MoonFall (18 page)

“We can still do this ma’am,” Lily said as she wrapped a bandage around Mason’s wounded arm. She looked like a kid playing at doctors and nurses, so petite and fresh faced, Mason looking down at her like she was the sweetest thing in the whole world.

Footsteps and howling voices approached from the way they had come.

“In here.” Ferguson held open the door of a nearby house. They all hurried inside and she closed the door behind them, sliding the bolt into place and peering out around the corner of a curtain.

The noises grew, footsteps approaching the house accompanied by the sound of crashing windows. Someone rattled the door handle, but when it wouldn’t open they gave up. Then the window exploded in a shower of glass, Ferguson ducking back away from the flying slithers and the daylight pouring in. They all raised their weapons, ready for a desperate trapped stand, but the Dionites kept moving, the sound of them now receding on up the street. The window had been mindless destruction. Their hiding place remained intact.

“Now they really are going for the stores,” Ferguson said. “No other reason to go that way.”

Burns nodded. “Then we really need to stop them.”

“Or what?” Noah asked. “They take a few tools, some rope, try to run off with your lumber?”

“Food,” Burns said. “Old food, fresh food, recently preserved food. You think we feed a town this big without controlling those supplies? Or just by what we can scavenge? They destroy our supplies and they won’t have to do this again – we’ll be dead by the end of next winter.”

“Well, we’ve still got a plan, right?” Noah said. “Only this time let’s not wait long enough for any surprises.”

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they marched down the street that he’d seen the central stores before. Not that he’d had the first idea what he was looking at, just two cylindrical towers rising up in the center of the town, but in retrospect they’d always looked a little like the granaries he’d seen out west. He wondered if they were really full of grain – precious grain that could be made into bread or porridge or best of all beer. Or was that just a good shape to be storing food in, or an easy one to build, or some kind of tradition that kept farming folks comfortable knowing that their food was still good?

It turned out that what he knew about farming couldn’t even have filled Blood Dog’s tiny mind. But at least he knew a little about how to fight, and he was mighty glad to be carrying a sword rather than a ploughshare.

Burns stopped them again two streets over from the stores. The Dionites seemed to be almost festive in their approach to the place, yelling and chanting and kicking up all kinds of chaos, beating their weapons against the towers to make a racket like the world’s biggest tin drum.

“Noah’s right,” she said, and he couldn’t quite read the look she gave him. “We need to do this full on or not at all. They outnumber us five to one, and Apollo’s survival depends upon us.

“Lily, we won’t be able to hold back and protect you. Get to a rooftop now. When we attack, look for anyone who the others are following and take them out. It may not be so blatant as them giving orders – just watch for who takes the lead. Failing that, try to stop the rest of us from getting surrounded or attacked from behind.”

“Yes sir.” Lily saluted and ran off between the buildings.

“Mason, you still up for this?” Burns gestured towards the blond guy’s injured arm.

Mason looked around from watching Lily run off, nodded to Burns.

“Uhuh,” was all he said.

“OK then, you stick with Vostok and Ferguson,” Burns said “Try to find a flank you can fight if they’ve even got such a thing. Back up if you’re getting surrounded, but press in again first chance you get. Understood?”

They all nodded. Mason took a swig from his hip flask, and this time Burns refrained from comment.

“What about me?” Noah asked.

“We’ve got the best job of all,” Burns said, drawing her battered sword. “We’re going straight for the center.”

“Uh, I know I ain’t no sergeant, but that sure doesn’t sound like much of a plan,” Noah said, imagining himself charging head-on into thirty tattooed lunatics with clubs and axes. “Won’t we just get ourselves surrounded and, you know, killed?”

“Not if we do it right. We’re going straight for the leader, or anyone who looks even vaguely like a leader. No hesitation, no defenses, just straight in. They’ve acted like wild animals so far, let’s hope they stick with that. Enough scatter before us we can get straight through, chop off the head.”

“I thought that’s what Lily was for.”

“Hopefully, yes. But are you willing to bet your life on her getting the right savage before she runs out of arrows?”

“Rather that than charge straight to my death!”

“Well tough. It’s kill or be killed now – we save those stores or we settle down for a long, slow death. So, if you’re with us like you say you are then you need to help me take these bastards down. And if not…”

She turned her back on him.

“If not then I’ll do this alone,” she said.

Noah looked down at Bourne. A gun was all very well for company and it was all he’d had for a mighty long time, but a gun didn’t talk back to you, it didn’t save you when you were cornered, it didn’t bless you out when you were being a chicken shit coward instead of a real man. Sure, that last one might have suited some folks fine, but those folks hadn’t been raised as one of the Brennan boys, or seen their brothers die just for doing what looked right.

“Here.” He held the Katana out to her, took the other blade from her hand. “You know what you’re doing with one of these. Me, I’ll just be scaring them off long enough for you to do some real damage.”

 
“Thanks.” She smiled and took his sword.

“Just no more beatings, OK?” he said.

“Deal.”

She looked around the group, catching each of their gazes in turn.

“We might not all live through this,” she said. “But Apollo will. Civilization will. And that’s bigger than any of us.”

Once they had the Dionites in sight, Burns and Noah waited two minutes for Vostok’s group to find their flank. Noah wouldn’t have called it the longest two minutes of his life, not even with all the howling and banging and screaming as the Dionites tried to batter down the doors to the store with the knowledge that, if they caught sight of him, they’d come running over and maybe tear him to shreds. But he’d had more comfortable times since he came to Apollo, and that was really saying something.

“Ready?” Burns whispered at last.

“Ready,” he replied.

They ran.

Not away from the Dionites this time, though that might have made a hell of a lot more sense, but straight towards them, weapons raised, Burns taking the lead. The nearest Dionite turned to them as they came, but she was too late. The Katana slashed clean through her belly and she fell to the ground in a tangle of guts and twitching limbs.

Shouts and clashing weapons announced that the other Apollonian group had found a flank to attack. Vostok’s Russian battle cry was all the more fearsome for meaning nothing to Noah.

Two more Dionites ran towards them, spears held out in front of them. The thought flashed through Noah’s mind that he had no idea how to reach them without getting skewered. But something else flashed past his head and one fell with an arrow through his eye. The other had just enough time to glance over in alarm before Burns had knocked his spear aside, grabbed the shaft with her spare hand and cut him down with her sword.

“That one,” she said, pointing towards a Dionite woman with red tattoos and a club with old saw blades sticking out of its head.

They ran towards the Dionite, knocking others aside rather than stopping to fight them, Noah hacking and flailing at whoever came in front of him, all the time dreading the blow that might come from behind. All they had now was momentum, and there was no point waiting for that blow. He had to trust Burns, trust Lily, trust the plan, and trust that now he didn’t have other options.

The Dionite swung her club at Burns, who flung herself aside, rolling across the road and to her feet with sword raised. Noah charged in behind, screaming for all he was worth and swinging his sword. The Dionite easily dodged and swung around with her own attack.

The blow knocked his sword aside, jarring his shoulder and numbing his fingers, but he managed to keep his grip. A second blow skimmed his chest, one of the saw blades digging into his shoulder and wrenched out in a spurt of blood and ragged red pain. Noah heard more than felt himself scream.

Other Dionites were closing in. The alpha raised her club to finish off Noah.

Burns leaped. Her Katana swept down through the Dionite’s arms, hacking one off and leaving the other a dangling, ragged mess. As the woman stared wide-eyed at the ruin, Burns swept the blade back up and through her neck.

The Dionite fell in a bloody heap on the ground.

Noah felt something against his back – the killing blow he had feared. Strange how it seemed softer after the saw-blade in the chest. He twisted around to at least see who had killed him, instead found a Dionite sliding to the ground, an arrow in his back, his club brushing rather than crushing Noah as he slid down dead.

He looked up at the other Dionites. They were running, the pack scattering in ones and twos down side streets.

They’d got the alpha.

He clutched at his shoulder, sank in pain to the ground. How many times today had he done this now? When did today even begin and last night end?

Burns was crouched at his side, bandages in her hand.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “Probably not as bad as it feels. Messy but shallow.”

She pulled out a knife, cut the sleeve from his jacket and started binding the wound with the expertise of long experience. It hurt like hell as she pulled the ragged skin into place and strapped it down, but at least the bleeding stopped.

“There.” She tied off the bandage. “Get it looked at when you can – don’t want it getting infected.”

Noah stretched out his arm, gently at first and then with growing confidence.

“Don’t even hurt so much,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Come on,” she said. “They’re not all dead. We need to chase them off for good before they find a new leader.”

She held out a hand and helped him to his feet.

“Vostok?” she called out. “Ferguson?”

“Here.” It was Vostok’s voice, deep and eastern, but with all the solemnity a single word could carry. And when they rounded the corner to find him Noah saw why.

Vostok stood over a pair of dead Dionites, blood spattered all over him. Mason was behind him, leaning against a wall as he took the weight of an injured leg, and Lily stood in the doorway beside him, a length of pipe in her hand, her quiver empty at her side.

Ferguson lay in the street, tangled in with the Dionite bodies, her eyes staring blankly up at them.

“She got cut off,” Vostok said. With one hand he was clutching a medallion that hung around his throat, a small icon of a hammer on a chain. The blood on his fingers sank into the runes engraved on it, making them stand out darkly. “I try to get through, but…”

Burns knelt down and closed Ferguson’s eyes, moved her hand in a circle over the dead soldier’s face. The others made the same gesture over their own chests.

“Gods guide her,” Burns said.

Noah had never believed in multiple gods, wasn’t sure he’d ever really believed in the single one. But as he looked down in sorrow at Ferguson’s body he found himself hoping that there was something more, and that whatever it was acted kindly towards the woman who’d so briefly been his comrade in arms.

They’d been together an hour, and already he felt closer to these people than he had to anyone since Jeb and Pete. Was that another baboon-crazy-world moment, or was it just how being human worked when you had to face the worst of what life had to offer?

“We need to move.” Burns rose. “Keep running them down so they can’t regroup. Any of you who can run, you’re with me. Anyone else head back to the town square. This isn’t over yet.”