Making stool pigeons out of graycoat turnkeys, eagle-eyed children of squalor parading through the streets while businessmen haircuts, no faces, slide down the street, discussing weather patterns over Antarctica and calculating tips when traveling the French countryside. Could see one guy, had the look of a bald man in a fat man's body, he was talking through his four teeth and setting up poignant nostalgia traps to lure shoppers in.
Checking with the Violent Crimes Bureau in Eberhart, Anthony was able to calculate exactly what forces remained in the city working for his side. But even this data was fraudulent and inaccurate, couldn't be trusted farther than a horse shits on a Wednesday. Anthony was calculating the odds for and against the citizens of Eberhart, those huddled refugees of straight head trips left for dead in stinking carrion Valhalla. The results were astounding. In Eberhart, the chance of being killed by your best friend was 1 in 7, by a scorned lover was 2 in 3 and, most amazing of all, the chance of being hit by a train came to an even 3 in 7. Many of these deaths were likely at the hands of drunk policia on patrol, explained as a train collision though the body was dragged from the Canal in the dead of night while children threw firecrackers at a helpless kitten lodged in the final tree of Eberhart. The tree will be discussed later.
The propensity for death by train in the Frontier, where there was no rail traffic or even train tracks, was popular enough to spawn a magazine: One-Legged Dancing with Tom Jones. And the lurid details of the alleged train deaths were reported in a neo-noir, postmodern style reminiscent of Hemingway meets Bret Easton Ellis. Included here is one of the top stories from the bi-monthly publication:
Quentin Brownshoes Everston, the last rolling drunk of the Eld stock, was found to be raving psychotic in public restrooms at an upscale mercenary supply shop. Shopkeeper Joe "the Butch" Berkowski relates that Brownshoes walked in casually wearing his usual senseless attire and sporting a lifted pocket watch that he exposed to young boys and girls with the startling missive, "This bastard will tell you when you're going to die, you bastard." He carried with him a duffel bag that was later found to be full of trash, part of some immense recycling ring that has spread throughout the Frontier and is still largely misunderstood by law enforcement. He made his way quickly to the bathroom and soon his foul smell was emptying the whole store.
When Berkowski instructed Brownshoes to buy something or ship off, Brownshoes made an anti-semitic remark (believed to be directed at himself; he is known to have converted years ago to participate in a green card sting) and then calmly withdrew a match and lit himself on fire. He raised one hand in the air and then, according to eyewitness A.J. Whitney, he offered his body to McDonald's as a peace offering, referring of course to the infamous decade of litigation caused by an error on a McDonald's drive-thru menu. Just as the fire reached the remaining strands of Brownshoes' hair, his artificial heart exploded and showered all in the store with shrapnel. Whitney, a licensed marmoset, proclaimed it the most frightening ordeal he's ever experienced outside of a White Castle.
"I'll never go back there again," Whitney explained. "There's a sense of decency missing in this society."
Asked what he planned to do now that his shop has been the target of some bizarre terrorist act, Berkowski replied heartily, "We're going to diversify and re-prioritize. If we don't go on with our lives, the terrorists have already won." Indeed they have, old chum. Indeed they have.
The article is intercepted here by a rogue advertisement for a pussy shack just outside of Eberhart in the lawless north wilds where coyotes are fond of burying babies while the parents participate in orgies. As Stevenson explained to Kell the day he arrived in Eberhart, "Don't let your prick write a check because he can't see what he's writing anyway." Needless to say, the only thing that held off Kell's bloodlust at this piece of advice was Stevenson's steady supply of Baroline. Now moving into his second day without it, Kell's organs are beginning to liquefy and he's already shit out his appendix and the shell of his spleen. Baroline lives on blood inside the body and the spleen was emptied as an emergency measure for survival. It is just a matter of time before Kell's circulatory system is completely co-opted to sustain the Baroline kick. Stevenson calls this, the final phase of the Baroline cycle, "the chickens coming home to eat the roosters."