The Wanderer and the New West

by Adam Bender

  She couldn’t believe it was really Errol Breck sitting across from her in the four-seat arrangement. The Wanderer — it felt more correct to call him that — rode forward, having refused to ride the other way. Kid Hunter stationed himself by his partner’s side near the aisle. Neither man talked. The Wanderer stared blankly out the window while the Kid absorbed himself in a pair of expensive red headphones.

  She wished they would talk. Rosa had plenty of questions, but in spite of her best attempts to start an interview, the Wanderer had said little to nothing since they got on the train. He just kept staring out that infernal window. On her phone, she made note of this aloof behavior, along with his train seating requirements. She also wrote a description of the gold wedding band that he wore on his left hand. He was married — or had been anyway. From her research on the Brecks, she recalled that Errol had disappeared the same day the police found his wife, Helen, murdered in their house. Suspicious, but the corrupt Vegas Police Department dismissed Errol as a suspect early on, and the cut-and-paste journalists of Our Times never asked why.

  Rosa studied Errol Breck’s sorrowful eyes. She knew the Wanderer was a killer. Had Errol been capable of murder?

  The train lurched, nearly sending Rosa’s head into the window. It wasn’t the first time, and she groaned bitterly. “This love of trains,” she said to the Wanderer. “I don’t get it.”

  “Heh,” he replied.

  *

  Charlie hit PAUSE on his tunes and lifted his headphones. “So where are we going anyway? We getting off this train anytime soon?”

  The Wanderer seemed annoyed by the question. “You’d know if you didn’t have those damn headphones on.”

  As Kid Hunter winced, Rosa raised her eyebrows with interest and began to type something on her phone. “In fairness, you weren’t saying much that Charlie could have heard.”

  The Wanderer glared at her device. “What’s that you’re doing?”

  “Taking notes.”

  “What for?”

  “My next article in The New West.”

  Charlie didn’t get why, but that got the Wanderer super ticked off. The gunman swiped for the phone.

  “Don’t touch my phone!” she protested, pulling it away in the nick of time. “Are you crazy?”

  The cowboy leaned in to Rosa’s face and whispered sharply. “Listen to me. You’re not going to write another article. You hear me? That’s over.”

  She gasped. “I thought you were here to help me. What, you’re on your brother’s side, now?”

  “Step-brother. And I reckon I am helping you! That blog of yours is going to get you killed.”

  She laughed. “I think that boat has sailed, don’t you reckon?”

  The Wanderer held up his palms in frustration.

  Charlie had to laugh. He just had to. The two of them were acting like an old married couple.

  “What’s so funny?” snapped the Wanderer.

  Charlie did his best to straighten his face. “Aw, it’s nothing, man.”

  A small growl erupted from the other man’s lips. He turned his face hard toward the window and disengaged from the others. Rosa’s eyes fell back to the screen of her phone.

  Charlie waved a hand in front of the reporter’s eyes to get her attention. “If it helps, I’m happy to do an interview. You can feel free to snap some pics of my handsome mug, too, if you so desire.”

  Rosa’s eyes lit up like she hit the jackpot. Charlie wasn’t surprised, as he was used to having that kind of effect on the ladies. “Yes, that would be amaz—”

  “He’s not giving you an interview, either!” protested the Wanderer, turning back to face them.

  Charlie grimaced. What was the big deal? He liked the idea of a little celebrity. The Wanderer seemed to think he had a leash on him. No one put this dawg on a leash.

  “Well, Kid,” Rosa said like it was no big deal, “we don’t have to make you famous if your boss won’t let you …”

  “He’s not my boss!” He leaned forward and shoved a finger in the Wanderer’s face. “I ain’t no sidekick to you, and I ain’t going to let you tell me what I can and can’t do!”

  He noticed Rosa making some more notes and yelped at her to stop.

  “You listen real good, boys,” she snapped. “I’ll write what I want to write, when I want to write. That’s how reporting works. Now if you boys give me an interview and say the right things, maybe you’ll come out better in the final copy. How does that sound?”

  *

  Rosa tightened the cross of her arms and scowled bitterly out the window of the train. The Wanderer and Kid Hunter had responded to her protest by saying literally nothing — she looked at her pink plastic watch — for the last hour and forty-five minutes! The gunman kept his head turned to the window, while Charlie played a game on his wristband.

  “Let’s get off at the next station,” said Rosa. “I’m tired of this train.”

  The Wanderer shook his head. “We should go farther. Increase the distance between us and the Gang.”

  “You say that like you know what you’re talking about. But all you are, Mr. Breck, is a spoiled brat pretending to be a cowboy!”

  The farmer’s tan of the passenger behind him wrinkled as he turned to see what the sudden ruckus was about. Rosa shot him a stern look that made him mind his own business real quick.

  The Wanderer narrowed his eyes and pointed a finger gun at Rosa. “No, I’m the man who saved your life. I’m still saving your life.”

  Rosa laughed. Is that what he thought? “I don’t need to be saved! I’m safe!”

  He turned wearily to Charlie for backup, but the Kid was miles away, bouncing his head to the beat of his tunes. The gunman muttered something and looked out at the rolling desert.

  “Look,” she said, “maybe when we get to the next station, we should just part ways. I’ll get off, and you boys can keep going to your hearts’ content. I think it will be better for all of us, don’t you?”

  The Wanderer let a long breath of air escape through his nose. “If I agree to an interview,” he said, “will you stay?”

  Rosa tried not to show excitement, but her inner journalist was doing flips. She had him now.

  *

  Leaving the desert in its dust, the train bolted straight into a mountain range and began to climb. Soon they were surrounded by a scattering of dark emerald pine trees. The Wanderer watched with some amusement at the awed look on Rosa’s face as she noticed the sudden greenery. It occurred to him that this just might be the farthest she’d ever been from Liberty.

  A mustached conductor walking down the aisle distracted him from his musings. He looked a lot like Gerard.

  “Why don’t we start with a story about my stepbrother?” he asked Rosa.

  She pulled out her phone to take notes. “Please.”

  “Okay, so when I was … fifteen, I think, and Gerard was twelve, I heard him moaning about some smarty-pants at school named Arnold who was always upsetting the curve on exams. Gerard was never very good in school on account of never studying, and he was getting particularly anxious about an upcoming test on some book he hadn’t bothered to read.”

  Kid Hunter laughed. “I know that feeling!”

  “Two days later at recess, I found a bully beating another boy to a pulp. Turned out to be that smarty-pants Arnold who Gerard had been complaining about. I stopped the bully, but poor Arnold went to the hospital with a concussion, and he wasn’t seen back in school again. Rumor had it his parents opted for homeschooling.”

  “Say what?”

  He tried not to let the Kid’s excitement derail the story. “Well, Gerard’s big test came, and he ended up passing with a C+. The curve worked out for him real well without Arnold around. Gerard was pleased as punch, and that’s when I started getting suspicious. I tracked down the bully, and sure enough, Gerard had paid him to do it!”

  “That’s fucked-up!”

  “Says the bounty hunter,” replied Rosa with some a
musement. To Errol, she asked, “So what’d you do?”

  “What any kid my age would do — I told my dad. He said it was wrong what Gerard did, but family takes care of family.”

  Rosa raised her eyebrows. She began to ask another question, but he cut her off. “That’s all for now.”

  As he turned back to the view, he asked himself — as he did often — if it was a mistake to leave after what happened to Helen. If he’d stayed in Vegas and taken the CEO role at Breck Ammunition, there would have been none of that nonsense in Freetown. As for the reporter, well, he didn’t know what he’d have done in Gerard’s position, but he certainly wouldn’t have tried to kill her. And, Jesus, there definitely wouldn’t be any deals with the Red Stripe Gang!

  *

  A soft smacking of sneakers against carpet coming from the front of the car brought the Wanderer to his feet. Kid Hunter came pounding down the aisle without the beers he’d promised.

  “We’ve got to get off this train!” cried the Kid, pulling down his large hiking pack from the overhead rack and throwing it over his back in one fluid motion. He scooped up his bright red headphones from the aisle seat and slapped them around his neck for safekeeping.

  “What is it?” asked Rosa in alarm.

  “The Gang’s here!”

  The Wanderer snatched his denim knapsack from under the seat and yanked the reporter onto her feet. As they fled single-file after the Kid, bumping through a jungle of ankles and hanging elbows, he heard Rosa shouting an apology to the other passengers. Personally, he wasn’t worried about the other people on the train. In fact, he was glad it was so crowded. He reckoned even the Red Stripe Gang had some sense of morality and wouldn’t dare fire their weapons without a clear shot on their targets.

  “How many?” he yelled ahead to the Kid.

  “Saw two in the café car — might be more!”

  At the end of the compartment, Kid Hunter slapped a red button next to a glass door, and the door slid open. In the space between cars, the young mercenary paused to look out the exit, another metal sliding door with a slit window. The Wanderer had an inkling about what his partner was thinking and warned, “It’s too soon.”

  With a short nod, the Kid continued into the next compartment. As the Wanderer neared the same passage, a lock clicked on his right and a steel hatch to the toilet popped open, blocking his and Rosa’s path. He slapped the door shut with a quick motion of his wrist, pushing the person on the other side back into the bathroom with a yelp.

  “Where are we going?” called Rosa. “There’s an end to this train, you know!”

  The Wanderer smiled. “It might be better I don’t tell you yet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He was still formulating an answer as Kid Hunter came rushing into view at the end of the car. The Kid stopped again in the space between the compartments. The Wanderer stopped short in a last-ditch attempt to avoid a crash, but Rosa careened into his back and drove him forward into the bounty hunter. The three fell into a big heap on the ground.

  Kid Hunter pulled himself out with a grunt. “Would you two stooges watch where you’re going? Damn!”

  “Why do you keep stopping?” snapped Rosa, picking herself up off of the Wanderer’s back. “And what’s the plan, exactly? I knocked off some poor guy’s reading glasses back there. I felt really bad!”

  Kid Hunter opened the hatch to the outside. The rattling of train against track loudened to a pounding jackhammer. Pointing out at the fast-moving landscape of dry grass and pine needles, he shouted, “It’s all in the tuck and roll!”

  Connecting the dots, Rosa exploded in outrage. “Wait, what? Are all vigilantes this stupid? You can’t actually jump from moving trains! That’s just in the movies!”

  “No, no, it’ll work,” asserted the Kid. “I’ve seen it done in … uh … just trust me, it’ll work!”

  The Wanderer looked back into the previous compartment. Incoming was a man with a bushy beard. He was holding a handgun — a Breck 17 from the looks of it. The Wanderer reached into his left holster.

  “There’s no time to argue,” he said, aiming the silver Lassiter through the glass. “Rosa, watch the Kid carefully and do what he does. I’ll be right behind you.”

  There was a sound of screeching metal and the three lurched toward the front of the train. The Wanderer caught himself on the glass door; in the same moment, the gangster reached and slapped the open-door button. The gunfighter could smell lunch, breakfast, and possibly last night’s dinner in that Red Striper’s beard. The Wanderer greeted him with a shot straight into the belly. The gangster groaned, and an awful stench rose from his bleeding gut. Keeping the Lassiter pointed down the compartment aisle, the Wanderer addressed the others. “There’s more of ’em on their way. If we’re going to jump, we’ve got to do it now!”

  He received no argument. That seemed awfully suspicious, so the Wanderer stole a glance over his shoulder. He did a double take. The Kid and the reporter were gone. Stranger still, the ground outside had ceased moving.

  “Aw, hell …”

  Someone had stopped the train.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Cute.

  Rosa did her best to keep up but Kid Hunter ran like a man on fire. She called, “Shouldn’t we wait for the Wanderer?”

  “He’ll have to catch up!”

  She stopped and panted heavily as the Kid disappeared into the trees. “Guess that makes two of us …”

  As Rosa rubbed her bare arms, she became aware of just how far north they had traveled. She was sure they hadn’t left Arizona, but the rocky terrain and scattered pine trees of her current surroundings felt alien after spending most of her life in a dry environment of sand and cacti. Beyond the ponderosas, she could see brown mountains outlined by cold blue sky. She definitely hadn’t packed for this. Actually, she hadn’t packed at all, and now she was in the middle of the wilderness, actually running away from a train, the one thing that could bring her back to civilization.

  A pistol cracked from the train. Two more gunshots followed in sequence. And then the terrifying chugging of an automatic — a Yossarian assault rifle. The sound of it knocked Rosa to her knees. She crumpled into a knot of limbs on the ground.

  Kid Hunter burst out of the trees, running back toward her. “The Wanderer’s in trouble! We’ve got to help him!”

  “I … I left my gun in my truck back in Liberty.”

  “Shit, you did, didn’t you? Whatever — hide here. Just holler if you get in trouble. One of us will come running.”

  “Wait …”

  It was too late. Charlie was already sprinting back toward the train. Rosa crawled to a spot behind a thick pine and reached for her phone, thinking she might calm down if she could just write some notes. With dismay, she noticed the phone’s battery indicator blinking red.

  The Yossarian blared, making Rosa drop her phone. She could die out here. She could actually be shot, and she would have no one but herself to blame. She could die because of what she wrote. Before, she had kidded herself into thinking she could just sit back and make observations. Instead, The New West had pulled her into the violent world she was writing about. She had made people angry before, but this was different. People actually wanted her dead, and not just anybody — America’s biggest company and its worst gang of outlaws. Was writing the truth really worth putting her life on the line?

  *

  The seed of a joke tickled Kid Hunter’s brain as he raced back toward the train. When Rosa said she didn’t have a gun, it reminded him of how last time, she had stopped a fight without using a gun. He was sure there was a funny way to throw that back at her, but he couldn’t quite figure it out.

  A bullet whizzed by his head. He took the opportunity to duck behind a thick pine.

  “Watch it,” came a gruff voice on the left. The Wanderer was hiding behind a boulder a few yards away.

  Kid Hunter returned a cheery shout. “I’m here!”

  Th
e gunman spat out a laugh. “And the whole gang knows it, too.”

  “Not for long.”

  Gripping his pistol with two hands, Kid Hunter bent out of cover and took a shot. He missed but at least got a lay of the land. The train was still stopped, and there seemed to be at least three gangsters hiding behind the trees closest to the tracks. There were a couple dead ones as well.

  “The one on the left has got a Yossarian!” hissed the Wanderer.

  That particular motherfucker was leaning out with the black assault rifle that very instant. Kid Hunter fell back behind the tree just as a spray of steel death thundered against the thick trunk. It was followed by an eerie quiet.

  “Hey, Wanderer!” called one of the gangsters, the one in the middle with a Breck 17. “We just want the girl. Give her to us, and you can walk away from all this.”

  “Yeah,” added the third Red Striper with a giggle. “You can wander on!”

  Kid Hunter snickered — he couldn’t help it — and the Wanderer scowled. Charlie whispered an apology, and made up for the transgression by sending a bullet straight through the joker’s piehole.

  The Yossarian replied with a steady barrage that kept the good guys trapped behind cover. Kid Hunter bit his lip. He’d gotten lucky taking down that one gangster, but two pistols against an assault rifle were still bad odds. The Wanderer looked cool and collected, but there was a dark look in his eyes, too. Like he didn’t mind if he didn’t make it. As if he was ready for death if it came to that.

  Charlie thought of his sister panhandling for change back in Vegas. No way was he gonna die and leave her to fend for herself.

  The Yossarian stopped and the Kid’s ears rang. One of the gangsters yelled, “Hey, wait!”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. “What do they want this time?”

  The Wanderer shook his head. “He’s not talking to us. Listen.”

  As the high-pitched ringing died, Kid Hunter heard the engine of the locomotive. He took a peek and saw the train sliding away and picking up speed. The gangster with the Yossarian tossed the rifle over his back and took chase, as if he thought he could catch up. He didn’t get far before thunder cracked, and blood burst out the back of his skull. The Red Striper dropped to his knees and managed a dazed turn of the head before gravity took him completely. The Wanderer stood out in the open with his silver Lassiter gleaming in the sun.