by Adam Bender
“Hello, Elza,” he said without turning around. The vision in the glass wavered to display the view behind him.
In the glass, he saw her stop short, apparently taken aback by his notice. She wore a tight black dress and tall black boots, and carried a Breck 17 semiautomatic. “How … ?”
“I’ve got the Kid with me, and he’s got you in the sights of his Montag. Personally, I’m unarmed, so why don’t you throw that gun of yours over to me, and we can talk like civilized folk?”
She didn’t move. Errol turned around to face her, making sure not to make any sudden movements. She looked uncertain, shaken up. He glanced up at the trees over her shoulder and said, “Kid —”
“Wait!” she cried. She pressed a button on the hand grip to eject the magazine, and threw the gun at his feet.
He picked it up for inspection. “I know about your marriage to Gerard. You think that if you kill me, you’ll inherit the company.”
Elza sneered. “Not at all! I’ve never wanted to own Breck Ammunition.”
“But …” he stammered. “Then why … ?”
“All I’ve ever wanted, Errol, is to ruin the Brecks’ business. Just like your father ruined ours.”
His eyes widened as he made the connection. “Your accent …”
She smiled coldly, but Errol’s thoughts had already moved elsewhere. Gerard’s last words, denying any involvement in Helen’s death, rang chillingly in his ears: “It was …”
“. . . Elza,” Errol finished. He stared her hard in the eyes. “You claimed that Gerard sent the hit man to my house. But it was you who sent them.”
“Gerard was a terrible businessman, and I knew I could control him. So I put him in a position to take over the company. Your wife’s death was … a mistake … but I could not complain about the results.”
He gritted his teeth. “Until I came back.”
She shrugged. “It does not matter. Gerard wasted a fortune on the Breck 100X, and now he is dead. The board is dead. Do you not see, Errol? You are the last Breck, and your company is broken, hanging by a thread.”
“I’ll fix it.”
She crossed her arms in defiance. Looking off to the side and speaking flatly, she said, “And you will begin by asking your partner to shoot me?”
He narrowed his eyes. “No. You’re going to take the next train out of Vegas, just like I did. Only — and you listen good to this — you will never come back here.”
A smirk turned into an absentminded chuckle as Elza searched the trees. “Kid Hunter, he is not even really here, yes? You are unarmed, and you have no backup. You bluffed to get me to drop the gun.”
Errol didn’t respond, just kept his grim expression as she leaned over and reached into one of her boots. Naturally, she had another gun attached to her ankle, this one a small, snub-nosed Zeller revolver. She leveled it at his chest. “You see, Errol? I am calling your bluff. I get to finish the job, after all. I get to finish the Brecks!”
Errol raised the semiautomatic in response.
It was the gun that she had given up just a minute before, and she looked at him like he’d lost his marbles. “That gun’s empty! Did you not see me —?”
He fired and Elza’s gun hand exploded in crimson. Screaming, she dropped the Zeller and fell to one knee. Sprinting over, the Wanderer scooped up the little pistol and stacked it between his palms on top of the Breck 17.
“You forgot to check if there was still a round in the chamber after you ejected the magazine,” he declared over the woman’s wounded cries. “There was.”
She moaned, clutching her wounded hand tenderly. “Why not shoot me dead?”
“Heh,” he laughed, pausing momentarily to look back at the monument for his wife. “The truth is, I don’t blame you for Helen. I want to. Hell, I want to blame anyone or anything for what happened. But I’ve come to understand that it’s on me. There’s nothing I can do, nor no one I can shoot, that’s going to change the fact that I fired the gun that killed my wife.”
A cool breeze burst forth from the monument, rustling the fresh grass around the tombstones. The wind carried the gunman away from a whimpering Elza, through black iron gates to a skyline view of the city at the dead heart of the New West.
Errol Breck understood where he needed to be. It was time, at long last, for the Wanderer to come home.
* * *
About the Author
Adam Bender is an award-winning journalist and author of speculative fiction that explores modern-day societal fears with a mix of action and romance.
In addition to The Wanderer and the New West, Adam is the author of two dystopian sci-fi novels about government surveillance: We, The Watched and Divided We Fall. Adam adapted the first book into a screenplay and has written several short stories.
In his day job as a journalist, Adam has covered politics and technology for Communications Daily and Computerworld Australia. He has won multiple investigative reporting awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Specialized Information Publishers Association for his telecom and internet news coverage.
Despite how this all might appear, Adam is generally a rather modest and amiable fellow. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Mallika, and he’d be happy to have a craft beer with you at the next Phillies game. Check out Adam’s blog at WatchAdam.blog and follow him on Twitter (@WatchAdam), Facebook (facebook.com/wethewatched) and Goodreads.
WE, THE WATCHED:
A novel by Adam Bender
Break through the government propaganda and avoid surveillance cameras in the novel acclaimed by Kirkus Reviews as “a page-turner of the highest order” and a “deeply allegorical and powerfully thought-provoking dystopian must-read.”
Told from the first-person perspective of an amnesiac, We, The Watched places the reader in the shoes of Seven as he struggles to go unnoticed in a surveillance society.
Seven enters a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution. Seven’s amnesia gives him a blank-slate perspective that helps him see through the propaganda, and he soon gets involved with a group of rebels called the Underground. But this same perceptive power could get him into trouble with the government police force known as the Guard.
For more information, visit the official website at WeTheWatched.com.
DIVIDED WE FALL:
A novel by Adam Bender
The war has come home. The mission has failed. Agent Eve Parker just wants Jon back.
Eve must arrest her fiancé after he loses his memory and becomes a revolutionary named Seven in a fight against the government. However, when she learns more about the President’s plan to broaden citizen surveillance, she begins to question just who is right.
Divided We Fall, a sequel to We, The Watched, takes place in a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution.
“Bender’s sequel is a worthy delivery on the promise of his riveting debut,” said Kirkus Reviews. A novel about a scheming president offers an excellent read for those who love thrillers or 21st-century history.”
The critically acclaimed novel was a Library Journal SELF-e selection. Amazon and Publishers Weekly honored the manuscript as a quarter-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.
Copyright
Smashwords Edition.
Copyright © 2017 by Adam Bender
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
To request permission, please visit:
adambenderwrites.com
/> This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9924629-6-3
Edited by Rachel Gluckstern and Jim Spivey
Cover design by Ben Mcleod
Interior formatting: Mark Thomas / Coverness.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
A MISSION STATEMENT FORTHE NEW WEST
The Parishioners Are Packin’!
Was He Justified?
What’s the Angle?
Not that Nice a Train, Darling.
Gonna Get You Good.
BRECK AMMO EXPECTED TO REVEAL NEW GUN
This Gun Is a Revolution!
Let’s Round Up Some Bad Guys!
Now Ain’t that Romantic?
Sensationalist Speculation!
BRECK CONNECTED TORED STRIPE GANG
This … Blog …
The Wanderer and Kid Hunter!
Ain’t Safe for You Here.
Aw, Hell …
Cute.
To New Friends!
So You Reckon You’re a Real Reporter?
Ain’t You Just a Little Wanderer?
This Smells of Showboating!
El Aspecto de los Muertos.
The Hero Never Dies, Right?
A Militia!
So That’s It?
BALLAD FOR A LITTLE WANDERER
I Ain’t Nobody.
A Citizen’s Arrest.
We Need to Talk.
Rise and Shine.
You and What Army?
This Is Madness!
WANDERER BREAKS UP BRECK GUN TRADE WITH GANG
It’s Not Your House.
A Job is a Job.
Very, Very Lucky.
The Truth?
Riders!
EXCLUSIVE: THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THE WANDERER!
You’ve Still Got a Brother.
The World’s Changed.
Make Sure He’s Dead.
A GUN TO KEEP US SAFE
Battle Scars.
About the Author
WE, THE WATCHED:A novel by Adam Bender
DIVIDED WE FALL:A novel by Adam Bender
Copyright