Byrd Man

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Part IV

"In the fields the bodies burning, as the war machine keeps turning."
― Black Sabbath

Boston
Now

James McCaleb looked through the two-way mirror at Special Agent Rachel Cole. They put her in the room shortly after she went to Boston SAC McCray with an honest to god break in the Bunker Hill Butcher case, their first one since the whole nightmare started. Using legwork, or so she claimed, Cole had discovered an apartment in the Charlestown neighborhood the killer was using to kill his victims. A crime scene unit discovered DNA evidence matching four of the five victims and DNA from an unidentified person, presumably their killer.

"How you doing, Rachel?" McCaleb said as he came into the interrogation room. "I'm Special Agent in Charge James McCaleb."

"I know who you are," Cole said once McCaleb was sitting at the table across from you. "Head of the BAU, serial killer hunter."

"That's right,' McCaleb said with a nod. "I read your jacket, you know. You applied to come to the BAU but instead got sent packing to Alabama, how'd that make you feel?"

"Angry," Cole shrugged. "But I got over it. Now, why are you interrogating me instead of working the breakthrough?"

McCaleb smiled. She had a point and he tended to agree with her for the most part. He'd been at the Bureau for close to thirty-five years and had been chasing mass murderers and serial killers for most of that time. As part of his profiling training he had learned to read people pretty well. And he could tell that Rachel Cole had nothing to do with the serial killer.

"So, you had a hunch and played it out and it worked out," said McCaleb. "What else do you have for me?"

"Like what?"

"Like a profile," said McCaleb. "If you've been following this case on the sly, then you probably have an idea of a profile on our unsub. What have you got?"

"Well, for starters he's smart. But he probably has a job where he doesn't get a chance to show off his intellect. That job is probably something that lets him be out and about a lot, a chance to stalk his potential victims. He probably has a family, but they have no idea what he likes to do in his spare time."

McCaleb nodded thoughtfully. Those three observations fit with the BAU's profile of their unsub perfectly.

"We're thinking it might be a city employee," said McCaleb."

"That fits," she said with a nod. "Bureaucratic work. Maybe part of the sewage department, or maybe a trash worker.'

"Rachel," McCaleb finally said after a moment's silence. "How would you like to do something more than catch bank robbers?"

Saigon
1973

(Mood Music for this part)

The Carousel Club was the kind of place that gave the bars in Saigon a bad name. GIs downed drinks while Susie Q by CCR pounded from the speakers and half-naked Vietnamese women go-go danced on makeshift stages around the room. Even more scantily clad women walked through the room, flirting with GIs and reminding them that for a small price they were all theirs.

Frank Castle walked through the raucous crowd with a cigarette in his mouth. He wore a field jacket that hid the name CASTLE on the breast pocket of his Marine fatigues. He hoped nobody would see him or remember his face, but it was obvious the second he stepped in he was overthinking it. The men here were more focused on having a good time with the drinks and girls and not looking at yet another soldier.

Frank walked from the bar area into the backroom. It reeked of opium and piss. Soldiers were laid out on cots, some actually smoking opium while plenty more had medical tubes tied around their arms and hypodermic needles by their side. This was the side of the war nobody back home ever knew. The shit here was so bad that plenty of guys went running to opium and heroin to ease the pain. It was a form of escapism that was a lot more intense than the partying going on outside, but it was all the same. Pleasure -- be it sex or drugs or drinking -- took your mind off being in the bush and fighting this horrible war.

"You looking for something?"

A small Vietnamese man was at Frank's elbow. He flashed a row of yellow teeth at Frank.

"I Uncle Ace, and I fuck you up for right price."

Hoang Tich Tran, aka Uncle Ace Tran, was the owner of the Carousel Club. According to the government intelligence apparatus, he was also a Communist sympathizer who used his club to gather blackmail and intel for the North Vietnamese Army.

"I'm here for you," Frank said as he pulled out a pistol with a suppressor on it.

Uncle Ace's eyes got wide as Frank fired two shots into his head. The junkies around him stayed in outer space as Uncle Ace flopped to the floor and twitched as he died. Frank tucked the gun back into his jacket and calmly walked back into the bar and joined the party.

Boston
Now

Frank Castle looked down at Chris O'Keefe as the man begged for his life. He'd snatched O'Keefe off the street after the man left his job. He'd worked for Code Enforcement for the city of Boston and had access to the city's work trucks. He cruised around town all day on jobs, inspecting homes and picking out his next victims. Castle walked up behind O'Keefe, grabbed him by the armpits, and they disappeared from the street without anyone noticing. Now they were at deserted boat ramp near the harbor.

"Please," O'Keefe pleaded. "I've got a family."

Frank's eyes glowed emerald green as he heard music in his head, a song from a long time ago. Two lifetimes ago.

What goes up must come down
Spinnin' wheel got to go 'round

"What about all the women you've killed," Frank said coldly. "They had families too."

He held his hand out and O'Keefe reached for his throat. He gurgled and tried to fight whatever it was that was restricting his windpipe. Frank remembered the song from a seedy dive bar in Saigon. It struck a cord with him because it reminded him of Karma. Back then, he prescribed to what he called the Big Wheel Theory. Karma and justice was a big wheel that kept spinning. Sooner or later, it caught up with you. That's what the Punisher had been, and now what the Spectre was. He was the wheel incarnate, an unstoppable force that you could never stop or slow. In the end, the wheel always catches up and overcomes you.

"This is God's vengeance," Frank said, the Spectre raging inside of him. "And this is divine retribution."

Frank balled his hand into a fist. A loud crack echoed as O'Keefe's neckbones were snapped in two. He fell on to his side in a slump. Frank looked down at him. The Bunker Hill Butcher was dead by his hands. But hopefully he had led the FBI agents on a trail that would lead to his eventual discovery. In the end, the wheel had crushed Chris O'Keefe. Castle turned away from the body and started to walk away. There were others who needed God's vengeance.

The wheel had to keep turning.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

I'm not going into a Petty hole with you!

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Yer so bad.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

<Snipped quote by Byrd Man>

I doubt many others aside from us would understand that reference without the use of Google.

@Nexus Prime

Good.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

<Snipped quote by Byrd Man>

You can't insult genius. Don't be petty.

@Nexus Prime

I'm so petty I'm mentioned on the liner notes of Full Moon Fever.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

It was actually meant for Nexus but through accident became a diss towards you. Either or works for me.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Green just isn't your color, friend.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Last Killer Standing
Part II:
Washed in the Blood of the Lamb

"There are no second acts in American lives."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jefferson City, Missouri
1873

Reverend Timothy Partlow looked up from the pulpit at the sound of an opening door. The reverend almost recoiled at the sight of a tall, lanky man with a horrible scarred face stumbling through the nave towards him. He seemed to sway with each step, grasping on to the wooden pews for balance as he walked.

"There's no service at the moment, friend," Partlow said, stepping away from the pulpit and cautiously walking towards the man. "We've got one coming up this evening you're welcome to attend."

"Ain't here for no service, rev," the scarred man said with a drunken slur to his voice. "Need someone to witness to me. I need to get right with God."

A drunken man stumbling into the church was nothing new to Partlow. With a rowdy saloon down the street and an even rowdier cathouse beside it, men regularly came in to repent their wickedness. In the reverend's experience, every man succumbed to temptation, himself included. As willing as the spirit may be, the flesh was always weak. The feat was not exactly in avoiding temptation, but in asking for forgiveness once it had happened. What happened more often than not was they would soon leave after getting sober, never fully embracing God and going right back to their sinning.

"Come sit next to me on the pew, son. We'll talk."

The man reeked of liquor. Not just on his breath, but seemingly his whole body had been doused in it. Partlow could barely stand to sit just a few feet away from him on the pew. He noticed for the first time the man wore the gray of the Rebels, even though the war had been over for nearly ten years.

"What have you exactly done?"

"What haven't I done? Name the sin, rev, and I've done it. I've fornicated, fought, cursed God, and even killed many men."

Partlow gingerly placed a hand on the man's back in order to comfort him. He seemed genuinely remorseful, but he was convinced that had to be the hooch talking. This man had the look of a real gun thug, almost like the men Partlow knew from his past. If the sins were true, then Partlow had more in common with the drunk than the man realized.

"What's past is past, my friend. Wickedness may have been in your heart, but that wickedness can be driven out and replaced with the Lord. I speak from experience. In my youth, I battled my own demons before I let Christ into my heart. I was once a wicked man, but through His grace I have repented my ways. I was washed in the blood of the lamb and I became a different man."

"Have you really, rev?"

The drunk fixed his eyes on Partlow. The reverend found it hard to maintain eye contact with the man, especially with the scarred side of his face that made the right eye look bigger and unblinking.

"Changed, I mean," said the drunk. "I don't think it works like that. I had a man explain it to me like this one time: Our lives are a series of doors that lock behind us. We walk through a door and we can't go back. Soon or later we run out of doors to go through and we're left in a little room with the person we've become. We make our choices and we have to live with them. Now, the guy who told me that was coming down off a three-week opium high and I had just recently kicked six of his teeth out with my boot... but I think he was on to something. We are who we are and no amount of praying and weeping and gnashing of teeth can change that."

Partlow recoiled backwards at the man's words and at the fact that, slowly, is drunken slur had seemed to disappear.

"Like how you may be doing good here in Jeff City as Reverend Partlow, but saving all the souls here won't change the fact that you're really Timothy Perkins, and you are an evil bastard."

The reverend's blood seemed to run cold at the mention of that name he thought he'd left behind. He started to back away from the man, but before he could get too far away the man's strong hand found itself wrapped around Partlow's wrist.

"You tell your flock about what you did in Abilene? All the men you and your gang killed when that bank got robbed? What about those fires outside Wichita? All them women and kids that got caught in them burning houses? I bet them old ladies love hearing about the smell of burning human flesh and the way a human being screams while their lungs on fire. That gets them going, don't it?"

"NO! NO! NO! NO! That ain't me!"

Partlow struggled against the man's iron grip before he was pushed to the floor by the scarred man. He thrashed and spat and tried to fight back, but the man was too strong. The stranger jerked the preacher's hands behind his back and tied them together with a short length of rope before knotting it tight.

"I'd kill your sorry ass right now if I could. Unfortunately, the bounty stipulates you're wanted alive. That judge out in Kansas really wants to see you at the end of a rope."

"Whoever you are, you're mistaken! I'm a preacher, for God's sake!"

"Keep denying it and I'll cut out your tongue. You'll bleed out plenty, but I'll stop it before it gets too bad."

The reverend was brought to his feet by the bounty hunter. The scarred man's face was in a permanent sneer, but he felt that the man's face would look like that if he could make the face by choice.

"What I want to know is why is Bill DeVery killing the rest of your gang?"

Partlow blinked in surprise and looked at the bounty hunter.

"Bill?... I mean, who... is Bill?"

"Nice save there, rev, but it ain't gonna make a bit of difference. The rest of your boys -- Migs Malone, Swede Harden, Wilbur Helms -- all got gunned down by someone before I could collect the bounty on them. You and DeVery are the only two members of the gang still alive. With you acting all pious I imagine it's Billy boy doing the killing."

The reverend's heart raced. He was on the verge of hyperventilating, but he licked his dried and cracked lips before nodding.

"I... yes, I am Tim Perkins. I was Tim Perkins. All those things you said I did, I did. I was a monster... but I have changed my ways. I know why Bill is after me. Let me tell you my story and, after I've finished, you can decide if you'd rather take me in for the bounty... or make ten times more than what you would if I hang."

The bounty hunter snorted loud and long before he spat a wad of mucus on the church floor.

"Talk fast, rev. You're using up what little bit of patience I got."

---

Rockford, Illinois
1868

A pitch black engine steadily chugged and poured smoke from its stack as it roared down the rails. Connected to it were six cars that swayed with each dip and divergence on the tracks. The town of Rockford began to rapidly disappear behind it, giving way to the open country of Illinois. It was headed north towards the Wisconsin state line, the towns of Janesville and Madison before the big city of Milwaukee. That was its planned destination, anyway. The five men following the train had other plans.

They watched the moving train from a close hilltop with their horses hitched and waiting. The five men looked every bit like the roughnecks that they were, scraggly facial hair and dressed in dark clothing with bandannas hanging around their necks. One of the men watched the train’s movements with a looking glass in his hands while another stood next to a dynamite plunger.

“Alright,” Timothy Perkins said to the other men. “Mount up. Swede, you got about a minute until the train gets close enough to blow it.”

Swede Harden nodded and prepared to pull the plunger’s handle down while the other four mounted their horses. Perkins pulled his looking glass back out and watched the train approaching a bend.

“Now!”

Swede pushed down on the detonator, sending a electrical impulse a quarter of a mile away where three sticks of dynamite were wedged against the train tracks. The dynamite exploded just as the engine passed over it, sending the engine up ten feet into the air in a fireball of burning coal and twisted steel.

The fiery engine landed on its side and slid off the rails, twisting and dragging the rest of the train with it in a heap of battered boxcars.

“Let’s go,” said Perkins, slipping the bandanna up across the lower half of his face.

The five masked outlaws charged towards the wrecked train with guns drawn. Their intended target was the mail car three spots behind the engine. Part of its delivery in Janesville was payroll to the workers of the various factories and industries in the town, a cash sum totaling nearly twenty thousand dollars. The gang approached the overturned train car, quickly dismounted their horses and pulling their revolvers.

The mail car’s door swung open with a loud clatter. Two hands reached through the door and began to pull someone up through the door. As soon as the burly and mustached face of a man appeared through the hole, he was blasted through the head by Wilbur Helms’ big Smith & Wesson and fell back into the car, dead. Somewhere, someone moaned and someone else cried.

“Spread out along the train,” Perkins told the others. “Anybody even looks a bit like the law, gun ‘em down. Billy, you’re with me. We’re going into the mail car. “

Perkins and Bill DeVery climbed up across the car towards the open door where the marshal had attempted to come through. They jumped down through the hole into the capsized boxcar. It was a mess of scattered mail and twisted bodies. There were a lot of men on the floor, either unconscious or too hurt to put up a fight thanks to the crash. Perkins narrowed his eyes at the men. There were nearly a dozen in here. That was way too many for a simple mail run. Perkins found a dead man’s body and rifled through his jacket. He found a badge announcing the dead man as an agent of the United States Treasury.

“Bill,” he called over to DeVery. “Something’s not right here.”

“I think I found out what it is.”

Perkins looked over where DeVery had a very large trunk opened at his feet. The trunk was easily four feet across and two feet tall. The trunk had been knocked around in the crash, flying open and spilling large amounts of United States greenbacks across the floor. DeVery looked up from the cash and grinned at Perkins.

“It’s all twenties and hundreds. I think there’s at least three more of ‘em in the train.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Perkins said under his breath. “To hell with that payroll. Get that money back in the trunk and let’s find the others.”

---

“The Great Rockford Train Robbery,” Jonah Hex said mostly to himself. “That was y’all?”

“It was,” Timothy Perkins replied. “We found out later that all that money was on the train because it was being put into circulation and the old bills being brought back to the Mint. They had just dropped off one of those trunks at the Treasury field office in Chicago and were headed to Milwaukee to do the same. All told we took at least three million. We eventually gave up counting.”

“You got scared, didn’t you? That was a hell of a lot of money to take, nowhere near what you had planned.”

“We got spooked, yeah. This time we ripped off the federal government, not some wildcat bank or some penny-ante factory owner. It was a big crime that they wouldn’t stop trying to find the money or the robbers. Three million dollars. More money than anybody could spend in ten lifetimes. We took a small share of the haul and split it up, hid it, and went our separate ways.”

Perkins reached into his tunic and pulled out a scrap of paper. He held tightly to it as he looked at it.

“This—“ he held out the paper before pulling it back close to him. “—is part of a map to find the money. Upon our death, we would pass on our part of the map to the others. Last one left alive gets all the piece of the map and gets the money. In theory, it was a good plan…”

“But Bill got tired of waiting,” said Hex. “After just, what? Five years? Surprised y’all took this long to turn on each other.”

“I don’t want the money any longer, Mr. Hex,” said Perkins. “That is part of a past I wish to forget, it was a version of myself that no longer exists that did those things.”

“Well, tell that to DeVery when he shows up.”

“That will not stop Bill from killing me, if only to prevent me from coming back one day and killing him for the money… but what if I give my part of the map to you? You take out Bill, you get all five parts of the map, and get the money and I get to live in peace.”

Hex looked at the preacher. A line of perspiration ran across his hairline and beaded down his forehead. He looked at Hex with an almost fevered sense of optimism. Hex was about to reply when the doors to the church burst open.

The two men turned and saw the tall, meaty frame of Bill DeVery with a shotgun in his hands.

“Tim,” he called in a thick southern twang. “I come for ya!”

“Get down,” Hex growled, pushing Perkins to the floor and drawing one of his Colts from its hip holster.

The outlaw and bounty hunter opened fire upon each other simultaneously.

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

Part IV
Bad Boys

"No Justice, No Peace"
-- Traditional

Parker saw Grofield coming out the airport terminal and honked the horn of his car. He was dressed in jeans and a jacket. His straw blonde hair was styled in a thick mop over his head and he had a thick mustache the same shade as the hair on his head. Alan Grofield and Parker had worked together on many jobs over the years. Among the many recurring partners Parker had, Grofield was among the most frequent.

Unlike Parker, who considered thief as the closest thing he had to a job, Grofield was an actor first and a thief second. All the money he made from heists went to fund a theater troupe he and his wife ran somewhere out in the Midwest. The fact that Grofield kept having to come back to pull jobs was a pretty good indication of how successful the troupe was.

Next to Handy McKay, Parker worked with nobody better than Grofield. They complimented each other almost perfectly. Parker was rough around the edges while Grofield was all charm. Grofield could talk his way into a locked room while Parker would just opt to kick the lock in. Even in the looks department they were a ying and yang, Parker with his stern looks and Grofield looking like a young Robert Redford. Some wiseass working with the two of them on a job once called them Butch and Sundance in honor of the old western outlaws. Against Parker's wises, the nickname stuck.

"Parker," Grofield said as he got into the car with his bag. "What's it been, three years?"

Parker looked at him for a second before nodding. "You need to cut your hair."

"Wow... nice to see you too, buddy. Do you know that you're the closest thing to a best friend I have in the criminal underworld?"

Parker turned back at Grofield and looked at him silence for a moment before nodding again.

"Keep the mustache. It plays with what we're going to do."

---

Parker's hotel room served as the command center for the job. The far wall had the blueprints of the Finger Homes pinned to it. Alongside it were notations and observations written on sticky notes and attached to the wall. Along with Parker, Handy, and Grofield was another pro from out of state. Parker had never worked with Luis Ortega, but Handy vouched for him. In the few days he'd been part of their crew he seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders and that's all that mattered to Parker.

"Our intel comes courtesy of one Lil' Peanut," Handy said as he stood in front of the blueprint.

All four men were in the room. Parker and Ortega stood while Grofield sat on the bed. Three black uniforms were on the bed beside him. They weren't perfect copies of GCPD uniforms, but they would hold up for what they needed to do.

"Lil' Peanut is a dealer who works out the high-rise tower," said Handy. "And in exchange for a cut -- or so he thinks -- he laid out how Skeevers' system works. The man himself lives in an apartment on the top floor. 12D. His money is close by in apartment 12F, 12F is the clearinghouse for the whole projects. Skeevers has a crew in there counting all the money before it gets redistributed to him, the other dealers, and their supplier for more drugs. According to Peanut, someone from the high-rise goes through the projects and the drug corners twice at noon and midnight to collect the proceeds for the day. Most of these operations are damn near 24/7, so they get a nice chunk of change from every stop along the day."

Parker was glad for the daytime collection. The job was always planned as a daytime one for several reasons, the Bat among them, so it helped them out that if they hit in the middle of the afternoon the counting room would most likely be flush with the profits of the previous twelve hours.

"Where's the drugs?" Parker asked.

"That's a little bit different. They're still in the high-rise, but the stash is moved on a regular basis. The cash is up top and Skeevers knows nobody in Gotham would be crazy enough to take his money, but you can't trust a junkie so he moves it every few days to another location in the high-rise. According to Peanut, they just moved it to 5B. If we're going on this soon then 5B is still going to be the location."

"How are they going to react when we make our play?" Ortega asked. "Are they used to cops coming into the high-rise."

"Nope," said Parker. "Cops are always harassing the corners outside the projects, but they rarely go in. Which makes me think they might have someone on the payroll. That might be trouble if we don't move fast enough."

"So the action is this," said Handy. "We go in fast, get up to the twelfth floor, grab Skeevers and the cash, ride the elevator down to five and get the stash. Throw the cash and stash in the trunk with Skeevers in the backseat. And we deliver all three to our employer."

With a slight gift to Skeevers, Parker thought to himself. It was something that he hadn't discussed with anyone, but he was going to make the move himself just before the hand off to Segel and his heavies. The man had blackmailed and threatened Parker into doing this job. If Parker didn't put a stop to him, he would almost certainly try to do it again.

"Get a good night's sleep," Parker said. "We're meeting back here at ten sharp to get ready to go."

---

Parker looked at himself in the mirror. He wore a gray suit with a white shirt and black tie. His shoes and belt matched the color of his tie. The suit was off the rack, decent quality but something that a detective could afford. He had a glock in a holster on his hip and a fake badge tucked into the breast pocket of his sports coat.

A knock at the door drew him to it. When he opened it, Grofield was standing there. His hair was now in a buzzcut, but he had that thick mustache still. He wore the uniform of a GCPD patrol officer along with aviator sunglasses.

"Sir," he said evenly. "I need you to come with me downtown."

Parker smirked and looked over his shoulder. A replica GCPD patrol car was parked beside Parker's car. Again, it was a fake but high quality. With Segel bankrolling them they could afford the best of almost everything. The only way to get more authentic would have been to go out and steal a cop car.

Handy's van pulled up and he got out with Ortega. Both were wearing the same uniform as Grofield. The four men quickly got into the car. Grofield got behind the wheel while Parker took the shotgun seat. They pulled out of the hotel parking lot and drove towards the projects.

"The shotgun's in the trunk," said Grofield. "Handy, do you want to do the honors?"

"I certainly will," he said with a grin.

When they got two blocks away, Parker nodded.

"Grofield, light it up."

"With pleasure."

He flicked the lights and sirens and sped up. The car announced its presence to everyone as it sped into the housing project. Grofield came to a skidding stop right in front of the high-rise. The dealers and musclemen always hanging around the front entrance scattered as the four robbers jumped out the cop car. Parker, Grofield, and Ortega pulled their glocks while Handy pulled the shotgun out from the trunk.

"Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do," Grofield sang as the four men went through the door into the high-rise.

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 ♦ Chaotic Neutral}

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.