No chit-chat this time, kids, let's just get right to the action...and yes, we are nearing the end.

8: UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR

The first time Jonah had gone up against these iron hounds, it had been in one of the aboveground hangers, with a good distance between him and them to work with before they could sink their teeth into him. It had been close, but in the end, they'd never laid a paw on him. This time, however, the odds were stacked against him: he was trapped in a dark, narrow corridor, barely five feet away from the thing, and it had Stiletta pinned to the floor, to boot. The explosive charges he'd brought along would just rip them all apart at this range, and if he risked a shot with it thrashing around on top of Stiletta, a stray bullet might kill her. He had to make a decision quick, though, the splintering rifle stock in her hands wouldn't hold the huge metal beast at bay much longer.

"Everybody out of the way!" Hex yelled, then charged straight at the dog, turning his shoulder towards the bulk of it and knocking it off Stiletta. Hal and Cutter both dove for cover on opposite sides of the corridor as Jonah and the machine-hound tumbled past. The gunfighter came to rest about twelve feet from where he'd started, fighting to right himself before the dog could recover. Unfortunately for him, the machine was built to take heavy impacts, and it soon regained its footing and lunged after him. He rolled out of the way, but one of its front paws raked across his back, metal claws easily ripping through the layers of protective clothing and drawing blood. Cutter grabbed hold of Hex and pulled him into a hallway branching off from the main corridor.

Holding his flashlight along the length of the gunbarrel to illuminate his target, Hal fired at the machine-hound's own back as it ran past, the armor-piercing rounds punching holes in its hide. He didn't stop it, but he definitely got the machine's attention. It skidded to a stop and whirled on the Green Lantern, exposing itself to another barrage of gunfire from behind, this time from Stiletta at the head of the corridor. Her rifle was useless, so she was blasting away with the handgun she'd been carrying for a backup. "Get moving!" Hal told her. "Head for the crawler, we'll be right behind you!"

"No way, you need all the help you can get!" she answered, never letting up on the dog.

"Well, somebody better get a move-on," Jonah said as he and Cutter began to open fire from their position at the back, "'cause these bullets ain't gonna last forever!"

One of their shots took out part of the dog's cranial housing, exposing wiring and sensors, but that only succeeded in making it more berserk. Sparks and shrapnel flew everywhere as it howled, metal teeth champing at the air. The photoelectric eyes of the beast stuttered for a moment, blinking on and off like twin traffic signals, but it still thrashed around. "I think we knocked out its vision," Hal said. Reaching down, he undid the Velcro straps on his leg brace and ripped it off. "If we're gonna make a run for it, now would be a good time!"

"Yuh heard him, son," Jonah said, and gave Cutter a push to get him moving. The young man's eyes were fixed on the dog as they ran past. It looked straight at them for a moment, but it didn't appear to notice them. "Never mind it, Ah've got us covered," Jonah told him, giving him another push, "yuh just look where yo're goin'!"

Flashlight beams swung back and forth as they retreated, alternating from the floor to check for obstacles, to the walls as they searched for the markers that would lead them back to the surface. Stiletta was far in front, with Hal gaining, and Hex at the tail end with a hand clamped on Cutter's arm to make him keep pace. In the darkness behind them, the sound of the machine-hound careening into walls echoed up the corridor. "It's still coming," Cutter gasped, craning his neck around to stare into the black. "Fugging thing's blind, and it's still coming..."

"May be blind," Jonah said, "but it ain't deaf, so put a cork in it!" He knew it wouldn't help, though, their footsteps alone made enough noise for the dog to follow. Their only hope was to stay as far ahead of it as possible.

Suddenly, Hal went down, his flashlight dipping as he cursed and hit the floor. Cutter and Hex paused to help the Green Lantern, who was holding on to his injured leg. "Figured I could run faster without the brace," he said through gritted teeth, "but my stupid knee gave out."

Stiletta turned around and shined her light back at them. "What happened? Are you all right?"

"Perfect," Jonah answered, and put a hand under Hal's arm to yank him to his feet. "Lantern decided we don't have enough problems, so..." He stopped when Stiletta began shouting, the beam of her light darting to the right of the corridor. He then heard the whine of the machine-hound's gears directly behind them. With barely a thought, he threw himself to the left, pulling Hal along with him and getting off two shots with his Magnum. Unfortunately, Cutter was not so quick, and the hound jumped on top of him, knocking him to the ground. Front paws planted on his chest, it sank its teeth into his shoulder, the powerful jaws clamping down hard enough to snap his collarbone. Deciding that the danger of accidentally shooting Cutter was of little consequence now, Hex took aim for another shot...and hit an empty cylinder. In their rush to get away, he'd never reloaded. "Sonovabitch!" he shouted, then ran forward and smashed his gun over the dog's muzzle until it let go, giving Hal the opportunity to grab Cutter. It snapped at Hex blindly for a moment, then jumped on the young man again, latching onto his calf before Hal could pull him completely away from the dog. The Green Lantern fell to the ground as well, but he kept his arms wrapped around Cutter's chest and held on as the dog tried to drag them both further down the corridor. "Hold on tuh him, Ah'll be right back!" Jonah said, then ran off into the darkness.

Stiletta soon joined Hal, adding her weight to the human chain as the dog jerked Cutter's leg in a perverse game of tug-of-war, the young man screaming the whole time. "Where the Hell did Hex go?" Hal asked her, then turned his head in the direction he saw the gunfighter run, yelling, "Come back here, you bastard! I swear to God, if you don't..."

He stopped when he heard something banging down the hallway, and Jonah's voice echoing off the walls: "C'mon, doggie! Yuh want a fight, Ah'll give yuh a good one!" Though Hal couldn't see very well in the dim corridor, he could hear the sound of bootheels slapping the ground, and it was coming closer. "Over here, yuh stupid clockwork mutt! Yuh couldn't take me out last time, so here's yer chance fer a rematch!" Jonah yelled, then Hal saw a human shape fly out of the darkness and land on the machine-hound. The dog reared up with a growl, letting go of Cutter and turning its attention on its new opponent, who offered no resistance.

"Jonah, no!" Stiletta screamed, and began to reach out to try and pull the dog away, but another hand came from behind her and latched onto her wrist. She turned to yell at Green Lantern, then saw that it was Jonah. "How the Hell..."

"Never mind," he said, "we've got maybe ten seconds 'til the charges go off." He then scooped Cutter up into his arms, and the three of them ran as fast as they could away from the dog, Stiletta supporting Hal on his bad leg. Seconds later, an explosion lit up the corridor, shards of metal and concrete flying everywhere as they hit the deck. More of the ceiling caved in behind them, entombing the remains of the machine-hound. Coughing a bit from the smoke, the gunfighter muttered, "The timers on them things is a shade off."

Hal groped for Jonah in the darkness. "How's Cutter? You still got him?" He ran a hand over Cutter's neck to check for a pulse as Jonah set him down on the floor. "I need a light...who's still got a flashlight?"

"Shit, I dropped mine back there somewhere. Jonah, do you..." Stiletta began to say, then stopped when she saw a spark.

"Sometimes, yuh got tuh do things the old-fashioned way," Jonah said, holding up the wooden match so Hal could see what he was doing. The light was poor, but it was enough to tell that Cutter was in awful shape. His coat was soaked with blood at the shoulder, and the dog had nearly torn his leg off, dislocating it from the hip socket in the struggle. More blood was pumping out of the shredded muscle that used to be his calf. He wasn't screaming anymore, just laying there with his eyes rolled up to the whites and breathing shallowly.

"We've got to stop the bleeding." Hal undid Cutter's belt and cinched it tightly around the young man's thigh. "I need something for bandages."

Stiletta removed her coat and tore the sleeves off, handing them to Jordan. She then ripped a few more strips off of what was left and wrapped it around a long piece of metal lying nearby. "You want to explain your little magic trick back there?" she asked Hex as she lit the impromptu torch with his match.

"Figured since the dog was blind, it wouldn't know the dif'rence 'tween a live body an' a dead one right off," he said, "so Ah ran up the hall 'til Ah found thet fella we stumbled across, shoved a couple charges in his pockets, then ran back here howlin' like the Devil so's the dog would think Ah was the one a-jumpin' on it."

"That's an absolutely insane idea."

"Worked, didn't it?"

Hal waved a hand at Stiletta, saying, "Bring the light closer." He'd bandaged the shoulder, and was now working on tying a splint to Cutter's leg, using two more pieces of the metal shrapnel that used to be part of the corridor. "This should keep it immobile enough to move him," he said. "We've got to get him back to the warehouse, and fast."

Careful not to jostle him too roughly, Hal and Jonah carried the unconscious young man out of the complex, Stiletta leading the way with the torch. Once they'd returned to the vehicle, they laid Cutter across the bench-like seats in the passenger compartment, wrapping him in a blanket stowed onboard and strapping him down as best they could so he wouldn't bounce around. The gunfighter collapsed on the floor next to the seats as Hal and Stiletta readied the crawler to head out. Hal poked his head out of the driver's cabin to check on the two of them once they were moving, but Jonah waved him off. "Y'all worry 'bout steerin' this monster, Ah'll keep an eye on the kid," he said.

"Who's going to keep an eye on you?" Though he'd treated Cutter's wounds, no one had even taken a look at the gouges in Jonah's back.

"Ah've had worse," he answered, and leaned back against the crawler's hull. Despite his bravado, Jonah was in quite a bit of agony. The engine seemed to thrum in time with the throbbing pain in his back as they drove across the frozen wasteland, but he ignored it for now and focused his attention on Cutter, watching the kid for any sign of trouble.

After an hour or so, the gunfighter's eyes began to slip closed from exhaustion, but he soon snapped to attention when he thought he heard Cutter speak, followed by a cough. Jonah sat up and felt the young man's pulse near his throat, saying, "Kin yuh hear me, son?"

"Dad?" he gasped, trying to lift his head.

"Yer dad's not here," Jonah said, "lie still."

"It hurts, Dad...make it stop, please..." His voice was so weak, he sounded like he was eight instead of eighteen.

Jonah placed a hand against Cutter's pale, clammy cheek as the young man stared through him with unfocused eyes. "Ah wish Ah could," he said, and he meant it. He'd seen things like this when he'd fought in the Civil War: badly wounded men laying in battlefront hospitals or out in the field, begging for the comfort of friends and loved ones. A few were so far gone, they became incoherent. He remembered one long night hunkered down in a ditch, listening to some poor soul out in the dark screaming for fried chicken and ice cream. After a couple hours, someone managed to put a bullet into the screaming man and end his misery. "Yuh did real good today, Cutter," he told him.

If he heard the words, he made no sign. "I'm tired..."

"Ah know. Yuh rest easy now, boy...yer dad will be here when yuh wake up."

Cutter said nothing else after that, the only sound coming from him being the unsteady wheeze of his breathing. A few minutes later, that faded away as well. Jonah moved his hand over the young man's eyes, then got up and walked over to the front cabin. Hal immediately began to get up from the co-pilot's chair, but the gunfighter put a hand on his shoulder to hold him in his seat. He then leaned over to Stiletta and told her to slow down.

She looked up at Jonah and was about to chew him out for suggesting such a thing, then she saw the expression on his face. "No...no, you're wrong," she said, tears already forming in her eyes. "You go check, GL. He's wrong, he's got to be..." Even as she said the words, she was cutting the acceleration on the crawler. By the time the machine came to a full halt, she had crumpled up over the steering wheel, still telling Hex he had made a mistake in between sobs.

The sun was setting as the crawler pulled back into its berth at Maple. The three of them stood clustered around Cutter's body for a moment, no one speaking. The blanket had been pulled up over his face, but they were all reluctant to disturb the scene any further. "I'll ask Vance to bring the gurney down here," Stiletta said eventually. "That seems like the best thing to do." Hal and Jonah nodded in agreement. They lingered on a while longer before finally disembarking, none of them ready to face the other residents just yet, but they had no choice.

"Christ, what took you so long?" Lewis said as they exited the vehicle. "Where the Hell did you go, you said it'd only take a few hours." He immediately began looking over the exterior for damage.

They all ignored him, filing past the mechanic on their way out of the motor pool. When he began to enter the crawler, however, Hal turned around and took hold of Lewis's shoulder. "Don't...just hold off for now, okay?"

"Why, what did you break?" Lewis then looked over the group and said, "Where's Cutter?" At the mention of his name, Stiletta began to tear up again.

"We had an accident...just hold off for now," Hal repeated, then let go and rejoined the others as they entered the main hall.

Lewis wasn't about to let them off so easy. "What sort of 'accident'? Where'd you guys go?" He followed them out into the hall. There were a few other people milling about as well, and they all stopped to watch as Lewis grabbed Hal's arm and spun him around. "This have to do with your 'superhero' bullshit?" The Green Lantern said nothing, which to Lewis was as good as an admission of guilt. "You son of a bitch...you weren't happy with playing dress-up by yourself, were you? You had to drag that kid into it, too!" He shoved Hal back a step.

"Can't you shut up for once?" Stiletta said. "You're totally out of your depth this time, Lewis."

"The Hell I am. First it was your crazy boyfriend pretending to be some dead cowboy, then this asshole shows up saying he's a superhero, and everybody plays along with the joke. Now Cutter's dead, and that joke isn't so damn funny now."

"It's not a joke," Hal told him in an even tone, "it never was."

"Yeah, right. The two of you are really time-travelers, and this is just one big happy adventure for you. No problems to worry about, no consequences when you screw up and kill some eager-to-please kid." He glared at Hal. "Well, the rest of us don't have that luxury. We live in the real fugging world. We're all scrounging to survive in this nightmare, and we don't need a couple of briq-heads coming around to..."

Jonah stepped forward and punched Lewis in the jaw, cutting him off mid-sentence. He fell to the ground, and Jonah jumped on top of the mechanic and began pounding on him, his face locked in a tight grimace. Lewis wrapped his arms over his head in an effort to protect himself, but it didn't deter the gunfighter in the least. Hal tried to grab hold of the Hex's arm and stop him, but his efforts only earned him a fist to the face. He stumbled back, Stiletta catching him before he could fall to the ground himself.

The slight distraction gave Lewis a chance to land a few blows, knocking Jonah off of him. "Fugger's crazy!" he yelled as he scrambled to get away. The gunfighter didn't let him stray too far, though: he grabbed Lewis by the hair with one hand, then reached beneath the collar of his coat and pulled out his knife with the other. He held it to the mechanic's throat as they knelt on the floor, Lewis's back pressed against Jonah's chest.

"Mister Bowie wants tuh hear yuh say 'Sorry'," Hex whispered directly into the man's ear. Lewis let out a whimper and nothing more.

"That's enough, Hex, let him go," Hal said. While his head didn't move, Jonah's eyes focused on Hal, and what the Green Lantern saw in them gave him a chill. He remembered what Jonah had said not long after he'd arrived about showing those gangbangers who the bigger, meaner dog was. Judging by the look in Jonah's eyes, Hal felt that the biggest, meanest dog in the yard may have just gone rabid.

"Oh Jesus," Lewis begged, "Jesus God, don't, please..."

"Thet ain't whut Ah asked fer," Jonah told him, pressing the knife harder into Lewis's throat. Blood was already trickling from the corner of mechanic's mouth and his nose, and it was soon joined by a small drop collecting on the edge of the blade.

"Sorry! I'm sorry! Christ Jesus, I'm sorry, don't kill me!"

Jonah removed the knife and shoved him forward, sprawling him out on the concrete floor. "Ah hear yuh shootin' yer damn fool mouth off like thet again, an' Ah won't be so forgivin'," he said as he stood up, slipping the knife back into the sheath beneath his coat collar. Hex then turned and slowly walked out of the main hall as Jordan pulled Lewis to his feet. The mechanic was still muttering apologies under his breath.

December twenty-fourth: even in a world torn to pieces by nuclear holocaust, that day still meant Christmas Eve to many people, including those residing at Maple. That particular date, however, would also be remembered as the day they laid Cutter to rest in the tiny cemetery outside the complex's perimeter. The grave lay next to his father's, though not as deep due to the hardness of the winter earth. Stiletta began to cry as one of the residents read a few passages from a ragged Bible, and even Hal felt some tears slip free when they lowered the body in, swaddled in a plastic tarp. Only Jonah seemed unmoved by the whole proceedings. In fact, he didn't show up for the funeral until halfway through, choosing to stand at the edge of the group around the grave, his face lacking any expression. He hadn't talked to anyone since thrashing Lewis the night before, and when Stiletta tried to approach him after the funeral, Jonah simply walked away before she even got close to him. "You don't think he's starting to slip again, do you?" she asked Hal.

"After what he did yesterday, I don't know," he answered. That didn't make her feel any better.

As the day went on, the children began to get wound up in anticipation for the big Christmas Eve dinner, and the presents to follow. They didn't understand why most of the grown-ups seemed sad, or why they changed the subject when one of the kids asked why Cutter wasn't there to fix the lights on the artificial tree they'd set up in the Hub. Despite the hellish environment they had spent most of their lives in, many of the children still had no comprehension of death. In the days to follow, their parents would do their best to explain it to them, but for now, the words would go unsaid.

Hal volunteered to play watchdog while the others gathered for the feast. He thought it only fair, seeing as he was sort of the odd man out. Stiletta tried to talk him out of it, but the Green Lantern had made up his mind. "If I'm staying here, I'll have to start pulling my own weight sometime, right?" he said, giving her a small smile. "Consider this my Christmas present to everybody." He then left the Hub, wishing a happy holiday to folks as he walked past them. Once he was gone, her thoughts lingered on him. Though he seemed fine, she worried that the current setback might cause Hal to become like Jonah: a stranger out of time, isolating himself from a world that he felt he had no place in.

No, Lantern said he's been through this sort of thing before, she thought, he'll be all right. Jonah, on the other hand... Stiletta realized then that the gunfighter hadn't shown up for the dinner hour. She'd hoped that he wouldn't try and skip out as well, but it appeared that was exactly what he was going to do. As the other residents began sitting down at the tables laid out around the room, Stiletta left the Hub and headed down the hall to Hex's quarters. Not surprisingly, the door was shut, and she gave a light rap on the metal plating, saying, "Jonah? Are you all right in there?" There was no answer at first, then she heard movement behind the door. He opened it just enough to look out at her, the poker face still in place. "I was just...do you want to come down for dinner?" she asked, his stony gaze making her nervous.

"Not hungry," was all he said.

"Well, maybe you could come down anyways, just to hang out. It's Christmas Eve, you shouldn't be cooped up all by yourself."

"Wouldn't be the first one Ah spent by muh lonesome." A small flicker of emotion in his eyes, gone before it could fully manifest. "'Sides, them folks don't want me 'round tuh spoil their fun."

"That's not true. If you think they hate you for what you did to Lewis, forget it. Everyone here has wanted to bust him in the chops at one time or another." She'd hoped to get a smile out of him, but the poker face remained. "If you're not coming out, can I come in, then? I feel silly talking to you through a crack in the door."

He hesitated, then opened it a little wider, stepping aside to let her in the room. The dim lamplight made her shadow dance on the wall as she passed it. "Why ain't yuh down there yerself?" he asked, closing the door.

"I wanted to see if you were okay."

"Ah ain't been drinkin'."

"That's not what I said." She stood in the middle of the room, hugging her elbows. "I'm worried about you, Jonah. I don't want you to start hiding again."

"Ah won't, promise. Ah just don't feel like bein' 'round nobody right now."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No...no, yo're fine," Jonah said, then looked down at the floor. "Ah'm kind of glad yuh came by, actually. Been wantin' tuh talk, but..." He ran a hand through his hair. "Ah ain't sure whut tuh say."

"What is it? You can tell me." She took a step forward, closing the distance between them. He looked nervous, and she had a feeling about what was on his mind. "Did you want to talk about Cutter?"

He shook his head. "Ain't thet exactly. Close, but..." He took a deep breath, then said, "When we was down in them tunnels, an' thet dog came out an'...when it pinned yuh, Ah got scared."

Stiletta smiled and said, "Is that it? You dope, we were all scared, that's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Thet ain't whut Ah meant. Ah got scared 'cause Ah thought...Ah thought it was gonna kill yuh, an' Ah couldn't bear the thought of thet." He mussed his hair again, stalling. "The whole time Ah've been stuck in this godawful place, yo're the only thing thet's kept me goin'. Hell, Ah'd be dead ten times over if'n yuh hadn't been there tuh tell me whut's whut these days. Ah need yuh."

"Maybe in the beginning, but you do all right for yourself now. What about those couple times when we got separated? You did fine then."

"Chalk thet up tuh dumb luck, 'cause thet's all thet was." Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders. "Even then, the only thing Ah could think of was findin' yuh again. Yo're important tuh me, Ah..." He lowered his head for a moment, and when he brought it back up, he looked directly into her eyes. "Ah love yuh, Stiletta."

She didn't speak, couldn't speak. She'd always suspected, but to hear him say it was something else entirely. For him to lay himself bare like that, after months of dancing around how he felt, took courage. "Jonah..." she finally managed to say, but he cut her off.

"If'n yuh don't feel the same, thet's fine. Ah think Ah kin live with thet, but after everything thet's happened lately...Ah didn't want tuh lose yuh without yuh knowin' thet."

"I think I already did," she said, then reached out and touched his chest, her hands sliding over the black, synthetic material of his shirt, "but I don't know how I feel."

"Like Ah said, thet's fine...but Ah do hope thet yuh feel the same. Ah know Ah ain't the handsomest fella 'round these parts, but Ah like tuh think thet Ah'm long on charm."

"Oh, you are," she answered, laughing. Jonah laughed a little himself, then moved his hands from her shoulders up to her face, cupping it in his callused palms. He then gave her a kiss, lingering for just a moment before pulling away. Stiletta had kissed him before, just hours after they'd met. Not out of affection, though, merely a thank-you for saving her life. The look of surprise on his face at the time had been priceless. The look he gave her now was one she'd never seen from him before: soft and full of warmth, overshadowing the twisted scars until they seemed to not exist at all.

"Sorry, had tuh do it," he said, "even if it's just the once."

"It's okay." She then surprised herself by saying, "You can do it again, if you want."

He did, taking his full measure of time as he embraced her, hands caressing her long blonde hair. Jonah's fingers brushed against the clasp of her bodysuit at the base of her neck and stopped there. After a minute of fumbling with it, he pulled back from kissing her and grumbled, "Have Ah ever told yuh how much Ah hate this damn zone suit yuh wear?"

With a smile, she reached behind her neck, brushed his hands aside, and undid the clasp.

"Hey, how's things going up here?"

"Very boring," Hal said, leaning against the catwalk's rail. He watched Mookie step off the ladder and walk over to him, a thermos in hand. "Not much to do except count stars." The sun had set a few hours before, and the night sky was virtually cloudless, with a crescent moon hanging over the cul-de-sac.

"Yeah, I've done that quite a bit myself on watch. That's a good thing, though. Means the scavs are taking the holiday off."

"So what brings you by?"

"An urgent errand of mercy." She held out the thermos. "Marya sends coffee and a notice that if you don't get your butt down to the Hub, all us piggies are gonna eat your share of the chow."

"I'll survive," he answered, then took the thermos and unscrewed the plastic cup from the top. "Tell her that the coffee is appreciated. I feel like I might fall asleep up here."

"Sure you don't want to pop off for a bit? I can keep an eye out...not that I think anything will happen." Hal insisted that he was fine, and turned back to gaze through the wall slots at the cul-de-sac, taking a sip of coffee . Mookie leaned against the rail herself and said, "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"There's a rumor going around that you're really an alien or something, and you were, like, trying to phone home yesterday. That true?"

"You don't beat around the bush, do you?"

"I know, it drives Red nuts. So, is it true?"

"Only half. This is alien," he explained, holding up his ring hand, "and so were the beings that gave it to me, but I'm human last I checked."

"Oh...damn, I always wanted to meet an alien."

Hal laughed, spitting a little coffee back into the cup. "Trust me, it gets old fast," he said as he wiped his bottom lip. "After a while, you don't even think of them as being different."

"You've met a lot of 'em?"

"Met them, worked with them, fought them, dated them..."

"Aw, get out! You didn't date an alien!"

He raised his hand again, like he was taking an oath. "It's the truth, I swear. It happened years ago, but..." He stopped when he saw that Mookie was staring at his hand. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"Was that glowing earlier?"

Jordan didn't know what she was talking about at first, then he saw it as well: a faint green glow skirting the edges of his ring emblem. "What the Hell?" he muttered, then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye through one of the wall slots. He rushed forward, leaning as best he could out of the slot, staring up at the dark sky. I imagined it, Hal thought, it's just a trick of the light, nothing's... Then he saw it again: three new stars in the sky. Green stars. And they were growing.

Mookie stood next to him, staring just as hard. "What is that?" she breathed.

"I think you might get to meet some aliens after all," Hal said. "Go find Hex, quick!" They both ran for the ladder at the same time, almost knocking each other off the catwalk.

Nestled under blankets, Jonah lay perfectly still, trying to not disturb Stiletta as she drowsed in his arms. The bed was only made to fit one person, leaving little room to stretch out. Don't bother me none, he thought, and gently traced the contour of her face with his finger. Ah could spend the rest of muh life right here.

She shifted closer, her breath tickling his neck, then kissed him along his jawline. "This is nice," she said softly.

"Ah was just thinkin' the same."

"So...what do we do now?"

"If'n yo're suggestin' we have another go already..."

"No, I meant us." Stiletta moved a little so she could look Jonah in the eye. "Is this a one-time thing or what?"

"Ah'd rather it not be," he said, touching her face again. "Ah thought Ah'd made thet clear."

"You did, but I was just thinking, with you and the Lantern trying to find a way back home..."

"He's tryin' tuh get home, not me. Far as Ah'm concerned, this is muh home from now on."

She looked at him quietly for a moment, then said, "You're serious."

"Why wouldn't Ah be? Been doin' a little thinkin' of muh own: if'n Ah ain't the Jonah Hex we found in the warehouse, then maybe Ah ain't the Jonah Hex thet Lantern met, neither. Maybe he met the one thet got his dumb ass stuffed."

"But what if you are the one that helped him out? Do you want to take that risk?"

"We ain't goin' nowheres, so there ain't no risk. Fer all Ah know, this is where Ah'm supposed tuh be...an' if'n thet's the case, then Ah want y'all tuh be here with me." He cocked an eyebrow. "Assumin' yuh'll have me, of course."

Stiletta kissed him in response, letting her hand drift up to his face. She had been hesitant about touching his scars while they made love, unsure of both his reaction and her own if she'd done so. Now she did it without fear, her fingertips barely touching the skin . "You've never told me how this happened," she said.

He laid his hand over hers, so that her palm covered most of the ruin on the right side of his face. "Does it matter?" he asked.

"No, it doesn't." She went to kiss him again, but stopped when someone began pounding on the door and calling Hex's name. It sounded like Mookie.

"Whatever yo're sellin', we ain't buyin'!" Jonah yelled at the door.

Mookie wasn't so easily deterred. "C'mon, Hex, we've got a situation out front!"

That made both of them sit up in bed. Jonah already had his pants on before Stiletta could even put her feet on the floor. "Whut's goin' on?" he asked as he buckled on his gunbelts.

"I'm not sure," Mookie told him through the door, "but I think some of GL's friends decided to drop in for Christmas dinner."

Hex and Stiletta froze, staring at each other. "Tell him we're a-comin' on the double!" he called out, throwing on the rest of his clothes. Jonah ran out into the hall seconds later and bolted to the front entrance, dodging people who were collecting by the open warehouse door in an effort to discover what the commotion was about. When he made it outside, he could see Hal standing in the middle of the cul-de-sac, looking up at a trio of green, human-shaped streaks in the sky that were closing in fast. As they neared the ground, Jonah saw that only one of them could actually pass for human. The other two were almost beyond the gunfighter's comprehension in appearance, though they all wore uniforms very similar to Hal's.

Jonah barely noticed when Stiletta caught up with him, laying a hand on his shoulder. She was struck dumb the same as him. After a few minutes of watching Jordan talk with the new arrivals, Hex finally managed to recover his voice long enough to croak out the standard saying he used when words just plain failed him:

"Holy Hannah..."