Dead Moon Rising

by Caitlin Sangster

  My home.

  “He’s asking where we’ll find the highest population concentrations.” Song Jie clears his throat. “That’s where the Chairman is going to be, correct? And his son.”

  “Yes. Definitely.” Maybe they’re trying to kidnap the Chairman himself. That would make more sense, even if it wouldn’t be very helpful—just give Dr. Yang another reason to solidify the Reds behind him, leading them to avenge their beloved leader.

  I can’t stay with these people, tramping through the woods just hoping that somehow the promise of arriving in the mountains within days will happen. They’re making a target of themselves. Eyeing Song Jie’s pack over the top of the map, I bite down hard on my lip, the skin breaking. Sev wouldn’t know. She’s not here to judge.

  It doesn’t matter if Sev sees, the rational part of me counters. The part that hoped along with Sev that I can be better than I was before. Attacking these people and leaving them to die would make you less.

  And suddenly it feels like a choice. An easy one. Not Sev watching me to make sure I’m not a monster inside. Not Sole shaking her head and saying I can’t help it. Not Jiang Gui-hua looking down at me with pity or Dr. Yang choosing carefully his every word, knowing each one will twitch my arms and legs like marionettes on a string.

  It’s not Sev’s opinion or anyone else that matters. It’s my choice what I do next. And I don’t want to harm anyone else.

  I take half of the map and point generally to where the City sits, Gein squinting down at the paper. “When we get closer, I’ll give you coordinates.”

  We walk until the trees around us grow so closely they seem to link arms, every inch of the forest so tightly knit that visibility is almost zero. Reds must still be tailing us, and every step I take blind feels like asking for a bullet to the head. Song Jie leads us down a balding ravine that screams shallow grave—anyone at the top will be able to see us and there’s nowhere to run. Telan shifts uncomfortably ahead of me in our line as if he can feel it too, but he keeps his back to the trees until we get to a clump of boulders, as if pretending the threat isn’t there will make it go away.

  The boulders are apparently interesting enough to stop and stare at despite our precarious situation. Telan and Song Jie set their shoulders to the smallest of the rocks wedged in the bottom of the ravine while Gein watches, twitching when a fly lands on his sweaty face. The two Islanders pull together until the moss begins to tear, the rock underneath groaning as a section of it slides away.

  There’s a hole behind the rocks. A tunnel.

  Reifa’s face is a full moon, smiling as if Guonian’s holiday dumplings came early. Did we already pass Guonian and I didn’t even know?

  It seems like a pathetic thought to be having at this moment, waiting for the shots from above that will puncture my head or heart if the sniper is good. A lung or major organ, leaving me to bleed out if they aren’t. Guonian dumplings are something I’ve always eaten alone, watching other families and wondering where I fit. For some reason I thought this year I’d be with Sev. With June. Maybe even Kasim and Sole. With Luokai even, both of us attempting to rediscover what it means to have a brother.

  Instead of making dumplings with Sev or getting into a glue fight with June and Kasim while papering my door with red, I’m being forced by a muscly Baohujia onto my knees to fit into a hole that seems a place for the dead if I ever did see one.

  Crawling through the tunnel is a lopsided affair with me holding my bad arm tight against my stomach, Reifa’s backside only inches from my face. When we finally emerge into open, black space, I reach out to the sides to stop vertigo from setting in. Based on the way our breath echoes, the cave has to be at least fifty feet high and I don’t know how wide.

  A light flickers into existence just behind me. I look back to find Song Jie’s fingers leaving stripes of shadow across the little globe painting the ground around him gold. The depths of the cave seem to swallow the glimmering ball, bulky shapes crowding the space like gores in a predatory slumber. Helis.

  The cave is an aircraft hangar built into the hill, each heli shrouded in silk. The shape and lines of them are familiar, but somehow off, the limbs and guts of the helis all in a slightly different place than I’m used to.

  “This is how we’re going to get to the mountains?” I ask Song Jie, who is igniting more of the little lights and handing them out, sickness a flower unfurling inside me. “The Reds out there… Were they after you or after this?” I gesture hopelessly at the hulking shapes.

  “Stay out of our way.” Song Jie brushes past me, following Reifa to the closest aircraft, the two of them holding their lights up to the propellers as Telan pulls the tarp away from its body.

  The metal is painted black, guns huddled under its nose like a particularly lethal mustache. It’s like nothing I’ve seen from the City. Hibernating since before the Influenza War, sick with sleep like the rest of us.

  Telan and Reifa start testing the hatches, the windows, the wings. They follow Gein, of all people, as he shakes his head at the heli and moves farther down the line, then points to the next craft with a satisfied grunt.

  “What’s Gein saying? What’s going on?” Only Song Jie hangs back, fishing in his pack for another light. The floor is dyed red under our feet, and when I follow the color over to where the helis sit, I can see a hint of yellow stars on the floor, like the Core at the Mountain. This must be a military base from Before.

  “Gein found the one he’s best equipped to fly.” Song Jie goes down to his knees, digging into the pack. “Go. You can steal the best seat.”

  As Gein and Reifa pull open their chosen heli’s hatch, I take my time walking over. My eyes find a long glass window set into the hangar’s stone wall to my left, about fifteen feet up, and a doorway set into the rock just under it. Next to that, there’s a cutout section mostly cluttered with shadows, but combined light from Gein, Reifa, and Telan is enough to see outlines of fuel tanks and long tubes.… They almost look like pre–Influenza War bombs. Piled together, as if there’s no harm to be had from them.

  Telan stops me before I can get too close to the heli, as if he’s afraid I’ll somehow alert the Reds outside to what we’ve found in here. He points to the ground, speaking in Port North’s odd combination of sounds before going back to help Gein balance the heavy stairs that pull free with the hatch. I’m supposed to stay here, I guess.

  Once the stairs are down, Gein climbs into the cockpit and settles himself on the other side of the cockpit window, which finally makes me understand. Reifa dragged Gein all the way out here because he’s a pilot. I don’t know how I would have been able to tell. Calluses? Maybe an extra lift to his walk? All the pilots I’ve ever known have looked like Tai-ge: ready to flap their arms and keep a heli in the air on pure muscle should the propellers fail.

  “How did you know these were here, Song Jie?” I ask, unable to muster more than a whisper, as if these old creatures are worthy of reverence. “Why hasn’t the island been using them to fight…?”

  I look to where I last saw him by the tunnel mouth. It’s dark, as is the cave everywhere except where Telan and Reifa are using their lights to inspect the heli. Gein comes back down the stairs, growling at me to get out of the way. I duck under the propeller to check the other side, and my adrenaline is surging by the time I get back to where I started.

  Don’t any of them see that Song Jie is gone?

  The realization only has a split second to settle before the shing of metal on rock echoes up through the cave, a sound I’ve heard too many times. My body moves before the rest of me can think. I bodycheck Gein, pinning him to the ground so we’re both shielded behind the heli when the world explodes around us.

  CHAPTER 16 Howl

  EXPLOSIONS DON’T SPEAK IN A particular language. They’re a universal understanding that erases the need for words. It only takes a fraction of a second, and it changes your whole world.

  It isn’t a fire-and-shrapnel explosion, thank Yuan, but
a wash of hot air and an ear-killing boom that knocks me off center. The heli rocks to the side, the force of the blast knocking Telan to the ground, his light skittering across the floor. Even with my eyes and ears covered and the heli to block the worst of it, I’m still surprised to find myself all in one piece. Gein, underneath me, looks blankly up at the heli propellers shaking overhead, his eyes unfocused. Ducking out from the heli’s protection, I kick the light Gein was holding toward the tunnel we came from. Dragging the pilot out from behind the heli’s bulk takes almost all my strength, and the pain tearing through my shoulder makes my arm feel like it’s going to fall off. Gein’s limp, but I can feel his pulse racing.

  What do I need to get out of this? A pilot, for sure. Every step seems unbalanced, as if the floor is waving this way and that underneath me. Definitely the work of a flash-bang grenade. Whoever is out there must know what’s in here: lots of combustibles. They’re not going to use bullets unless they’re sure of what they’re shooting.

  As I drag Gein toward the wall where I saw the door, I trip over a set of legs. Falling to my knees, I find long braids and slack, old-person skin—and a pulse. Reifa. She’s alive.

  Her gun is lying just next to her on the floor. Picking it up it feels wrong, as if taking her weapon means I’m taking her life. And worse, as if touching the weapon will bring back everything inside me that might be crooked. But I take it anyway, thrusting it into my waistband, where it pokes into my ribs. If not to use, then at least no one else will be able to use it on me.

  In another life I would have left Reifa where she lay. In this one, I help her sit as Gein wobbles up from the ground, holding his head. Grabbing Gein and supporting Reifa, I shuffle both unbalanced Port Northians to the wall where I saw the window. Just as my fingers find the cracked wood door, a metal-on-stone clunk echoes throughout the hangar, telling me we have seconds before we’re either dead or stunned. The doorknob won’t turn, but it does splinter with my first kick, then cave with the next. We fall through the opening in a muddle of limbs and terror just as a second detonation roars by in a hot rush of air.

  Pain in my chest turns everything white, the set of stairs inside the doorway a blurry impression of sharp edges. Gein gives a yelp, and Reifa buries her head into my bad shoulder, but we’re shielded from the worst of it. “Follow me!” I yell, but I can’t hear even my own words. The two Port Northians don’t need the direction because they follow me up the stairs, Gein pausing to retch about halfway up. At the top there’s the glass window I saw from outside. Controls decorate the wall and the long desk that’s built in directly beneath the window, but they’re all dead, not a flicker of light to be seen.

  There has to be another way out of here. The helis didn’t squeeze in through that tunnel. I just have to find where. Once I know where the exit is, I can shatter the window and pick off the assailants from up here with Reifa’s gun, then get out before the rest of their group gets inside. Provided I don’t run out of bullets before I run out of assailants. I don’t know how many bullets are in her magazine, and I don’t want to stop just now to check.

  Swearing, I push one of the chairs toward the stairwell, wondering how long we’ll last trapped up here. Maybe the desks can be moved and we can barricade ourselves in, but that would only extend our lives by minutes at best.

  Gein and Reifa huddle against the wall on the top step, and I have to drop my chair to pull them out of the way, but somehow they pitch me over instead. My brain seems to blank out, nothing but the sure knowledge that we have less than a minute before whoever it is out there finds us up here and that Song Jie—that little Seph-eater—is probably hiding behind one of the grenade-wielding grunts down there.

  Song Jie hated Reifa and the others. I could see it in the line of his shoulders every time he had to bow and cook and carry. Did he plan this, letting the Reds corner us in here where we wouldn’t be able to find him? I believed him when he told me I was the murderer. Anger churns inside me. He was right to be afraid of me.

  But that thought turns my chest to ice.

  Afraid like the little girl I shot, her parents already dead bodies lying broken in the tent right in front of her. Afraid like Sev when we were in the cave, waiting for me to kill her, too.

  I am not a murderer. But if I can’t fight, then I might as well lie down here on the stairs with my hands over my head. Kind of the way I am right now, stuck between Reifa and Gein. If I can’t fight, I’m choosing to die.

  I don’t want to die. Is it a choice between those two with nothing in between? Murderer or gore meat?

  The door below cracks open, a yellow quicklight zinging through the air to hit the wall, then land at my feet. I don’t see the soldier until he’s right on top of us, yellow light hitting the stars pinned to his uniform and glinting down the barrel of the gun pointed at my chest. He says something, but I can’t hear his words over the ringing in my ears. Hands above my head, I feel the gun I took from Reifa pressed into my ribs.

  I explode up from the floor, kick the soldier’s gun hand to the side. Grab hold of his wrist and slam his elbow into the wall, breaking his arm. His gun clatters to the floor as I pull Reifa’s weapon from my waistband and point it at his head. The soldier crumples a little, holding himself together as he clutches his broken arm to his chest. He says something, the sound filtering in and out of my damaged ears, but his eyes meet mine and hold. I didn’t shoot you, he seems to say. I didn’t want to kill you.

  My finger on the trigger presses hard without actually pulling it, the two of us staring at each other, two people on opposite sides, but for what? I doubt he wants to be here any more than I do, and it’s my life against his. My life and Reifa’s and Gein’s. Is that an even trade?

  Before I can press the button on this man’s existence, a gunmetal crack fills the tiny stairwell. The man jerks forward, blood blooming across his chest in a violent spray. He falls forward, bullet wounds dark and wet in his back.

  Below him on the stairs stands Song Jie, a gun in his hands. Where did he get a gun?

  My hearing is still full of nothing but bullet holes, Song Jie’s lips moving extra slow as if it’s supposed to help. He lowers the gun, his steps exaggerated and deliberate. The same way you to talk to a feral dog with its hackles raised, ready to shoot if it goes for your throat.

  Pointing purposefully toward the other Islanders behind me, he waits until I lower Reifa’s gun before he brushes past me to enter the control room.

  Reifa falls in next to Song Jie as he wrenches at the dead controls. Gein hasn’t moved from his spot in the stairwell, hands clapped down tight over his ears. Song Jie points to a cubby by the control panel, gesturing for me to take off the door. Torn between the stairwell and its inefficient guard (Gein’s not about to stop anyone from coming up here unless they’re sympathetic criers) and knowing we need to get out of here, I don’t follow his frantic pointing. My gut’s all turned around, not wanting to trust Song Jie or any of these court calligraphers with my life. But Song Jie shot the man who was thinking about shooting me. Song Jie’s whole body shakes as he pulls at the controls, blood splatters across his chest and face to match the ones on me.

  It’s that image—one of a man who has never killed before facing the atrociousness of what he’s done—that makes me move. I stick the gun in my waistband and go to the control box, taking the long knife Reifa holds out—the same one I almost used on Song Jie—to leverage it open. It releases with a screech, the metal locking mechanism rusted to almost nothing. Song Jie elbows me out of the way, connecting wires and flipping switches inside until the whole room lights up. The floor seems to hum.

  Not pausing to breathe, Song Jie goes back to the control panel, frantically pressing and pulling things, the multitude of lights blinking on and off again under his fingers, making him squint. Above us, rock seems to groan, and the hum in the room turns to what feels like an earthquake, knocking me to the ground. Light pierces the darkness outside the window, pure and blinding, like s
taring straight into the sun.

  Song Jie grabs Reifa’s arm, then darts for the door, dragging the old woman behind him. My hearing is going from high-pitched tone to a sort of hazy remembrance of what sound is supposed to be like; Song Jie’s voice barely penetrating. “… I don’t know how long before they’ll get through the block I set up in the outer tunnel. Everyone who made it in is dead, but we don’t have much time!”

  He pauses to prod Gein with his foot—not hard, but enough to nudge him from his stupor, allowing me to pull the pilot up from the ground and lead him back down the stairs. Song Jie leads all of us to the cutout room where I saw the outlines of supplies. Gein stumbles along after us, staring blank-eyed at the tidy rows of boxes until Song Jie gives him a push toward them. He points to a pile of long, hard plastic boxes, sending Reifa and Song Jie each scrambling to extract one, then carrying them toward the heli. “Help us!” Song Jie calls back, only an outline of the words scratching through my ears. “We have to get out.”

  I pick up one of the long boxes, heavier than I would have guessed from its size. The beam of light above us widens as the roof slowly folds up. The sun highlights bodies on the ground: four City jerkins… and a set of Baohujia robes. It’s Telan, facedown and motionless, a pool of red blood underneath him.

  Opening the hangar door will allow us to lift off, but it will also give Reds a way in. I don’t understand exactly what is going on, but it’s obvious they knew to follow us here. We need to get off the ground now.

  I glance up as the hangar door makes a world-cleaving, metal-on-stone grumble, the opening to the sky stuck at less than twenty feet wide. Reifa and Song Jie both pause, Song Jie’s sweat-streaked face blank. He says something in Port Northian that punches the way only the very best of swear words can.