The Traveling Technomancer: A Westward LitRPG

J.C. Chambers III

Death is not the end.

Owen dug into his hamburger, careful not to spill any sauce onto his lap. He stared out his van’s windshield at the local bank. He was just making a quick run today to deposit a check, but he needed to finish his lunch first.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dale the county sheriff making his way up to the van. The police officer was about ten years older than Owen, making him almost thirty, but he already had a sizable paunch on show. They’d been friends ever since Owen’s dad had died. And though nobody could replace his old man, the local sheriff was the next best thing.

“Hey there, Owen,” said Dale, knocking on the window. “Got a minute?”

Rolling down the window, Owen said, “You writing me a ticket?”

“Yeah, you got a broken rear-light-- nah, I’m just screwing with you. How’ve you been?”

“Same old, same old,” said Owen before taking another bite out of his burger. It wasn’t great, but it was food. “You got something you wanna talk about, or did you just come to piss against the wind?”

“Can’t it be both?”

Owen gave him a blank stare.

“Fine, fine. The cruiser’s been giving me trouble,” said Dale, gesturing to his police car a few spots over in the parking lot. “She ain’t getting up to speed as fast as she used to.”

“Sounds like that might be the gearbox,” said Owen with a shrug. “Bring it in to Joe’s tomorrow and I…” something out of the corner of Owen’s eye caught his attention.

“And you’ll…” said Dale, raising an eyebrow.

A black truck turned around the corner of the bank. It wasn’t moving particularly fast, but it pulled to a stop right in front of the bank’s doors. Which was strange.

However, strange became downright alarming when two men with masks stepped out of the vehicle. One of the men moved to the bank door, while the other stepped toward Owen’s van and raised a handgun.

Oh shit.

“Dale, look out!” Owen ducked beneath the dashboard as the gunman opened fire, the gunshots cracking through the air one after the other in rapid succession. Dale screamed and dropped to the ground with a thump.

“Dale!” Owen roared. He reached over, his heart pounding in his chest, and pushed the driver door open. The last two or three shots zinged off the door frame as he leaned down to gaze on the fallen police officer. Five distinct blood stains welled from Dale’s chest and abdomen, his eyes glazing blankly upward as his chest shuddered with each breath.

They shot him first, Owen realized, so that he couldn’t stop the robbery. Holy shit. That could have been me. Holy shit.

Owen’s skin went cold and clammy as he reached down from his driver seat and clasped Dale’s hand. “Hang in there, Dale. Don’t you die on me.”

But there was nothing he could do. Only moments later, Dale’s broken chest ceased to rise and fall.

No, no, no. Bile welled up in Owen’s throat as he stared at his friend. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening.

More gunshots went off, shaking Owen back to the present. He jolted up in his seat, peering over the steering wheel. The gunman had left him and entered the bank with the other robber. And with those gunshots, who knew who else had died?

Only moments later, those two same gunmen came out of the bank carrying a satchel each, no doubt loaded with cash. They got into the truck to make their escape.

Owen had to do something. He couldn’t just let them get away. He’d never considered himself the heroic type-- crime happened every day in town, and he’d always just tried to ignore it. Hell, he was probably as likely to mug a person as anyone else, if the chips got down.

But they’d shot Dale.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Owen put the van into first gear and slammed on the gas. The car shot forward, pressing him into the seat as it accelerated. His half-eaten hamburger, long forgotten, flew up in a spray of mustard and ketchup. He kicked into second gear, gaining even more speed as he barreled toward the black truck. By the time he was near the truck, he’d made it all the way to fourth gear.

The bastards noticed him too late.

He slammed into the driver door of the truck. His seatbelt caught him, digging into his chest, as metal and glass shattered and flew all around him. The airbag exploded in his face, knocking his head back and pressing him hard into the driver seat.

For a while, he couldn’t move. The impact was too jarring, too sudden. Everything hurt-- everything. But he was still alive. He hoped he couldn’t say the same for the robbers.

He tasted blood in his mouth as the airbag deflated. His van was a wreck, the hood crumpled and distorted in front of the shattered windshield, blocking his view of what lay beyond.

Owen unbuckled his seat-belt and tried to open his door. Of course, it was stuck, warped from the crash. However, his window was cracked to hell, so he gave it a heavy elbow to shatter it open.

He pulled himself out of the van through the window, cutting his hands on some bits of broken metal and shards of glass. His muscles groaned in protest, but he wasn’t going to wait in the van, just in case the robbers were still able to move.

He dropped down onto the pavement, landing on his hands and knees. Shattered glass and steel littered the asphalt, and he could smell oil on the air. He spat out a glob of blood and bared his teeth.

The first robber was dead. His corpse hung halfway out the truck’s driver window, his upper body making a strange sizzling sound on Owen’s exposed engine. But the other robber? Nowhere to be seen.

Owen searched about him for some kind of weapon. He wanted to hope that the other gunman had simply been thrown from the vehicle. But that was just wishful thinking. And wishful thinking resulted in getting shot.

He saw a monkey wrench laying not five feet from him, thrown from the van at the moment of impact. Now that Owen thought on it, he realized his good fortune that none of his tools or materials in the van had hit him during the crash.

He stumbled toward the wrench, but he’d only moved a couple feet when he heard a voice growl, “I’m going to kill you for that.” He whipped his head up to see the second robber limp from around the truck’s other side. The man had removed his mask to reveal a bloodied, pale face. One hand clutched to his side, where he seemed to have broken ribs, while the other held the man’s handgun.

Owen didn’t need to ask if the weapon was loaded. Adrenaline shot through him like lightning, his body aching to move. He knew that if he didn’t act now, he was going to die.

He leaped toward the monkey wrench, grabbed it in hand, and threw it at the robber. The moment the tool left Owen’s hands, the gunman’s weapon went off.

Pain lanced across Owen’s chest as a pool of blood blossomed over his heart. I’ve been shot, he realized blankly, the thought far calmer than he would have expected.

However, the wrench hit its target, cracking the robber’s skull open. The bastard fell to the ground in a heap and ceased to move.

That’s what you get for killing Dale, Owen thought, unable to speak. He collapsed to the ground, the heat of the asphalt a welcome relief from the encroaching cold. The world began to shrink around him as darkness closed in. He fought to keep his eyes open, but the blackness came regardless.

However, that was only for a moment, as the pitch darkness was replaced with a pure, bright light.

On that day, Owen Westward died.

But death was only the beginning of his journey.