“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Dante.”
Dante did not answer. He just waited, watching Victor with a serious expression.
“I guess you deserve to hear some answers,” Victor said. “All this time I’ve been trying to find you because you’re my brother. You’re the only family I have left. But in some ways, it’s like we hardly know each other at all.”
“So pull up a chair,” Dante answered. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.”
Victor smiled. He followed Dante’s suggestion and sat down beside him. As the evening descended around them, Victor told his story—halting at first, then flowing more smoothly as the memories came back to him. Dante listened attentively, not interrupting even to make a quip, and for a long while it seemed to both of them as if time had frozen in place.
Victor had not felt so at peace in a long time.
THE END
Acknowledgments
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
That was George Orwell’s description of what it’s like to write a book, and though we had a great deal of fun in writing The Last Colony, there were also times when we were more spurred on by the cracking of whips than any literary gratification. If not for the support of certain people in our lives, whether that meant patiently listening to our ramblings or slapping us upside the head, we would have flushed our sanity down the drain long ago.
First off we would like to thank the Hunt and Truax families for all their love, support, and encouragement. We owe you a debt of gratitude we can never repay.
We would also like to thank Mary Hunt, Jenna Scherdell, Billy Thomas, and Emily Truax for providing feedback as the story evolved. Without your support and helpful comments, we would still be floundering in a morass of revisions. Thank you for your patience and invaluable help.
We hope you will all continue to support us moving forward. We have many more stories to tell.
About the Authors
William Hunt is a full-time novelist who enjoys exploring other worlds through his imagination. When he’s not writing, he’s usually daydreaming. When he’s doing neither of those, he can usually be found trying his hand at carpentry, making a clumsy show of sword-fighting, or being chased by his nephew and nieces. Most of the time he lets them catch him. Most of the time.
Stephen Truax is a technologist and project manager by profession. He has a lovely wife and two sons under two that fill him with joy and rob him of sleep. When he's not crafting a story, he enjoys shooting — hoops and guns.
Contact Us
Like what you read?
Fortunately for you (and our wallets, coincidentally), the story does not end here. To learn more about the next installment in the Last Colony series and read our blog, please visit WRHunt.com.
Also, don’t forget to leave a book review on www.Amazon.com. If you didn’t like the book, leave a review anyway! Maybe you can teach us how to do our jobs a little better.
And now, for a glimpse into Book 2…
Book 2 Preview
The man who climbed out of the tunnel earlier that evening would not have been recognized by his own mother. His clothes were torn in several places, his hair disheveled. He was missing one of his front teeth. But the most remarkable thing was the blood that stained his arms, the front of his shirt, even his face. It was too much blood to be his own. He looked as if he had been held by his feet and dipped into a vat of ketchup.
If his mother had been there, and if she had been able to stomach the sight long enough to see past the blood, the second thing she noticed would have been the eyes. They were flat, more like a mediocre painter’s rendition than the real thing. They shifted side to side, listless, not searching so much as drifting with the leftover energy of an adrenaline high.
Though the sun was half hidden behind the horizon, the man raised a hand to ward off the reddish light. For a little while he stood there, like the dazed survivor of an automobile accident, unable to make sense of his sensory information. His mind was caught on a carousel that spun his thoughts in circles. His hand, which clutched a meat tenderizer still dripping blood, kept jerking upward like it wanted to swing at something. His lips twitched at words.
He knew some time had passed because the sun was now completely gone. He lowered his hand, turned, and began walking again. He did not have any particular destination in mind, but rather he walked because his body told him it was the appropriate thing to do.
Even this feeble effort, however, was soon interrupted. The dead body of a horse stretched across his path. He contemplated the animal’s glassy eyes and the bullet hole in its gut as he raised and lowered the meat tenderizer. Some instinct ordered him to splatter the horse’s brains on the road. After all, the animal might only be pretending to be dead. It might spring to its feet when his back was turned, falling on him with its powerful hooves.
Instead of obeying this instinct, however, he lifted his eyes and beheld the rest of the carnage strewn across the road. Some great battle had clearly been fought here. The bodies of both horses and men lay in pools of blood on the asphalt, a scene frozen in the gray twilight.
The man was still studying this battlefield when movement caught his attention. Something was breaking the pattern of the trees at the side of the road. The man, at first rooted in the midst of the carnage, reluctantly crossed the road and shuffled into the trees, following glimpses of blue that bled into the shadows of the evening.
“Who’s there?” the figure said, spinning around to face the man. It was a young girl.
The meat tenderizer in the man’s hand began to twitch.
_____
How long she had been wandering among the trees, she could not remember. The forest was eternal. The jagged, fissured bark hemmed her in, met her at every turn, led her on in circles. She had taken to breaking off pieces of bark from the trees to mark them, but it was little use. Every time she felt such marks on the surface of a tree, she doubted whether they had been made by her or some creature before her. Maybe she was really feeling the scar left by an angry bear, or the scrape of a moose’s antlers.
When she heard the first footfall, she pretended it was only a pine cone landing in the soft litter of needles that covered the forest floor. Then came another, crackling the dry needles underfoot, and she knew it was following her. Maybe it was the bear that had marked the tree, or a moose. Or maybe it was one of the people she had heard fighting down at the road. She hoped it was not one of the people. An animal, if it meant her any harm, would deal with her quickly. It might even be painless. But a human might not show her such kindness. She had learned long ago there was no more dangerous animal in the world than man.
“Who’s there?” she said, spinning around. The stranger did not answer. She could hear his breathing, however, a sound that whistled slightly against his teeth.
“I don’t have anything,” she said. “Why don’t you just…just go, okay? Leave me alone.”
The stranger still did not answer. The girl crossed her arms, as much to warm herself as to take a defensive posture. She was thinking of Allen Renfrew, the man who had adopted her as his own after she was taken from the parents who had never really wanted her. That, at least, was what she had always told herself about them, because it was difficult to reconcile the way they had treated her with any blush of true affection.
She imagined that, in the invisible space at her side, Allen was standing there with his own arms crossed over his chest. From a holster at his waist hung a six-shooter, like the Peacemaker John Wayne used in the movies, and his hand was just itching to draw on the stranger standing only a short distance away.
The girl, of course, knew this was no more than a flight of fancy…yet there was an air of reality to the vision that caused her to press a ha
nd to her temple, wondering whether the blow to the back of her head, which had caused her blindness, had rattled the rest of her brain as well. Who knew what loose parts might be rattling around up there.
Another footfall crunched the needles.
“Just leave me alone,” she whispered as the pain in her head increased, thrumming with every pulse of blood. “Just—” She did not finish. As she tried to take a step back, the world - that panorama of color and beauty that had been reduced to a blur of grays and reds - revolved around her, and then the ground rose and she felt the prick of pine needles against her arms.
_____
She woke to find herself being dragged by her arm across the forest floor. She kicked her feet, she screamed words she would not later remember, she pulled her arm but the man’s hand was a steel vise.
Then, just as she marshaled her strength for one desperate tug, the hand released her. She felt warmth at her side. Rolling on her hip, she saw reddish color and reached out her hands.
“Fire,” she marveled, as if speaking the word would prove its reality. “You built a fire.” As she hunched over the flames, warming bones brimming with cold, a delicious smell filled her nostrils.
“What is that?” she whispered as her mouth began to salivate. She could hardly credit her senses.
“Meat,” a throaty voice answered, placing something warm and greasy in her hand. She nibbled the chunk of meat, unconvinced it could be as good as it smelled. It was even better than it smelled. She wolfed it down.
“More?” she asked, hearing the piteous note in her own voice but not caring just now.
In answer, a whole steak was placed in her hand. She did not know what kind of meat it was (Horse, her mind told her, you are eating a horse!), but she knew it was tasty and would strengthen her body, and that was all she needed.
When she had eaten enough to dull the edge of her desperate hunger, she sat back and licked her fingers, warm and content as she had not been since Allen was killed.
“My name’s Jenny,” she said, listening to the cracking of branches as the man fed the flames. “Who are you?”
Moments passed. She gave up on expecting an answer, but that was okay. She was warm, fed, no longer wandering the forest in circles. Whoever this man might be, and whatever his intentions, he had saved her. He had earned the right to be reticent.
The man cleared his throat. When he spoke, there was that slight whistling sound again.
“My name,” he said, “is Meatloaf.”
Brothers (The Last Colony Book 1) Page 23