“I want to help you,” the kid said, looking up at the back of the stranger’s Stetson. The stranger holstered his twin pistols and turned around, kneeling on one knee to look the kid straight in the eyes.

“Listen, son.”

“My name’s Bobby.”

“Listen, Bobby. You don’t want to go where I’ve gone or where I’m going. You don’t want to be what I am. I’m who I am to help you not have to be someone like me. I do what I do to help the West, and to help the rest of the world.”

“I can help too! I’m 12 years old now! I can shoot almost as good as my pappy could!”

“That didn’t help him against the wormlings now, did it?” The stranger stared off to one side, near where the wormlings had burst out of the ground. The kids eyes welled up with tears, but he couldn’t see the stranger’s eyes welling up as well behind the dark sunglasses. The
stranger reached out and wiped away a sole tear running down the kid’s cheek.

“You’ve got to be brave, Bobby. You’ve got to help your mommy and the town rebuild. I’m going to go on and make sure no one - not wormlings, not that bastard Throckmorton and his stinking Combine, not anybody - can hurt you or your town again.”

“The templar said we didn’t deserve to be helped.”

“That’s why the templar has a hole in his head, put there by me. Look at me, Bobby.” The kid looked up, right into his eyes. The stranger reached to his sunglasses. “You don’t want to go there.”

He pulled off his sunglasses and the kid looked into the fireball of a ghost rock bomb, perpetually dancing on the eyes of a dark stranger.

Jack looked over at the passenger seat where Bobby slept. He looked like a little angel, and that pissed Jack off. Bobby had snuck into the car that night as he’d packed up the ammunition the town had given him in exchange for what he’d shot into the wormlings. Bobby had a small supply of sharpened hubcaps below his seat and some food his mother had packed for him.

Outside of the bomb-blasted ruins of Laredo they met up with some of Jack’s friends - a syker named June, a scavvie named Older Pete, and a mutie named Lawrence. Jack introduced them to his new charge as the sun set, shining strange lights through the demonic mushroom cloud over
Laredo.

As the newcomers treated Bobby to their scavenged cans of ravioli around the fire, Bobby grew increasingly distressed. Jack tried to calm him, but to no avail.

Finally, Bobby grabbed his hubcaps. Jack had had enough.

“Bobby, sit down right now. I ain’t lettin’ you run off and get yourself killed.”

“I can’t! I gotta go do this.” Bobby’s voice trailed off as he ran out of the light.

“Damnation.” Jack pulled his twin .45 caliber pistols. “Y’all stay here.”

“No problem, Jack,” cackled Older Pete. “Just leaves more to -”

His voice cut off with the crack of a gunshot. Blood replaced words in his mouth. Jack jumped to the side, spinning as both guns blazed. June held her bald head as she concentrated, then tumbled to the ground as she caught two bullets herself. Lawrence’s hands blasted purple eldritch blasts into the darkness.

Jack felt himself stumble as he caught a full burst of submachine gun fire. He looked up to see the face of his killer looking down on him, wearing the black hat of the Combine. Snarling his best threat, he started to pull himself up - then saw silver fly past his head to sever
the neck of the Black Hat. The hat stayed on the head as it tumbled away from its body.

The rest of the squad swung back and pulled away. The head kept rolling, down into a dry gulch, where it exploded as the headbanger chip got too far away from its munitions. Bobby came running out of the darkness.

“I got two more back there, Jack! Did I do good Jack? Jack!”

Jack coughed a bit then stood. Dark black blood had flowed slightly from his bullet wounds, but even now they were closing.

“Bobby, come here.” Bobby walked over, slowly, wary of the man with a half dozen bullet holes in him. “Bobby, do you know what a deadbeat dad is?”

“I think so–mom said that’s what her first husband was, the one that was Rick’s dad.”

“Back in those days, some dads willingly abandoned their kids and didn’t help them. That doesn’t happen much by accident anymore.”

“That’s good.”

“Not necessarily. Bobby, I’m a deadbeat dad, but in a different way. Feel this.” He reached out and took Bobby’s hand, then put it over his heart. All Bobby could feel was a slight fluttering.

Bobby looked even more scared. “Wha–what’s that?”

“I’m dead, Bobby. That’s what keeps me alive, and when it’s in control, I’m much, much worse than those wormlings were. But I’m in control now.”

He got up, away from Bobby, and started looking towards June and Older Pete.

“But Bobby - when I’m not in control, keep the hell away. For your own sake.”