by Scott Blade
Not Widow. Not his team.
Widow had to be the real deal. He had to be a SEAL. He had to go all the way .
If you counted his childhood, his early Navy life, his SEAL life, and now his life as a drifter, then he was on life number four, he guessed and not three, but who was really counting?
Mississippi was way too far to be seen from where he was. From where he stood, he might as well have been looking down from outer space, trying to find the state. The distance was too far away and too long ago. He knew that, apparently. But even a stray dog thinks of home from time to time.
Yesterday, Widow had stopped in a place called New London, Connecticut, a coastal Navy town. Beautiful place. It felt like home, even though he had never been there before. It felt like home because there was an NCIS installation there. It was on the Naval base.
While he was there, the thought of visiting had crossed his mind. And he even came close around lunchtime, when he stopped in an off-base coffee shop, hoping to catch a glimpse of sailors coming in on their lunch breaks, in uniform. It was the same hope of someone revisiting his old alma mater.
It felt like home, only it wasn’t. It was just a cozy memory that resurged through him because it was homelike.
He visited none of the Naval installations. No interest. He’d ended up there the same way that he’d ended up now on the side of the road, deep in the country in northern New Hampshire; life compelled him, that and he had caught a bus and got off there .
Widow took one last look toward Mississippi, toward the past, and then he perished the thought and looked down at the road under his feet, and then at his surroundings.
He was standing at a crossroads, an uneven one. It was uneven because one road was an old highway that headed north into Canada. And the second was a forgotten road to God knows where in both directions.
He looked up in four different directions like the four points of a broken compass—left, right, back, and front. Left was almost west. Right was practically east. Back was sort of south. And forward was close to straight-on north.
The points of this compass were not perfect, but close enough to be a little suspicious, as if it had been designed that way, on purpose.
Some cheap architect right out of college, working for the state, probably did it as a gag or a little secret that only he knew about, the way an artist paints themselves into the background of their paintings and never tell a soul.
In all four directions, for Widow, there was a choice to be made, a direction to be taken, a road to take.
Widow stood dead on a crossroads that he had never heard of, and he wondered, why not? Seems that in the world he loved, the Americana world, it would be famous, like Route 66. But it wasn’t.
He had never heard of it before.
The crossroads was more of a cross then a traditional X. One road was an old, two-lane highway, readily maintained, but not glorified with new blacktop. It led out of sight in two directions, and the other wasn’t quite a dirt track, but not far from it, if the state didn’t come along and repave it soon.
It looked like it had been created during the days of horse and buggy about two hundred years ago, maybe more, and in the time since it was blacktopped maybe ten times, with the last time being well over a decade in the past.
The old track led off into two opposite, yet, equally forested, equally mountainous, and equally rugged directions.
The highway backtracked a hundred-plus miles back down along the Vermont-New Hampshire border, and eventually became the end of Route Three and from there led down to Massachusetts, where Widow had spent two days with a girl who had talked with him, slept with him, shared coffee with him, but never told him a thing about her own private life.
This was all after he was in New London, and a lot more memorable.
The girl had a palpable need for privacy, which Widow respected. His life was an open book for anyone to read, but no one ever did. She asked no questions of him, other than the basics. And he asked no questions of her, other than the basics.
After two days fizzled out, he left her and headed north to continue a hollow quest that he had taken upon himself to go on, which entailed visiting all of the, what he called, Devil Stops in the US.
Hell’s Kitchen was the last stop he’d made. He’d gotten the idea when he was in Hells Canyon, back in Idaho. Then he moved on to Devils Lake in Wisconsin. After that, he headed east to Hell, Michigan, and then on to Route 666 in Pennsylvania, and to Hell’s Kitchen, where he went a little off course and stopped in New London, out of curiosity.
All this until he was headed north to a place called Omen Bay in Maine. That had been the plan and the last stop on his invented itinerary until he accidentally sat in a bus terminal for ninety minutes before he realized it was decommissioned.
The depot looked in use. The service drive into it was unblocked, and the lights were on, but there were no workers, no other passengers waiting, and no buses came through. Eventually, he figured it out and felt stupid for not seeing it earlier.
It was at this abandoned bus depot, and out of boredom, that he looked over a bulletin board posted with government information packets and an old state map of New Hampshire’s roads and highways.
On the map, he saw a town name that interested him.
The town was in the middle of nowhere. It was called Hellbent, New Hampshire.
Hellbent. It fit his current itinerary. It was maybe the best name for a Devil Stop yet. He had to check it out. Besides, he had nothing to lose. He wasn’t on any real timeline. No schedule to keep.
He was a man with a regimented past who lived for an uncertain future, full of surprise.
That was the route he’d taken that led him to now. Standing at the crossroads that led in three directions he didn’t want to go and one he did, to Hellbent.
How he got there specifically, was on a bus from a different terminal a mile away from the closed one. This bus dropped him off south about twenty miles where he hitched rides until he caught a ride from two friendly Canadians headed back to their country. They were happy to drop him off where he now stood, just fifteen minutes earlier.
He had seen no other cars since.
The reason why the crossroads was so interesting, other than leading to the town of Hellbent, was the words involved.
The names involved, to be more precise.
The highway that Widow stood on was the Daniel Webster Highway. Named after a famous New Hampshire statesman and lawyer. The other road had no posted named that Widow could see, but there was one forgotten street sign off to the side that was posted. It read: This way to Hellbent.
Hellbent. Daniel Webster.
A crossroads of Daniel Webster Highway and a road that led to Hellbent.
The Devil and Daniel Webster .
He wondered how this had happened.
After another five minutes passed, Widow looked in all directions, again. Still, there were no cars.
He looked at the map in his head and recalled a mountain range that he would like to take a look at.
He stepped away from the crossroads and stared over the trees, veering down into a grassy valley and treetops as thick as grenade bursts. The sun beamed to the east. Widow cupped his eyes, making a visor out of his hands. He couldn’t see the mountains that way. Not surprising. In his mind, he calculated the distance from the crossroads to the particular mountain range that he sought to be around eighty-five miles, give or take a mile.
The mountains that he looked for were called the Presidential Range. He was too far north to see them. He had never seen them before. In fact, he had only passed through New Hampshire by interstate or over it by air, never stopping. Never even giving it a second thought, which he realized was shameful.
New Hampshire was a historic American state, one of the original thirteen colonies. The first men who lived there were some of the original revolutionaries.
Widow wasn’t a mountaineer, never trained to be a serious one, but he had
trained to climb in the Navy. He knew that Army Rangers used to train in the Presidential Range for mountain warfare. He wasn’t sure if they still had a training base there or not. Mountain warfare hasn’t been fought in decades. If you don’t count Afghanistan, which Widow didn’t because Afghan mountains were jagged and deadly, not much climbing was ever needed. If they needed to blow up a Taliban cave, they’d use missiles or helicopters.
Patrols in the mountains stuck to perimeters around forwarding bases or were kept in the mountains that one could hike through.
Plus, in his experience, it didn’t take much to get the Taliban to come out of the mountains to do battle. Just announcing that Americans were nearby was usually enough to get them stirred up.
Another thing that he remembered about the Presidential Range was that it had the most diverse weather systems of any place on Earth. It could be very dangerous. Which was why many mountaineers trained there before attempting to climb spectral peaks, like K2.
The range has its name because many of the mountains in it are named after presidents and other famous Americans.
Widow moved on and walked northeast; he stuck his thumb out.
He stayed on course to Hellbent, walking along the little shoulder of the track for another thirty minutes, when he heard the slowing of tires, rubber over loose gravel, and the sound of a car with an air conditioner blasting hard inside.
He stopped and looked back to see a vehicle slow and dust clouds waft from the rear tires. The car stopped five feet from him. The passenger side tires were over the line on the shoulder, while the driver side tires remained on the track. Not a legal way to come to a stop on a New Hampshire shoulder, but no one was going to say anything to this driver because he was a New Hampshire state trooper in a New Hampshire state patrol car.
The car was a metallic green and tan Dodge Charger that looked more like a park ranger’s ride than a trooper’s.
The police interceptor package was constructed out of taxpayer money with every cent accounted for.
Widow could see it all right there.
It was an impressive vehicle. Homeland Security money combined with federal taxes and state and local, Widow thought.
It’s got to be spent somewhere.
The trooper inside wore the state uniform, green shirt, khaki pants. All ironed and pressed and creased like any armed service members would do, but it made Widow think of the Corps.
Marines were the military branch that carried that kind of neatness with them into civilian life. Not all former service members who are neat in civilian life were Marines, but odds were that’s what this guy once was.
The trooper was a man, a young guy, maybe early thirties with a baby face like he was playing dress-up overacting as an officer of the law. But he was also a jarhead, which never sits right on a guy with a baby face. It usually made them look younger than they wanted. Like infants out of the womb becoming infantry.
Widow smirked at the thought.
At first, the trooper was on his cell phone, not his radio. He talked for a few extra moments while looking at Widow.
Widow wasn’t sure what to do but was under the distinct impression that he was supposed to wait for the guy to get off the phone, like walking into a gas station and waiting while the attendant spoke to another customer over the store’s phone. Even though the standing customer had already pumped his gas, he had to wait for the attendant to get off the phone. No choice. He had to pay for the gas.
Widow thought about just shrugging and turning and walking away. Leave the guy on his phone call. Why not? He had no obligation to stay and wait. He had done nothing wrong. And this was a public road. And the trooper didn’t have his lights on. So why stick around?
Of course, Widow stayed where he was. It wasn’t out of a sense of civilian duty or obligation to law enforcement from the state of New Hampshire. He stayed where he was because he did not have the best track record when it came to first impressions and cops.
The trooper hung up the phone. He slipped a pair of Rayban sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and stared at Widow over the rims. He looked at Widow from side to side, as if he were reading the tail number off a plane, and then from bottom to top .
The man’s blue eyes probed and stared at Widow. Baby-faced or not, the man had cop instincts and cop training and gave Widow a suspicious cop stare. This guy was experienced enough to be formidable. He was a good cop. No question.
Widow could see him remaining friendly, staying calm, keeping a professional demeanor, but the whole time he worked out what to make of Widow, like a bouncer working the door at a nightclub. The guy was threat assessing.
Standard department policy with the public was to remain friendly, but also to stay vigilant when threatened, and Widow was always threatening. He couldn’t help it. Threatening was in his DNA like having blue eyes. It was harder for him to appear friendly with strangers than not.
Terrifying was his default position. No way around it.
Widow aroused suspicion in nearly everyone he encountered daily, especially law enforcement.
The trooper’s nameplate gave his name as Wagner. He buzzed his window down, driver’s side. It was automatic. He flicked a switch and waited and leaned his arm out.
Wagner didn’t roll down the passenger side. Widow realized that the trooper must’ve wanted him to walk around to the driver side. So, he did.
The trooper waited until Widow was standing in full view, three feet from his door and then he spoke .
“Sir, you okay?”
“I’m good. How’s your morning going, Trooper?”
Wagner ignored the question and asked, “Sir, are you broken down out here?”
“Nope.”
“What you doing out here then?”
Widow paused a beat because this would generally cause him a problem. If he told the truth, a red alert would go off in the man’s brain. It was just human nature. Typically, people didn’t understand why a perfectly able-bodied man would choose a life of wandering around aimlessly. And standing out in the middle of nowhere at a crossroads, made him look like a drifter wandering aimlessly.
But what else was he going to say? If he claimed he was going to Hellbent, he’d still look like a hitchhiker, not a real difference between a hitchhiker and a drifter. A hitchhiker was just a drifter with a destination in mind.
So, he kept it simple.
“Walking.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Widow.”
He didn’t bother giving his first name.
“Are you from Hellbent?”
“No. But I saw Hellbent on a map. And then again on a sign back at the crossroads.”
Wagner stayed quiet.
Widow said, “So, what is Hellbent? A town?”
“No. Not really. It’s not officially a town. It’s more of a place. ”
Widow stared at him, confusion on his face.
“It’s not recognized as a town. There’s no mayor or nothing. It’s just a community. Technically, it’s a part of the county, but the nearest sheriffs are sixty-plus miles north. So, it’s my jurisdiction. Basically. We consider it a state matter. Somebody’s got to look after it.”
Widow stayed quiet.
“It’s about ten miles north and east. Down this road. In fact, it’s the only thing down this road. Unless you’re looking to get lost in the wilderness,” Wagner said and pointed down the cracked, winding road.
Widow said, “It can’t be the only thing?”
“Until Canada, it is.”
“Is that so? Can you get to Canada this way?”
Wagner shrugged.
“You can if you’re so inclined. It’s a treacherous track though.”
“How so?”
“This road only goes to town. There’s other roads leading out of town on the other side, but they all lead out into the wilderness, eventually. And out there a man can die. If he doesn’t know where the hell he’s going.”
�
��Is that a fact?”
“That’s a fact.”
“You implying I could die out there?”
“You seem to not know where you’re going. Not exactly. Could be you.”
Widow stayed quiet.
Wagner repeated his question .
“Are you going to Hellbent?”
Widow shrugged.
“Looks that way.”
“So were you going there intentionally?”
“I never go anywhere intentionally. If I can help it.”
Wagner frowned at that, and asked, “Where do you live?”
Widow paused a beat. This question caused him another problem. It always had, when asked by law enforcement. Soon as he told them that he didn’t live anywhere, he often ended up in a conflict situation. Cops don’t like guys without a permanent address. Partially, because ordinary people couldn’t understand it. Partly, because the most common guys without addresses were criminals evading current warrants calling for their arrest.
Widow wasn’t much on telling lies, but he wasn’t against it either. Telling lies used to be part of his job description.
“That’s where I’m headed.”
“Hellbent?”
Widow nodded.
“A second ago, you seemed like you didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Widow shrugged. Gave no answer.
Wagner said, “Well, get in. I’ll give you a lift.”
Widow paused a beat, stared at the road ahead. Still, no cars coming. He didn’t want to ride with a trooper into town or anywhere else for that matter. He preferred to avoid cops and cop cars. They tend to come with handcuffs .
“Come on,” Wagner said.
Widow shrugged and stepped around the nose of the car and tried the passenger door handle. It popped back. It was locked.
Widow heard the Trooper’s voice, muffled by the glass.
“Get in the back. It’s department policy. Civilians ride in the back.”
That was what Widow was afraid of.
He stepped to the rear door, opened it, and dumped himself down on the back seat. A bulletproof glass divider separated him from the front, from Wagner. Several pea-sized holes were spread out in the center of the glass in a circular pattern like a straight on shotgun blast had created them.