The Long Road Home #3

When Hal Jordan saw the quarters he'd be sharing with Cutter, his first thought was that a Radio Shack must have exploded in the vicinity, and all the debris landed on that spot. Metal shelves bolted to the walls overflowed with small, half-dissected motors and unidentifiable parts. A plastic milk crate was engorged with circuit boards stacked vertically like old LPs. Wiring had been swept aside into corners and under the beds, where even more junk lurked like electronic dust bunnies. It didn't matter to Hal what the place looked like, though, so long as the mattress he was sleeping on was soft.

"How long do you think you'll be sticking around?" Cutter asked as they settled in for the night.

"Don't know. Guess it depends on how long it takes for me to find the help I need."

"You mean like your super-friends?"

"Yeah, like them," Hal said, "or whoever came after them." Before and during dinner, he'd pumped all the residents for information about any metas they may have been familiar with. He drew a fair share of blank looks, and the people who did understand what he was getting at usually couldn't come up with anything useful, or at least recent. In fact, for nearly all of them, Hal was the first superhero any of them had actually seen in the flesh, and certainly the only one they'd heard about post-war. There was, of course, the Batman in New York Stiletta had mentioned, but she'd never seen the man herself, and Jonah wasn't exactly someone he could talk to at the moment. Still, it's a lead, Hal thought, though I doubt Bruce would be alive after all these years. Dick maybe, or even that Drake boy, but Bruce would be...what, eighty? Ninety? He certainly wouldn't be jumping off rooftops, even he's not that good.

Despite the funny look he got from Cutter, Hal kept on his whole uniform when he got into bed, boots and all. It was an old habit: so long as the mask was on, he was "on duty", which meant he stayed prepared. It didn't matter that his ring was dead, he was still a Green Lantern.

Green Lantern...he was still coming to grips with his reinstatement, and here he was, representing the Corps in a time when there may not be a Corps. They'd only recently reformed, had they managed to weather the past half-century? And if so, why weren't they here, helping Earth recover from this nightmare? Where are any of the heroes? Hal thought as he lay there in the dark, the only sounds being a low-level hum of electrical current and Cutter's light snoring. Someone has to be left, there were too many of us, all over the globe. What bothered Hal the most was the fact that so many people had barely any recollection of superheroes before the bombs dropped. What could have happened between his time and now that nearly all of them disappeared?

The questions followed Hal as he drifted into sleep, coloring his dreams in ambiguous shades of gray. He ran down the empty streets of Seattle, calling out names and receiving no answer. He'd catch reflections of his friends and colleagues in store windows, but be greeted with nothing when he turned around. His mind was so wrapped up in the images, it didn't even register when the cold metal nuzzled his cheek. The sharp click of a hammer being cocked, however, cut right through.

Hal's eyes snapped open, and he saw the shadowed figure of Jonah Hex standing over him, barechested and pointing a gun at the Green Lantern's face. He almost asked Hex how the man figured out where he'd been sleeping, then realized this was one of the most renowned bounty hunters of the Old West. He had his ways.

"Get up," Jonah told him, his voice barely above a whisper but still full of menace. It wasn't until then that Hal realized his hands were bound behind his back -- Jonah had trussed him up while he was sleeping. Hal's eyes darted over to the other bed, but Cutter was still asleep, paying no mind to the small amount of light pouring through the now-open door. Jonah somehow knew what Hal must have been thinking and growled, "Make one sound, an' yuh won't make another," then stepped back just enough to let the Green Lantern get out of bed. It was hard enough to do tied up, but to make matters worse, Hal's injured leg had stiffened up while he'd been sleeping. When he tried to stand, he let in a sharp hiss of breath through his teeth, which made Jonah shove the gun in his face again.

"My leg," Hal mouthed, stopping himself from adding "you idiot" to the end of that.

"Don't care," Jonah replied, then jerked the gunbarrel in the direction of the door. Hal limped out to the hallway, then Jonah grabbed him by the back of his collar and steered him down the hall to the gunfighter's room, shoving the Green Lantern down on the small metal-frame bed once inside. Place smells like a cheap bar, Hal thought as he sat up. The dents in the wall and the empty liquor bottles on the floor added to the ambience.

After he shut the door, Jonah picked up a battered metal chair off the floor and wedged it under the door handle. With him turned around like that, Hal could see a series of diagonal scars running down Jonah's back -- it looked like the man had tried hugging a mountain lion -- they were the most prominent ones among the dozens of scars all over his body, a testament to a hard, violent life lived without the benefit of Kevlar or plastic surgery. When he finished his task, he walked over to the bed and stood over Hal, staring down at him for a moment before pressing the gunbarrel under the Green Lantern's chin. "Hold still," he said, then reached up with his free hand towards the mask. Instinctively, Hal leaned back and turned his face away, but Jonah grabbed him by the hair. "Do yuh want me tuh blow yer head off, boy? 'Cause Ah'll oblige yuh if'n yuh do."

"You don't need to take my mask off."

"Yes Ah do." He then let go of Jordan's hair and ripped off the mask in one fluid movement. Hal did his best to remain quiet, though the skin around his mask was still tender from the acid burn. "Ah don't cotton tuh folks whut wear masks," Jonah said, then held up the offending object. "Makes me a mite curious 'bout whut they're hidin'." He bent down close to the Lantern's face, his blue eyes meeting Hal's brown ones. "Fer whut it's worth, Ah know a couple of masked men back home. They seem like alright fellas, but if'n Ah had muh druthers, Ah'd do the same damn thing tuh them." He straightened up, removed the gun from beneath Hal's chin, then tossed the mask at the Green Lantern's chest-symbol -- it bounced off and landed on the floor. "Don't know why yuh'd want tuh wear such a damn silly outfit fer, anyhow."

"It goes with the job."

"Whut's thet? Head fool at the Mardi Gras?" Jonah leaned against the wall, the Magnum still pointed at Hal.

"Do you really want an answer, or is that rhetorical?"

"Reckon thet's why Ah dragged yer green butt down here: we're gonna play a little game of 'Question an' Answer'. Ah ask, yuh tell." He held up the gun, saying, "Ah've got one bullet in here. Yuh give a bad answer, Ah pull the trigger." He spun the cylinder. "If'n yuh win, yuh get tuh go on yer merry way. Yuh lose, an' Marya sets out one less plate fer Christmas dinner."

Well, Hal thought, this happened a little sooner than I expected...but certainly not in the way I expected. There was no choice but to go along with the game, though. He'd given the bindings a few tugs, but the knots were good and solid. The man knew how to truss somebody up, that was for sure. "Okay. Start asking your questions."

"Whut's yer name...an' Ah mean yer proper Christian name, not thet 'Green Lantern' nonsense."

"Pass," Hal answered, shaking his head.

"Yuh sure yuh don't want tuh reconsider?" Jonah stepped forward and put the gun to Hal's temple. "Cain't imagine why yuh wouldn't want tuh tell me, seein' as how we're supposed tuh be such good friends an' all."

After a long pause, he said, "Jordan...my name's Hal Jordan."

"There, was thet really so hard? Now how 'bout where yo're from?" He pressed the barrel harder against the Green Lantern's head. "Gonna try an' back outta thet?"

"No...but I assume by 'where', you also mean 'when'," Hal said. "Before I came here, I was in San Diego, California, the year 2005."

"Bad answer number one," Hex said, and pulled the trigger. Hal braced himself, and was greeted with the click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber. "One down, five tuh go. Want tuh change yer answer?"

"It's the truth, I swear."

"Then how come yuh said we met in 1878 afore? Cain't be from both places."

Hal tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. "I'm from around the turn of the millennium, that's where I'm supposed to be. When I met you, I had been sent there from my normal time."

Jonah pulled the gun back. "Fair enough...was it Borsten?"

"I don't understand."

"Reinhold Borsten. Everybody Ah've met thet got stuck here from somewheres else has thet bastard tuh thank fer it."

"No, it was an accident, plain and simple."

"Thet's one Hell of an accident."

The Green Lantern shrugged. "Happens more than you'd think."

"Ah try not tuh," Jonah said, and his eyes wandered away to the dark corners of the room. The man looked too gaunt in Hal's opinion, just a shadow of the Jonah Hex he'd met years ago (or would meet, depending on your point of view). The fire was still there, but it was beginning to sputter out. "How long yuh been here?"

"Just arrived," Hal answered, then, tentatively, he asked, "What about you? How long ago did you come to this time?"

Jonah looked over at him. Hal expected to be told to be quiet, he wasn't allowed to ask questions, but instead, the gunfighter said, "It's been so damn long, Ah honestly don't remember no more." He ran a hand through his red hair. "Yuh never did answer muh first question, by the by."

"I told you, my name's...."

"Not thet." He gestured at Hal's attire. "Whut kinda job makes yuh wear green longjohns?"

"Oh." Hal thought for a moment, trying to couch the idea in terms a man from the 19th Century would understand. "I'm kind of like a Texas Ranger."

Jonah cocked an eyebrow. "Thet a fact? Never seen a Ranger run from a mob afore, even if all he had was his longjohns."

"Let's just say I was out of options...and ammo."

"There ain't no such thing as 'out of options'. Yuh just didn't try hard enough."

"Like you've been trying to hide in a bottle? Was that your only option?" The words spilled out of his mouth before he'd realized it.

"Thet's number two, now." Jonah pointed the gun at him again and pulled the trigger. Click. "Gettin' a little personal there, don't yuh think, stranger? Ah don't care whut yuh say, y'all don't know me."

"It's true, I don't,” Hal answered. He knew he was putting his life on the line, but at the rate he was going, he’d be eating a bullet tonight no matter what he said. “The Hex I knew wouldn't be afraid of an unarmed man, and if things got strange, he wouldn't get drunk and ignore it."

"Ah ain't no drunk!" Jonah grabbed the front of Hal's uniform and pulled him to his feet. "An' Ah sure as Hell ain't afraid of no baby-faced greenhorn."

"Then why did you tie me up? Why do you keep shoving a gun in my face?"

"'Cause Ah don't trust yuh. Yuh show up outta nowheres, actin' all cock o' the walk, claimin' we're old pals...Ah don't buy it, not one damn bit. Yuh may have all them convinced," he said, waving the Magnum towards the door, "but Ah think yo're holdin' something back, an' yuh ain't leavin' here 'til yuh tell me."

"I can't tell you everything."

The gunfighter scowled, then stuck the barrel under Hal’s chin again. “Three.”

“Don’t!” Click.

“Am Ah makin' yuh nervous, boy?”

Hal looked him dead in the eye. “Compared to what I’ve been through lately, this is a cakewalk,” he answered. "I'm not holding back by choice, believe me. If I thought it was safe to tell you, I would, but...do you know what a paradox is?" When Jonah didn't respond, Hal said to him, "It's a contradiction, something that shouldn't be possible, but it is. That's what this is: you meeting me in this time before we meet in 1878. Anything I tell you about what happened then could change it, even though it's already happened for me."

"Thet don't make one damn bit of sense."

"It's the truth. The timestream is very sensitive. One tiny change can make a ripple in the flow of time, which can make even bigger ripples, and those can make huge rifts, causing the whole thing to collapse. Trust me, I've got what you could call 'hands-on experience' in this sort of thing."

"Seems awful convenient, clamin' yuh cain't tell me nothin' less'n Ah want the whole world tuh come crashin' down."

"I know how confusing the whole idea is to you, Hex, but you're going to have to believe me when I say that we were friends. It was a brief friendship, but you were there for me when I needed you, and that's what matters. I can tell you that the last...the other time I saw you, I told you I was glad that I didn't have to count you as an enemy. I meant every word of it...but right now, you're making it really hard for me to live up to those words."

The two of them stood there for the longest time, silent and unmoving. Hal prayed that he'd gotten through to Jonah, for both their sakes. Unfortunately, the bounty hunter's face gave no hint as to what his thoughts might be. After a few minutes, though, Jonah's eyes drifted down to the floor, and he quietly asked, "Was Ah old?"

"What?"

"When yuh saw me the other time...was Ah an old man?"

Hal suddenly remembered Stiletta's description of the "statue" they'd found. "No...God, no. You looked, well, about the same as you do now, I guess. Your hair was a bit shorter in the back, though," he said, noting that it was currently long enough to start brushing Hex's shoulders, "and you were wearing...I think it was an old Confederate uniform."

"Ah was?" Both Jonah's eyes and his voice brightened a little. "Don't josh me now, son."

"No joshing, promise.”

Jonah fell quiet again for a moment. “Stiletta said...she said yuh don’t know nothin’ ‘bout...’bout how Ah died.” He pushed the gunbarrel harder under Jordan’s chin, but not as hard as he’d done previously. “Tell the truth an’ shame the Devil, now.”

“I wish I had something to tell, but...I only knew you for one day, that’s it.”

“One day? How kin yuh call me a friend if'n yuh only knew me fer one damn day?"

"It was a Hell of a day."

The gunfighter said nothing, his eyes drifting away again. Hal began to see the same look of distress on the man's face that he'd witnessed earlier that day.

"Hex..."

"Quiet." Jordan heard the hammer cock back, but that was all. "Less'n yuh got something useful tuh say, don't open yer mouth."

"I do...but I'm afraid to say it with this pistol jammed beneath my jaw."

"Scared thet Ah might take offense?"

Hal paused. "Yes. Yes, I am scared. Is that what you want to hear? There's a one-in-three chance that the next time you pull the trigger, you'll blow my brains out, so any rational man would be scared."

Jonah looked at Hal with red-rimmed eyes, like he hadn't slept in years, then lowered the gun. "Fine. Speak yer piece."

He took a deep breath, then asked, "Do you care about Stiletta?"

The anger in Jonah's eyes was plain to see through the exhaustion. "Sonovabitch...Ah knew it..." He brought the Magnum back up to the Green Lantern's head so fast, he scraped the barrel against the man's cheek. "Yuh cain't have her!"

"I don't want her, I just wanted you to take a look outside your own misery for a second," Jordan snapped, all too aware of the gun just inches from his face. "Maybe destroying yourself with booze makes you feel better, but it's hurting her, too. Trust me, I know what it's like to try and drink away your problems: when you sober up, they're still there, the people you love are suffering worse than you are, plus you've got the hangover to deal with." He was trying not to yell, but it wasn't easy. Jonah's behavior, his denial, was reminding Hal too much of his own bout with alcoholism. Even after he was given the ring, it took him a while to face up to the fact that he was responsible for a lot of his own problems, and that if he wanted things to get better, he had to dry up first. "I don't blame you for wanting to hide from all this. I'm only a half-century removed from this time, and the thought that this is where the world's headed makes me sick. And as far as that corpse goes..."

Jonah flinched at the word like it was a lash.

"As far as that goes," Hal continued, "you're gonna have to learn to live with it. Yes, it's horrible to think that you died in some undignified fashion, but let me tell you a little secret of life that I learned the hard way: people don’t judge you by your last act as much as they do by the sum of all your years. Everything counts, every grand deed and misdeed. Some people...some people will focus more on one than the other, sure, but that doesn’t mean you should lie down and give up because things aren’t going to turn out the way you wanted."

"Ah should kill yuh right now fer talkin' like thet tuh me," Jonah snarled.

"Then do it and get it over with, because if you're not going to listen to what I've got to say, I quit."

"Why yuh so all-fired concerned 'bout whut happens tuh me, anyhow?"

"Because Stiletta asked me to help an old friend," Hal told him, "and because if you don't get your head on straight again, I might die." He let that hang there for a moment before going on. "When I met you in 1878, I was so messed up, I couldn't even remember my own name. If you hadn't been there to rescue me, I probably wouldn't be standing here right now." He shook his head. "I shouldn't be telling you this, it could screw up the whole timeline."

The gunfighter regarded him for a moment, then said, "So yo're only tryin' tuh save muh neck so's Ah kin save yorn somewheres down the line."

"Not completely, but yeah, that is part of it. The other part is because not too long ago, I was where you are. I'd lost nearly everything that I cared about, and I thought there was no one that gave a damn about my pain, so I...I made some bad decisions. They made sense to me at the time, but..." Now it was Hal's turn to look away. "When my friends tried to tell me I was doing the wrong thing, I refused to listen, and it ruined my life. You wouldn't believe what I went through to get back to where I am today." He looked at Hex again and said, "There's people here that are worried about you, Jonah, and they want to help you, but you won't let them. I can understand why you don't trust me, and that's fine, but trust them, before you do something you regret."

Eyes still red, mouth pressed in a hard, thin line, Jonah drew in a long, slow breath, then let it out and said, "Ah've already got a long list of regrets, but it started long afore Ah got here." He then let go of the Green Lantern. "Ah don't agree with everything yuh said, an' Ah sure as Hell don't believe all of it, but Ah think yo're doin' yer best tuh be straight with me. Ah'll admit, Ah'm a mite impressed y'all told me off like thet, whut with me havin' a gun at yer head an' all. Yuh don't have muh full trust yet, but yuh got muh respect, Jordan."

"Does that respect include you untying me?"

"Don't rush me, son." Jonah holstered his gun, walked over to where his coat lay, then pulled out a knife from somewhere within. "Just 'cause Ah'm doin' this don't mean thet Ah'm turnin' muh back on yuh. If'n yuh cross me, Ah'll come down on yuh so hard, yuh won't know yo're dead 'til yuh've been in Hell fer an hour." With that, he reached behind Hal and cut the restraints.

"Thanks...and you won't be sorry, I promise." The Green Lantern rubbed his sore wrists, then bent down and picked up his mask off the floor. "I'm just glad we reached an understanding before you finally hit that bullet."

"Nothin' tuh worry 'bout there," Hex said as he reloaded the Magnum. "Looks like Ah forgot tuh put a bullet back in the gun after Ah emptied the cylinder."

"You...what?" Hal stared at the gunfighter. "You were threatening me with an empty gun?"

"If'n Ah was gonna kill yuh outright, Ah would've slipped muh Bowie 'tween yer ribs while yuh was sleepin'. Nice, quiet death. Wanted tuh be sure yuh was a skunk afore Ah went an' did something like thet, though. Ah ain't the heartless bastard some folks think Ah am." He clicked the now-loaded cylinder shut with a smile. "Ah'll remember next time."

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Hex, you're a menace."

Sobriety, in Jonah's opinion, was highly overrated. He saw nothing wrong with taking a nip or two every so often, but after his little sit-down with Hal, even he had to admit that perhaps he'd slipped too deeply into his cups. He promised to cut back, but both Stiletta and Green Lantern told him that wasn't good enough, it was either all or nothing. Jonah felt they were being rather extreme. "Y'all sound like this temperance woman whut got a hold of me once," he told them. "If'n yuh start thumpin' a Bible at me, Ah'm leavin'." They informed him that wasn't an option, either.

During his first day on the wagon, the gunfighter was watched closer than a fox circling a henhouse. The only time they let him be alone was when he answered the call of nature, and even then somebody stood outside the bathroom door. By the end of the day, he was ready to kill for both some privacy and a stiff drink, and the fact that he was beginning to feel sick as a dog didn't help his mood. Hal noticed Jonah's discomfort, and told him it was from something called "the dee-tees". "I went through the same thing when I dried up," Hal said as the two of them sat in the Hub, each of them nursing a cup of weak coffee. "Figure it's your body's way of getting even for trying to kill your liver."

Though he was suffering, Jonah found the man's frankness a comfort. It made Hal more human to him, not just some strange relic from a past that he hadn't even experienced yet. "Yuh don't strike me as the sort of fella thet would drink."

"The best alcoholics don't look the part. That's how they get away with it. I wasn't a slobbering, fall-down drunk, but I did enough to land up in jail on a drunk-driving charge." He stared down at his cup. "Crippled one of my friends, nearly killed my brother...and yet I still managed to get this." Hal brought up his ring hand. "God has a strange sense of humor."

"Ah've noticed thet," Jonah said, then gestured about them. "Seems the best way tuh explain all this."

"This wasn't God, just men...very stupid, short-sighted men. I thought we'd finally gotten out of the shadow of nuclear war in my time, but it certainly doesn't look that way. I just wonder what happened to all of us that we couldn't stop it."

"Hell, son, Ah wasn't even here fer thet."

"No, I didn't mean you and me, I meant the other heroes." Hal had explained earlier about all the other masked men that used to exist back at the turn of the millennium. To Jonah it all sounded like hogwash. Sure, he'd seen a few odd things himself since coming to this time, but the sort of people Green Lantern claimed to know didn't even sound like real folks. He reasoned it away as he did most of the strangeness he'd encountered in "modern" society: somewhere between 1875 and 2050, everyone had gone completely insane. "There's no way they would have all sat back and let this happen," Hal continued, "not to mention that apparently no one has shown their face since then."

"There was thet Bat-fella," Jonah said, "but Ah think he's dead."

"Okay, one guy out of thousands. What about the rest?"

"They're yer friends, why do yuh keep askin' me?"

"Well, isn't this your field of expertise? Finding people?"

Jonah looked at the man for a moment, then turned away. "Thet ain't whut Ah do no more. Back home, Ah'd do yuh fine, but here...yuh don't want some broken-down old man helpin' yuh. Ah wouldn't do yuh one lick of good."

"Why not? You've been here for quite a while, you know how things work. I don't even know the name of the nearest town."

"Breyersville...but there ain't nobody there worth talkin' tuh." Hex thought for a moment, then said, "Best place tuh start is the Crystal Palace, if'n yuh got money tuh spare...cost yuh twenty Soames just tuh set foot in the place. Then there's Freepoint a few miles past thet, an' River's End...lots of folks go through there all the time. An' if'n yuh don't mind hoofin' it fer a couple days, yuh kin..." He stopped. "Whut's so damn funny?"

"Nothing," Hal replied, a sly grin on his face.

"Yuh ain't gonna get nowheres if'n yuh don't take this serious. Don't yuh know there's folks'll kill yuh soon's they look at yuh 'round these parts? Thet hole in yer leg is proof of thet. They don't give a damn 'bout yer name or yer fancy ring, all's they see is easy pickin's." He took a sip of coffee, then said, "Ah'd best come along an' watch yer back when yuh go lookin' fer these friends of yers, otherwise yuh'll be buzzard chow in no time flat."

Still smiling, Hal said, "That's very generous of you, Hex."

"An' yuh'd best appreciate thet generosity, 'cause yo're gonna have tuh depend on it awful heavy." Jonah pointed a finger at him. "Yuh ain't got a gun, a ride, or one red cent tuh yer name, so muh sense of Christian charity is all yuh got goin' fer yuh at the moment."

"So, do you want to start tomorrow morning?"

"If'n Ah ain't sickin' up muh guts, sure thing."

They reached the first settlement that Jonah deemed worth their trouble by eleven in the morning. Freepoint wasn't pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but the ramshackle buildings and rows of converted trailers did well enough for the residents, and unlike Crystal Palace, they wouldn't charge for the privilege of walking through their streets. The two men drew their fair share of looks as they made the rounds, asking questions of anyone that seemed willing to talk to a clean-cut gentleman in a mask and a rough-looking man with a face only a mother could love. Unfortunately, most of the answers they received were the same as the ones Hal got from Stiletta and her friends: no one had seen a meta since the war, few to none were known before the war, and the names Green Lantern rattled off, including his own, jogged no memories.

After two hours with no luck, they declared the place a loss and headed to the next town five miles away, a hole in the wall laughingly called New Eden. Prospects didn't improve any there, though Hal did spot some people clustered around a burning oil drum that gave off the same reddish-pink smoke he'd seen in the parking garage. When he asked Jonah about it, the gunfighter made a face and muttered, "Lotus-eaters."

Hal smirked, saying, "I didn't know you read Greek mythology."

"Whut do Greeks got tuh do with anything?" He waved a hand at the small crowd. "They burn little bricks of the stuff an' suck up the smoke. Makes 'em act all moony, like opium, only they don't even got the sense tuh do it in a den, they just drag it out into the open." Jonah lit a cigarette and blew smoke their way, as if to counteract the strange drug's effects. "Cain't get drunk like civilized folk do."

The more hours that passed, the more Hal's discouragement grew. They had traveled countless miles and had nothing to show for it but sore backs from all that riding. As they headed back to their cycles after hitting yet another dead end in another shantytown, Hal expressed his concerns to Jonah. "Maybe we're going about this wrong, or just asking the wrong questions. We should have found out something by now."

"We're followin' a cold trail, Jordan. Thet's the worst sort tuh follow. All's we kin do right now is keep siftin' through all the worthless information 'til we find a good solid lead, then we kin jump on thet an' hope it pans out."

Hal sat down on his bike, saying, "Yeah, I know, but this is frustrating. I'm about ready to call it quits for the day."

"C'mon, one more stop, then we'll head back tuh Maple."

"Are you really that eager to get rid of me?"

"Yes."

Jordan was knocked speechless for a moment. "I thought we'd settled all this."

"Ah've decided tuh tolerate yuh, Ah never said we was best buddies now. The sooner Ah kin foist yuh off on some of yer fellow masked men, the happier Ah'll be." He closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingers. "Yuh have no idea how much it troubles me just tuh look at yuh sometimes. Ah don't care thet yuh've got this idea in yer head thet we're pals...maybe when we meet the other time we will be, but right now yo're just a bad dream Ah cain't shake."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Hex. I hope you'll change your mind when we do find my colleagues, because if they can help me get back to my proper time, then they might be able to..."

"Don't start."

"Start what?"

"Makin' promises. Ah don't want tuh hear 'em, 'specially 'bout thet." Jonah leveled his gaze at him and said, "Ah've missed muh chance tuh go home twice now. Both times Ah got muh hopes up only tuh have 'em crash down like one of them newfangled flyin' machines. So don't go an' build 'em up again, Ah don't think muh heart kin take the strain a third time."

Green Lantern fell silent for a while, looking out over the sprawling, snow-covered expanse that lay before them, then said, "Okay, I won't bring it up anymore."

"Fine by me." Jonah straddled his own bike. "So, one more stop? River's End is only 'bout three or four miles thetaway." He waved a hand to the east.

"Sure." They fired up their rides, and Jonah led the way to River's End. As they neared the building, Hal let out a quick laugh. The gunfighter had told him that lots of people came to the place, and once he saw it, he realized why...or at least why they would still associate it as a fine source for goods and services. The world comes to an end, Hal thought, and people still go to the freaking mall.

Most of the structure was intact, but parts of the exterior had been built upon, extending out to the mall's crumbling parking lot. That area had the air of a Turkish bazaar about it, with people standing out in the cold haggling over the price of whatever junk lay before them. Jonah skimmed the booths with a practiced eye, picking out the truly useful vendors from the crazies that would make up tales just to part the two men from what little money they had. But even the bounty hunter's experience couldn't produce information where there simply wasn't any, and they slowly worked their way inward to the mall proper. The interior shops looked much better than their outside counterparts, as did the people running them, but the higher quality didn't improve their prospects. "Looks like we've gone bust again," Jonah muttered as they neared the back end of the mall. "Yuh sure we're lookin' fer real people, Jordan?"

"Very funny." Hal surveyed the area, hands on hips. Some of the storefronts on that end had been converted into living quarters, with all sorts of people and their possessions crammed within. "Let's check with some of the folks down here before we take off," he said...then realized he was talking to himself. Jonah had disappeared. Oh damn, he thought as he turned around in a circle. Did he decide to ditch me here? After a moment, he saw the gunfighter across the way, walking into one of the stores. In the display window was a hand-lettered sign:



"Like a kid spotting a toy store," he mused, then followed after him. Hal found him already engaged in conversation with the owner behind the counter, handing the man a bullet.

"Yuh got anything like thet?" Jonah asked.

"What sort of gun is this for?" The man held it up for a closer look. The brass casing was blackened with age.

"Colt .44 Dragoon...converted, of course."

"Are you high? I sell guns, not antiques." He tossed the bullet back at Hex, who snatched it out of the air. "Lay off the Lotus and come back when you've really got business for me," he said, and began to turn away.

Jonah reached over the counter, grabbed the man by his shirt, and pulled him back. "Ah ain't in the mood fer sass. Show me whut yuh got, an' Ah'll tell yuh if'n we've got business."

"All right, all right! Jesus..." He shook loose, then rummaged under the counter for a moment. "I've got a box of odds and ends, maybe what you need is in there." He placed a metal box half-full of bullets in front of Jonah.

"I didn't know we were doing any shopping today," Hal said as Jonah began looking through the box.

"Place was here, figured Ah'd try."

"Good idea...think I'll do the same." He then said to the owner, "Mind answering a few questions for me?"

"Let me guess: you want musket balls."

Hal ignored the comment. "I'm looking for some people...the sort that would really stand out if you saw them. They used to call them metas: stronger than average, faster, some have extranormal powers. There were quite a few back around the turn of the millennium. I'm trying to locate some, find out if any survived the war."

"People like that don't exist around here," the man said, shaking his head. "You've seen too many movies."

"What about before the war? Did you ever hear about any of the old heroes?" Hal felt strange referring to himself and those like him as "old", but at this point in time, it was the proper context. "You should know Superman, at least."

He laughed. "Superman? That's a fairy tale. You may as well be looking for Rumpelstiltskin."

"He's not a fairy tale, he's a real person."

"If you say so, buddy...personally, I think you both need to cut down on the briqs." The man turned to Hex and said, "So are you buying or just wasting my time?"

Hal expected Jonah to punch the owner, but instead he held up five bullets, all roughly the same size as the one he'd showed the man earlier. "How much?"

"Two-and-a-half Soames."

Reaching into his coat, the gunfighter produced a small plastic container and shook out what looked to Hal like Alka-Seltzer tablets. Stiletta had told the Green Lantern before about the importance of Soames in current society: in a world where almost every water source was poison, the purifying tablets were worth more than gold, and had become the de facto currency. Jonah snapped one of them in half, then handed over the proper amount.

"Pleasure doing business with you...now scram." The owner jerked a thumb towards the door.

"Cain't imagine why folks ain't linin' up tuh come into this place," Jonah muttered as they left the shop. He gave the bullets in his hand one more look before tucking them in his pocket.

"I'm surprised you're still using your old guns," Hal said. He'd seen the Dragoons laying on the table in Jonah's room and recognized them immediately. "It's obviously not easy to find ammunition for them, so why do you keep bothering?"

"This is the first time Ah've gone lookin', actually. Didn't get them back 'til a month ago."

"You mean they were..."

"Yeah, they were," Jonah said, cutting him off before Hal could mention the corpse. "Funny thing is, they should be at the bottom of a lake 'bout two hunnert years back."

"A lake? What happened?"

"Ah was drunk." Jonah stopped walking and shoved his hands in his pockets, obviously embarrassed to admit what he'd done. "Drunk an' fed up with the world. Ah thought muh guns was the cause of all muh troubles, so Ah tossed 'em in a lake an' said good riddance. When Ah sobered up a week later, Ah thought 'bout tryin' tuh fish 'em out, but Ah wasn't 'bout tuh up an' drown muhself fer 'em, even if they was the nicest pair of guns Ah ever owned." Hal could see the confusion brewing in the gunfighter's eyes once again. "They should be nothin' but hunks o' rust by now, but there they were, right in muh hands."

"Maybe you had copies made after you...I mean...."

"Ah know whut yuh mean, an' Ah thought of thet, but Ah know thet it ain't so. When yuh trust yer life tuh something fer so long, yuh get tuh know every quirk 'bout it." He pointed at Hal's ring. "If'n yuh dropped thet in a pile of rings made tuh look just like it, wouldn't yuh be able tuh pick it out? Yuh kin spot it an' just know thet it's yorn. Ah had them Dragoons fer years, Ah know every inch of 'em. Even the damn serial numbers is the same."

"Then you must have retrieved them somehow, I don't know. For sure, you had guns just like that when we met in..." He stopped, hearing a commotion coming from down the hall. Two men in biker leather ran out of one of the converted storefronts. With them was a two-year-old girl, beating at the man carrying her and screaming bloody murder. The bikers shoved away what little resistance they met and headed towards the nearest exit. Hal didn't know what was going on, but years of experience told him it couldn't be good. "Come on, we've got to try and head them off!" he shouted at Jonah, and began to run after them.

"Whut's this 'we' nonsense, Lantern? Yo're the damn hero." But after standing there a few seconds, he cursed under his breath and followed, easily overtaking the still-injured Jordan. The bikers were too far away for him to block their escape route, though, so Hex decided to improvise: he drew one of his guns and fired a shot at the pushbar on the door to the outside just as the unencumbered biker was reaching for it. The ricochet was more than enough to make the guy change his mind. Seeing the bounty hunter and the Green Lantern bearing down on them, the second biker turned tail and ran off in another direction. "Ah'll fetch the one with the girl," Jonah told Hal, "y'all kin have the other fella."

"Much obliged." Hal had discovered that when you spent a good deal of time around Jonah Hex, his speech pattern tended to rub off on you.

The first biker had only been momentarily stunned by the sudden gunshot, and was now pulling out his own weapon. Time to even the odds, Hal thought. He whipped off his coat, threw it in the biker's face, and forced him against the wall. He then grabbed the man's hand and twisted until the gun dropped to the ground. "Why do I doubt either of you is that girl's father?" Jordan said to him.

"Fuggoff, man," the biker spat back, tossing his head to push aside the coat. "What business is it of yours?"

"I'm the new mall security." He gave the biker's head a quick rap against the wall, hard enough to knock him out, then turned to a man standing nearby. "Watch this guy," Hal said, handing him the gun before heading off the way Jonah and the second biker had gone. He found them not far away, the would-be kidnapper sprawled out on the tiles with a bloody nose and the gunfighter kneeling down to gather up the sobbing child.

"M-Mama, hur' my Mama," the girl stuttered out as she buried her face in the folds of Jonah's coat. She was dressed in a ragged sweater three sizes too large and mismatched shoes.

Jonah smoothed down her hair with a surprisingly gentle touch. "Hush there, youngster, it's alright now." Balancing the girl in the crook of his arm, he stood up and said to Hal, "Yuh lost yer coat."

"The other guy looked like he needed it more." He gestured at the girl, saying, "I didn't know you had it in you."

"Ah have muh moments." Jonah looked down at her tear-streaked face. "Got a boy back home...ain't seen him since he was a month old, but Ah reckon he was 'bout her age when Ah came here."

"I'll bet he's a hellion on the playground." He reached out with a gloved hand and wiped away some of her tears.

The girl sniffled and lifted her head away from Jonah's chest to look at Hal. After a moment, her expression went from sadness to the sort of joy you only see on a child's face. "Lannern!" she cried out.

The two men stared at each other. "Did she just say..." Hal began, then stopped as the kid began to pull at the chest-symbol on his uniform.

"Geen Lannern!" she said the best her two-year-old vocabulary would allow.

"Out of the mouths of babes," Hex wondered aloud. The child began to wiggle in his arms, so he handed her off to Jordan. "Looks like yuh got yerself a new sweetheart."

"I guess so." He gagged as the girl locked her arms around his neck in a toddler death-grip, giggling and saying his name over and over. "Time to go find Mama," he said, and the three of them retraced their steps back to the storefront Hal had seen the bikers come out of. As they neared, a woman dressed just as haphazardly as the little girl ran up to them, her face bloodied and a bruise forming on her cheek.

"Oh my God, Merrissa," the woman said, pulling the girl from Hal's arms, "oh, my baby girl." She ignored the men as she rocked the child in her arms, the relief plain to see on her face.

"Are you all right, ma'am?" Hal asked.

She nodded, saying, "I'll be better if you tell me you killed those bastards. God knows what they were planning to do with her."

Paying no mind to her mother's thoughts of homicide, the girl pointed and said, "Mama, iss Geen Lannern!"

"No, sweetie, I told you, they're gone, all gone." Then she gave Hal a long look. "He does look a lot like the pictures, though."

"Pictures?" Jordan laid a hand on the woman's arm. "Ma'am, what are you talking about?"

"It's nothing, just some old magazine Merrissa found. She asked me who was in the pictures, so I read her the names and made up stories to go with them."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure, I guess," she said, and led them into the converted store. They walked past piles of junk and old furniture to a small area where the mother and daughter lived. They had little more than a mattress and a few bags of belongings.

The girl fought her way out of her mother's arms, saying, "I wanna show 'im!" She ran over to the mattress and pulled out the magazine tucked beneath it, then held it up for Hal to see. "Don' like the ou'side pages, jus' the inside. Ou'side's all blucky."

Hal didn't know what "blucky" meant, but he figured it referred to the smears of dirt ingrained into the magazine cover. The image was still clear enough for him to recognize the Newstime logo, and beneath that... "Oh Jesus," he breathed, then took it from her and began to flip through it.

"Whut is it?" Jonah asked, leaning over Hal's shoulder for a better view.

The Green Lantern didn't answer, just kept flipping the pages and skimming paragraphs. After a couple minutes, he said to Hex, "How many Soames do you have left?"

"Ah don't know, maybe..."

"Whatever it is, give them half."

"Whut? Yuh lost yer mind, boy?"

"Give them half," he repeated, then knelt down in front of the girl. "I'm sorry, honey, I'm going to have to keep this. It's important."

The girl pulled at the magazine. "No, iss mine, I wanna keep it," she said.

"If I give you one of the pictures, can I have it?" he asked. "I'll try to have one of my friends bring it back when I'm done, I promise."

She thought about it, lower lip pouting out, then said quietly, "Okay."

Hal opened the magazine to a picture of himself, making sure the back of the page contained nothing more than an advertisement, then carefully tore it out. He handed it to her and gave her a kiss on her forehead. "Thank you, Merrissa," he said, then stood up and looked at the mother. "And thank you, ma'am. You've just helped me more than you'll ever realize."

The woman was stuffing the Soames into her pocket. "No problem...come by next week and I'll have even more magazines for you."

"This one will do fine," he told her, then turned to walk back out into the mall, the gunfighter right behind.

"Yuh mind tellin' me why Ah gave thet gal eighteen Soames fer an old periodical?" Jonah asked once they were out of earshot.

Still walking, Hal said, "Have you ever heard of a place called Coast City?"

"Cain't say thet Ah have."

"It's in California. I spent most of my life there. A few years ago...to me, it was a few years ago...an alien warlord named Mongul came to Earth and wiped out the entire city, killing millions of people in a bid to take over the planet. I wasn't there to stop him from destroying Coast City, but I was able to take him out before he could finish with his plan. Broke my arm, tore up my knee, but I didn't let up until I was sure he couldn't hurt anyone else."

"Whut's all thet got tuh do with anything?"

He stopped now and handed the magazine to Jonah. Beneath decades of grime, the gunfighter saw the Newstime banner running across the top, and the phrase "One Year Later" at the bottom of the cover. Between the two was a picture of a slender tower with a memorial flame burning near its tip, and five statues ringing its base. The faces on four of the statues were unfamiliar, but Jonah had come to know the fifth one very well the past few days.

"According to this," Green Lantern said, "Mongul killed me as well."