Free The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) by Mark Reynolds Page A

ago, and no one had ever come back.
    Covering the ticket counter’s glass
front was a small sign reading, JUST STEPPED OUT — BE BACK MOMENTARILY. A pair of feet walked between the two
statements, the kind of friendly sign one could buy at any office supplies
store. Only this sign was ancient, the glue on the tape long ago turning to a
useless amber crust, the card dry and yellow, as brittle-looking as the Dead
Sea Scrolls. The sign might simply have been a relic, saved and reused for more
years than anyone cared to remember. But Jack had the impression that it had
hung there since before the Eisenhower administration, and whoever had stepped
out would not be back. Not ever.
    Just like you, Jack.
    In college, he read Stephen King’s The
Stand , a book about a plague that wiped out most of the population, leaving
behind all of the machines and buildings and relics of the modern society, but
none of the people. Whole towns silenced, an empty world of artifacts. A
reminder of how one’s entire life was composed not so much of places and
things, but the people relative to them. And standing here in the gloom of an
abandoned train station, a silver screen actor fifty years too late for the
scene’s final take, he was reminded of this fact. Maybe not today, and maybe
not tomorrow, but soon; for the rest of your life …
    Jack walked down the aisle between
the rows of benches, feeling as if he was entering a church of invisible
parishioners, the sound of his footsteps loud in the dead silence. He stopped
at the lip of the platform, the yellow caution line nearly gone now, rubbed
clean by the scuffing and dragging of a million passing feet boarding and
leaving the trains over the countless years that Cross-Over Station was in
vogue. Travelers moving back and forth, work to home and back to work again,
traveling salesmen, vacations to distant relatives. All gone now, erased with
the passage of time. Cross-Over Station was dead, an empty shell abandoned by
the creature that had outgrown it.
    An enormous clock stood atop a wrought-iron
pole, its face at least eighteen inches across, large antique hands pointing to
black, gothic numerals. 10:57. Jack confirmed the station time with his
wristwatch, surprised that it was still running, much less that the time was
correct. It wouldn’t be long now.
    So where was the Writer?
    Jack glanced back at the doors,
hoping to see a shadow fall across them, hoping to see the Writer bursting in
at the last moment. Ah, good to see you again, Jack. So glad you decided to
come. Didn’t have any problem finding the place, did you? The outside looks
like hell, but in its day … Well, time to reminisce later. Are you ready for an
adventure?
    Yes.
    But the Writer was nowhere to be
seen. Jack waited at the edge of the faded yellow line, reading and rereading the
sign on the opposite side of the tracks: DO NOT STAND AHEAD OF THE YELLOW LINE UNTIL THE CONDUCTOR HAS
GIVEN THE SIGNAL TO BOARD .
    He looked again at the clock. 10:58.
    Jack started patting his pockets to
waste time, making a mental inventory of the contents in an effort to reassure
himself that nothing was lost or missing—nothing other than what he already
knew was lost. He assured himself he still had his wallet, half of his life
savings kept inside, the rest stowed in his duffel bag. Beside his wallet, a
pen—what writer didn’t carry a pen? In his front pocket, some change and a
small jackknife. He suffered a moment of panic over his missing keys before
remembering that he didn’t have keys anymore. His apartment keys were in an
envelope on the windowsill, and his car key was lost in the parking lot of
Stone Surety Mortgage. There was nothing else. All that he had was what he
carried.
    This is what it feels like to start
over, he thought,
the realization both liberating and unsettling. He had no keys because he had
no locks; locks kept things safe, and he had nothing to keep. He was back to
square one.
    10:59. Time mocked him.
    And he