The Moon Stealers Box Set. Books 1-4 (Fantasy Dystopian Books for Teenagers)

by Tim Flanagan

  From the front of the make-shift cubicle, a long metal nozzle appeared. It looked like an extension for a hand pump that Trent used on his garden to spray the weeds. Without warning a fine spray shot out and hit him in the chest. The water was cold, but it felt strangely liberating to be able to remove his clothing and wash his body. The room filled with a mist that smelt like a highly chlorinated swimming pool. He rubbed his hands over his face. The disinfection spray was refreshing as it soaked into his hair and ran down his face. It had been a few days since he had washed or changed his clothes and the tiredness that had overcome him outside was miraculously washed away along with the dirt.

  The spray stopped and the nozzle withdrew, followed by the curtain frame as part of it was pushed against one wall. The nurse passed a towel to Trent then opened the door into the next room which was laid out with shelving piled with clothes.

  'All of the clothes are piled in sizes. Men's are on the right. Help yourself then move through into the next room when you're ready.' The nurse removed her wellies and pulled on a pair of trainers then disappeared through another door. The armed man stayed behind Trent, preventing him from going back. Trent had no intentions of going back outside; he wanted to know where his son had been taken. He found a mismatch of clothing that fitted him, then walked through the door that the nurse had already gone through. The next room looked more like a normal office with a table and chair, together with a book shelf that had been cleared and stacked with boxes of medication.

  'Please sign yourself and your son into this book,' the nurse instructed Trent. 'Your son is being checked by the doctor through here.' She gestured to the door directly in front of him. Trent filled the information into the book then went through into yet another room.

  His son was laid out on a metal framed bed, stripped of clothes, but covered with blankets to keep him warm. Joel's eyes saw his dad and a faint smile crept over his face. Beside him, a man was detaching an inflation cuff from around the boy's arm, satisfied that his blood pressure was normal.

  'Open your mouth,' instructed the doctor. Joel slowly opened it to allow the doctor to shine a light down his throat, while Trent walked to the side of the bed and reassuringly picked up his son's hand.

  'Although he's weak, he seems ok,' said the doctor from behind his face mask. 'There's some bruising on the tips of his fingers and toes. This happens when the body's blood drains away from the extremities, as it does in extreme cold for example, leaving behind the deoxygenated blood. We have seen similarities with other patients when blood is being taken to the core of the body, to the organs that need it more, like the heart and brain. But, those patients are usually unconscious. Your son's pulses are strong and his blood pressure is normal. He needs food and fluids and should be back to normal within a day or two.'

  Trent smiled and squeezed his son's hand with relief.

  'How long has he been ill?' asked the doctor.

  'About three days now. He was unconscious and lifeless when I woke yesterday. I tried to get him to London as quickly as I could.'

  'Come with me. Let me show you something,' the doctor said, putting a hand on Trent's shoulder and steering him to the left of the room. At the door was a small table with a box of facemasks and a pump action antiseptic dispenser.

  'But, my son?' protested Trent, not wanting to leave him again.

  'He will be fine. Here, put this on,' said the doctor as he handed Trent a facemask. Once they had squirted the cold gel onto their hands they walked through the door into a long room. An electricity generator whirred from the corner, cables crossed the room to all sorts of electrical equipment, whilst one connected to a lamp that was hung crudely from the ceiling, providing a fractured stream of light that flickered in the room. Along one side of the room some beds, similar to the one Joel was in, were pushed up against the wall. In each one lay the bodies of men and women, barely still alive. The pulse monitors that were connected to their ear lobes betrayed the occasional bleep as their hearts pushed another wave of blood hopelessly through their arteries. The doctor stood at the end of the first bed they came to.

  'Look at this man's fingers, toes, nose and lips. See how they're turning black as the flesh dies from the lack of blood.'

  'Joel's lips were blue, just like this man. He had begun to cough up blood,' muttered Trent, shocked and saddened by the husk of a man that lay in front of him.

  'As their illness becomes worse, we think the internal organs also begin to shrink and die.' The doctor gently pulled the blanket back to show the man's rib cage. His skin was stretched back tightly, the internal organs withered down to nothing. 'Muscle degrades in the arms and legs, until even the heart muscle begins to fail.'

  The doctor moved over to a window on the opposite side of the room. Trent followed, not truly wanting to see what was beyond it. The glass on the window was thick and wavy, and even though looking through it distorted his vision, there was no mistaking what he was looking at. In a huge room, at least three times the size of the one he was standing in, were row upon row of beds, camp beds, mattresses, inflatable beds, in fact anything that could be used for people to sleep on, all crammed in end to end with only just enough room for the few nurses and doctors that manned the health sector of Bank Community to walk between. Every bed had men, women and children, coughing, crying or more worryingly, lying perfectly still, on them.

  'The worst affected are in this room,' explained the doctor. 'Some have wounds from creature attacks and others injuries, but every single one of them eventually ends up the same way. None have shown any improvement and we don’t know how to treat it.' The doctor faced Trent and looked directly into his eyes, 'Why is your son different?'

  'It must be the tablets?' muttered Trent.

  'What did he take?'

  'On the road yesterday, Steven gave Joel some tablets, I took some too. He said the river water might have been infected. The box was in my shirt pocket.'

  They both went back into the room where Joel was now sitting up and taking sips of water from a beaker the nurse held for him.

  'Where are this man's clothes?' the doctor asked the nurse.

  'I think Greg might have disposed of them,' she replied.

  The doctor rushed into the clothing storeroom then opened the door into the decontamination room, looking for Greg, who Trent presumed was the man that had followed him in with the gun.

  In the corner of the decontamination room, past the curtained area where Trent had been hosed down, was a steel incinerator bin. The sloped lid joined in the centre to form a small funnel like chimney. Greg, his gun slung over his shoulder, was pushing the last of Trent's shirt into the chimney with a pair of cooking tongues. Flames quickly licked around the fabric in colours of orange and blue as the fire reacted to the disinfection chemicals that clung to the surface of the material. Everything that Trent had entered the building in had been incinerated, including what remained of the packet of tablets that Steven had given him.

  19. The Unexpected King

  Steven, Georgia and Tracker left Annie, Mason, Shirley and Dylan in the family allocated sleeping accommodation whilst they went for a wander around their new surroundings. There were many doors to rooms they had not yet seen that remained locked to them.

  'They are certainly organised here!' said Tracker.

  'I wonder if all of the communities are so well run?' replied Georgia.

  'Everyone has a job. Everything is compartmentalised. It's all very neat.'

  'Is that a bad thing?' asked Georgia, noticing the slight bitterness in Tracker's voice.

  'I don’t know. It just seems too regimented. I suppose most people have lost their spirit and need to be told what to do. But, to me, it's almost like they have lost all control of their lives.'

  'When times are tough, someone has to take the lead,' said Georgia.

  'Yes, but not at the expense of freedom. These survivors are being treated like drone bees or worker ants. They have lost their spirit.'

&nb
sp; Steven hadn’t joined in the conversation, although he agreed with Tracker. He too felt that the Bank Community was sterile and lifeless and seemed to be dictated to by the elusive figurehead called The American who everyone seemed to be pinning all hopes of life outside London on. Steven watched a small round-topped door creak open from behind a wood panel. Inside was a man who looked like an old-fashioned miner, with smears of dirt on his face and hands and a thin pocket torch wedged in his mouth so that he could see the narrow steps he had just come up. In his hands was a cardboard box that sagged slightly in the middle from the weight of its contents. The daylight that came in through the windows and doors that bordered the

  Bullion Court made him squint slightly after working in the limited light below ground. Keeping his hands tightly on his load he stepped out into the corridor then used his back to push open a door immediately to his right. Steven watched with curiosity, wondering what that room could be hiding. After a few moments the man emerged empty-handed and walked back down the stairs and out of sight once again. Steven walked away from the other two towards the room the man had just left his box in. The round brass looped handle of a key stuck out from the lock. He gently pushed against the wood of the door, just enough to create a small gap so that he could take a look inside. At first, all he could see were plain cardboard boxes stacked in neat piles in rows away from the door. He pushed against the door some more, then saw a small pile of gold bullion bars carefully lined up on a wooden pallet. They didn’t sparkle or gleam like he had seen in films; instead, in the dim light, the surface of the gold appeared dull and brown, tarnished with age.

  'Looks like they’ve managed to get to some of the gold then,' whispered Tracker in Steven's ear. They had noticed Steven walk away and instinctively followed.

  'I don’t understand this obsession with wealth,' added Georgia. 'Our priority should be to defend ourselves against these creatures and rebuild our civilisation, not waste time on gold and possessions.'

  'Assuming we manage to defend ourselves and rebuild, then what?' Steven asked Georgia.

  'What do you mean?'

  'If we find a way to survive against the creatures, wealth will once again dictate how we live alongside each other. The man with the gold will be king.'

  Tracker looked nervously over towards Steven.

  'You believe what the old man said, that this is being done in preparation for the future?' he asked.

  'But we won't have a future unless the creatures can be controlled somehow,' continued Georgia. 'The old man at the door said there were more people who were ill than were not. If the creatures don’t physically attack us, the bacteria will definitely wipe us out. With so few survivors it seems a waste spending time and energy trying to collect gold, when it would be better spent collecting as many boxes of the antibiotics as possible.'

  Steven took a step into the room. There was no one else in there. He went over to the first box and lifted the cardboard flaps open so that he could see what was inside. From the ease with which the man had carried it up the stairs, he knew it couldn’t be gold. Tracker went to another box in the second row and had a look at that one too.

  'Paper money,' Steven said in a low voice, not wanting to be heard from outside the room.

  'Same here,' replied Tracker. 'Piles of it, and all in different currencies. American dollars, Euros, Russian Roubles, Indian Rupees and Chinese Yuans.'

  'This one's different,' added Georgia from another row. She had picked up a handful of papers from another box. Steven and Tracker went over to have a look. On each sheet of paper were lists of countries and numbers. Georgia recognised some of the countries that were listed; Switzerland, Luxembourg, Bahamas, Monaco, but not others. After the country was a long string of letters and numbers, punctuated with the letters IBAN.

  'What do you think this is?' Georgia asked the other two.

  'A list of off-shore bank accounts,' replied Steven. 'IBAN stands for International Bank Account Number, and consists of thirty-four numbers and letters.'

  'How do you know?'

  'A couple of years ago I investigated a reported alien abduction. A woman said she woke one night to stars and lights in her room and her husband had vanished. I checked for activity on his bank accounts and found he was living like a prince in the Seychelles with his pharmacist girlfriend.'

  'What other information would you need to obtain the money in each of those accounts?' Tracker asked.

  'Passwords, keys, codes, retina scans, fingerprints. Bank account numbers on their own are not enough. There would be secure information that could only be accessed through the bank's computer.'

  'But all the computers and electrical devices won't work if there is no power,' said Tracker.

  'This list is useless then,' replied Georgia.

  'Maybe, maybe not,' said Steven thoughtfully.

  They moved onto another box.

  'There must be some safety deposit boxes in the gold vault too,' added Tracker who lifted a slim black case from one of the boxes. Inside was a dazzling necklace of diamonds that hung like teardrops. All seemed small in comparison to the huge round diamond in the centre.

  He then pulled out more diamond encrusted jewellery, as well as expensive watches, but then froze as he heard voices from the other side of the door.

  'We have lost all communication from the MI6 Community,' said a lady's voice.

  'Have they pulled back to the Embassy?' replied a man.

  Tracker quickly put the jewellery back into the box. The other two were also putting everything back as it had been when they came in, without making a sound.

  'No. The American's sent a search party,' answered the lady's voice from beyond the door.

  'Come on,' whispered Steven as he pulled Georgia over to the side of the room behind the main door where they were hidden by a tall pile of boxes. Tracker did the same from where he was, then shuffled along the wall until he stood with Steven and Georgia. All three of them were now staring at the sides of cardboard boxes that made up a wall in front of them. They expected to see the man from the vaults enter the room and deposit another box, but no one came. Voices, not knowing they were being overheard, continued to whisper outside the room.

  'What about these new arrivals? Where did they say they came from?' asked the female.

  'The one with the tablets said he had been in Yorkshire checking water quality,' replied the second voice which sounded like the old man that had let them into the bank.

  'What about the sick boy in the health sector?'

  'Dr Richardson says the boy is making a full recovery despite showing signs of having the infection. His father's clothes were incinerated after decontamination. The remaining tablets were in his pocket. The only example of the tablets that we have is these.' They heard a rattling sound and assumed the old man was shaking the remains of the tablets that were in the box Steven had shown him earlier.

  'The American is curious about these antibiotics, but also wary and suspicious of the newcomers.'

  'The man said there were stockpiles of the drug being held across the country. It's almost like he, or whoever he works for, knew about the creatures and this bacteria before it actually happened.'

  'Keep them under observation until the American gets here. He wants to talk to them personally.'

  'There's something else you might find interesting,' added the old man. 'The other one, the man that signed himself on the register as James Tracker, he's not who he says he is. I recognised him the moment I set eyes on him. His real name is James Hallington. He's the Queen's cousin.'

  There was a pause in the conversation as the woman thought about the significance of what she had just been told. From inside the gold store room Georgia clapped a hand over her mouth as she took a sharp intake of breath.

  'Don't mention this to anyone else,' the lady eventually said. 'He may have a legitimate claim to the throne, especially now that we know some of The Royal Family have died or are dying from this infection. With a
king amongst them, the rest of the survivors may look to him for leadership. The American will not allow that.'

  20. The American

  'You mean you're royalty? And in line to the thrown?' asked Georgia once the voices had disappeared from behind the door.

  'Well, technically, yes,' replied Tracker uncomfortably. 'But, I was never likely to become king, so I've always enjoyed a quiet life.'

  'Don’t you realise that puts you in danger?' said Steven. 'You heard what that lady said; some of the Royal Family have already died. You could be the next King of England. The American obviously enjoys his position of authority and won't want anyone else turning up that might threaten that. If the survivors in the Bank of England, or maybe even in the other communities find out who you are, they may naturally follow you instead of The American.'

  'Well,' replied Tracker who was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the conversation. 'I don’t think I'm the only one who's in danger. Because of those tablets of yours, it sounds like The American doesn’t trust any of us. We might all be unwelcome if we stay here too long.'

  Steven nodded.

  'Come on,' he said. 'We need to get out of here. The old man is supposed to be keeping an eye on us - he'll get even more suspicious if he can't find us.'

  Cautiously, Steven stepped out from behind the wall of boxes and opened the door slightly so that he could see into the corridor that bordered the

  Bullion Court. There didn’t appear to be anyone there, but he could hear the sound of an engine as a lorry crept slowly between the old stone walls of the bank and pulled up inside the courtyard. 'One of the patrols has just arrived back,' whispered Steven to the other two. 'We need to get out as quickly as we can before this room is swamped with people.'

  Steven slid out of the room and casually made his way up the corridor in the direction of the health sector. The other two quickly followed. Half way up they stopped to look through one of the windows that bordered the court. The double doors at the rear of the lorry were now open and two men, each armed with a gun, were beginning to lift boxes out of the back. The driver of the lorry let out a single long blast on the horn, then stepped out from the cab and began helping the other two at the back. The horn was obviously a signal for the iron doors to be opened so that the goods they had salvaged could be unloaded into the Pay Hall, together with anything of value, into the storeroom where Steven, Georgia and Tracker had just been.