by Adam Bender
Errol forced a chuckle. “Is that so?”
*
Charlie cursed as his device’s battery dropped to 29 percent. He was composing a message to his sister, Jane, to say that he was all right but might be incommunicado for a few days. He would send money home when he could. In the meantime, if anyone came by asking for him, she should just say he was away on a job.
He hoped she was all right. Even though she wasn’t a kid anymore, he still felt responsible. He’d been away a long time and didn’t know when he’d see her again. There was nothing but trouble waiting for him in Vegas. But he was still a better older brother than Jimmy, wasn’t he?
The screen showed 23 percent battery — a six-point drop in only a few minutes of use. Charlie scowled. Why, with all the advances in technology, couldn’t the damn scientists make a better battery? He got a couple days tops on a charge, and it always seemed to drain faster after hitting the halfway mark!
He shot off the message to Jane and put the damned thing to sleep.
*
Rosa was getting bored. Lindsay had gone into her tent to read a book, and now no one around the campfire was talking. She wanted to interview Errol, but knew it would be a bad idea with Jimmy around. No use staying up, so she faked a yawn and made a move to leave for bed.
“Wait,” said Jimmy, stopping her with a wave of his hands. “Why don’t we all have a quick drink first? I’ve got whiskey. You’ll sleep better. Makes the night feel warmer.”
Rosa tried to turn him down but Jimmy pressed on, and the others seemed keen. Finally, she gave in and sat back down.
“Great!” exclaimed Jimmy. He went into his tent and a few minutes later returned with four glasses of amber liquid. After carefully passing the drinks around, the young thief toasted, “To new friends!”
The men threw back the drinks while Rosa eyed the dirt-smudged glass critically. It could certainly do with a wash, but she needed the drink, so she followed the crowd and gulped it down.
She felt a bit wobbly when she stood but blamed it on getting up too fast. Certainly she hadn’t had enough to be tipsy already.
Rosa had barely set up her tent when she noticed the Wanderer on his back by the fire, already fallen into deep slumber. Charlie was sleeping, too, having only managed to set up his tent in a lopsided, lean-to fashion. It provided cover but was far from finished.
“Hey, are you boys … all right?” Suddenly her head felt heavy. Like a dying woman straining to reach the mirage of an oasis, Rosa crawled into the tent and struggled into her sleeping bag.
Pablo tossed a tennis ball up into the air and caught it as he walked ahead toward the car. Rosa ran to catch up, but the seven-year-old boy’s back kept sliding farther away. The ball went up. The ball went down. The ball went up. The ball hit the sidewalk, painting a long trail of red on the pavement.
Rosa broke out of the nightmare gasping for air. Distantly, she became aware of arguing voices, and light coming from a green tent. She knew something was wrong and tried to get up, but she felt too heavy to move.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
So You Reckon You’re a Real Reporter?
The sun had already soared high over the trees by the time Rosa came out of her tent. She could hear Kid Hunter snoring inside his tent, but the Wanderer was already up, stumbling a bit groggily around the shade of the campground. He didn’t have his hat on, and his hair was crazy.
“What happened?” she called to him.
“We were drugged,” was the grim response. He was holding a white plastic bottle of medicine. “Sleeping pills. They must be long gone by now.”
“Were we robbed?”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Oddly enough … no, it doesn’t seem so.”
“Then why … ?” She didn’t finish the sentence. By her side she noticed a dirty envelope, scrawled with messy handwriting.
Hope u had a nice sleep. Now she’s ur problem.
A fresh rush of wooziness overcame Rosa as she stepped out of the tent. She staggered drunkenly to the green tent on the other side of the dead fire. Through its polyester walls, she heard a heavy sob.
“Oh my God,” gasped Rosa, tearing open the flap covering the entrance. She found Lindsay shaking in her sleeping bag. Her cheeks were stained with wet lines streaking from her eyes to the bottom of her chin.
“Jimmy’s gone,” the little girl cried. “Jimmy’s gone.”
*
Wet with dew and still cold from the night, the tent poles sent chills through Rosa’s fingers. In a sudden burst of chivalry, the Wanderer offered to help, but she could do it herself and told him so. As it turned out, she ended up doing Charlie’s in addition to her own. He’d barely even tried before loudly announcing his defeat. The Wanderer tried to assist, but it turned out he didn’t know what he was doing, either. They were city boys through and through.
Lindsay handled her own tent quickly and efficiently, but afterward sat on the ground pouting beneath the gray hood of her sweatshirt. She spoke once, when the Wanderer asked if she knew the way to Founders Spring.
“There’s a trail,” she stated.
“Will you show us?”
With a heavy sigh, she rose to her feet and swung on her backpack. Without turning to check if anyone was ready, she set off into the pines.
Kid Hunter managed to keep pace with Lindsay, but Rosa and the Wanderer soon fell back. When she was certain Lindsay was out of earshot, Rosa asked him, “Should we have brought her with us? We’ve got dangerous men after us.”
He took a long breath. “What choice do we have? We can’t leave her out here.”
“I’m worried about her. I think she’s in denial about what happened. She either thinks Jimmy will come back for her, or that he’s set a challenge for her and she just has to find him.” Rosa knew neither were likely. “She’s too young for a life like this. She’s too young to be carrying a gun.”
He shrugged. “I was shooting when I was her age.”
“Okay, but you’re a Breck. You probably had a gun in utero and shot your way out.”
“Heh.”
The path led up a hill and it soon became more difficult to walk. Rosa procured a rubber band from her pocket and began tying her jet-black hair into a ponytail. “What are we going to do with Lindsay,” she said between heavy puffs, “when we get to town?”
It didn’t sound as though Lindsay had anyone besides Jimmy. She had mentioned foster parents, but the way Jimmy had spoken about them made her think they weren’t a good idea.
“We’ll find a church,” said the Wanderer. “They’ll know what to do.”
For some reason, the idea of just dropping her off like that, making it someone else’s problem, didn’t sit well. “And will you leave me with the church, too?”
He rolled his eyes. “If Founders Spring seems safe and it suits you, you can hide out wherever you want.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as it takes.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “And what’ll you do? Catch a train to the next town?”
“The train doesn’t go to Founders Spring.”
She groaned. “Forget it.”
He looked at her helplessly. It was a look she recognized from her brother. Jack … he probably was worried. She never told him she was leaving town. He’d probably showed up at her house and found it abandoned. If Ben Martin hadn’t gotten there before him, there’d be a dead gangster in the front yard, and a horribly burned one still moaning inside.
She watched Lindsay stomp through the trees like she was having a tantrum. The girl with the gun, forced to live in the wilderness and steal from strangers. There were stories everywhere Rosa looked.
Part of her wanted to try to interview the Wanderer again, but she wasn’t sure what would be the point. She’d gotten herself into enough trouble already. Even if she did interview him, she wasn’t sure she had enough juice left in her phone to record it. She didn’t trust her memory. What was she going to
do? Scribble on a pinecone? She didn’t even have a pen!
Just in case, she pulled out her phone to check its battery, but the damn thing wouldn’t even power on. Not only would she not be able to use it for interviewing, but there was no way to call Jack.
“My eyeglass just died, too,” commiserated the Wanderer. “Tried to wake it this morning but it was dead set on sleeping. Let’s hope the girl knows where she’s going.”
His gaze stayed on her, and for a second, she thought he was going to say something.
“What?” she asked, unable to wait any longer.
He said, “So you reckon you’re a real reporter?”
The familiar label made Rosa’s eyes dart to the hot pink watch on her wrist. It was still working, naturally. The one good thing about a watch that wasn’t smart was that it had a great battery life.
“A real reporter?” she replied, eyeing the rudimentary buttons on the watch’s surface. “The truth is I don’t know what I am anymore.”
He studied her with confusion, as if she was some kind of gun without a handle.
She sighed morosely. “I thought I was better than other reporters because I was going to write the truth. I wasn’t going to just write what the advertisers wanted. I wasn’t going to have any advertising. I was just going to write about how things really were. But now — I mean, look at us. Lost in the woods with the Red Stripe Gang on our tails.”
He nodded. “You’ve got guts. That’s for sure.”
When he looked away, Rosa tapped one of the buttons on the watch. A black circle appeared on the screen. The thing was recording! Despite herself, Rosa felt a familiar surge of excitement. It couldn’t hurt to interview him. Even if she decided not to write The New West anymore.
“How about you answer one of my questions, now?”
“Heh,” laughed the Wanderer. “What do you want to know?”
She certainly wasn’t about to make the same mistake as yesterday and ask a question that would scare him off, so she started with a softball. “What’s the deal with you and trains?”
He laughed, before proceeding to a variety of answers. He sprinkled each possible explanation with more awkward chuckles. She had never seen him so embarrassed. It was actually kind of cute. He offered a few fleeting memories of his childhood — a train set, a ride on an old-fashioned steam engine — as well as a few general remarks about the relaxing nature of riding the rails and how nice it was to look out the window. She didn’t believe any of these reasons, though. Truth was she had him figured already. The Wanderer — Errol Breck — was running from something but couldn’t decide where to go. On the train, he didn’t have to. What he was running from was what she really wanted to know.
*
The trees glowed and suddenly gave way to azure sky as Rosa neared the edge of a cliff. Red giants loomed overhead, looking poised to crush them with sandstone fists. The sound of rushing water brought her eyes down hundreds of feet to a long river carving through the rocks. They had come to a canyon.
She looked on as Lindsay picked up a stone and tossed it hard over the edge. The rock met the water too many feet below with a faint yet emphatic sploosh!
“Yeah, yeah … I can beat that,” challenged Kid Hunter.
He grabbed a small boulder with two hands and lifted it slowly over his head. With a grunt he pushed it into the air. Lindsay’s eyes expanded as she followed the rock’s heavy fall. The water burst as if struck by dynamite.
“Oh my God!” the girl exclaimed with pure delight. She pulled back her hood, revealing a brush fire of hair. “You must have just killed, like, I dunno, twenty fish!”
“That all?” replied Charlie with a pearly grin.
Rosa noticed the Wanderer chuckling and wondered if he had any kids. Figuring it would stir up memories of his dead wife, she decided to hold off on asking until she had won his trust.
“Hey, idiots!” shouted Lindsay, standing with Charlie by a dry and knotted tree. The petulant girl waved her hands like she was trying to get through to a pair of spaced-out drug users.
Rosa forced a smile but was sure it looked fake. “You have our attention!”
Lindsay told them about a dirt trail that wound down the canyon in a series of tight switchbacks, ending finally on one side of the river. “We can eat when we get down to the water. We’ll follow the river through the canyon until sunset. Then we’ll find a place to make camp for the night.”
Rosa and Charlie both instinctively looked to the Wanderer.
He responded with a shrug. “She’s the boss.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ain’t You Just a Little Wanderer?
Kid Hunter trudged after Lindsay down the path into the floor of the canyon. She moved like a squirrel. He couldn’t keep up, and the trail was too long to try. The pines had abandoned them and now there was no shade. Charlie could feel the midday sun through his burgundy track jacket, making him sweat. He tried taking the coat off, but then flies and mosquitos started attacking the flesh of his exposed arms. The bites hurt like hell, leaving him with tracks of itchy bumps. So he put his jacket back on and just suffered through the heat.
He was getting hungry, too, but then it occurred to him that the only snack food they were carrying was granola bars. There wasn’t even a variety of flavors — just apple cinnamon. And the bars weren’t even the moist, chewy ones; these were like crisp cardboard. They only made him thirsty, and there wasn’t a whole lot of water to go around. Fucking hell. If he wasn’t so hungry …
Lindsay paused and spun around with her hands on her hips. “You’re so slow!”
“Naw, girl, I’m just saving my energy. In an hour, you’re gonna fall over and I’ll still be walking, slow and steady. Know what I’m sayin’?”
She grinned. “Yeah, we’ll see.”
When he caught up, she slowed her pace and walked by his side. “I like your secret names,” she declared. “Wanderer, Kid Hunter … uh, Reporter Lady … I want a secret name!”
He raised his eyebrows. Seriously?
They resumed their walk down the path. Flourishing her hands like a magician, Lindsay announced, “I know! Call me … Lindsay.”
“Uh,” offered Charlie, narrowing his eyes, “isn’t that your name already?”
“No, not Lindsay!” she corrected. “Lindsay!”
“Still not hearing the difference.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like Lin, dash, zee.”
“Wait, Lin … Z?”
She gave an exasperated nod.
“Lin-Z! All right, I get you!” burst Charlie with a deep laugh. “I have to say, though, that is a really dumb name.”
She dismissed the criticism with a short breath. “Whatever.”
“Plus,” Charlie continued, undeterred, “if you ever ran into some British nob, they might call you Lin-zed. Ha! That’s even worse!”
The expression on her face radiated pure rage. “Shut. Up.”
He grinned so widely his gums showed.
“Anyway, this is America,” Lindsay said. “When am I ever going to run into a British … what did you call him?”
Charlie waved it off. “Don’t worry about it.”
She didn’t appear ready to back down. “Your name’s stupid, too!” she burst. “I mean, what, do you hunt kids or something?”
“That’s not —!” he cried out in alarm. Crestfallen, he mumbled, “Shit, that’s a good point.”
She smiled. “It’s okay, I didn’t think of it that way when I heard it the first time. Anyway, it’s too late to change it now. You’re already famous, right?”
Before he could reply, Lindsay skipped ahead, eyes fixed on the sky. Charlie wasn’t sure what she was looking at. There weren’t even any clouds. Even if there were clouds, why would anyone look at clouds? A flash of light from the woods on the opposite side of the canyon made him blink. He squinted into the trees but couldn’t see anything. Probably nothing.
“So you’re the sidekick, right?” she asked, pa
using again to let him catch up.
He chuckled — what else could he do? “Naw, girl, the Wanderer and I are partners.”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
He gasped. What was that supposed to mean?
She giggled. “I don’t mean like he’s your boyfriend. I just mean you look to him for the final word on things. It’s okay! I’m a sidekick, too. Well, I mean I was … before …” Green eyes fell to worn boots.
Charlie nodded sympathetically. He knew who she was talking about. “You’ve got to leave all that behind.”
“It’s okay, really. Jimmy just likes to challenge me sometimes.”
He shook his head. “He shouldn’t have left you.”
They stopped short as a small brown lizard bolted up from a rock in the path and skedaddled arm over arm into the bush.
Lindsay smiled like a tiny, sly angel. “Think I can have my gun back?”
Charlie laughed. He glanced back at the Wanderer and Rosa, chatting like an old married couple. “It’s going to take some doing, I think. Rosa doesn’t approve of you carrying.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t think I’m old enough. But I’m almost thirteen! I’m basically an adult! How old were you when you first had a gun?”
“Younger than you.” Back in Vegas he had to carry … to protect his family and to get the things they needed.
“See?”
“But,” he interjected, “I wish I hadn’t needed it.”
“But you did. Need it, I mean. And so do I. Have you ever shot anyone?”
“More than I like to admit. For money, mostly.”
“I’ve shot some people …” She said it quietly while wringing her hands. “Well, I’ve shot at them. They didn’t die, so I guess it doesn’t count, right? Mostly, Jimmy and I would just, you know, wave our guns around, real threatening-like. Usually, people would just give us their stuff and run away like frightened bunnies. But I know how to shoot. I’m a good shot.”
Charlie couldn’t decide if she was trying to convince him that she was a lamb or a wolf. Instead, he told her about his wristband, and she watched with rapt attention as he ran through the features: smart gun control, apps for everything, the hacking interface … and then the battery blinked red, and the screen shut off.