the man with the bandaged side was saying over his cracked mug of beer. “Not one fucking chance at all.” The beer looked like piss and no doubt tasted much like it. The gaudy around them was the sort of gaudy to serve beer like that. Which was to say, the Deathlands’ standard gaudy: dark, dank, low-ceilinged, reeking of spilled booze and vomit. It was the sort of place where one or two dozen lost souls gathered by the light of stinking lanterns fueled by river-fish oil or turpentine, and tossed back booze in hopes of getting drunk as quickly as possible. There was a reason why Snake Eye always paid the premium for booze from the bottle. He might not know where it really came from, but at least he could see what he was pouring in his shot glass. “You talking about life as a citizen in the Association,” Snake Eye said, sidling down the bar to where the man sat a little apart from what may have been companions, but were unlikely to be friends, “or did you have a specific incident in mind?”
