The Shadow Walker

by William R Hunt

“We were supposed to work together, remember?” Meatloaf shouted.

  “You were even more of a chump than I thought if you believed that!” Victor called back. “Why don’t you go run back to your daddy, little Os? I bet he’d be real proud of what you’ve become.”

  Meatloaf shrieked and the cart started forward. It came hurtling at Victor, bouncing along the uneven concrete, and then swerved at him and struck his hip. Victor staggered backward as Meatloaf popped up from behind the cart like a jack-in-the-box, a bright and feverish light glowing in his eyes. His hair was wild and tangled, and when he grinned Victor noticed a black gap between his front teeth.

  “You promised!” Meatloaf cried. He leaped toward Victor and swung his meat tenderizer, knocking the Colt from Victor’s hand and sending it clattering across the ground.

  “And promises are forever!” Meatloaf screamed, seizing Victor’s hair with one hand and raising the tenderizer with the other. Victor punched Meatloaf between the legs. Meatloaf bent double, his scream dying to a bewildered moan, and then Victor shoved him aside.

  He was on his feet again. He could see the bridge ahead of him, the bridge his own brother had nearly destroyed, and there were sandbag barricades and the dark muzzles of rifles bristling out like the spears of a Greek phalanx, and then something else: A shape advancing from the far side of the bridge, bullying its way through the storm, gaining form as it neared the middle of the bridge.

  Rifles cracked, bullets zipped past Victor. He glanced back to where Scarlett and Gabriel hunkered behind a station wagon. One of the windows exploded with a shower of glass, and as Victor watched, Gabriel fired aimlessly toward the bridge and then retreated along the sidewalk, his head tucked low. Scarlett shouted at Gabriel, but he kept running, leaving her in the lurch while he saved his own skin. She rose over the hood of the car and fired a few bursts at the bridge before she was forced to take cover again.

  Then someone on the other side of the street opened fire on the bridge. Victor watched with fascination, though he could see little more than the flash of a muzzle through the snow and sleet.

  “Victor!” a voice shouted, reaching Victor on a breath of wind. He heard it, cocked his head, and frowned.

  “Khan?”

  The shape on the bridge rumbled closer. Victor caught movement in the corner of his eye and saw Dante come stumbling up the bank, his broken thumb clutched close to his chest.

  Victor rushed toward the bridge. The storm thickened, blinding him, and suddenly he was face to face with the eye of a tank cannon. He stopped. The tank stopped too, and for a time Victor stood there unmoving, thinking at any moment the tank would fire right through him, or one of the soldiers manning the sandbags would put a bullet in him.

  Instead, the hatch of the tank opened and a man emerged. He was tall and thin, his cropped hair as white as the snow. He climbed down from the tank, said something into the radio in his hand, and almost at once the firing stopped. There was nothing left but the howl of the storm.

  He approached Victor, walking stiffly across the fine layer of snow gathered on the bridge. His gaze never left Victor’s as he extended his hand. “I’ve been waiting a long time,” he said.

  Victor nodded, sensing the slow turn of the world on its axis, the invisible hand of fate at work. Fate was a seed inside you, taking root before you were even born, and you could trim its branches and shape it but you could never change its nature, never escape it, because it was inexplicably bound to you. The longer you lived, the more it became a part of you, until your identity was no longer your own.

  Victor shook the man’s hand. “Hello, Peter,” he answered.

  Peter smiled. “Welcome home.”

  Epilogue

  BEFORE

  The dreams started on the plane back to the States.

  It was really only one dream, or one type of dream. He would glance down to see his hands wet and dripping with fresh blood, or pull a trigger only to see Sophia’s pale, hollow-eyed face at the end of the barrel, while Graves’s voice pleaded in the background of his thoughts.

  They followed him, these dreams, skulking in the shadows during the daytime, gathering around his bed at night. Sometimes the whiskey drove them away. Sometimes he stayed up into the early hours of the morning just to keep them at bay, reading by the fire, jogging along deserted streets lit by the halos of streetlights thick with flying insects. In the morning he would put on his suit, his tie, and his smile and go to work at an accounting firm, a job Camila had convinced him to take, but gradually - as days snowballed into weeks, then months - the smile grew strained, cracked by the deepening lines of his face, and the cost of hard drinking and sleep deprivation began to show.

  He found himself daydreaming at work, divided between the guilt of what he had done with Peter and the hounding question of what might have happened if he had stayed. Is this all? he kept thinking as he added to his retirement fund, decorated the house with the occasional painting or antique sign picked up at a yard-sale on his way home from work, listened to his co-workers talk about sail-boats and cruises and bowling night, smiled at the pictures of toddlers these same co-workers carried in their wallets, nodded as they complained about their wives.

  It all came to a head months later at a four-star restaurant on the top floor of a converted textile factory. It was his anniversary with Camila, and he knew by the way she had been dropping hints the past few weeks that she was expecting more than steak and wine and an intimate night by the fire.

  “So how was your day?” she asked as they waited for their meal. There was a note of anticipation in her voice. The glow of her eyes seemed brighter than the flame of the candle resting in the middle of the table.

  “Fine,” he answered. He was watching the other tables, the smiles and jokes, the way that woman surreptitiously touched that man’s arm or how she blushed when he talked to her. What kind of lives did these people live? Was this night a part of that life, or was it just a lie?

  Camila cleared her throat. “Has something been on your mind lately?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  From the corner of his eye, he watched Camila take a long swallow of water. It was like they were on their first date—the uncertainty between them, the fragility of the evening, as if a single wrong word or gesture could shatter it all. How was it possible they had been together a whole year?

  The waiter arrived with their wine. Camila cleared her throat and thanked him, waiting until he had gone before she turned her gaze back to Victor. He knew what was coming. This was how all their fights began—with disappointed expectations.

  “Why won’t you talk to me about it?” she asked in a tight voice.

  “About what?”

  “Whatever is clearly on your mind.”

  “Look, I just want to sit here and enjoy a good meal. Is that too much to ask?”

  Color was rising to her face. She took another quick swallow of water. “I knew this was a bad idea,” she said.

  “How is having dinner a bad idea?”

  She leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Why can’t we be like other couples, Victor? Look at them, look at how happy they are. That’s because they’re actually talking about something.”

  “What are we doing right now?”

  She shook her head, staring at him in disbelief. “Something happened to you. You used to be fun, you’d surprise me with things. You were spontaneous. Remember when we took that trip to the Gulf?”

  “Yeah, the heat was awful.”

  She ignored his comment. “That was when I knew…” Her words faltered. She pulled back.

  “Knew what?” Victor asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, I want you to say it. What did you know?”

  “That I wanted to be with you,” she answered, unable to stop the tear that slipped from the corner of her eye. “That you made me feel safe and happy, and we could have whatever future we wanted.”

  “You know that’s kind of childis
h, Cam,” he answered, hearing the insensitivity in his own words, a little voice in the back of his head screaming that this was all wrong, that he should just apologize and tell her the truth and maybe, just maybe, the night could be salvaged. Maybe this would not become the train-wreck he had been anticipating for a while now.

  “Childish?” Camila repeated, raising a napkin to dab at her eyes. “Well, I’m sorry for trying so hard to be happy.” She rose, brushed past the waiter who had arrived with their steaks, and hurried toward the bathroom.

  “Can I get you anything else?” the waiter asked, his face carefully blank, as if determined not to get involved in this dispute.

  “No, this is great, thanks.”

  Victor picked up his knife and fork, cut a piece off the steak, and slipped it into his mouth. It was delicious, and he had absolutely no appetite.

  ___

  Later, in the bathroom, he lifted his gaze from the sink to stare at the man in the mirror. He’d had a few glasses too many, said some things he regretted, and not long ago Camila had taken her purse and said she was getting a cab, hurrying toward the door before the tears could start in earnest. Victor had finished his dinner (the wine had brought his appetite back), then gone to the bathroom for a piss before he drove home.

  Why did he feel…nothing? He wanted to scream, to break the mirror into a thousand pieces, but instead his only desire was to head home and curl up on the couch, maybe turn the TV on for some background noise.

  He fished the velvet box from his pocket, opened the lid, studied the ring. How different the evening might have gone. He pulled it free and dangled it over the sink, hesitating, waiting for the rational part of his brain to kick in and stop him. It never did. He watched the ring bounce against the side of the pipe before it disappeared.

  That night was the last time he saw Camila. He didn’t even bump into her when she came to the house to collect her things—not because she tried to avoid him (she didn’t), but because he avoided her. He felt no ill-will toward her. He avoided her because of the self-loathing he felt when he saw her, the bitter realization that he had grown to despise himself.

  Time flew by with few noteworthy events to mark its passing. He drank more, slept even less, spent more time watching people than interacting with them. He sold the house and settled for a cheaper one that looked like a run-down retirement home (“Nestle Lane: The Place where Dreams Come True”). By this time, all the talk on the news was about a small insect the world had taken for granted for thousands of years. It was dying off, people said, hunted by pesticides or mites or an unknown disease—nobody could say for certain. Victor would sit up late at night and listen to the anchorwoman talk about crop failure and food shortages, about artificial pollination and cattle feed, noting with detachment how everyone interviewed - scientists, politicians, lawmakers - always harped on the same thing.

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

  But the more they used the word, the more it sounded like there was reason to panic. Victor wondered if Sophia and her team had actually finished engineering that virus and had, sometime after being granted their freedom, sold it to the highest bidder. It seemed absurd to think anyone would want to ruin the planet, but Victor had given up on trying to understand human nature. He had enough trouble figuring himself out.

  Soon there was talk of turning private farms over to government control, of rationing, of global depression. Everyone on the news assured Victor there was plenty of food to go around, even if the honey bee went extinct (which, they also said, would never happen). The real trick was adjusting to such a monumental change.

  The price of dairy products skyrocketed as feed for the animals disappeared. Fruit became a luxury, markets became violent as shoppers fought one another for produce, and just before noon on a Tuesday, when a panel of economic experts on Fox News were speculating about the possibility of another stock market crash, Victor quietly slipped out of the office of Walsh & Fitch and never returned.

  As he drove home, Linkin Park’s “Numb” blaring through the windows, he realized he needed a plan. He also realized - and this was the truly frightening part - that he didn’t have one. He used to pride himself on being ready for anything, keeping plans and contingency plans for any emergency. Now…

  What had changed exactly? He had lost something overseas, something he hadn’t known he possessed, and now there seemed to be no way of getting it back. By the time his car pulled into the cul-de-sac in front of his house, he told himself, he needed to come to a decision: Either relocate and plan for the worst, or tie a pair of knots by the second-floor balcony and jump off.

  One or the other. Get busy living or get busy dying.

  He pulled into the driveway, turned off the stereo, removed the key from the ignition, and sat for a few minutes. The houses were silent. The hood of the car went ping…ping…ping as the metal contracted.

  Get busy living, or…

  He climbed from the car and strode to the house. It was relieving, actually, to make the decision, even if he could not bear to glance in the mirror as he walked down the hall. He moved into the study and withdrew a pen and notepad, scribbled the start of a few messages, then tore them off and tossed them into the trash.

  What did he have to say, what did anyone have to say, about such a decision? He imagined the neighbors gathering around his body like vultures. They would say, “Gee, he seemed like a pretty regular guy to me, what did you think?” Or maybe, “I always knew there was something about him. Couldn’t quite place my finger on it until now.”

  The suicide type.

  Is that what I am? he thought as he cradled the Colt in his hands, sitting at his desk beneath a painting of a general in a field tent. Am I this weak?

  The gun was cold and smooth. He loved it because it was the most reliable friend he’d ever had. If he asked it to take a life, its scruples never got in the way. If he asked it to take his own life now, friend or not, it would do so without hesitation.

  His eyes fell to the picture on his desk. It was Christmas. He was drinking beer with Dante and their dad, a silent snowfall piling on the windowsill, and the scene felt out of time somehow, their expressions not frozen but fixed, a captured moment he could slip back into if he just closed his eyes.

  He closed his eyes…heard the voices, the laughter…smelled the smoke of the fireplace…felt the strength of a bond formed in the earliest years of his life…sensed how much happier he had been then, though he had not appreciated it at the time.

  Their father was gone, following shortly after their mother. But Dante… Last Victor knew, Dante was still in the city. There would be riots, panic, looting, and who knew what state of mind (or body, for that matter) Dante might be in.

  Victor raised the gun to his head, staring at the picture, but he could not pull the trigger. For once in your life, he told himself, do something right. Help someone. Maybe…just maybe…you still have a chance to redeem yourself.

  Maybe. But that was the food of hopes and dreams, wasn’t it? Not certainty, but possibility—a fool’s hope, perhaps, but hope nonetheless.

  After a while he rose from his seat, pushed the chair carefully back in place, and slipped the Colt into his waistband.

  Where would they live? What would they eat? How would they protect themselves? These were questions he understood, and he was more than ready to embrace them.

  Stepping outside, the sunlight of a full day bright on his face, he felt a surge of purpose fill him. He would find Dante, and together they would survive this catastrophe—somewhere, somehow. The details didn’t matter. The important thing was that they found a way to do it together.

  Because in the end they were brothers, and nothing else mattered.

  Acknowledgments

  We want to thank the Hunt and Truax families for their continued support of our efforts; Jenna Scherdell, Mary Hunt, and Rebekah Hunt for reading our work, warts and all, and offering feedback; Olivia at OliviaProDesign on Fiverr, for
doing a great job with the cover in a short amount of time; and finally our readers, whose imaginations are the wind beneath our wings. We could not have done this alone, so thank you.

  About the Authors

  William Hunt is a full-time novelist who spends a lot of time thinking about how society might end. When he’s not spinning yarns, he can usually be found working on the family farm or reading books. A few of his favorite authors include Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, Emily St. John Mandel, and Ray Bradbury.

  Stephen Truax is a technologist and project manager by profession. He has a lovely wife, as well as three children who fill him with joy and rob him of sleep. When he's not crafting a story, he enjoys shooting — hoops and guns.

  Authors' Note

  The story does not end here.

  We began the Last Colony series without a clear sense of how many books we wanted to include. Did this feel like a standalone novel or a longer series? Over time, we’ve come to think of it as a trilogy—and that’s just how we mean to approach it. Though we may pick up on the lives of some of the characters after Book 3 (those who survive the book, at any rate), we believe the majority of this tale will be finished by the third book’s closing chapters.