Infernal

Richard’s mind raced. The bearded man’s revelation sent fact, fiction, and what he knew to be history reeling around in his mind like bumper cars in a dodgem game.

William Anderson Hatfield, aka “Devil Anse” Hatfield, sat behind a large table not twenty feet in front of Richard. One side of a feudal coin that bore Randolph “Ol Ran’l” McCoy’s face on the other, the imposing figure was dressed in a military uniform he had never worn on Richard’s Earth, holding a rank he had never held, fighting a war that had never been fought—had he said Eastern United States?—with weapons that would not have existed on Richard’s Earth for another fifty years.

The bunker suddenly shook under the impact of aerial bombardment, reminding Richard of the four P-51D Mustangs he’d seen tearing through the sky. Dust sifted down from massive concrete blocks overhead. All eyes in the room looked up; waiting, perhaps, for those enormous stones to buckle, fall, and crush them all.

The Hatfield-McCoy feud had started on Richard’s Earth in 1878 over the supposed theft of a McCoy hog by Floyd Hatfield. The matter had been taken to the courts but the local Justice of the Peace, Anderson “Preacher Anse” Hatfield, had ruled in the Hatfield’s favor based on the testimony of Bill Stanton, a relative of both families. Bill Stanton was later killed by two McCoy brothers.

Though Stanton’s murder was the first recorded incident of violence between the two families the feud likely had its origins in the murder of Randolph’s brother, Asa Harmon McCoy.

The Hatfield’s hailed from West Virginia, near the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River straddling the West Virginia-Kentucky border, while Randolph and the McCoy clan had moved across the border into Kentucky years earlier. Both clans supported the Confederacy during the Civil War but Asa McCoy had chosen to fight for the Union. Jim Vance, the uncle of Anse Hatfield had taken exception to this betrayal and was widely believed to have murdered Asa in 1865.

The feud escalated after Anse’s son Johnse began a relationship with Ran’l McCoy’s eldest daughter, Roseanna. When Roseanna left her family to live with Johnse and the Hatfield’s in West Virginia both families had rejected any notion of marriage. Roseanna, pregnant by that time, returned home to Kentucky. Disowned by her father and abandoned by Johnse, Roseanna grew ill and lost the child. It is believed she committed suicide after Johnse married her cousin, Nancy McCoy, in 1881.

During the Pike County, Kentucky Election Day celebration in 1882 a fight broke out between the two families. Ellison Hatfield, brother of Anse, was killed by three of Roseanna McCoy’s young brothers: Tolbert, Pharmer, and Bud. Ellison was stabbed repeatedly and shot. The trio was immediately arrested but Hatfield and a large posse took the McCoy brothers by force from the constables before they could reach safe haven. Devil Anse tied Roseanna’s brothers to pawpaw bushes and each was shot numerous times.

The feud reached its peak in 1888 during the New Year’s Night Massacre. Several members of the Hatfield clan surrounded the McCoy cabin and opened fire on the sleeping family. The cabin was then torched in an effort to drive Randolph McCoy into the open. He made a break for it and escaped but two of his children were shot. His wife was beaten and left for dead.

Later that year a posse arrested Wall Hatfield and eight others. They were taken to Kentucky where they were tried and found guilty of the murder of Randolph McCoy’s young daughter Alifair, shot and killed during the New Year’s Massacre. Seven received life in prison. The eighth, Ellison “Cottontop” Mounts, was executed by hanging.

By 1891 the feud had made headlines across the country. Another dozen deaths had occurred between the two families since the New Year’s Night Massacre prompting the Governor of West Virginia, Jacob Beeson Jackson, to threaten to send his militia into Kentucky to end the violence. To prevent what would most certainly have resulted in a second civil war the Governor of Kentucky, Samuel Bolivar Buckner, sent his Adjutant General Samuel Ewing Hill to West Virginia to investigate the Hatfield-McCoy hostilities. His investigation resulted in another eleven deaths with nearly the same number of wounded.

Arrests and trials related to the massacre continued until 1901. A truce was not officially declared between the two families until 2003.

What happened on this Earth? Richard wondered. Had Samuel Hill’s investigation into the Hatfield-McCoy feud sparked a larger conflict? Had Governor Jackson made good on his threat and sent his militia into Kentucky? Was that the spark that lit the tinder? And how was this war being fought with military technology that wouldn’t exist on Richard’s earth until well into the next century?

Something Sophia had said to him days earlier came to mind: “Imagine where your science and technology would be if a little event called the Dark Ages had not occurred or had been significantly shortened. A society that doesn’t have a gap that large in its technological learning curve would be far more advanced than yours is now, don’t you think?”

The aircraft and fortifications he’d seen on the battlefield were from his World War II era. On his Earth that war ended with the dropping of two nuclear bombs. Richard cringed at the thought.

“We’re travelers,” Sophia spoke up when the dust settled and the sound of detonations overhead faded. “From abroad.”

“Dear lady,” Anse Hatfield replied, a note of warning in his voice, “I was addressing the gentleman. Please be quiet.”

“We’re travelers,” Richard repeated, following Sophia’s cue. “The lady, Sophia Bledell, and myself, Richard Farris. Travelers. Nothing more.”

“Well armed travelers,” Hatfield said with a grin, gesturing towards the cache of weapons laid out on the table. The two men behind Sophia and Richard laughed. “What do simple travelers need with such an arsenal?”

Richard opened his mouth to say that only a fool would travel abroad in war time without weapons but Sophia interrupted him: “Those are not our weapons. We picked them up along the way.”

“Aren’t you the impertinent one?” Anse cast his gaze on Sophia. “Dressed as a man and not as a woman, your tongue running as if it’s hinged in the middle and wagging on both ends.” He picked up the RLP and turned it over in his hands, his eyes narrowing at Sophia. “These weapons match your attire. You are either a liar or a thief. I hold no truck with either. I will ask you once more to shut your mouth, young lady. Open it again and I’ll have you gagged and removed.”

Sophia shot Hatfield a baleful glare but said no more. Unmoved by the hate in her eyes, Anse returned his attention to Richard.

“You were about to say, Mr. Farris?” He prompted.

“The weapons are ours,” Richard admitted, sensing the futility of denying the obvious. “They’re for our protection.”

“Protection from who?” The man Hatfield had called Johnse spoke up as he crossed the room to stand at his father’s side. His voice conveyed disbelief.

“We are fugitives of a sort. Falsely accused,” Richard said, choosing his words carefully. “The weapons are to protect us from our pursuers.”

“Ah.” Anse said simply.

He toyed with the RLP but had not managed to trigger its screen or discover the slider. Richard wondered what would happen if the device suddenly activated, warning of an impending Rip opening or the presence of BanaTech forces.

“How did you manage to cross over a quarter mile of fortifications and end up in the middle of the largest battlefield in Logan County, unseen and without injury?” Anse asked.

“We crawled,” Richard said. Nothing else came to mind.

“They do look like they been crawlin’ through shit, sir,” the man behind Sophia said. He slapped a none-too-gentle hand on her shoulder releasing a plume of dust and dirt from a rockslide on another world. She winced as he leaned in and sniffed at her. “Smell like it, too.”

He and the man behind Richard laughed at this. Even Johnse cracked a smile. Anse Hatfield’s expression remained set in stone.

“What is this?” he asked, still examining the RLP. “An explosive of some sort?”

The room fell silent. The men in the room stepped back from Richard and Sophia. Johnse, Richard noted, did not leave the elder Hatfield’s side.

“It seems a bit small,” Hatfield continued, “but it could contain enough explosive to kill anything within in, say, six feet.”

“It’s not a bomb,” Richard said.

The room had gone quiet. Even the aerial bombardment had stopped for the moment. The quiet before the storm, Richard thought. He’d seen situations like this in prison. Two groups of men would talk at first. Then argue. Then all would grow still. That stillness, that silence, was dangerous. It was the silence of fear and paranoia. It usually ended when the killing started.

“It’s a communication device,” Richard said. “It operates much like your two-way radios…”

“Richard, no!” Sophia cried. “Don’t tell them anything!”

Hatfield was on his feet and around the table much faster than Richard would have thought possible for a man of his apparent age. He slammed the RLP down on the tabletop and descended on Sophia like a man possessed.

“No!” Sophia cried, this time in fear as Hatfield pulled something from his pocket and pushed it towards her face. She jerked her head away but he grasped the back of her neck, wadded the handkerchief he’d pulled from his trouser pocket and forced it into her mouth.

“Tie it!” He barked at the man behind Sophia. The soldier obeyed with obvious relish, pulling the length of cord he’d pulled from his own pocket so tight it cut into her cheeks.

“Damn women.” Hatfield grunted and returned to his seat. “The Devil split their tails and tongues with the same stroke.” To the men behind Richard he said: “Take her to a holding cell. Johnse”–he turned to his second—“go with them. See that no harm befalls her.”

“You want I should leave you alone?” Johnse asked. “With him?”

“Do as I say,” Hatfield said. “I’ll be fine. Mr. Farris and I are going to continue our conversation.”

“Yes sir.” Johnse fired off a smart salute.

Sophia was cut from the chair, her arms re-tied behind her. Richard caught a brief look from her—one meant only for him—just before she was escorted from the room. It was a look of intent, of cold calculation. The look said she’d wanted to be removed. Had she played on Hatfield’s misogyny to achieve that end? He’d seen a similar look on her face once before, back in Missouri. Just before everything erupted in gunfire and bloodshed.

“Don’t be concerned for the welfare of your companion,” Hatfield said, misinterpreting the alarm on Richard’s face as the door to the bunker clanged shut behind him. “I do not condone the mistreatment of prisoners under my command, no matter their gender. Ms. Bledell will come to no harm. Johnse is a good boy. He will see that she is not abused.”

Hatfield stood and turned away from the table. His shoulders, square and strong before, now slumped with age and exhaustion He stared at the blank wall behind the table as if looking through a picture window onto the vast landscape of his own mind. Richard wondered if he liked what he saw there. The confident Brigadier General who’d so aggressively had a woman bound, gagged, and removed from his presence only moments before was gone. In his place was a tired old man who now spoke to Richard as if speaking to an old acquaintance.

“Are you a religious man, Mr. Farris?” Hatfield’s voice was bereft of the strong authority it had held since the hood had been removed from Richard’s head.

The change of subject, like the change in demeanor, so threw Richard that he was uncertain how to respond.

“Come now.” Hatfield turned back to the table and eased himself back into the chair. Arthritis, Richard thought, excruciatingly painful in an era with no advanced medicine. Likely hidden from those under his command. “I realize the question impolitic. Impolite, even. But please indulge me. I have found that one can best judge a man based on his relationship with God.”

“I suppose I am,” Richard answered, recalling that on his Earth Anse Hatfield had been a devoutly religious man and had, on more than one occasion, accused the McCoy clan of being godless heathens. “To a degree.”

“To a degree?” Hatfield repeated.

Richard chose his words carefully. He was treading on dangerous ground here. If Hatfield were basing his decision on whether or not to release them on Richard’s answer to the seemingly irrelevant question, if he were indeed judging him based on his religious views, then Richard’s response carried the weight of both his and Sophia’s lives.

He was being interrogated, he realized. No more and no less. He wasn’t being waterboarded—not yet anyway, he thought with a chill—but he couldn’t help feeling that Hatfield was after more here than Richard’s views on God.

Stall, he told himself. Play his little game and give Sophia time to work out whatever plans she has. But do not let this man know what we’re doing here.

Believing that the older man would recognize a lie immediately, he decided to be honest. “Where I come from,” he said, “there are many forms of religion. With many followers, each subscribing to his own belief system in his own way without a lot of interference from others.”

“There are Christians, here,” Hatfield said. “Baptists, Presbyterians, the list goes on. As well as Catholics, Jews, and I believe even a new group who refer to themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“It’s much more diverse in my…country,” Richard said. He’d almost used the word time. As weary as Hatfield now seemed, Richard was not fooled. Historically, Anse Hatfield had been a shrewd and cunning man who would not have missed the slip. “There are dozens, perhaps even hundreds of recognized religious groups all claiming to be the one true religion of God.”

“Sounds confusing.” Hatfield brushed dust from his lapel in a lazy gesture. Smoothed his beard. “To which of these groups do you subscribe?”

“None of them,” Richard said.

The old man scowled. “You’re an atheist, then?”

“Not at all,” Richard said. “I believe in God. I spent over a decade studying the subject. There is too much proof of His existence for any rational man to deny Him. It’s organized religion I have problems with.”

Hatfield’s eyebrows shot up at that, his lazy expression replaced by one of interest. “Please explain.”

Richard thought for a moment, deciding how best to put into words feelings he hadn’t spoken of for the majority of his life. Despite being raised Methodist and taught never to question the Word of God or His methods he had always had questions. Why had God created the Earth and populated it with human beings? Was He lonely? Bored? And why allow the existence of evil? Why tolerate something that would bit by bit and piece by piece destroy that which He had so lovingly created? Were the firmaments of Heaven so familiar and dull to Him that He required a bit of sport for distraction?

He’d sought the answers while incarcerated, absorbing everything he could on the subject of God and religion. His research had led to no solid answers but he’d drawn one simple conclusion: “We, as human beings,” he said, “are missing a big piece of the puzzle.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Hatfield said.

“The major religions—not the little cults that pop up from day to day assuring our imminent destruction based on the dream or nightmare of some nut job or another—all agree that there is a God and that He is good. They also agree that there is an evil force, commonly called Satan, and that he is bad. Satan is to be avoided, God is to be obeyed, and this is how we should do it. That’s where the trouble starts. The how we should do it part.

“We base that part of the equation on various versions of the Bible, commonly the King James version. Problem is, the New Testament of the King James Version was finished in 1611, a full millennium and a half after the death of Christ. That was the third English translation of the original Greek text, translated by forty-seven different scholars who were directed to ensure that the text conformed to the ecclesiology of the Christian church as it was understood at that time. The Old Testament had already been translated from ancient Hebrew texts, some dating as far back as the year 1500 BC, and there is an entire set of texts called the Apocrypha that were considered too profound or sacred for the masses that were left out of most versions of the Bible altogether.

“Therefore, the modern Bible is a text conceived of and written by human beings, based on other texts handed down throughout the ages that have been re-interpreted and re-translated countless times by other human beings.”

“Which means…?” Hatfield prompted.

“The texts that our religions are based on have been changed by thousands of hands, over thousands of years, by human beings who by their very nature can’t help but introduce their own personal interpretation of how the texts fit our needs into their work.”

“Meaning,” Hatfield said, “that while having the same essential structure as the original Word of God, whichever version of the Bible you’re basing your beliefs on has been changed so much as to have little significance.”

“I wouldn’t say the texts are insignificant,” Richard said. “I would say that much has been lost or missing, dismissed as being of spurious origin or considered apocryphal in nature. Whatever the reason, the answer to the riddle of God’s existence has been lost to us.”

“You do not believe in faith, then?” Hatfield asked. “That God has intentionally left out the answers as a test of our devotion?”

Richard found himself admiring a man who would undoubtedly order both Sophia and himself imprisoned or executed. Despite his advanced age and physical infirmity his mind was sharp, his intellect keen. On another Earth, under different circumstances, Richard felt the two could have had a rewarding friendship.

“I believe in faith,” Richard answered. “Faith in the Father and in His love for his creations. Faith in His promise that we will ultimately sit by his side in glory. But I don’t believe He set down his Word to cause confusion among us, to spawn religious group after religious group with different ideations, philosophies, and values. Those who steadfastly believe that theirs is the only true interpretation of His Word and will commit acts of violence to prove it. Those who will happily break the first and firmest commandment—thou shalt not kill—over and over again in His name.

“No,” Richard continued after considering the events of the past few days, “I don’t believe this conundrum is a matter of faith. Nor do I believe it to be of God’s design. I believe some vital piece of information has been left out, intentionally or by chance. And without it, we are all lost.”

There was a knock at the heavy iron door and it opened with a groan. Johnse stepped through, closing the portal behind him with a resounding clang.

“The device has arrived, sir,” he said, firing off a smart salute.

“Enough of that, Johnse.” Hatfield rose from behind the table. “Mr. Farris here knows we are kin.” To Richard, he said, “You are a fascinating man, Mr. Farris, if a bit of a fanatic. I’d like nothing more than to discuss your delusions further but I have to see to the arming of the nuclear device your friends at BanaTech delivered to me just now.”

The look of shock on Richard’s face must have been as clear as a neon sign at night. He lurched forward in his chair, straining against his bonds. He’d been had. Hatfield not only knew about BanaTech and Jefferson but knew about the Rips and the Multi-verse as well. His ignorance of the RLP and its function, their dialogue, the unexpected questions, the tired disposition and the old man’s apparent frailty—it had all been a ruse. Subterfuge. Both to stall for time, as Richard had thought he was doing, and to get him to open up on some level, any level, so that Hatfield could get a sense of why they were being pursued by BanaTech.

Richard felt as if one of the aerial bombs earlier had loosened a block of concrete and it had just now dropped on his head.

“You son of a bitch!” he cried.

“Ah, he sees the light.” Hatfield smiled. “And you thought our conversation was simply the result of a tired old man’s curiosity. No, Mr. Farris. I know exactly who you and your friend are, and from whence you came. I simply wanted to know why Alex Jefferson is so interested in what he claims are mere rogue operatives. So interested, in fact, that bulletins demanding your arrest have been sent to every known Earth in the Multi-verse. What is it, Mr. Farris, that makes you so dangerous to them?”

Richard shot him a look of such hatred, such venom, that Johnse took a protective step towards his father. Hatfield, awaiting an answer, appeared unmoved by the display of hostility.

“They’re afraid that I can destroy them all,” Richard snarled.

“Really,” Hatfield replied, drawing the word out. “One man with the power to bring down BanaTech and all its forces? As dangerous as I think you and your little friend may be, I hardly think you’re capable of that.”

“My first thought when you turned up so nicely on my doorstep was to hand you over as ordered. After all, we’re supposed to be friends here, BanaTech and I. Our arrangement to stamp out the McCoy’s once and for all and regain control of the West is my first priority. It also crossed my mind to simply let you walk away. Rip through to the next Earth or wherever it is you’re going and get on with your business. Your affairs are not mine and if you are a thorn in BanaTech’s heel, what is that to me? But a man should never bargain from a bad position.”

Hatfield motioned to Johnse who promptly cut the ropes binding Richard to the chair. Even if he’d wanted to fight—and he found that in that moment he did—he would not have been capable. His hands and feet had lost all circulation making even the simple act of standing difficult.

“When this is all over and Pikeville is reduced to ashy ruins your friends at BanaTech will undoubtedly seek to gain control of the restored United States,” Hatfield continued. “That means that my men and I will have to be disposed of. I had thought to fight them but our weapons are no match for theirs and after three long years of war we are tired.

“You and Ms. Bledell offer a unique opportunity.” Hatfield watched as Johnse bound Richard’s hands behind his back. “While I’m still unclear as to why you pose such a threat to Jefferson, he may be willing to offer safe passage off this war torn planet to the person that can deliver you to him.”

Richard stumbled across the bunker, his feet unresponsive and awash with the fire of blood returning to sleeping nerve endings. Still angered by how easily he’d been manipulated and deceived, one thought resonated through his mind as the bunker door clanged shut behind him and he was led down a long hall with minimal lighting.

Devil Anse Hatfield and Alex Jefferson may well have many surprises in store for each other.