The Shadow Walker

by William R Hunt

  Victor scratched the bridge of his nose. He cleared his throat and worked his jaw, but the words did not come right away. It was like putting quarters in the vending machine and waiting for the soda to spill out the bottom.

  Finally Victor stood, his shadow falling long across the floor. “You’re not crazy,” he answered. “I wish you were, but you’re not.” His voice sounded far away.

  “Why, Vic? Why did the horsemen…why did the Baron want to get to you? Who is he?”

  “It was Walker’s fault. Khan was watching us, looking for an opportunity to approach safely. I probably would have shot him if he’d come to the house. So Walker decided to take matters into his own hands…” He spoke like he was trying to piece together an incoherent dream.

  “But that still doesn’t explain why they grabbed me,” Dante pressed. “Did Walker panic? Don’t tell me he mistook me for you.”

  Outside, a gentle fog crept across the green and sank into the road, hiding the bloated bodies of the horses and the riders who had kidnapped Dante. They would lie there forever, picked clean by buzzards and wolves, never given the honor of a proper burial. But they’ll live in my dreams, Dante thought, and felt a sneaking suspicion they were the substance of last night’s nightmare.

  Victor took a deep breath. “You should eat your breakfast. We have a lot of miles to cover today.”

  Dante nodded, accepting that he would not get any more answers for now. His mind, however, was not quite ready to let it go. It was clear the horsemen had known many things about the brothers, and it was equally clear that Victor and Khan had once been friends. Had Victor also been friends with the man who sent the horsemen, the one who styled himself “the Baron”? This was the important question, and it troubled Dante like a bad tooth. He kept touching it as if to reassure himself it was still there.

  Dante rolled back his blankets and crawled to the pan nestled among the embers of the fire. The soup was warm rather than hot, but he was so hungry that it might as well have been lobster bisque.

  “Ready to go?” Victor asked when Dante had finished.

  Dante pushed the pan away and peered up at his brother. “Just one problem,” he said. “Unless you’ve got a sled and a team of Huskies, I don’t think we’re going anywhere in a hurry.”

  Victor smiled. “I’ve got the next best thing.”

  ___

  “Are you freaking serious?” Dante asked, leaning on Victor for support. The animal was tied to one of the pillars on the clubhouse’s front porch. Its coat was a rich black, the muzzle white with pink skin around the nostrils. Long white hair hung down around its hooves. The leather of the saddle and bridle was faded and worn, but serviceable.

  “Found it wandering around this morning,” Victor said. “Must have escaped the shooting. Not sure what breed it is, but it’s definitely big enough.”

  “Big enough to carry my fat ass? Is that what you mean?”

  Victor chuckled. “You said it, not me.”

  Dante hopped over to the horse’s side. The animal lazily turned its head and sniffed his hand.

  “He’s quiet, alright,” Dante said, brushing his hand across the horse’s broad cheek. “And it’s called a Belgian, by the way.”

  Victor raised an eyebrow. “And how would you know that?”

  “I have a history too, my friend,” Dante answered. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  Victor cupped his hands together and hoisted Dante into the saddle. Dante stuck his good foot in the stirrup and curled the other against the Belgian’s flank. It felt very different from the last time he had ridden a horse. He stared across the grass, which was expanding as the sun evaporated the mist, and felt a little like a child sitting on the back of an elephant at a carnival. The world was his to explore, to discover, to make his own.

  Victor shaded his eyes as he stared up at Dante. “How’s the view?”

  “Grand.” He paused, noticing a thin wisp of gray threading up from the forest on the opposite side of the road. He pointed. “Is it just me, or is that smoke?”

  Victor turned, then nodded slowly. “Probably just some hobos enjoying the dead horses.”

  “Yeah,” Dante answered, “you’re probably right.”

  ___

  They left the clubhouse behind them, striking across the rolling turf of the golf course. The morning was crisp and cold, the trees hemming the course silent, the sunlight bleeding through a thin screen of cloud. Dante glanced back as the road slipped from view, thinking, That’s the place I almost died. He supposed he would remember that road, with its fury and its mangled horrors, for a long time. There were many ways he could have shared Walker’s fate—catching a stray bullet, injuring more than his ankle when the horse beneath him buckled, or even being killed by Walker out of spite.

  Instead he had survived. It was a blessing, but it also felt like a burden, as if his freedom brought with it a responsibility. He could not say precisely what this responsibility was; he merely sensed that to go back to the person he was before, to live as though he had not just been granted a miracle, would be to waste the gift he had been given.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked after they had gone on in silence for ten or fifteen minutes. Victor kept pace at Dante’s side, carrying the backpack - with its small assortment of cans and perishables - and the Winchester rifle. His gaze was hard as he scanned the area ahead of them where the golf course ended and the sparse forest began. Dante suspected that, had they met Walker when Victor was in this mood, the course of their lives would have gone very differently.

  “We’ll see how much ground we can cover by dusk,” Victor replied. “We can stop earlier if we find a good shelter. With any luck, we’ll find something to eat by then, too, even if it’s just a squirrel or a dove.” He sounded more like he was working it out in his mind than laying down the law.

  “I got a look at a map back when I was following your trail,” he went on. “If I’m not mistaken, there should be a Federation town somewhere north of us.”

  “Is that where you want to go?”

  Victor glanced up at Dante, shielding his eyes. “What do you think we should do?”

  Dante thought about it for a few moments rather than rushing an answer. “We should be careful,” he said slowly. “I want to find other survivors, but on our terms. I don’t want to give up our guns and blindly trust others to have our best interests in mind.”

  Victor nodded. “And if we can’t do it on our terms?”

  “Then we stay out in the wilderness, on our own—as long as we have to.” As long as we can, he added to himself.

  “You’ve changed,” Victor said. “You’re more cautious than you used to be.”

  Dante considered this and decided Victor was right. Maybe that was what happened when the first stranger you’d spoken to in months kidnapped you.

  “You know,” Dante said, “I never thanked you for staying.”

  Victor frowned at him. “How do you mean?”

  “For not riding off with Khan. Whatever he offered you, you must have been tempted.”

  Victor gave him a sad smile. “What could have tempted me so much that I would abandon my own brother?”

  Dante smiled back…but he suspected that something could have convinced Victor to leave. For that matter, there was probably something that could have convinced Dante to leave, too. Such was the nature of the human heart.

  “This is nice,” he said.

  “Yeah, it is. It’s been a long time since we just talked.”

  “No, not that.” Dante suppressed a grin. “I mean looking down on you.”

  “Wise ass,” Victor muttered, shaking his head.

  Dante sat back and tried to ignore the discomfort he felt in his ankle at every step. They drifted along, watching the sun rise and dry the turf, and as the morning waned Dante’s curiosity about Victor’s past life grew. “I’m curious,” he said, “why did you climb into that helicopter with Peter? You could have gone home to
Camila and forgotten all about the laboratory.”

  “I’d say curiosity—but no, it was more than that. Like I said, the moment I met Peter I knew he was destined for great things.”

  “And did you learn what he was doing at that compound?”

  “Not at first,” Victor answered. “First, I had to win his trust…”

  Chapter 7

  BEFORE

  They drifted through the night, not speaking, the sound of the helicopter blades muffled by their padded headsets. Victor watched the ground rush by and thought, What have I got myself into now?

  Peter Krieg occupied the seat opposite Victor, staring thoughtfully into curling forests gray beneath them, the clustered villages with their rustic churches, the lonely roads wandering through the wilderness. Some distance from the compound they had left (the flight took less than an hour, though Victor could not have been more precise than that), the helicopter turned and Victor saw a castle ahead of them, rising from the mountainside like a child’s fairytale. Yellow light glowed from the turrets and the front gate.

  “What is this place?” Victor asked, the microphone carrying his words directly to Peter’s ears.

  Peter glanced at him and shook his head impatiently, as if to say he would have to wait and see.

  The Blackhawk helicopter descended, swooping around the tapering turrets as they approached the courtyard encircled by the arms of the castle. The whitewashed walls of stone rose past them as if they were sinking into a deep well. The helicopter slowed, settled gently on the cobblestones, and Peter climbed out, ducking beneath the whirring blades.

  Victor jogged to catch up with Peter. He tried to ignore the sensation of stepping into another time in history, to set it aside for later examination, but he found the view irresistible. He turned in a tight circle, taking in the scores of windows facing the courtyard, the beauty of the architecture, the palpable aura of power and nobility radiating from the stone.

  “Quite something, isn’t it?” Peter asked. “It was built by a Bohemian King, Conrad the Third. Nearly lost it to his niece in a succession war.”

  Victor imagined standing by the front gate of the castle, his shield raised to protect him from the hail of arrows raining down from the wall, and hearing the order to storm the gate.

  “It must have been suicide,” he said.

  “They took the lower courtyard.”

  “But not the keep.”

  A smile flickered across Peter’s pale lips. “Nobody has ever taken the keep, not since the first two stones of the foundation were laid together.”

  His attention was stolen by a small boy running barefooted across the cobblestones. “Vater!” the boy cried. As Peter crouched with his arms spread, the boy planted his feet and leapt. Peter caught the child and spun him in a circle, their smiling faces close together as the boy’s limbs trailed through the air.

  Peter set the boy down and ruffled his hair. The boy, nearly breathless, said, “Hast du auf dem hubschrauber geflogen?”

  “Ja, habe ich,” Peter answered. “Sei ein guter Junge und sage deiner Mutter, dass wir Gäste haben.” Planting a hand on the boy’s shoulder, he directed him back the way he had come.

  “He has your eyes,” Victor said. Both of them, man and boy, had eyes the gray of a cloudy sea.

  “And his mother’s ceaseless energy,” Peter answered, still staring after the boy. He faced Victor and, as if realizing he was still wearing the smile he had intended only for his son, he pulled his eyebrows together and cleared his throat.

  Victor turned to see the team of scientists crossing the courtyard, ushered by Peter’s men. One of the scientists spun her head and caught Victor’s gaze. Her coal-black hair flicked across her shoulder, contrasting the white of her lab coat, as she gave Victor an imperious stare.

  “Where are you taking them?” Victor said as the woman broke contact and slipped through a door along the side of the courtyard. The awe of his surroundings was wearing off as he remembered why he had come. He was tired, ready for a hot shower and a drink of something cold, but those things could wait. Learning who Peter was and what he wanted with the scientists, however, could not.

  “You Americans,” Peter said, walking toward the flight of steps that would lead him to the main entrance of the keep, where his boy had gone. “Always in a hurry to reach the next location, the next topic of conversation. Never able to enjoy the moment.”

  Victor matched Peter’s stride. “Someone unleashed a chemical weapon on a civilian population, and I need to figure out who it was.”

  “And I assure you, those scientists were not involved in the matter.”

  Victor stopped walking. “And you know this how?”

  Peter drew his hand wearily across his forehead. “I have been watching them for some time now. If they were making chemical weapons, I think I would know something about it.” He began walking again.

  “And just who are you?” Victor said as he caught up. “CIA?”

  Peter paused with a heavy sigh. “Listen, Mr. Gervasio, we are both on the same side of the fence. If you will just come inside with me, I will explain everything. You have my word of honor.”

  Victor looked from Peter’s cloudy eyes to the white walls of the castle, then on up to the dark heads of the turrets. Try as he might to keep his mind focused on the mission, he could not help but wonder about this man whose path he had crossed under such unusual circumstances.

  “Alright, Mr. Krieg,” he said. “But I’ll hold you to that promise.”

  Peter smiled thinly. “I would not expect anything less.”

  ___

  A flight of stone steps led them inside the castle. The walls were dark, the air warm and close. The smell of venison and roast fowl drifted through the tapestry-laden halls. Candles recessed in the walls flickered with the air stirred by their passage, lending more mystery than light to the journey.

  At the end of the first hall, two people stood facing them, holding hands. The first was the boy, Peter’s son. The second was a woman carrying an old-fashioned tin lantern with clouded windows. She was tall and elegant. Her silver-threaded hair was tied severely behind her head, and she wore a short-sleeved dress that stopped just above her ankles.

  “Guten abend, Meister,” the woman said, releasing the boy’s hand so she could pluck at her skirts as she curtsied. The words carried the tone of a ritual. The boy only stared at Victor shamelessly.

  “Please,” Peter answered, touching the woman’s arm, “there is no need for such formality.” Was it the glow of the lantern on Peter’s face, or did Victor see a flush of pleasure blooming there? Victor had initially taken the woman for a servant (he knew enough German to understand she had said, “Good evening, Master”), but the way Peter had touched her arm seemed too familiar, too tender. Maybe she was his wife, and this was their way of reenacting how the first residents of the castle might have behaved.

  “This is our new guest, Mr. Gervasio,” Peter continued.

  “Just Victor is fine,” Victor said.

  Peter went on as if Victor had not interrupted. “He will be dining with us tonight.” He glanced over his shoulder at Victor. “And afterward? Shall we prepare a bed?”

  “No,” Victor answered immediately. “I won’t be staying.” He thought of Camila at home, wondering how she was doing. What time was it on the East Coast?

  Peter smiled. “You may change your mind once you have tasted my wife’s cooking.”

  ___

  The woman and the boy led them up a winding staircase to the second floor.

  “You take care of this place all by yourself?” Victor asked, speaking to the woman he assumed was Peter’s wife.

  The woman’s head tilted just enough to acknowledge he had spoken, but she did not look at him and she did not answer.

  “Mostly,” Peter said. “There was a time when this place would have been full of stewards and servants. I enjoy the quiet, but the work is never done.” He chuckled politely.

 
“How long have you lived here?”

  “Several years now, I suppose. We are still settling in. A place such as this…it does not like to change hands. It remembers the dead long after they are gone.”

  So long as none of the dead join us for dinner, Victor thought, everything will be fine.

  The dining room was a masterpiece of carved wood. The long table seated twenty chairs on either side, with two larger chairs at the ends. Though Victor and Peter’s family were the only ones in the room, the table was laden as if for a feast. From one end to the other, Victor’s eye caught nothing but meats, soups, dishes of vegetables or fruit, gravy, caviar, cakes and pies.

  “I confess my weakness,” Peter said in a slightly embarrassed tone. “I never could bear splitting a meal into four or five courses. Better to lay them all out at once—then you don’t have to worry about saving room for the next dish.”