“Once you’ve served your purpose.”
Others were approaching now. At a nod from Walker, one came behind Dante, grabbed his arms, and shoved him to the ground. As Dante was pinned to the forest floor like a beetle, he kept his eyes on Walker. He had to know the answer to just one question, one maddening question.
“What’s my purpose?” he asked.
Walker reached into his coat. “I have a little something for you. I’ve been saving it for just this sort of occasion.”
“You sure about this?” one of the others said.
“I’m sure I’ll do the same to you if you keep standing there,” Walker answered.
Walker loomed over Dante, and that smile—oh, it was there, alright, lurking in the dark space behind his eyes. If ever a man had been born without a soul, Dante thought, this was he.
“Your purpose?” Walker repeated. “You are just a key, a recipe, a password. We have a use for you now, sure…but when we’ve taken what we need?”
“What do you need?” Dante shouted as his limbs were pinned to the ground. “What do I have?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” Walker answered, squatting beside Dante. He was holding something long and narrow in his hand, but Dante could not get a clear view of it.
“You can’t kill me,” Dante said. “You just admitted you need me.” He twisted his head around, trying to find that other horseman (the big man) who had curbed Walker’s violence back at the cabin. He was the one in charge. He was the one who decided what could or could not be done. But where was he?
“Kill you?” Walker repeated. “No, we need you alive.” He paused. “But there are all kinds of alive, aren’t there?” He gave a quick nod to his companions, who stretched out Dante’s right arm and pinned it against the ground.
“Wait!” Dante shouted, growing frantic. “Wait!” He’s going to break my arm, he thought. He’s going to maim me!
Walker leaned over him, his face only inches away. “I warned you about what would happen if you ran, didn’t I? You might think you can fool me, but I know all about you, Dante Gervasio. I know your habits, your accomplishments, your vices. I know everything you’ve ever done, and that should scare the living piss out of you.”
Then Walker’s face was gone and Dante braced himself for the pain. He screamed just to fill his ears with sound, to try to shock his body and blunt the edge of the coming pain. And maybe Victor would hear his scream, maybe Victor would come and save him before—
Something pinched his arm, and within moments all his fear dissolved.
_____
“If we see you around here again,” Felix said, raising his voice for theatrical effect, “we’ll shoot you.”
With a shove for good measure, the group of militiamen stared after Victor as he stumbled down the road. Exhausted from his long chase after the horsemen and the adrenaline-fueled fight at Fairfield, Victor continued walking until he had broken the line of sight with the town, and then he dropped down beside a stand of birch trees. He lifted his canteen to his mouth and found only a small mouthful remaining. How much longer could he last, going on this way? A day? A week? However determined he might be, he had squandered his one chance of rescuing Dante from the horsemen. They were probably miles away already.
They had not returned his AK-47. Felix, who had not forgiven Victor for holding him over the edge of the second-story window, had told him to look at it as a tax for passing through. Victor felt like he was leaving a limb behind, but the information he had gleaned might just have been worth the sacrifice.
Birds were singing in the trees. There was a beauty to this time of the year, even if the colors were not the same as they had once been. When was the last time he had stopped to notice the smell of the breeze or the crispness of the air? Autumn had always been Dante’s favorite season, while Victor’s was winter. The cold was in their bones. Many people seemed to think of winter as an interlude to summer, but Victor saw it the opposite way. Summer was a passing thing—memorable more in its frailty than its strength, a thing to be appreciated more than expected. But winter…that was a constant. It was not warm in space, nor in the deepest places of the sea. Heat was life, that was true, but cold…
Cold was eternal.
His mind was still drifting when a scream echoed through the forest. He knew that kind of scream - he had heard it many times before - but he also knew that voice…the voice of a boy who’d made tunnels in the snow with him, who’d played hockey with him in the street, who’d convinced Victor to sled down the back stairs of the porch together, resulting in more than a few bruises.
Now that same boy was being tortured somewhere out there while Victor sat on his ass and contemplated the season. He pushed himself to his feet with a grunt of effort, ignoring the complaints from his legs. He was a soldier, after all, and he had only one mission: To free Dante, no matter the cost.
“Hang in there, little brother,” he murmured, clenching his jaw. “I’ll see you real soon.”
Chapter 12: Trust
He had watched them lead her down the road, a girl in a blue summer dress that suggested she had just been at the town pool with a few friends and was now heading back home for supper. Jenny could not have been older than eleven or twelve years. Her hair was the color of wheat on a cloudless noon, a gold that was giving way to brown. There was something fitting in this transformation, like lost innocence.
So dawn goes down to day, Victor thought, recalling that book of poetry he had read during his self-imposed exile at the cabin. Nothing gold can stay.
They gave her no food, no water, no coat to ward the cold. Evening was falling, the wind rising with a spectral touch that set Victor’s arms shivering as the sweat dried on his skin. The one thing they had given her, as far as he could tell, was the strip of white cloth wrapped around her head.
She kept walking even after the men behind her had left. Maybe she could think of nothing else to do. Maybe she was being driven by her fear, a demon she could exorcise only by tiring her own body. Or maybe she actually believed there was somewhere worth going.
There was nothing around them but the road and the trees and a ditch that smelled of refuse. Victor waited until she had nearly reached him, her sandals making only a soft patter on the asphalt. Then he stepped out from behind the birches and onto the edge of the road. She did not slow or show any sign she had heard him. It was not until he took another step, cracking a branch beneath his boot, that she stopped.
She grew deathly still. Her hands, which had hung limp at her sides, now pulled toward her dress and curled themselves into fists. “Who’s there?” she whispered. She spoke so softly, it was almost as if she feared being heard.
“I’m the other black sheep,” he said. “My name’s Victor.”
The girl turned her head toward the sound of his voice. The blood had oozed from her forehead, creating a dark red spot through the bandage, and Victor thought how much this seemed like the scene of a horror movie: the blind girl standing on a lonely street with a bloody bandage on her head, the wind rising among the trees, the night falling in layers of shadow. She was the tormented soul that can only be appeased when some old wrong has been set right. Despite his doubts about the supernatural, Victor shivered.
“Are the other men gone?” the girl asked. “I can’t hear much with this bandage.” She reached for the bandage, trying to claw it down off her ears.
Victor took a quick step forward. “You should leave it,” he said. “Your face is cut. It will get infected if you’re not careful.”
She lowered her hands and let them rest at her sides. “Why are you here?” she said.
Victor took another step toward her. She heard the sound and stepped back. Just enough of the girl’s face was visible for Victor to see the fright drawn there.
“What do you want?” she whispered. “What do you want? Are you one of them?” She began turning her head about, as if imagining she was surrounded by people she could not see.
“Slow down
,” Victor said. “I want to help you.”
“Allen told me not to trust anyone.”
“Allen’s dead.” The coarseness of his own voice surprised him. When had he grown so unfeeling that he cared nothing about the death of a child’s father? There was no time to think about that now.
She grew as still as ice at the sound of his words. He thought she must have known this already, but perhaps the hit on her head had confused her just enough to cause her to question what she remembered.
“I’m sorry,” Victor said. “But now I need your help just as you need mine.” He lowered his backpack to the ground, opened it, and broke off a piece of wheat bread he had carried with him from the cabin. “Here, take this,” he said, offering the food as much for the preservation of his humanity as for the girl’s life. Some things, once lost, could not be recovered again.
“What is it?”
“Bread.” He moved toward her again, and this time she did not step away. He squatted down in front of her, sensing that if he was still a man and she was still a child, then maybe not everything in the world was broken.
He held the chunk of bread in front of her. “Can you smell it?”
She lifted her hand, and with an uncertain motion searched the air for the bread. It reminded Victor of a spotlight scouring the sky at night. Her fingers brushed his and she immediately pulled back.
“Here,” Victor said quickly, taking her wrist and placing the bread into the open palm. He released her before she had time to struggle, and then he settled back on his haunches and waited. Already the shadows were growing longer among the trees, but some things could not be rushed.
She lifted the bread to her mouth and began to nibble it like a mouse, cupping her hands to catch any crumbs. Her frame suggested she had not been eating well for months, though this could have been an indication the town was issuing food rations.
“I’ve always had a good nose,” she said as she finished the crumbs. “Papa used to hold things to my face and I would cover my eyes and try to guess what they were.” She stopped herself short, perhaps realizing that smelling things wouldn’t be a game for her any more.
“You were close to him, weren’t you?” Victor said.
She did not answer, nor did she need to.
Victor added, “There’s someone I’m very close to. He’s my brother. Those men who came to your town on horses, the ones responsible for everything that’s gone wrong today—they took him. I’m trying to get him back.” He paused to let this information sink in.
The girl crossed her arms, trying not to shiver. “But they’re gone,” she said. “And once someone is taken, they never come back.”
Before he could answer, a gust traveled down the street, scraping leaves and sending them tumbling end over end. The girl began to shake. Victor unzipped his coat and took it off. “Take this.”
Instead of accepting the coat, however, she pushed it back. “I don’t want it.” Victor thought he heard a note of bitterness in her voice.
“Why not? You’re shivering.”
“You’re just going to leave. I know you are. You’re just like the horsemen. You take what you want and then you leave.”
Victor felt his anger kindle at the comparison to the horsemen, but he took a deep breath and calmed himself. “I’m trying to help you.”
“And then what?”
“Then we can go together,” he said, trying to sound as blithe as possible. “What kind of a man would I be if I left you here?” But even as he said the words, something withered inside him.
She faced him, as if measuring him with her mind. She still had not taken the coat, and the shadows were still lengthening, and Victor knew they had already stayed too long. He had stayed too long. It was time to be on the road again, time to gain ground he had lost. Maybe the horsemen had stopped for the night. Maybe he could press on through the night, weary as he was. A fool’s hope was better than no hope, wasn’t it?
“Okay,” she whispered, sounding defeated. “Just please don’t leave me. Please don’t—” She paused as the smell of rot rose from the ditch beside the road. “That’s where they dump everything,” she said. “They bring it out in wheelbarrows and dump it there. And at night, the dogs come. I can hear them fighting one another. I don’t like dogs.” She shivered again.
Victor turned his head and scanned the forest, not liking what he saw. “Alright,” he said. “We should get out of here. Will you take the coat now?”
She let him wrap the coat around her shoulders. As they began walking down the road, she gave a soft cry and stopped.
“What is it?” Victor said, wondering if she was in pain.
“If you need to catch up with your brother,” she said, “I think I know a better way than walking.”
_____
“We found them when we were out scavenging,” Jenny explained. “We hid them here so they wouldn’t be taken from us. How do they look?”
Victor studied the pair of bicycles stashed in the back of a minivan abandoned in the woods. “There’s a bit of rust,” he said, “but the tires have air. Let’s see what happens.” He pulled the bikes from the back of the minivan and leaned them against the bumper. He directed Jenny’s hands to the smaller one, which was probably too big for her, while he grabbed the handles of the bigger one, which was too small for him.
“Do you remember how to ride?” he asked as Jenny positioned herself on the seat.
“I think so,” she began. “If we go slow—” But she was cut off by the baying of a dog deeper in the darkening forest. Victor did not need to see her eyes to read how that sound had affected her.
“How will I follow you?” she whispered.
Victor entertained the idea of holding one of the handlebars on her bike, then dismissed it. Besides being too slow, it would be a good way to get someone hurt. Instead he drew his knife, pried free a zip tie holding the brake cable to the frame of his bike, and replaced it with a small piece of rope from his backpack. He attached the zip tie to one of the rear wheel spokes.
“This should work,” he said, pushing his bike forward. The tie made a sharp sound as it struck against the spokes. “Can you follow that sound?”
“I think so,” she said. “But what if something else follows the sound?”
Victor looked down toward the deserted road, which glowed a dull, almost ghastly white. He listened to the sound of dogs baying in the forest—sounds that were growing louder.
“If anything follows us,” he said, “we’ll just have to do our best to outrun it. Come on.”
It was slow going at first. Jenny seemed convinced she was going to hit something, but as they continued down the road without an accident, she began to trust her ears. The trail was such that they were able to move at a fast pace without fear of missing anything.
The road took a turn, and Victor could feel that, beneath the leaves and pine needles littering the road, they were on asphalt now. The trail of the horsemen was leading them north and east, away from the back-country roads and toward civilization—the very thing he had helped Dante escape. He had a sudden mental image of Dante lying on a couch in a room smelling of booze and cigarettes, the table beside him occupied by a few rolled bills and a white powder that had been cut into fine white lines by a razor. Victor tried to shake the image. Dante had proven he was better than that…but still the image remained.
Whether he sought it or it sought him, Dante was always running into trouble. And Victor was always saving him. He wondered, however, if this time the odds were too heavily stacked against them, if even he wouldn’t be able to help Dante this time.
How far will you go to save him? he asked himself. And who will suffer for it?
Chapter 13: The Shadow Walker
They pressed on through the darkness, gaining speed along the deserted road. The evening wore on to full night, but for a while the moon hung above them and Victor was able to see some distance ahead. Then clouds rolled in, heralding a storm front. Victo
r had planned to make camp in the forest in order to remain hidden, but when he looked at Jenny and saw the raindrops dotting her bandage, her arms shivering like the tines of a tuning fork, he decided to sacrifice caution for comfort.
“Come on,” he said, pushing his bike toward a mom-and-pop country store set up in a converted barn. The windows had been boarded over, a sign that someone had continued to live there beyond the initial food shortages, but Victor thought there was a good chance those people had since moved on.
“I can’t hear you!” Jenny said as Victor was moving away. He should have realized it already. The rain, along with the cracking of thunder, was too loud for her to hear the zip tie on the bike.
Victor walked back to her and took her hand. The hand was cold, but not as soft as he had expected. Instead he felt the calluses of someone used to physical labor.
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