Disclaimer: I own none of the characters presented in this story. Red Dead Redemption and all associated with said property belong to Rockstar Games.
Disclaimer: Strong depictions of violence, murder, and other such heinous and repugnant acts, very harsh language used throughout, and some taboo and offensive material occasionally presented.
Part Four: Bill
1:09 PM, July 16th, 1899
He swore: if he died, they would dig him up, asking what was keeping him.
At Dutch's behest, Bill was riding to their next pleasant adventure now, right after having just gotten back from burning down Caliga Hall, right after burning down Braithwaite Manor, right after getting shot to hell in Rhodes, right after robbing a bank in Valentine. His time with this gang hadn't been nearly as prolific as the brief time spent in others. He didn't have much more than pocket change, all the money went to Dutch; he couldn't get some from any of the girls in camp (not that he found any of the women particularly desirable), with Abigail being married, and Karen being with Sean–Dutch said it wasn't allowed (and of course, the rest of the women were barren, unattractive bitches); hell, he wasn't even respected too much among them–he was just the camp clown, the gang idiot. No one was his friend.
Still, he rode with Lenny and Sean now, going to clear out any squatters from this new spot. And fast too. The rest of the gang needed to get there before the sun went down–that's what Dutch said.
"So, tell me about this place, Lenny," said Sean, his irksome Scottish (or maybe German) accent crowding Bill's ears.
"Arthur and I heard a tip 'bout Lemoyne Raiders selling new, high-grade weaponry they picked off from trains or coaches bound for Saint Denis. Although after hearing 'bout this Angelo Bronte gangster fella, I'm thinking they mighta been his, being smuggled in under the ruse of being for the law."
"So, we stole from the guy we need to ask an enormous, child-sized favor from? Terrific."
"Inadvertently," Lenny stressed, "but yeah. That's what I'm thinking."
"He meant to tell us about the kinda hell we's riding into, not your damn conspiracy theories about who we pissed off this time," Bill spat.
"Uh-oh, something's up Bill's arse," Sean said, muttering something else he couldn't hear.
"Sorry, Bill," Lenny breathed out automatically, though Bill could tell he didn't mean it. "We took 'em all out and stripped 'em of all that stuff they tried to keep nice and safe away from prying folk. So, I imagine they ain't there no more."
"You 'imagine'–"
"Well, why the hell would they anchor there anymore when two guys found out about the place and single-handedly took it? It clearly ain't secure," Lenny argued.
"I don't want your opinions," Bill opened, "if I did, I would've asked. I want the facts, the know-how. Does the balcony have good sniping positions, how open is the front yard, those kinds of things."
"But I'm telling you, ain't no one gonna be there but a few drunks and vagrants." the boy persisted.
"Let me give you the most important piece of advice you'll ever get: we are what we are, and nothing more. Hosea and Dutch, they the thinkers. Karen and Abigail, they the whores–"
"–watch yourself Goat Gruff–" Sean cut in.
"–and Strauss and Trelawny, they the modern men, Grimshaw and Pearson, the straw bosses, and the rest 'a us: we're the guns. You're a black buck–except ain't even much of a buck, we'll put a pin there until we put some more weight on ya–and nothing more. Don't go thinking you something more than you is. Only leads to confusion."
Lenny murmured something under his breath in response, something that wouldn't normally distress Bill, but Sean had gotten under his skin with it earlier, and now it couldn't be tolerated.
"The fuck you say?"
"I said… 'fuck you, Bill!'" Lenny said, seemingly surprising himself as much as the others with the first bite of vulgarness he'd ever claimed.
"Wowee!" Sean drawled. "Boy's balls have a-dropped!"
"You little shit…" Bill said between clenched teeth, his hand reaching down. "I'll kill you!" He pulled Brown Jack in front of Lenny's Mustang, aiming his sawed-off shotgun so Lenny's eyes fell down the bipartite abysses of the chambers. The boy was rigid with fear, eyes wide. Good. Bill thought. Be scared you dumb little boy, you worthless mooching fairy.
"Alright girls, simmer down. I salute the entertainment you provided me through this long journey, but we are here now." Sean called out, pointing to the large white house in the distance, besmirched with black rot, like shitty britches, and green mold and vines that ensnared the large two-story plantation homestead.
Bill kept his gun trained on Lenny.
"Bill…"
He couldn't get away with it. Too many get away with treating me like trash.
"Bill."
Micah, Molly, Charles, Uncle, John, Arthur, Javier, Dutch. Hell, practically everyone 'cept maybe Kieran.
" Bill."
I'll make an example, so no one would ever disrespect me again. So they'd know their places. Underneath me.
"Bill!" Sean screamed, finally knocking him out of his trance.
"W–what?"
"We all know you ain't gonna do it, so can we just move things along?" Sean said, pulling his standardbred to the left and turning away, letting Bill know the conversation was over. Bill gurgled in anger, in humiliation, his shotgun retreating back to his holster. Lenny stared him down, eyes no longer pregnant with apprehension but with… pity? Pity!
Bill growled before bringing Brown Jack around and following Sean down the road.
He began growling in sets when he saw Lenny's foresight had proved fruitful: there was not one single man guarding this place that he could see, no sniper on the balcony or holed up in the ramshackle gazebo, no men patrolling the spacious yard, and not one guard stationed near the front doors.
"Told you," the smug bootlip said, "they cleared out."
Bill could only snarl in response.
They unmounted their horses by the stone fountain, long decrepit, blushing with algae and flies. The exterior was clean, now the inside needed to be plumbed for unwanted guests.
"Remember gents…" Sean began, shocking the other men with his choice of weapon: throwing knives, "this gonna be our new home for who knows how long, so if you blow someone's brains out with a shotgun, staining them walls pink and red, know that someone's gonna hafta scrub that out and I won't be helping a lick."
"And when it's your blood on them walls 'cuz you chose to fight what could potentially be hordes of violent drunkards with toothpicks, I'll choke back a laugh at your eulogy," Lenny retorted, cocking his double-barrel.
They moved to the mildewy double doors on the front porch, preparing to briskly barge into the tumbledown chateau when the entryway yawned open on its own volition.
"–goddamn Yankee agents. Gonna make our job a hell of a–" a Lemoyne Raider said to his companion as they emerged from Shady Belle. The parties stopped dead in their tracks, competing in some drawn-out staring contest that lasted until the raiders reached for their guns.
Bam! Bam!
Lenny and Bill let fly with their shotguns, blowing those fools back into last week, while announcing their presence to the whole house. The sound also scared the fellers' unhitched horses away, Enis taking Sean's holster and ulterior forms of firepower along with him.
"Goddamn it!" the Irishman screamed.
"So much for it being abandoned!" Bill said, stressing the last word.
"My bad…" was Lenny's only response.
Bill heard the approaching pitter-patter of footsteps and ordered Lenny to the wall beside the doors. When those same doors folded in as the men inside pulled them open, Bill nodded his head toward Lenny and they jumped out, blasting everyone in that narrow space to hell, bodies contorting as the slugs dug deep into them. The trio trudged over the bump of corpses, dividing like a sprouting stump; Sean and Lenny covering opposite sides of the first floor, Bill the second. He scaled up the stairway, which moaned with every heavy step he took.
"Any more of you upstairs, I'm coming for you! You hear me?" Bill barked.
"C'mon! Come out where I can shoot you!" an unseen raider called back, one with a grating voice.
Bill neared the top of the pale-brown stairs, seeing four rooms: two on his right, one looping behind him from the left, and one directly at ten o'clock from where he stood. No sooner had both of his feet touched the gray-black wood of the second floor when one of the hillbillies jumped out from the furthest room on the right, finger on the trigger.
But Bill's fingers were faster. Bam! He shot the man on the right side, tearing off most of the meat on his right arm, shoulder, and face, leaving him a bloody, screaming mess until he died from the second shot.
"Got you!" the Grating Raider said, and Bill heard the sound, flexing his muscles, preparing for the pain, for the holes, yet only feeling his hip a little lighter. Then he listened to the satisfying ting ting ting as his bandolier hit the floor, scattering red shotgun shells everywhere. He saw his foe aiming through a crack in the room–for the house was so decayed that massive streaks of wood were missing in the walls, and even an entire window-sized section–to his ten o'clock. Fondling the floors for the red cylinders, he bolted to the wall before the man could get another shot off.
"Oh, you're done for now, friend. Shouldn't have come back. None of you Yankees shoulda," he said–gratingly, of course–as Bill fumbled with his gun, trying to fit the rounds in the chamber.
"You'll all die now!" the raider finished, and Bill's ears went numb as a bullet was shot through the wall–one inch from his face–with a sound so deafening–more from the proximity than the loudness of the revolver–Bill didn't even hear it when he dived down onto his back, gun held high, and fired both rounds into the wall, causing it to splinter and shatter at such a diverse range of locations that the whole dilapidated thing came crumbling down. The Grating Riader stood behind that wall, unfazed, gun at the ready…
Before he collapsed dead from all the buck shots Bill had plugged into him.
Bill gave a large wheeze of relief before getting back to work, wasting no time to reload his shotgun with the ammunition dispersed all about the floors. Instead, he drew his cattleman revolver and stormed the door that ran directly behind where he'd entered from the staircase, finding it completely empty. He rushed to the locked door, the first one on the right, the last one left unchecked, kicking it open to find an old man sitting up on the comfortable-looking doublebed–most of the furniture left in the house (dressers, beds, chairs, tables) were not native to the house and newly immigrated by the Lemoyne's–his gun harmlessly positioned on the nearby wooden bedpost.
"I knew you'd come," the old-timer said. "You or some other coward like you. The bounty hunters, the freedmen,"–he began reaching for the gun in an innocuous manner, probably intending to use it as a prop for whatever monologue he was kindling–"the carpetbaggers–"
Bill cut him off by putting one right between his eyes–he listened to enough speeches back at camp.
The second floor was cleared. Bill looked around, groaning; the amount of bodies that needed disposing was disheartening–he'd hoped most would've been outside, he was not looking forward to dragging all these bastards down the stair–
His thoughts were cut off by the sound of Lenny's screaming. Bill made for the staircase, crossing to where the pale-brown and gray-black wood met before stopping. Maybe I should just let it happen? he considered. Boy ain't nothing but a nuisance. Saves me the heat from killing him myself.
These thoughts were shrugged off with a memory: Arthur, a healthy hole right on the right side of his face, right above his right eye. Bill couldn't say he rightly loved Arthur, the man could be quite self-righteous, but he had respected him nonetheless. And he'd as good as killed him, good as performed the rites himself by doing what he did best: not thinking. Not examining the situation, not seeing their whole predicament was right for a trap. Not again. Right now, he'd make sure no one died on his account again. He'd make sure that after all this, there would be folks… left.
Bill rushed down the stairs, Lenny's cries echoing upwards to meet him in the middle. He spun around to the bottom, seeing the boy on the floor a few feet away in the naked room, apart from a rundown table and a few red boxes in the corner, straight ahead of him where the staircase ends. He was being choked by another raider, who mounted him, squeezing his neck purple with a satisfied grin. Bill drew his revolver, taking careful aim–didn't want to hit Lenny…
Bang! The gun seemed to shoot itself, sending a horrible pain into Bill's hand as the gun jumped out of his hand. A squib load! Goddamn worthless, unreliable cattleman! Bill thought. What worthless, unreliable Satin-serving whoreson made such a cursed gun as the cattleman revolver!
And he saw the Chesire Raider move one hand off Lenny's throat onto his own cattleman revolver, this one clicking seamlessly as he cocked it, aiming it ahead of him…
And the man was killed instantly by a throwing knife that hit him square in the side of the thorax, stabbing his heart. Lenny shoved the slumping cadaver off of him, croaking for air gluttonously.
"See, Bill? Couldn't have made such a precise shot with a shotgun, eh?" Sean beamed, stepping in the light from the room to their left, the first room on the right from entering the house.
Lenny's croaking descended into a manic laughter, followed by Sean's and, reluctantly, Bill's. It echoed through the empty estate: the only sound that could be heard apart from the flowing green swamp waters just outside and the occasional robin chirping.
"Good–good call on the raiders, kid," Bill gasped through hysterical laughter. "Jesus, can't fight, can't think…"
"And I still got more to offer than Molly!" Lenny pushed out between fits of hooting, eliciting even more laughter in all three of them. Bill let his legs buckle and his butt touch the floorboards, lying down fully, looking up at the corroded roof he'd be living under for who knew how long. Then a bright drop of maroon fell down from that ceiling, bursting on his cheek, and reality came back to him.
"Shit," he said, smile gone, standing up. "How many bodies are there?"
"Least eight," Sean answered.
"Fuck."
"Guess we best get to it," Lenny said, also rising, his smile mostly depleted as well.
"How?" Bill asked. "I mean, what do we do with the bodies? Burn 'em in the gazebo?"
"Nah, we can just toss 'em off the pier, the swamp'll take 'em."
"Think Grimshaw will really make us clean all this backwash?" Bill asked, stepping away from the trail of blood from the Cheshire Raider that followed him. "It was self-goddamn-defense."
"Probably. Probably with our socks too," Sean wagered. "That cow is a cow."
"Shit."
And slowly, wearily, the three crestfallen men got to work.
As promised, I'm on track for three updates this week.
Thanks for reading, as always!