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Back Happy Hour In Hell
Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

I was nearly dead on my feet, but I did my best to remain upright while Riprash dug through what he had. None of his own clothes would fit, of course—I might as well have tried to wear an old Sears family camping tent—but he found a few of his boss Gagsnatch’s things in a sea chest. The shirts all had two neck-holes, of course, to go with Gagsnatch’s redundancy in the head department, but with a flick of his dirty fingernail Riprash turned two holes into one large one, and the pants, though baggy, were a better fit than anything of Riprash’s would have been.

None of this helped with the ache in my skull from Doctor Teddy’s brutal surgery, or the knowledge that some kind of crab monster was crouched at the end of my brainstem, ready to execute me, but I couldn’t afford to be picky. I was out of Eligor’s clutches except for that, and it beat the shit out of being flame-broiled, I can tell you.

“Now, weapons,” Riprash rumbled. “Hmmm. Stab-stab or boom-boom? Maybe both.” He lifted out another, much heavier chest like it was a shoebox, and after rattling his way through a pile of his own weapons he pulled out a knife that looked like a slim lady’s dirk in his massive hands but which would serve me well as a sword. I slid it through my belt, feeling like a Halloween pirate, but Riprash wasn’t done yet. At the bottom of the chest he found what he’d been looking for, a brace of pistols wrapped in waterproof canvas. Not the flintlocks I had seen several times in Hell, but something a bit more modern, closer to the cap-and-ball Colt revolvers that had solved the most crucial disagreements of the American West. They were made of rough, black iron, and the grips and other trim were yellowed bone, minutely carved.

“Fellow traded those to me for passage. More or less.” Riprash laughed.

I had been helpless and tormented a long time, so I liked the idea being able to shoot at things that wanted to hurt me. I slipped the guns into my belt on either side, butts forward, then took turns drawing them cross-handed, individually and together, Billy the Kid style. My regenerating hand ached after only a few tries, but the guns were well-balanced. I planned to fire them later on to see how accurately they were sighted.

“You said, ‘more or less’?” I asked as I practiced.