Richard Kadrey - Devil Said Bang

“It wasn’t much of anything,” he says. “You’re always concerned with how the local populace regards you. From what I’ve seen, the rabble takes you as the grand exalted master of the infernal hindquarters just fine. Though your boisterous days as Sandman Slim have left a deeper impression. You’re credited with every cutthroat murder and cracked skull in town, of which there are more than a few.”

“Lucky me. Most people don’t get hated for one life. I’m hated for two. If I get a part-time gig as a meter maid, I can probably make it three.”

I find Mason’s lighter in my pocket but nothing to smoke.

“Do you have any cigarettes? I left mine back home.”

Home. That’s a bad habit. Stop thinking that way.

“Sorry. My last smoke went down the shitter when you knocked it out of my mouth.”

“Liar.”

He half smiles and pulls a pack from another pocket. Bill’s been in enough saloons to know that a well-timed cigarette can calm an argument quicker than an ax handle.

“Was there anything else in the note?”

Bill takes a while tapping the Malediction out for me. At first I think it’s just how a man who spent decades rolling his own smokes handles premade cigarettes. Then it hits me that he’s stalling.

“No. I don’t suppose there was anything else that mattered in there.”

I check both ends of the alley for movement. Nothing.

More secrets. Just what I need. Is he changing sides? Bill isn’t the happiest saloonkeeper in the universe. Taking orders and abuse from drunk Hellions isn’t what he’s built for. Maybe someone made him a better offer. Is there anywhere in this fucking town I don’t have to look over my shoulder? Do I have to fill the Bamboo House with peepers now?

I turn and start away.

“I shouldn’t keep you from your bar, Bill. Thanks for the information.”

“Where are you headed?”

“I’m thinking about getting drunk and seeing if I can pick a fight at the arena. I still want some carnage tonight.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

I stop and look back at him.

“You can do that? Just walk around?”

He holds out Lucifer’s mark.

“This keeps me out of all kinds of trouble. These pig fuckers might stab each other over a nickel’s worth of beer, but they aren’t about to break the Devil’s toys.”

“Come on, then.”

“Give me a minute. I got saddled with a dim Hellion for help. Boy’d be a good thief if he ever actually took anything instead of losing it. He’s too dumb to steal and too clumsy for the legions, so they made him a barman, which, sadly, in my experience is just about right.”

I light the cigarette and watch Bill go inside. Johnny Cash singing “Ain’t No Grave” drifts out when he opens the door.

I hate not trusting him. It’s been nice being able to be human with him for a few minutes at a time. It’s one of the few things that’s kept me sane. If he leads me into another ambush, I’ll know what side he’s really on. If I’m on my own, that’s just the way it is. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Bill comes back to the side of the bar a minute later and cocks his head for me to follow him.

“Which way do you think is best?” I ask, giving him an opening to lead me down any blind alley he wants.

“Through the market, I reckon. There’s a lot of traffic and people are looking at the goods and not at faces.”

And crowds are good places to stick a knife in someone’s back and disappear.

“Sounds good. Let’s go.”

We walk in silence. I can’t hear his heart or his breathing, but I can see him fine and Bill’s movements are definitely tense.

We pass the site where the new City Hall will go up. This Convergence L.A. is solid but there are small places where the real Hell peeks through. Like these Hellion cranes. The cabs are rounded and covered in heavy wired mesh and they have six or eight big portholes instead of windshields. They look a lot more like giant bugs grabbing food with long chitinous beaks than construction equipment.

Bill says, “You’re quiet all of a sudden. Usually you’re the chatterbox and I’m the one waiting to get a word in.”

The market stalls cover the sidewalks and spill onto the roads where the original stores and businesses have burned or been abandoned. The big stalls sell anything a fine upstanding Hellion could want, most of it black market. Clean clothes. Jewelry. Health and hex potions. High-end Aqua Regia and wine.

“I was thinking about who I should flay alive for selling all of Hell’s goods to these Harry Lime pricks.”

“I see. Maybe you’ve got more of the devil in you than even I credited you with.”

“Maybe it’s time to see just how much.”

There are ghosts in the crowd. Not damned souls. Ghosts. A few of them follow us.

Bill says, “Back there at the bar, you might have noticed I didn’t want to say some things.”

“I noticed that.”

Bill looks at me.

“That’s a cold tone. You peg me for a bushwhacker now too?”

“I’m tired of being surrounded by people with secrets. If you have something to say, just say it.”

“All right. But I’ll do it my way.”

“Fine.”

He puffs on his cigar. A red legger elbows Bill out of the way. Bill elbows him right back. The legger whirls around and grabs Bill’s arm. I reach for my knife but the raider sees the mark on Bill’s arm and backs away.

Bill turns and starts walking again like nothing happened.

“They tell me that back home I’m more notorious than John Wesley Hardin, which is a hoot, as he had more fights and killed at least twice as many men as I ever did. On the other hand, it pleases me no end that Broken Nose Charlie Utter, who so violently disrupted my final card game, is known to very few. Men with restless lives—and I’m including you in this—we don’t seem to get much say in who’s remembered and who’s forgotten and with what amount of affection or derision.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I’m sure you have, Sandman Slim.”

Bill puffs his cigar and thinks.

“The point is, whatever you do, whether you’ll turn out to be the Antichrist, the prince of killers, or perhaps nothing at all, it’s time, not men, that will be the judge.”

He stares off at nothing for a second.

“Sometimes I think that last one might be the most preferable state. To be nothing and erased from eternity strikes me as a fine thing some days. But, of course, that wasn’t offered to me and it won’t be offered to you.

“Where are you going with this, Bill?”

“Where I’m going is that neither of us is predisposed to backing down from a fight, so you need to pick and choose yours better than I did.”

Ghosts trail us on both sides of the street. They’re not threatening, but any more and they’re going to start attracting attention.

“If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that all shed blood, yours or your enemy’s, stains Creation forever and there’s no washing it away,” says Bill. “That lesson came to me too late and I killed at least one good man, a Wichita deputy, because I was too free and easy with others’ lives. If I’m in this wretched place for anything, it’s that.”

I flash on the pictures of dead faces tacked on the walls in Mason’s hidden room. I glance at the ghosts. Dead Hellions used to go to Tartarus but I destroyed the place and released them. Now they have nothing better to do than wander Hell’s streets until the end of time. I was proud of destroying Tartarus. Now I’m not sure I did anyone a favor.

“I’m not really in a position to turn pacifist at the moment. People want to kill me or take over my mind. I’m not going to lie down and let either of those things happen.”