Read MoonFall for Free Online

his travels. The odd hunter who’d kept himself in game dinners and furs for the winter, or couples who’d grabbed the right supplies to thrive in the wilderness. Even one or two farmers who’d managed to make their lands work right, though most were just scraping by. But a community or a decent sized caravan like the one he’d followed south? Those could never find enough food and medicine to really thrive, only hold themselves together and to keep each other going.
    This place was different. These people weren’t just well fed, or clear of the scars inevitable in a world without emergency rooms to hand. They were clean, their clothes neat and well patched. A prouder man might have felt ashamed to come among them in Noah’s own ragged coat and sweat-stained shirt, but Noah was determined not to be that man. He straightened his shoulders, brushed the dried blood from his chin, held himself upright. Nobody made the Brennan boys feel like dirt, even when dirt was what they were wearing.
    “Where to?” he asked.
    The guard to his right laughed. He was mighty tolerant for a man Noah had tried to kick in the balls.
    “To the prison,” he said. Noah realized his was the Russian-sounding accent and that Lieutenant Poulson’s was something more softly alien. What was with this place – had Virginia been invaded by the goddamn Europeans? Folks back home would have had things to say about that, and none of them friendly.
    But as they marched him down the street, Noah heard familiar accents too, mostly local but some from deeper in the south or up the east coast. This place was thriving, and it still seemed to be American.
    Something else grabbed his attention as they made their way towards an ugly concrete building on the far side of town. A girl, somewhere in her teens, scrawny as a spring fawn. She shadowed them as they walked, peering at Noah through gaps in the crowd, scurrying across junctions rather than staying out in the open. Her ragged clothes would have fit in anywhere else, but here they were distinct, and while the folks around them seemed determined to ignore her, to Noah she stood out.
    They exchanged glances as he passed, her look filled as much with curiosity as with a challenge to him, wanting to know what this disheveled stranger was about. Places like this had hot water, mirrors, and sharp razors. There weren’t many beards here as wildly impressive as his, and even without the escort he’d have been distinctive.
    “If I was you, I would not be looking so happy.” Poulson glared at Noah. “Your friends are not going to save you.”
    “No change there then,” Noah said. “I can count my friends on the fingers of one ass-cheek.”
    At last they came to a complex of grim concrete buildings, barbed wire trailing across the tops of the walls, dead cameras still standing on a couple of posts around the yard. The sign out front still held the words “County Jail,” though the name of the county had been whited out and the word ‘Apollo’ neatly painted over the top.
    Seemed these folks took pride in everything, even the dark places they reserved for crooks and strangers.
    The raggedy girl stopped a hundred yards from the jail, hovered anxiously in an alley, her eyes flitting between Noah and the flat gray edifice. At the gate, a smaller door swung open on well-oiled hinges and Noah was shoved once more, this time across the doorstep and into an exercise yard. There wasn’t much exercise going on, only two guards taking a break at a faded wooden table. Again there were religious icons all around the place – a cross in one corner of the yard, a bunch of little statues along railings and ledges. It was as if someone had taken a great big guide to world religions and shaken the pictures out all over this town and its jail. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Pope and the Dalai Lama had rounded the corner laughing about who was getting into heaven first.
    Well, maybe a bit surprised. He’d heard