Shadow Walker

Overland Trading

"Hancock."

Dec leapt backwards, half expecting another attack from the Northerner. He'd been jumpy all shift, kept seeing Rain's glossy raven hair in every plastic wrapped pallet and expecting her knife at his neck at every unexpected hiss of machinery. But his name had come the mouth of Tim, his supervisor, and his hands flew behind his back to hide the incriminating light of his palm pod.

Tim was the last person he wanted to see right then. He'd snuck around the corner of A building to call Tommy—Their argument had been playing on his mind since the night before and he had to know if Tommy was still mad at him. Plus, he needed to tell someone about his encounter with Rain. But Tim had a knack for catching people wagging off. Like Dec's dung beetle senses, he had a nose for complacence.

"Boss wants to see you once you've finished with that load," Tim said.

Dec's breath hitched. "About what?"

Tim thumped his chest, hacked up a lump of phlegm, then swallowed it again. "Dunno. I'm just delivering the message." He leaned on the frame of the roller door as though to catch his breath and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. Tim, straight arrow Tim, looked as though he'd had a big night as well.

"Anyway. Boss'll be in his office." Tim said as he pushed off the door. "And don't let me see you on your palm pod again."

Dec watched him go, eyes narrowing on the pendulum swing of Tim's dirty blonde rat's tail against his high vis jacket and the ungainly sway of his walk that made it seem like he had uneven legs. Everything about Tim was infuriating. He was an inexplicable choice of supervisor—useless at heavy lifting, wretched at problem solving, couldn't back a truck between two lines to save his life. But he was a stickler for the rules, obsessive about protocols, and the biggest rat Dec had ever met. He had no doubt his attempt at a phone call would go straight back to their boss.

Stanley. What did Stanley want? He'd never been called into Stanley's office before. He didn't even think Stanley knew who he was, except for a faceless name on a payslip. He cast his mind over the last month. How many shifts had he missed? Three. Surely that wasn't cause for a formal warning. And he'd given more than forty-eight hours notice on each occasion. Besides, he was a good worker. Hardly ever mixed up orders. Never broke boxes like the other pickers. Had never been caught on his phone ... until now.

Worry swept aside any thoughts of Tommy and Rain as he made his way back to the docking station, cutting through the corner of the carpark, past the stencilled black letters on the side of the main shed reading, 'Overland Trading.' He remembered how he'd felt when he'd first visited the warehouse to drop off his job application almost two years ago. He'd been stunned frozen by the enormity of the site, which encompassed an entire block of the industrial hillocks in Blackforest Range. He remembered staring, mouth agape, at the constant flow of triple road trains, trucks and semis, the two storey high beamed rooftops, the pallets stacked in dizzying rows, the shiny conveyor belts carrying boxes covered in official labels—dangerous, toxic, fragile. He even got to witness a van arrive via armoured guard, its contents unloaded and locked in the secure area behind bars.

He remembered telling Tommy about it later, explaining how Overland Trading was the main cross-docking site for the exchange of Southern and Northern produce in and out of Atunda. He told Tommy his job would be to pick and pack the goods and load them for distribution to local suppliers, or to be sent to the docks for shipping. He said it all with a proud puff of the chest, using the fancy terminology he'd heard others use on his trial shift. Tommy had scoffed and told Dec he was whoring himself to a government job, which was as good as riding a Northerner's cock. When he'd asked Tommy what made him any better, accepting the monthly Nocturnal incentive payments without blinking an eye, that shut Tommy up.

The job lost its bearability within a month. After he'd learnt everything there was to know about the pick and pack, he asked Tim if he could get his truck licence so he might be able to try his hand at deliveries. Tim just looked at him as though he'd asked for permission to take a shit in the middle of the conveyor belt. He didn't dare enquire about a promotion after that and noticed some of the pickers had been in the same job for longer than they'd been Nocturnal, and still hadn't moved so much as from the A shed to the B shed.

And that wasn't the worst of it. The thing that pissed Dec off the most was the fact that while Nocturnals did all the heavy labour at night, Daylighters came in and processed the digital paperwork from the comfy air-conditioned offices during the day—their excuse being it was cooler in the factory at night and more conducive to productivity. That might've been a valid reason during summer, but in winter, when Dec's fingers were too cold to lift boxes, or even grasp his picking slip, the excuse fell like a hammer on a bruise.

Dec reached the docking station, grabbed his picking slip from the wall and made his way to a forklift. As he turned the starter key, a pain shot through his fingers and he pulled his hand away. Examining his fingertips, he noticed they were red—the skin slightly raised where Dirk's note had singed him the night before. He must've been too drunk, or too shocked to notice it until now. Now, it was proof that last night had happened—that it wasn't just some fiction he'd conjured in his drunken mind.

Rain flashed in his eyes, the gloss of her hair, the vivid scar on her neck, the almond core colour of her skin. He shook his head, and tried to focus on the picking slip, which vibrated on the dashboard, numbers blurring against the whirr of the electric motor. His vision waned, crossed, then refocused. He realised he was exhausted, hadn't eaten or slept properly in almost three nights.

He slapped his face.

Get on, he told himself and releasing the footbrake on the forklift, he gripped the raised knob on the steering wheel with his good hand and levered the accelerator using the flat palm of his other. With careful precision, he lined up the forklift prongs with the first palate while, in his head, selecting the first code on his picking slip A 05 04 02 for building A, aisle 23, section 4, level 2. Easing the vehicle into a slow roll, he picked a path down the narrow aisle marked on the factory floor in neon orange tape. His ability to remember his entire list of picking codes after looking at them only once was a skill he didn't realise he'd had until he started working at Overland. Too bad it hadn't amounted to a pay raise.

He lowered the palate into place and scanned the barcode. Machine 17: Base plate, frame, steel mesh, fan, the label said. Sounded like computer parts again. How many computer parts did Atunda need? It was all he'd been unloading lately. Computer parts and optic frames. And he had no better clue what the latter could be.

He shook his head. It wasn't his job to question the orders, just to move them. So, he reversed the forklift back through the aisle towards the docking site with the skill of someone who'd made that trip so many times, he could do it in his sleep. As he went to load another palate onto the forklift, he heard shouting from behind a parked van in the adjacent docking site and slowed to listen.

"Do you know how much each of these boxes is worth?" Tim was yelling at Grubber. No surprise there. By the sounds of it, Grubber had lost control of his forklift and run one of the prongs into the side of the stationary van.

"I'm sorry," Grubber said. "It won't happen again."

"You will be when I tell Stanley about this."

"I-I can't lose me job. Please."

"Who said anything about losing your job?" Tim said, voice growing hoarse as he tried to raise it. "I'm going to check over these boxes and if I find any have been damaged, you're going to be working for free for a very long time to pay back the damage."

"I got kids."

"Should've thought about them before you —"A bout of coughing cut him off mid-sentence and the pitch of it reminded Dec of Adele's in the weeks before they'd known she had more than just the common cold. Before they'd known about the desert sickness. He thought about Tim's red eyes, and the way he'd leaned on the shed to catch his breath after he'd caught Dec on his phone.

Maybe he was being paranoid. There was only a few dozen reported cases in Atunda so far, with no link between them, and no proof that the virus was contagious. Tim was probably coming down with nothing but a common cold. An unseasonable summertime flu. He tried to settle his mind with this while he filled the rest of the packing order, steering his forklift the long way around the aisles to avoid Tim and Grubber.