“They would kill you,” Dante finished quietly. He was not surprised to hear the outside world was dangerous. This had been Victor’s mantra since the day they first reached the cabin. Dante wanted to explore the area, search for other survivors, start society over if necessary. But Victor was always telling him they needed to wait until they were better prepared. Exactly what “better prepared” would look like, or how long it would take to get there, Dante did not know. Until now, he had found no reason to believe the world had fallen apart as much as Victor claimed.
Walker glanced sharply at him. “There are things worse than death.” He did not elaborate, and Dante was glad he did not. The morning had lost its cheer, the trees their color, the breeze its smell. Something about the day had grown as lifeless as a drooping flower.
“I can’t go back,” Walker added.
Dante brushed dirt from his hands and glanced at the cabin, thinking about how Victor would take this news. It would prove all his suspicions, convince him he had been right to stay at the cabin and they should go on staying there, the rest of the world be damned. But if it was true, if there really were people after Walker…
“Horses?” Dante repeated. He pictured the set of a low-budget slasher, with Walker running through the woods at night as branches snapped around him. Maybe I’m in this slasher, too, he thought. And what would be the next part? The brothers would go back to investigate the cow farm, expecting it to all be a big joke? Then, surprise, it turns out Walker was actually sent to lure them there?
Walker nodded and gave Dante a sideways glance that suggested he knew what he was thinking. “I’m crazy, right?”
Dante resisted the urge to ask if these horsemen had also carried chainsaws. The whole thing sounded far-fetched, but there was just enough detail, just enough raw emotion, for him to wonder.
He sighed and cleared his throat. “The real question is, what do you want me to do about it? I could invite you to stay, but—well, you’ve already seen how my brother is.” A new thought occurred to him. “Do you think they’ll come here?”
Walker hesitated a moment before answering. “No, I don’t think so. If they’ve left you alone this long, they probably don’t know you’re here.”
Unless you led them to us, Dante thought, but did not say.
“Walker,” he said, “who are these people?” He found it difficult to imagine he had neither seen nor heard any sign of these people before, but the brothers were just isolated enough for it to be possible. No—it was crazy talk. Law enforcement might have become localized around cities and major farming operations, as Victor supposed, but that didn’t mean the rest of the country was the Wild West. It couldn’t.
Walker’s eyes focused back on Dante. Clarity (or perhaps it was sanity) slowly returned. “I don’t know,” he said.
“How did they find you?”
Walker shrugged. His expression suggested he had spent plenty of time asking himself this same question.
Dante decided he had interrogated Walker long enough and started toward the cabin. “I have to warn Victor,” he said over his shoulder.
“No!” Walker protested quickly. His hand snaked out to grab Dante’s arm. “No, you can’t.”
Considering Walker’s emaciated appearance, Dante was surprised by the strength of his grip. “What are you talking about? He needs to know.”
Walker stared earnestly into his eyes. “I think your brother means to kill me.”
A few moments passed as Dante took this in. “You think so?” he said, now feeling certain this man was paranoid. The idea that these horsemen might just have been a product of his imagination was sounding more plausible by the moment.
Walker shook his head. “I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy!” His grip tightened on Dante’s arm. “He told me as much when you went inside. He threatened me, told me I had to leave. If I didn’t…”
Dante sighed. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Just don’t say anything to him about people on horses. He doesn’t need any more excuses to be a recluse.”
Chapter 4: Zero-Sum Game
They ate mostly in silence. It was a better meal than many they’d eaten in that cabin since the day they arrived, and Dante’s mind went back to that first lean year—subsisting on wild edibles, canned goods scavenged from nearby houses, a few small animals they’d succeeded in hunting or trapping. Dante had still been rehabilitating then. But despite how sick he had become and how little he had contributed, Victor had not once regretted his choice to help Dante escape the city—at least not aloud. Whatever their differences, it was a debt Dante would carry for the rest of his life.
When they had finished eating, Walker stood and rested his hands on the back of the chair, as if ready to make an announcement. His eyes found Victor’s, then returned to the middle of the table. “Well,” he said, “I can’t thank you enough. I haven’t had a good meal since…” His voice faltered. He looked defeated, like a man hounded by a recurring nightmare.
“You don’t have to go, Walker,” Dante said.
Victor, who had been staring at his plate as he chewed a piece of steak, lifted his eyes. There was none of the narrow-eyed suspicion Dante had expected, but instead that imperturbable calm, a practiced poker face ready for any occasion.
“I think he should stay for a little while,” Dante continued. He waited. When Victor did not interrupt him, he went on, emboldened. “He can sleep in the guest room. Besides, we could use another pair of hands around here. It will be time to harvest the wheat soon, never mind canning the vegetables. We both know how much you enjoy that.”
Victor pressed his tongue against his upper teeth, trying to dislodge a piece of meat. “Are you waiting for my permission?”
The gruff tone of his voice surprised Dante. “Are you saying you don’t have a problem, Vic?”
“I’m saying what I said before. You bring him here, he’s your problem.” He stood and, leaning across the table, picked up both his plate and Dante’s, pointedly leaving Walker’s where it lay. He carried the plates into the kitchen and set them in the sink.
Dante looked at Walker, surprised at how easy it had been to convince his brother. Walker mouthed a silent “Thank you.”
_____
The windows in the guest room were drafty, so after showing the room to Walker, Dante went down into the basement to grab a few blankets.
The basement of the cabin was set up like a stereotypical man cave, with a flatscreen TV positioned above the fireplace and faced by three upholstered chairs. The closet beside the fireplace held a few gaming systems—an Xbox, a PlayStation, even an Atari. The sight of the Atari reminded Dante of the first time he had played a video game. He and Victor had dueled, chasing one another in pixelated dogfights bereft of any scenery except a colored background. It was video gaming in its purest form, a hobby Dante had often enjoyed while stoned.
He approached one of the cabinets. He had brought a flashlight, since there was no light in the basement but the diffused glow of a few small windows, and he scanned the cabinets with the beam as he tried to remember which one contained the stack of blankets. His mind was unconsciously turning over what had just occurred at breakfast, the way Victor had so willingly conceded to the idea of letting Walker stay.
Despite Walker’s conviction, Dante did not really believe Victor was considering killing Walker. Maybe he had warned him in the shed. Maybe he had even given him a few choice words. But to threaten his life? That wasn’t the brother he knew, the brother who had helped him escape the city and stayed by his side all through his recovery. Victor could come across as cold, even heartless sometimes, but Dante knew he was a better man than the role he often played.
Dante opened one of the cabinets and shone the light inside. No blankets. He began to close the door…but stopped when he recognized what was inside. A briefcase. Victor’s briefcase. It was the same one Dante had seen in the back of Victor’s car at their parents’ house, on a Christmas day shortly before Dante had em
barked on his travels around the world.
The sight of the briefcase, a relic of a different era, gave Dante pause. What might be inside? Victor had spent a number of years working for a government organization (the CIA, Dante guessed), but he had never told Dante who he worked for or what he did. Dante did not know whether this secrecy was related more to Victor’s line of work or to his tendency to under-share, as if believing he would become vulnerable if others knew too much about him.
What bothered Dante most was how incapable he had ever been of keeping secrets from Victor. No matter how hard he tried, Victor had a way of reading his every emotion, guessing his every move. They had played chess a few times as kids, but Dante had quickly learned that, while chess was only a game to him, Victor thought of it in terms of competition. Victor had to beat someone. Everything was a zero-sum game to him—if there was no loser, there was no point in playing. And Dante was almost always the loser.
Dante opened the cabinet a little wider. The briefcase must have held some value to Victor, or else he would not have kept it so long. But if he cared about it, why had he left it so…unguarded? He kept most of his secrets locked in the vault of his mind. Why would he leave any of his secrets where Dante might get at them?
Because it’s just a briefcase, he told himself. You’re letting your imagination run wild. Just grab that blanket, and—
Dante grabbed the briefcase by the handle and carried it toward the glow of one of the windows. The briefcase was heavy—fifteen to twenty pounds, easily. Nothing shifted inside when he turned it, nothing rattled. It was secured by a pair of combination locks, each of which required a set of three single-digit numbers.
So that settles it, he thought, starting back toward the cabinet.
Then, his mind taking its own course, he began to wonder what numbers Victor might have entered. Dante wasn’t going to try to open the briefcase. Victor had every right to keep it locked, and Dante would no sooner intrude on Victor’s secrets than invite Victor to intrude on his—the few he kept, anyway. He just wanted to guess…
The first numbers that came to mind made up part of Victor’s birthday. Dante entered them and, as he expected, nothing happened. Victor was too clever to use such an obvious number. The real combination would possess significance only to Victor, which would make it nearly impossible for Dante to guess except by chance.
So there’s no harm in trying a few numbers, then.
He used his own birth date, the street number of their parents’ house, the day of his mother’s funeral. He would have tried using the day Victor helped him get out of the city, except he couldn’t remember what day it had been. He had fed that day and the ones preceding it to the almighty blow, an insatiable monster that was never picky about its meal.
Dante sighed and sat back on his haunches. Could it have been Victor’s social security number? A phone number? A significant date Dante was unaware of?
All these ideas seemed too trivial. He was thinking in checker terms, but Victor was a chess man. If he was going to lock something in a briefcase, he would think of a good combination.
Maybe he has a wife and children out there he never told me about, he thought, laughing softly. Maybe the combination has something to do with them. The scenario was at first funny to imagine, but then he realized it was far from impossible. Victor very well could have kept such a huge secret from him.
A board creaked overhead. Dante heard the murmur of voices in the kitchen, or maybe it was the hall. Victor was doing most of the talking, if Dante heard correctly—they were not directly above him, so the words did not carry well. After a short time, Dante heard footsteps retreating toward the front of the cabin.
As Dante returned the briefcase to the cabinet, he realized he hadn’t noticed how Victor had left the numbers. Had they all been set to 0? It was the kind of thing Victor would have remembered, the way a spy in a movie might place a hair across a door gap to see if someone has entered the room. But so what if Victor learned Dante had been playing with the combinations? Why did it matter?
Because he doesn’t trust me, Dante thought. If he trusted me, he would have told me what’s in there. How can it matter now, anyway? Whatever secret organization he might have been part of, it’s been dissolved by now. But now he’ll see I’ve messed with it and he’ll…
He’ll what? another voice answered. He’ll trust me less?
Dante, who had suffered his share of competing mental voices since the heyday of his addiction, told them all to shut up and returned the briefcase to the cabinet.
_____
Victor was standing on the porch with his hands thrust into the pockets of his faded jeans, looking at the tree line like an artist imagining how he would duplicate the contours and colors.
“What’s going on?” Dante said. “Where’s Walker?”
Victor tossed his head, and Dante looked toward the woods to see Walker wading into the weeds, his heavy coat gathering seeds as he went.
“Where’s he going?” Dante asked.
Victor shrugged. “Back to the cow farm, maybe.” A hint of skepticism had entered his voice, and Dante did not have to ask what kind of conversation the two men had shared. There was a reason he had heard Victor’s voice more than Walker’s.
“You told him to leave,” Dante said, feeling anger begin to stir in his chest. It was not Victor’s hostility toward outsiders that bothered him most. No, it was Victor’s willingness to make unilateral decisions, constantly reminding Dante that this was not - and never had been - a 50-50 partnership. It was more like 70-30, even 80-20, and Victor owned the controlling share.
Victor took a deep breath, as if savoring the evening air that was drifting across the hills. The color of the sky had changed. It was now paler at the edges.
“I gave him a choice,” Victor replied. “He chose to leave.”
Dante chuckled low in his throat. “Just kick him to the curb like he’s an old can, huh? Is that how we do things now?”
Victor did not take the bait. He kept his eyes on the tree line. “We don’t have food, we don’t have time to teach him how to help, and worst of all we can’t trust him.”
Dante laughed at this last suggestion. “Can’t trust him? What, you didn’t like the way he looked at you? You have to talk to someone before you know if you can trust them.”
“And I talked to him.”
Dante wanted to say he had looked into Walker’s eyes and knew he was an okay guy. He wanted to say not everyone out there was looking for the first opportunity to act like a sociopath. But he knew how these words would sound to Victor’s mind, a mechanism that operated only on probability, analysis, and logic. To Victor’s thinking, they had everything to lose by helping Walker, and nothing to gain.
Dante shook his head. “How long will he last out there? A week? A day?”
“He’s not our problem.”
If we didn’t have the same mother and father, Dante thought, I’d be the same thing to you. Just another problem.
Victor lowered his voice. “What happens if people find us here, Dante? How many do you think we can fend off?”
The suggestion surprised Dante. Had Walker told Victor the story about the horsemen? Dante studied his brother’s face, but it was as difficult to read as ever.
He said, “Why do you always assume people want to take what we have?”
“Why do you assume they don’t?”
“Because not everyone is like you, Victor!” Dante shouted. “The world’s different, sure, but not everyone thinks it’s an opportunity to be their worst self.”
“Is that what you think I am?” Victor asked quietly. “My worst self?”
Dante let out a sigh, wishing he could take back the words. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying. I get it. But here’s what you need to understand: While you were snorting coke with your buddies—”
Dante threw his hands in the air. “Not this speech again!”
>
“—I was surviving, planning, figuring things out so we—” Victor waved a finger between Dante and himself “—could survive. So we could outlast this…thing. But my planning didn’t include freeloaders like Walker.”
Dante was staring hard at the floor. His nostrils flared with pent-up emotion. It had been this way since they were little—Dante’s emotions would overtake him, enrage him, sometimes lead him to attack Victor with a flurry of punches. But Victor would just keep Dante at arm’s length, never overwhelmed by the moment, always in control of himself. They were opposites that way, and their counter styles of handling conflict always complicated any argument.
Dante said, “So that’s what it all comes back to. Your brother the fuck-up. The brother who needed to be saved because he couldn’t take care of himself.” The muscles of his jaw bulged in and out.
Brothers (The Last Colony Book 1) Page 3