MoonFall Read online

  A woman on wheelbarrow detail lost control of her barrow on the rough ground and spilled broken bricks all around Blood Dog’s feet. He leaped at her, fists flying, spitting the vilest curses Noah had ever heard. The woman darted away, her face a rictus of terror, and it was only when Blood Dog’s chain ran up short that he was kept from chasing after her. He stopped for a moment, looking back at the two-foot iron peg with which the guards had fixed him to a spot, then went back to work, glaring around at everyone as he set to swinging once more with the pick.

  “He bit a man’s ear off last week,” said Jen, the round faced woman next to Noah on the chain. “Spat it out into the face of one of the guards. Took six guards to restrain him, and I heard two of them are still in the infirmary.”

  “He always been this way?” Noah asked.

  “More or less.” Jen leaned on her shovel, glanced around in case the guards were watching, but they were too preoccupied to care about the prisoners going a little slow, half of them guarding a street thief while another patrol finished chasing his accomplice. “He’s gotten worse the last few weeks on account of his trial’s coming up. He’s up for death, and no-one’s taking odds against it.”

  “What did he do?” Noah wasn’t really sure he wanted to know what atrocities his cellmate was capable of, not while there was no escaping him at night. But at the same time he couldn’t resist scratching at the scab of curiosity.

  “What didn’t he do? Blood Dog ran half the crime in Apollo before Molly Burns brought him down. Ran guns, drugs, meds. Put the squeeze on businesses. Killed folks for money or for fun. They say he killed his first man when he was sixteen, sliced him open with a shard of glass. Maybe that’s true and maybe it ain’t, but criminal life got pretty exciting in Apollo after he arrived, both for good and for bad.”

  “He been inside long?”

  “Long enough to kill five more, including a guard. That’s how everyone knows he’s going to hang and burn. Everyone except Blood Dog at least. Though even he’s sane enough that the prospect of a trial’s turned him a little crazier.”

  As she spoke, Blood Dog picked up a chunk of masonry as broad as his own chest. He raised it above his head and then flung it at one of his fellow prisoners. The man only just jumped clear, the block smashing a wall next to where he’d stood. Even as the guards ran over to beat him down, Blood Dog laughed like a fierce jungle beast.

  The guards beat Blood Dog until he stopped resisting, then they separated him off from the rest of his chain gang and three of them led him back in through the town gate.

  Noah glanced around. There were only three guards now covering seventeen prisoners, plus the street thief the other patrol had brought in, a gangling youth with no shoes and an idiot grin. If there was ever a time to escape, this was it.

  He waited until he was sure that the guards were preoccupied then shifted his chain, putting a link up on the wall he was breaking down.

  “Won’t do you no good,” Jen said.

  “You saying you ain’t in?” Noah hadn’t planned on springing anyone but himself, but better an accomplice than someone who might call the guards.

  “I’ll try anything.” She shifted around to better block the guards’ view of Noah. “You get them two links there, reckon we can both slide off this chain and be gone.”

  “Alright then.” Noah hefted his pick, slammed it down against the chain. The brick beneath it crumbled but the metal barely showed a scratch.

  “Keep going,” Jen murmured. “No point giving up now.”

  Noah swung the pick again and again, hoping that he was doing more damage than it looked like.

  “Hold a second,” Jen said.

  Noah looked around. The guard patrol that had brought in the street thief was back, and they had another captive. Kicking and squirming in the grip of a muscled soldier was a scrawny teenage girl dressed in ragged clothes and with a mop of brown hair flying around her face.

  “You know who that is?” Noah asked.

  “Nope.” Jen shook her head. “But the Elders said there were ten thousand souls in Apollo at the last census, and I sure as shit ain’t had time to meet them all.”

  “I think she was following me the day I was brought in.” Noah tilted his head, trying to get a better look past Burns. If she wasn’t the same girl then, she was mighty similar looking.

  “Reckon half the town will have been watching you,” Jen said. “Gotta get our kicks somehow and seeing a Dionite brought in sometimes has to do.”

  Noah suddenly perked up. He’d been such an idiot. Why hadn’t he just asked the other prisoners what he wanted to know? If his captors knew what a Dionite was, and the Dionites knew what a Dionite was, why wouldn’t the other people around here?

  “These Dionites,” he said. “What are they–”

  “Back to work prisoner,” one of the patrol soldiers growled as they walked past.

  Noah obediently got back to it, pick rising and falling on the pile of rubble and the chain draped across it. Was it his imagination or was he starting to wear through one side? He focused on the task rather than talking, not wanting to do anything that might risk drawing attention to him and Jen.

  He kept his head down as Burns walked past them too, dragging the new prisoner by what passed for a collar on her stained and tattered t-shirt. Keeping a careful eye on them in case Burns came back, Noah swung his pick in a dramatic but ineffective display of work, hammering at broken and easily shifted debris for the biggest impression of labor.

  To his surprise, Burns didn’t drag the girl back to town or to some holding cell for an interrogation and a beating. Instead she dragged her aside into the relatively upright ruins of a garage.

  “What you doing?” Jen hissed as he moved forward a few steps, the chain stretching out behind him, so he could spy on them through his own set of ruins.

  “Just curious,” he replied. Whether it was the curiosity of a man interested in a woman or of a prisoner wanting leverage over his captor Noah wasn’t sure, but curiosity sure was the thing right now.

  He’d half expected Burns to be laying down some sort of illicit beating, or shaking the girl down for bribes in return for letting her go. Sure, Burns had struck him so far as the upright type, and hearing her mentioned in relation to Blood Dog’s downfall added to that image, but Noah’s worldview held room for suspicion of everyone. There were no surprises left in the world, and very few righteous souls. Noah knew he wasn’t among them, why expect any different from Burns?

  Yet here was a surprise right before his eyes. The woman who had beaten him bloody, who had brought down the most dangerous killer in Apollo, was smoothing down the hair of a street urchin using her own neck scarf to wipe dirt and a smear of blood from the girl’s face and examining her scrapes and bruises with a look of concern that Noah had previously thought beyond her. They were talking quietly to each other. He couldn’t hear what it was about, but once she was done cleaning Burns pulled a loaf of flatbread and a couple of apples from a pouch on her belt and handed them over. The girl munched on an apple with such enthusiasm that Noah wondered if she’d eaten all week. He knew that desperate, empty feeling, and by the looks of her, the girl did too.

  So this was the real Burns – not the angry woman who’d laid into him in an interrogation room, but someone caring and compassionate, maybe even one of the real good guys. It had been a long time since Noah had met one of the real good guys, and now he wanted to get to know her even more.

  Burns glanced around, peering back towards where her fellow guards stood. Apparently satisfied that no-one was watching, she hugged the girl who squeezed her tightly back. Then Burns sent her scurrying off through the ruins back around the edge of town, away from their guard detail and the other patrol.

  As she stepped out of the ruined garage, Burns glanced over towards the ruins where Noah stood. He ducked back behind the remains of a wall, then started pounding at it with his pick, determined to look busy.

  She rounded th
e corner, stepped up next to Noah, and peered over his shoulder towards where she’d been a minute before. Then she turned to face him.

  “Think you’re smart, huh?” she said.

  “My Mama told me so,” Noah replied, trying to look innocent. He knew from past experience that he was no good at it, but practice made perfect, right? “But then our Mamas are biased, ain’t they?” Her face told him she wasn’t going for the innocent look- better try another move instead. “You got any kids, Sergeant Burns?”

  He shot a pointed look back towards the ruined garage. Burns narrowed her eyes.

  “Whatever you think you saw, you didn’t.” She looked from him to his chains and then down to Jen, who was trying very hard not to look like she was listening as she shoveled rubble into a barrow.

  Burns squatted next to the chain, ran a finger along the battered link where Noah had been making his bid for freedom. Then she looked at the head of his pick, some points on its blade freshly gleaming where they’d been battered against other metal. She rose and leaned in close to Noah.

  “I guess we both have secrets now,” she murmured. “Let’s keep it that way, huh?”

  She turned and strode off back towards the other guards, calling out over her shoulder.

  “I’ll be keeping a close eye on you two.”

  “Nice work, lover boy.” Now it was Jen’s turn to glare at Noah.

  He shrugged.

  “Are you any less free than you were this morning?” he asked.

  “I suppose not.” She hefted a last shovel of rubble into the barrow, looked around for someone to wheel it away. “But what was all the whispering about?”

  “Reckon I’m in love,” Noah said.

  “And her?”

  “Reckon she’s in hate. But I’ll grow on her.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Then how do you feel about walks under starlight?”

  Jen glanced over at a guard striding angrily towards them, lifted her shovel and moved as far as she could from Noah.

  “Reckon I feel like digging.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LAST NIGHT

  NOAH’S IDEA TO ask other prisoners about the Dionites had arrived at a lousy time. Blood Dog had carried on picking fights after they brought him back to the jail, putting two more inmates in the infirmary and leaving evidence in the form of bloodstains on the canteen floor.

  This had put all the guards on edge. They’d vented their tensions by beating down on any hint of trouble, from fights between prisoners to inmates looking at them funny. The prisoners, feeling the pressure of scrutiny and the pain of the guards’ clubs, had closed down into their defensive cliques, no-one talking to anyone who wasn’t already in their gang. And Noah was in a gang of one.

  It didn’t help that Burns was making a point of watching him and Jen, and even got other officers in on it.

  “I do not know what you do to her,” Vostok said as Noah passed him in the hall, “but Sergeant Burns, she has us all on you now, yes?”

  He laughed and slapped Noah on the shoulder, though Noah didn’t see much that was funny about it himself.

  “Sounds about right,” he agreed.

  Vostok seemed a decent guy, but he was still undoubtedly a guard. Two minutes later, Noah saw him hit a guy for refusing to get back into line. He figured that was what this place did to you – if it didn’t make you untrustworthy it made you untrusting, and either way it was just making you human. The good thing about prison was that there were no niceties painted over the top, creating the illusion that everything was happy and fluffy.

  Of course, the bad thing about prison was that there were no niceties painted over the top, keeping folks from screaming at each other or beating on each other or stealing each other’s food in the lunch line. The only thing holding back that barely contained layer of violence and mayhem was the threat of more violence and mayhem, which didn’t exactly set the tone for fun and relaxation.

  As he sat alone in his corner of the canteen, eating a stew that was more grit than vegetable and drinking water the guards had probably spat in, Noah watched the other inmates, trying to work out his next move, or at least what he could learn that might give him an edge. Knowledge was power, Mama used to say, and that was why she’d never put him or Jeb or Pete through school. She didn’t want the authorities getting power over her sons by planting their sorts of knowledge into their heads. She wanted them to learn things that mattered, things that were real, and above all she taught them to keep learning.

  So, Noah sat and watched. He was good at watching.

  When he was a kid he’d had a dream that his father was some kind of spy. After all, he worked for the government, and whatever he did it was all very secretive. It took him away from home for weeks at a time, and when he returned he couldn’t talk about what he’d done. That was something he impressed on the Brennan boys time and again – Pa worked with secret things and it was important, but he couldn’t tell them about it.

  Then he’d started reading thrillers, the same ones Pa kept on the shelves, and suddenly it all made sense. These secret agents and investigators, they were always traveling, always away from home, always doing things they couldn’t talk about. They had to be spies. Pa had to be a spy. And like so many impressionable kids, Noah wanted to be like the man in his life. So he wanted to be a spy.

  He raced through all those thrillers, learning as much craft as he could from them. He practiced it around town, watching folks covertly, following them up the street until they caught sight of him and told him to buzz off. Then he got on the internet and read all about spy craft and secret agents. It turned out that some of what was in the books wasn’t quite right. In fact, it turned out that spying was mostly pretty boring, and the skills involved didn’t seem a whole lot like the ones his Pa had. Whereas space shuttle engineers and the guys who built monster trucks, they had the real exciting jobs. Maybe he’d work with engines.

  Thus ended young Noah Brennan’s brief dreams of being a secret agent. But some of the skills stuck, and one of those was watching people, observing without drawing attention. He hunched over his stew and watched the canteen.

  Blood Dog’s friends were looking twitchy. Their leader wasn’t with them and that was giving them a taste of what was to come. They eyed each other with suspicion, but showed downright hostility towards the wider world, a world that was closing in, not giving them the safe space they were used to with their boss around.

  Jen seemed to be part of an Apollo town crew, like Blood Dog but not his gang. They’d dug in deepest in this defensive game of keeping heads down and weathering the day’s storm. The street thief who the patrol had brought round to the chain guards today, the one with the idiot look and the awkward limbs, was in among that crew, which told Noah something about Burns’ friend. She fit into the crime life of Apollo, but not the full-on thuggery of the town’s Blood Dogs. Why Burns would help even such a low level criminal was an intriguing question.

  Noah finished his stew and pushed the bowl away then picked up an apple. On close inspection it was worm-eaten and old enough to have gotten on the dried out and wrinkled side. But food was still food, and no-one was going to throw him a can of beans or a leg of fresh roasted lamb. Besides, if it was good enough for worms it was good enough for him, right?

  He took a bite, remembered that worms would eat dirt, but kept on chewing.

  While he ate, he watched the folks at the next table over. These were among the ones he’d pegged as Dionites, with all the bare flesh and tattoos. It flickered across his mind that Blood Dog and Burns both had tattoos too, but that didn’t seem like much of a connection. Blood Dog’s were crude, angry things. Burns’ at least shared beauty with the pictures like these folks wore, but they lacked their smooth flow or focus on plants and animals. These folks had a real back to nature theme in their tats, lots of trees and free flying birds and coiling snakes.

  Then it struck him, looking at a row of them, all hunched
over and with their backs turned to him. The snakes weren’t just a theme, they were a pattern, a symbol, the thing to make them stand out. Though the designs were different – some coiled around trees, some rising to strike, some just draped over their skin – there was a snake on the right shoulder of every man and woman at that table.

  His apple finished, Noah got up and walked around the other side of the Dionites on his way to return his tray. Sure enough, the folks along this side had snakes on their right shoulders too.

  Now all he needed to do was find Burns and show her that he didn’t have the snake. It might not get him a get out of jail free, but at least it might get him out of the unanswerable questions, make a start on getting him released.

  He put his tray on the counter and headed back towards his cell, humming a tune to himself.

  That humming lasted as far as the cell door and the guard who stood there, key in hand, waiting to let Noah in. She looked grim as the prison walls.

  “They giving us our own doorman now?” Noah asked, trying to keep his spirits up. But just seeing that tiny, cramped space, never mind the thought of being locked back inside, made his guts clench and his brain spin with dread.

  “Shut up and get inside.” The guard opened the door, shoved him through and hurriedly swung the door shut again.

  Looking back, Noah couldn’t help but notice that the rest of the cells were still open, the inmates not yet locked down for the night. He didn’t think that this extra security came on account of him, but it was sure going to mess with his state of mind.

  Blood Dog stood in the corner of the cell, smashing his fist repeatedly against the same stretch of wall.

  “Fuckers,” he growled. “Fuckers. Fuckers. Fuckers. Fuckers.”

  Noah stepped over to the bunks as quietly as he could. He could hardly avoid being seen in a seven foot cell, but he could at least try not to disturb the lunatic who bit off other men’s ears and slit their throats with glass.