The Moon Dwellers

by David Estes

  “So you’re not Tristan Nailin, the son of President Nailin, the boy wonder who will one day become the most powerful man in the Tri-Realms? You’re not that Tristan?” Chip asks, his smile growing even wider—impossibly wide—spreading from ear to ear.

  “I think you have me confused with—”

  “Ha! We’ve got a real treat tonight, everyone. Tristan Nailin himself, in the flesh! Well, bless my lucky stars!”

  My instinct—especially after our encounter in the pizza shop—is to be ready to fight, but the man’s tone sounds light, friendly even. Either he is a very good actor or he has nothing against me.

  With unexpected swiftness, his tone changes. “Your father is a real piece of work, son,” he says in a low voice.

  “And me?” I ask, dreading the answer.

  “Eh, I think you’re all right, kid.” I am so overjoyed by the fact that he doesn’t harbor any ill feelings toward me that I manage to ignore him calling me kid again. He continues: “I have a good sense about people, ya know? Just like I could tell you were lyin’ earlier, I can tell you have a good heart. I think maybe you could be the one to make some positive change when you become president.”

  “I’ll never be president,” I say honestly.

  “For heaven’s sake, why not?”

  I scan the room. The others in the cellar are listening to the exchange in silence. Their dark eyes feel like those of silent executioners. I hope it is just my imagination.

  I know I should stop the conversation now—for God’s sake, shut your big, fat mouth!—but I tell them anyway. “I’ve run away. We’ve run away.” I interlock my fingers to signify the collective of Roc and I. “I don’t want anything to do with my father or the Sun Realm.”

  The guy with the smile winks at me. “You see? I told you I knew you were one of the good guys.”

  I change the subject, cutting my losses. “So who do you think is behind the attack?” I ask. Despite his age, the guy does seem perceptive, and I really think he might have some valuable insights. Instead, Roc jumps in.

  “I think your love for that girl is so strong that it causes explosions,” he says playfully.

  “Roc, no,” I say, but it is too late. The talker seems to enjoy clamping his mind around whatever topic is on the table.

  “What girl?” he says, leaning forward.

  I warn Roc off with my eyes. “Just a girl,” I say.

  “A girlfriend?” he guesses.

  “Yeah, sorta. Just a girlfriend,” I say, hoping that will end the conversation. But Roc isn’t ready to let it go. Good friend.

  “Yeah, Tristy and his girlfriend just had their first date,” Roc says, smiling brightly. “They almost even spoke to each other this time.” I want to slug him, but I don’t think a spat of violence will win me any points with the moon dwellers.

  “A moon dweller?” Chip asks, a gleam in his eyes.

  I wait for Roc—who is suddenly feeling talkative—to answer, but instead he puts his palm out to indicate it is my turn. I wish there is a table I can kick him under.

  “Yes, she’s a moon dweller,” I say.

  “Well, why aren’t you with her? ’Specially at a time like this.”

  It is a good question. I want to be with her, want to know she is okay. I don’t think the guards recaptured her, but I can’t be sure, as I was a bit busy dodging flaming rubble at the time.

  “I don’t know where she is,” I say, dropping my head.

  “I might be able to help with that,” Chip says. “I’m somewhat of an amateur private investigator. Where’d you last see her?”

  I know I am approaching a dangerous level of truth, but I’ve told them so much already—hell, they know I am Tristan, the Tristan—so I decide to just go for it. I need help, and if they can provide it, then I have to accept the risks. “Okay, look. Here’s the thing…” I tell them nearly everything. The strange feelings I had for her the first time I saw her; our escape from the Sun Realm; how she was trying to escape from the Pen when the bombs starting blowing up all around us; and, finally, how she was gone when the smoke cleared, like a magician performing a famous disappearing act.

  When I finish, I sit back and wait for a response. I’m not sure what to expect.

  Everyone starts talking at once, asking questions, making comments. The young mother exclaims, “That’s so romantic!” while her husband says definitively, “You’ve got to go after her.” The older couple, who’ve previously been silent, speak in succession: “I bet they went north,” one says, while the other says, “No, south, she must’ve gone south!” Even the kids get involved. The little girl says, “Tristan, do you love her?” The boy is more interested in the action than the romance. “Were you scared when the guards pointed their guns at her?” he asks.

  When the chatter dies down somewhat, I hear a voice from my right, from the door, which is now slightly ajar. The woman who invited us in is standing there—I didn’t even notice her arrival and have no idea how much she’s heard. “She’ll be laying low for a few days with her friends, until things die down. You might only have one chance to find her, because as soon as she makes a move, she’ll run as fast and as far as she can.” The woman sounds wise beyond her years, like she’s experienced everything that life has to offer. “What do you reckon, Chip? She’ll head for the northeastern suburbs most likely, at least at first, don’t you think?”

  I realize that Chip is the only one who hasn’t yet reacted to my story, and I turn to him, hoping he’ll have a revelation, something that will give me some kind of direction.

  “Yeah, northeastern suburbs because they extend the furthest from the commercial district, where most of the bombs were hittin’. She won’t stay in one place long, though, and eventually she’ll have to find a way out of the subchapter. Can’t use conventional means, as she don’t have travel approval, unless she can find a forger in a hurry, although I don’t know how she could pay for it. I reckon she’ll try one of the mining tunnels on the subchapter border, up near where she’s probably already hiding.”

  The woman adds, “You’ll also want to find out more stuff about who she’s with, the other two escaped prisoners, because it might change what they do.”

  I scan the room, looking each person in the eyes, and waiting for any more advice. When silence ensues, I say, “Thanks. Thanks for everything.”

  Somehow I know they’ll keep my secrets. I don’t know why they will. I guess maybe they are just good people. Real good people. The kind you call friend; the kind you stand up for; the kind you fight for. I don’t know what is happening above me, but I vow in my heart to help these people, somehow, some way, some day. To do whatever it takes to give them a better life.

  We leave, Roc and I. Explosions continue to rock the night around us, but they are less intense and less frequent. The streets are empty, everyone having taken shelter.

  We run back to the Pen, where the fence is still destroyed, and the yard still strewn with guards’ bodies. No one is around. We stop at the point along the fence line where I last saw the girl. Consulting the map, we identify the best route to take out of the city.

  “This way,” Roc says, taking the lead as navigator.

  I follow him, hoping and praying that we are doing the right thing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Adele

  Sometimes I wonder whether people are inherently good or inherently bad. I’d like to think good, or even neutral, like we can all make the choice for ourselves. But then you meet someone like the guy we are seeing on the telebox, and you think people are just plain bad.

  After a quiet morning in the servants’ quarters at Tawni’s parents’ house, we move inside once we are sure it is safe. Although we don’t plan to linger much longer, we are careful to cover our tracks so no one knows we’ve been here. The longer it takes them to find our trail, the colder it will become and the safer we’ll be.

  The whole morning I think about Elsey. She will be our first rescue, because she is c
losest and I know exactly where she is. It is all I can do to stop myself from running off alone to save her. I need to be patient. One thing at a time.

  Tawni’s house is even more impressive than I’d imagined based on my glimpse in the dark. It is three stories with more than a dozen rooms. The floors are marble and swirled with illustrious blue and green patterns. Winding staircases rise majestically in at least three places, providing access to the upper floors. The entire place is spotless, a testament to the quality of the servants that work here.

  We’ve gotten lucky; it is one of the servants’ two days off.

  We turn on the telly, hoping to find out what is happening in subchapter 14. There are two major news stories being run over and over again. The headline story is about the bombing. We were all wrong about the culprits. I am shocked, to be honest.

  While we’ve all been hating the Sun Realm—for its unfair policies and outrageous taxes—the Star Realm has been hating us. The whole time I’ve been thinking the star dwellers are like a younger sibling to us, different but on the same side—but they’ve taken a different approach. The video from Vice President Meriweather, the leader of the Star Realm, explains things.

  He blames us for the oppression by the Sun Realm, says we let them go too far, that we set a precedent that forces the Star Realm to comply with unfair contractual terms. He says our leaders are spineless, gutless—which I tend to agree with—and that until we remove them from power and agree to join their rebellion, they’ll continue to bomb the living sheetrock out of us. Earlier, I assumed subchapter 14 was the first target, and it was, but it was only one of many first targets. Overnight a dozen subchapters were bombed, although none as heavily as ours.

  Tawni and Cole are as shocked as I am. “If we kill each other, then where will we be?” Cole says, exasperated. He refuses to sit down while watching the broadcast, and now he is pacing, throwing his hands around as he rants.

  “It will only make the Sun Realm more powerful,” Tawni agrees.

  “But the star dwellers are right, in a way,” I say. When I see the looks on my friends’ faces, I explain, “I don’t mean in bombing us—not that. Just about our leaders. They’re just puppets for President Nailin, right? He dictates the terms, and they agree to them in exchange for a bit of money on the side.”

  “Yeah, true,” Cole says, “but why not just come and talk to us about it, rather than chucking bombs around?”

  “Maybe they did,” I say. “Maybe we ignored them.”

  I think Cole might blow up, lose his temper again—he is certainly in one of those moods—but he doesn’t. He chews on the side of his mouth like he is chewing on my words, trying to understand them, and then says, “If that’s true then they should be removed from power. As far as I’m concerned, there should be a rebellion, but not against us, against the sun dwellers, by both us and the star dwellers.”

  “But so many people will die,” Tawni says.

  “People are dying now!” Cole shouts. He lowers his voice, looking around as if the walls might have ears. “Just more slowly. The life is sucked out of us, day by day, as the sun dwellers take more and more from us. One day they’ll take our souls.”

  He has a point, but that’s when the second breaking news story comes on, so we turn our attention back to the telebox.

  The next story is all about us, referred to as “the escaped guests from the Pen,” who are deemed to be “armed and dangerous.” Our photos and names are stuck to the bottom of the screen while they show footage of the destroyed fence, the downed guards, and the dropped guns. Without explicitly saying it, they imply that we’re responsible for the whole mess, rather than admitting it was the star dweller bombs that caused the destruction.

  Next they give information on who to call if we are spotted. Security checkpoints are being added to all major subchapter borders, and roadblocks are in place to search vehicles that may be hiding us. The penalty for harboring “the fugitives”—meaning us—is a life sentence in the Max.

  The lead investigator, which basically means hunter of humans, is speaking live from the Sun Realm, and will be traveling to subchapter 14 to personally begin the search. His name is Rivet, and his face is what sparks my thoughts about the inherent nature of the human race.

  Let me tell ya, I don’t know where they found this guy, or what hole he’d been hiding in, but he is the epitome of evil. His face is cold and hard, with black eyes that are so close together they appear beady, like a snake. Fierce black eyebrows rim them in a perpetual frown. His mouth is the snarl of an angry dog. A three-inch scar cuts one of his cheeks in half. He has a low-cut Mohawk and multiple piercings in each ear, which fits in perfectly with the dozens of tattoos that litter his muscular frame. Everything about him screams intimidation.

  His words are cold, like icicles, and I almost feel like he can see us through the screen, directing his threats right at us. He keeps his comments brief: “I cannot reiterate this enough: We must apprehend the fugitives as quickly as possible. They are armed and extremely dangerous. Their sentences range from murder to treason, and they deserve to be locked away for the rest of their lives. This office pledges to hunt them down and bring them to justice, to be tried for their new crimes under the law. Thank you for your time.” Cameras flash and reporters yell out questions, but Rivet is gone, having disappeared back inside some government building.

  “Murder?” I say. “I was in for treason, but they didn’t even mention your crimes. We didn’t kill anyone, they can’t say that!” I am angry and flustered. I knew they wouldn’t be fair to us—have never been fair to us—but I don’t want people to think I am a murderer.

  “There’s something I should tell you,” Cole says, finally sitting down on the floor.

  I glance at him, but then back to the telly as the next segment begins. It is a review of each of us—our pasts, our crimes, our sentences, that kind of thing. They start with Tawni and brush past her pretty quickly, saying Cole and I are bad influences on her and that her sentence is much lighter—for the minor charge of illegal interstate traveling.

  “My parents are hard at work doing damage control again,” Tawni says sullenly, as if she would prefer to be depicted as a hardened criminal.

  They move onto me next, turning my parents’ slight rebelliousness into an act of high treason, framing it like we are a family of thieves and spies, not satisfied until we destroy everything from the Star Realm to the Sun Realm. They go into a lot of detail about how it makes sense that I would try to escape, given my life sentence. By the time they are done with me, I even feel slightly ashamed of myself, although I have done nothing wrong.

  The broadcast ends with Cole, touting him as the ringleader of our little gang, noting that he is “as cunning as he is dangerous.” I grin at him when they say that, expecting him to take it as a compliment, but he looks away from me, his lips a straight line, unreadable.

  I wait for them to tell Cole’s story about the bakery, his attempted theft of six loaves of bread, his apprehension and short juvie sentence.

  I find out the truth.

  There was no bakery, no bread, no mild sentence. Cole duped me. The way his eyes sparkled when he told the story, his attention to detail, his effortless laugh: it all made me believe without a doubt that he was telling the truth. The true story paints a much grimmer tale.

  According to the reporter, Cole attacked an Enforcer without provocation. The Enforcer was conducting a routine search of Cole’s neighborhood, looking for anything suspicious—they do that from time to time. They don’t need search warrants; just a badge and a uniform authorizes them to go wherever they want, whenever they want. Cole jumped the guy and killed him, broke his neck cleanly. They say it was instant death and that Cole is a murderer. Cole was sentenced to life in prison, just like me.

  The segment ends and Tawni clicks off the telebox.

  I stare into space in silence. I am upset that Cole didn’t tell me the truth, but even more upset with the infor
mation in the broadcast. Although I haven’t known Cole for long, I know enough about him to realize that he wouldn’t kill someone without a damn good reason. I want to ask, want to know the real story, but also know that Cole has to want to tell me. I don’t want to force something out of him that he prefers to remain buried. So I just wait. A few minutes go by in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Cole still won’t make eye contact with me—his face turned away—although I look at him a few times.

  Tawni is the first to speak. “Cole, she’s one of us. She should know.”

  Cole finally turns his head, and I see what he’s been doing in silence. Crying. His cheeks are slick with moisture and his eyelashes beaded with tears. It scares the hell out of me. In the short time I have known Cole, I’ve found there to be a strength in him that is beyond anything I’ve seen in someone before. It makes me want to be his friend, to depend on him, to count on him. But now he looks broken, destroyed, devastated. The pain on his face is utterly complete.

  He starts slowly, building momentum as he unloads his pain. “There were three of them,” he says, “but I thought there was only one.”

  “Enforcers?” I ask.

  He nods. “When I came home from school he was in the house. My younger sister, Liza, had stayed home sick. My parents were both out, working, like always.” He pauses and takes a deep breath. Before he starts again, a fresh stream of tears dribbles from each eye.

  “He was on top of her,” he continues, “trying to take everything from her. God, Adele, she was only eleven.” I feel my own batch of tears well up and I fiercely blink them back. If Cole can’t be strong, I need to be strong for him.

  “I was like a raging bull, full of anger, and I felt stronger than ten bulls. I was on him before he even knew I was there. Liza’s tunic was half-ripped and he was trying to pull it off of her. She was incredible, Adele, not giving an inch, kicking and clawing and fighting to the bitter end. Eventually he would’ve subdued her, but not before taking a bit of a beating. My sister was strong, like me.” Although his face remains mournful, I detect a hint of pride in his voice. But as much as I want to, I can’t ignore his use of the word was. It is there in the back of my mind, tormenting me.