Limbus, Inc. Book II Page 8

  He took a drink—deeper and more desperate this time—and then he began again to read.

  Fishing for Dinosaurs

  By

  Joe R. Lansdale

  When I climbed out from under the bridge that morning, it was raining hard and a cold wind was blowing and I guess that’s what turned me, that and the fact my coat was as thin as cheese cloth and I was so hungry I felt like my backbone was trying to gnaw its way to my navel. Being wet, cold, and hungry, as well as homeless, can affect a man’s judgment in all manner of ways. It damn sure affected mine.

  I thought about waiting for the rain to stop, but then decided the rain was what I needed. It was a Sunday morning, and if I was going to break into a house or building to find warmth, and mercy help me, something to steal and sell at a pawn shop, it was as good a time and as good a cover as any.

  The rain beat me like chains, it was coming down that hard, and by the time I walked along the highway, which was empty of cars, I had a throbbing headache from the constant pounding of the rain. Finally, I came to a row of buildings just outside of town, and I decided they were my best bet. I felt drawn to them, in fact.

  Most of the buildings were part of a series of warehouses, and that made it all the better. At the worst it would be warmer and drier inside, and maybe there would be that little something I was talking about. Something to steal.

  It was like the place was made for me to break in. Underneath one of the windows someone had laid a barrel on its side, and I managed to get up on that without it rolling out from under me, and by using my elbow, I broke the window out. I spent some time picking the glass free because it was a good position, out back of the warehouse, away from the road, and with the rain and lack of traffic, I could take my time.

  When I crawled inside, I moved away from the window and through a row of barrels that contained who knows what. Through cracks in the stacks I saw bits of this and that, but the truth was I wasn’t interested. I felt bedraggled and just needed a warm place to rest, and as I said, I was looking for something easy to steal. But it occurred to me that I might could hole up in the warehouse until morning, maybe even beyond. It didn’t seem like a place people were coming to often. If I could find a way to get food, this might be my home away from home for a while. I tried to think about my own home, but my mind didn’t cooperate; I had a hard time visualizing it.

  Winding my way through the rows of barrels, knocking aside a cobweb or two, I came to a door and gently pushed it open. It was nicer in there, and I could see it was a factory floor. It looked old and unused for quite some time, a deduction I made from the fact that it, like what must have been the store room, was gently covered in dust. There were all manner of machines, and I walked between those and found an office, which I peeked into. There was a desk in there and a chair, and on the desk I could see a little plaque with a rotating world symbol with certain spots on the continents dotted in red. I had no idea what that meant, or if it really meant anything. There was an old-fashioned rotary phone on the desk. I hadn’t seen one of those since I was a kid. My grandparents owned one forever ago. I thought of them for a moment, but couldn’t seem to hold their faces in my thoughts, and I let it go. There was also a coat rack, and on the rack was a nice wool coat and a pork pie hat on one of the spokes.

  I walked away from there and found the break room. There was a candy machine and soft drink machine in there, but I had no money, so outside of turning one over and beating it until it gave up the goods, it didn’t look likely that they’d do me any good. I didn’t think I was strong enough to break it open. Not the way I felt right then anyway.

  Back in the office, I sat in the chair and opened the desk drawer. I found a tin of paper clips, a box of old-fashioned kitchen matches, a few sheets of paper, the nub of a pencil, a plastic container of business cards, and about four dollars in quarters. I took the coins and went back to the machines and bought myself a bag of animal crackers and a soft drink with someone else’s money, then went back to the desk to enjoy it. While I ate I fiddled with the box of cards. They all had the same emblem that was on the plaque on the desk. A globe spread out and broken open to show all the views. I studied that world, determined it wasn’t the earth as I knew it. It was similar, but there was a slight rearrangement of continents and the continents were marginally out of form. It didn’t fit my geography lessons, but there was something about it that seemed right and sane to me, as if I had seen such a map somewhere, once upon a time.

  Texas, the state I was in, was on the map, but the panhandle bent and went higher and twisted up through Colorado. At one time what became part of Colorado had been Texas. I remember my dad used to say, “Why Texas gave that part up, I can’t say. There’s good skiing up there.”

  There were a number of other things, including a large continent in the center of the Atlantic. I didn’t know what that meant.

  I studied the card for a while and read the words at the top. LIMBUS, Inc. Below it was a phone number. I fanned the cards out, saw they were all the same, but noted something odd. The phone number on each of them was different. That made little sense. I turned one of the cards over. It read:

  LIMBUS, Inc.

  Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?

  Call us. We employ.

  1-800-555-0606.

  How lucky do you feel?

  I studied the number. I looked at the phone on the desk. I thought, don’t be a dumb ass. They won’t give you a job. They’ve probably been out of business for years, and besides that, they don’t even know how to make a proper map of the world. It was my hunger and desperation that was thinking about calling, not my common sense. It may have been one of those scam jobs where you worked for them and turned out in the end you owed them money. Forget it, I told myself.

  I ate my animal crackers and drank my drink, and when I finished I was still hungry. I scrambled around in the drawer and found some more quarters, a few dimes, got myself another drink from the machine and this time went for a bag of peanuts. When I finished eating I got the coat and tossed it on the floor and lay down on it, using the hat to cover my face. Lying there with a full stomach, I went straight to sleep. I slept warm, and for some time.

  It was dark when I awoke. I fumbled about and got the drawer open and found the matches. I struck one and looked about for a light switch, found one. I flipped it, and a light so dim that to see well by it you would have to set it on fire glowed on the ceiling.

  I shook out the match. I picked up the phone. It had a dial tone.

  All right. This place was not out of business, just not used frequently. Or maybe it was just this section. It was a large complex. Very large and this was just one end of it. Maybe there was more going on here than I thought.

  I picked up the coat and put it on and sat back down in the chair and looked at the business cards that I had fanned out on the desk. I picked up one and studied it for a long time. I thought, well, what the hell?

  I dialed the number on the card.

  A man’s voice answered on the first ring.

  *

  At first I was a little startled and said nothing. Then the voice said, “If you are looking for a job, it is highly possible you’ve called the right place. My name is Cranston. How did you get our card?”

  I told him.

  “Ah, our storage facilities in Owen Town.”

  “This is a town?”

  “Once it was. It’s just warehouses now and one long street, but it’s still referred to by that name. The railroad went a different way some fifty years ago. The town went away with it. Actually, those are very old cards for a very different time.”

  “I’m confused, Mr. Cranston. You offer jobs to anybody?”

  “No,” he said. “We use Limbus to get our workers. You’ve called one of the numbers on the card, our number, which they have provided, and I should say all the numbers on those cards are our numbers. We offer jobs to those who have our number, or whoever we seek out or Limbus prov
ides through its many methods. It’s really not worth considering. It’ll just cause your head to fill with cobwebs. Just talking about it makes my head a little musty and webbed. Here’s the thing, Mr….”

  I really was tired. I had to give that some thought. My name finally arrived, as if by a late plane. But instead I made up one. “Ray Slater.”

  “Mr. Slater, you have two choices. You can hang up the phone right now and leave our warehouse because obviously you’re not supposed to be there. And I might add, don’t be looking into any of the storage. You might find some of it…shall we say, uncomfortable.”

  “I was cold and hungry,” I said. “I thought about stealing things, but didn’t. Well, some quarters out of the desk drawer. I used them for the vending machine.”

  “That’s all right. We only use that area for storage, as I said. But you will need to leave, unless you would like to accept our job offer. We can be very intolerant about someone probing about in our materials. The job is the second choice.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “The way we work is simple. You accept the job, and then we find where we want to put you, what you’ll be doing. Now and then, we come to you, but in this case, you have come to us. We can employ you or have you arrested.”

  “Or I can be out the window and gone in five minutes. Ray Slater is not my real name.”

  “But if you have left a fingerprint, any manner by which you might be identified, we will seek you out. The results may not be pleasant.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Yes sir,” said the voice. “It is. Our resources are unlimited. I might also add that we pay very, very well.”

  I let all of this move about in my thoughts like a drunk trying to find his apartment keys, then settled on the fact that I had nothing. My life had turned wrong since my father died. There wasn’t a thing I had done that had worked out. Maybe this was all bogus. Maybe Limbus was a day job supplier. Raking leaves, hauling trash, cutting grass around curbing. It didn’t matter. I needed work. I needed money. I was so low down I could look up and see bottom.

  “All right,” I said.

  “We’ll send someone for you.”

  *

  I stayed in the office, waiting, expecting it to actually be the police that showed up. I thought that might be all right. A warm cell, a hot meal and a bed. Perhaps even someone named Bruno who I could snuggle with. Maybe they’d keep me a few days, or even send me to jail for breaking and entering. It had to be a better life than the one I was living.

  I sat in the chair and sipped what was left of my soft drink. After a short while I heard the sound of footsteps, and then I saw them. Two very big men coming toward me. They wore black suits that no doubt had been specially designed for them; you didn’t get those kind of suits off the rack for those kind of men. One of the men was about six-seven, broad shoulders, with very close-cropped reddish-blond hair and bronze skin. I had never seen skin quite that color before. Later, I saw his eyes were odd in that they were gray with flecks of what looked like bronze fragments in them. Strangest eyes I had ever seen. The other man wasn’t quite so tall, but like his counterpart he was broad shouldered and muscular, a more lithe muscularity than his partner. His hair was jet black and his eyes were as gray as gun metal. His tanned, handsome face was marked with numerous small white scars.

  They came in and stood looking at me, said not a word. I got up and went with them, walked down the long hall between them, feeling like an antelope between two lions. We turned a way I hadn’t been, and I saw there were clear, glass vats visible between the barrels, and there were odd, fleshy things floating in the vats, but I didn’t get too good a look because the men on either side of me took up my view.

  We came to a big door. The dark man slid it aside, and we went out of it. Outside a long black car was waiting. There was a man behind the wheel, short and squat, wearing a black chauffeur’s cap. He looked like one of those middle-list drawings from a chart of the evolution of man. Appeared as if he ought to be squatting in a cave chipping out flint arrow heads. He rolled down the window, looked at me, said, “I’m Bill Oldman. I will be your driver.”

  “All right,” I said. “Don’t they talk?”

  “When they take the urge,” he said.

  One of the men, the dark-haired one, got in the front passenger seat. He said something to the driver in an odd language that contained clicks, exhalation of breath, and a few words that sounded like a monkey hooting. The driver nodded.

  The bronze man sat in the back with me. He said in a voice as melodious as bird-song, “You will need to take a sedative.”

  “Now wait a minute—” I said. But I was too tired and too weak, and the man was incredibly strong. He stuck a hypodermic needle in my neck, and as the plunger went down, I was certain I was going to die, that I had been taken for body parts, or was being put to death by the vengeful owner of the warehouse, or at least by one of his henchmen. I don’t even think I had time to raise my hands. I know I couldn’t speak. My eyes began to close. The last thing I remember was the squat man driving us away into hot sunshine. The rain had passed but there were still clouds over my head.

  *

  The world crawled with fuzzy light. The light went from top to bottom in waves, and then from bottom to top. There was movement in the room, and there was sound. Footsteps. I felt like a wounded porpoise floating to the top of the sea. I had the sensation of tiny particles moving throughout my body, looking for a place to lie down.

  A blond nurse wearing blue and white smiled at me. She was pretty. I tried to smile back, but moving the corners of my mouth away from my teeth was just too large a job. She moved out of my view and then a man came into my sight. He had arrived without the sound of footsteps. He was either a very light stepper or my mind was only picking up a bit of this and a bit of that. He bent over me. He wasn’t as pretty as the nurse. He was what you would call roughly handsome with an emphasis on the rough. He wore a suit so dark it was the color of the end of time. He was lean and bony, had a long, long, crooked nose and hard gray eyes. His black hair was slicked back from his high forehead. Something about his face didn’t lend itself to smiling. In fact, there was a cruelness to it.

  “I’m the man you spoke to,” he said.

  I tried to call him a son-of-a-bitch, but I hadn’t the strength for it.

  “My name is Cranston,” he said. “You can call me Mr. Cranston.”

  I managed to make my top lip quiver, but that was it.

  “You called about a job. We have a job. It’s an unusual job, but then again, all our jobs are unusual. We like to choose people who don’t really have a lot of options. Desperate people. Sometimes the people we choose, or the ones who choose us, don’t live through the job. No one will know what happened to you. Someone might care, but no one will know. It will be as if you have fallen off the face of the earth. If you succeed, it could still be the same. You may never go back to the life you lived, not in any manner, shape, or form. It isn’t always that way, but frequently it is.”

  I didn’t have a life to go back to, so that part didn’t concern me, though the part about not surviving almost allowed me to speak. But not quite. Phlegm rose up in my throat, but no words. I was too weak to spit it out, so I had to swallow it. It was like trying to swallow a grapefruit.

  “If you don’t want the job, well, I have to say this. We have a man, the big bronze man who helped bring you here. He’s a doctor, and he can wipe your mind clean and set you down wherever we like. We can give you new memories. It might even be a good life. But you won’t be you, and you won’t remember any of this. I realize right now it’s a bit difficult to speak, so I’m going to leave you and let you think. There’s an IV in your arm, and there’s a drip feeding through it. It will put you asleep again. When you awake the next time, we will feed you, and it will begin. Or, we can make the other arrangements I mentioned.”

  My eye lids felt like falling boulders.

  He moved
away.

  I tried to keep my eyes open.

  I couldn’t.

  A mouth was close to mine. I could smell sweet perfume. The nurse. “I suggest you take whatever they offer,” she said. “By the way. My name is Jane.”

  Someone turned out the light. It might even have been the one in the room.

  *

  When I awoke the second time I felt less weak. I couldn’t get out of bed though. I had a leather band across my waist and my ankles were bound. I was propped up in bed and my hands were free and there was a tray in front of me. At first I thought I might make a show of things and toss it across the room, but the smell coming from it was divine. It was a big juicy steak with grilled vegetables and wonderful, aromatic seasoning. The pretty nurse, Jane, was sitting in a chair across the way. Sitting there in her white and blue dress and her white nurse cap, her long legs crossed. She was reading a magazine. She looked at me and smiled. I couldn’t help myself. I had the urge to smile back, and this time I was strong enough to do it. It was a thin smile, but it was friendly. It was hard to look at her and not be friendly.

  I ate my steak.

  No sooner had I finished up my meal than Cranston came in.

  The nurse came and took the tray away. Cranston pushed a chair on rollers next to the bed and sat down.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Enough to cuss you now,” I said. “All you had to do was ask me to come.”

  “We didn’t really want you to see the route. Did you know you slept in the car for two full days? Well, part of it was in an arranged house, but you slept the entire time. It took that long, with a stopover, to get here.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “This makes four days. We wanted you to get a deep rest. You needed it, and you will need it for what is in store, provided you choose to accept our employment.”

  “And if I don’t, then I get my brain sand papered?”