘You got a liking to fighting with this guy in the underworld equivalent of the old west, and a century and a half later you’re both still doing it as a hobby?’
‘You could put it that way,’ Everett admitted. ‘I like to think of it in slightly grander terms. Fighting across Hell in an eternal duet. But, yeah, I suppose it is a hobby. It’s not like it makes us money. Quite the opposite in fact.’
Tally smiled and shook her head.
‘You know what, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, but if it makes you happy then who am I to judge. I drive a bus around selling shit I find in garbage heaps to weirdos.’
‘It takes all sorts, doesn’t it.’
…
When Everett had woken up the next day he’d found that the chain was gone. Evidently his host had decided he was too ridiculous to be a threat. She’d woken him at dawn.
‘Come on, eat your breakfast, then we’re getting down to business. Time to earn your transport,’ she said, putting a plate in front of him.
‘Do you always start this early?’ Everett groaned.
‘Can’t be wasting the daylight,’ said Tally. ‘No amount of head torches make scavenging in the dark a pleasant experience.’
…
Mere minutes later he’d been handed a pair of leather safety gloves and a bag.
‘So… what do I do, exactly?’ he asked.
‘It’s easy, you just sort through the drifts of trash in the corners and the alleys and between the buildings, and you bag anything worth money.’
‘And you enjoy this?’ he asked.
‘Hey, count yourself lucky. We’re in a ghost town right now. Worst thing you’ll find is a dead raccoon. If we were in the city there could be rotting food, shat diapers, god one time I swear I found a cubic metre of beef, still in one solid slab from the factory. Must have been there for weeks, it had gone right off, and there was a colony of rats living in it.’
‘Right… So I’ll just go and have a look around then.’
The task turned out to not be quite as onerous as Everett had first expected. He’d always been aware of scavengers and the piles of half real and half manifested garbage, but he’d never really put much thought into them. Now that he was wandering the alleyways of a town that looked like someone had last lived there in the nineteen eighties, he had to confess that he could almost see the appeal.
He’d decided, more or less at random, to start with a heap between two buildings near where the bus was parked. After heaving aside a metres-wide corrugated iron sheet he was confronted with a wide range of garbage. He shrugged, started tossing the dull and obviously worthless stuff aside, and quickly began to see her point. Yes, there was a surprising amount of scrap metal of various types that he threw into a heap in case she wanted it. That was just the bulk, though.
It didn’t take him long to find start finding things which gave him a real sense of confused morbid fascination. He was pretty sure the double ended frying pan was an object of such profound stupidity that it could not have been intentionally designed by anyone. There was a machined metal dice eight inches across which based on its weight would destroy any table anyone was foolish enough to roll it on. He was particularly impressed by the bath towel sized dollar bill.
By the time they broke for lunch, he’d brought a couple of bag loads of interesting stuff back to the bus, and they’d filled the last of the space in the bus’s luggage bays with the more valuable scrap metal.
They ate and then compared their finds.
‘I didn’t expect there to be quite so much weird shit, if I’m honest,’ Everett admitted.
‘The joy of a ghost town. Less split bin bags full of rotten food, more scrap metal and weird stuff,’ Tally said. ‘Can’t hit them too often, though, got to give it time to refresh.’
‘I never get used to that,’ said Everett. ‘The way stuff just appears here. Distance, and roads, and things.’
‘I love it. I mean I kind of have to, I make a living off it. Wouldn’t get all these abandoned towns if it wasn’t for expansion, and people moving around. Now, come help me with this heap.’
…
In the centre of the town a heap had grown to such an extent that its weight had caused the wall of a building to collapse, merging the heap into what appeared to be the stock room of an abandoned shop. Tally had the grin of a person mentally counting just how much cash they might make out of the next few hours.
They both piled into it, separating rubbish, scrap, and valuables.
‘I think I’m starting to see where the cash comes from,’ Everett said, holding up what appeared to be a precisely detailed thirty-second scale glass replica of a Hyundai i10, complete down to the interior and mechanical parts. ‘It’s not like there aren’t collectors for any weird thing down here.’
‘Yup,’ agreed Tally, ‘and there’s the stuff I make too, I do scrap metal sculpture in my workshop at the back of the bus. It’s nice to have something to do on nights parked up just about nowhere.’
‘I’ll admit it, I like the bus lifestyle,’ said Everett. ‘Roomy, comfy, all the facilities, and if you don’t like the neighbours, you just drive away.’
‘I love my bus. And you’re not wrong about the neighbours. People can get snobby about scavengers. All I’m doing is lowering the total amount of garbage in their towns. At least with this, if I decide I don’t like somewhere I can paint something obscene somewhere prominent and be long gone before anyone notices it.’
‘Yeah, I’m not a neighbours man either,’ agreed Everett. ‘I don’t tend to stay in one place for more than a few years. I like to see what’s out there, try new places, you know?’
‘Nothing to do with the locals getting pissed off at the assassinations?’ suggested Tally.
‘Hey, I told you we don’t do collateral damage anymore, not since the bandit days. Just blowing someone the fuck up has no artistry to it. No challenge. Sometimes it’s all about planning and precision, sometimes it’s spectacle and drama.’
‘I take it the most recent was all spectacle?’
‘You know it,’ agreed Everett. ‘I’m minding my own business and wham, out of nowhere, I’m being chased through the city by a guy on a dirt bike with a submachine gun. Had a good old fashioned chase through the city, with a bit of light gunfighting, I jacked the car, bolted out of the city. Nearly evaded him a couple of times, but he doesn’t let go once the game’s on.’
Tally shook her head as she examined a strange piece of twisted metal, shrugged, and tossed it aside.
‘It might have got a little messy at times, but that can be part of the fun. Variety is important. Sometimes we get a bit competitive doing one thing or another. We had, like, a five-year sniper duel, and that… that was pure art. You must plan, study someone’s routine, choose a perfect place to shoot from.’
‘It’s not just the kill, either, it’s about the precision, the range. Just shooting each other from across the street isn’t the point. We’d take our time to get that perfect headshot.’ Everett laughed. ‘The only problem is it’s a bit impersonal, you never see it coming, never see the other person. We got into a habit of sneaking over to the body and leaving a card in the pocket with where we fired from and the distance. Gave us a yardstick to compete against.’
‘Our longest were in the three, three-and-a-half-kilometre sort of range. I think we’ll beat that next time we get into that mood, though. What with laser rangefinders, modern scopes, precision rifles, that sort of thing.’
‘How the hell do you get anything done? Like, how do you manage to make a living and have a life when you might get sniped at any moment?’ asked Tally.
Everett smiled.
‘We don’t do it all the time, remember. It’s like I said, there’s always a few months between attempts. It’s rare we do more than one a year each. Neither of us are regular job types, we’re more mercenary work, bounties, that kind of thing. We make a point of not offing each other when we’re in the middle of a job, too, it’s just polite. Not to mention, well, how do I put this… we both kind of kick started the old investment funds in our bandit days. Yeah, we both did our share of wealth redistribution… but a hefty chunk always went in the bank. Then into investments. And we both live frugally most of the time, so the cash just grows and grows.’
‘Rob from the rich to give to your stockbroker,’ joked Tally.
‘Like I say, though, we kind of moved past that sort of thing, outside of the occasional very well-paid piece of work. Ditched the roleplay and went to the core of it. We did law enforcement, we did banditry, we moved on, and the only bit we kept was each other.’
‘I’d joke again whether this is a sex thing, but it really isn’t is it…’ Tally said. She shook her head. ‘Hey, sorry if this is a bit personal, but does this whole arrangement not derail your personal life a bit? I mean how does dating work when you’ve got this whole thing going on? How do you plan a date when you know you could be being watched by someone planning your demise?’
Everett laughed.
‘We’re in Hell, everything’s kind of ridiculous. You tell them about it and they think you’re weird. Big deal. All the fun people are weird. It does scare off the odd person, but more often than not people have got some weird shit of their own going on.’
‘True,’ Tally agreed, starting to count on her fingers. ‘Raised by feral imps, archdemon sex colony, all the robots, the psychotic extreme sports.’
‘Exactly! Anyway, you know how it is when you move round a lot, you don’t get into all that many super long-term relationships,’ said Everett. ‘And sometimes, once you explain it, people can be into it. I dated this girl Shayla on and off for a few years. Absolute livewire that woman. I’d been with her a few weeks when I explained the whole deal, it was my turn, and she wanted in on the planning.’
‘She helped me rig this little backstreet as a trap, he walks in, she pulls a rope, and it drops these barricades, blocking it off either end. Then we came out, introduced Shayla, then tossed him a spare sword and went for a two against one. That was a hell of a fight, he always was a damn fine swordsman.’
‘Is that not a bit unfair, bringing backup?’ Tally asked.
Everett shrugged.
‘Sometimes we hire people or bring backup, if it fits whatever the scene is. And that was a more introducing two of my friends who just happened to then try and kill each other situation.’
‘She sounds like a good match for you, by which I mean she’s insane,’ Tally said.
‘Yeah, she was,’ Everett said with a chuckle. ‘About a year after that she got a reset, full memory wipe. It had always been part of the plan. Just a shame it wasn’t a bit longer.’
‘Jeez, man, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine, was a long time ago,’ said Everett. ‘She did it every century or so. She’d get the wipe, move to a new city, start over as someone else. Based on the notes she left for herself she’d been doing it for thousands of years. When she decided it was time she made all her arrangements, there was a great big party, then she was off.’
‘Yeah, that’s always hard,’ said Tally. ‘Some people just can’t do eternity. I don’t get it myself but I suppose that we all have our own way of dealing with it. Do you know some people say everyone’ll do it eventually? I don’t believe them, the idea freaks me out.’
‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Everett. ‘My memories are me. I ran into her, a few years ago. It had been like twenty years. I told her who I was, I had lunch with her and her husband, told a few of the old stories, just the funny ones. It was nice. Odd, though. Most of the time she was a completely different person, then every now and then she’d give me a look or laugh, and it was like she remembered.’
‘Coping with eternity,’ Tally said, with a sigh, ‘I never stay anywhere long enough to get bored, she becomes new people, and you…’
‘I anchor myself off of a murderous dysfunctional relationship with a guy I’ve spoken to maybe twenty times in the last hundred and fifty years,’ said Everett. ‘I know this is messed up. I have had a therapist. Well, a sequence of therapists, they don’t tend to stick.’
He chuckled.
‘We may not speak often, but we know each other bizarrely well. It comes from the tracking. I was in kind of a bad way for a while after Shayla reset. One day I wake up and there’s a box on the table by my bed that hadn’t been there when I went to sleep. I open it, cautiously as you do, and I nearly have a heart attack. Unnecessarily as it turns out. I’d never seen a cake so convincingly made to look like a bomb. All the parts were edible, the wires, the clock, everything. There was a lovely card with it, too.’
Tally laughed and shook her head.
‘I’d have loved to be in the room when he made that order,’ she said. ‘You’ve definitely got something, him and you. I might not ever quite get it, but if it works for you two, then fair enough. What do you think you’ll do when you both get tired of this?’
Everett mused for a moment, poking through the garbage heap.
‘I don’t know. I think whatever it is he’ll be there though. It’s a connection. Like the two of us are tied together. Maybe eventually we’ll pivot to sports or competitive chess or set up competing patisseries or something.’
…
The bus came to a stop on the outskirts of Parastaxia, outside a scrap metal depot where Tally was going to empty the luggage bays of their cargo.
‘So, you sure you’re good to go from here?’ Tally asked as Everett climbed out of the bus.
‘Yeah, I’ll drop in on some friends, blag a couple of days on a couch, pay them off with a movie and a big meal, then get the train home.’
‘And start plotting your revenge?’ added Tally.
‘Nah, I’m feeling pretty chill at the moment. Just going to let those creative juices bubble away for a while. I think I’ll head home, catch up on my reading, do a bounty or two if any catch my attention. What about you?’
‘Same old same old,’ Tally said. ‘I’ve got a list of collectors and traders to see in town. I posted some of the new finds online. You’d be amazed how many people put in offers for that big dice you found.’
‘It weighs a ton, I think it must be tungsten or something. Scrap value alone would be a hefty handful of coin. Should more than cover the cost of feeding me,’ said Everett.
‘Don’t sweat it, it’s nice to have some company on the road from time to time. And where else am I going to get a story that bonkers?’
Everett laughed.
‘Yeah, that’s true. Most hitchhikers don’t come with remotely this kind of backstory.’
‘Then,’ she continued, ‘I’ll stock up the fridges, fill up the tank, then hit the road. Maybe I’ll park myself up in the middle of nowhere for a day or two. Have some me time. Make some art. I’ve got a toolbox and a bag of interesting scrap metal just calling to me.’
‘You take care out there,’ Everett told her. ‘There are some weird people out in the wastelands and the drift zones. Hey, I’m living proof of that. Kind of.’
‘I always am,’ she replied. ‘I bet you didn’t find half the guns I’ve got stashed away on that bus.’
‘Well, aren’t you just full of surprises,’ Everett said, chuckling.
‘The alternative’s way too dull. You give me a call sometime. I want to hear what you come up with. Maybe I’ll even have an idea or two.’
‘Oh, I will. Not least so I can get your cassoulet recipe.’
‘It’s less a recipe, more a big pan and some vibes, but I’ll give you some tips,’ Tally said.
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Everett said, holding out his hand.
Tally shook it.
‘See you around, buddy,’ she said, and then departed into the scrap dealer’s yard.
Everett turned and wandered down the street deeper into town, ticking through a to do list in his head. Find the bank. Get an aura scan for a new bank card. Get the cash for a new phone, and some more suitable clothes while he was at it.
He paused, passing the entrance to an alleyway, just as he began to work through a list of who he knew in town and who might be feeling sociable. His eye had been caught by one of the half manifested junk heaps.
He chuckled and shook his head. Hell really was a funny old place.