Hell Is Empty (The Frontier Book 3)

by Travis E. Hughes

  They were out in full force in the early afternoon. He wondered if they’d started drinking. Ed’s red nose suggested so. He’d gone to gather liquid courage it would seem.

  “What’s up?” Talbert asked, parking the bike and chaining it to the post.

  “What’s up is you put a gun in my face,” Ed said. “And you’re holding a friend of ours in your jail. So there’s a lot up.”

  “First off, you’re friend Kidd Wylie isn’t in town right now,” Talbert said.

  “Where the hell is he then?” asked Ed.

  “Drago, you’re running with these dipshits here too, now?” Talbert asked, putting his boot on the stoop of the sheriff’s office and leaning his elbow on his thigh.

  “They sent me here. Said there was going to be some trouble,” Drago said, only to have Ed turn to him and shake his head. “They’re all connected.”

  There was a small warning in the words and Talbert understood them. The Red Scarves are a bigger organization than you think, being the message. He’d already figured that out though.

  The station’s doors swung open and out stepped Earl Wyatt with a shotgun in hand.

  “Easy, Wyatt,” Talbert said. “These guys don’t like it when you wave guns at them.”

  “Too bad there’s not an easier way to get their attention,” Wyatt said, keeping his gun trained on Ed. Up the street a group of half a dozen Red Scarves rounded the corner and crossed the road.

  “Why don’t you let the kid go and we’ll let you live today,” Ed said.

  “Why don’t you go get sober and let us do our job,” Wyatt said.

  “He’ll be released soon enough,” Roslyn said from behind a parked cart, gun aimed at the closest Red Scarf approaching up the street.

  “You going to lock us all up?” Ed asked, looking around at his gathering force. Roslyn counted ten so far. They were almost all accounted for. Maybe locking up ninety-percent of the gang would send a strong message. But Ed was right in his question.

  “Where you going to put us all?” Ed asked. “Assuming you manage to stun us all again.”

  “It’ll be tight, but Kidd’s cell will hold you all,” Talbert said, still leaning on his thigh. “Standing up. You’ll have to nap leaning against each other.”

  “Can’t imagine the smell after a couple days,” Wyatt said. “We’ll have to fumigate.”

  “Yeah,” Talbert agreed. “It’ll stink something awful. But if that’s what it comes to then…”

  The movement was fluid, the transition nearly impossible to detect, but Talbert’s back straightened as his gun emerged and fired simultaneously. The bolt hit Ed between the eyes, knocking him cleanly off his feet to land against the side of the building with a heavy thud, before sliding down it.

  “That’s the last time I stun one of you motherless pricks!” growled Talbert to the others who had yet to draw. Talbert held up his pistol and visibly switched it to lethal. “Now drag his ass home and this is the last time we discuss your interference with justice again. Got it?”

  “He’s not playing around, guys,” Drago said, taking one of Ed’s arms. Fred the Big Red grabbed the other and they carried the Purple Lord away. The rest of the Red Scarves followed.

  Roslyn trailed Talbert and Wyatt into the sheriff’s station and they secured the door. Talbert kept his eyes out the window.

  “All right,” Roslyn said. “We need to get Kidd back to Yanker.”

  “First light tomorrow,” Talbert said over his shoulder. “We travel light and swift.”

  “Okay,” Roslyn said, putting together the team in her head.

  “That’s the fundamental problem of not killing a few of them now and then,” said Talbert. “They don’t fear us.”

  “But they should respect us for not killing everyone,” Roslyn said, shaking her head. “We can’t say we represent the Avians and then turn around and kill our enemies just for being our enemies.”

  “Why not?” Talbert asked.

  “It’s hypocritical to say the least.”

  “When our lives are threatened it’s a matter of self defense,” Talbert said, shooting her his steely blues. Their intensity quieted her and she strolled back to the jail cell to tell Kidd Wylie to prepare to travel in the morning.

  But Roslyn’s transponder buzzed. It was Frank. She answered.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “You guys might want to come see this,” Frank said. “I’m in front of the Yellow Donkeyballs, over on F Street.”

  “What’s up?” asked Roslyn.

  “Wild Bull McQueen just rode into town with his traveling companions,” Frank said.

  “We don’t have an active warrant on him right now,” Roslyn said. There had been one a few years ago but that expired when no one wanted to take it on.

  “The woman he runs with, Jane, the little one with the mouth on her,” Frank said.

  “Yeah,” Roslyn said. She’d studied his file before. She remembered the report mentioned a couple of traveling companions. Jane Goodaire was her name. The other one, the guy, was named Chuck the Duck. Of all the outlaws in the galaxy, it could be argued that Wild Bull McQueen was the most famous. He’d been a security officer in the early days after the war on Og and Athena and then later in Griffin on Danaus. But he didn’t quite follow any known code and people began to fear him.

  “She’s organizing a stun duel for Wild Bull,” Frank explained.

  “With who?” Roslyn asked.

  “Who ever wants to step it up and has a stun gun,” Frank said.

  “Really?” Roslyn took a moment to let that sink in. She remembered Adriana had said that the stun duel was credited to her. Wild Bull McQueen had taken to stun dueling for money? It was a form of exhibition, she supposed.

  “But there’s an atmosphere down here, this afternoon,” Frank said. “We might want to keep our eyes on it. Jane is stirring people up.”

  “What about Chuck the Duck?” asked Roslyn when she arrived at Yellow Donkeyballs. The street had been blocked off. The sheriff’s department arrived with her and helped to organize the growing crowd.

  Roslyn recognized Wild Bull from his case file and his long red hair that reached down to the middle of his back was hard to miss. Taller than most men, he wore a red sash that he kept his guns tucked into, butts out to cross draw. His red mustache drooped down over his lips. Next to him stood a stocky man with greasy black hair, styled up into a tall ducktail. That had to be Chuck the Duck. He was speaking to Jia Fang, the owner of the Yellow Donkeyballs. Wild Bull signed autographs to people as they approached him.

  Adriana Johar approached with her crew and camera drones. Roslyn moved in closer to listen.

  “So when did you start stun dueling for sport?” asked Adriana.

  “Well, this will be my second fight,” Wild Bull said. His voice had the rasp of a whiskey drinker.

  “How did your first fight go?” asked Adriana.

  “Well, ma’am, for a very affordable price, I can upload the footage of it to you for broadcast,” Chuck the Duck said.

  Talbert stood back away from the crowd. His eyes were out for Red Scarves. They didn’t disappoint. He counted eight in the crowd. But they seemed more interested in Wild Bull than anything.

  “You ought to fight him, Devil Bill,” said a voice to his right. Talbert’s hand was on his gun, but he waited to draw.

  “I see you woke up,” Talbert said to Ed. Ed held his hands up. He had two black eyes. He was trailed by Fred the Big Red and Drago. Drago it would seem was moving up in the ranks.

  “I heard your threat after you shot me,” Ed said. ‘Drago told me.”

  “My promise, you mean,” Talbert said.

  “You’re the fastest gun I’ve ever seen,” Ed said. “I bet you could take Wild Bull McQueen in a fair fight.”

  “He ain’t lying, Bill,” Drago said. “I saw you beat Krave Allison to the draw that night back in the day. I was there. I’ll put money on you.”

  “Think of the fame y
ou’d get from this?” Ed said. “You want people to respect what you’re doing out here? Shit. I saw the news. You out draw Wild Bull McQueen and ain’t nobody going to challenge you to a fight ever again.”

  “Not a fair one, any way,” added Drago with a smile.

  “And if I lose?” Talbert said. “People will question if they can take me. I’ll be looking over my shoulder all the time. On top of which, people know who I am now.”

  “Look,” Ed said, holding out his hand. “I think we got off on he wrong foot. We both have a common interest in there being peace in the streets.”

  “What do you want from me?” Talbert asked, refusing to shake. Finally Ed dropped his hand and the grin faded from his face.

  “Well, I want peace for one,” Ed said, watching Jane Goodaire pass by.

  She wore a fringed jacket that seemed a few sizes too large and there was dirt on her nose and cheek. She could have been confused for a man, but her hairless face still had traces of femininity.

  “Which one of you mary lickfingers wants to try their mettle against the fastest gun in the galaxy?” she said in her croaky voice. “Come on. It’ll only hurt for a little while then you’ll be right as rain. Ten percent if you lose. Seventy-five if you win.”

  “You want peace but what was all that at the jail earlier?” Talbert asked.

  “Our boss wants Kidd Wylie free,” Ed sighed in a defeated tone. “It’s my ass if I don’t deliver that.”

  “Too bad for your ass, then,” Talbert said out of the side of his mouth. Head forward, he watched the proceedings unfold before them. Chuck the Duck marked a spot in the middle of the street with chalk. He then paced off twenty paces and chalked another spot. After that he hurried to the center stripe and counted twenty steps in the other direction, again putting down a line.

  Talbert felt a mournful pity for Wild Bull. Had he really come to this? Allan had always talked about finding Wild Bull and asking him to join them. He had been the original gunman, the first of the living legends. But his moral compass was even more questionable than Talbert’s. The Birds would never even consider letting Wild Bull McQueen on Shiva. He wasn’t a deranged killer like Krave Allison or Wes Hardy, but he found somewhere along the way that it was fairly easy to work both sides of line.

  He killed a deputy of his in Griffin was one story. No one knew why. But after that he’d given up security work all together. Some say he went back to Earth to milk his fame as a famous gunslinger for the talk show circuit. He killed a few along the way it was said. Usually he was in the right. But the new trend, supposedly started by Roslyn, had planted the idea that he could make money from stun dueling. It all felt cheap and sad.

  “I volunteer Devil Bill Talbert,” shouted Ed before Talbert realized what was happening. His own name sounded foreign to him briefly.

  “The hell you do,” Talbert snarled at him.

  “Sorry,” Ed said. “But we want to see a good fight. All these other peckerheads don’t stand a chance. But you…”

  “He’s right, Bill,” Drago said.

  “What’s that?” Jane came hurrying back through the crowd to them. “General Devil Bill Talbert’s among us?”

  “Ah shit,” whispered Talbert and rolled his eyes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “He’s over here,” Ed said, waving his hand in the air.

  “Fastest gun I’ve ever seen,” Drago said.

  “Which one’s Devil Bill?” asked Jane. She stood two feet away from him, but Talbert could smell the whiskey on her breath. Talbert sighed and dropped his head.

  “This is the one and only, Devil Bill Talbert,” Ed said, stepping back to give him space. People quieted around them. Then came murmurs and whispers behind cupped hands. Talbert kept his face expressionless, save the annoyance in his eyes.

  “Is that true?” Jane asked, stepping toward him to get a better look. The smell of ripe onions and seaweed matched the stale whiskey stench as she did. “The Devil Bill Talbert? The General?”

  “War’s been over a long time now,” Talbert said.

  “You look awful young to have been a general in the war,” Jane said, waving Chuck the Duck over to them.

  “Youngest general in modern history, ma’am,” Drago said with a proud expression.

  “Are you his manager?” asked Jane to Drago.

  “No, ma’am,” said Drago. “I used to work with Bill. We were once colleagues if you will.”

  “Call me ma’am one more time and see what happens!” shouted Jane, droplets of spittle spewing the air around her. Drago stepped back and held up his hands.

  “I have no interest in dueling Mr. McQueen,” Talbert said, drawing Jane’s attention back to him. She spun and swayed slightly, her eyes unfocused.

  “Devil Bill?” Chuck the Duck asked as he made his way through the crowd to them. “It is an honor to meet you, sir.”

  “Name’s just Bill or Talbert,” Talbert said gruffly.

  “Yeah, well, Devil Bill will sell way more tickets and promote much, much higher wagers,” said the Duck licking his lips. He spat a wad of Da’akleaf and looked around at the crowd.

  Talbert felt her before he glanced up to notice. Adriana Johar and her crew had turned all three drones on him.

  “Devil Bill Talbert?” Adriana said. “Now we know why you didn’t want to be on camera. People said you were dead.”

  “Okay,” the Duck said. “Here’s what I’m thinking. What time is it?” Duck pulled a watch out of his breast pocket. His suit had once been a nice tailored one, but he’d worn it down to fibers and threads. “Seventeen-fifteen. Okay. What time does the sun set here?”

  “The man asked a question!” shouted Jane to the crowd.

  “Uhm,” stammered a man. “Around nineteen-thirty, give or take.”

  “Two hours,” said the Duck, counting the crowd. “How many people live in this town?”

  “I don’t think anyone’s taken a census or anything, but there’s a lot,” said Drago.

  “Nice estimate, Drago,” said Roslyn moving around bodies to help negotiate for Talbert. She tried to think of something to interject. “Okay, well, if the man doesn’t want to participate then…”

  “Who the shit are you?” shouted Jane.

  “I’m Roslyn Fink. I run the Interstellar Peace Keepers agency. Technically we’re a detective agency also, but that’s a mouthful sometimes.”

  “What does that have to do with the price of cat shit?” Jane asked, almost yelling.

  “Bill Talbert is my employee,” Roslyn explained, pointing at Talbert with her forehead.

  “You’re the head of the Finx Crew,” said someone in the crowd.

  “No, that’s not our name,” Roslyn said loudly enough for everyone around them to hear. “We’re Interstellar Peace--”

  “Good for you,” Jane shouted.

  “Look,” the Duck interjected. “This is a big billing. We got lucky here. Let’s not rush this. How about we set the fight for tomorrow at high noon? Right here in front of the uh…” he looked up to read the sign. He laughed at the name. “Yellow Donkeyballs. Elvis, they’ve run out of names for things haven’t they?”

  “Afraid I have business to tend to tomorrow,” Talbert said. “Takes us out of town.”

  He noticed Roslyn’s expression and realized he’d just tipped the Red Scarves off as to when they planned to move Kidd Wylie to Yanker. He winced his apology.

  “Bull,” shouted the Duck, calling over the living legend. “Come meet Devil Bill.”

  Dogg Holly had impressed Talbert the same way Wild Bull had, only the circumstances were different enough that Talbert was able to hide being star struck better this time. That and Dogg never knew him as Devil Bill. There was something mutual between them.

  “I’ll be damned,” Wild Bull McQueen said as people moved aside for him. “General Devil Bill Talbert. What are the chances?”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. McQueen,” Talbert said, extending his hand. They shook, both apply
ing firm grips but neither trying to out-squeeze the other.

  “Call me Bull,” said the tall man.

  “Only if you call me Bill,” Talbert said.

  “Sounds fair,” Bull said and stroked his long mustache. “Well, what do you say we duel like proper gentlemen?”

  “Ain’t got a beef with you, Bull,” Talbert said.

  “Ain’t about all that. We’re more civilized now. This is about money,” Bull said and chuckled. He turned to face the hovering cameras, putting his arm around Talbert, who looked extremely uncomfortable.

  “This town is on fire,” the Duck said. “Let’s go some place more suited for negotiations. The street is no place to plan an event of this magnitude, gents.”

  “Find somebody else,” Talbert said.

  “Come on, Bill,” Bull said, pleading in his voice. “Let’s give these people what they want and at the end of the day walk away with pockets full of chips.”

  “This ain’t my scene,” Talbert said.

  “So you’re afraid?” Bull asked, loud enough for the crowd and cameras to hear. Adriana Johar leaned in for the answer.

  “Nope,” Talbert said. “That’s not what I said. I don’t want to do this, because this is beneath me. Should be beneath you, too.”

  The crowd collectively gasped and more whispers followed. Wild Bull blew a puff of air through his nostrils in way of a sad chuckle. He pulled his arm from around Talbert’s.

  “You think you’re better than Wild Bull McQueen?” asked the Duck in a theatric bravado. “How dare you?”

  “No, you know what I think?” Bull said. “I think you’re a little bitch. I think you earned your nickname because you were a coward during the war and to overcompensate for being a little coward bitch, you ordered thousands or was it millions of people to be killed.”

  Roslyn knew what Wild Bull was doing and she knew it would work. She felt Talbert’s back rising.