Hell's Highwaymen Read online

  Hell’s Highwaymen

  By

  Phillip D. Granath

  Contents

  Hell’s Highwaymen

  Contents

  A Desolate Plane

  The Trail of Regrets

  The Rose

  Tall Tales

  Gas and Go

  Hounds of Hell

  A Wonderland

  Exit Lane

  Frogger

  Unexpected Company

  In the Court of Lenny Two-Thumbs

  The Darkness

  Changes

  To Dream

  Struggles

  The City of Angels

  Fox and Hound

  Any port in a storm

  Old Haunts

  Split Rails

  The Lake

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2018 by Phillip D. Granath

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the expressed written permission of the author.

  Cover art provided by Shinji2602, c/o Fiverr.com.

  Acknowledgements

  I just wanted to thank Jeremy Wilson and Brian Sweeney for their time and input. These two helped me make Hell’s Highwaymen a reality.

  I of course also need to thank my family, especially my amazing wife Abby, for not only supporting me through this process, but for literally, supporting me and our family as I pursue my education and my dream. And while Gage is still at an age where he is more inclined to chew on books than open them, all of this would mean very little without him. I love you little man.

  A Desolate Plane

  The desolate plain looked as if stretched out for eternity, an endless waste of flat red rock. In the distance the horizon was marked by the faintest of shifts to a lighter shade of red; where a sky perpetually devoid of clouds and for that matter a sun, brushed against the stone.

  Lieutenant Cort Augustus lay on his belly at the edge of a small rise. His Union blues covered in the same layer of fine dust that seemed to permeate everything in this place. He watched the plain intently at times raising his spyglass to his eye. He learned long ago that the trick wasn’t to watch for the souls but to watch for the change that they wrought across the plain. The sound of scraping boots announced Oliver’s arrival a moment before the British Dragoon dropped to his stomach next to the Cavalryman.

  “What’s the word Leftenant?” he asked.

  Cort shook his head, “Nothing yet.”

  “Mind if I join you then?”

  “Fine by me. How are the rest of the boys doing?” Cort asked.

  “Same as always, complaining. Jamie is trying to talk the priest into a card game, and the heathen is, well, doing heathen things. Talking to the wind or some such bollix,” Oliver replied. Settling in the Dragoon removed his crested fur cap and laid it upon the ground next to him.

  “That thing is ridiculous,” Cort said.

  “You Colonials just can’t recognize a proper uniform,” said Oliver.

  “I told you before, we ain’t no damn colony, not anymore. We’ve been our own country for nearly a hundred years now. At least it had been a hundred years...”

  “Since you went and got yourself killed?” Oliver asked

  The pair lay in silence for a time longer, time not meaning what it used to in this place. It was the Dragoon that spotted the change first. He raised a hand and pointed to a spot just shy of the horizon.

  “There,” he said.

  Raising his spyglass, Cort followed Oliver’s gaze and the place came into view. A dark line now cut its way across the barren plain. It hadn’t existed a moment before but now formed as the men watched. Bit by bit, a few feet at a time the red rocky ground faded away and transforming into a paved street. The road some hopeless soul now walked through the afterlife.

  “Can you see them? How many are there?” Oliver asked.

  “No telling,” Cort replied. “But I don’t care if it’s one or a dozen, we’ll take them all. Get the men ready to move.”

  “Right O,” Oliver said.

  With that, the Dragoon slid back down the slope to alert the other riders. Cort continued to watch the new road for a few moments longer. A house suddenly came into being along its path, and he grinned. That was a good sign; perhaps several souls walked the road together. Their very presence was now reforming the land to fit their own personal versions of Hell.

  Cort turned and began to walk down the slope. As he moved, he reached up and tugged awkwardly at the yellow bandana around his neck and turned his head to the side with a sharp pop. He then pulled his Cavalry hat up from his back onto his head then adjusted the saber at his waist. He drew the heavy Colt from its holster and checked the heavy black powder revolver. As he reached the base of the hill, his ragtag group of highwaymen were doing the same. Checking the tools of their bloody trade, the means by which most of them had earned their ticket into this wasteland.

  Jamie Preston put up his deck of cards and was now carefully inspecting both of his Scofield revolvers. He carried the pistols in a pair of holsters slung low over each hip. He wore the same red double-breasted shirt, complete with it's three distinctly dark red stains across the back as he had the day he died. The day a group of Texas Rangers had caught up to him just outside of Austin. The 20-year-old blue-eyed and blonde-haired youth looked up and shot Cort his usual grin. The Cavalryman returned the grin and not for the first time had to remind himself that the young man had more than a dozen notches carved into the grips of his Scofield’s and that was before he had died.

  Father Callahan sat in the same spot where Cort had left him. The priest sat clutching his heavy leather-bound Bible in his lap, his lips moving as he read silently. The priest looked up and upon seeing Cort approach said.

  “So here we stand again my boy.’

  “So we are Padre, any words of wisdom before we go into battle?”

  “Yes, the same words as always. Don’t do this, ride away and leave these poor tortured souls to their fates,” the young priest said.

  “I’ll take that under-advisement Padre, and again, I’ll ignore it. Just as I’m sure you’ll forget your objections when it comes time to take your share of the spoils,” Cort replied.

  The young priest lowered his eyes in shame and Cort strode past him.

  “And don’t call me boy, I’m older than you by more than a decade,” Cort added

  “Mayhaps you should keep the preaching to yourself there, preacher man,” Jamie added with a chuckle.

  “Shut up Jamie, the Padre has his uses,” Cort snapped.

  The young gunfighter scowled at the grizzled cavalryman’s back. The priest glanced up from his Bible and just glimpsed the hate that boiled in Jamie’s eyes. It was just a matter of time before the two men came to blows; all of them knew it. Cort walked on, either oblivious to or ignoring the eyes that burned into his back. He stopped at the base of a large boulder and looking up he shouted.

  “Heathen, get your ass down here!”

  The Mongolian warrior sat motionless, staring into the distance as he often did. His wood and horn bow were laid out on the rock in front of him. He looked like a statue chiseled from the stone in his lacquered leather armor, but then he turned his head and slowly looked down at the cavalryman. The move gave Cort a clear view of right side of the warrior’s head, including the open bloody wound that had been his death.

  “Minii Ner Shinji!” the warrior shouted. />
  “Yeah, I know. You are Shinji. I’m Cort, and still, nobody gives a shit. Do yourself a favor, learn some fucking English. How long have you been in hell? Like a thousand years? Mongolian is not going to become popular again anytime soon!”

  “Bi oilgokhgüi baina!” Shinji shouted.

  “Again, nobody understands you or gives a shit! Just get your ass down here!”

  Oliver knelt near the base of the boulder and was driving a ramrod down his black powder cavalry carbine. Never one to miss an opportunity the dragoon spoke.

  “Just do yourself a favor Shinji, learn proper English. The Queen’s English, not the drivel this pack of colonial dogs speaks,” Oliver teased.

  The Dragoon’s remarks earned him a laugh from Jamie, a smile from the cavalryman and an odd look from Shinji. The priest looked up from his bible, and the scorn was plain on his face.

  “Spoken like a true slave to the crown. Jesus man, even here in death are you too blind to see it? Look around you; this is where that inbred pack of fools you call a monarchy has led you,” the priest said.

  In reply Oliver simply stood and cracked a wide grin, the Brit broke into song in his throaty baritone.

  “We'll still make them fear, and we'll still make them flee,

  And drub 'em on shore, as we've drubb'd 'em at sea;

  Then cheer up, my lads! with one heart let us sing:

  Our soldiers, our sailors, our statesmen, and Queen!”

  “Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men;

  We always are ready, steady, boys, steady!

  We'll fight, and we'll conquer again and again.”

  Jamie was smiling broadly and slapping one of the revolvers against his thigh as he tried to match the beat of the tune. Cort found himself grinning as well, but Hell had a way of sucking the joy from anything, and even Oliver’s lively song somehow seemed forced. The young priest simply shook his head and bent back down over his bible. Oliver started another verse, but Cort cut him off with a look and then shouted.

  “All right, gather round!”

  The small group of dead killers stood and gathered into a circle around the Lieutenant. Shinji slid down off the boulder and joined them.

  “You all know what to do; we’ve all done this plenty of times before. Best as I can tell we have at least two, maybe half a mile out. They are walking a real clear trail so they should be easy to find. We hit them fast and hard, let’s try to keep them together if we can this time. If there is enough, we take them on the spot. If not, scoop them up fast, and we’ll divide up the spoils later,” Cort said.

  “Jamie, you up for a ride through the canyon lands?” he asked.

  The young gunfighter’s grin vanished and he shook his head slowly in reply.

  “Damn it, Cort, I fucking hate those canyons,” Jamie replied.

  “I know you hate them, that’s why you can find them here, but they give us a good way out if we need it,” Cort paused as if considering and then added.

  “I’ll tell you what, if this raid goes well enough, well then after… we can head for The Rose,” the Cavalryman said reluctantly.

  Oliver’s face lit up, and he turned to look at Jamie, even the priest perked up at the words. Jamie shook his head slowly and finally relented.

  “Alright then,” he said quietly.

  “That’s the spirit young man,” Oliver said patting him on the back.

  “Erüül mendiin tölöö,” Shinji added.

  “All right, same as before. Olly, you’re on the right, Jamie the left. I’ll take the center, Padre you hold back a bit, you’re on body detail again. Shinji, I know you don’t understand a damn thing I’m saying, so you do…whatever,” Cort commanded.

  “Örshöögöörei?” the Mongolian replied.

  “Yeah, yeah, mount up!”

  The horses that the highwaymen rode waited silently in a small group nearby. As always, the beasts stood eerily still. They didn’t paw the ground or search for grass to nibble at or even swat their tails at flies. They were as dead as anything in the plane and mere shadows of their living counterparts. They stood silently and simply waited for their riders.

  Just looking at the beasts sent an unnerving shiver up Cort’s spine. Each man had arrived in this hellish plane in the saddle; just as each man’s weapons had been the tools of his damnation in life and were now carried into this place, just as the horses on which they had ridden. The four animals were nearly indistinguishable from one another; each was dusty gray with dull, lifeless black eyes. The only way to tell the beasts apart was by the saddle mounted on each. Jamie’s wore a well-tooled Western-style saddle, Oliver’s a high-backed saddle commonly used by the Dragoons, and Cort’s wore a standard union issued cavalry saddle. The oddest was by far the priest’s saddle, a small odd shaped thing that the Padre had once explained was intended for “competitive equestrian riding,” whatever that meant. Cort wasn’t exactly sure how a man of the cloth had earned his ticket to hell or why he had arrived here on horseback, but these days riders were few and far between.

  The fifth horse, if it could be called that stood much shorter than the rest. To Cort, the beast just seemed unnatural, with short, stocky legs and a wide chest. The animal's hide was thicker as well with longer and slightly curled hair. Shinji’s saddle was on oddly shaped thing more wood than leather, butCort had seen the warrior do some impressive things from it, including standing on the saddle while firing his bow at full gallop. The five dead killers mounted without another word, and a moment later the group left the cover of the ridge and rode out onto the dusty plane.

  Jerry trudged down the path reluctantly, the pain in his feet was well past just hurting and now bordered on excruitaing. He looked down at the expensive Italian wingtips, they had turned heads around the office, but the thin soles had never been intended for long treks across, well, wherever in the hell this was. The insurance adjuster stopped and brushed the dust from his faded blue suit again. He didn’t know where he was, nor could he say exactly how he had gotten here. He looked up at the sky, at the perpetual red of sunset and thought again how odd it seemed. His mind seemed fuzzy, and all he knew for certain was that he needed to keep moving. He could feel it in his chest, like the pull of some internal compass drawing him further along the path. So, Jerry stumbled forward placing one aching foot in front of another.

  Jerry wasn’t alone on the path; several others walked along it as well. One woman, in particular, was hard to ignore, though Jerry tried. She wore only a white petticoat and ran frantically up the path; she was crying and calling out a series of names. She would run ahead and rush into each house that appeared along the side the path. The houses were abandoned and decrepit looking things, all oddly similar in appearance. Each was surrounded by rotting picket fences with rusting bicycles and other assorted toys in each yard. None of that overly bothered Jerry; somewhere in the back of his head he considered that such a stretch of derelict properties would make the right person a sound real-estate investment. As Jerry looked up another house just came into view. How far did these houses go? Jerry wondered.

  “Got a light?” a voice asked.

  Startled Jerry spun on his heel, lifting his briefcase up protectively in front of him like a shield. He startled again when he saw its source. The man was black, blacker than any man that Jerry had ever seen. He was skinny, skinny to the point that his head seemed overly large. The man watched Jerry closely with wide, curious eyes. He was wearing a t-shirt in the colors of the Brazilian flag and it was stained with…blood?

  “Do you have a light?” the man asked again, speaking the words slowly this time.

  Jerry immediately felt guilty and embarrassed he lowered his briefcase, quickly looking around the path to see if anyone had seen his not so PC reaction. The black man seemed not to have noticed and plucked a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear. He stood silently waiting for Jerry to reply.

  “No, No, I don’t smoke,” Jerry said slowly.

  “No
?” the man asked.

  “No, no light…I’m, I’m sorry,” Jerry replied lamely.

  The black man’s eyes didn’t change, but his lips slid upward revealing a row of impossibly white teeth.

  “It’s okay bro,” the man said.

  The words were meant to be reassuring, but to Jerry, they somehow seemed more like a threat. The black man reached behind him, and Jerry instinctively stepped backward. The man was reaching for a weapon; somehow Jerry knew this. He raised the briefcase up again and held it between them, this time not afraid if anyone saw him. The man began to laugh in reply, and then a voice cut him off.

  “Track, track, hey you there!”

  Both Jerry and his soon to be attacker turned and looked back down the street. A man was striding toward them quickly at something between a run and a walk. He wore a bright orange vest and matching shorts. His forehead and wrists were both wrapped in white sweatbands that matched his sneakers.

  “Halloo there,” the runner called.

  “Hello,” the black man replied, and his smile somehow grew even wider.

  Jerry’s eyes danced wildly between the two men as the runner approached. The new arrival stopped just in front of the pair but was still running in place, his feet never stopping. Jerry could see that the man was much older than he would have first guessed and rail thin.

  “Say, either of you fellows noticed a mile marker nearby? I’ll be damned if I can find one and it is playing hell with my pace,” the runner asked between breaths.

  Jerry looked at the newcomer dumbfounded. Then, just to make the scene seem a bit more unreal, he noticed the runner’s right eye was full of blood. As the man jogged in place, a single bloody tear slid from the corner of his eye, and he quickly wiped it away with the sweatband on his wrist.

  “Also, if it’s not too much of a bother, can one of you tell me where we are? I seem, well, I seem to have somehow lost my way, somewhere between Devonshire and the East-end. Though the devil if I could tell you how,” he said with a distinctively British accent.