The Wanderer and the New West

by Adam Bender

  “Martin’s Militia!” a man whooped from the pews. Father James followed the squeaky voice to Dougie, the sheriff’s lapdog.

  “Martin’s Militia,” affirmed Ben. “Now I should tell you that I won’t take just anyone! I’m looking for policemen, former soldiers, people who remember the law and are willing to fight for it. This here is going to be a new beginning for all of us. It’s got to be, and it’s goin’ to be. Maybe the government doesn’t think we’re worth the funding, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop enforcing the law!”

  There was a momentary hush, during which Father James saw a chance to win back the crowd. But a few claps quickly turned into a thundering applause. With a chill, the priest shrank behind his pulpit. Ben Martin looked back at him with a grin stretching ear to ear.

  *

  Jack added another comic book to Pablo’s stack and sat in the chair beside the hospital bed. The comic’s cover featured a red-cloaked superhero watching over a dark city. Emblazoned over his head in yellow was the title, The Adventurer.

  “This issue isn’t the best,” Jack confessed. “It’s kind of half an epilogue to the last one, and half setting up the next thing. Seems like there’s some potential, but to be honest it didn’t really make for a great read. I’m kind of thinking we should drop this series and just stick to Spy-Boy. What do you think?”

  The machine keeping Pablo alive beeped in response.

  Slapping his knee, Jack began to talk excitedly. “Oh man, Pablito, you’ll never believe what that crazy Ben Martin said at church today. He says he’s starting a militia, if you can believe that. What is this country coming to? The thing is, the other people at church, they seemed to eat it up. It’s completely loco! I guess I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Jack’s phone buzzed. He pulled the device out of his pocket and nearly yelped the caller’s name. “Rosie?”

  “Hey, Jack.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. He pressed the device harder against the side of his face and cupped his other hand against his ear. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  She began talking a mile a minute. She was with the Wanderer, they’d had to leave Liberty quickly, and she was sorry she hadn’t told him where she was going. Gerard Breck and the Red Stripe Gang were after her, so she couldn’t come home yet. “Some things have happened,” she said. “I promise to tell you all about them when I see you again. But I’m all right. I’m just … planning my next move. I think I’m close to a really good story. For once in my life I feel like I’m going to make a difference, Jack. I’ll call you again soon. I love you.”

  “Wait!” he cried as the phone disconnected. “Damn it, Rosie!”

  When his sister had her mind on a job, she didn’t give much time for anything else. But at least he knew now that she was safe. When he’d gone to her house Thursday to discuss her termination from Our Times, he’d found the door ajar and Ben Martin’s car outside. The sheriff had told him that the Wanderer had taken her. The statement hadn’t had the effect that Martin intended. Instead, Jack had breathed out a sigh of relief. For some reason, Jack firmly believed the Wanderer was a good man, someone who carried the same set of ethics as the heroes from the comic books. Rosie would be okay. He was sure of it.

  The door opened, and Pablo’s nurse popped in. The young, raven-haired woman wore powder-blue scrubs with a name tag that said Mary. When she saw Jack, a look of panic entered her eyes. “Oh, hello, Mr. Veras. I didn’t know you were here —”

  “It’s fine. If you need to —”

  “N-no, I can check on him later! You should definitely take your time.”

  Jack smiled warmly. “Thank you.”

  Mary moved to leave, but turned back at the door. “He’s a tough kid, you know. We see a lot of cases like this, but Pablo … he’s fighting hard.”

  Jack’s eyes followed the nurse out the door. She was kind of cute. Not the way she looked — not that he had any complaints there — just the way she got all a-flutter. It was different from Elaine, who’d been always so sure about everything, even when she was wrong.

  Everything about the way his wife had left was horrible. The split had happened right here in the hospital. Angrily whispering over their comatose son, she’d said he should’ve protected Pablo. Why hadn’t he carried a gun? Why hadn’t he stopped the shooter? Why had he frozen up and allowed the bullet to strike their son? They’d been questions he’d often asked himself, but the more he thought about that day, the more the details seemed to blur. He remembered paying for the tennis gear … popping the airtight can to let Pablo play with one of the balls … laughing with Rosie as they walked back to the truck …

  And then …

  Oh God. His boy looked so still. The blood …

  He shook himself until the vision passed. He looked at his beautiful son, not dead but sleeping, and hugged him hard. He had to stop thinking about that day. It was too horrible. Too horrible. Pablito would recover. He had to.

  Jack just needed to be patient.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  So That’s It?

  Rosa sipped a cup of bitter coffee while watching cars splash water from small ponds in the road. The trucks created the biggest waves, occasionally drenching unwitting pedestrians on the sidewalk. One teenage boy made a valiant attempt to deflect the spray by bringing down his umbrella like a shield, but Rosa suspected he was unable to protect his socks, based on the awkward way in which he stepped afterward.

  She was two coffees in, sitting at a window booth at a dirty old diner about a block away from the Old Inn at Founders Spring. She’d been making calls all morning. She couldn’t track down any of Lindsay’s family. At least she’d managed to find a small place for the burial and a preacher to officiate the ceremony. He wasn’t available until tomorrow because, apparently, he had a dentist appointment, but the funeral home said they would let Lindsay stay another day. Anyway, it was probably for the best, given the weather.

  She shook her head. Let Lindsay stay? As if the child could go anywhere.

  The quiet rhythm of someone typing on a keyboard got her thinking about The New West. She considered the blue pen and three sheets of Old Inn stationary on her table. The paper teased her with its blankness. She wanted — no, needed — to write about Lindsay.

  Rosa turned back to the window. She thought she had decided to stop writing The New West. So far, all the damn blog had done was get her fired and nearly killed. There were still dangerous people out there who wanted her dead. If she stopped and hid out here in Founders Spring for a little while, maybe they would go away.

  No, that wasn’t an option. In this day and age, someone could find anybody if they tried hard enough. Kid Hunter could do it in seconds. The grim truth was that Gerard Breck had found her before, and he’d do it again.

  Anyway, she’d need a new computer if she was going to post a new article. Or wait! Maybe the hotel had a business center. It would probably cost her a little bit, but she was a fast typist. It could work.

  After another thoughtful sip of the rich coffee, she pulled the paper closer and picked up the pen.

  Look, if she wanted to write, she might as well write. It’s not like she had to post it.

  As the journalist scrawled on the page, the coffee shop’s bland guitar music faded into white noise. At the end of every paragraph, Rosa heard a voice in her head. It was a whisper that grew into a bold declaration: Americans must read the story of Lindsay, the little girl with the gun.

  Well, Rosa only knew one publication that could tell it properly.

  *

  Charlie awoke to the stale smell of cold fries. It was raining. Every few moments, a gust of wind sprayed a blast of water against the window. He flicked on the lights, taking a few deep breaths as the hotel room revealed itself. Everything felt sore: his legs, his arms, and especially his bandaged wound. He got out of bed and checked his various devices, which were connected to each of the outlets around
the room — the wristband next to the bed, the tablet by the desk, and the smart gun in the bathroom. Stomach rumbling, he turned to the hamburger sitting listlessly on his desk. Last night, he’d ordered two from room service and gobbled the first one down in less than a minute. He’d been unable to bring himself to eat the second, not because he was full, but because the first burger had tasted like a dead rat. Looking at it now, Charlie could see that the eight hours of rest had not served the sandwich well. He dropped it into the wastebasket.

  He still felt tired. Even though the bed was comfortable, it’d been a struggle to turn off his mind and go to sleep. When he’d finally entered a dream, he found himself back in the endless forest with Lindsay in his arms and his feet stuck in some kind of swamp. He’d fallen into the muck and had to crawl forward on his knees. He remembered feeling certain there was something following them, something big and vicious …

  A wolf.

  He got them away from the wolf, but when he looked down, Lindsay was already dead.

  Charlie splashed his face with water from the bathroom sink. The last part of the dream was true. Lindsay really was gone.

  A loud pounding brought him to the door. It was the Wanderer. “I want to find out who that son of a bitch was.”

  Kid Hunter ushered him inside the room, hanging a DO NOT DISTURB tag on the door before closing it behind them. “I’ve already done a search on his gun registration. Unfortunately, it’s registered to someone else.”

  “You mean he stole the Montag?”

  “Or he faked the registration. Easy enough to do.”

  The Wanderer shook his head. “So that’s it? We’ve got nothing?”

  “I wouldn’t say nothing,” said Charlie. “We might not have the bastard’s ID, but the registration does give me access to the gun’s IP address. I can track where the gun’s been and what other IP addresses it’s communicated with. I might be able to piece together an ID based on that.”

  “Kid.” The Wanderer’s voice was grave. “You don’t think he posted videos?”

  A chill rushed through Charlie’s body. The Montag came with a built-in camera that recorded about fifteen seconds before a kill and five seconds after, enough to show the shooter lining up the shot and the prey going down. Breck Ammo called the feature “Moments,” and the idea was to share your best shots with your buddies. The gun manufacturer had sponsored a few websites where hunters could post their best shots and egg each other on. The sites only allowed videos of animal kills, but every now and then someone would try to post what was called a “murder take.” The moderators tended to weed them out pretty quick. But there was another side to the Internet, a darker side, where one could post such videos for other sickos to consume.

  Kid Hunter ran a search, praying to God it would come up empty. As the computer worked, he felt the Wanderer’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Kid … Charlie … I just want to say I’m sorry for what I said back at the camp. It’s not your fault she ran off. You were on guard to keep the lone wolf out, not to keep Lindsay a prisoner. She wanted to get away, and none of us could have prevented that. She just waited for her moment and took it.”

  “Yeah. I know. Thanks, man. But I still wish I had stopped her.”

  One result. It was a murder-take website and the lone wolf’s gun had sent videos to it. He had an anonymous profile. No name, no personal details, just a statistic:

  Frags: 43

  Below there was a list of videos. The most recent was dated July 8. Yesterday morning.

  “Oh God,” groaned Errol.

  Calmly, Charlie unfolded a keyboard and began to type. “I’m taking it down,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m taking this whole sick website down.”

  Kid Hunter’s fingers became a blur on the keyboard, moving faster and faster until …

  *

  . . . his fist exploded against the fat man’s jaw. Kid Hunter ducked to dodge a punch from another drunk as the tub of lard staggered backward and fell into a wooden table. Someone came at the Wanderer with a chair, but he jumped left and the chair came crashing down on another attacker rushing up from behind. Kid Hunter was still watching the fat man when another guy rammed into him from the side and snatched the Canadian gun from his holster. The drunk pointed the stolen weapon at Charlie’s temple.

  “Whatcha waiting for?” taunted the Kid. “Squeeze the trigger!”

  With a grin, the drunk pulled, but nothing happened.

  “And that, my wandering friend,” shouted Charlie, swiping the pistol back with one hand and punching hard with the other, “is why I use a smart gun!”

  The Wanderer grunted in acknowledgment. He had a chair leg in his hand and was brandishing it like a club. One of the other bar patrons put up his hands defensively.

  The boom of a shotgun brought the brawl to a standstill. The bartender had a sawed-off Pilgrim in his pudgy hands. He leveled it first at Kid Hunter and then at the Wanderer. “It’s over! Get out of my place and never come back!”

  The partners put up their arms and exchanged amused looks. With a nod, they turned around and exited the saloon.

  *

  Errol felt a little wobbly as they shuffled past a watchful hotel employee waiting behind the reception desk.

  “I bid you good night,” he said to the clerk in what he thought was a sober-like fashion, but the salutation elicited snickers from his companion as they stepped on the elevator. Charlie’s floor came up first, and Errol drawled another good night. The Kid tripped over the space between the elevator and the carpet but managed to catch himself at the last minute. Laughing, he waved at the closing door.

  Errol swallowed hard when he reached his destination, and he had to hold the OPEN DOOR button to allow himself time to think. After nearly a minute, he hit the button for Rosie’s floor. He was at her door before he realized. He raised a fist but didn’t knock, and after a few seconds, he let the hand fall languidly to his side.

  What was he thinking coming here? What did he think would happen? Mumbling a curse, Errol turned back down the hall. Tapping his eyepiece, he pulled up The New West. With some surprise, he discovered a new article. While he and Charlie had been out drinking, Rosie had been writing an obituary. The headline was “Ballad for a Little Wanderer.”

  He returned to his own room and read the whole thing from start to finish. After a second time through, Errol took off the lens and placed it gently on the bedside table. He closed his eyes, just thinking and breathing. He remembered how small Lindsay had looked in his Stetson, and a sob escaped his lips. He held a clenched fist to his mouth, failing to suppress the tears.

  Tomorrow he was supposed to bury a little girl. The Wanderer wasn’t sure he could go through with it.

  BALLAD FOR A LITTLE WANDERER

  By Rosa Veras

  I knew a young girl who liked to carry a gun.

  Her name was Lindsay. She was living in the woods up north with her older brother. They were poor and had no family, so they stole from hikers, campers, and other wanderers of the forest.

  Lindsay died yesterday, shot in the back for sport. She was twelve years old.

  I met Lindsay while on the run from the Red Stripe Gang, who, as I wrote in my last article, are working on behalf of Gerard Breck. The Wanderer and Kid Hunter had come to my rescue and offered to escort me to safety. Things got complicated, so we had to make a break for it into the woods.

  The truth is that Lindsay tried to rob us. But the Wanderer and Kid Hunter were too smart for that. They tricked her into taking us back to her camp, where we met her brother and learned about their operation.

  Then Lindsay’s brother tricked us. We woke up and found him gone. He had abandoned his sister.

  What else could we do? We invited Lindsay to join us. Anyway, she knew the forest. We quickly learned that she was much more than a thief. She was bold, she was brave, and she was funny. She was our guide, and I think she taught all of us a thing or two about the strength of a child.

>   But Lindsay left us far too soon. We woke up one morning and found her gone. The Wanderer told me she’d be okay. He said she was a “Little Wanderer.”

  We learned later that she had run off into the forest to look for her brother. All she found out there was death. A monster in the forest — a lone wolf sniper with a Montag hunting rifle — shot her in the back. Why? Because he found it fun. To him, shooting innocents was a sport.

  Our Little Wanderer fought valiantly against this evil man. She shot the lone wolf straight through the gut. She killed him, but he’d already killed her. Kid Hunter found Lindsay before the end. She died in his arms. We tried so hard to save her, but it wasn’t enough.

  So this is the obituary of a little girl. I wish there was more I could tell you about Lindsay, but the truth is we barely got to know her. In the end, she left this reporter — all of us — with important questions:

  How many more children like Lindsay are out there? Why must it be that living in the New West requires our children to carry guns?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I Ain’t Nobody.

  Kid Hunter pounded harder on the Wanderer’s door. “Man, you in the shower or something? C’mon, the funeral’s in less than an hour! We got to go!”

  Somehow, calling it just plain “the funeral” was easier than specifying who the ceremony was for. Charlie shuddered. This was going to be a rough day. The aches in his arms still lingered, and he knew he wouldn’t be through with the nightmares for a long time to come. He wondered how the others were coping. Probably not much better. Maybe gathering around a little grave would help them get through it. Then again, maybe talking about Lindsay would just make things hurt worse. Either way, he understood it was something they had to do.