Hell's Highwaymen

by Phillip Granath

  He reached out and gently put a hand on her shoulder. Rachel shuddered once trying to fight back the tears, and at that, he wrapped her up in his arms. Her head found a place between his neck and shoulder and once there she began to cry softly. It occurred to him at that moment that this was the first time he had ever touched her.

  “What happened?” he asked, “I thought you went to Colorado?”

  Rachel took a few shuddering breaths and whispered into his shoulder, “I did, I was.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Rachel looked up at him then, her eyes puffy and red.

  “My mother called. My parents…they’re…they’re extending their trip. They’re going to, to spend the holidays in Tuscany with friends,” she whispered.

  “With friends?” Jerry asked in confusion.

  Rachel nodded into his shoulder and sobbed, “I was alone, I didn’t want to be alone…I didn’t know where else to go.”

  Rachel buried her head into his shoulder and quietly began to sob again. Jerry just held her not sure what else he could do. Another student came down the hall carefully balancing a pair of pizza boxes. He awkwardly navigated his way around the bags in the hallway and the couple, pausing just briefly to give Jerry a toothy grin.

  “Well, uhh…maybe we should go inside then,” Jerry offered lamely.

  Rachel caught her breath and nodded again allowing Jerry to usher her inside while he wrestled with her luggage. Once they were inside the small dorm room Jerry was immediately embarrassed, the place was a mess. The bunk bed dominated one side of the room, and within hours of his roommate’s departure Jerry had taken the space over, and Jerry’s dirty laundry now covered Marty’s bunk. Rachel rubbed her eyes and looked around for a moment trying to decide where to sit. She finally settled on Jerry’s bottom bunk and pulling back the snarled blankets cleared a place for her to sit. But as she sat she found she was too tall to sit upright, and she was left to awkwardly lean back fighting to find a position that at least looked casual.

  Jerry just stood watching his guest and couldn’t help but smile. She was trying so hard to regain her composure after breaking down so completely. This woman was a fighter he realized, and for a moment the thought swelled him with a sense of pride, and he couldn’t help but smile. She looked up seeing his grin, and the pair shared a quick laugh. It was the kind of laugh that should have been awkward, but at that moment it seemed the most genuine thing Jerry had ever heard. She reached out to him and took his hand and just held it for a moment.

  “I’m sorry, I know we don’t even really know each other…” Rachel began, but Jerry cut her off.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said honestly.

  Rachel smiled again and then looking around the room asked, “What were you going to do, for Christmas I mean?”

  Jerry followed her gaze around the small space. He had planned long hours of intense study fueled by takeout food and broken up by the occasional marathon sessions of video games. That idea now seemed sad, perhaps even a bit embarrassing with Rachel here.

  “What about your family?” she asked.

  “My...well my parents…they died a few years ago. I just have my Grams now,” Jerry admitted awkwardly.

  “Didn’t she want to see you for the holidays?”

  “Well yeah, but I can’t afford to just fly home,” Jerry admitted.

  “Where is home?”

  “Menomonee Falls, it’s just outside of Milwaukee,” he said.

  “Seriously? Why don’t you just rent a car? Isn't that like a 5-hour drive tops,” Rachel asked.

  “I, I can’t just rent a car and besides I have plenty to work on right here,” Jerry said, perhaps a bit too defensively.

  Rachel looked around the room again and just nodded her head. Both of them were quiet for a moment, and then she spoke.

  “When I was little my family used to spend the holidays in a new place every year. My dad would say that he did it to teach me about the world, but that wasn’t why we went. We did it because my mother is an aging trophy wife and each year that goes by reminds her of how much older she is. She likes to spend the holidays abroad because she can just think of it just as another vacation and not admit to herself that she is a year older.”

  “Damn, first world problems,” Jerry said before he could stop himself.

  Rachel turned to face him, her eyes were still red from crying, but they held an edge of strength.

  “Make fun of me if you want. Your mother is dead,” Rachel paused taking a breath and then continued, “but I’m sure she would have given anything to have one more Christmas with you. My mother doesn’t want to see me because she can’t come to grips with the fact that she has a daughter old enough to be in college.”

  Rachel stood and stepped in front of him, tears beginning to roll down her face again.

  “You have someone at home, someone that wants to see you? Go and see them while you still can Jerry. What the fuck are you still doing here?”

  It was perhaps the first time he had ever seen her angry. She went to push past him heading for the door, but Jerry grabbed her hand before she reached it.

  “Come with me,” he said quickly.

  “Why?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Because I want you to meet my family,” he replied honestly.

  Though Rachel had offered to pay, Jerry refused to allow her to rent a car. Instead, he borrowed his roommate’s Jeep. Marty had purchased the “Brown Bomber” for $300 and a case of beer at the start of the school year from a graduating senior. Neither he or Marty had ever taken the ’85 Jeep Grand Wagoneer any further than the Walmart out on route 10, but the tires were good, or at least good enough and the tags had another six months before they expired. Jerry was even fairly certain that Marty had put the vehicle on his insurance or at least his parent’s insurance.

  An hour later Rachel and Jerry were on the road and headed North. While Jerry refused to allow Rachel to rent a car, he relented when it came to paying for gas. She also bought a pair of tall coffees and a blanket in their school’s colors. They had discovered rather quickly that the Waggoner's heater couldn’t keep up with the dropping temperatures outside and Rachel leaned against Jerry as he drove, wrapping the blanket around both of them. Jerry found himself grinning like a fool as he drove them North through a lightly falling snow. Three hours later would find them North of Chicago, in one of the worst snowstorms that the state had seen in a decade, a storm that would change both of their lives.

  “What the fuck is that?” Cort shouted.

  Ahead of the fleeing horseman, a gray storm cloud had formed on the horizon. The wall of clouds was quickly expanding and rolling across the plain as if eager to swallow them. A gust of freezing wind whipped out of the mass of rolling clouds, the cold air stinging the rider’s eyes and burning their lungs.

  “Who did that?” Cort demanded.

  “That would-be Jerry’s doing,” Father Callahan volunteered.

  The Lieutenant slowed his running horse just enough to fall back and ride next to Jerry and the Priest.

  “Greenhorn, what in the hell do you think you're doing?”

  “I’m, well, I’m trying to help!” Jerry shouted back defensively.

  “You have no idea what you just called up, do you?”

  “It’s a snowstorm from…”

  “Wrong, you idiot! It was a snowstorm when you were alive. Here it’s an even more hellish version of your storm. This place twists everything, haven’t you figure that out yet? We have no idea what’s waiting for us in there. The only thing for certain is that it will be worse than whatever you experienced before,” Cort shouted.

  Jerry’s anger touched him then; perhaps it was his memories of Rachel or the storm from his past that was looming ahead. The fact that a pack of demons was chasing them couldn’t have helped either, and Jerry shouted back at the wounded Cavalryman.

  “You may not have noticed, but we have run right the fuck out of options. T
he way I see it, we can either stay out here and let those things chew us to pieces, or we can take our chances in the storm.”

  Cort stared back at Jerry, his eyes filled with anger. He reached out for the Insurance adjuster with his burned arm and immediately pulled back as the pain struck him. He gripped the arm back to his chest and for a moment looked as if he could pass out. Cort took a deep breath and then looked back at their pursuers, Jerry followed his gaze. The fiery stallion was gaining on them again, eating up the distance between them at a terrifying rate. The toad thing had rejoined the chase as well. Jerry watched as it made an impossibly far leap, still farther back than the stallion but eating up the gap in larger chunks. Cort turned to look at Jerry again for a moment as if considering something.

  “What have we got to lose?” Jerry asked.

  “All right,” Cort said relenting and then shouted, “Jerry and the Padre will take the lead! Everyone else fall in!”

  With that, the priest kicked the horse to the head of the column, and the rest of the fleeing party fell into line behind them.

  “I hope you’re right about this!” the Priest said.

  Jerry tried to respond, but at that moment they were swallowed by the wall of clouds. The wind was immediate and intense as if he had thrown open the exit door of an Airliner in mid-flight. The ferocity of the wind ripped a curse right from Jerry’s lips, and he lowered his head thankful that he could use the young priest as a windbreak. For his part, Father Callahan lowered his head and wrapped one arm up to cover his face as best as he could. The priest was forced to slow their mount as neither rider nor beast could see more than a few feet in front of them.

  “We have to keep moving!” Jerry shouted.

  In the span of a few strides, the sound of the horse’s steps changed as the hard-red rock beneath its hooves became snow-covered asphalt. Jerry looked down and found the world now covered with a nearly a foot of snow, but just as Cort had promised even the snow here was tainted. Instead of a pristine white, the fresh snowfall here was a dirty gray looking more like ash than snow. He caught a handful of the odd colored snow in his hand and discovered a few things. First, it didn’t melt against his skin and second that it had grown too dark to see the flakes.

  Jerry looked up squinting against the swirling wind and found that the cloud-choked sky was now as dark as night. After the seemingly endless cycle of red skies out on the plain the darkness should have been a welcome change, but to Jerry, it now seemed ominous. He began to wonder if this truly had been their only option or if he had made a terrible mistake.

  Jerry turned then looking over his shoulder and could just see a dark shape that was the Lieutenant’s horse behind them. The rest of the highwaymen were lost from sight completely, and Jerry could only hope that they were all staying in sight of one another. A long low shape emerged from the swirling snows at their right, and it took him a moment to realize it was a guardrail. Then a car partially buried by the windblown snow came into view. Beyond it another vehicle appeared, bumper to bumper and the first in a long line of snowbound vehicles.

  Father Callahan shouted something and was pointing to their left. Jerry looked, and as he had expected a similar line of seemingly abandoned vehicles had formed there and beyond them in the next lane over as well. This section of freeway was a frozen parking lot, not much different than the one Jerry had known in life.

  “Between then, keep moving!” he shouted pointing ahead.

  The priest nodded and guided the horse into the snowy canyon that had formed between the lanes of snowbound vehicles. Behind them, Cort paused before entering the narrow channel ensuring the rest of the riders were still with them. Shinji rode out of the storm at a steady trot. The warrior stood tall in the saddle making no move to try and block the freezing wind. The Mongolian saw the Lieutenant and smiled as if he enjoyed the change of weather no matter how extreme it was.

  “Keep moving you idiot!” Cort shouted as Shinji trotted into the snowy canyon.

  Oliver came next with his hand raised trying to hold his fur-lined cap in place.

  “Where is Jamie?” Cort demanded.

  Oliver thumbed over his shoulder back into the storm behind him and then rode past him. Cort peered into the swirling snow and Jamie emerged a moment later. The gunfighter’s wounds had healed it seemed but as he neared Cort could see that it had taken its toll. Even in the darkness, the young man looked pale. Jamie pulled his horse to a stop upon seeing Cort.

  “What in the hell? I wake up, and you’ve lead us to the god damned North pole!” Jamie shouted.

  The gunfighter had both of his arms wrapped around his body trying to stop himself from shivering.

  “You’re right, next time we’ll leave you for the beasties. Now get your ass moving!”

  Jamie opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by a sound that came out of the storm behind him. It was something like a muffled scream, and suddenly Jamie found himself at a loss for words. The gunfighter kicked his horse back into motion and entered the snowy gap. Cort gave the swirling snows behind them one more apprehensive glance and then turned his horse to follow after him.

  At the head of the fleeing troop of highwaymen, Jerry and the priest pushed down the snowy canyon through knee deep snow. The snowbound vehicles on either side of them managed to block out some of the wind allowing the men to converse at something just short of a shout.

  “How far will this go on?” the priest demanded.

  “I don’t know this is so much worse than the real thing. We were on a two-lane highway, not an eight or whatever in the hell this is,” replied Jerry gesturing to their right at the seemingly endless lanes of cars.

  “And the freeway wasn’t raised,” he added.

  Jerry and the priest both turned to the left, looking down a narrow gap between two buried vehicles the guardrail was barely visible again. Beyond it in the gloom Jerry could see the guard railing of the opposing freeway, an eight-foot gap separated the two, and the space between them held only darkness. Somehow Jerry knew that here, in this place, a fall like that would last forever.

  The pair rode further down the line of abandoned cars when a glint of red steel caught Jerry’s eye. He took a quick breath looking away and then turned and looked back again not believing his eyes. It was a red delivery van buried in the snow, the one from that day. He blinked again as if trying to wipe the images from his eyes. Of course, it would be here he realized, why wouldn’t it be?

  He turned back to his right and looked ahead at the line of buried cars. Sticking from the snow on one of the formless drifts was a shiny chrome spotlight. Jerry knew that underneath that snow lay an old police cruiser. The kind that had been stripped of all their lights, sirens and then sold at public auction. It had been there that day just a few cars behind him. He was certain, remembering everything in detail clearly though he hadn’t thought about the storm in years.

  Jerry looked down now not wanting to recognize anything else but already knowing that he would. This was a piece of his hell, what did he expect? He would be forced to remember it all in vivid detail. He shook his head now knowing what would lay ahead of them. Cort had been right he should never have tried to call this place into being, he was going to get them all killed he realized.

  “What is it boy? What do you see?” the Priest asked.

  “I’m sorry, I…I didn’t think…I…ahead of us there is going to be a wreck. A big one…the road…it’s going to be blocked.”

  As the words left his lips, the white wall materialized out of the shadows ahead of them. It was a massive thing nearly thirty feet high. At first glance, it looked like a huge wall of snow, but as they neared, it became clearer. A half dozen twisted and jackknifed tractor-trailers formed the barrier, bits of bare metal dotted by the occasional broken red reflector and black tires. The massive wreck covered with a fine layer of fresh snowfall. The priest looked up in disbelief and then to his right following the line of the twisted metal wall as it cut across all of t
he lanes of traffic.

  Ahead of them, the gap in between the lanes widened, and Father Callahan slowed the horse to a walk. The last few cars in the lane were smashed bumper to bumper in what had obviously been a desperate attempt to keep from slamming into the mountain of wreckage ahead. At least one vehicle appeared to have been forced through the guardrail on the left and off of the freeway; as a long section of railing was missing. The missing vehicle left a space at the base of the wall just large enough for the highwaymen to ride all of their horses into.

  Cort rode in behind them followed in quick succession by the remaining riders. All of them had their heads turned upward staring at the mountain of wreckage in front of them. Cort turned his head following the edge of the wall with his eyes, the first vehicle in every lane as far as the eye could see was hopelessly smashed against the base of the wall. The eyes of the others followed his gaze as well, their horses stamping in frustration and perhaps fear of what pursued them.

  Exit Lane

  “Where the fuck do we go now?” Jamie demanded.

  “I…I don’t know,” Jerry admitted quietly.

  His head was down, and he stared at the snow-covered concrete willing himself not to look. Not afraid of the Cavalryman as much as what was there just beyond the edge of his vision.

  “Jerry, you bastard you look at me!” Cort shouted.

  “You led us into this death trap you better find us a way out!”

  “And brother you better be quick about it now!” Oliver added, staring back down the snowy trail they had ridden in.

  “Jerry, you spineless fuck, this is your fucking piece of hell now you…” Cort shouted, but then suddenly he went silent. He turned his head to the side slightly as if straining to hear something.

  Then Jerry heard it himself, a faint whimper, so quiet he nearly lost it between the beats of his own heart. It was a pathetic sound, the type of sound that only those newly born or nearly dead can make. Cort spun his horse around drawing his saber, and the rest of the riders followed his lead, their weapons coming up and at the ready.