The Wanderers

With only those simple words, she started to strip, shedding her duster before unbuttoning her plaid shirt and letting the linen skirt drift down to the ground; in seconds she was naked. Both my son and I watched her graceful form walk away and into the river before she dove underneath the water.

I tried my best to focus on building a fire but my gaze kept wandering back, waiting for her to surface, though she never did. After half an hour, we were both sitting by the fire staring at the river, waiting.

"Should we go looking for her?" Richie asked.

"No," I replied, though I had to admit I was also worried.

It wasn't much longer when she appeared on the bank, walking into our camp from downstream. Her skin was dry through her braid still dripped water; in one fist she carried three fish by their tails, in the other she had several thin sticks of green wood, one had speared a dozen mushrooms on it. She handed me the items before dressing her bare form.

Richie cleaned the fish and set to cook them, leaving me to watch the wanderer while she sat across the fire and unbraided her hair, the wavy golden locks tumbling over her shoulders, leaving dark stripes of wetness on her shirt.

We ate our meal in silence, picking off flaky pieces of the light meat from the fish, eating the roasted mushrooms until we were all full. Vega placed her duster on the ground, laying back on the covered sand to stare up at the stars. I was surprised when she spoke, she hadn't volunteered much in the time since we met, "It is nights like this that remind me of my home planet."

Though my son and I were also laying down, the smooth tone of her voice drew our gaze to her. "What was it like?" Richie asked.

"It was a very unforgiving place," she said though there was a fondness in the words, "unlike your planet where every place has a day and a night, my planet rotated such that half of it was in perpetual day, half in eternal night. I lived on the border of the two, often spending weeks on one side or the other, though there were many of us who lived in full day or full night. But whenever I went to hunt in the darkness, I would camp under the stars just like this." She sighed, her longing clear.

"Why did you leave?" I asked quietly.

"Our star died," she said simply, "we had no choice. At first we had intended to find a new place to call our home but it proved more difficult than we had anticipated. Eventually the peacefulness of space became our new world. As our numbers grew we split, bidding each other goodbye so we could venture further and further across the universe. The wanderers I was with had just split again before we came to Earth, that is why there were so few of us."

"So few?" Richie said, "There were nearly a thousand of you, how many wanderers are there across the galaxy?"

She laughed, "There were not a thousand of us, Richie. When we arrived at Earth we were barely half that; only one other elder and I had a full contingency of men bonded to us, the other seven women were still too young to have gathered all of theirs. Now our numbers are even less, barely over a hundred."

There were so many questions I had wanted to ask but the quietness of the night stretched out; I heard Vega sigh before she rolled over onto her side and I knew I had missed my opportunity. I stared up into the night sky, at the thousands of stars shining brightly and I tried to stifle my yearning, my need to see what they contained, to witness what was out there beyond the safety of Earth's atmosphere, as I knew it would be something I'd never get a chance to experience.

Our days and nights continued on the same; we walked while the sun was out, found a quiet place to bed down in the evening. Vega always managed to find us food and water, keeping both my son and I in good condition. There were a few nights that I woke to the soft mewls of her voice, the restrained huffs of my son as they fucked under the stars; I tried to shut the sounds out, clenching my eyes closed but it never worked. Her purrs alone were enough to give me an erection, the pleasure in her moans made me yearn to be the one who caused them. Being near her and knowing that she was not mine, I not hers, was torture.

On the last day of our journey I knew we were getting close to the town. I wasn't quite sure what would happen, if she would walk straight into the thick of it with us or if she would vanish but neither option was what Richie wanted. Neither option was what I wanted. However, in the early afternoon, we stopped at the edge of a plateau and I could see the trail leading towards a cluster of buildings in the distance; we simply stood there for a while, my son and I unsure of how to proceed. We had an obligation to the caravan, to our charges to ensure that they arrived at New Washington safely yet we didn't want to abandon her, even if we knew she would be fine on her own.

"I will watch you from here," Vega said, "to ensure that you arrive safely."

Richie and I both glanced at her; it was a very odd thing for her to say. Firstly, neither one of us had any concerns about being in danger so close to a town, even if we were unarmed. Secondly, the fact that she was not coming with us didn't settle well with Richie. Or myself. Frankly I had thoroughly enjoyed her company these past few days and was sad to part ways with her—it is quite possible I would never see her again.

Both of us knew better than to argue with her; she had her duty to fulfill, same as us but it still felt wrong. When I looked over at her and caught her gaze, we held it for several moments before her long golden fingers reached up and squeezed my shoulder, "Be well, Aldrich."

I nodded. I should have said something—I wanted to say something but what? The feelings I had were ridiculous and I knew it. So instead of telling her how I felt, I let my eyes drop down to the ground and I walked away, leaving my son behind to say his own goodbyes in private.

I carefully picked my way down the sharp incline from plateau to the flatland below and started walking, not daring to look back at the wanderer I had left behind. It seemed almost a quarter of an hour before Richie caught up and fell into step beside me; I sensed his sadness though he tried to hide it, all the while hoping I was better at keeping my feelings buried than my son.

Over the next hour, the town grew larger as we neared it, though it could hardly be called an actual town as it was more of an outpost. In the past it might have been part of a larger community but as it stood now there were less than a dozen buildings that lined either side of the main dirt road through it and only a few smaller houses littered behind those. There were no trees or any other plant life, just a dusty thoroughfare with a small general store, a blacksmith, a mechanic, a saloon and a few other stores to service the travelers leaving the old continental U.S. for the northern stretch of Canmerica.

Walking down the center of the road, we headed straight for the saloon. I could have checked in with the mechanic first to see if the caravan arrived but if they had chances are most of the adults would be knocking back a drink or two after a long stint in the wild. Following Richie up onto the boardwalk, he opened the glass door for me; immediately, all noise inside ceased.

"Holy shit," someone murmured.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust but once they did, I noted that most of the tables were packed with faces that I recognized as our charges. I tipped my hat and headed to the bar. Richie and I had barely sat down before Mr. Davidson appeared at our side.

"I never thought I'd see you two again," he said, the tone of his voice suggested that he was clearly relieved, "how did you escape those wanderers?"

Richie asked the bartender for two whiskies with a water back. I ignored Mr. Davidson's question, asking my own, "What of our weapons? Our horses?"

"I have your rifles and pistols and we brought your horses along. It was our intent to leave them here in case you two made it out alive," he replied, still waiting for my explanation.

"Could you please bring us our guns? I've been walking lopsided for a week without mine," I murmured, slamming back the whiskey. It burned down my throat and smoldered in my belly but it offered a little bit of relaxation.

Mr. Davidson, not wanting to leave until he got our story, flagged down one of the teenage charges and directed him to fetch the gun case from his wagon. The kid nodded, glad to be of some use; once he had left, Mr. Davidson continued, "What are you going to do about those hunters?"

Now the man had Richie's attention and he asked, "Are they still around?"

"It has been a while since they left but everyone is still terrified of them. They woke up after you two were taken and were pissed because you cost them their bounty. They rode with us for a few days but honestly all of us felt safer once they were gone; they left to hunt you down."

"To hunt us down?" I asked, surprised.

He nodded, "Yes, well, you did shoot both of them."

I grunted; it seemed like a good idea at the time, however if I had known then what I knew now I would have chosen a different route and shot the pair of them at full charge. I glanced over at Richie and he understood exactly what I was thinking.

"Thank you for the information, Mr. Davidson but Aldrich and I are rather tired after our long journey here. I think we'll get ourselves a room here at the saloon so we can get cleaned up and rested. You know where to find us if you need anything. You can let the others know we will leave in two days," Richie nodded at Mr. Davidson and then waited for the bartender to hand him the key to one of the larger suites upstairs.

I drank down my glass of water before standing and stretching; I nodded at Mr. Davidson before following my son towards our room. It was the same one we had stayed in hundreds of times before on our journey through the town; one of the reasons why we always made it a point to stop here and give the folk our business was their discretion. Not once did we ever get asked about our relationship or our age though we had watched store owners grow old and their profession picked up by their children many times over.

As soon as we entered the suite, we both removed our hats, dusters and boots. I let Richie head to the bathroom first and sat in a threadbare chair near the door while he bathed. This entire past week had been a clusterfuck to sum it up nicely. There were too many loose ends, too many possibilities and my mind was reeling. I picked out the most important issue and tried to focus on it—the hunters. If they were after us it only meant one thing, they were going to kill us.

Normally we'd keep the caravan in town for a week or better but knowing that we were being sought out meant pushing up the time table; either they'd catch up to us in the next few days and we would shoot it out in town or we'd press on and deal with them later. It was hard to say and either option was shit.

I tensed when I heard footsteps approaching the door, followed by a soft knock; my hand automatically reached for my missing weapon and I cursed under my breath a little. I got up and stood off to the side with one hand the door handle and my back pressed against the wall in case someone thought they'd get the drop on us. "Who is it?"

"Jeremy, sir," a young male voice was muffled through the wood, "Mr. Davidson sent me to get your weapons."

I exhaled and twisted the knob, seeing the young man outside with a small box in his hand. I frowned, hoping that he'd have grabbed the rifles too so that I could ensure they were undamaged and charged but evidently he didn't think much about it. I took the case and forced a smile to my lips, "Say, I have another errand for you and I'll give you twenty credits as compensation."

"Of course, sir," he replied with a smile.

I nodded, "Good—run to the tailor's across the road and tell him that we need new sets of clothes. He keeps some made up for us so he'll give them to you to bring back. Got it?"

The kid nodded and bounded off down the hall.

After I shut the door, Richie came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, his disheveled wet blonde hair and scruffy beard still dripping water down his bare torso. My eyes immediately fell on the circular white skin that covered the wound he had suffered days ago; it was oddly seamless aside from the color difference as the fresh skin hadn't seen any sun. I handed Richie the box with our pistols, desperate for a shower to wash away the grime of the past week, "The kid is coming back from the tailor's with new clothes, transfer him twenty credits from my account."

My son grunted, taking the box from me before I walked into the bathroom. After I kicked the door shut I stripped my clothes off and climbed into the small wooden shower. I punched my account number into the panel on the wall to transfer credits for the water usage; I sighed as the warm water poured down on me. I must have stood there for a solid five minutes before I even bothered to move and wash my body down. While rinsing off my eyes drifted shut. Echoes of Vega's voice, the airy way she would purr at Richie when he fucked her, the soft whimpers, her mewls reverberated through my mind, instantly causing my body to respond. Groaning I glanced down at my hardening dick for a moment, fully contemplating stroking some relief out of it but instead I shut the water off and climbed out of the wooden shower. I needed to focus on the problem at hand, not spend time day dreaming about a woman I'd never see again.

I swiped my hand across the fogged over mirror, staring at the reflection that I knew as my own though the young body didn't portray the age I felt in my mind. I grabbed a towel and ruffled it over my shoulder length dirty blonde hair, patting the water out of the beard that formed on my face. It had been a few weeks since I bothered to shave; I decided now was as good of a time as any to do it, besides it would give me something else to focus on than the golden naked body of the wanderer that my thoughts kept meandering towards. I scooped up a dollop of the dried shave cream from a tin into a bowl and wet the old fur brush, swirling the tip around to work up a lather, letting my mind and body focus on the mundane task. Watching it foam up into a thick substance I slathered it over my face before grabbing a straight razor; I checked to ensure that it was sharp before I set to work, each stroke leaving behind smooth tanned skin. I remembered back to a time of disposable razors, hell disposable everything and it made me huff out a breath at the notion of the things we wasted out of convenience.

By the time I was finished, the face staring back at me in the mirror appeared even younger than before, skin tight over the lithe torso with hints of the muscles that lie beneath. I splashed my face with warm water to wash off any remaining soap residue before patting it dry with the towel. I glanced over my frame once more, eyeing the scars that dotted my body, telling the story of a long lived life, of close calls and near misses, of far forgotten times and friends long since dead. My eyes fell on my flaccid cock, noting that I had indeed distracted myself enough to calm the beast before I wrapped the towel around my waist and existed the bathroom.

Richie was pulling on his cowboy boots, already dressed in a new pair of jeans and a lightweight green plaid button up. He eyed me for a moment, no doubt wondering what took me so long; nodding his head over to the bed my gaze followed the movement to a pile of folded clothes. I began dressing while he spoke to me, "Our pistols are in working order, however the clips aren't charged; you have five shots, I have three. Our extra ones seem to be missing as well; perhaps they were thrown into Mr. Davidson's wagon along with our rifles."

After buckling my belt around my new jeans, I slipped my arms into the soft, light grey shirt, buttoning it up while I replied, "I'd like to go to the hatter and get a decent cowboy hat, maybe we can check the wagon afterwards."

"Sounds like a plan," Richie replied while he pulled on his duster.

After putting on my boots I grabbed my new duster as well, letting the leather settle easily over my shoulders before checking my pistol and sliding it into the holster. It felt calmingly familiar to be armed again, despite the fact that I had rarely used it over the years, it was a comfort to know it was there. Richie and I locked the room behind us, using the back staircase to avoid the open saloon full of our charges, instead slipping out unnoticed through the back door.

We circled the building and hopped up onto the boardwalk, making our way down the block to the hatter's next to the tailor's. The door chimed when we pushed it open, the old man at the counter greeting us with a nod. He either didn't recognize us or made it a point not to say that he did but showed us the stock he had available. Richie and I tried on several different ones each before we picked our favorites; it was a feeling of completion to have a well fitting cowboy had on my head again.

After we paid the hatter, we left his shop and started walking further away from the saloon towards the mechanic's yard where the wagons were being stored. I crossed the dirt road and hopped up on the boardwalk two buildings down from his store front when I heard a high pitched whine. Before I had time to react, Richie tackled me down to the ground behind a large concrete planter. The shot zipped past us, barely missing before it burned a hole into the wooden building.

"Fuck!" I heard a male voice cry out, immediately recognizing it as the son of a bitch hunter who shot Richie.

I had already drawn my pistol before my son pulled his; we exchanged glances, knowing we were sitting ducks. "Did you see where he was?" I whispered.

Richie shook his head, "No." Slowly he slid his back across the concrete so he could tilt his head to peek out from the side of the planter. Immediately he jerked back when another shot blasted past us and into the building, making yet another singed hole in the front. "The idiot is directly across the street behind a planter like us but if they're any good then his partner is somewhere else."

I nodded, knowing it was too risky to shot at him without knowing where the other one was, "Maybe you should make a run for the rifles and draw the other man out." I suggested.

He thought on it, relenting when he realized we didn't have much choice, "If you can figure out where the other hunter is while they're both shooting at me we can make this a fair fight." Richie holstered his weapon and drew his legs up under him so he could get into a crouch and prepare to run. He looked at me hard, "Don't die until I get back, old man."

I grunted, "No promises kiddo." He shook his head before his long form uncurled and he bolted down the board walk towards the caravans.

"Shit, he's running!" The first hunter yelled.

The second I heard two pistols firing I glanced out from the side of the planter in time to watch the hidden hunter bolt from his position; he was tucked behind the side of a building and went tearing down the road after Richie. It made him the easy target but I knew by the time I had him in my sights his partner would be shooting at me. I drew in a slow breath and twisted my body around, using the top of the planter to steady my arm as I aimed across the street. The first hunter had his gun trained on Richie's fleeting form and wasn't quick enough to refocus on me before I squeezed the trigger. I saw his body jerk backwards before I ducked behind my planter and waited for gunfire to rain down on me.

But I didn't hear a thing; either his partner was still on Richie's heels or he was smart enough to wait for me to come out. I frowned, not fond of the idea of losing my new hat but I plucked it off of my head and placed it over the barrel of my gun, easing it just above the top of the planter to draw the attention of anyone watching. I cringed, preparing for the blast of a weapon but all that came was silence.