Hell raisers hell inc se.., p.1
Hell Raisers (Hell inc Series Book 3), page 1
Hell Raisers
by Dick Wybrow
At the end of this book get a sneak peek at Book 4
The InBetween
Novels by DICK WYBROW
THE HELL INC SERIES
Hell inc.
Hell to Pay
Hell Raisers
The InBetween
The Night Vanishing
Past Life
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemble to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021, Dick Wybrow
www.dickwybrow.com
Cover by Warren Design
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. All and any parts of this book that are reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system should clearly state details of the author/ publisher.
Hell Raisers
(Hell inc Series Book 3)
CHAPTER ONE
The most magical creation in the world is the clipboard.
At the most basic level, a clipboard is a portable desk you can hold. Take notes, fill out forms, sign your soul over to the devil. That sort of stuff.
A clipboard will also hold your pen. Sometimes, they come with a string attached to said pen, but, really, that’s trying too hard.
When it rains, a clipboard can serve as a makeshift umbrella (pro tip: watch out for swinging pens on strings).
And in a pinch, you can wield a sturdy clipboard as a weapon. Sally Scull, the nineteenth-century gunslinger I was driving for, told me some agents of Hell inc.—“the new-aged bastards!”—had even gone so far as to sharpen one side of their clipboards to a razor’s edge. Swinging these around, they could take out an enemy agent working for Hell, the original overlords of the Downstairs, who they were trying to unseat.
Note: This sort of use is what the pharmaceutical world calls “off brand.”
But that’s not what’s magical about clipboards.
Here’s what is: They are the hall pass to the world.
Holding one of these simple devices grants you unquestioned access to areas you have no business going. Red-velvet ropes are no match for the mighty clipboard.
Even without the sharpened edge.
And since I am an ex-DJ with zero marketable skills and a current motorcycle chauffeur for one of Hell’s top agents, most places are places I have no business going.
For example: I certainly had no business standing at the top of a granite behemoth called El Capitan in California’s Yosemite National Park surrounded by hundreds of people—at an event watched by hundreds of thousands around the world—waiting for a social media darling named Jaxon Dragon to attempt a “wingsuit” jump from its three-thousand-foot peak.
However, I was carrying a clipboard.
I was also sporting an Action Jaxon ball cap I’d picked up from one of the vendors at the base of the mini-mountain. For an event that would last less than a minute, there were at least seventeen different stalls selling all sorts of Jaxon merch. A simple transaction to purchase a pair of thundersticks emblazoned with his face would take longer than his flight through the valley below.
Hats, T-shirts, mugs, do-rags, and of course his line of “men’s empowerment products.” Many “dudes” wouldn’t buy from a line of beauty products, so empowerment it was!
Thus, moisturizers were labelled “fluid infusers.”
Facial cleansers were sold as “mug wipes.”
And there were blackhead removers, beard trimmers, moustache trimmers, nose-hair trimmers, and even old-school cover-up for those pimply days, which he’d sold as Guy Grout™ for chrissake, all under the alpha-male arm of A-Jax.
One could slap many labels on Jaxon Dragon himself—and after you pull off the label, here, try this A-Jax cleansing skin tightener!—like “entrepreneur” or “daredevil.” But the most appropriate might simply be social “media douchebag.”
That, of course, meant that “Action” Jaxson Dragon was secretly an underling, proxy, or agent of Hell inc.
So Sally Scull, my employer, was going to kill him.
Sally worked for the other side.
No, not the other other side. This situation wasn’t Old Testament–style good versus evil. This was basically New New Testament-style evil versus evil.
Sometime in the twentieth century, after scores of lawyers, corporate accountants, brand ambassadors, and so on died, they naturally went to the afterworld place where locals dressed in red, had summer homes near lakes of fire, and carried pointy sticks, searching for body cavities to stick them in.
However, this new blood pulled off something no other had since the dawn of time. They’d formed a splinter group—what you might think of as a corporate version of Hell—which was dubbed “Hell inc.”
Derivative, sure, but apparently not violating any copyrights.
They checked.
They had the lawyers.
Hell inc. was headed by Steve Janus, former CEO of Baby Gap.
After his death in the late 1980s, Janus started trying to unseat The Old Man in Hell so Janus could take the reins himself and, um, reign. Naturally, the Devil ain’t happy about that, so the two sides are locked in a war, battling for power.
But, Sally explained to me, it’s not yet an all-and-out war.
“Janus got all his minions and agents trying to wipe out all our minions and agents,” she told me over some homebrew I’d concocted at our California ranch house when we’d first started working together. “And the Old Man has people like me keeping the peace.”
“By killing them,” I said.
“That’s how you keep peace, Rasputin,” she said and frowned at me. “Don’t you read no books or nothing?”
“Is there an audiobook? I prefer an audiobook. That way I can get other stuff done while I listen. I would read, of course. It’s so much better, but I get so busy—”
“No, no, and no and in that order,” she had said, repeating a favorite phrase of hers. “The job of talented folks like myself is to peace-keep the others side’s agents back to Hell via bullet, blade, or busted head. And now you being my chauffeur, it’s your job too.”
I’d done a lot of questionable things in my life but never outright killing people. Or, well, even in-right killing people, if that was a thing. No killing, basically.
But her targets were minions of the forces of pure evil, so technically, that was a bit of a get-out clause. In my rationalization, I chose to ignore that Sally et al. were also forces of pure evil, just on another team.
We’d taken the motorcycle, a very special machine close to my heart I’d named Bucephalus, from her ranch house at the foot the Santa Lucia Mountains near Big Sur all the way to Yosemite. A four-hour-plus drive that took us ten minutes.
Sally, bless her heart, wanted to whip out her shooters and tear up ol’ Action Jaxon with lead slugs. A state that, by the way, could not be improved by any amount of fluid-enhancing cream.
I’d come up with a different idea and one that was far less shooty bang-bang.
And one that ensured us less chance of getting ID’d. Jaxon would meet a very public end to his contract, so if it didn’t point back at Sally—and by association me—that would be best.
I felt a bump behind me that was so rough I nearly dropped my clipboard.
Sighing, I said through clenched teeth, “You were supposed to be waiting down below, Sal.” I didn’t even have to turn around to know it was her. I was downwind.
“Had to keep moving,” she growled. “People started starin’ at me. Makes my trigger finger itchy.”
I’d been eyeballing Jaxon, who was surrounded by a throng of TV reporters waiting for him to finish his final online broadcast to his followers—thirty-three million of them—so they could get their story for the handful of people still watching television.
Currently, he was waxing on about how he wasn’t concerned about rocketing through the air faster than 150 miles an hour because any wind damage to his skin would be held off by something called A-Jax Skin Shield™.
When I turned to Sally and saw what she was wearing, I had to bite my tongue, willing the corners of my mouth to stay down, stay down. She’d once shot a man just for snoring. Laugh at her? The assault would likely involve a reload. Probably two.
“That… is an amazing look,” I said, nodding to keep my head busy. “Look at you flyin’ the Action Jaxon flag too!”
“Makes me look hippy.”
When I say “nineteenth-century cowboy,” the image it conjures up is exactly what you would see when gazing upon Sally Scull. Dusty hat, leather chaps, denim vest, denim pants, and cowboy boots spotted with shit, blood, and, very likely, bits of brain matter.
Over all of that, Sally had stretched an A-Jax T-shirt featuring the man’s face and the twinkling smile on it. I’d have paid a dollar to see what size the shirt was, but my best guess was the Xs before the letter L would look like the bottom of a love note from a smitten fourteen-year-old high schooler.
She grunted, her usual form of conversation, nodding at Jaxon, who was now waving away the reporters and walking to a spot at the cliff’s edge. Here stood three lighting rigs in a tight frame, all pointing toward a red square of carpet.
Down below floated a long, long ribbon of rainbow balloons, like airport running lights suspended in mid-air, awaiting the landing of Pride One.
At the very end was his target: a giant sheet-metal slab that had been cut into three letters. Tall, red bedazzled script sparkling in the sun: the word Jax.
Sally and I followed the throng of supporters, paid-VIP guests, and principal sponsor reps rushing toward his jumping-off point. I kept my clipboard high, scribbling with a stubby pencil to appear that I was taking notes. Or measurements. Or planning the after-event buffet.
Even before reaching his carpet square, incongruous against the gray slate rock, Jaxon was getting his millions of followers ready for the big moment.
“…but don’t worry, that’s all part of it,” he said, grinning at the camera, which was attached with a goose-neck telescoping arm coming out of his helmet, pointed at his priceless face. “After the initial drop, I’ll have enough speed, and I’ll arc the wingsuit at exactly thirty-one degrees, which I can track”—he tapped an OLED monitor fitted to the inside of his wristband—“here. If you’re a premium subscriber, you’ll see all those measurements—including my heart rate and BP—up on your screen.”
“You shoulda let me shoot him,” Sally mumbled. Fortunately, with the wind stronger near the edge, only a few of the nearby onlookers glanced in our direction, likely unsure if they’d heard what they thought they’d heard.
I growled back to her, “Will you be quiet! Please!”
“Raz, just so we’re clear,” Sally said, chuckling, “you’re only still breathing because you said ‘please.”’
The man in the jet-black wingsuit was now on his spot, doing a series of stretches that seemed wholly unnecessary.
“And I’ve got cam-shots from both hands, a chest view to see the ground hurtling by at eye-watering speeds. Another on my head to see our target, and a few of you get the rear shot—that’ll show you what we left behind, and, for the ladies only, you also see a shot of my… behind!” He grinned and laughed. “That’s just for the premies, though. You’ve got about sixty seconds left if you want to get in on that.”
Yeah, he called his premium subscribers premies. Sure, it could have been ironic, but “Action” Jaxon Dragon didn’t seem like the ironic type.
“All six cams, just ten bucks,” he said, giving a thumbs-up. Then he theatrically held his finger to his ear and shouted: “Forty-five seconds!”
The crowd around us erupted in cheers. Everyone got excited, jostling against one another, trying to get a better view. Some people in the throng were actually watching on their phones, the display cut into six different squares.
The only one without an absurd ear-to-ear grin was my cohort in Hell-based crime, Sally Scull.
“Ain’t you gonna do something?” she said in a hoarse whisper. “He’s about to go!”
I tapped my pencil on the clipboard, trying to get her attention. She started to speak again, so I tapped harder. Finally, she looked down.
“Camera?” she “whispered” so loudly it was like how another person might sound from three rooms over to warn you of a house fire.
I clenched the pencil tightly and tapped it again.
She looked up, squinting. Slowly, I saw her counting as she rubbed what was left of a chili dog on her shirt. A red smear now spread across the man’s twinkling smile.
I watched her mouth make the soundless words—One, two, three…
Finally, she shrugged and said, “Six cameras? What?”
Again, I tapped the word camera on the clipboard and shook my head slowly. When she didn’t get it, I tapped the back of her head casually, as if I was dusting off a bit of lint.
“Fifteen seconds!” Another cheer.
When Sally looked up again, it took a moment, but then she saw it.
On the back of Jaxon’s helmet, where of course he couldn’t see it, was an extra camera. A seventh. However, no one would see the image coming from this one, not even the premies, because there was no real lens. Not camera electronics inside. Just a shell.
I looked at her and popped my eyebrows, waiting for the knowing grin.
But from Sally, no grin.
No knowing.
She frowned, and I frowned back.
Apparently, nineteenth-century gunslingers didn’t know very much about physics. That was fine. She’d learn in—
“Five seconds!”
—give or take.
CHAPTER TWO
EXT. PHILADELPHIA INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT, WAREHOUSE - NIGHT
Dark.
The kind of dark that has no light, like really zero light. Not even an afterglow. None of that stuff.
We HEAR a CLANK!
Someone’s closed the circuit on the interior fluorescent lights, which pop and fizzle, waking up like sleeping coyotes in a field on the edge of suburbia after they catch the scent of a juicy Pomeranian.
The first hero we see is lean but tall, wearing an eye mask and a two-toned body suit that hugs tight, ropey muscles as he strides to the large worktable in the middle of the warehouse floor.
This is DIRK.
He’s followed by a mammoth of a man. Wearing a two-toned suit, red and gray, but no mask, he barely appears human. More like a mix between a bear and a blood sausage.
This is TURK.
TURK
Dammit, we nearly had him!
DIRK
(pouring himself a drink)
Slipped through our fingers.
VOICE (O.C.)
Again.
Striding in, a woman formerly known as Valerie Powers, human-rights-lawyer-turned-vigilante-assassin.
This is MERC.
MERC
Where were you guys? I had a bead on Killmaster,
and then—
TURK
Someone didn’t disable the alarm codes.
All are quiet as we hear a squeaky metal door CREAK open and slam. Collectively, they audibly SIGH.
A moment later, we hear someone off camera stumble over what might be empty paint cans with a CLATTER.
VOICE (O.C.)
Dammit!
Turk looks over at the others, offers a half smile, and shakes his head slowly.
Before their fourth member stumbles into the room, a bent sword bounces on the floor and smacks into Dirk’s leg.
Finally, a short, stocky figure in chain mail, leather, and a medieval-looking metal helmet stumbles into the room, trips on his empty scabbard, and tumbles to the floor.
This is QUIRK.
QUIRK
Dammit, dammit!
MERC
(eyes shifting between the other two nervously)
Uh, hey, Quirk! Everything was, um, set on my end.
(she then finds her rhythm again)
But when I lined up the shot, the floodlights blacked out,
and the warning sirens—
QUIRK
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The woman’s mouth hanging open with her last unsaid word, she watches as the dwarf member of their crew digs into his pants and pulls out a flask.
Again, the three others trade glances.
TURK
Uh, hey, you know there’s no, um,
drinking on the job, Quirk!
What are y—
Quirk tosses the flask aside, scowling.
QUIRK
Empty.
He digs under his belt up to his elbow. Finally, he pulls out another flask and takes a long draw.
DIRK
Whoa, now, Quirky. Um…
(he wavers then, to someone off camera, says)
Hey, Daveed, is he supposed to do that?
Everyone watches as Quirk grabs a locked chest with one hand, lifts it, and sets it on its side. Several pieces of Styrofoam sprinkle across the floor.
QUIRK
Fuck, I hate this gig.
MERC
What? Wait…
