* * * * * *
I waited in the jail for close to an hour, until it got dark, his gun aimed towards the door as I sat in his chair. I was a patient man, but I needed to be on the road, and my time could be better spent than sitting in the tiniest shithole of a Sheriff’s office I’d ever seen.
I opened the door of the jail to find that night had indeed fallen and surprised I also found the esteemed Sheriff waiting for me outside, henchmen to each side with guns drawn.
“Nice to see ya awake, Mr. McKidrict,” said the Sheriff as he took a step forward. “I’ve been waiting for ya. Never did like the boy much… and now I’ve got two men to replace him. I reckon ya remember them?”
It was the two rednecks from the fight in the tavern, one Irishman and one enormous hillbilly, now standing like toy soldiers, straight as an arrow and lacking the stink of alcohol or any emotion.
When I first saw them in the bar, I didn’t give them a second thought. They were hooligans, not worth the time it’d take to stomp them. They were the kind that took up space in the world, never contributing and certainly never amounting to anything of value.
These men barely resembled the two. They stood without expression; their stares were dead, with not a hint of thought behind their eyes. It was as if they had lost the freewill that was given to them in birth.
I didn’t know how the Sheriff was doing it, there was something more going on in this town than I had realized. The bartender was right; I’d never seen a drunk tank like the one in this town.
The Sheriff held my gun and ordered his boys to holster theirs; they both did so willingly and stepped forward to fight me, their daggers glistening in the moonlight.
Even liquored up and full of narcotics, these lowlifes wouldn’t have managed to slow me down for more than a minute. Still, I had little time to spare and I wasn’t about to waste any more time dealing with them. It was the Sheriff that I wanted. Unlike these two shells, he knew exactly what he was doing.
Before they took another step I put them down with two bullets to the brain. They weren’t bad men, but they were in my way; and the latter never fared well. They were both rocked backwards and collapsed to the ground.
Two bullets down, that left one for the Sheriff. “Never bring a knife to a gunfight, Sheriff!”
“Now don’t think for a second that I won’t put one through your head too if your finger so much as twitches. Put my gun in my holster and take it off, nice and slow … we’re going to take our time with this.”
“So now we do this hard way?” the Sheriff asked. “Ya got a real twisted sense o’ morals, Horace.”
“That’s twice you’ve used my name,” I said, watching him lower my gun. “Now, how exactly do you know who I am?” You got someone else pulling the strings, I get that. What I don’t get is why anyone would give a shit about some inbred wannabe, playing Sheriff with a brain damaged deputy—.”
“You’re nothin’ but a tick,” he said, “feedin’ off the blood o’ hard workin’ people. I’m gonna enjoy this, reaper.”
I expected him to strike first, even gave him the opening he needed. I figured I might as well give him a running start, so to speak. What I didn’t expect, however, was he’d be concealing brass knuckles. The taste of blood had already reached my mouth by the time I hit the ground. The Sheriff started to rain down blows as he straddled me.
“One more for the good guys,” the Sheriff said as he licked some blood from his brass knuckles. “I’ll see you in Hell, you uncivilized piece of trash.”
With his back arched and fist raised high, the Sheriff prepared to crush my skull with one final blow, but a kick to his balls made him recoil in agony.
“Nothing but trash, isn’t that right, Sheriff?” I asked, slowly picking myself up and wiping the blood from my eyes.
I caught the gleam from the brass knuckles as Sheriff Madsen swung to strike me one more time. I sidestepped the blow and returned one of my own, hard into the solar plexus. He gasped for air frantically as I darted into the shadows, out of his line of sight. The Sheriff had done a number on me. One more slip and it’d be my last.
“Show yourself, reaper!” barked Sheriff Madsen. “I want to see the life flee from your eyes when I bash your goddamn skull in!”
“You’ve called me by name,” I said, stepping from the shadows. “You’ve called me by title. Explain to me just how you know who I am? What demon is it that whispers in your ear?”
“Fuck you,” the Sheriff said.
He took a jab at me, but I avoided it and took his legs out from under him. I stepped on his hand and wrapped my hand around his throat and dug in deep as he gasped for air, spittle running down his chin.
“How do you know my name?” I asked once more. “Tell me and I’ll make this quick.”
“I’m not tellin’ you shit,” he croaked. “If you’re gonna kill me, get on with it.”
“You’re not getting off that easy… believe me, Sheriff; I know pain.”
“You h-heard me,” the Sheriff stammered. “You can g-go screw y-yourself, reaper.”
“Relax Sheriff,” I said, “You’re going to live… both you and your good for nothing deputy.”
I struck him in the head with the butt end of the gun. He went out like a light and went limp under my grip. He wouldn’t to be bothering me anymore.
“You’re a lucky man, Sheriff,” I said, collecting my holstered gun. “Ten years ago I would’ve plugged all three of you before you got a chance to open your damned mouth. So yeah, you’re lucky that I’m getting soft.”
I looked down the dimly lit street and made sense of my path. It was a clear shot to the stables, but there was something I had to do first. It wasn’t for Gabriel or the boy that I stayed, but the crazy old geezer I made a promise to and I intended to see it through.
Honor is a fickle thing among men. For most, it’s a moral compass upon which they could judge, and be judged by others, a code most seemed to abide. But there was always differences between the codes of men, some so stained and twisted who’d see the world burn to make their dreams come true.
There weren’t many men in the world to stop them, but those of us that did, found we had to become like them to bring them down. For in the darkest depths where those vile creatures roam, they are most vulnerable.
It was a fine line in which I walked, and the harder I tried to be a better man, the less I became what it was that made me special in the first place. I was a cold-blooded killer, bred for battle with Hell’s most unholy of creatures, and I was good at it, at least I used to be.