Текст книги "The Moon Dwellers"
Автор книги: David Estes
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
“A moon dweller?” Chip asks, a gleam in his eyes.
I wait for Roc—who is suddenly feeling talkative—to answer, but instead he puts his palm out to indicate it is my turn. I wish there is a table I can kick him under.
“Yes, she’s a moon dweller,” I say.
“Well, why aren’t you with her? ’Specially at a time like this.”
It is a good question. I want to be with her, want to know she is okay. I don’t think the guards recaptured her, but I can’t be sure, as I was a bit busy dodging flaming rubble at the time.
“I don’t know where she is,” I say, dropping my head.
“I might be able to help with that,” Chip says. “I’m somewhat of an amateur private investigator. Where’d you last see her?”
I know I am approaching a dangerous level of truth, but I’ve told them so much already—hell, they know I am Tristan, the Tristan—so I decide to just go for it. I need help, and if they can provide it, then I have to accept the risks. “Okay, look. Here’s the thing…” I tell them nearly everything. The strange feelings I had for her the first time I saw her; our escape from the Sun Realm; how she was trying to escape from the Pen when the bombs starting blowing up all around us; and, finally, how she was gone when the smoke cleared, like a magician performing a famous disappearing act.
When I finish, I sit back and wait for a response. I’m not sure what to expect.
Everyone starts talking at once, asking questions, making comments. The young mother exclaims, “That’s so romantic!” while her husband says definitively, “You’ve got to go after her.” The older couple, who’ve previously been silent, speak in succession: “I bet they went north,” one says, while the other says, “No, south, she must’ve gone south!” Even the kids get involved. The little girl says, “Tristan, do you love her?” The boy is more interested in the action than the romance. “Were you scared when the guards pointed their guns at her?” he asks.
When the chatter dies down somewhat, I hear a voice from my right, from the door, which is now slightly ajar. The woman who invited us in is standing there—I didn’t even notice her arrival and have no idea how much she’s heard. “She’ll be laying low for a few days with her friends, until things die down. You might only have one chance to find her, because as soon as she makes a move, she’ll run as fast and as far as she can.” The woman sounds wise beyond her years, like she’s experienced everything that life has to offer. “What do you reckon, Chip? She’ll head for the northeastern suburbs most likely, at least at first, don’t you think?”
I realize that Chip is the only one who hasn’t yet reacted to my story, and I turn to him, hoping he’ll have a revelation, something that will give me some kind of direction.
“Yeah, northeastern suburbs because they extend the furthest from the commercial district, where most of the bombs were hittin’. She won’t stay in one place long, though, and eventually she’ll have to find a way out of the subchapter. Can’t use conventional means, as she don’t have travel approval, unless she can find a forger in a hurry, although I don’t know how she could pay for it. I reckon she’ll try one of the mining tunnels on the subchapter border, up near where she’s probably already hiding.”
The woman adds, “You’ll also want to find out more stuff about who she’s with, the other two escaped prisoners, because it might change what they do.”
I scan the room, looking each person in the eyes, and waiting for any more advice. When silence ensues, I say, “Thanks. Thanks for everything.”
Somehow I know they’ll keep my secrets. I don’t know why they will. I guess maybe they are just good people. Real good people. The kind you call friend; the kind you stand up for; the kind you fight for. I don’t know what is happening above me, but I vow in my heart to help these people, somehow, some way, some day. To do whatever it takes to give them a better life.
We leave, Roc and I. Explosions continue to rock the night around us, but they are less intense and less frequent. The streets are empty, everyone having taken shelter.
We run back to the Pen, where the fence is still destroyed, and the yard still strewn with guards’ bodies. No one is around. We stop at the point along the fence line where I last saw the girl. Consulting the map, we identify the best route to take out of the city.
“This way,” Roc says, taking the lead as navigator.
I follow him, hoping and praying that we are doing the right thing.
Chapter Eleven
Adele
Sometimes I wonder whether people are inherently good or inherently bad. I’d like to think good, or even neutral, like we can all make the choice for ourselves. But then you meet someone like the guy we are seeing on the telebox, and you think people are just plain bad.
After a quiet morning in the servants’ quarters at Tawni’s parents’ house, we move inside once we are sure it is safe. Although we don’t plan to linger much longer, we are careful to cover our tracks so no one knows we’ve been here. The longer it takes them to find our trail, the colder it will become and the safer we’ll be.
The whole morning I think about Elsey. She will be our first rescue, because she is closest and I know exactly where she is. It is all I can do to stop myself from running off alone to save her. I need to be patient. One thing at a time.
Tawni’s house is even more impressive than I’d imagined based on my glimpse in the dark. It is three stories with more than a dozen rooms. The floors are marble and swirled with illustrious blue and green patterns. Winding staircases rise majestically in at least three places, providing access to the upper floors. The entire place is spotless, a testament to the quality of the servants that work here.
We’ve gotten lucky; it is one of the servants’ two days off.
We turn on the telly, hoping to find out what is happening in subchapter 14. There are two major news stories being run over and over again. The headline story is about the bombing. We were all wrong about the culprits. I am shocked, to be honest.
While we’ve all been hating the Sun Realm—for its unfair policies and outrageous taxes—the Star Realm has been hating us. The whole time I’ve been thinking the star dwellers are like a younger sibling to us, different but on the same side—but they’ve taken a different approach. The video from Vice President Meriweather, the leader of the Star Realm, explains things.
He blames us for the oppression by the Sun Realm, says we let them go too far, that we set a precedent that forces the Star Realm to comply with unfair contractual terms. He says our leaders are spineless, gutless—which I tend to agree with—and that until we remove them from power and agree to join their rebellion, they’ll continue to bomb the living sheetrock out of us. Earlier, I assumed subchapter 14 was the first target, and it was, but it was only one of many first targets. Overnight a dozen subchapters were bombed, although none as heavily as ours.
Tawni and Cole are as shocked as I am. “If we kill each other, then where will we be?” Cole says, exasperated. He refuses to sit down while watching the broadcast, and now he is pacing, throwing his hands around as he rants.
“It will only make the Sun Realm more powerful,” Tawni agrees.
“But the star dwellers are right, in a way,” I say. When I see the looks on my friends’ faces, I explain, “I don’t mean in bombing us—not that. Just about our leaders. They’re just puppets for President Nailin, right? He dictates the terms, and they agree to them in exchange for a bit of money on the side.”
“Yeah, true,” Cole says, “but why not just come and talk to us about it, rather than chucking bombs around?”
“Maybe they did,” I say. “Maybe we ignored them.”
I think Cole might blow up, lose his temper again—he is certainly in one of those moods—but he doesn’t. He chews on the side of his mouth like he is chewing on my words, trying to understand them, and then says, “If that’s true then they should be removed from power. As far as I’m concerned, there should be a rebellion, but not against us, against the sun dwellers, by both us and the star dwellers.”
“But so many people will die,” Tawni says.
“People are dying now!” Cole shouts. He lowers his voice, looking around as if the walls might have ears. “Just more slowly. The life is sucked out of us, day by day, as the sun dwellers take more and more from us. One day they’ll take our souls.”
He has a point, but that’s when the second breaking news story comes on, so we turn our attention back to the telebox.
The next story is all about us, referred to as “the escaped guests from the Pen,” who are deemed to be “armed and dangerous.” Our photos and names are stuck to the bottom of the screen while they show footage of the destroyed fence, the downed guards, and the dropped guns. Without explicitly saying it, they imply that we’re responsible for the whole mess, rather than admitting it was the star dweller bombs that caused the destruction.
Next they give information on who to call if we are spotted. Security checkpoints are being added to all major subchapter borders, and roadblocks are in place to search vehicles that may be hiding us. The penalty for harboring “the fugitives”—meaning us—is a life sentence in the Max.
The lead investigator, which basically means hunter of humans, is speaking live from the Sun Realm, and will be traveling to subchapter 14 to personally begin the search. His name is Rivet, and his face is what sparks my thoughts about the inherent nature of the human race.
Let me tell ya, I don’t know where they found this guy, or what hole he’d been hiding in, but he is the epitome of evil. His face is cold and hard, with black eyes that are so close together they appear beady, like a snake. Fierce black eyebrows rim them in a perpetual frown. His mouth is the snarl of an angry dog. A three-inch scar cuts one of his cheeks in half. He has a low-cut Mohawk and multiple piercings in each ear, which fits in perfectly with the dozens of tattoos that litter his muscular frame. Everything about him screams intimidation.
His words are cold, like icicles, and I almost feel like he can see us through the screen, directing his threats right at us. He keeps his comments brief: “I cannot reiterate this enough: We must apprehend the fugitives as quickly as possible. They are armed and extremely dangerous. Their sentences range from murder to treason, and they deserve to be locked away for the rest of their lives. This office pledges to hunt them down and bring them to justice, to be tried for their new crimes under the law. Thank you for your time.” Cameras flash and reporters yell out questions, but Rivet is gone, having disappeared back inside some government building.
“Murder?” I say. “I was in for treason, but they didn’t even mention your crimes. We didn’t kill anyone, they can’t say that!” I am angry and flustered. I knew they wouldn’t be fair to us—have never been fair to us—but I don’t want people to think I am a murderer.
“There’s something I should tell you,” Cole says, finally sitting down on the floor.
I glance at him, but then back to the telly as the next segment begins. It is a review of each of us—our pasts, our crimes, our sentences, that kind of thing. They start with Tawni and brush past her pretty quickly, saying Cole and I are bad influences on her and that her sentence is much lighter—for the minor charge of illegal interstate traveling.
“My parents are hard at work doing damage control again,” Tawni says sullenly, as if she would prefer to be depicted as a hardened criminal.
They move onto me next, turning my parents’ slight rebelliousness into an act of high treason, framing it like we are a family of thieves and spies, not satisfied until we destroy everything from the Star Realm to the Sun Realm. They go into a lot of detail about how it makes sense that I would try to escape, given my life sentence. By the time they are done with me, I even feel slightly ashamed of myself, although I have done nothing wrong.
The broadcast ends with Cole, touting him as the ringleader of our little gang, noting that he is “as cunning as he is dangerous.” I grin at him when they say that, expecting him to take it as a compliment, but he looks away from me, his lips a straight line, unreadable.
I wait for them to tell Cole’s story about the bakery, his attempted theft of six loaves of bread, his apprehension and short juvie sentence.
I find out the truth.
There was no bakery, no bread, no mild sentence. Cole duped me. The way his eyes sparkled when he told the story, his attention to detail, his effortless laugh: it all made me believe without a doubt that he was telling the truth. The true story paints a much grimmer tale.
According to the reporter, Cole attacked an Enforcer without provocation. The Enforcer was conducting a routine search of Cole’s neighborhood, looking for anything suspicious—they do that from time to time. They don’t need search warrants; just a badge and a uniform authorizes them to go wherever they want, whenever they want. Cole jumped the guy and killed him, broke his neck cleanly. They say it was instant death and that Cole is a murderer. Cole was sentenced to life in prison, just like me.
The segment ends and Tawni clicks off the telebox.
I stare into space in silence. I am upset that Cole didn’t tell me the truth, but even more upset with the information in the broadcast. Although I haven’t known Cole for long, I know enough about him to realize that he wouldn’t kill someone without a damn good reason. I want to ask, want to know the real story, but also know that Cole has to want to tell me. I don’t want to force something out of him that he prefers to remain buried. So I just wait. A few minutes go by in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Cole still won’t make eye contact with me—his face turned away—although I look at him a few times.
Tawni is the first to speak. “Cole, she’s one of us. She should know.”
Cole finally turns his head, and I see what he’s been doing in silence. Crying. His cheeks are slick with moisture and his eyelashes beaded with tears. It scares the hell out of me. In the short time I have known Cole, I’ve found there to be a strength in him that is beyond anything I’ve seen in someone before. It makes me want to be his friend, to depend on him, to count on him. But now he looks broken, destroyed, devastated. The pain on his face is utterly complete.
He starts slowly, building momentum as he unloads his pain. “There were three of them,” he says, “but I thought there was only one.”
“Enforcers?” I ask.
He nods. “When I came home from school he was in the house. My younger sister, Liza, had stayed home sick. My parents were both out, working, like always.” He pauses and takes a deep breath. Before he starts again, a fresh stream of tears dribbles from each eye.
“He was on top of her,” he continues, “trying to take everything from her. God, Adele, she was only eleven.” I feel my own batch of tears well up and I fiercely blink them back. If Cole can’t be strong, I need to be strong for him.
“I was like a raging bull, full of anger, and I felt stronger than ten bulls. I was on him before he even knew I was there. Liza’s tunic was half-ripped and he was trying to pull it off of her. She was incredible, Adele, not giving an inch, kicking and clawing and fighting to the bitter end. Eventually he would’ve subdued her, but not before taking a bit of a beating. My sister was strong, like me.” Although his face remains mournful, I detect a hint of pride in his voice. But as much as I want to, I can’t ignore his use of the word was. It is there in the back of my mind, tormenting me.
“I pulled him off of her with two hands, threw him against the wall. He wasn’t prepared for a fight. His hands and voice were pleading, begging for me to let him go. I wonder if I should’ve.”
“No, Cole,” Tawni says. “If you’d let him go he would’ve just made up a story about you attacking him and the end result would’ve been the same.”
Cole hangs his head and bobs it up and down, like he wants to believe her but knows he never will. He says, “I was in a rage, not to be reasoned with—you know my temper. I grabbed him and slung him into the wall headfirst. I spun him around, cradled his head, and wrenched it hard to the side. I didn’t even know how to do it properly, but I guess brute strength was enough. I can still hear the bones in his neck cracking. I know I should be sickened by it, but I’m not; I relish the memory.”
I relish that part of his memory, too. The Enforcer was pure evil, inherently bad for sure. If anyone was deserving of death, it was him. I want Cole to stop his story there, but I know he can’t.
“The other two Enforcers were upstairs when it happened,” he says. “They were looting our few measly possessions of value. My mother’s gold wedding band. My father’s steel-toed boots. Taking our stuff while their buddy took my sister.” Cole’s face remains tearstained, but there are no new flows. His eyes are strong again, flashing anger. I would’ve pitied any Enforcer who walked into the room at that moment.
“I guess they heard the commotion, because they came down quietly, their guns out and ready to shoot. But I wasn’t ready to fight anymore. I was holding Liza, helping her cover herself with a blanket. She was bawling, kissing my face, begging me to take her far away from that place. Our home, the place where we’d had so many happy memories, grown up together, had become dirty to her, a prison of filthy nightmares. She would’ve cast it off forever, Adele.”
I am crying. I don’t know when I started, but once the taps are turned on I can’t seem to stop them. I feel ashamed, like I’ve let my friend down in his moment of need. But he doesn’t seem to notice, like it is simply the natural thing for me to do.
“They pointed their damn guns at us, screamed for us to ‘Stand up! Stand up!’” He wipes his face with his sleeve. “One of them checked the other Enforcer, realized he was dead. They separated us, moved us apart, kept screaming at us. I didn’t understand what was happening until they shot her, my Liza, oh, my poor sweet Liza!” Cole’s head is tucked in his hands, his entire body shaking with sobs. I am bawling. Tawni is crying, too, but more constrained. She moves to Cole’s side and rubs a hand on his back.
I think the story is over, but a few minutes later Cole looks up, dripping tears from his chin. “They waited for my parents to get home. I was in shock, sitting there numbly, waiting to wake up from the horrible nightmare. I almost charged them, daring them to shoot me—preferring if they would—but I didn’t because I knew I had to explain to my parents why their little girl was dead on the floor. They hadn’t even bothered to cover her body with the blanket.”
The only thing I can do for Cole now is to listen. Believe me, I don’t want to, don’t want to know the truth—not anymore. Desperately want to believe the comedic story about him juggling the loaves of bread.
“My parents walked through the door like they always did, holding hands, laughing, as happy as anyone in the Moon Realm ever was in those days. I screamed out, tried to tell them everything in a single breath, but I was denied even that. They shot them before they’d even registered what was happening.” No, no, no, no, no! I can’t take any more of the story. I bury my head in my shoulder, sob uncontrollably, like he is telling me the tale of my own parents’ deaths.
In a strange reversal of roles, he waits patiently for me to get control of my emotions. When I force my head back up, he continues. “I fought like a wild animal, trying to force them to kill me, too. I really thought they would, especially when I started throwing anything I could get my hands on at them. But no. They ran around, dodging the things and laughing, mocking me, enjoying themselves.”
“Cole, I’m…I’m…” I can’t get the right words out—there are no right words.
“I know,” Cole says. “So now maybe you can see why I just can’t trust that Tristan is good, not when he comes from up there.” He motions to the ceiling, like he is pointing to the heavens.
“I thought…I thought you were jealous or something,” I say, right away wishing I hadn’t.
Thankfully, Cole laughs it off. “Jealous? I mean, you’re not a bad-looking girl, Adele, very pretty actually, but I’m not really into…how do I put this delicately…you.”
Now I laugh, too; it sounds hollow and foreign to me, like it is something I haven’t experienced in a long time. “Sorry, I realize it was stupid now,” I say.
He waves me off. “So that’s my story. I’m the murderer in the group, I suppose.” His eyes are steely again, but I can still feel a weakness behind them, a vulnerability. I’ve only just met him, but he already feels like a lifelong friend, like I’ve known him forever. Instinctively, I move over and hug him, squeezing so tightly that if he isn’t as thick as a bear he might pop. It feels so good to be hugged by someone again, even under such awful circumstances. Earlier, I’d gotten a taste of it when Tawni held me close after my fight with the gang leader, and now I am suddenly addicted to human contact. It is like I need it to survive. I don’t want to let go, but after a few seconds I do, not wanting to make things awkward between us, or to give him the wrong impression.
He is smiling. I feel we’ve made a major breakthrough in our relationship, which has seemed somewhat strained at times. Tawni is smiling, too. She already feels like my sister, after all we’ve been through together in such a short time.
My real sister’s face pops into my mind once more. “It’s time to rescue Elsey,” I say.
“Where did you say she is?” Tawni asks.
“She’s in an orphanage not far from here. It’s just across the border into the slums.”
“We should be leaving soon anyway,” she says. “It’s not safe to linger here.”
Before leaving, we make sure that everything is put back to how we found it. We “borrow” a couple of old packs that Tawni says her parents will never miss, and fill them with nonperishable food from the storeroom. Unlike most residents of subchapter 14, Tawni’s family has enough supplies to last them for months, if not years. We only take items that are available in plenty, to ensure no one will notice they are missing. Although we expect to be able to find plenty of water along the way, we fill a couple of jugs from the servants quarters with fresh water from the well before tying our packs shut.
Lastly, Cole and I raid Tawni’s parents’ closets for things to wear. Tawni points out the items that her mom and dad never wear, so they’ll be less likely to realize they are gone. We stuff our gray prisoner uniforms under a mattress in the shed. Tawni grabs a few old tunics from her own closet and we head out the back door.
Daylight is more dangerous for us. We don’t necessarily expect that if someone spots us that they’ll call the hotline and report us to Rivet, but we also can’t count on silence amongst our people—Tawni’s parents proved that.
The one thing we have going for us is that even during the daytime, so little electricity is provided to our subchapter that the overhead lights don’t provide enough light for someone to recognize us unless they are practically right next to us.
Still, we stick to the shadows, pausing to look all around us before moving across open spaces. Block by block we make our way out of Tawni’s neighborhood. When the houses change from solid stone blocks to crumbling bricks, we know we’ve reached the slums. I think we all feel safer now.
The slums are exactly as you’d expect. All the houses, if you can call them that (they are more like tiny sheds), are in major disrepair and in desperate need of some TLC. Kids run barefoot in the street, playing knights and barbarians with rocks and cardboard swords. Dead, staring faces sit at windows, as if waiting for someone to come save them. No one is coming. Except us, and we aren’t there to save them.
Unfortunately, the orphanage is in the dead center of the slums. Because there is so much more activity in the slums than in most neighborhoods—none of the people seem to work and none of the kids seem to go to school—we are especially careful. Despite only covering about ten blocks, it takes us nearly two hours to reach the orphanage. I am ready to scream when we finally arrive.
The orphanage is probably the best-maintained structure in the slums, but it still isn’t fit to live in. Certainly not for children. I feel my hands squeeze into fists so tight that my knuckles start to ache. Things were bad for me, but they might be worse for Elsey.
The dilapidated door hangs precariously by a single hinge, unable to fully close. At least half the windows are broken, either by old age or a few well-aimed rocks from the neighborhood monsters. There are holes in the roof and cracks in the steps.
We can’t see any activity through the windows in the front. The orphanage is ringed by a crumbling stone wall, high enough to block our view of the rear yard.
When it appears the coast is clear, we take turns climbing the wall while the others cover us—not with guns but with eyes, ready to whisper a warning if someone is coming. We all make it into the side yard safely. We creep toward the back.
As we approach the corner of the building, we can hear voices. Children laughing, children shouting, nursery rhymes: that sort of thing.
I’m leading and am about to peek around the corner when I feel something whiz past my head. I duck and throw myself flat on the ground, suddenly believing that we’ve been discovered and that someone is shooting at us.
Cole chuckles, somewhat loudly. A cloth ball rolls away from us into the side alley—the cause of the whizzing. Just as I regain my feet, a young girl, no more than seven, rounds the corner, nearly colliding with me. She stops like she hit a wall, and prepares to scream, opening her mouth wide and leaning her head back.
Cole grabs her, covering her mouth with his big hand just in time. Her muffled scream sounds no louder than the distant echolocation squeal made by a hunting bat. She starts kicking, so I run to her and start talking in a low, soothing voice, trying to comfort her.
“It’s okay, little one. We’re not going to hurt you,” I promise her. “We’re just looking for someone—my sister.” She still looks scared, her eyes wide and her breathing strained and ragged through her nose, but she is calmer, no longer struggling so much. “Do you promise not to scream or run away if my friend lets you go?” I ask.
She thinks about it for a minute and then nods slowly. I hope she isn’t lying.
“Let her go, Cole,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow, but complies, releasing the girl and stepping back. She doesn’t run, doesn’t scream, just stands there staring at us. Then she says, “They’re going to wonder where I’ve gone,” she says in a tiny voice, more fit for a butterfly princess than a little girl.
“Okay,” I say. “You can go back. But first, do you know a girl named Elsey?”
The girl’s eyes light up at my sister’s name, and I know we’ve gotten lucky. Not only does this girl know Elsey, but she likes her and will want to help her. It always amazes me how much you can discern from just the look on someone’s face.
“Oh, yes!” she says, twirling her brown curls with one of her fingers. “Elsey and I are the greatest of friends. She’s older than me, but she says I’m old for my age anyways.”
It sounds like something Elsey would say. She’s always liked playing with younger kids, making them feel grown up, special. I used to think she might become a schoolteacher. But that was before my parents were abducted.
“Can you tell her Adele is here to see her?” I say. “And help her find an excuse to come around this corner?”
The girl is even more excited now, flapping her arms as if she is ready to fly off to find my sister. “You’re her sister! You’re her sister!” she exclaims.
“Yes, now please go tell her.”
The girl starts to race off, but then stops, whirling around to retrieve the ball before scampering back behind the orphanage. Smart girl.
We wait against the wall, expecting an Enforcer to appear at any second, having been ratted on by the sweet little clever girl.
Instead, like a mirage, my sister appears, running so fast her legs are a blur, her jet-black hair swishing around behind her. My day is a rollercoaster of emotions. The demon drop of Cole’s story has given way to a higher high, practically bursting through the cavern roof. My heart is literally soaring, rising out of my body and smiling upon me from above.
Elsey slams into me with such force that she nearly topples me over. Although we’ve only been apart for six months, a mere blip in our lives, it feels like we haven’t seen each other in years. She seems to have grown, both physically and in maturity. Only ten, her pale face looks wizened, young but worn.
“Oh Elsey,” I sigh, holding her tight against my chest, her legs wrapped around my hips. She is still a child, above all. Forced to endure far more than a child should have to endure. Far more than anyone should.
I want to hold onto her forever, but time is short.
“Let me have a look at you,” I say, gently lowering her to the stone slab alley. My breath catches as I gaze on her face. She is breathtaking, has always been, with doll-like features that are so perfect they must have been carved by a master sculptor. She’s always been more beautiful than me, but I don’t mind, for she is a pure spirit. I can tell by the way her jaw sticks out now that six months in this place has hardened her, but in her violet eyes I can see the same pure energy she’s always had.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Elsey,” I say, tearing up slightly.
“I’ve missed you so much, Adele,” Elsey says earnestly. “I couldn’t believe it when Ranna said you were here. I ran as fast as I could.” She scrunches up her face, like she is making a wish. “Are you here to get me out?” she says hopefully.
I nod. “Yeah, but we’re not exactly allowed, so we’re going to have to do it sneakily.”
