Shadow Walker

Confrontation

He didn't realise how far he'd retreated into the shadows until he backed into something hard, pointed—too cold to belong to a jut in the sandstone wall. His mind flew to the best possible scenario—that he'd backed into the padlock on a gated fence. But the object in question was too precisely placed, and followed him when he shifted slightly to the right. When he heard an expulsion of breath, and felt the press of the pointed object move to the small of his back, he knew ...

Slowly, he turned and found himself nose-to-nose with a young boy who, by the light of the moon which had finally forced its way through the fog, was barely his sister's age and wearing the standard blue overalls of a factory worker. The cuffs of his pants dragged on the ground and his shirt dangled past his wrists. The reflective strips on his high vis vest flashed in the darkness, as did his eyes which had an anaphylactic puff of Desert Sickness about them. He coughed, sending a glob of half-clotted blood flying from his nose and catching the curve of his upper lip. In his hands was a sleek, rifle, matt black on the barrel, gliding to a glossy walnut stock end. It was a magnificent weapon, much too heavy for the boy, and much too powerful for firing at close range.

"Try anything n'ill shoot." The boy's voice was so raspy, it seemed like it had come from the smoke-hollowed larynx of an old man rather than the twelve-year-old he appeared. It was confirmation of what Dec feared. The boy was sick. And a desert-dusted mind was one that could too easily pull a trigger.

He raised his hands and saw Teegan do the same out the corner of his eye, taut strings of panic making puppets of their bodies. He heard himself say, "We're not going to hurt you," and registered how his voice rang weak and unconvincing.

The boy's puffy eyes narrowed, and his lips upturned into a cavity-riddled smile. He said, "Rat-holing from the demolition mission?" and did a half nod in the direction the construction vehicles had gone.

Dec frowned, demolition mission? and kept his eyes on the rifle, refraining from saying his thoughts out loud. Something told him it wouldn't be a good idea to let the boy know how little he knew of what had been happening in the city. "Why? Are you hiding from them?" he said carefully.

The boy tossed his head and laughed, sending droplets of sweat flying from his overgrown fringe and splattering Dec's face. His momentary distraction gave Dec a chance to catch his breath and find some rationale between his adrenaline-charged thoughts. He caught a flash of gold embellishment on the body of the gun, next to the boy's trigger finger. It was the deer head insignia, marking it as the same series design as the one his step dad used to use to blast foxes and the occasional rabbit to smithereens. A .22 bolt action rimfire rifle, requiring a license to own and which should've been kept securely under lock and key.

The bolt handle was pointing upwards.

And all of a sudden, the dream-like uncertainty that had been following him around since the memory recall with Rain lifted. As he stared down the barrel of that gun, he realised it didn't matter if he could make himself invisible, or recover other people's memories with a little bit of meditation, or hear voices. He couldn't rely on fancy tricks he couldn't control when his mum and sister needed him and when his city was on the verge of a civil war. He had nothing but his scrawny sun-deprived self, and a random scrap of knowledge he'd managed to retain from all those years ago on his farm.

With a surge of adrenaline, he gripped the barrel of the gun and twisted it out of the boy's hands with a surety that surprised even himself. In another swift movement, he had the gun against his shoulder, locked and loaded, barrel pointing toward the boy, whose mouth opened in a strangled cry. If shooting game with his stepdad on the farm had taught Dec anything, it was that the weapon wouldn't fire if the bolt handle was in the upright safety position.