MoonFall (2 page)

Outliers
, Noah thought. Scouts clearing the way for a larger group.

He considered making a run for the trees. They weren’t looking his way, but there was always a chance they might see him if he ran. They might not be concerned about strangers who kept themselves to themselves. Or they might. Certainly he had no interest in a confrontation with these people, much less talking with them. He hadn’t seen a soul in weeks, and he liked it that way.

There was no rush—after all, Washington was just one more foraging ground across the wilderness that had once been America. What waited for him there could wait another day.

Cramps began to grip the muscles of Noah’s legs. He knew he was going to be immobile for a while and needed to make himself comfortable.

Waiting until he was sure the truck crew was pre-occupied, he opened the door of the car concealing him just enough to ease himself inside. The car had clearly been there a while, but the seats were mostly intact. He settled into the least moldy one, sinking far enough that he could watch the road without being seen. Then he waited.

By the time the truck crew cleared the cars from the road below him, the rest of their convoy had arrived. A full nomadic community, maybe forty vehicles in all shapes and sizes, from a battered old school bus spewing steam from its ragged bonnet to a couple of dozen horse drawn carts, then followed up by bicycles and even a couple of women taking turns to push a wheelbarrow. The motorbikes were clearly the cream of the crop, but it was quite a harvest of wheeled vehicles.

Noah watched the ramshackle community with a sense of detached curiosity. The people were as mixed as the vehicles, from a gray-haired black guy in dungarees who seemed to be in charge of the group, to a blend of folks around Noah’s age, down to kids who could never have known the world as it once was.

A couple of teenagers were rough-housing by the side of the road – a dark haired girl shoving her younger brother around while they waited to move on. It reminded Noah of when he’d been that younger brother, and a pang of loss for Jeb and Pete tugged at his chest. Not just for the early days on the road when they’d kept him going through the mind-numbing loss of everything they’d known, but for the times when they’d been young and naive and had the whole world at their feet.

More naive than they’d ever known. But then who could have seen this coming?

Just thinking about those times made him want a smoke. He reached for the packet in his top left pocket and the three precious, stale, old cigarettes it still contained. He stopped himself before he’d even got one out. There were people nearby, people whose attention he didn’t want.

He chewed on a strip of jerky to distract himself and watched the caravan.

They were moving again, through the gap between the cars and down the solid strip of highway that remained despite the weeds clawing their way in from the edges. The gray-haired leader looked up as he passed by below. Noah sank deeper into his seat, tensed as he listened for any sign they’d spotted him.

Instead, the cough and splutter of engines, the clopping of hooves, and the rumble of wheels on tarmac filled the air.

As the noise faded, Noah rose in his seat and looked again at the mass of machinery disappearing down the highway. The two teenagers he had watched romped at the back, helping a red-headed woman in a patched green dress push her wheelbarrow along. The boy finally got revenge on his sister, punching her in the arm while she was busy pushing the barrow, then looking all innocent when the woman turned to see what the fuss was about. As the girl protested to an indifferent authority, Noah found himself chuckling.

He looked up the road north-east, then back towards the column disappearing south. Sure he didn’t much like people, but it had been a long time since he’d had any entertainment.

“Y’know what?” he murmured, patting Bourne as he opened the car door. “Washington can wait.”

Noah followed the assembly at a distance for the next few days. It was easy to do—the scouts were mostly occupied seeing what was ahead rather than what lay behind, and when they did double back he just drew back deeper into the woods. Walking through woods was a skill, and one he had plenty of practice at. Keeping up with a group traveling at the speed of a wheelbarrow wasn’t much of a challenge.

By the third night he was getting close enough under cover of darkness that he could overhear brief snatches of conversation, at least when the speakers were getting loud. He tried to maneuver himself so that he could watch Sally and Todd, the teenagers he’d spotted on the first day, as well as Mary and Claudette, the women who shared wheelbarrow duties with them. It was easy enough to do—wherever the group camped they ended up near the edge, away from the warmth and loud conversations that went on around the central campfire. Their place was out near the shadows, almost as much as Noah’s was.

That third night the little community reminded Noah of what people were really like.

Tyrone, the group’s gray-haired leader, called them all together after dinner. He pointed to a map stuck against the side of the bus, an old, frayed thing showing the roads as they had been before all Hell hit. The gathering was too close to the center of camp for Noah to hear what was being said, but it looked like Tyrone had made a decision between two roads.

Only, not everybody was happy with Tyrone’s choice. One of the motorbike riders—the one Noah thought of as Half-Skull for the symbol on his jacket—stepped forward and gestured angrily towards Tyrone. Some seemed to be trying to shout him down, while others stood behind him, arms folded, glaring at the rest.

Tyrone argued back. Angry words turned to angry gestures, turned to Half-Skull shoving Tyrone and Tyrone shoving him back. Something glittered in Half-Skull’s hand as he slammed into the older man.

Tyrone sank to his knees, hands clutching at a knife handle protruding from his chest.

The whole community fell silent as they watched their leader stare in shock at Half-Skull and then topple over in a pool of blood.

Someone screamed, then was silenced by a gesture from one of Half-Skull’s friends.

There was no loud banter around the campfire that night. Sally and Todd huddled together in their blankets, not arguing or fighting, but clinging to each other with fierce protectiveness.

Noah remembered Jeb and Pete again, remembered the way he’d clung to them when things went bad, and how on the worst off all mornings that had left him soaked through with their blood.

He smoked a cigarette.

The next day the group moved on, but the atmosphere was different. Half-Skull stood on top of the bus as it rumbled along, watching the people around him as much as he watched the road ahead. Heads were lowered, shoulders slumped. The group had always seemed like a fragile band, undernourished and riddled with disease, half of them hobbling or blighted by sores and hacking coughs. But Noah had never seen them so downtrodden.

Watching them no longer lifted his spirits. And yet he could not help following, drawn along by some terrible compulsion. Did he want to keep seeing people, or did he just want to know what would happen next? He asked Bourne, but his holstered companion remained silent.

Their next stop was a junction where the highway met another road running east to west. An old gas station seemed to be the reason for the stop. Half-Skull set people to work retrieving any dregs of fuel still remaining in its tanks. Noah figured it for a lost cause. They weren’t far enough into the wilds for such a place not to have been thoroughly ransacked, but he watched with the same hollow, edgy feeling he’d watched everything else since Tyrone’s death.

Tyrone had seemed like a good man, as much as such people still existed. Half-Skull wasn’t. He and his allies prowled the camp, most of them carrying muskets, while the others worked. If they were meant to be guarding against outside dangers, then they were looking the wrong way. It crossed Noah’s mind that was to his advantage, as they might not have viewed him with friendly eyes. The thought didn’t reassure him none.

He was watching Sally and Todd cook the company’s dinner, their usual arguments reduced to whispers, when a scream echoed through the camp. His hand went straight for Bourne, his eyes and everybody else’s following the sound to the darkness at the edge of the camp.

Half-Skull had a handful of Mary the wheelbarrow wrangler’s red hair. He yanked her head to one side as he pushed her against a wagon and wrenched up her skirts. She screamed and battered futilely against his chest, her face contorted in horrified panic. Half-Skull’s fist collided with the side of her face, leaving a trickle of blood in its wake, then he turned his glare on the rest of the camp.

Sally stood but was pulled back down by Todd. Everyone else turned away except for Half-Skull’s gang, several of whom were grinning with approval at their leader.

Mary’s screams turned to sobs as Half-Skull tore her dress entirely away.

Noah turned away, too. His hand wrapped around Bourne’s handle, gripping so tightly his fingers went cold. Bourne who was empty of bullets, unlike those muskets in the camp. Bourne, who made him feel so powerful in his idle moments, now left him impotent in the face of depravity. But, then, he didn’t know the woman. She didn’t even know he existed. Why would he risk anything for her when her own people wouldn’t?

His stomach tightened. These people sickened him, just like most did in the end. Better to be alone than constantly reminded of what humanity really was.

He picked up his pack, drew deeper into the shelter of the trees, and started walking east.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

D
UMPSVILLE

A
FEW
DAYS
later Noah found the town of Dumpsville lying an hour’s trek north of the highway. For the first time in a month, he thought he might finally scavenge some decent supplies. The journey east so far had been bitterly disappointing – a few empty houses and a burned-down gas station, and only one rabbit in his snares. Even the local mushrooms had an unhealthy purple color that no sane man would put in his mouth. But Dumpsville held real promise, as much as anything made by people could.

It probably had a proper name once, something sweet and homey to fit its cozy, secluded setting. Cherry Wood, maybe? Or Pastor Heights. Something that spoke of family values and the Appalachian country spirit. But the meteorite that had hit the road at the southern end of town had taken out whatever welcome sign had proudly declared its name, and so Noah filled the gap. He hated towns like Dumpsville – they reminded him too much of home.

He skirted around the edge of the meteorite crater. It had been there a while, long enough for a whole range of plants to sprout up in the rubble, including clusters of those purple mushrooms and even some small trees. Which probably meant no-one had been around for a long time either, otherwise they would have done something to repair the road. Maybe the inhabitants had evacuated in the early days, headed to somewhere more secure and populous, and never returned. Maybe they’d taken the meteorite as a sign from the heavens and pulled up stakes to move on – all it took was one charismatic preacher and a couple of misfortunes to poison people’s judgment. Or maybe they’d just decided it wasn’t worth staying with the main road in ruins. Could be they were all dead now, or living on some Caribbean island like the characters in a pre-collapse holiday brochure. Whatever the case, Dumpsville seemed both deserted and largely untouched, the best sort of town.

Noah walked Main Street, past squat houses with big yards and a couple of boxy shops. His heart leapt at the sight of a gun store, a grin splitting his face at the thought of such a place long left untouched. It only took a moment’s work to bust the lock and get inside.

Once inside, his heart sank. The store had been thoroughly and neatly cleaned out. Not a gun on the walls, not a bullet on the shelves, just a pile of crumbling paper targets and a counter gray with years of dust. Whatever their motives, the townspeople had gone fully armed when they left. Even after pillaging through the backs of cupboards and in a store room behind the register, Noah came up empty handed. Finding ammunition was looking a whole heap less likely for Noah.