Byrd Man

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Last Killer Standing
Part I:
Missoura

"An aged man is but a paltry thing.
--W.B. Yeats

Missouri
March, 1873

Wilbur Helms gasped for air. He was running as fast as he could through the thickets and underbrush around him. A painful stitch in his right side felt like a knife to the ribs every time he moved. He was too old and too fat to keep running like this, but it was a matter of life and death that he get as far away as possible.

They came for him in the middle of the night, knocking in the rickety door of his small house. A wayward shot clipped Wilbur's ear and took a chunk of it off. He went for the derringer under his pillow and took enough potshots at his assailant to send them back out the door. Wilbur grabbed his bigger Colt, along with the scrap of paper he always had with him, and managed to slip out the back door and into the woods behind the house.

He tried to slow down his breathing. His rampant wheezing could be easily heard out here, making him an easy target for the man after him. Wilbur reached into his shirt and held the scrap of paper in his pudgy hands. The paper was why they were after him. For nearly ten years Wilbur had been living his life in fear of this moment, and now it was here. Based on his own estimates he had another quarter of a mile to get to the river that ran through his property. If he could ford it and get to the Samuelson's farm house a few miles after the river, then he could be safe. He just had to make himself move.

With a deep breath, Wilbur broke out of the underbrush and straight into the double barrel of a shotgun. He let out a small sound of surprise as the shotgun disintegrated his face and his dead body flopped to the ground. Spitting a wad of tobacco at his feet, the killer rifled trough the dead man's clothes until he pulled the scrap of paper from Wilbur's shirt. Tucking it into his own pocket, the killer stepped over Wilbur's dead body and whistled under his breath as he headed back to the house.

Central City, Missouri
April, 1873

Max Steiss snarled and raged against the bars of his jail cell. He cursed and spat through the bars at the two men impassively watching him from ten feet away. Jonah Hex had a smoldering cigar clamped between his teeth and a mocking smirk on his face. Beside him, US Marshal Jason Garrick shouted Steiss down with promises of violence upon his person. Steiss fumed and collapsed on the cell's small cot, his back to the two men.

"Thank you for bringing him in, Mr. Hex," said Garrick.

"Don't thank me," replied hex. "Just pay me."

"You'll have to see the US Attorney about that. The bounty on Steiss is what? Five thousand? An amount of money that size, I can't pay out for."

Hex looked at the marshal and sized him up. He was at least ten years older than Garrick. He knew the reason why a man as young as Garrick was the head marshal for this part of Missouri. He had the job forced upon him after a bushwhacker killed Garrick's boss six months earlier. Hex was in on chasing after the man for the bounty, but Garrick beat him to the draw and came back to Central City with the murderer tied to the back of his horse. It pissed Hex off something fierce to be denied that bounty, but he was okay with it in the end. Justice was something that Garrick needed to get for the dead marshal and the town and for himself. Hex never brought justice into his dealings. No, death and violence were enough for him.

"How far a ride is it to Jefferson City from here, a few days right?"

"Jeff City?" Garrick asked, scratching his chin. "Two days ride if you push it, why?"

Without a word, Hex ambled over to the office's far wall. Hanging on it were wanted posters of Missouri's and the country's most wanted. Hex dug through the different pictures until he found the one he wanted. It was a yellowing piece of paper that curled at the corners. On it was a drawing of a fat man with a double chin and a hook nose. Underneath the photo was the name Wilbur Helms and a price of two thousand dollars.

"Helms here was part of a gang of rough boys that operated out of Kansas. He and four other men have been on the lam for at least five years now. A federal judge in Lawrence is willing to pay full price on Helms and the rest of them. Only problem is I found Helms dead a week ago in Independence, least I think it was Helms. Shotgun blast to the face ruined what looks he had."

Reaching into his jacket, Hex produced wanted posters of two other men with black x's drawn across their faces with charcoal.

"Two other members of his gang I tracked last year in Kansas were both dead, both of them murdered by persons unknown."

Garrick let out a low whistle and walked to his desk. He leaned against it and looked at the scarred bounty hunter.

"Someone scooping you on the haul?"

"No. Whoever's killing 'em is leaving 'em behind. Can't claim a bounty without a body. The next member in their gang that's on my list is supposed to hang around Jeff City."

"Well, I'd hurry the hell up if I was you," Garrick said with a wink. "Get to Jeff City before you miss out on another payday."

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Part III

"Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."
― Charles Dickens

US Federal Penitentiary
Fishkill, NY
2005

The cacophony was near-deafening as the gate opened and Frank Castle was led through general population. Two guards flanked him on either side as they walked into the open area where five hundred men watched the Punisher join their ranks.

"Fuck you!" someone yelled.

"Gonna fuck you up, old man!"

There were more threats, each one more lewd than the last one. From a guard station, FBI agent James McCaleb watched the chaos with a frown. For the past twenty years McCaleb had been the Bureau's preeminent Punisher hunter. Nobody had done more to get inside Castle's mindframe and try to plan his next move.

After decades on the run, Castle had walked into a police department in Rye, New York a week ago and turned himself in. The move caused national news and left the big question of why. After decades of avoiding the law, why did he turn himself in? A lot of people in Quantico didn't care about the why, they were just glad it was over. Over McCaleb's protests, Castle had been transferred to the prison here in Fishkill to await trial.

McCaleb knew Castle's play in the prison. The fifty-five year old was coming back to where it all began to end it. In the prison's infirmary ward was eighty-eight year old Dominic Scargetti, the man whose crime family created the Punisher. McCaleb argued with his bosses that the old man was Castle's target. For whatever reason, he was coming here to finally get revenge on the man who took his family away from him.

The concerns were brushed away. Castle was old, the prison was secure, he'd have to get through so much to even get close to the infirmary that it was impossible. They didn't get it. In the years since 9/11, Frank Castle had been put on the backburner in favor of counter terrorism. Radical Islam was the threat. Meanwhile, Castle had probably killed more people than all the terrorist attacks in America combined. He was one of the most dangerous men in America, and now the FBI was giving him what he wanted.

McCaleb looked on a monitor and watched as Castle was led to an open cell. The electronic door slid shut and the guards walked away. Castle gripped the bars of his cell and looked around. His eyes found the camera McCaleb was watching from and stayed locked on it. After several long seconds of looking, Frank Castle actually smiled at the camera and winked.

----

Boston
Now

Special Agent Rachel Cole always had lunch at the diner across from the FBI building. Most of the other agents always had lunch together, either in pairs and trios or in groups, but she was always by herself. She was new to the office, having come from the Alabama field office just a month earlier, and was still finding her place. She was in the bank robbery unit -- Massachusetts had a very high number of bank robberies per year -- but what she really wanted was work in the crimes against person section. They were busy with the Bunker Hill Butcher, working with Washington and the Behavioral Analysis Unit to catch the guy. Rachel didn't consider herself the next Clarice Starling, but she wanted to catch serial killers. It was part of the reason she joined the Bureau.

"Hello, Rachel."

And old man slid into the booth across from her. He wore a black jacket and black work pants. His hair was grey and he was big and burly. He looked like an old fighter. She started to protest, but then she saw his eyes. They were green, an unnatural shade of emerald, and bright. Those eyes kept her transfixed and seated right where she was while he spoke.

"When you get back from lunch, you're going to have an idea concerning the Bunker Hill Butcher. The Bureau already knows that he's killing his victims somewhere else and then dumping them at the monument, but you're going to go through a map of Charlestown. You're going to look through the homes and apartments within sight of the monument and find this address --" he gave her the number and street "-- and you're going to find that an apartment on the third floor is rented by a man with two names, the lease is one name and the utility bill is in another, both names are nondescript and sound like aliases. You're going to find this suspicious and check out the apartment yourself. That's when you're going to find DNA evidence that will tie the apartment to the killings. And you're not going to remember this conversation at all. Understand?"

"Yes," she said evenly.

"Good," he said. He stood. "Enjoy your lunch, Special Agent Cole."

He walked out and Rachel remained motionless for a few seconds before blinking rapidly. She looked down at her food. She'd lost her train of thought. The Bunker Hill Butcher, that's right. The killer had taken at least five lives, maybe more. Always dropping them off at the monument... she wondered.

"Can I get my check?" she asked a passing waitress.

She had a thought. Something had clicked in her head. She stood up and threw a twenty dollar bill on the table and walked out before she could get her check. She had to get back to work.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Prologue:
Snowbound

"You don't start over. That's what it's about. Every step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it."
-- Cormac McCarthy

Colorado Territory
January, 1873

The four riders kept their horses in a straight line up the mountain pass. They kept their nags at a steady and brisk pace in order to cover as much ground as possible before it was too late. Although it was just after three in the afternoon gray clouds hung heavy in the sky, obscuring the sun behind them and making the chilly afternoon dip even lower. The clouds were snow clouds. A blizzard was on its way and they had to get to their destination.

Riding at the head of the four-man convoy was John Karnow. That wasn't his real name, just the name he was using in Colorado. Karnow and his gang were headed for a cabin near the mountain top. It wasn't stocked with much, which was why their saddlebags were loaded down with provisions to make it through until the spring. Karnow's saddle bags had more than canned food and salted pork in it. In two bags on both sides of the horse and one wrapped around the horn of his saddle were gold and greenbacks, the gang's hard-earned spoils after a robbery spree through Nebraska and Wyoming in the fall.

"We're almost there!" Karnow shouted back to his men. "Keep movin'! We gotta get there before the snow does!"

As if on cue, the first flurries of snow began to fall from the sky. Within a few minutes, a steady snowfall began to cover the ground. Karnow cursed and spurred his horse onwards up the pass. The behind him did likewise, one whipping the side of his horse with his reins.

"How much further?!" Joe McGruder yelled up at Karnow. "I can barely see in front of my face, Jimmy!"

"Just a bit further, dammit!" said Karnow. "Get yet goddamn horse movin' and we'll be there!"

While the band of outlaws continued their rapidly slowing journey through the pass, a voyeur watched from above. He was nestled in a hiding spot of foliage and snow scarcely a hundred yards away from Karnow and his gang. The watcher had been here for twelve hours, toughing out the cold and waiting for his quarry to arrive. For five months now the watcher traveled in the wake of Karnow's gang. He tracked them across Nebraska and Southern Wyoming and saw the destruction they had wrought first hand, from the bank teller with his throat slit in Lincoln to the burned down houses in Cheyenne. As the days grew shorter and the cold started coming in, the watcher made a gamble and headed to Colorado while the gang caused mayhem in Casper.

A man from Louisiana, a Cajun who knew Karnow as one John David Ferguson, told the watcher about the cabin in the Rockies. It was where he and Ferguson and three others went back in '69 after dynamiting a mail train in Utah, and then in '71 when they went on a spree through New Mexico and killed a half dozen souls. Anytime it got cold, Ferguson headed there to wait out the winter and hibernate. The Cajun told the watcher all this with tears in his eyes just before a Nebraska hangman tied the noose around his neck. He begged for clemency and promised he would show the watcher where the cabin was if he could be set free. The watcher's scarred face was as hard as stone as he shook his head and condemned the man to whatever waited for him in the next life.

From his hiding perch, the watcher clung tightly to the Spencer rifle in his glove-covered hands. Richard Adams, the slow-witted Arkansan with a penchant for raping female bank tellers, had trouble keeping up with the pack thanks to the increasing snowfall and a stubborn horse. The watcher had his first target.

The rifle cracked once. Adams' horse raised up and threw him to the ground. Adams coughed blood and held hard to the gaping wound in his chest while the panicked animal took off down the mountain in a frenzy. The three others looked around in confusion as the watcher worked the Spencer's action and loaded another round. Another rifle shot went into the side of Joe McGruder's head and exited out the other side, taking what little brains he had with it. He was dead before his carcass landed in the snow.

By now, Ferguson and his one remaining man had their guns out and were looking for the watcher. The heavy snow made it almost impossible for them to see his hunter's blind. The Spencer kicked as the watcher blew Chris McCall off his horse. The horses of the two dead men were panicking and Ferguson could barely control his own nag.

"WHERE EVER YOU ARE, YOU GODDAMN BUSHWACKER, YOU COME OUT AND FACE ME RIGHT NOW!"

With the confusion and violence of the last few seconds, Ferguson had lost where he was on the mountain. At the start of the ambush, the watcher was a hundred yards away. Now Ferguson was on top of him, far too close for the Spencer, but close enough for the big gun.

"Where are you?!"

"Right here, Ferguson."



"Draw, you bastard!"

The watcher rose from his hidden vantage point, snow and leaves falling off of him as he came out with the revolver aimed squarely at Ferguson's heart. He needed to keep the face intact. He was worth the same amount dead as alive, but that wouldn't be worth much if the watcher turned Ferguson's face into pulp.

Ferguson let out a surprised gasp at the sight of his face, a gasp that became a gurgle as the watcher put three shots into his chest, a tight grouping that made Ferguson's heart explode and killed him before he could raise his gun.

Slumping off his spooked horse, John Ferguson sprawled on the snowy ground and breathed his last breath as Jonah Hex stomped away to finally take the piss he had been holding in for hours.

Last Killer Standing

A Jonah Hex Yarn

The Fourth Horseman Came

I think it's because of how McGovern did that you had the rise of centerism and Clintonism in the Democrats. FDR and Woodrow Wilson were the only two really liberal/progressive democrats elected in the 20th century and their elections were due to flukes and disasters.

The Fourth Horseman Came

Ah, John Edwards. The poor son of a South Carolina millworker... who could also afford 200 haircuts and hush money to staff members and mistresses.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

\S/

Character Name: Superman

Character Proposal: Fuck you.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

I am surely sure. And don't call me Shirley.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

@The Spectre This is a WIP right?

@Lord Wraith

That Jonah Hex proposal isn't a work in progress. That much I know...

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Jonah Hex

^{"There is no God and we are his prophets." -- Cormac McCarthy}

^{Jonah Woodson Hex ♦ 1/9/1838 - 10/5/1904 (66) ♦ Male ♦ Neutral Good}

C O N C E P T A B S T R A C T:

I want to tell western stories set during the life of Jonah Hex. I've already got a few ideas I can use and run with.

N O T E S:

Nothing to add at the moment.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Part III:
Criminal Darwinism
"Criminal: a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation."
― Howard Scott

"This is it for me," Handy McKay said from the passenger seat of Parker's car. "This is my last job, Parker. I can't do this anymore."

Parker didn't respond. Parker and McKay had been working together off an on for nearly a decade and every job they worked together was always going to be Mckay's last. He was tired of the life, he couldn't keep taking the risk, it wasn't worth the headaches. But yet here he was, sitting int he car in the shadow of a housing project he was about to rob.

"Shit has just changed so much, Parker. What happened to the guys like us, huh? The strongarm guys and the yeggmen?"

"Dead, retired, or in jail," said Parker. "It's the crook retirement plan. Pick one of the three."

"Yep, and there aren't any new kids coming up to take their place. We're the last of a dying breed."

Parker just nodded. Handy was right about that. Thanks to computers and the internet, the way thieving was done was completely different than when Parker had first started robbing. Fifty years ago, guys like Parker and Handy were all over the place. Professional hijackers, safecrackers, highwaymen formed their own shadow working class across the country. Now? The best thief in the world was probably some fat teenager sitting in his underwear in Estonia, stealing credit card information by the hundreds.

In the past few years guys like Handy always asked themselves and Parker the question of why. Why did they still do it? Why run the risk when there were easier rackets out there where they could make just as much, if not more, money? Parker couldn't answer for guys like Handy, but he knew why he was still out here. It was because he was good at it. And he knew that if this were fifty years ago, he'd be considered the best thief in the world. If guys like Thomas Segel subscribed to a type of Economic Darwinism, then Parker was a full believer of Criminal Darwinism. He was the meanest, toughest, son of a bitch out here and he would rob and take whatever he wanted until he was stopped.

Down the block from where they sat was an open-air drug corner. They watched as a crew of three teenagers served customers who walked up on foot or who drove up in cars. In the half hour they'd been watching at least twenty people had come through to get their fix. Parker did the quick math in his head, but before he could get it out of his mouth Handy beat him to the punch:

"They probably clear close to five grand a day," he said. "And that's just one corner. Skeevers has all the drug corners on this side of town and runs product through all the housing projects."

"Skeevers has to be making at least twenty grand a day," said Parker. "All that money has to be collected from the corners to go somewhere. I'm betting it's the tower."

Thanks to Segel's connections, Parker and Handy had gotten a blueprint of the Finger Homes. The main building was a twelve story tower. Surrounding it were four low-rise housing complexes. All told there were two hundred units and apartments with which to hide drugs, money, and whatever else could be hidden.

"We need to get closer," Parker said as Handy lit up a cigarette. "We need to get into the project house."

"Good luck," said Handy, blowing smoke. "They'll see a big white guy like you coming a mile away. Even a brother like me, I'm not from the homes so they're going to be looking at me funny. I'm telling you, Parker, I grew up in the PJ's. Those corner boys are watching everything."

Parker scowled. How in the hell would they get in to do recon, much less to actually pull the job, if their every move was being watched? Parker was beginning to regret ever living Tampa for this shit show.

"We need a finger, that's for sure," said Handy. "Around these parts, that's going to be easy. We flash some cash at one of these small fish dealers and they'll sell out their mama. Still doesn't help us the day of. We need a way to get into the projects without anyone paying us attention."

A car zoomed down the street past Parker's parked car and came to a skidding stop beside the drug corner. The black car's light flashed blue as three plainclothes detectives jumped out and started to rush towards the fleeing drug dealers. Even the junkies and neighbors all started to make themselves scarce as another unmarked police car came into the area and joined the chase after the runners.

"What if we don't go in quiet," Parker said with a nod towards the cop cars. "What if we go in loud and bright, and doing so in a way to make people avoid us like the plague."

"Son of a bitch," Handy said with a grin. "And mamma always said I'd look good in uniform."