MoonFall (17 page)

“Yep.” It was maybe stretching the definition of the word plan, but Noah wasn’t going to let Poulson push him into backing down. Now he’d found some backbone he wanted to use it. “They may not have a big chief in charge, but most of them are still the following type, just like most folks. They fight in packs like wild animals, and like wild animals they play follow the alpha. The group that near killed Sergeant Burns here, I killed their leader and the rest up and scattered, ‘cause all they wanted was to follow his lead. Same thing happened when the sergeant saved my ass, right sergeant?”

Burns nodded thoughtfully.

“It fits,” she said. “I’ve seen them put up one hell of a struggle, and I’ve seen them run with only one man down.”

“That’s useful to know,” McCloud said, “but we still need a plan.”

“Oh, I’ve got that too,” Noah said, pleased to find the pieces slotting together in his brain. “We can’t chop off the head, but we can cut off one limb at a time. The groups we’ve seen were hunting packs, and the alpha dog always stood out. The strongest, the fanciest, even just the one giving orders. Means all you’ve got to do to beat any group is look for that one and deal with them. You’ve got shooters right, folks with muskets and bows? Spread them out among the squads. Each time they find a fight the shooter stands back, watches, and then takes down the leader. Everyone else just has to stay alive a minute or two. Without a hierarchy, there’ll be no-one to stop the packs running, no second in commands to take over as those alpha dogs go down. Break enough packs and they’ll lose the will to fight, or at least lose the will to keep charging your gates.”

He finished talking and stood waiting to be shouted down. Instead, to his surprise, he saw several thoughtful faces turned on him and on Captain McCloud.

“Interesting.” McCloud looked over to Burns. “Does this fit with what you saw?”

“Yes, Captain,” Burns nodded. “Though we only got into a couple of fights, so it’s hard to be certain.”

“There are no certainties in war,” McCloud said. “Do you vouch for this man’s loyalties? If he’s with them, this could all be a ruse.”

This time Burns hesitated for a moment. But she looked at Noah, her mouth hitching up into a little half smile, and she nodded.

“Yes, Captain, I vouch for him.”

“Very well.” McCloud looked around the table. “Aside from Poulson and Noah, does anyone have any ideas?”

There was some thoughtful hemming and hawing, like a cluster of doctors assembled around an interesting disease, but McCloud didn’t give it long to spread.

“Better the wrong course than no course at all.” McCloud looked over at Poulson. “Rasmus, the initiative and courage behind your idea are much appreciated, but given the information behind it I’m going with Noah’s plan. That said, I need someone with that initiative and courage to plug the gap in our wall and stop the packs attacking there. Take a platoon and deal with it.”

“Yes, Captain.” Poulson saluted, threw a final dark glare at Noah and strode away.

“We have at least one gang of the enemy inside the walls,” McCloud continued. “Gods know what kind of chaos they’re causing. Burns, take one of the squads patrolling near the prison and hunt them down. Take our new addition with you – he seems to have a good eye for details and for the mind of the savage, maybe he’ll help you find them.

“The rest of you...”

Burns saluted and grabbed Noah’s arm, dragging him off down the street.

“No need for that!” he protested. “I just got you your plan.”

“And now we act on it,” she said. “Follow me.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

T
HE
H
UNTING
P
ARTY

T
HE
PATROL
THEY
found was small, but it held some familiar faces. Vostok laughed as Burns told him that Noah was on their side.

“I am bet you regret beating him now, yes?” he said.

The patrol also contained Lily Okamoto, the young Asian archer Noah had seen Poulson send to hold a junction earlier in the night, her comrade in that task Mason, and a red-headed woman named Ferguson.

“Well, don’t this just take the biscuit,” Ferguson said. “And to think we’d have shot you half a night back.”

“Glad as I am you ain’t doing that, shouldn’t we get moving?” Noah said. “I’d like to get myself safe and supplied for the summer, don’t want this place burning down before I can do it.”

Vostok’s group had been following the Dionites on and off for an hour, closing in so that Lily could pick one off with her bow and then pulling back before the enemy could catch them. They’d whittled away their opponents a little, and managed not to get caught. But the Dionite pack outnumbered them several times over and without Noah’s insight about the alphas they’d had no way to do more than harass the enemy.

“They are spending much time around the prison,” Vostok said. “Blow holes in walls, let more prisoners out, add them to group. Lily kills a few, but there are more now than at the start.”

“So they’re adding the prisoners?” Burns asked.

Vostok nodded.

“I think they’ve moved.” Lily pointed down a rubble-cobbled street toward the prison. “After last time they were heading west, toward the stores.”

“Let’s make sure they’ve moved,” Burns said. “I don’t want any more than we can avoid getting out of jail.”

“This one is enough, yes?” Vostok jerked a thumb towards Noah.

Burns put the patrol in order. Ferguson and Vostok took the lead with riot shields and clubs, looking like they could have just stepped out of a policing operation twenty years earlier. Behind them, Burns and Lilly followed, the latter with her bow at the ready, not drawn taught but with an arrow to the string as she held it in front of her. Noah and Mason took the rear, taking it in turns to look back in case any Dionites emerged from the streets behind them.

The prison loomed ahead of them, a concrete monolith rising above the surrounding houses. Its yard only stretched out to the front, and if the place had once had fences, then those had been taken away to make more space within the town walls. So as they approached the side from which Noah himself had escaped, they came straight up against the walls of the cell blocks.

Or what remained of them.

However the Dionites had arranged their explosives, they hadn’t lacked imagination, ambition or ways to launch them at the upper floor. There were blackened, gaping holes all the way down the side of the building, including several amid the rubble at its base.

As they neared the road around the prison, Ferguson raised a fist and they all stopped in their tracks. She turned back, held up five fingers and then three more, and gestured down the road to the right, along the concrete wall.

Burns took a few steps back, leaned in close to Noah.

“You’re the one who spotted the leaders we’d killed,” she whispered. “Now it’s time to see if you can identify a live one. Go take a look, see if you can work out which one’s in charge.”

Noah nodded.

“There any good alleys I can use to get close?” he asked.

Instead of answering Burns pointed to the building next to them, with its flat roof and fire escape up the side. She raised an eyebrow.

Noah nodded and made his way to the building, sword still in hand. The fire escape looked rusty but still intact and it didn’t fall apart when he tugged tentatively at an end of the handrail. Sure, it wasn’t the sturdiest thing in the world, but it would still be safer than trying to creep up on the enemy.

He climbed the stairs as quietly as he could without slowing to a crawl. Halfway up a panel creaked and began to sag beneath him. He grabbed ahold of the rail, ready to cling on for dear life, but it held steady after sinking a couple of inches, whatever had worn through apparently finding support from the other struts. Still, he moved more cautiously after that, testing each step before he took it, until a hiss and a gesture from Burns set him to hurrying again.

With a deep breath of relief, he stepped out onto the rooftop. It was littered with weeds growing in patches of wind-blown leaves and small puddles formed among the patches of mulch and roots. But there were no holes, and most importantly the far edge clearly faced straight out onto the prison.

Noah walked across the roof, crouching as he reached the edge so as not to show himself against the bright morning sky. A couple of pigeons flapped away as he came near, and he waited a minute before peering down just in case the birds had drawn attention.

A small band of Dionites were spread along the street below, each in the same tribal style of loincloth and tattoos. Most of them were watching the surrounding streets, but two were crouched by the base of the prison wall. Noah didn’t recognize the canvas bag they were fiddling around with, but if he was a gambling man, he’d have put his money on explosives.

In the middle of the Dionites stood a man with a long wooden staff and an intricate necklace of old computer cables around his neck. As Noah watched, another Dionite appeared, said something to the man with the staff and was directed by him to a position watching one of the streets.

Part of Noah wondered why these people made it so easy to spot their leaders. But then he figured that they had to know who to follow even more than Lily had to know who to shoot.

He crept back across the roof and down the fire escape, dislodging more pigeons as he made his way down. One of them seemed to glare at him before it flapped away, like it was annoyed at the human’s audacity in crossing its turf. Didn’t the stupid bird know this was a man-made structure?

Course that didn’t make it man’s world anymore.

“Spotted him,” Noah said to Burns and Lily once he was back with the patrol. “Medium tall, spiky hair, carries a pole and he’s wearing a necklace made out of leads and wires and shit.”

“OK,” Burns said. “Me, Vostok and Ferguson go into the street first but don’t engage. Lily follows, takes her time, takes the leader out, then the rest of us make a racket to make sure they’re scared off. If they don’t scatter then we double back and make a new plan. Clear?”

“What about us?” Noah pointed towards himself and Mason.

“You keep our escape route clear.”

As the others disappeared into the street outside the prison, Mason pulled a hip flask from inside his camo jacket, took a swig and waved it towards Noah.

“Hooch?” he asked.

“Hell yes.” Noah tipped the flask to his lips, took a deep swig. It was like drinking sandpaper, potatoes, and ethanol. The ethanol was what counted. “Damn that’s good.”

He took another swig, passed the hipflask back. Voices were being raised around the corner, but they clearly hadn’t reached the ‘make a racket’ part of the plan yet, or been charged by a screaming mob of Dionites.

“Where d’you get it?” he asked. If he was going to stick around, then being able to get a drink came high on his list of priorities.

Mason prodded his own chest with his thumb.

“You got your own distillery?” Noah asked excitedly.

Mason gave a little wobble of the head that seemed to say ‘sort of’ and raised the flask to his lips again.

Noah looked at him with admiration.

Behind Mason, a movement up the street caught his eye.

“Shit.” He raised the sword.

A couple dozen Dionites were emerging from the side streets. As Noah and Mason looked their way they broke into a run.

Noah looked to Mason and by unspoken agreement they too both ran, fear lending them speed.

They hurtled around the corner just as Lily was drawing her bow. Noah swerved, tripped over his own feet and knocked into her. The shot went wild, over the head of the lead Dionite.

Burns turned on him, fury across her face.

“No time!” he gasped. “More coming.”

He kept running straight towards the Dionites in front of them. Better the devil you knew than the one three times his size and charging after you.

The others were running too, whether because of his lead or because Mason was with him or because they too had seen what was coming. The Dionites raised their weapons ready to meet them in combat, but Noah swung his sword in a wild, wide arc and they backed up just enough for him to run on through.

If he’d meant to stay and fight it would have been a terrible move, exposing his back as he drew attention to his presence. But if he wanted to keep moving it was the best he had.

They ran on, past the bomb-planting Dionites and the leader, who raised his staff in defense but did little to stop them passing. Noah and Burns both took swipes at him as they passed, but Noah missed by a mile and Burns only scratched his arm.

It was only once they’d rounded two corners and heard no sound of pursuit that Noah stopped to catch his breath and look back.

They’d all made it out alive, which was something. But Mason was hurt, blood staining the green and brown of his sleeve, arm hanging limp by his side. There was a spatter of blood across Ferguson’s cheek, though whether that was hers or someone else’s was hard to tell.

“What the hell?” Burns demanded.

“There were twenty of them,” Noah replied. “Appeared from nowhere behind us. I swear, we acted as soon as we saw them coming. Didn’t we?”

Mason nodded. The hipflask was still in his hand, and he looked for a moment like he was about to take another swig, then thought better of it and stowed it away. Noah didn’t think he’d have had the will not to drink just then, given the merest fraction of a chance.

“Appeared from nowhere, huh?” Burns stared accusingly at the bulge where Mason’s hipflask had gone. Guilt clamped Noah’s chest in its vice-like grip. If he hadn’t had a drink would he have seen the Dionites sooner? Might he have given Lily time to take the shot?

But damn it had felt good to get a drink.

“They were letting out prisoners.” Vostok shrugged. “Must have spread them out too, ready in case we come.”

The
whoomp
of an explosion came from back near the prison.

“And now there’s even more of them,” Burns said. “Great.”