Keeping Luna Read online

  Owen was staring at Claire. He felt impulsively drawn to touch her, to hold her, but he didn’t know how to go about it. Her giggling resonated warmly in his head.

  “Orders are orders,” he said.

  “Right,” she giggled again, and rose up from her chair. “So… we’ve tried to talk about everything and nothing, because that’s what we’ve been told people tend to do. Today there will be no more talking than need be. I’m happy with the quiet as long as you are.”

  She was sliding the orange straps from her shoulders as she talked.

  “The plan is this: Sex now, then climbing. There’s a good place just three blocks from here. A good variety of walls and routes.” Her dress was now pulled down past her breasts. Owen sat frozen.

  “Are you planning to leave your clothes on?”

  Recovering from his surprise at this sudden turn, he shot to his feet and removed his sweatshirt. His shirt was quick to follow, and then he worked at his belt.

  “Climbing,” she continued, “then whatever you want to do. A run, maybe? I’m not picky.” Her dress came to rest on the floor around her feet. She stepped out of it and towards him. “And I’ve made us some sandwiches to take with. Then I was thinking we might come back here for more of this. If you want to.”

  Her hand was extended towards him, both of them naked now, and both of them very satisfied with what they were seeing. Owen was perhaps more noticeably pleased as he took her hand and was led into the next room.

  Chapter Five

  “You see all this shit?”

  Riley waved his hand towards the village, which was really only a smattering of seven or eight modest concrete structures and a handful of small tin-roofed sheds.

  “This is what all of Section 53 used to look like. The whole coastline on either side of Tirana. Just shit. Trash and rubble and more trash. People scuttering about in it like cockroaches. No. That’s being unkind to the cockroaches.”

  A murmur of laughs rolled through his audience. These were young men. Nineteen. Twenty. Some were twenty-one, but none were older than that. For many of them, this was the first assignment on their first tour. They tried to seem as relaxed as Riley sounded, but jitters are hard things to keep hidden. A bouncing leg, busy fingers, eyes that blink too often or not at all. They were easy to spot.

  “One giant heap of shit, and they live in it. Not just that; they’ll fight for it! They know we’re here, for fuck’s sake, and they haven’t budged! So make no mistake here, boys. You will be put to work today. They’ll make you work for every centimeter of this little shithole, and then there are a hundred more little shitholes just like this one, just waiting for us.”

  Kale was some fifty meters down the line, smiling mildly and listening to Riley address his men. Kale’s own platoon was also listening to Riley, but the only smiles they could manage were nervous and unconvincing. They glanced at Kale, then at their feet or the ground or the next man’s feet, and then back up at Kale, hoping that he, too, might start in on a speech of his own. This waiting was awful business.

  But Kale just sat there with his back to the low brick wall, the small village a few hundred meters beyond it. This short barrier had once been a dark reddish-brown, but decades of wind and sand and sun had done their work, and the wall could now hardly make itself distinguishable from the yellow-brown dirt and sand that it was anchored into.

  The heat clung to the men like wet laundry. They were lucky enough to be sitting more or less directly beneath a large fig tree, the sun filtering through thousands of leaves before breaking through in thin beams down onto them, but there was no real wind this far inland and the air was oppressively still.

  Kale scoured about, looking for a decent piece of fruit, but those figs that hadn’t spoiled on the ground had been stepped on by his platoon. He shifted his eyes upwards into the tangle of branches overhead.

  Plenty up there, he thought.

  He spotted one fig that looked promising, hanging a few meters above the head of one of his men. It was nearly the size of a tennis ball, deep violet and beginning to split down one side. Kale was a bit surprised it hadn’t fallen already.

  “Trevor,” Kale spoke quietly, though not in a whisper. “Fetch me that fig there.” He motioned towards it with his eyes and a small nod of his head.

  “Are you….” Trevor stopped short. He knew that Kale was serious, as he had never conducted himself in any other manner. Trevor looked up at the fig. In all the history of mankind, no man had ever beheld a piece of fruit with such fear in his eyes.

  “Shit, shit, shit…” He pulled his butt up off the ground, shifting himself into a crouching position, and then peeled the rifle strap from his shoulder and lay his firearm beside him, careful to keep his head held low throughout. He looked up once more and took a few deep breaths. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” And then he shot up like a spring and clutched the fig between two fingers and a thumb and came back down with it. Something small smacked into the tree trunk just as he returned to the ground, and the sound of the gunshot reached them a fraction of a second later. Looking up at the tree, they could now see a small dark hole, a bit larger than a centimeter in diameter.

  The men erupted in laughter. Trevor just sat there, trying to get his heart to slow back down. He remembered the fig in his hand and tossed it over to Kale, who rolled it around in his own torn hands and inspected it.

  Perfect. Can’t recall ever seeing a better one at market, he thought. He glanced over at Trevor.

  “You bruised it.” He saw Trevor’s throat moving down and up again as he tried to swallow with no saliva. His eyes were wide and his face pale, which was quite the feat in this sweltering heat. Then Kale let his lips round upwards just enough to almost be a smile. This was the “thank you” that he would never speak, tangled together with his own amusement. Trevor’s eyes softened some and his shoulders lowered. He sighed and sat back down on his butt.

  Kale blew on the fruit to rid it of whatever dust had settled on it, placed both his thumbs into the split on the side, and tore it in two. He held out one half to Trevor, who humbly declined it with a small wave of the hand. Kale shrugged and put the second half into one of his hip bags, and then the other half disappeared in two bites. He closed his eyes, still leaning his back on the low wall, and the fearful silence crept back over the men.

  In days long gone, Kale had once been told, soldiers would smoke cigarettes by the dozen in these situations, in the hopes of calming their nerves. Really it had just served to give them a focal point, something to keep them occupied, but what are nerves and jitters if not just eyes with nowhere to look and hands with nothing to touch?

  He hadn’t even seen a cigarette until he was twenty and on his first deployment. It was a situation not unlike this one. Waiting. Waiting within shouting distance of those who want to kill you, and who might soon get the chance. The unfriendlies had passed them back and forth and always seemed to keep at least one lit, and even at a distance Kale could smell it wafting across the hot zone and into his camp.

  He had not smelled it on this day, however, and was thankful for that. There had been something uncomfortable about it. Not the smell itself, which was actually somewhat pleasant, but his unfamiliarity with it. It was the unknown. It was strange and foreign, and it seemed to drive him further from everything he knew. It reminded him that he was in someone else’s land, even if it would not remain theirs for long.

  Riley, whose rambling speech had been interrupted by the gunshot a minute earlier, now continued his harsh lecture, peppering in a few jokes and teasing selected members of his team. He kept things light, but whatever smiles could be found in his ranks, nervous or not, flattened themselves out the moment that the sound of jet engines was heard. His speech and any effect of its harsh humor ended abruptly and were replaced now by a few hurried commands.

  “Ok, boys! Packs stay here, helmets on, rifles up, safeties off!

  Kale’s eyes were still closed and he listened as the bombers
roared closer, gauging their distance by the shaking that began in his ears and seemed to vibrate in his skull as they neared. His eyes snapped open and he addressed his men.

  “Ten seconds! Stay on me!”

  Thunder came over them now, directly overhead and almost unbearable for that split second before it peaked and began its quick fade as the tactical strike passed over the small village. Then the ground shook and no one could hear anything over the ringing in their ears.

  Kale didn’t bother yelling anything more at his men. He just put his left hand up over the edge of the brick and it became the pivot point for the rest of his body as he leapt over with his heavy rifle in his right hand. His feet hit the earth and he took off running. His men would be right behind him, he knew. The dread of the enemy could never hold sway over them as their fear of him did.

  The buildings he ran towards were no longer recognizable as such. The red tiles of the roofs had vanished, and most of the structures were now just jagged grey walls growing out of rubble and a fog of dust. Some hadn’t been left with even this much, reduced to vacant, blackened ground. These looked like charcoal and ashes held in the hand of a giant and then blown into the wind, leaving only a dirty palm as proof that they had ever been there at all.

  There were movements within the sooty mist of one building, flashes of brown fabric fumbling about in a grey cloud. Kale slowed his feet. His legs still scurried beneath him, though in shorter steps and smoothly enough that he could now fire with a chance of striking his target.

  He unleashed a few short bursts into the cloud, three or four rounds each, with a second in between to allow him to recover his rifle from its recoil. He resumed full pace until he was posted up against the wall of the nearest structure, looking back at his men and Riley’s men approaching and hugging up to the remaining walls of other shattered buildings.

  A few bursts rang out from the far end of Riley’s line, but then stopped. Now they waited, as it was best to let this dust settle before proceeding. After about ninety seconds, Kale’s line of vision was clear all the way to the furthest reaches of the village, to that point on its perimeter where the sand disappeared once more into scrubs and brush.

  Four men shared the wall with Kale. Five others were up against the remnants of the next building which was about twenty meters away, and three more were on his other side, crouched behind the last ragged bits of what had been the largest building in the village just a few minutes prior. The soldiers beyond these were Riley’s, and were not Kale’s concern.

  He signaled that one of his men was to remain on the corner of each wall to give covering fire while the others worked their way in, then he pushed off of the concrete wall and rolled his way around the man holding the corner.

  They penetrated the town one wall at a time, the furthest men systematically halting their advance to supply cover while the others made their way up. Kale noted a handful of broken bodies strewn about the wreckage as he made his runs. Most of them were half-buried in stone and dirt and twisted rebar. One he could tell for certain was female. He was certain there would be more.

  They had made it two walls in before gunfire snapped at them from one of the furthest buildings, one of just two left that could still provide some real shelter to the enemy. The shots did not sound at all like Kale’s or his men’s, lacking some of that lower mid-range that he felt in his chest whenever he squeezed off a round. These shots were a higher pitch, from a smaller caliber rifle, and came one by one instead of in bursts.

  “Tony, bring down the beast.”

  “Yes, sir!” shouted the young man to his immediate left, sliding the thick black strap from his left shoulder and swinging the giant firearm off of his back and down onto the ground before him.

  “You got a line on that building?” asked Kale.

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Bring it down. And sink that other one while you’re at it. I’m on cover.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Tony slid open the action on the giant cannon at his feet and dropped one of the cylindrical rounds into it, fifteen centimeters long and six across, and hammered it shut again.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes, sir!” Tony’s movements were calm and precise. The weapon was now loaded and active, and he clipped its support line onto his chest harness to help him balance the weight.

  Calm is good, thought Kale as he followed along with Tony’s motions. Calm is control. Nerves before the game don’t mean shit, but once this ball gets rolling… once there’s a genuinely hostile human firing live rounds at your head… well, then you’ll see where all your training and all that drill gets you.

  “Here we go!” Kale popped his upper torso halfway around the right corner and started firing at the building in bursts of four or five with small intervals.

  Tony grabbed the massive gun up with one hand on the stock and trigger and the other gripping the triangular handle that protruded from atop its massive barrel. He hopped out to his left and clear of the wall. Needing only a second to aim and pull the trigger, he sent the heavy round hurtling dead-center into the concrete facade of that far building, where it sank into the solid rock composite like a dart into corkwood.

  Three whole seconds passed before it detonated, sending the entire front wall into the rest of the building. Then everything was lost in a cloud of dust and the piercing drone of white noise.

  “Rinse and repeat!” ordered Kale.

  The two men switched sides behind the wall, and Tony set to work loading the massive weapon once more. He nodded at Kale, who now jumped out on the left side and began firing bursts at the only other building that was still more or less intact. Tony came out on the right and blasted another round into this concrete structure, which was a hair closer than the first and about seventy-five meters to its left. This shot made contact near the corner of the building this time, but the result was the same as before.

  The dust began to work lazily at settling. No one spoke.

  Kale doubted there would be much more resistance, but there still stood a few bits of wall ahead of them and he wouldn’t tolerate risking any of his men, not knowing for certain whether anyone was behind those walls or not. That would be a personal failure for Kale. And he didn’t have a stomach for blunder. He sent two men back to the fig tree where they had begun their initial charge, instructing them to split there and circle around each side of the town to check for any remaining unfriendlies.

  Five minutes later he heard some gunshots from far off to his left. His earpiece activated and the man who had swung out on the right flank said there was nothing worrisome to report. Another minute passed and then the man who had taken up the left reported the same. Kale instructed both to stay put where they were while the others advanced.

  The rest of the team pushed forward as they had done before, wall by wall and run by run, until they had reached the far border of the village.

  “Ok, boys! Well done!” Kale could hear Riley shouting on the far end of the town. “Now let’s secure this steaming pile and move on to the next! Stay alert now!” He had dialed down the raw commanding aggression in his voice and was now working to restore some level-headed caution to his and Kale’s men.

  “Pair off and we’ll do this grid by grid. If you find any surviving breeders, try to take them alive. Don’t bother with the men.” He had worked his way close enough to Kale to speak at him without shouting. “I don’t think we’ll be bringing back any women for coupling this time, though. Looks like they were fighting alongside the men.” He nudged with his foot at a hand that was protruding from the rubble beside him. It was bruised and covered with blood and dirt, but they could both see chips of dark nail polish on the nails.

  They worked slowly forward from the back of the village in a dozen two-man units, sweeping through the wreckage in search of anyone still breathing.

  “Got a moaner here!” yelled one of the men two grids over from Riley. He was looking down at a man whose legs were obviously cr
ushed, and who was laboring to breathe through a punctured lung.

  “Male or female?” Riley hollered.

  “Male, sir.”

  Riley merely tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. The young soldier took a step in towards the man beneath him, standing now between his outstretched arm and his torso. He raised his foot and placed it on the man’s throat, slowly shifting all of his weight. It made no sound, but he could feel a small crunch through the thick hard sole of his boot.

  They moved on.

  Kale had paired himself up with Tony, and the two of them worked their way up the center aisle of the town until they came to what remained of the larger of the two buildings that Tony had levelled with the beast. The breadth of its floor space, which was about all that was left, covered three search grids. So there were now a total of six men prodding through it.

  Trevor and a soldier named Gregor were conducting their sweep to the left of Kale and Tony, when Gregor stopped suddenly. He felt that his feet were no longer on stone. Tapping down with hard tip of his right boot and hearing it resonate, he knew it was a thick plate of metal, and an empty space beneath it. He signaled to Trevor, who trained his rifle on it as Gregor got his fingers under an edge and began to lift. It opened towards Trevor, who led the sights of his weapon down into a dark shaft.

  “Sir, we’ve got a bunk…”

  Pop.

  The sound startled Gregor and he dropped the heavy metal lid. Trevor collapsed onto it, face down. Blood began to pool on the iron beneath his head.

  “Shit.” Kale hopped across the rubble between them and made it quickly over to Gregor. “Shit,” he said again to himself. He placed his rifle flat on the ground next to the metal hatch and rolled Trevor over and off of it. There was mashed flesh where his eye had been, and a viscous sludge of blood and tissue and shattered fragments of skull trailed down the right side of his face.

  Kale turned his head away from Trevor and towards the hatch, yelling now in a tongue that none of his men could understand. It was a very glottal language, and the way he barked made it sound as though there were no space between his tongue and his throat.