PROLOGUE 

Jack once told me that he knew for a fact he would die alone. It was a thing he heft he had earned; a quite end, with no one left to mourn him. He would pass out of memory, and his sins and feats would be forgotten by the world.

Only days after he said this, it fell to me to prove him wrong.
He was on his back, trying to stand, even when both his legs ended in bloody masses where his knees used to be. His short black was stained red with the blood seeping from a dozen lacerations. The handle of a knife protruded from under his shattered ribs, and more blood painted his clothing with gore. A vertical stripe of slashed flesh marred his hard face, blood mixing with fluid from his ruined eye.

He never lost his pride.
The man I once mistook for Death himself stood above Jack, savoring his victory with a pained grin that stretched his partially flensed face grotesquely, drawing the remaining skin away from the staples that held it to his skull. His black leather jacket was shredded, and covered in Jack’s blood, and the arm that held the shotgun, which had destroyed Jack’s legs looked as though it had barely survived an encounter with a meat grinder.

“You’re a hard man to kill, Jack.” The Dead Man rasped, in a voice that indicated that his throat was as ruined as his face.

Jack finally stopped struggling to get up, and fell backwards, laughing against all odds. I realized that he must have gone into shock.

The Dead Man gripped his shotgun tighter, and his face warped into a snarl even more terrifying than the grin. “Why are you laughing?!” He was screaming, shaking the gun. “What’s so goddam funny?!”

"You are!" Tears of mirth were joining those born of pain that already covered his face, and the laughter never ceased. "I'm lying here bleeding to death, for Christ's sake, and you're trying to squeeze in a fuckin' one-liner! You're just too much!"

The hyena laughter ceased abruptly as the Dead Man pulled the trigger, and Jack's head exploded into a thick cloud of red mist and skull fragments.