VIII

After Bill had cut him loose, Mortimer lay in the road, groaning and rubbing the circulation back into his wrists. His finger stump throbbed. The cowboy squatted next to him muttering encouraging things like "You'll be okay, partner" and "Live to fight another day" and so on.

Mortimer didn't mind. He'd give Buffalo Bill a big wet kiss on the lips if that's what he wanted. Mortimer Tate was alive. He'd escaped the Beast.

He stood, looked down into the Beast's hollow and bloody eyes before taking back his parka and other belongings. He kicked the dead man into the shrubs on the side of the road, tossed the bear skin on top of him.

"This yours?" Bill held the police special toward Mortimer butt first.

Mortimer hesitated. If this insane cowboy had wanted Mortimer dead, then he'd already be dead. He took the pistol. "Thanks."

They stood in the middle of the road among the frayed rope and the splotches of blood and the cold wind lifting the cowboy's yellow hair.

"Now what?" asked Buffalo Bill.

"You tell me," Mortimer said.

"I'm going to Spring City."

"I was thinking Evansville," Mortimer said.

Bill shook his head. "Red Stripes on that side of the mountain. Not too many. Enough to worry."

Mortimer frowned, recalled the three men he'd killed up the mountain who wore red armbands. "Red Stripes?"

"Jesus, you don't know about them? What? You been in a cave for nine years?"

"As a matter of fact..."

"It might snow soon." Bill squinted at the dark clouds gathering overhead. "Maybe we should find a roof."

"I need to get something first," Mortimer said. "It's not much farther."

"Okay."

Bill retrieved a battered backpack from behind a stump, and both men set off toward the entrance to the pocket wilderness. They walked in silence, and at last the snow began to fall gently, silently dusting their heads and shoulders.

Mortimer broke the silence first. "Why did you save me?"

"Can't let an innocent man be dragged along like an animal. Ain't right."

"How do you know I'm innocent? Maybe I'm a criminal. Maybe I was being taken to trial. I could be a murderer."

Bill's head jerked around to look at Mortimer, eyes wide. This possibility clearly hadn't occurred to him. "Hell."

"Don't worry." Mortimer grinned. "You did the right thing."

Bill exhaled, shook his head. "Damn. It's a hard world to be good in."

The snow was a foot thick on the ground by the time they reached Mortimer's stash. He cleared away the shrubs and accumulated snow, pulled the tarp off the sled.

Bill whistled appreciatively at the weapons, and Mortimer assumed Bill was looking at the formidable Uzi, but the cowboy reached for the lever-action rifle. Bill stopped mid-reach, raised an eyebrow at Mortimer.

"Go ahead."

Bill picked up the rifle, ran his hand over the stock. He looked right holding it, like it completed his costume.

"Take it," Mortimer said.

"What?"

"It's yours. Least I can do after you saved my ass."

Bill grinned big, worked the lever and sighted along the barrel. He held the gun in both hands, held it away from his body, looked at it like it was a sacred relic. "This is how the world was built, and how it was destroyed, and how it'll be built again." He cradled the rifle in one arm like a puppy. "You got shells for it?"

Mortimer handed him a box of ammunition, then showed him a bottle of Johnnie Walker. "Help me pull this sled, and I'll buy you a drink."

"Amen to that, brother."

They found an abandoned house, all the windows broken out, but there was a large fireplace. They hauled in wood, started a fire. Soon it was dark, snow falling thick outside, wind blowing the ragged curtains in the windows like the wispy nightgowns of ghostly orphans.

Mortimer had cleaned and wrapped his finger stump with the extra first aid supplies from the sled.

They sat on a fake leather couch and passed the bottle between them; the whiskey lit up amber in the firelight. The house creaked in the moaning wind.

"Goddamn, that's good," Bill said. Another big slug and he held it in his mouth an extra moment before swallowing, smacked his lips.

"I miss Burger King." Mortimer took the bottle, drank. It was so warm and good going down, Mortimer marveled he'd been able to leave the bottles unopened for nine years. "I like Whoppers."

"SONIC," Bill said. "I liked to pull up and eat in my car, listen to the radio and eat foot-long chili dogs. I could eat two and Tater Tots in the space of an Avril Lavigne song."

"Do people still drive cars?"

Bill shook his head and took the bottle back, sipped. "Gasoline goes stale after a while and nobody's refining anymore. Horses are coming back. Man, I'd love to get me a horse."

"Coming back?"

"People ate them."

"Jesus."

"You really don't know any of this?"

Mortimer shook his head, took the bottle and gulped.

Bill said, "Goats too. Dogs and cats. Rats. Meat is meat. I heard tell they turned cannibal in some places, but I don't know if that's true or not."

I could turn around right now, thought Mortimer. I could go back to the cave. There's no Burger King down the mountain, no world I remember.

"Why are you dressed like a cowboy?" Mortimer was curious as hell.

"Does it seem weird?"

Mortimer shrugged. "I don't know the standard of weird anymore."

"I'm always afraid people will think it's weird."

"Do they?"

"Yes."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want."

"I don't know why I did it at first," admitted Bill. "I always liked westerns, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, you know? Think about what a cowboy is, what he represents. The new order rolling across the prairie, right? Even when he was slaughtering buffalo and red Indians, he still left civilization in his wake, towns and railroads and all that. I guess maybe I thought we needed cowboys again. Maybe not. Hell, I don't know. Probably sounds stupid."

"No it doesn't." Yes it did.

"Anyway," Bill said. "Everyone else looked like a refugee, dressed in rags. Everyone looked lost, like they've got no place to go. If you're a cowboy, you're not a refugee. You don't need anyplace to go. Cowboys are supposed to drift, ride off into the sunset. If you're a cowboy then you ain't lost."

The man had found his purpose through costuming. Sure. Whatever helps a guy cope. Buffalo Bill was an un-lost non-refugee.

"I want to find my wife." Mortimer belched. It tasted like barfy booze.

"You didn't take your wife into hiding with you?"

"It's complicated."

"No it's not," Bill said. "Everything's real simple now. She's either alive or dead."

Mortimer thought about that. Outside the wind howled. Inside the fire crackled and snapped. Mortimer's eyelids grew heavy, and he faded into whiskey dreams.

IX

"You okay?" There seemed to be genuine concern in Bill's voice.

Mortimer leaned into the rope, trudged in the shin-deep snow, one foot in front of the other, every step an effort of titanic proportions. His head throbbed. His stomach rebelled. He had not been this hungover in...how long?

A decade.

Abruptly, Mortimer dropped the rope, dashed to the side of the road and went to his knees. Heaved. The puke was acidic, made his eyes water. He hurled three times in quick succession, splattering the snow. Steam rose. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"I'm a little fuzzy myself this morning," Bill said.

"Get bent," Mortimer muttered, then spit.

"What?"

"I said I'm fine. Let's go."

They made their way down the mountain. Landmarks began to look familiar. A flood of memories. Mortimer found himself hurrying. He wanted to see his town, his old office, his old house.

His old life.

The gas station and convenience store at the bottom of the hill was a charred husk, blackened and hollow. He'd bought beer and newspapers there. Toilet paper, Slim Jims, ice cream, unleaded. In an odd way, Mortimer was relieved. He would have felt like a grade-A jackass if he'd hidden in a cave for nine years and then come down the mountain only to find the convenience store selling cigarettes and lotto tickets like nothing had happened.

"I want to find my old house," Mortimer said.

"Wait!" Bill grabbed Mortimer's sleeve and tugged, pointed at the side of a brick building across the street. "It's true. They have one here. Thank God. I didn't know if it was true or not."

Mortimer looked at the wall. Spray-painted in three-foot, neon-pink letters were the words JOEY ARMAGEDDON'S SASSY A-GO-GO. An arrow painted underneath pointed toward downtown.

Mortimer squinted at the sign. "What the hell's that?"

"Paradise, partner, paradise. Come on." Bill began to pull the sled in the direction indicated by the sign.

"Wait." Mortimer pulled back on the other rope. "I told you I want to find my house."

"Just for an hour." Bill dug into his pockets, came out with a handful of silver coins. "I'll buy you a drink. I have six Armageddon dollars."

Mortimer's stomach pinched. "I don't want a drink."

"Just for an hour."

"No."

"Thirty minutes."

"I said no."

Bill dropped the rope, turned on Mortimer, pointed at him. "Listen, pal. The only people who don't want to go to Joey Armageddon's are those who've never been to one. Ten minutes. You won't be sorry."

Mortimer admitted to himself he'd like to see downtown, the little Norman Rockwell Main Street, the storefront where he'd sold insurance. He wondered if he'd recognize the town he'd lived in. His old house had waited nine years. It could wait a little longer.

"Okay," Mortimer said. "Lead the way."

"You'll love it."

"Just pull the sled."

Spring City was the kind of sleepy small town high school kids vowed to leave for the big city. Before the Fall there had been a bank and a post office, various stores. A blinking stoplight. Old men had stood in front of the greasy diner, thumbs hooked in denim overalls as they discussed the Volunteers' football season and the doings at the First Baptist Church. A Laundromat. Feed store. Hardee's.

Now, as Mortimer and Buffalo Bill pulled the sled toward the old armory, vague faces watched them from dirty windows. There was an eerie caution in their expressions. Mortimer asked Bill if they should be worried.

"Not in town," Bill said. "We're safe enough. I think they have a militia here."

A militia. The idea made Mortimer feel nervous instead of safer.

The armory had been transformed. A sign above the double doors in bright pink, professionally stenciled, not the rough spray-paint job they'd seen on their way in, declared the place JOEY ARMAGEDDON'S.

Mortimer raised an eyebrow. This had been a place for high school dances, city league basketball and town hall meetings. What was it now?

They walked inside, Bill leading the way, excited like a little kid going to a birthday party. Mortimer did not recognize the interior of the armory. Tables and chairs were scattered throughout it, a hodgepodge mismatch of booths and other furniture clearly looted from various restaurants and pubs. At the far end of the auditorium, a long pine bar; behind the bar and slightly elevated, a stage. What looked like two enormous birdcages flanked the stage on either side. Strings of unlit Christmas tree lights crisscrossed the ceiling, hanging low.

"Will the sled be okay outside?"

"Nobody pulls shit within five hundred yards of a Joey Armageddon's." Bill beelined for the bar.

Mortimer followed.

As he approached the bar, Mortimer noticed a dozen men at a pair of picnic tables along the far wall. They wore dirty clothes and spooned a thick, brown stew into their scruffy faces. Next to the picnic tables was a line of stationary bicycles, a cumbersome wad of wires and cables leading from the bicycles to a metal box.

He caught up with Bill at the bar, where the cowboy had caught the bartender's attention.

"Is the beer cold?" Bill asked.

"Sure," said the bartender. He was fat and bald, a large tattoo of a black spider in the middle of his forehead. "The kegs are outside in the snow. Cold beer in summer, that's the real trick."

"Great. You have the house special microbrew? Chattanooga Brown?"

The bartender shook his head. "Ran out three nights ago, and the Red Stripes are fucking up the supply wagons coming north. We got Freddy's Piss Yellow."

"Never heard of it."

"Remember Pabst Blue Ribbon?"

"Yeah."

"Not that good."

"Two mugs," Bill said.

Spider-face leaned on the bar. "Let's see the color of your money, friend."

Bill put the silver coins on the bar. Spider-face took one and pushed the rest back. He pulled the tap and filled two mugs with foamy, bright yellow liquid and set the mugs in front of Bill and Mortimer.

"You got any rooms?" Bill asked.

"Five coins a night."

Bill frowned. "That's pretty steep. It'll clean me out."

"That's with electricity and plumbing. You'll think you're at the fucking Marriott."

"Let me think about it."

Spider-face shrugged and went about his business.

Bill lifted his mug. "Cheers."

Mortimer tasted the Freddy's Piss Yellow. It tasted more or less like beer. Beer somebody had used to wash his balls. But after his third sip, Mortimer felt his headache ease a little. Hair of the dog.

"Can I see one of those coins?"

"Sure."

Mortimer turned one of the coins over in his hands; it was heavy, maybe lead or nickel with a shiny silver coating, smaller than a silver dollar but bigger than a fifty-cent piece. Primitive stamping. It had ONE ARMAGEDDON DOLLAR on one side, a picture of a mushroom cloud on the other.

"What the hell is this?"

"Armageddon dollar," Bill said.

"Yes, the words Armageddon Dollar printed on one side tipped me off."

"They're used as currency at all Joey Armageddon locations."

"The place has its own money? How many locations are there?"

Bill shrugged. "If I were you, I'd exchange that sled of trade goods for Armageddon dollars right away."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"For one thing, carrying a bag of coins is easier than pulling that damn sled everyplace. Which, by the way, is getting kind of old."

"What if I want to shop somewhere other than Joey Armageddon's?"

Bill chuckled, sipped beer. "There isn't anyplace else."

Mortimer asked Spider-face where he could trade his goods for money. The bartender pointed through a door.

"Be right back," Mortimer told Bill.

Mortimer went to the sled, made sure no one was looking, then took one of the Johnnie Walker bottles from beneath the tarp and carried it back inside, went through the door the barman had indicated.

A small man sat behind a wire-mesh cage, a little window in front of him, like a bank teller. Sitting on a stool in a corner was a three-hundred-pound black man in army fatigues and a purple fez. He looked grim and dangerous. The M16 machine gun in his arms didn't help him look any friendlier.

The white-haired man behind the cage wore a thick pair of glasses, a pencil behind his ear. He regarded Mortimer with little interest. "Yes?"

Mortimer cleared his throat. "I'm here to trade."

The white-haired man yawned. "Buying or selling?"

Mortimer put the Johnnie Walker on the counter. "Selling."

The man's eyes slowly widened. "Is that real?"

"Yes."

"We had someone in here before." A warning tone in the man's voice. "He drilled the top and filled the empty bottle with home mash. After we beat him, the mayor sentenced him to a month on the bicycles. I'll ask you again. Is it real?"

"It's real," Mortimer said. "As are the other thirty-five bottles out on my sled."

"Thirty-five?" The man trembled. "Mister, if you're telling the truth, you just became the richest man in town."

"I have other things too." Mortimer listed the items.

Sweat beaded on the man's forehead as he copied the list into a little notebook with his pencil. "Can I get your name?"

"Mortimer Tate."

"I'm Silas Jones, Mr. Tate. And may I say you are a most welcome and valuable customer here at Joey Armageddon's."

The tally came to seven thousand Armageddon dollars, and Mortimer took the Emperor's Suite on the second floor of the brick building attached to the armory. Two rooms, a double bed in each. A bathroom.

Mortimer Tate took his first crap on a working toilet in nine years.

He took a shower. A hot shower. Dried himself with a clean towel. Put on a terry cloth robe. A knock on the door.

It was the clerk, Silas Jones.

"I trust everything is to your satisfaction, Mr. Tate."

"Completely."

"I have been authorized to give you this."

Silas Jones handed him a pink card. It had been laminated. On the front was a mushroom cloud exploding upward into a pair of breasts. On the back were Mortimer's name and the words Platinum Member.

"What's this?"

Jones gasped. "What's this?" He looked surprised. "Why, Mr. Tate, this is one of the most sought-after status symbols of the new world. This is a Joey Armageddon's Platinum membership. It entitles you to special treatment at any of our fine locations."

"How many locations is that?"

"I don't know," admitted Jones. "Last count was something like twenty. I think."

"What kind of special treatment?"

"Alas, I don't know that either, since I myself have not been fortunate enough to achieve Platinum membership."

Uh-huh.

Buffalo Bill emerged from one of the bedrooms. He wore only his boots, his hat and a towel. "Jesus H. Christ, it's like Bucking-ham fucking Palace." Bill was middling drunk, having worked halfway through a complimentary bottle of Freddy's Piss Vinegar Vodka. (Bill had asked for a bottle of Major Dundee's Slow-Motion Gin, but the most recent shipment was rumored to have been hijacked by Red Stripes.)

Bill slung an arm around Mortimer's shoulders. "I saved this motherfucker's life. Best thing I ever did." He slurped vodka, gagged, and it trickled down his chin.

Silas Jones cleared his throat. "Quite."

Bill sniffed one of his own armpits. "Damn, I stink. Better shower." He stumbled into the bathroom.

"Mr. Tate, if I may offer a suggestion," Jones said. "You are now in possession of a staggering number of Armageddon dollars. You'll probably want to take steps to secure their...uh...security."

"Is there an open bank in town?"

"The First Armageddon Bank of Spring City is an authorized subsidiary of Joey Armageddon's Sassy A-Go-Go. I happen to be the head teller."

"Thanks. Sign me up. Where can I get some food?"

"The kitchen downstairs at Joey Armageddon's will be open in an hour."

"I'd like some new clothes."

"The selection downstairs in the trading post is top notch, and Joey Armageddon's has a tailor on call. I can send a runner for him if you need alterations."

"So is Joey Armageddon's the only store in the world or what?"

"Mr. Tate, with all due modesty, I think you'll come to find that Joey Armageddon's is the world."