Keeping Luna

by Todd Michael Haggerty

  There was a loud snap. Kale felt the popping reverberate through his own arm and his eyes lit up. Eiric’s elbow joint was blown and his forearm now arched back in the wrong direction.

  Before the pain had time to register, the flattened mid knuckles of Kale’s fist were sunk into his throat. His body would now heed only the force of gravity, ignoring his silent, desperate pleas to remain on his feet. But before his knees could hit the ground, Kale had swung behind him, sliding his arms underneath Eiric’s, and locking the fingers of both hands together behind his neck in a full nelson.

  Kale hoisted his hips underneath the young, beaten man, lifting him from the rooftop, and then walked in small steps towards the edge of the roof. Eiric tried to form words, to shout, to cry, but was unable to. He couldn’t breathe, in or out. His eyes were wide and full of despair. Kale let him go just as his feet cleared the ledge, back-pedaling away from the precipice as Eiric plummeted down to the uneven asphalt of the entryway below.

  He looked up and closed his eyes, feeling the precipitation collect on his face once more. He sighed. This rain isn’t too bad, I suppose.

  Chapter Ten

  “Fancy a race?” asked Claire.

  “What, you mean another one?”

  “First one back to the building wins.”

  “While I do admire your competitive spirit, and your eagerness to lose again, I don’t think…”

  “What do you mean lose again?” Her eyes narrowed and she stopped walking. “That would mean that you won. And you didn’t win.”

  Owen stopped to face her. “I was the first to the top. Don’t get upset just because I out-climbed you.” He tried to maintain a straight face while he baited her.

  “First to the top. You were also the first off the ground, by about three seconds. As in ‘one, two, three, go’. Most people know to wait for ‘go’.”

  “We start on ‘go’? Everyone knows you start on ‘three’.”

  She punched him hard in the arm. “You started before I got to ‘one’!”

  He laughed. He delighted in making her lose her calm, and his arms wore the evidence. On any given day, each arm displayed two or three bruises, dark blotches of purple and green, somewhere between the elbow and the top of the shoulder.

  “Shit! Like I said, no need to get upset.” He massaged the side of his shoulder through the short sleeve of his t-shirt. “That was a good one. I never should have taught you how to throw a punch.”

  “You know you didn’t teach me anything. If you were man enough to put on the gloves with me sometime, I’d show you.”

  “Ha ha. You’re firing a bit below the belt now. Trying to get me riled up. Might just work.”

  She grinned and they resumed their casual pace towards her flat, which had become his flat as well over the course of the last several weeks. The apartment he had been issued was on the fringe of the city, well away from the town center, and about an hour by foot from Claire’s. It offered a less-than-breathtaking ground-level view of the highrise across the street and the trunks of three massive trees.

  Claire’s place, on the other hand, overlooked the water. It was closer to the restaurants they frequented, a very well-stocked grocer, and his new place of work. And it was closer, naturally, to Claire. He found more and more that he really did enjoy their time together, and that those quiet moments of solitude when he did happen to find himself alone were less appreciated than they had been before the two of them got to know one another.

  “Besides,” he said, “I get enough boxing in at work with Junior.”

  “How’s that going anyway? With Junior? What was his real name again?”

  “Um… Gabriel. I almost forgot. I never call him that.”

  “Is he keeping you busy enough? You don’t miss training real fighters?”

  “He’s been pretty surprising, really. True, he hasn’t come close to landing a real punch, but he doesn’t quit. He works harder than anyone I’ve ever met, I think. And he’s already beginning to lose that sad bastard flab… replace it with some solid fibers. I hesitate to say the word ‘muscle’, because I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to grow real muscles on that frame of his.”

  “But it’s satisfying work then? You sound satisfied enough.”

  “It’s different, and different is good. The army gets you used to change. They move you around a lot and vary your programs, make you adjust your days and your nights. But the atmosphere is always the same. Everything is always tense. So no matter what job they have you doing, or where, it all feels more or less like the job before it. This is different… relaxed in a way. Casual. For me, anyway. Not so much for him.” He chuckled, and they continued down the wet sidewalk in the rain.

  “We train in a private facility… a fucking basement that that old man found for us. I think he’s a somebody. You know, someone high up. Oldest damn person I’ve ever seen, too. So I guess Junior must be something special, too. Makes it all the more gratifying every time I open his nose.”

  “Halt, citizens!” The voice barked at them from just inside the alleyway they were passing. As they turned to face him and saw his black jacket and pants, with those signature reflective yellow stripes that ran laterally across the outsides of the over-arms and thighs, he bellowed at them once again. “Thumbs out!”

  Claire immediately put her gym bag down and held her right thumb out for the scanner, keeping her eyes to the ground throughout. Owen, on the other hand, just stared at this Enforcer as though he were solving some sort of puzzle.

  The Enforcer was quick to show his own impatience. “IS THERE A PROBLEM, CITIZEN?! I SAID THUMB!”

  “Nope. No problem, Grounder.” replied Owen, still staring. He slowly set down his duffel and held out his thumb, maintaining eye contact.

  “Grounder, huh? Aren’t we being cute? We’ll just see about you, Mr….” the Enforcer’s voice trailed off as he looked down at the scanning console in his hands. The hard look left his eyes, which now lowered to his own feet as he spoke.

  “Sorry, sir. I didn’t… I didn’t know it was you, sir. If there is anything I can do to…”

  “You can disappear,” Owen said coldly.

  “Yes, sir.” Without another word, the man spun about-face and headed away down the alley, trying not to appear as though he were hurrying.

  Claire looked at Owen with shock in her eyes.

  “How… What did… I have never seen that before! I have never seen anyone talk to an Agent like that! I’ve never seen anyone talk back to an Enforcer at all! How? How are you not in cuffs? How did you know he was a… what did you say… a Grounder?”

  “They’re all Grounders. They never make it any higher than that before we send ‘em packing. They’re fuck-ups. Sometimes they screw something big during a live maneuver. Sometimes they just don’t mesh with the rest of the squad. There’s always something… off… about them. So we send them back to civ. and wash our hands of them.

  “But are you still considered active? Do you still outrank them?”

  “Technically, no. But then they aren’t active either. There were five degrees of rank separating us, and that sort of mental wall doesn’t go down overnight.”

  “Was that just rank that I saw? He was… he was terrified of you!”

  “I’m not sure. I suppose my name has been in a lot of mouths. Doesn’t matter. He’s gone. Wretched little worm.”

  They walked on in silence for some time. The rain was starting to soak through the thin outer layers of their clothing. Claire pulled her hood over her head and hummed a few notes of a song that didn’t exist.

  “What is it?” Owen asked. He had begun to pick up on a few of her ticks, and had identified this quiet humming as an indicator that she had something to say, although, for one reason or another, she was hesitant to say it.

  “Hmmm? It’s just… Well, I was serious about the race back there. Not the race itself, but the getting-there-quicker part. You have noticed that it’s pouring out here, right?”
<
br />   He closed his eyes for a second and took in a lungful of the crisp, wet air.

  “I noticed. I wouldn’t say it’s pouring, but it sure is raining though. I think it feels amazing. You can run on ahead if you like. We can even say that you won the race.” He braced for another slug in the arm, but it never came.

  “I’ll survive,” she said. “I grew up in the rain. On the coast, just south of here. I can deal with it for a little longer, but I don’t see what’s so great about it.”

  “Living in the sandbox might give you some perspective, I guess. Everywhere they’ve sent me has been hot and dry, but this last one… these last three years… were excruciating. This rain is a blessing.” He unfurled the thin jacket he had been carrying under his arm and slid it on, zipping it up just shy of its apex. “I’m not so crazy about the wind though.”

  She raised an eyebrow and looked over at him. “Who is?”

  As they approached the next crossing, one block from Claire’s building, Owen felt her hand on his arm.

  “I’m just gonna run in here for a second and get some bread and bubbly water. You want anything?”

  “Naw. I’m fine,” he answered.

  “Alright. You wait here and enjoy your rain.”

  Claire entered the little bodega on the next corner. Owen walked past its entrance far enough to escape the wind that was blowing up the side street. He leaned up against the wall just beyond the store’s awning and felt the cold rain on the bare skin of his scalp. He hadn’t been able to let his hair grow for more than a week without feeling the need to shave it off again. He doubted he would ever try again.

  I wonder when Claire will start to show, he thought to himself. I don’t think I ever would have guessed, just looking at her… or watching her climb that wall today, like some damn espresso-fuelled spider monkey!

  He grinned and looked off to his right. Claire’s building was across the street, about one-hundred-and-fifty meters away. Another fifty meters beyond that, just past the intersecting street that terminated the one he stood on, was the foot of the park that wrapped itself across the waterfront and ran beneath Claire’s window on the opposite side of the building. The trees in the park were losing their thick canopies, and the dark green of the grass beneath them was mostly covered by yellow and orange and brown leaves.

  Though his eyes were fixed on the light blue residential building at the end of the street, adjacent to where the park began, his peripheral vision caught something moving on his left. Something small and dark had fallen from a considerable height and had come to rest on the lawn of the building across the lane.

  A few people walked by him and half-nodded hello as they passed. Owen didn’t notice. The streets and lawns of this neighborhood were remarkably clean and neatly kept, as they were in the rest of the city. Littering was against the law, and though the severity of the punishment for this crime was unspecified, nobody seemed all that eager to find out.

  Owen found himself intrigued by this apparent defiance of the law, and began scanning the face of the building for an empty window. There were none. Of course not… not on a cold, windy, wet day like this. He looked further up and was likewise unable to spot anybody on the roof.

  He pushed off of the wall and out across the sidewalk, nearly bowling over an older woman as she walked by. He crossed the street and walked out onto the wet grass where he had seen the object land. It didn’t take him more than ten seconds to find it. It was a small, brown lump. He picked it up.

  “No fucking way,” he mumbled slowly to himself. He turned it over in his hand, examining the teeth marks on one end. Then he brought it up to his nose.

  “Who the fuck…?” He looked up again, but didn’t see anything. The cold of the day came to him all at once, and he felt the hairs on his arms standing up. He shuddered, and then dropped it back into the grass at his feet.

  He turned and started back across the street, but before he could reach the other side he heard a heavy wet thud behind him. A woman shrieked. A man shouted something incoherent.

  Owen pivoted slowly in the middle of the avenue and looked back towards the highrise. At the base of one of the raised flowerbeds was the collapsed body of a man in navy blue pants and a grey T-shirt. What remained of his head bent at an unnatural angle from his shoulders and up the low stone wall of the planter it had struck. It was a sticky pulp, and the features were grotesquely distorted. Owen noted the man’s right arm, and the way it projected backwards from the elbow joint.

  The flat, narrow ledge of the planter wall was caked in viscous crimson.

  Owen looked up once more, but didn’t see anything or anyone at the ledge on top of the structure.

  “Oh my…! What… is… is that a person?” The voice was Claire’s. She approached Owen from behind, carrying a clear bottle of water and a loaf of bread. “Is that really a… person?”

  Owen turned and took her by the arm and marched them both in the direction they had come from.

  “Wha… no... where are we going? What happened to that man?”

  “Stop talking. Walk.” Owen’s voice had taken on an unmistakably serious tone, and his arm swept protectively up over her shoulder. “Don’t look back. Just keep walking.”

  “But my building is the other way!”

  “I know. Just keep walking.”

  The two of them walked to the corner past the entrance of the store Claire had just exited and started up the side street that ran perpendicular to hers.

  “That man… was that you? Did you…”

  “No. He jumped. He’s a jumper.”

  She stopped walking and slipped free of his arm. He stopped and turned to her.

  “It wasn’t me,” he assured her again.

  “But then why are we going this way, Owen?”

  “Because we didn’t see anything. NOTHING. You understand?”

  “I don’t…”

  “Listen!” he said sharply. “Enforcers and examiners will be on their way now. Real pleasant folks like that little shrew Agent we just met. They’ll be asking questions. They’ll be taking down names. Anyone who may or may not have seen something. And you and me, we saw nothing. We should go somewhere. A restaurant. We’ll eat lunch, we’ll come back in an hour, and everyone will have moved on. Ok?”

  “Ok,” she said with a hesitant complacence. “But if we don’t have anything to hide… if we don’t know anything?”

  “I’m asking you to trust that I know what I’m talking about, and that I think it’s best for us to avoid that scene. You’re a stubborn woman, and I love… like that about you. But for right now…”

  “Ok. Ok.” She sighed. “I’m glad that you love… like that about me.”

  “Shut it.” He smiled mildly, and then took her hand as they walked on.

  Chapter Eleven

  Every rotation of the wheels birthed a low, creaking moan as Gabriel pushed the wheelchair out of the elevator and towards the door of Lamar’s flat.

  “I’ll fix that for you a little later. It just needs a bit of oil.”

  “Gabriel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Has there been some new development that I am unaware of? Do we speak in the hallway now?”

  “No, Lamar, we do not. No matter how close to the flat. No matter how mundane the topic.” His voice played at teasing, and had assumed the character of Lamar’s own voice, minus the slight trembling it had taken on over the course of these last several weeks. Lamar smiled meekly.

  The door to the apartment had recently undergone a change in its security settings that allowed Gabriel to open it with his own thumb on the scanner, as it had become laborious for Lamar to reach it. Gabriel scanned his thumb and then pushed Lamar into the entryway, down the long passage, and out into the spacious living room. He wheeled the chair around the white sofa in the far corner and parked it so that Lamar was facing the seat. Gabriel had removed the giant coffee table a few weeks prior.

  He flipped over the brakes on both wheels and
came around so that he was facing Lamar. Bending down and hooking his elbows underneath Lamar’s armpits, he lifted his frail frame and pivoted, setting him carefully onto the sofa cushion. It seemed that the old man became lighter, that this transfer became easier, every time he had to lift him. Gabriel wasn’t sure if he should attribute this to Lamar’s declining health and visible weight loss, or whether it might be the product of his own new training regimen and the resulting muscle development, the swiftness of which had been surprising for both Gabriel and his trainer.

  He took two large white pillows and propped them between Lamar and the low back of the sofa, and then took a few steps back.

  “Can I get you anything? Water?”

  “No.”

  “Ok. I’ll just take your chair and fix that squeaky wheel real quick. Won’t take but a minute.”

  “Forget the damn chair. I barely notice the sound, and you won’t have to put up with it for so much longer.”

  Something stirred in Gabriel every time Lamar took on this fatalistic tone.

  “I wish you’d stop saying things like that, Lamar.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s any big secret that I’m on my way out.”

  “You’ve been on your way out for the last forty years, you old bag,” Gabriel said with a sneer, forcing himself to chuckle a little at his own remark.

  “Three more months are all I need. Then you will be ready, and so will I.”

  Lamar read the uneasy expression on Gabriel’s face.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna off myself. Not technically. Besides, I don’t think I could get my foot up over that porch railing.

  Not technically, thought Gabriel. Not technically? What the hell does that mean?

  There was no denying that Lamar had taken a turn. The meat of him, which hadn’t been that plentiful to begin with, had shrivelled away considerably. His face was narrower, and the skin was loose beneath his chin. The wheelchair was no longer something that he decided to use. It was no longer optional. He had previously insisted on Gabriel pushing him around in it mainly because he found some amusement in putting the squishy, weak boy to work.