MoonFall (22 page)

“Ain’t much of anything to go at,” Noah said, sighing out his own disappointment. “She ain’t overly affectionate, and that don’t give me much to work with.”

“Case you ain’t noticed, this ain’t a town for public displays of affection.” Mason sounded strangely mournful, and the others blinked at him in surprise. He shrugged. “Just sayin’.”

There was a pause as they all considered what was – by the standards of that afternoon – a deep and considerable insight. Mason was right, now that Noah thought about it. Not being around people, he’d gotten used to not being around folks showing their love, or even just their idle lust. But he’d been here over a month and he wasn’t sure he’d even seen a couple kissing in the street. It lent a whole extra significance to Molly taking his hand to reassure him at Jen’s execution, an extra significance he hadn’t known to respond to.

“Why d’you stay here Dimitri?” Noah asked. “You’re a decent guy, and this place, it’s kind of messed up.”

“What you mean?” Dimitri leaned forward, staring intently at him. “Is good place, Apollo. Best place.”

“But all these executions and sacrifices and shit.” Looked into his cup for guidance. “That ain’t right.”

“I tell you what is not right.” Dimitri rose and went to stand by the grubby window, peering out at the streets of Apollo. “Why I come to America…that is not right.

“I grow up in Moscow. Bad neighborhood. Full of gangsters. When I am twelve they try to recruit me. They use many children to carry messages, carry drugs, look out for police. They say to me ‘Dimitri, it is your time now, you make plenty money working for us’. But my father, he has brought me up to be honest man, so I say no. They go away, but they still watch me.

“When I am thirteen they come again. This time they say they will hurt me if I do not join them. I say no, but they beat me badly, put me in hospital. Is not good hospital. Is poor Russian hospital for poor Russian people.”

“Is that how you got your scar?” Noah asked, pointing at his chin.

Dimitri laughed.

“This? No!” he said. “This I get five years back, falling in ditch while hunting. Everybody laughs then, including me.”

“It was kinda funny,” Mason said. “He came rearin’ up out of this hole in the ground, covered in mud and leaves and shit, lookin’ like some kinda tree monster. Course we stopped laughing when we realized he was bleeding.”

He poured more drinks, standing up to refill Dimitri’s cup.

“When I am fourteen,” the Russian continued, “they come again. By then I am growing large, like bear. Makes me more useful. They say they will hurt my father, hurt my mother, hurt my sister if I do not join them. They tell my father this, to his face.

“That night my mother packs bags, my father telephones friend in government. We get papers, get tickets, fly to America to start again. No plan, nowhere to go, just start again. We are in America three weeks when moon breaks apart and society with it.

“Where I grew up, a man who murdered became rich, became powerful, maybe became politician, while people he hurt stayed in shitty concrete flat and drank vodka and kept quiet. In Apollo, man who murders is killed and everyone sees it. There is law. There is order. There is safety. This place is not messed up, the rest of world is.”

He knocked back the rest of his drink and looked out the window again. Then his face cracked into a smile.

“Noah my friend,” he said, “I think is time for you to sing.”

A moment later the door swung open and Molly walked in. She looked around at the three of them. And shook her head.

“Are any of you even halfway sober?” she asked.

They looked at each other, trying and failing not to laugh.

“We ain’t that bad,” Noah said. “Except maybe Dimitri. Ain’t that right, buddy?”

“Fuck you, Yankee,” Dimitri bellowed. “I open my heart to you and get this!”

He staggered to his chair, tried to sit down and fell ass first on the concrete floor. They all laughed again.

“How’d you know we’d be here?” Noah asked.

“Mason confiscated a bottle of booze off Red Coogan on Tuesday,” she said. “This is the first day off he’s had since, and this is where he always goes when he thinks it’s empty. Which it won’t be for much longer – Poulson’s got a meeting here with his sergeants in ten minutes, and he won’t be impressed with any of this.”

“Shit.” Mason slammed the stopper back into the near-empty bottle and collected the cups.

“Come on Dimitri,” he said, struggling to help the huge Russian up off the floor. “Time to get you home.”

The two of them staggered out the door, Dimitri resting an arm on the top of Mason’s head.

“Guess we should get going, too,” Noah said.

Molly hesitated, standing just inside the doorway, looking down at the floor.

“I wanted to ask you something first,” she said, quiet and hesitant.

“Rasmus ain’t got a meeting here, does he?” Noah asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes, but we’ve got a little time,” she said, closing the door and sitting down next to him. The old chair creaked beneath even her weight. Finally, she raised her eyes, looking straight into his. “Noah, do you think maybe you could stay? I know you’ve nearly finished healing, and you always said you were going to move on, but, well, maybe you could stay.”

She smiled nervously, reached out to touch his hand. He looked down at those fingers, almost as care-worn as his own, but still beautiful.

“I don’t know,” he said. “This place, it’s not me. All the people, all the noise, all that working together shit.”

“The people?” she said, her smile growing. “That’s your excuse? You just spent the afternoon getting drunk with those people, remember?”

“Hey, I ain’t drunk!” Now it was his turn to hesitate. “OK, maybe a little. But not proper drunk.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I know.” He let out a deep sigh. “And you’re right. There’s people here I like. Dimitri, Mason, Sophie, even you on your better days. But there’s folks like Poulson, too, and the Elders. And all this shit with the sacrifices and mystery of the Oracle. That really ain’t my thing. I like to know where I stand, and for that place not to include hacking folks up for gods.”

“But that’s part of what keeps Apollo safe,” Molly said, urgency rising in her voice. “What keeps it special. What makes us a place of order amidst this chaos.”

“I get that, really I do.”

He patted her hand and then rose to his feet, pacing slowly around the room with one hand on Bourne.

“Thing is, order ain’t for me.” He knew he meant it, but he could feel something else going on in the back of his mind. Some itch he couldn’t quite scratch. Some rebellious part that didn’t believe a word of it, that would accept all of this for her. It was a small part though. “At least not this much order. Not rations and work assignments and Sunday services. Not blood and death for the sake of safety. Not sacrificing a maybe innocent woman to keep the mob safe from others.”

“Please, Noah.” She rose and moved over to him, stood just an inch away looking up at him. “There’s so much more going on here. This place is hope, hope for the future, hope for humankind. There’s more going on than you’ve seen, more even than I’ve seen, and I’d explain it if I could, if I could even begin to do it justice. You can do so much good here. Please, stay for Apollo.”

“For Apollo?” he asked.

“And for me,” she whispered.

“If I stay,” he said, “and that’s a big if, but if I stay, then it’s on my terms. I need to understand what I’m getting into, what I’m working towards. I need to–”
 

The door handle rattled. Molly stepped swiftly back away from him as the door swung open and Poulson stepped inside.

“What are you doing here, Burns?” he asked. “And what’s he doing here?”

“Discussing the Dionites,” she said. “But we’re leaving now.”

Poulson sniffed the air as Noah passed and pulled a disapproving face.

“Discussing Dionites, huh,” he said.

Noah ignored him and kept on walking. He had bigger concerns than being caught drunk. He had to work out where his future lay.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-S
IX

T
HE
E
LDERS

“H
EY
B
RENNAN
!”

Noah looked from the scaffolding to see Miguel looking up at him, hands on hips, wearing the disgruntled expression he put on whenever something interrupted his carefully ordered routine of wall repairs. That expression was very seldom turned on Noah, whose skill with bricks and stone had quickly made him one of the foreman’s favorites. But today, it seemed, it was finally his fault.

“Get down here Brennan,” Miguel said. “Someone wants a word with you.”

He hung the cement bucket over the end of a scaffolding pole, wiped the remnants off his trowel and stowed it away in his tool belt. Miguel had given him the belt on the day they finished repairing the breach, when Noah agreed to come and join Miguel’s regular crew in their repair duties. It was less dramatic work than filling a great big hole in Apollo’s wall, but it was still satisfying. They were working their way slowly around the whole circle of the town’s defenses, looking for areas that were damaged or weak and repairing them. There was a degree of precision demanded by the work that Noah had lost over the years, or perhaps never had when he was a young laborer, and he enjoyed sharpening his skills.

He’d made it clear at the start that this was a temporary thing, that he’d be moving on when the time came and then Miguel would need to find somebody else. The foreman had made good-natured jokes about chaining him up if he tried to leave and it was good to feel that level of appreciation, but it brought a sense of pressure as well, of responsibility towards others that he hadn’t been burdened with in years.

He clambered down the scaffolding and to the street. The buildings around the area had been occupied pretty much since the Fall and been well maintained as a result. They’d also survived the Dionite attack unscathed, making this possibly the best kept part of the whole town. It made him wonder who lived here, whether people of privilege got to have the best homes or whether it was all down to opportunity and necessity. There was so much about Apollo still to work out, so much he hadn’t seen.

He wasn’t surprised to see that the person looking for him wore armor with the white bow and arrow symbol of Apollo. The Apollonian Guard seemed to do all of the town’s official work – hunting for supplies, keeping order in the town, providing messengers between the various groups that got the work done. But as he brushed cement and brick dust from his hands he was surprised to realize who was wearing the uniform.

“Mr. Brennan.” A nod of the head was as close as Captain McCloud got to saying hello. “You’re to come with me to the Council Chamber. The Elders have invited you for an audience.”

“Hope they’re alright with meeting me dirty then,” Noah said, “cause the way we’re working here I don’t reckon I’m gonna be clean any time soon.”

Miguel shook his head but refrained from responding in front of the guard captain. Noah was sure they’d be sparring over that one later.

“That will be fine.” Captain McCloud nodded up the street into town. “We don’t have much formal wear in Apollo.”

Falling into step beside the captain, Noah made his way up the street and toward the town square. People watched as they walked past, but Noah didn’t reckon that was all about him anymore. People were starting to get over the tales of his exploits, the heroism having worn itself out when every singer in town started making up terrible tunes about his battle with the Dionite alpha. And Captain McCloud was a figure of note in her own right, powerful and respected, a leader even among the five guard captains. She answered only to the Elders, and everyone wanted to answer to them.

Everyone except Noah, at any rate.

“Did you ever serve in the armed forces, Mr. Brennan?” she asked as they walked.

“No ma’am,” Noah replied. “I knew a few who went that way when they finished high school, and my pal Jimmy’s pa had served in one of those fights out in the Gulf. Said it was the best and the worst decision he’d ever made. But me, I was never one for regulations and uniforms and all that saluting.”

“The best and the worst.” McCloud pressed her lips together, tightening the skin around some of her scars. “That sounds about right.”

“What about you?” Noah asked. “Reckon you’ve got that air about you, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I don’t mind. And you’re quite right. I did my time in the infantry, including a couple of tours overseas. After that, I was a private military contractor, or a mercenary as we would have been called in any honest age. I thought it was a way to carry on with the lifestyle, but it turned out I had to respect an authority to obey it, and we worked for some people it was hard to respect. People who didn’t earn it.”

She touched the scars on her cheek, a faraway look in her eyes.

“Were you doing that when it all went to hell?” Noah asked.

She shook her head.

“I was back home, trying to work out what to do with my life. Thirty and washed up – that’s no way to be. All this chaos, all this horror, all the struggles to get by, in a perverse way it’s given me back a sense of purpose.”

She saluted a passing patrol as they emerged from the street and into the town square. There was a market of sorts going on, people bartering goods they’d made or scavenged. With food rationed and clothes in short supply there wasn’t much of an economy in Apollo, but folks seemed to enjoy what little there was and the place was bustling.

“I asked whether you served for a reason,” McCloud said. “More than one, actually. You gave a good showing in the battle and I was curious where that had come from. I’m always hoping that more people with military experience will join us, even after all these years. The Guard is important, and any injection of skills and experience is valuable. But the other reason is that you’re going to have to make a choice soon, about what you are, what you want, what you’re willing to fight for. And I wanted to know what sort of man was making that decision.”