The Shadow Walker

by William R Hunt

  “I can’t leave,” she whispered.

  “You don’t have to be afraid. I can protect you.” A hint of anger had entered his voice, though she did not think it was directed at her.

  Nobody can protect me, not any more, she thought, but she kept the words locked within the vault of her mind. Maybe if she was silent long enough, he would get the hint and leave her alone.

  Clothing rustled as the man settled on his haunches. “I have a daughter about your age,” he said in a low, almost wondering voice. “Her name is Yasmin.”

  “You told me about her. She’s back at Kassel.”

  “That’s right. And I’m going back there. Come with me—you won’t have to fear any more. It’s a different world beyond those walls.”

  “You didn’t sound so eager to go back the last time you were here.”

  “I wasn’t,” the stranger answered. He paused. “Have you heard the story of Jonah?”

  She nodded. She had heard the story many times in Sunday School. She had never understood why Jonah would try running away from God in the first place.

  “Well, I’m Jonah,” the stranger explained, “and Kassel? That’s Nineveh. I need to go back, and I’m asking you to come with me.”

  The earnestness in his voice was like a physical pain to her. Why not go, she wondered? She didn’t know Khan, not really, but was Meatloaf any better? Could she really believe she was safe with him?

  “Jenny,” he asked softly, almost as if he were speaking to his own daughter, “this is important, perhaps life-or-death. I need an answer.”

  He was so composed now, the opposite of the man who had entered the tent earlier that night. Which one was he really? Leaving Meatloaf seemed the most logical thing in the world, but what then? Back on the road again, uncertain what they would eat or drink or where they would sleep, hearing the screams and the gunshots through the long cold nights, sore feet and tired legs, constant danger, the fear of waking to find she was all alone in the world?

  The truth was she was afraid to leave Meatloaf—afraid she would live the rest of her life listening for his footsteps as he sneaked up on her to pay her back for leaving him. Despite the strange fascination Meatloaf seemed to hold for Victor, Jenny knew there would be violence if the two of them met again—she could hear it in Meatloaf’s voice. If she abandoned Meatloaf now, he might come after her too.

  A song began gaining volume outside, drums and maracas, the words soft but gaining strength:

  “Please allow me to introduce myself

  I’m a man of wealth and taste…”

  Chapter 41

  Meatloaf watched their pallid faces flicker in the firelight. In a strange, almost perverse way, he could have belonged with them. After all, where could a person such as himself belong if not in a traveling freak show?

  Oh, they had their warts, sure enough. There was a reason most of the city folk kept their distance, especially the sober ones. Calhoun would not have admitted it, but had Meatloaf not come along with a budding fortune-teller in tow, this little coterie might have been forced to strike their tents much sooner.

  As it happened, tonight was to be their last in this part of the city. Three days—that was Calhoun’s magic number. Three days and three nights and then they would be on the road again, wham bam thank you ma’am. Why overstay their welcome, he reasoned? They were not tourists, for God’s sake. No reason to be sentimental.

  So tonight they were to have their final supper, as it were, an evening devoted entirely to one another’s company. There was drinking and dancing. A giant bonfire lit the center of the green, bursting constellations of sparks up into the branches of the elms. Many of the circus workers quietly sneaked off to their tents in pairs, preferring to continue their carousing in a more private format.

  This not-so-discrete trysting troubled Meatloaf. He had never been with a woman before. He thought he should have desired to be with a woman, but in truth the idea of sex disgusted him. It reminded him of his parents’ grunts behind a closed door while he stood in the hall in his pajamas, waiting for somebody to tell him the nightmares weren’t real.

  Once he’d made the mistake of walking in while his parents were grunting like a pair of pigs. Never again. If his backside had been a sheet of paper, his father’s belt would have been a permanent marker. Even now his cheeks (the ones on his face) burned with shame at the memory.

  But whenever these doubts plagued him, he reminded himself that eccentricities were often the mark of genius. And if that were true, then by God he must be a genuine Einstein!

  His gaze turned from the revelers around the bonfire to the small tent in which a little girl was sitting alone, her eyes drooping and then flying open at every sudden sound. That was what Meatloaf imagined, anyway. The real question was, what should be done with her?

  “Real prize, that one,” a voice beside him said. Calhoun had somehow crept up without Meatloaf’s noticing. Calhoun’s fingers clutched a sweating bottle of beer, which he kept dabbing against different parts of his body to cool himself.

  “Yessir,” Calhoun went on, “if she still had them eyes, she’d be as useless as a white crayon. Ironic, ain’t it?” He belched, curled the bottom of his shirt back, and pressed the beer against his hairy belly. “Ah, that’s the spot.”

  Instead of answering, Meatloaf put on his trademark smile (the one he had practiced so often in the mirror) and thought, You’re the first, good sir Calhoun. You get that dubious honor, at least.

  Calhoun had moved the beer from his belly to the side of his neck, which was lined with dirt. He seemed to think he had touched on something important. “I could take her off your hands, you know. What’s your price?”

  Meatloaf blinked and pretended he did not understand. It was not difficult to convince people there was a good deal of cotton between his ears.

  “For the girl,” Calhoun reiterated in a husky voice. “I’ll give her two jobs, one during the day and another at night, eh?” He elbowed Meatloaf’s ribs.

  “Sure, Cal,” Meatloaf answered with a chummy smile. “Mind if I call you Cal?”

  Calhoun slipped his arm around Meatloaf’s shoulders and led him toward the bonfire. “You know, my good friend, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  ___

  He was watching, later on that evening, when the dark-skinned man entered the tent. He felt a sort of detached curiosity, the kind he’d often felt as a boy as he watched insects wither beneath the concentrated sunbeam of his magnifying glass. Would the girl go with the man? Would the man force her to go against her will? Neither mattered a great deal to Meatloaf, not just now, because she had served her purpose and he supposed the time was already coming when she would outlive her usefulness to him.

  The festivities had reached their crescendo and then gradually begun to slip toward the half-hearted, zombie-like enthusiasm of bodies numbed by sleep and alcohol (not to mention weed, coke, and heroin). Meatloaf watched them all with a glittering eye, returning a fulsome smile to any face that turned his way.

  “I’ve been around for a long, long year

  Stole many a man’s soul to waste…”

  Humming along with the music, he drifted through the revelers - who were grinding against one another now - and slipped behind the tent where Jenny was sitting in the darkness. His empty hand reached into the tall weeds and returned un-empty.

  “I stuck around St. Petersburg

  When I saw it was a time for a change

  Killed the czar and his ministers

  Anastasia screamed in vain…”

  Oh wasn’t it glorious to hold the future in your hands? Wasn’t it a glorious thing?

  He had marked Calhoun’s tent earlier that evening. It was the one with the words HEAD HONCHO stitched above the entrance, the pretentious prick.

  Calhoun was fumbling with his belt while a woman half his age lounged on the bed. His eyes popped out to a startling degree when he saw Meatloaf enter the tent, and nearly fell out when Meatl
oaf fractured his skull. His hands jumped in the air as if they’d been electrocuted, then fell as his body slumped to the floor.

  The girl cowered in the corner of the bed.

  “Please allow me to introduce myself,” Meatloaf whispered, cradling the bloody, brain-flecked tenderizer in his hand. He may not have been a man of wealth and taste, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t steal a soul or two, did it?

  She screamed, but it did no good. He squashed her head like a rotten gourd. Then, just as he was leaving, he heard a humming sound come from Calhoun’s body. He was alive, the maggot! Actually alive! Wow!

  The second time Meatloaf hit Calhoun, his teeth spilled out like tic-tacs. The third time his head became no more than a pulp of mashed, hairy jelly, which suited Meatloaf just fine. He almost wanted to gather the gelatinous mass into a jar as a keepsake. How you doin’, old Cal? Don’t mind if I call you Cal, do you? Be sure to give my best to Dear Old Dad!

  He stepped outside the tent and took a deep breath of the cool, clean air.

  “So if you meet me

  Have some courtesy

  Have some sympathy, and some taste

  Use all your well-learned politesse

  Or I’ll lay your soul to waste”

  Meatloaf pointed the tenderizer at each of the tents in a silent Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. He grinned up at the ghoulish moon. Oh, what a time to be alive!

  Chapter 42

  The uncertainty was the real torture—not knowing whether he was lucky or unlucky, whether his brother was screaming or moaning or sobbing or already dead.

  Or if - and this seemed an absurdly optimistic notion to Victor - he was actually somewhere better, a still-on-this-earth kind of better.

  Victor had watched as his brother was led away to his unknown fate, Victor gripping the bars in his fists, wishing he had a supernatural gift he could call on, even if using it would damn his soul forever. He was weak, tired, spent. For a while the anger burned hot, fueling by ideas of how he would get his revenge against Yates, but then it cooled and he was left with nothing but a depressing sense of resignation, of realizing that for all the energy of his rage against the world, he was not, in fact, in control of anything.

  Hours came and went. One of the other prisoners tried speaking to him, but Victor would not answer. There was nothing to be said because there was nothing to be done.

  The only certainty was the coming of the train, the Sunset Limited, a force as invincible and implacable as gravity. Dante had not been taken on the train. Perhaps this was a good thing or perhaps a bad thing. Perhaps Dante was aboveground with Yates, drinking martinis and laughing about the look Victor would have on his face when he discovered it was all a practical joke.

  Anything was possible. But nobody really meant that phrase, did they? It was just a way of ending a conversation with someone trying to convince you of the existence of the Matrix, of saying, “What the hell do I know?”

  So no, Victor didn’t really believe it was possible this was a practical joke, at least not in a way worth thinking twice about. But there was something about that vehicle. There had to be a purpose for it. Where were those prisoners taken? A place where their bodies could be disposed of more easily? A shrine where they would be sacrificed to the gods of the earth in the hope those gods would decide they’d punished humanity enough?

  A few more prisoners were tossed into the cage. It was nearly full now, low-hanging fruit for the monster in the tunnel. It was only a matter of waiting. Victor closed his eyes and shut out his thoughts. It was a trick he had learned a long time ago, very useful in these circumstances. All you had to do was to recognize the impulse of a thought before the thought actually materialized, and then will the thought away. With practice, it became quite easy.

  By the time the soldiers reached the platform, a determination had risen up in him. He would not go gently into that goodnight.

  “As soon as they open that door,” he said in a low voice to the other prisoners, “we rush the guards. It’s the only way we get out of this alive.”

  Nobody answered. He took this as tacit approval of his plan.

  “Step back,” the soldier ordered as he held the keys to the lock.

  Victor hoped the guard would step inside the cell, but instead he told the prisoners to come out. Victor moved first. The beam of a flashlight dazzled his eyes, blinding him. The guards made a small circle on the platform.

  Just as the prisoners behind Victor were exiting the cell, he dashed to the side and slammed into one of the guards, sending his flashlight careening through the air, end over end, a dizzying spiral of light winking and finally blinking out when it hit the ground.

  Victor wrestled the guard, trying to pull the pistol free. If he could only arm himself, everything would all be over so quickly.

  Light burst in his vision as something struck the back of his skull. He slumped forward, the pistol forgotten. Everything slowed. He was on his back now, and dimly, like a fading dream, he remembered the other prisoners curled on the platform, the boots of the guards cracking ribs, the moans drowned out by the guards’ grunts.

  “Piece of shit!” someone exclaimed. A beam of light found Victor, and he rolled to the side just in time to avoid a kick. He pulled himself to his feet, wondering why so little seemed to be happening. It should have been a full-scale revolt by now.

  But no, the other prisoners only stood there like sheep, leaving Victor holding the bag.

  Two of the guards grabbed him while a third, who had a trickle of blood on his cheek from his head hitting the ground, punched Victor in the stomach. Victor was ready for the punch, but the second one caught him by surprise, a quick follow-up that bowled him over. A thread of drool slipped between his lips and trailed down toward the floor.

  A few more punches, a few insults, and Victor was stumbling with the rest of the group across the platform, his punishment served, his stomach churning and the room swirling. His mind was no longer clear. How hard had he hit his head?

  The rumble of an engine grew louder as he neared the tunnel, followed by that telltale red glow. His only consolation in the midst of this horror was that he knew Dante had been taken somewhere else. He might still be alive.

  The hum of the engine had become a roar within the confines of the tunnel. Victor was staring at the back of a two-toned Volkswagen bus. Prisoners were filing into the bus from the side door, guided by a row of soldiers.

  Victor was shoved forward. Pale, frightened faces stared down at him from the bus windows. As he was pushed into the open doorway of the bus, he threw his arms out and braced himself against the walls like a terrified paratrooper, a feeble attempt to stop the inevitable, a final gasp of protest. He could sense the baton cocking back, and this time maybe it would scatter his senses permanently.

  A shrill whistle piped nearby. Footsteps pounded toward them, no doubt other soldiers excited to get in on a terrific beating. But to his surprise, the blows never came. He was simply grabbed and dragged past the bus, his feet making a rhythmic bumping along the tracks as they bounced.

  “You got lucky, pal,” a voice close to his ear said. “Must have connections to escape that one-way ride.”

  Victor was too exhausted to ask for a further explanation. The soldiers made a few remarks to one another, but Victor could not quite grasp the meaning of their words. The voices, along with the pain in his head and stomach, faded to nothing more than the distant buzz of a fly trapped between two panes of glass.

  Chapter 43

  He woke to bright sunlight and a pulsing pain in his temple. He was lying on his side on a bed covered with a gray comforter, facing a window set in a brick wall. The view showed only the sun-bleached wall of another building.

  A bonsai tree rested on the window sill. Victor stared at the tree for a while as he waited for the fog to dissipate from his mind, admiring how much it appeared like a miniature of a full-grown tree.

  He wiggled his feet, surprised to discover he was no longer weari
ng his boots. His socks clung to his feet like shriveled carcasses.

  “Hello?” he called. “Is anyone here?”

  Pigeons fluttered and cooed somewhere above the window. He rolled to his right, away from the window, and discovered a bottle of Aspirin resting on a night stand. The seal was broken. He tapped a few pills into his hand, regarded them, then dumped them back into the bottle.

  A bookshelf divided the bedroom from the rest of the small apartment. Victor pushed himself off the bed, steadied himself against the dizziness, and tried to take a deep breath, only to discover his chest was filled with broken glass. He winced and subdued the urge to vomit.

  When his body was under control again, he slowly rose and wobbled into the next room.

  “Is anyone here?” he called again.