Read Online Vagabond by J.D. Brewer - Free Book Online

to hop onto and off of at the most random of places.  
      I moved into the cover of the trees and the flea followed. The dot in the distance took on the adequate shape of a train, and I felt a new hope. The boy probably didn’t know how to hop onto a moving train, and I may lose him soon enough. The engine grew large as it drew closer. I wondered how it got past the debris of the other train that had been blown up in the night, but, then again, the Republic worked fast when it came to clearing the Tracks. After all, the Tracks supported the entire infrastructure of the Colonies. The graffiti speckled boxes zipped past. It was still going faster than I liked, but I knew I’d be able to catch one since the cars stretched for miles. I stepped out of the trees and took my time to judge the momentum. As I examined the train, the boy did the same. He studied me as much as he studied the freight, and it unnerved me. He had eyes that took in everything.  
    And then, I saw it. The moment of truth. I began to run parallel to the metallic handle on an open door. I swung my hands out, made contact, and propelled and lifted my feet before the train yanked my upper-body off. I counterbalanced the weight of my pack with a little extra exertion and swung myself into the car. Before my eyes could adjust to the lighting, the flea followed suit. “How’d you know—?” Shock turned into annoyance because he still found a way to follow me.  
    I looked back into the shadows and willed my eyes to adjust to the car. There was plenty of light to see by. However, light has a way of being too bright outside in comparison to light confined to a specific space inside. It’s like looking directly into the sun then trying to read black words on a bright, white page. Every time I hop into an open boxcar, I never know what I’ll see until my eyes adjust.  
    The voice that met us shouldn’t have surprised me, and I should have assumed the possibility of someone else in the boxcar. Never the less, it still caught me off guard.  
    “Well, I’ll be!” he said.  
    I swore under my breath as my eyes fully adjusted.  
    Roderigo.  

    “Don’t be an ass about it,” Xavi warned.  
    Roderigo glared at us. His tiny eyes became tinier still. “That’s Randolf’s pack. See that patch? I sewed it for him. He always had the clumsiest damn fingers.”  
    “Yes. We’ve covered that,” Xavi sighed. “And, if we hadn’t collected, it’d be lost in the wilderness somewhere. We took it under the Bond.”  
    Silence wrapped around the man’s brown wrinkles, and when his mouth moved, the wrinkles moved too. He spit from the side of his mouth, and brown glop flew and resonated with stench. “He’s dead, then? I don’t believe it.”  
    “Look, I know he was your friend. We can give you his tent for that, but she needs the pack. We aren’t going to give you all of it, and, I only offer the tent to be kind. By the Bond, we don’t have to give you—“
    “By the Bond? Ha. So. If I come back and murder you in your sleep, by the Bond—“
    “It wasn’t murder. We even left clothes on him and didn’t take his boots—“
    “‘Cause they didn’t fit,” Roderigo spit again, and it landed on the tip of Xavi’s clownishly large feet.  
    Xavi frowned. “We still could have taken them to trade.” He glanced down at the spit and began to shake it off. The old man was quick to use the distraction to his advantage, and he reached out for the strap on my shoulder. His fingers were rough, as if they’d never been soft, when he grasped the strap and began to yank.  
    Xavi was between us before he could finish. “Don’t push it, or you’ll get nothing.” With Xavi between me and Roderigo, his height became brutally obvious. He was a towering mass, and he said, without saying, that even age and experience would not be enough to take him on.  
    Roderigo backed away and reached for his pocket, but Xavi grabbed the knife the old man was going