The Shadow Walker

by William R Hunt

  It took Khan only a few seconds to spot it: Ellis Bridge, the third of three bridges once spanning the Pesadilla River. The other two bridges were distant ruins along the gray water, snapped tension wires and broken pilings. Khan knew very well what had happened to them. The Baron had destroyed them, isolating his kingdom, a feudal lord minimizing the avenues an enemy could use to reach him.

  Khan had, in fact, overseen the destruction of the bridges himself. But his days as the Baron’s right hand were over. He supposed that would be Victor’s role now, should Victor ever forgive the Baron for the kidnapping of his brother. And if Victor did decide to join the Baron in Kassel, Ellis Bridge would take him there. Khan hoped to have a good long talk with Victor before that happened.

  He sat on the edge of the roof and let his legs dangle over the side. Johnny gaped at him and remained several feet back. Stray snowflakes drifted, swirled, and finally settled along the roof. They were melting now, but the temperature was dropping and soon they would start to accumulate.

  “So,” Johnny said, “when you asked if I could shoot…did you mean there was going to be shooting?”

  “I expect so,” Khan replied, mulling it over. “You don’t need to join me, kid. But if you do, you should know it has to get a lot worse before it gets better. Some knots are too old to untie, and the only way to separate them is to cut them.”

  Johnny nodded, though the far-off glaze of his eyes suggested he was not following. It didn’t matter. Khan knew where this road ended, and the truth was he had known for a long time. He just hadn’t been willing to face it.

  After a few minutes, he climbed to his feet, stretched his aching legs, and walked back toward the ramp. “Come on, Johnny,” he said, trying not to sound too much like he was calling a dog. “We’ve seen everything there is to see. We’d best get moving if we don’t want to get caught in this storm.”

  Johnny frowned at the sky and held open his hand, catching a lonely snowflake. “Are you sure there will be a storm?” he asked.

  Khan took a deep breath. “Yes,” he replied. “It’s about the only thing I know for certain.”

  Chapter 57

  Much as he tried to forget it, Victor could not stop recalling each moment he had spent with Scarlett—the whispered words, the softness of her skin, the smell of her hair, the sense of time flowing into a pool, not so much stagnating as resting. It had been years since he’d felt so close to another person. Then, as if changing from one coat to another, Scarlett had gone back to Gabriel and pretended nothing had ever happened between her and Victor.

  Maybe that’s all it was to her—a fling. But how could she choose to be with Gabriel, regardless of how indebted she felt? Victor was tempted to solve things the easy way, preferably by breaking Gabriel’s jaw. Still, he knew better than to think this would improve Scarlett’s opinion of him. And he cared about her opinion of him, didn’t he?

  Didn’t he?

  Yes, he thought he did, though he could not have said why. She had a strange hold over him. Now that she and Gabriel led the group, Victor found himself studying her constantly, despite his attempts to focus on their surroundings. Every time she turned to speak to Gabriel, Victor would study the profile of her face. He tried to catch her words, but he could hear only their cadence, and he was surprised to discover this was another thing he could not turn his attention away from.

  Love makes fools of us all, he thought.

  But was it love? Surely it was not love. It was much too early for that, and besides, the practical side of his brain had already made it clear they were wrong for each other. They were like flint, good only for casting sparks, and eventually someone was going to get burned.

  The sky was thickening as they stopped for their midday meal. They ate tinned meat and stale crackers, drank brackish water they hoped would not make them sick. They were at a point of desperation now. Gabriel assured them they were close to their destination, but Victor could not tell if he was just stringing them along so they would not sneak off in the night.

  Finally, as they sat in silence at the end of their meal, Victor decided he could wait no longer.

  “What are we doing out here?” he asked.

  Gabriel lifted his head. He had been dozing. Scarlett, standing sentry at the doorway of the hotel room, searched Victor’s face.

  “You’ll know soon enough,” Gabriel answered.

  “How soon?”

  “A day or two, maybe. Why? You have somewhere else to be?”

  “And how will we know we’re there? Last time I checked, I walked into the Commune of my own free will. I offered to help Yates, and after throwing me in prison for a while, he sent me on this fool’s errand. So forgive me if I’m a little pissed.”

  Dante was watching him with concern. Keep out of this, Victor thought, but something puzzled him about that look. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “I’ll let you know when we get there,” Gabriel said. “How’s that?”

  Victor pushed himself to his feet. He took one step forward, then spread his arms as the room swirled around him. His vision faded as if someone had just dimmed the lights. Within moments, Dante’s hands were steadying him.

  “Easy, brother,” Dante whispered in his ear, guiding him back to the carpet. Victor’s vision cleared and he saw Gabriel smiling at him, his perfectly-straight teeth practically winking with light. Victor wanted to bash them in.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Gabriel said. “If you were at full strength, I’d be a little worried just now what you might do. But you’re not at full strength, are you? Probably closer to sixty, maybe even fifty percent, what with your broken wing and the head trauma you’ve obviously suffered. So let’s not pretend like you’re in a position to make demands, okay?”

  “You know, Gabe, you can be a real dick sometimes,” Scarlett said as she walked out of the room.

  “Are you okay?” Dante asked Victor.

  “Yeah. Just need to catch my breath.” He tried to convince himself he was telling the truth, but he knew better. The best-case scenario was that he was suffering the effects of a minor concussion. The worst-case? Brain damage—the permanent kind. Jenny had gone blind from hitting the back of her head. Victor still possessed all his senses, but now a suspicion began to creep in that his body might betray him at the most inopportune time.

  “Why don’t you take it easy?” Dante suggested.

  “Sure, Dante,” Victor answered as he passed a weary hand over his eyes. “I’ll just take it easy and hope nothing goes wrong.” A new thought occurred to him and his eyes snapped open. “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “Of course not. Do you think I’d keep that from you?”

  “No,” Victor answered, the room swirling and settling, pitching at the slightest movement of his head. “Forget I asked.”

  He closed his eyes again, thinking of the period of time from when Dante was pulled from the subway to when Victor met him at the party. It was a blank space. Where had he gone? Whom had he spoken to? Did he know where they were going?

  No, he thought, he’s my brother, he would tell me.

  But he doubted.

  ___

  The sky thickened and the snow began to fall in earnest. The calm was like water beneath a frozen lake, a trapped silence of stone and ice, the buildings turned to fossilized monuments. They came out on the street and Victor spotted a green street sign dangling from the intersection. He had to focus his eyes to see one sign instead of two. He recognized the name, and suddenly he knew where they were going and suspected he knew why Yates had sent them there.

  One mission, and then Yates would welcome them into the Commune. One mission, and if they lived to talk about it, they would receive a hero’s welcome back at the Commune—and then, perhaps, a quiet exile to a harmless job where Yates could keep track of them, ensuring nobody made too much of their success.

  Because if they succeeded here, William Yates would effectively have cemented his control o
n his domain. He could push any ideology he liked, advance any agenda. If they succeeded in their mission, his throne would be secure.

  “You want to destroy the bridge,” Victor said. He had stopped walking. The others stopped, turned, and watched him through the flurry of snow, waiting for an explanation that did not come.

  “That’s right,” Gabriel answered. “It’s the last tie to the Baron’s territory on the other side of the river. If we blow that bridge, he’ll be cut off.”

  “If we get within a quarter mile of that bridge, we’re all dead. It won’t be left unguarded.”

  Gabriel smiled. “That’s why we brought you. You’re special forces or something, aren’t you?”

  Victor didn’t reply. Dante was frowning thoughtfully at him, snowflakes melting on his hat.

  “Do we have a problem?” Gabriel asked.

  Victor shook his head. “No problem.”

  “Good. You and Dante will take Mr. Hines beneath the bridge. He knows what to do with the explosives—all you need to do is get him there.” It was the first time Victor had heard anyone use the Lemming’s real name.

  “And what will you be doing?” Victor asked, not glancing at Scarlett but wanting to. “Sitting on your ass?”

  “Keeping a lookout,” Gabriel replied. “In case you stir the hornets’ nest.”

  Victor took Dante’s arm and pulled him a few steps away from the others. “What do you think? We can walk away from all this right now, Dante. I’m not sure where we’ll go, but we’ll find a way to survive. We always do.”

  Dante stared into the distance. “I don’t want to run any more,” he answered. “The Commune has its faults, I won’t argue that, but it’s a place to start over. This is what we talked about before, right? And now here’s our chance. We just have to complete this one task, then the future’s ours.”

  It was the answer Victor had expected, but not the one he had wanted. Despite his disappointment, despite knowing all the dominoes that might fall as a consequence of this decision, he set a hand on his brother’s shoulder and told him he was right, they would do this last thing and then, finally, they would have their chance to start over.

  It was not the biggest lie he’d ever told, but it may have been the most difficult.

  Chapter 58

  She came to a point when she could run no longer, and then she ran some more. Her arm felt loose from being dragged along by Meatloaf. If she had been a doll, she would have suspected the stitching around her shoulder was torn. Her breaths were ragged and shivering. Behind her lay darkness, ahead lay the same, and it was all sprinkled with a dewy moisture both fragile and perilous, delightful and terrifying, because she loved the snow but she also feared the cold.

  “I…can’t…” she managed to say between rapid breaths. The other words never came out. The roof of her mouth tasted like copper. Her lungs seemed to groan each time they were stretched to their limit, like tires inflated past the recommended pressure.

  Meatloaf’s hand released her and she stumbled. Her fingers brushed a brick wall and she propped herself against it.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said as soon as she was capable of speech again.

  “Do what?” he asked in a distant, distracted voice.

  “Take me with you.”

  “Would you rather wander out in the snow? Is that what you want, little girl?”

  For a moment, Jenny felt the terror of when Victor had abandoned her—wandering out into a blank world of infinite dangers, pitfalls, and predators, a world that did not bend its rules for the young or the helpless but went on in savagery, unwilling to show pity even if she should drift compass-less for hours, days, however long it took for her legs to buckle beneath her. That was nature. And how could she reconcile it with her faith in a supreme and benevolent being? How could a good God create such a bad world?

  These contradictions co-existed in her mind, and for the first time she wondered if this division was any less severe than what existed in her captor’s own brain: Oswald on one side, Meatloaf on the other.

  Do you want him to let you go? she asked herself. Because the world outside is swollen with fear, the kind that slips into your bloodstream and startles your heart with every pass, reminding you even when you’re asleep that it owns you.

  And yet, standing counterpoint to this fear, was fear’s opposite: Faith. But faith in what? Did she really believe that if she walked out into the storm, someone would be waiting there to rescue her? Did she really think that God, benevolent or not, would be unwilling to let her die, after so many others had already perished needlessly?

  No—she was not quite sure the nature of faith was to believe oneself impervious to physical harm. Not quite sure at all. Real faith meant trusting there were answers to impossible questions, believing that, when the final tally was taken, the righteous would be rewarded and the guilty punished.

  It meant trusting in a purpose so grand that even the safety of one’s life was insignificant by comparison.

  “It’s been fun to watch you squirm,” Meatloaf said, “but we really must be going.”

  “What about your promise? You promised me that if I helped you - if I went along as your little pet fortune-teller - you’d give me any favor I asked for. I want you to let me go.”

  A few moments of silence followed this little speech. Then Meatloaf laughed. His voice was harsh and scornful. “Looks like I pulled a fast one on you, didn’t I? I was crossing my fingers. You couldn’t see it, though, because you’re blind. Get the joke?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t need you any more, Oswald. I can look after myself.”

  His voice hardened. “Oh, you can? Have you forgotten where you were when I found you? You’d be dead without me.”

  “Maybe I would. But wherever you’re going, Oswald, I don’t want to go there with you.”

  “Stop calling me that! My name’s Meatloaf!”

  Flecks of spit dotted Jenny’s cheeks. She could smell the rank odor of his body, and now she wondered how she had tolerated it for so long.

  “If that’s your choice,” she said softly.

  “It’s not a choice!” he shouted. “It’s who I am! Who I’ve always been! Now—”

  She didn’t see his hand coming, didn’t see the swoop of his arm or the way his fingers stretched back, exposing the lines of his palm. First they were talking, then she was trying to catch her head before it rolled away. It felt like a bowling ball. She righted herself and instinctively raised a hand to the cheek whose nerves were just now reporting the slap.

  That was a long time coming, she thought in that too-calm voice. All at once she understood something with terrific, almost painful clarity: Fear was a wild dog trapped in the basement, and if you opened the door even an inch, it would soon have the run of the whole house. The only thing you could do was to keep the door closed and bolted, even press your back against it if you had to.

  So she did. She pressed her back against that door and the dog stayed in the basement, growling against the wood.

  For now.

  Later, as her strength ebbed, she might nod off and then wake only to find the door open, a tooth-studded maw grinning at her, but for now it was trapped—which, of course, meant she was free.

  “Are you going to get up,” Meatloaf said, “or do you need another smack?”

  She didn’t see a second thing. She smelled it, heard the scratch of claws on the ground, and at first - with a frightening merge of reality and imagination - she felt rather than thought that the dog in her head, the one trapped in the basement, had somehow slipped into the real world and was now beside her.

  Something thudded to the ground. “Off, off!” Meatloaf shouted as cloth tore, and then the words changed to garbled screams punctuated by the thumping of flailing fists. Jenny heard a canine yelp. She closed her eyes, presenting a minuscule barrier between herself and the world, and began to pray:

  Dear God, help me, dear God dear God dear God—

>   And it was all over almost as quickly as it had begun, a rapid pelting of feet chased off into the distance, a return of softer feet padding along the ground, and then the wet muzzle of a dog nudging her arm. Tears leaked from her eyes. She pulled the dog against her chest, sank her arms into its fur, and stayed there for a long time.

  ___

  What next?

  She tried to piece things together as logically as she could. She pulled a string of facts across her mind:

  She was alone (except for having Shadow);

  The temperature seemed to be dropping;

  She had no food, water, or extra clothing to keep her warm;

  And she was lost.