Scene 9
Lawman heard the screams as they reverberated from the past. He heard the child crying out his name. He heard the gunfire and knew in his heart of hearts that he could do nothing as sheriff to save either of them. Then there was a city. A city with flashing neon lights, its streets awash and brimming with that brash swirl of colour that trickled throughout every avenue, and flooded the sidewalks of every road. Lawman could hear the drum-drumming of the jazz music hanging in the close and stifling southern air. Its syncopated beat spiralled into chaos as slowly the neon lights spat and sparked into flames, and New Orleans was consumed by nuclear fire. Willows grew, darkness lurked, neon lights flickered and pirouetted within the shadows of twisting alleyways. And always within this graveyard, this desolated playground of opulence, there was a secret. There was a secret and it called to him. It called to Lawman.
His skin was sweaty and sickly pale as slowly Lawman stirred from the same nightmare he had every night. The one with the woman and the child was always the same, forever recurring, always traumatic. Only drink helped to stimmy his nerves on that one. However the appendage to that, the dream of a city with a secret – that was recurring sure, but it was also expanding. It expanded each time he dreamt it, revealing something new each time, as though he strode just a little bit further down its streets, as though his line of sight stretched just a little bit further towards seeing something he didn't like. Something that could only be left unspoken each time Lawman awoke, as he scrambled as many of his memories of the dream back together as he could, only to find he'd forgotten most of it. Either way, Lawman could not tell if it was auspicious to have these dreams or whether it was portentous. For that reason he had kept these thoughts to himself, locked away in his mind from the rest of the crew.
Well, he thought to himself bitterly, whatever's left of the crew now can go fuck itself. He looked up and saw his hands bound to a steel pipe somewhere in the ship's boiler room. Yeah, they can seriously go fuck themselves.
He looked across from him and saw the southern guide watching him with her dark eyes. She'd been watching Lawman sleep he soon realised and he wondered what she was thinking. She was tied up herself; to another pipe opposite Lawman. This one was beside one of the main boilers. She didn't struggle against her bonds but just watched Lawman with a furrowed brow.
"Yeah, you're welcome," Lawman told her as he motioned to her neck, the tender skin where her bomb collar had once clasped so tightly. "Must have felt like a bitch while that collar was clapped like irons around your throat."
The guide simply looked back at him. She tilted her head.
"I freed you," Lawman repeated slowly for her to understand. "Comprende? You're welcome. Not that it matters of course, judging by our current habitation and all."
There was no response. There were just those dark eyes looking back at him.
"Not very talkative are ya?"
Nothing.
Of course there was no response, Lawman knew she didn't speak the same tongue he spoke. Still he thought some sort of gesture or something might be received from her.
"I'm sorry about what happened to you. About all of this. Thought I might make somethin' right by challenging Carter, but it looks like I just made things worse, as usual. Damned be the sheriff in me, I just can't let things be."
There were a few moments of silence where Lawman looked about himself. He still had his pip-boy, although with his hands bound he had no way of operating it as just yet. He did not however feel the weight of his revolver in the holster by his hip. He had been searched and stripped of any weapons and (for that matter) his lock picking equipment. He could no longer feel that down his sleeve either. Well it looked like Carter actually knew what he was doing. But then of course he would. Tying up prisoners was probably only one step down his list of top attributes from shooting said prisoners in the head.
"Well, I dunno about you, but I sure as hell could use a drink right about now."
No response.
"At least if I had a drink I wouldn't have to face my death sober."
Lawman was nervous. And when he was nervous he wanted to drink or else to talk, and seeing as there wasn't a drop of alcohol available to sate his thirst he would be damned if a little thing like language stopped him from talking to the guide. He hadn't been killed. Not yet anyway. He was about to speak again when his ears suddenly pricked at a sound emanating from beyond the boiler room.
A slow and sharp clapping noise made its way to the door of the boiler room like someone clapping in mock applause at Lawman's predicament. It took a while before Lawman recognised that the clapping was the sound of footsteps upon the metal grill floor.
Lawman waited patiently as his adversary unbolted the door and strode into the room, picking up a crate and using it as a seat as he sat down in front of Lawman. Carter sat, a shadow veiling half his face, as Lawman glared back at his cruel stare.
Carter drew a pack of cigars out of his pocket, took one out and placed it between his yellowed teeth. He lit it and took a long inhale of its sweet aroma. When he exhaled a familiar blue haze lingered. "You know," he said, relishing the cigar as its fumes coiled from his mouth and rose upwards to the ceiling, "say what you like about Kees, but he sure hid some fine cigars from the rest of us."
"They're Oswald's," Lawman replied. He recognised the sickly sweet scent all the way back from when he was sat with him at the post. Back when he had a cold glass of hooch clasped in his hands. Lawman felt cold sweat percolate upon his forehead.
"Are they? Huh, the fancy rich bastard sure has taste."
He puffed some more on the cigar and Lawman watched its stub smoulder in the shadows like a blood moon. Carter unleashed plumes of smoke into the air.
"You gonna let me loose out of these bonds? I'm not much use tied up." Lawman spoke confidently as he stared directly into Carter's cold dead eyes.
Carter grinned and let out a couple of snickers. He lowered the smouldering cigar by his lap and leant in closer.
"What makes you so sure I ain't gonna kill you, Lawman."
"I'm not dead yet am I? I don't have a bullet rattling around the inside of my head. You're still interested in the tech file, ain't that right?"
"Yeah. I'm interested In the tech." He pulled another draft from the cigar and savoured its delicious fumes. "I'm interested in the money I'm gonna get once I lay my hands on it."
"You need me."
"No," Carter sneered. "I need your Pip-boy."
"You need the man who knows how to use it. The only man on this trip that fits that criteria is me, Carter."
"Yeah, maybe your right."
"So. You gonna hurry and let me loose? My arms are getting' tired."
"Why the hell would I do that, Lawman. I need you alive, but I don't need you comfortable. When we get to the vault, then we'll see. Maybe by then I'll figure how to work that damned pip-boy of yours."
"And my gun?"
"You really think I'm gonna give you back your gun?" Carter leered through the haze of cigar smoke. "You're a scavver, Lawman. Last time I checked you don't need a gun for scavvin'."
"What about the guide?"
"What about her?"
"You really gonna keep her cooped up in here, Carter."
"You have any better ideas, partner," Carter sneered. "Someone got rid of her bomb collar. Did ya hear?"
"Let her go."
Carter laughed. "Let her go? So she can do what exactly? Shoot us in the back? No, she's still of use to me," he growled. "I need her to guide us all through this…this fuckin' overgrown graveyard of a place. She don't need to speak to be able to do that, she don't need a tongue, she just needs a finger to point. With enough encouragement she can be made to understand the gist of what I'm sayin'."
"Okay. Let's suppose she takes you to Lost Orleans. Let's suppose she leads you there and the treasure is within your grasp. What then, Carter."
"I reckon we play a round Russian roulette with her as the sole player." Carter grinned. "I always did like parlour games."
"You're gonna kill her? What incentive has she got to help you then?"
"Oh you'd be surprised what people can be made to do, Lawman. As for you, you'll help us or you will refuse. In which case we'll start cutting off fingers. Or better yet we'll cut off her fingers. I know how fond you are of the girl, for some reason. And if you try to escape I'll just gun you down before you can get five feet away. You know how fast a draw I am.
"Yeah. I need you Lawman. And you'll soon realise just how sorry to hear that you should be."
And with that Carter put out the cigar on the iron grill floor and paced to the door, the sound of his footsteps clanging on the floor. They reverberated in the compact boiler room like the words he'd shared moments before.
He turned back one last time.
"You know what this is?" he said as he lifted up a clunky electronic device from within the depths of his satchel.
Lawman said nothing.
"It was Mr Kees'. Apparently as soon as we captured the tech file he was gonna use this to contact Oswald. He was gonna give away our location and escape with the tech on a private vertibird with him, leaving us high and dry. Funny how things turn out, isn't it. Now I'm the leader of this expedition I guess things really have changed. Trouble is I reckon there's only so much room on that vertibird, Lawman. And I think you're gonna have to get real chummy with the guide and her people quick because you're gonna spend a lot of time down south…
"…Just a little thought for you."
And with that he exited the boiler room. And Lawman was left with the guide and the shadows and the dying embers of that cigar as its meandering fumes slowly rose like the Mississippi; like a moonlit road to a question that Lawman dreaded the answer of.
How the fuck was he gonna get out of this?