The Shadow Walker

by William R Hunt

  “Well,” Victor added, “at least we know they didn’t finish the virus. Maybe they never would have succeeded, anyway. It’s just crazy, isn’t it? All that stuff she said about fruits and crops and cattle dying off?”

  Peter nodded dreamily. “Yes. Very crazy. It would have taken a mastermind to pull it off.”

  Victor sighed. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a stiff drink. Care to join me?”

  Peter looked at him, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. “You go on ahead. I will join you later. I just need some time right now to…to think. To clear my mind.”

  Victor smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “I get it. But don’t take too long—we should be celebrating. After all, we just stopped the bad guys.”

  Peter managed a weak smile. “Yes. Yes we did.”

  Chapter 19

  The long night passed without incident, and sometime after he had finished telling his story to Dante (as much as he could say for the night, anyway), Victor slept. He had not intended to let Dante keep watch (it went against his instincts as an older brother), but he could not deny how weary he was and how much he needed a few hours of unbroken sleep.

  So he spread his cold limbs by the fire, and in the morning he found Dante where he had left him, his hands wrapped around the stock of the Winchester.

  “See anything?” Victor asked, rising and joining his brother.

  Dante shook his head. Victor stared at him, trying to sort through the changes he had seen in Dante’s behavior recently. It did not come as a surprise that the trauma of Dante’s kidnapping was still affecting him. Like a returned soldier with PTSD, he had reason to be on his guard, worried that his world might change in an instant. Nonetheless, Victor was not sure how long his brother could maintain this heightened level of vigilance and still function, especially if he didn’t sleep.

  “Come on, Daniel Boone,” he said. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

  Scarlett was just stirring. The brothers joined her around the ashy remains of the fire, hunkered low and shifting their eyes to the forest. Scarlett produced a Heath Bar and broke it into three pieces, which they ate in silence.

  Scarlett was the first to speak. “You never told me what brought you here. Why aren’t you two in a country house somewhere?”

  Victor drew a deep breath, washing the stale air from his lungs. He glanced at Dante, but Dante’s attention was still on the forest.

  “It’s a long story,” Victor said. “We were living in a cabin, but we ran into some trouble. We’ve been on the road since then.”

  She nodded slowly. “What’s it like out there, in the country?”

  “Dangerous,” Victor replied. “Same as anywhere else, I imagine.”

  Scarlett nodded again. Nobody spoke. Lumpkin quietly browsed grass along the brook.

  Scarlett cleared her throat. Victor knew what she was going to say before she said it, but he waited anyway.

  “Thanks again for your help,” she said to him. “And good luck to both of you.”

  Without another word, she left the fire and began walking south along the trail that had brought the brothers to that very place. Victor watched her go, conflicted, scrambling for things to say but liking none of them. He found himself fascinated by her, drawn to her toughness and courage. She had lost a good friend and nearly been sacrificed by religious nuts, and still she held her head high and set her jaw, stubborn to the end, ready to face the wilderness and its dangers on her own again rather than ask for help. Victor admired the steel in her. He did not, however, know how to ask her to stay with them.

  While Victor was still mired in indecision, Dante spoke. “You don’t want to go that way,” he called.

  Scarlett stopped and turned around. The sunlight caught the side of her face, spinning the loose hairs around her ear into gold. She watched Dante, waiting for an explanation.

  Dante rose, the Winchester still hanging from his neck. “Wherever you came from, you won’t find anything better out there.”

  “What makes you so sure?” she asked.

  “Because I’ve been there,” Dante answered, his voice quiet and solemn, and there was a hollowness to his eyes as he spoke. Victor stared into those blue eyes that reminded him so often of their mother and saw images of the road behind them: the violence, the bloodshed, the horrors. It was like the old fables of legendary creatures that, once seen, would mark the viewer forever, altering their destiny for good or bad. Dante had seen something and it had marked him. How he would respond to it, however, was still to be seen.

  Victor and Scarlett both waited for Dante to say more, but he did not. The rest of the story was written on his face. Scarlett glanced behind her at the shadowy, skeletal trees, following a squirrel as it darted up a tree and started waving its tail like a flag.

  “Is this an invitation?” she asked. She did not face them.

  Dante glanced at Victor. Victor nodded.

  “Yes,” Dante replied. “I can’t say where our road goes, but we’d be happy for you to join us.”

  “We could use the company,” Victor added, marveling at that phrase “where our road goes” and thinking how mystical it sounded, as if they were on a Medieval pilgrimage to a shrine hidden deep in a foreign, mysterious land.

  Scarlett nodded to herself and returned to the fire. Her eyebrows were pulled thoughtfully together, and she bit the inside of her lip as she brushed pine needles off her coat.

  “There’s just one problem,” Dante said.

  Scarlett lifted her eyes, wary. “What’s that?”

  Dante studied the tops of the trees as a merry light began to burn in his eyes. “We don’t have a clue where we’re going.”

  There was a pause of quiet surprise. Then Scarlett laughed, and soon all three were smiling. After the humor had passed, Victor said, “What about the place you came from? Would they take us in?”

  This time, she did not pretend she had been surviving on her own. “They might,” she answered, “if you can make yourselves useful.” She paused, biting her lip again. Victor sensed she had reservations. He was about to ask her about it when she added, “You may not care for their ideological beliefs, though.”

  “As long as their ideology doesn’t involve fasting or human sacrifices,” Dante replied, “I’ll have no qualms.”

  ___

  They gave the factory a wide berth as they left the grass and trees for the hulking shapes of concrete, steel, and broken glass. Victor felt a sense of profound purpose, of finding his feet back on the path again after a long detour. No longer could he and Dante try to hide themselves from the rest of humanity, surviving in the tranquility of the wilderness. It was time to engage. Time to start building a real future.

  They didn’t encounter any survivors that morning, but they knew better than to think they were alone. Gunfire popped in the distance. The smell of smoke clung to the air. It was like traveling through a nightmare version of the real world: storefront windows shattered, the shops looted; vehicles abandoned in the middle of intersections; houses reduced to charred timber and ash. Sometimes Victor glimpsed empty cans strung just above the ground - as they had in the woods - or broken glass spread in front of a door.

  Scarlett always steered them away from these crude alarm systems. She seemed to possess a sixth sense about these things. One time she paused in the middle of an alley adrift with trash, lifted a plastic bag, and showed the brothers a board studded with nails. Then they carefully backtracked and detoured around the block.

  They stopped for an early supper. Their food supply amounted to a few clusters of berries Dante had picked alongside the brook and a block of pemmican Scarlett had been saving for an emergency. Given how many miles they had traveled on empty stomachs, this seemed to be just such an emergency.

  They divided the food into three piles and ate in silence. Dante uncapped his canteen, stared at it for a moment, and then passed it to Scarlett. “Here,” he said. “I’ll share with Victor.”

  Sh
e nodded, meeting his eyes to show her gratitude.

  “You sure these are edible?” Victor asked, holding one of the berries up to the gray light. The berry was blue, but the shape was wrong for a blueberry. It was more oblong, like an egg or an olive. Besides, blueberries did not grow in a cluster on a single stem at the end of the branch.

  Dante shrugged and popped one of the berries into his mouth. “Tastes edible,” he replied, smiling with blue teeth, his humor restored by the day’s miles. Then he made a face and spat a flat seed into his palm. “Definitely not a blueberry. Tastes almost like…”

  “Banana,” Scarlett said. “They’re called nannyberries.” She spat a seed into the dust and frowned at the horse. “We need to let your friend go.”

  “Really?” Dante asked. He sighed. “Alright, Victor, you heard her. Go on.”

  “A city’s no place for a horse, Dante,” Scarlett went on. “There’s nothing for him to eat, and anyone who sees us will have a clear reason to want to kill us. It would be cruel to take him any farther.”

  “Think you can keep up without him?” Victor asked his brother.

  “Sure, I’ll just hop along like a Monopod. No problem.”

  “There’s always the other option,” Scarlett said, pressing her lips together.

  “Amputation?” Dante asked lightly, then his face darkened as he realized what she meant. “No way! We are not eating him, no matter how fat he is!”

  “It was just a suggestion.”

  “Yeah. A bad one.” He glared at Scarlett.

  For his part, Victor would have been more than willing to sacrifice the horse for their survival. He did not have the energy to argue with his brother, however, so he decided to let the matter go and hope it would not come back to haunt them.

  He rose to his feet, dusted himself off, and stooped in front of Dante. “Let’s see how that ankle’s doing,” he said, pulling back Dante’s pant leg.

  “Peeping tom,” Dante muttered.

  “The swelling’s gone down. How does it feel?”

  “Better.” He glanced at Scarlett. “Any chance you have one of those baby carriers? I’m sure Victor wouldn’t mind giving me a lift.”

  “Fresh out,” she answered dryly. “We really should get moving. I know the city seems quiet right now, but that’s just the changing of the guard. We’re not safe here.”

  Dante limped over to Lumpkin and wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck, letting the hair of the creature’s dark mane filter through his fingers. He took a deep breath of the horse’s scent and patted the animal on the shoulder.

  “Thanks, old pal. I’m gonna miss you. Now go on before Scarlett gets any more ideas.”

  He turned the horse around, then gave a swat on the rump for good measure. Lumpkin trotted forward, back toward the wilderness, fading into the night until he was no more than a shifting shadow.

  ___

  Shortly after parting ways with Lumpkin, Dante spotted a rod of rebar lying among chunks of broken concrete and decided to christen it as his new cane.

  “Won’t have Lumpkin’s personality,” he remarked, trying to cheer himself, “but it should do the trick.”

  This proved more important than he had at first thought, since Scarlett’s “hideout,” as she called it, was farther than either of the brothers had anticipated. As Scarlett led them across vacant streets and through gutted buildings, racing against the coming darkness, all hope of finding their way back dissipated like smoke. There was no contingency plan now. Scarlett was their Virgil in this shadowscape tour of hell, and there was no telling where one wrong turn might lead them.

  Dante was about to cross a street straddled by towering apartment complexes when Scarlett grabbed the back of his coat and pulled hard, spilling him back into the alley.

  “What the—” he began, but Scarlett made a sharp shushing sound with her finger tight against her lips, her eyes wide and angry. Then she pointed across the seemingly vacant street, up at a third-story concrete balcony.

  At first Dante saw nothing. Then an orange glow, no larger than that of a firefly, caught his attention. A figure, shadowed by the building at his back, was smoking on the balcony. He seemed to be wearing a robe or a long coat. The barrel of a rifle rested casually on the edge of the concrete.

  “More of your religious friends?” Victor whispered, not moving his eyes from the stranger.

  “No, this one’s a hunter,” she whispered back. “A lone wolf, probably. He was a few blocks down last night. Must have moved closer.”

  Maybe he prefers the game trails over here, Dante thought. Like the one we’re on.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  They both looked at Scarlett. It was a strange moment—the two of them waiting for someone else to say what they should do. Uncharted territory.

  “We wait,” she answered. “The hunter won’t stay there forever.”

  They waited. The hunter dropped the cigarette at his feet and lit another, calmly, slowly, as if he had all the time in the world at his disposal. That lonely street, vacant except for the occasional rat scurrying from one hiding place to the next, was his kingdom; Victor, Dante, and Scarlett were merely guests.

  “Pass me the rifle,” Victor whispered to Dante. He ignored Scarlett, who was shaking her head, and propped the rifle on a stack of bricks still held together by mortar. He aimed at the place where the hunter’s head disappeared in shadow. An easy shot. He wouldn’t even know what hit him.

  “If you fire,” Scarlett whispered, “others will come.”

  He hesitated. “How many?”

  “One or two. Or maybe as many as a dozen.”

  “Are you saying these hunters work in groups?”

  “I’m saying they’re attracted by the sound of gunfire.”

  “Then I’ll be quick,” Victor answered. “As soon as he goes down, we’ll hurry across the street.”

  “You really want to gamble with our lives?”

  “You’d rather shiver here all night?”

  “I’d rather live, thank you.”

  Victor thought for a few moments. “If they’re not working together, then shouldn’t he be afraid to fire, too? If he shoots at us, won’t the other hunters converge on him?”

  Before she could answer, the quiet was disturbed by a sharp whine, like the sound of an old hinge. Brief as the sound had been, it seemed to ripple outward like a pebble cast into a pool. The hunter stiffened and turned his head. With cat-like stealth, he took the rifle in both hands and aimed down the street. Moments passed—long enough that Victor wondered if the hunter was just watching a rat through his scope. Then the rifle bucked against the man’s shoulder with a soft pop.

  A suppressor, Victor thought. That was why he didn’t have to worry about attracting attention.

  Something began to whimper in the street. Victor heard the creature drag itself on the ground, scraping through debris. The hunter raised the rifle and fired a second shot.

  The city returned to its uneasy silence.

  The hunter stooped, picked up his fallen cigarette, and stuck it back between his lips. He drew a knife from his belt, rolled back the sleeve of his left arm, and made the motion of a violinist drawing his bow across the strings.

  “He’s keeping a tally,” Victor whispered.

  The hunter continued to smoke for another ten or fifteen minutes. Then, without any apparent cause, he lifted the rifle and disappeared into the darkness of the room behind him—a room full of windows on a floor lined with concrete balconies identical to the perch he had just left.

  Chapter 20

  A few minutes after the hunter had disappeared, Scarlett rose and motioned for the brothers to follow her.

  They heard no muffled gunshot as they crossed the street, and soon they were hidden in the shadows of another alley. A few blocks later they reached a pillared canopy with the words “MAIN ENTRANCE” written in blocky letters at the top. A large white cross set on a blue background hung beside the words.<
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  “Aww, shucks,” Dante said, “you didn’t have to take me to the hospital.”

  “This is your hideout?” Victor asked, frowning at Scarlett. “A damn hospital?” It was probably one of the last places he would have considered for survival. It was much too big to defend, never mind having to worry about junkies wandering inside in search of a quick fix.

  “Are you going to question me at every turn?” Scarlett answered. “I told you, it’s safe. If you don’t believe me—”

  “I know, I know. I can find my way back. It just seems like a dangerous place, that’s all.”