Four high-school friends get together not to talk about the past, but because of a desperate request from Timothy "Cap" Dwyer. Someone has placed a large bet online that his daughter is going to die before the end of the month and when you are a senator and front-runner for the upcoming presidential elections you are restricted what you can do. The other three "Generals" - Sarge, LT, and Colonel - must reconnect and team up in time to save Maddy Dwyer before the bet is called. Only, who can you trust in this game, when anyone can be behind it?
Dale Sargent had two messages on his answering machine when get home last night. Two. That has to be a record. Not even the telemarketers want to talk to him, most days. The first was from Tracy.
Dad, mom is high again, saying stupid shit. Scary shit. I don't like this new guy, Jerry. I...Dad...I love you. I know what court said, but please can I come stay with you? I...fuck, I have to go.
Before he could punch the wall in frustration, because outside of kidnapping his sixteen-year-old daughter he has no idea how he could possibly arrange that despite it being best for everyone involved, the second message played. And this was a voice he knew very well, though over the past few years he has mostly heard it over the radio and a few TV spots.
Sarge, it's...it's Cap. I'm scared, man. It's about Maddy. Madison. I think she's in trouble. I know it's a drive, but can you please get to Maidenstead by tomorrow afternoon? I don't think she has much time. The Mazuki Warehouse, where we did that photoshoot? There. 3pm. Please.
Timothy "Cap" Dwyer. US Senator and darling son of Cresthill, AL. One of the Four Generals at Cresthill High. Captain of the baseball team and by far the coolest of the four idiots running around together.
Last time Dale had caught Cap on TV, he had noted the man going a bit fat, shocking white in the hair, but overall looking good. That high-school athlete star persona still kicking. Filling out the polo shirt in mostly all the right ways while touring a car plant near Montgomery.
Playing for the Cresthill Cloaks had been life altering. Probably saved Dale's life. Sure, the team sucked but they had, especially the Generals. Found friendship at a rough time.
Dale feels all the forty-five years he barely looks in the August heat. Kept strong. Active. Scars mostly on the inside. Some of those scars cut deep, though.
Had to hang up his boxing gloves ten years back. Tried to save his marriage with Cherry. Pleaded with her to consider Tracy. Like he was saying Why won't someone think of the children!? only it hits different when it's damned own daughter. Cherry was too far up on her own ass to compromise and ran off to Orlando and has hooked up with a string of men who do not care the woman has a child. Hell, most days she doesn't seem to care.
Now Dale teaches boxing to young idiots that will grow up to have their own similar life stories. Lives in Huntsville. Stays permanently single with only the odd hook-up. Still a fighter, though. Through and through.
The taxi drops Dale off and the driver, an Indian uncle type, spends a few seconds double-checking that Dale is ok with being left out here in the abandoned strip of Maidenstead. Dale tries to not laugh too hard. Maidenstead on a bad day is mostly just junkies and rust. He's lived in much rougher parts.
The Mazuki Fishery Warehouse was the biggest storage unit for wholesale fish in the Lower Alabama region until Amy Patel ran a campaign last year to show how much it was abusing workers who had been snuck in under the radar from Vietnam and how much of its product was of questionable quality. Now it's empty, falling back into Alabama nature, and five degrees hotter than outside. Dale can smell years of seafood and dust in the air.
When Cap was running his ultimately successful bid for Senate a decade back, he asked the Generals to show up and then the four of them, and Maddy, stood next to crates of fish and talked about a vibrant future of sustainable agribusiness in the state of Alabama. Got to model for photos. Lucky for Cap, who needed some luck, he got in and has been tracking well in the polls despite is one darling business partner getting outed as a bunch of sharks.
Dale doesn't know if Cap knew or not, doesn't want to know. Don't dig too deep into friends, especially not friends in power.
Still, he is here because Cap calling him sends him right back to the days when he followed every one of Cap's bad calls. Before Cap got Geneva Davis pregnant as high school seniors. Before Maddy was born. Before Genny died and Cap was suddenly a young, single father with a precocious brat of a daughter. An angle that 100% got invoked to help Cap rise to political power. Then almost derailed it when Maddy's life caught up with her.
Dale hears a car pull up behind him and as he turns around he hears a voice shout, Oh shit, Sarge!
Hey, LT, Dale says.
Lorenzo "LT" Torino. Big dude who is really good at big cars. Race car driver turned stuntman. Has been in New Orleans for the past ten years and is part owner in a bar that sells fake voodoo skull shaped glasses to tourists called the Stall Out. Word on the street is that LT's business partner had stolen a bunch of money and the place is barely afloat, now, despite being a staple of the off-French Quarter drunk crowd.
The car LT got out of is almost instantly recognizable to Dale.
A goddamned Barracuda, huh?
Back on the team, their coach, Coach Frisk, had owned a 1974 Barracuda and it had been the hottest damned car any of them had ever seen. Delia Fisk ended up becoming LT's first divorce of three. Now the man is on a fourth wife and has four kids. A lovable bastard who can charm anyone's face off, seems like most of his extended family is still amicable. Dale needs to learn the man's secrets.
Not saying anything and not giving LT time to get talkative, Dale walks right over and gives the bigger man a hug. Right in the middle of said hug, another voice calls out from the car, You better make room for me.
Collin "Colonel" Stallworth is getting out of the passenger side. The only one of the Four Generals who stayed Lower Alabama local, Colonel was the youngest and quickest of the four. Now he looks like he lost weight but Dale wouldn't get into a fight with him. He reaches out and hugs Colonel as well.
Colonel had always been the most truly disciplined of the four. Got interested in becoming a US Marshal after meeting one at a job fair their senior year. Did relatively well for himself. Steady and consistent work, but no true breakout successes for the first decade and a half. That was ok with him. Food on the table. Eyes on the prize where the eye was comfortable retirement with no strings attached. Never married. No children. No habits but jogging and reading old westerns.
Only five years ago he ended up being part of a task force to track down the Magnolia Killer. Colonel had been the one to finally crack the case. And promptly had his glory stolen from him by FBI agents, marshals, and other more ladder-focused types. According to Mama Stallworth, who kept in touch with Dale's mom, the shit Colonel saw will getting into the mind of the killer has left him shaken. Forty-nine kids over ten years. By Dale's math, that means Colonel has already saved around twenty-five more.
Dale can see it, though, in his friend's eyes. Colonel is half-way done. Had he gotten any proper praise from it, maybe it would have been worth it. Maybe.
The three shoot the shit for a bit while waiting for 3pm to roll around. Almost on the dot, just a minute before, a black car pulls up into the warehouse and idles for a minute.
Two people get out. A blonde-women with very light, very straight hair in a stark dark suit is driving. The man on the passenger side is someone they all recognize all too well. In his standard "uniform" of a polo shirt and khakis, Alabama Casual as it is sometimes called, stands Thomas "Cap" Dwyer. A man whose political career is built off the back of this very image: just another good old boy who wants the best for everyone else. Already being discussed in terms of presidential hopeful come '00.
Cap starts to walk forward but the blonde intervenes. She puts a hand on his arm and he reaches up and touches her face while saying something quietly. Dale tries not to raise an eyebrow at this. While it is clear that she is here professionally, possibly as security or something other, there seems to be a personal connection as well. Cap hitting the hired help?, he wonders.
Cap walks over and blinks a few moments and then smiles. Dale can see the tears barely hiding in the man's eyes. Tears he's almost crying because three old friends, who haven't been together at the same time since the photoshoot right here in this very warehouse, have showed up because he asked. Dale would be teary-eyed, too, if the other three showed up to help Tracy.
Fellas...
They can all hear the catch in his throat. He coughs and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers them around. None accept. LT's chosen poison is dip and Colonel was smart enough to stay away from all of it. Dale, himself, keeps a briar pipe in his pocket but hasn't smoked tobacco in it for years.
After lighting up and taking a few drags, he just stands silently for a moment and Dale can't help but glance at LT who is looking back at him.
Hey, um, Cap, what...
You guys heard of BigBetty.com?
That stupid "it's not betting, it's better" bullshit?, asks Colonel. Weren't you making speeches the other night about shutting them down?
Yeah, I...it's best if I show you.
Cap nods to the blonde who goes and gets a laptop out of the trunk of the car, along with some sort of satellite connection device, and brings it over and sets it down, gently, on LT's car. LT looks like he is going to say something but Colonel puts a hand on his shoulder.
She starts to type something in a browser but her hands are shaking bad enough she steps back. Grabs the cigarettes from Cap's pocket and goes over to their car to smoke one. Not talking this whole while.
Cap steadies himself and then types into the laptop. The BigBetty website, which is atrociously over the top and garish, comes up as images load. A few clicks later he brings up a particular page and shows us. The header across the top is like a slap:
MADISON DWYER WILL BE DEAD BY SEPTEMBER 1, 1998.
That's just two weeks away.
They must have a bunch of celebs and known folk they do this stupid shit with, Cap, LT tries, but Dale is barely paying attention because underneath there's an amount total to be won if this fact comes true...
$23,120,095
What the fuck, Cap?, Dale asks.
Cap shakes his head. We all look in silence as the value jumps up by another $100.
Madison Dwyer had been a gorgeous kid and her and Cap had been close even though Cap had been a fairly young single dad after Genny's death. Only, Maddy hit her twenties like a brick. Went a bit off the rails. During the re-election campaign two years back, Maddy's bad habits had been used against her father. He got her into rehab and thanks to some donations from Amy Patel, then just getting into her own and taking control of the family's finances, he managed to resonate enough with other 'Bama people who also struggling with addiction or had kids doing the same.
Post-reelection, Maddy calmed down a bit. Last Dale had heard, she was off at college out of state and getting some degree in business or finance or some shit.
Turns out, right about the time that Cap was talking about a bipartisan bill to shut BigBetty and similar sites down, a page predicting Maddy's death had showed up. Like LT said, there were other pages. Predicting the death of movie stars and warlords and CEOs. Most just picking up a few thousand dollars. The "Death Tickets" were one of the things that was helping to drum up support for the bill, despite the website itself being hosted overseas.
Then the page started taking off. Cap says he started proceedings to find out who was betting millions that his daughter would die before the end of the month but it might take weeks to get the proper channels open. That is to say, take weeks until they can prove that it is a credible threat. Which of course it is. For that sort of money it is worth betting on yourself to shoot a ex-druggie college student sent off to quiet pastures to make way for her dad's rise to fame. Make a few assholes rich in the process.
Why are we here?, Colonel asks.
Dale feels like he knows the answer before Cap says it.
For this much money, I don't know who to trust. Say we get some special agent protecting Maddy...
Dale struggles to not finish the sentence while Cap takes a few deep drags.
...and that asshole bets a his life savings on her dying? All it would take would be him looking the other way for a moment.
Teary eyes in full effect now.
You are the only three I trust to keep my baby alive.
Ok, Dale says, give us the details. Beside him, LT and Colonel start nodding.
Inspirations, Plans, Etc
The morning I wrote this (2026-03-02), I saw a news article: Prediction market trader 'Magamyman' made $553,000 on death of Iran's supreme leader. I started to think about the implications of allowing people to profit off the death off another taken to a more extreme degree. What if you could bet a million that someone would die and then pay someone else to kill them? What if a group of people got in on the action?
While it is a legit societal problem how much gambling and prediction markets are impacting us faster than we can react, I thought I could somewhat take my extreme and play it out in a fictional way in a hopefully less traumatic style: via Outgunned solo play. I've been looking for a chance to play a straight-shot OG game. The idea of three high school friends, somewhat idiosyncratically known by military ranks despite not coming from a military background, coming together 25 years later to try and protect the daughter of one of their own.
Much like action movies, little of the timing or technology will make sense, and that's ok. I'm going full action movie logic. Everyone has a bit of a tragic backstory and problems, but the three core men will be absolutely above board. Cap...well, Cap might be the bastard behind all of it. I don't know, just yet.
The story is technically "Alabama Weird" and takes place a couple of years after Eustace + Hitomi and the Case of the Rambler but will focus on somewhere else. Some sort of movie-version of Las Vegas, I think. A city that could be any city with lots of criminal elements.
If Colonel lives, he might get folded back into the Weird.
I think Mythic would work but I'm still workshopping the exact tools I'll use.