YUSU Bar Special
It was high noon. The town of Langwith, Texas sweltered in the January sun. Only the clutch of saddled geese outside the Courtyard Saloon were moving in the destructive heat. They shifted restlessly. Perhaps they could sense what was coming.
An aging management student dozes in the sunshine, his ten-gallon hat pulled down low over his snoring face. A shadow falls over him. He awakes, and looks up – and a look of terror covers his face. Scrabbling, he runs for his life.
Meanwhile, town Sheriff Tom Scott and postmaster Rory Shanks are helping get the Courtyard Saloon ready for opening night. A long time in the making, this is the first saloon opening here that’s not run by the big bad cattle-rustlin’ gangsters up on Hes Hill. It’s a big night. The proprietor, old father Burton, has been in town for longer than anyone still alive can remember. This is his dream.
None of them realise then that some dreams… can be nightmares.
The party is going well. The liquor was flowing. Abba was playing, but despite that everyone was having a good time.
But then they arrived.
They had been respectable townsfolk, once. YUSU Presidents and sabs. But power had changed them. Twisted them. Made them… evil.
Mickey Armstrong, small-time gangster, oozed evil from every sweaty pore. James ‘The Badger’ Alexander had gone mad with power and drink. He just oozed. Nat Thwaites-McGowan would only speak through an agent. But evil by proxy is still evil.
“This here bar,” drawled Armstrong in a voice that sent a chill through Burton’s heart, “was my idea. It’s my bar.” His eyes flashed with devilish light.
“I have been authorised to say,” McGowan’s agent told me in as evil a voice as she could muster, having only been Alcuin chair, “That this bar was Nat’s idea. Anyone who says different…” She drew her hand across her throat.
James Alexander spat a mouthful of half-chewed salmon canape into Jane Grenville’s drink. “This bar,” he growled “is mine.”
It was Armstrong who went for his gun first. His bullet struck James Alexander square between the eyes, but it only angered him, like a bb-pellet hitting a 40-stone Kodiak bear. He roared, and beat his chest, then picked up new Alcuin chair Oliver Hutchings and hurled him at McGowan, who decapitated him with his hunting-knife, spewing grisly gobbets of alternative music everywhere.
When the dust settled, four doorsafe officers lay dead. James Alexander was writhing in a pool of blood and VK green. Grenville was duelling Armstrong with battleaxes.
Apart from that, the launch went well.
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