The teen starred back in confusion, and slowly his face shifted from one of hope to a look of pain. At that moment, a second face appeared leaning in over the priest’s shoulder. It was the homeless man Danny had seen when he first entered the church, his hair and beard were long, matted and dirty.
“Father I did it. The ambulance is on its way,” he said and then quietly added, “and the police.”
The priest didn’t look back his eyes stayed locked on Danny.
“Everything is going to be fine son. Help is on the way. Is there anyone we can call for you? Your parents perhaps?”
Danny looked away as fresh tears started to spill from his eyes. His parents hadn’t come for him, they hadn’t saved him, nothing was as it seemed. His eyes drifted down to the syringe still sticking from his arm and still half full of the dark liquefied heroin. For the first time, he felt as if the drug had failed him, that it had somehow betrayed him instead of taking away his pain. Now he would be dragged back kicking and screaming to his parents. They would stick him in a padded room where he would withdrawal, raving and screaming for days on end. That would be his life now, no freedom, no family, no drugs to take him away.
Somewhere in the back of Danny’s mind, a small voice reminded him of the inevitable lows that followed the drug’s soaring highs. He viciously pushed the thought away reveling in his own depression and guilt. He wondered what his parents would say when they are called and told that their only son was found getting high in a church. That he had nearly overdosed and when he was found he was writhing around on the floor soaked in his own piss. His eyes drifted back towards the syringe.
“Son? Son? Look at me please,” the priest pressed.
The man’s eyes now fell upon the needle for the first time, and he stared at the thing as if it were a serpent.
“There’s no point anymore. I’m sorry Father,” Danny mumbled.
The priest reached out to touch Danny’s shoulder just as the teen’s hand wrapped around the syringe.
“No!” the priest shouted.
Danny pressed down the plunger as far as it would go, injecting all of the remaining drugs into his veins. It was much more than Danny had ever done or had ever seen anyone do and he knew it was the last time he would ever need the heroin. Almost immediately his arm began to burn, and quickly the feeling spread throughout his body. The priest grabbed the teen by the shoulders and spun him around. With a quick tug, he yanked the syringe from Danny’s arm and tossed it aside in disgust.
“No, no damn it!” the priest screamed.
Danny was back in the sea, but this time it was in the midst of a violent thundering storm. The very first wave crashed over him and pushed him down below the surface.
“He’s dying, he’s dying Father! I’ve seen it before!” the homeless man shouted as he began to cry.
The cold waters swirled around Danny dragging him downward. He didn’t try to fight the current this time allowing it to pull him down away from the light. But on some instinctive level, his body still fought for life, his legs and arms kicked and thrashed disjointedly.
“Please god no!” the priest cried.
On the cold stone floor, the teen’s body thrashed violently racked by convulsions. The homeless man cradled Danny’s head trying to keep the boy’s head from bouncing off of the marble. Sirens wailed in the distance, but both men knew they would be too late. The homeless man looked up, his beard wet with tears and asked.
“Can’t you do anything Father?”
The priest shook his head in frustration as he watched the boy dying in front of him and felt helpless. Finally, he nodded and admitted sadly.
“I can save him.”
“What? Then do it!” the man shouted.
“Sit him up,” the priest directed.
Danny’s body had gone limp, but he was hoisted up into a sitting possession. The priest knelt in front of him and made the sign of the cross in the air between them. The bearded man realized what was happening and lowered his head to pray and to cry.
As Danny sank deeper into the dark waters, his eyes flickered open, and for a brief moment, he looked upward. On the floor of the church, his eyes opened as well. The teen tried to speak but only foam spilled from his lips.
“My son, do you wish forgiveness for your sins and transgressions against God?”
Danny looked around his eyes were wide, bloodshot and filled with pain. At that moment, the doors of the church were thrown open. A pair of paramedics rushed in pushing a gurney through the doors and behind them trailed his mother and father. His mother saw Danny and let out a terrible cry. The world slowed around them, and he watched as the paramedics and his parents approach slowed to a crawl.
“I’m sorry,” Danny choked through the foam, “forgive me.”
“Amen,” intoned the priest.
Then Danny’s body slipped down into the dark waters, and he was gone.
The Darkness
The mood in The Rose was somber. After the thing calling itself Paradox had left them their shock had quickly turned to anger, but as Paradox had predicted the rider’s options had been few and predictable. Run and try to hide from a being that knew all of the Hell-scapes they could conjure. Or try and kill the thing, a task that seemed impossible if the shootout in The Rose was any indication. The men were left with little option but to wait, drink and stew on their predicament.
Jerry sat quietly throughout the rider’s arguments, angry rants and hopeless plots. The only thing that he had discovered was that if he drank three of Al’s bloody shots in rapid succession, he could feel the alcohol’s warm buzz almost the entire time until the drinks disappeared and the world reset. If the rules of this place held true, then he should never build up a tolerance or so he hoped. But just like the highwaymen’s discussions Jerry’s drinking ultimately proved pointless.
Paradox’s return was just as sudden and unexpected as his departure. The man’s massive frame pushed through the saloon doors without preamble or warning.
“Gentleman! Your master has returned!” Paradox shouted opening his arms wide to encompass the room.
The outlaws were on their feet in an instant. Shot glasses fell from startled hands only to be replaced by pistols a heartbeat later as the room went silent.
“Now, now, is that any way to start your first day on the job?” the thing chided.
Cort’s eyes stayed locked on Paradox for a moment and then slid down until they came to rest on the heavy revolver in his hand. Reluctantly he holstered the pistol seemingly conceding defeat. Oliver shook his head and placed his black powder rifle down flat on the table. A moment later and Jamie lowered his Schofields but refused to holster them.
“So now that we are all friends again, let’s start building my new empire,” Paradox said with a grin rubbing his hands together.
The riders rode away from The Rose and into the desolation of the plain. Paradox stood on the steps of the saloon grinning broadly and waving goodbye like an anxious mother.
“I don’t get it,” Jamie complained.
“What, you’ve never been sent on an errand before?” Oliver mocked the gunslinger, but the big man’s jovial tone seemed forced.
“One man, he sends us after one fucking man?” Jamie continued.
“Perhaps this man is dangerous,” the priest offered.
“He’d have to be a regular Billy badass,” Jamie responded and then asked. “What do you think about all of this Cort?”
“I think we have our orders. I stopped trying to understand them a lifetime ago,” the Lieutenant replied.
“You think we can really find one soul out in all of this?” Oliver asked.
“Paradox seemed certain of it,” Cort replied.
Jerry remained quiet, but he shared the rider’s unease. Paradox’s instructions had been simple enough. Keep the incessant pull of the horizon at your right and ride until they come to a large building, the man he wanted would be inside. Find him and bring him back to The Rose,
back to the waiting Paradox. Now Jerry just wondered what the catch was. What made this task such a challenge? Why couldn’t Paradox capture one man if he was as powerful as he claimed? The riders rode on in silence each man lost in troubled thought each scanning the barren waste warily, but they didn’t have to ride for long.
When the building first appeared on the horizon, it started as a large brown stain against the red of the plain. As the riders closed on the structure it came into a focus; an aged and derelict looking warehouse. Every inch of the building was covered with rusting sheet metal the dark stain even spread to the hard ground around it. A single empty doorway was seemingly the buildings only point of entry. Cort stepped down for his horse, and the rest of the riders followed suit.
“It’s an odd-looking place,” Oliver commented.
“It’s a warehouse,” Jerry explained.
“Aren’t warehouse usually made out of wood?” Jamie asked.
“Ahhh no, not anymore,” Jerry replied.
“I don’t care what it’s made out of. Padre, you wait out here, keep an eye out. The rest of us are going in,” Cort commanded.
“Is that really necessary?” Father Callahan asked. “Paradox said we wouldn’t have any, demonic, troubles.”
“You’re the one who called him the Father of Lies. Either way, I’m not ready to take him at his word about anything just yet,” Cort replied.
The lieutenant drew his saber and stepped up to the darkened doorway. Jerry watched the cavalryman peer into the darkness for a moment and then turned and looked back directly at him.
“Jerry, come here,” he called.
Terrified but knowing better than to object Jerry jogged up to stand beside the waiting cavalryman.
“Get out that little match machine you have there,” Cort said.
It took Jerry a moment before he realized that Cort was referring to his lighter. He set his briefcase down on the ground, unlocked the case and retrieving the cheap lighter, holding it out for the cavalryman.
“Light it and then lead the way,” the big man said nodding towards the door.
Jerry’s mouth dropped open, and he remained standing there for a moment. The rest of the riders gathered around the doorway with weapons drawn waiting for him.
“Fuck my life,” Jerry mumbled under his breath.
“Whoever this guy is Paradox wants him alive,” Cort said not for the first time.
“We’ll that part should be pretty easy. Lucky for us nobody around here can stay dead for long,” Jamie said with a smirk.
“That means no feeding on him!” Cort shouted.
“Well that just seems like a waste,” Oliver grumbled.
The group of outlaws stepped through the doorway and into the darkness of hulking building. Jerry held out the small lighter in front of him and had to strike it three times before it would light. The orange flame flickered precariously lighting just a few feet in front of them. The dull light outlined rows and rows of rusting machinery.
“Move forward, the rest of you spread out,” the cavalryman said, gesturing with the tip of his saber.
Jerry crept forward holding the lighter high and for a moment considered the absurdity of the situation. Here he was leading the way through the darkest corners of hell in the services of what was almost certainly a demon while armed with only a Bic lighter and a briefcase. While every weapon that the group of outlaws possessed was at this moment pointed at his back.
Then something brushed against one of the rusted machines in the darkness to Jerry’s left. A split second later a crouching shape darted between two pieces of machinery. Cort turned and could just make out Oliver’s form silhouetted in the darkness. The Dragoon had heard the noise as well, with his carbine raised he carefully began to sneak forward through the shadows.
The cavalryman glanced around the dark room in a moment of uncertainty. One thing he had learned in the military was to never draw attention to oneself, while on the battlefield or otherwise. But if Oliver was going to have a chance to flank their quarry. Cort was going to need to do something to draw their targets attention while Oliver got into position. But at that moment Jerry took it upon himself to provide the distraction.
“Ahhhh, god damn it!” Jerry screamed.
The light immediately went out and the darkness returned with a fury. Instinctively, Cort dropped into a fighting stance holding his sword up at the ready, though it was too dark for him to even see the blade.
“What is? What happened?” he shouted.
“I burned my fucking hand, that thing got crazy hot!” Jerry’s voice blurted out of the darkness.
In reply somewhere to the far right of the warehouse Jamie laughed.
“Strike that light again damn you!” Cort commanded.
“I can’t! I dropped it!” Jerry shouted back.
Cort gritted his teeth in frustration and drew his pistol. He raised the black powder revolver towards the ceiling and fired. Immediately the room was filled with a deafening roar that reverberated throughout the steel building. It was accompanied by a fireball nearly a foot in diameter that flashed from the long barrel and filled the room with a lightning-like flash. A moment later when Jerry’s vision returned he found himself sitting in a small circle of sunlight. He peered upward following the beam of light to the freshly made hole Cort had shot into the ceiling.
“Jamie, aim for the roof!” Cort shouted.
One moment Jerry was sitting on the floor of a warehouse and the next he was inside of a thunderstorm as both Cort and Jamie simultaneously opened fire. The sound was unbelievable, and Jerry threw himself to the ground struck deaf by the sound and blind by the flashes of muzzle fire. As the outlaw’s bullets ripped through the sheet metal building, beam after beam of sunlight began to cut through the darkness. When the rider’s guns finally went silent the darkness of the warehouse was replaced by a dusky half-light.
The shadowy figure that was crouching amongst the rusting equipment realized the darkness was no longer concealing him turned to flee. He ran head first into Oliver as the British Dragoon stepped into his path, the young man was sent sprawling backward on to the floor.
“Easy now their Lad, don’t be doing anything foolish,” the big man cautioned.
Danny scrambled backward away from the man with the huge rifle until his shoulders struck one of the pieces of rusting machinery. He turned quickly and tried to slip away between two of the pieces of equipment only to find Shinji blocking his path. The Mongolian warrior looked down at the teen with his usual solemn unrelenting gaze. Danny was trapped with no way to escape and nowhere to run. Out of the dim light, other figures started to appear holding guns and oddly enough, swords?
“Who are you? Did my parents send you?” Danny stammered looking up at the shadowed faces.
“Oh look, he wants his mommy,” Jamie mocked.
“I’m not going back! I can’t go back!” the teen screamed.
“You’ll do as you're told,” Cort commanded. “I’m guessing if you would have done a bit more of that you wouldn’t have woken up this morning in Hell.”
“Hell? What?” Danny replied.
“It’s true kid. I didn’t want to believe it at first myself. But we’re all here because we fucked up our lives and then we died,” Jerry said joining the circle around Danny.
The boy looked around at the faces of the men standing over him trying to find some sign that this was all just a joke or some kind of elaborate Scared Straight bullshit. He looked for the barest curl of a smile or bit of stifled laughter but found only cold stares from dead eyes.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Oliver asked in a gentle tone.
For a moment, Danny remembered lying on his back on the floor of the church. The cold of the stone beneath him and the face of the priest hovering over him, begging him, pleading with him. The warmth of the heroin as it pumped through his veins. Danny reached down, and in the darkness, his hand found the needle still stuck in his arm.
“I have an Idea. Why don’t all of you, go to hell!” Danny said with a laugh.
Then he depressed the plunger on the syringe as far as it would go. The teen’s body stiffened for a moment and then released a long drawn out sigh before Danny went completely limp.
“Come on now, there will be no malingering here,” Oliver said.
The Brit stepped forward and began prodding the teen with the toe of his boot. But Danny made no response and simply slumped over awkwardly.
“Ahhh…I think he went and died on us Leftenant,” Oliver said in surprise.
“Well then the jokes on him. Pick him up, let’s move him out into the light,” Cort replied.
The big Dragoon knelt down and scooped up Danny’s body being careful not to touch his skin. The riders funneled out into the light of the desolate plain where Father Callahan waited. Oliver laid the teen out on the hard ground, and for the first time, the riders got a good look at the quarry the demon had sent them to hunt down. He was much too skinny perhaps bordering on malnourished. His eyes were ringed by dark circles, and both of his arms were a spider web of angry red punctures. A red necktie was still wrapped around one of his arms while just below it a large syringe was still stuck from one of his veins.
“What’s this now? Is this how he put himself to sleep then?” Oliver asked pointing to the needle.
Shinji reached down and awkwardly pulled the needle from the dead teen’s arm. He held it up to the light turning it over in his hands and then after a moment lifted it to his nose sniffing at it curiously.
“Well that sure would be handy,” Jamie said looking over the Mongol’s shoulder and then added. “Seems like the world keeps imagining up amazing new things every day!”
“They call it progress,” Oliver pointed out.
“That’s not progress!” Father Callahan said with anger.
The priest bent down and snatched the syringe away from Shinji.
“It’s called Heroin, and that would make this fool a Junkie,” the priest said and contemptuously tossed the syringe away.
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