The Moon Dwellers (20 page)

“Thanks,” I growl.

We round the corner and my eyes widen when I see
the next platform.
B
ased on the noise level—wh
ich is almost nonexistent—I
expect
to find another empty platform.
N
ot so.
Instead, the platform i
s packed with people, shoulder to shoulder, back to front
, most of them stari
ng straight ahead.
No one speaks
.
They are like statues.

I check
my watch.
We’
ve
arrive
d eight minutes late
,
which means the train will arrive any second.
It i
s ea
rly evening—quitting time.
I’
ve heard that jobs a
re becoming so scarce in many of the Moon Realm subch
apters that some people commute
to other subch
apters to work and then return
home at the
end of the day, but until I see that crowded platform I do
n’t really realize the extent.

We join
the crowd, wedging ourselves between a fat guy and an even fatter
lady, trying to blend in.
We ge
t more than
a few suspicious glances—it doesn’t help that I am
wearing
dark
sunglasses.

I
hear
a rumble in t
he distance and the crowd pushes
forward, anticipating the train’s arrival, anxious
to get home.
The train arrives and the doors open.
It i
s em
pty; apparently subchapter 6 has
a lot more jobs than subch
apter 14.
By the time we push, jostle, and elbow
our wa
y onto the car, all the seats are taken.
We fi
ght our way to the wall
and lean
against it, trying to get some breathing space.
No luck.
The biggest man I’
ve
ever seen
in my life
stan
d
s
right nex
t to us and raises
his gig
antic arm so his sausage-like fingers
can
grasp the hand
rail.
Out of his
exposed
armpit waft
s
the smell of dried sweat and too many d
ays without a shower.
He burps, letting
out an even worse odor, one I couldn’t eas
ily identify, but which reminds
me of rotten onions
.

It should be a terrible ride, but it isn’t.
After all, I am
going to find the girl wit
h the dark hair.
The girl I know I have to find.
The girl I hope will
change my life.
Assuming she’s still alive.

Chapter Seven

Adele

I
t has
all been arranged.
The greedy guard has been paid.
Tawni has
withdrawn all of the
money
from her account.
We have
broken three pieces of thin plastic off of a cheap food container
that we’
ve
stolen from
the cafeteria.
We a
re ready.

All we have to do i
s wait.

Sometimes in the Pen waiting is dangerous.
Alt
hough a lot of the kids
a
re wrongly convicted—screwed by the system, like me
,
I guess, and proba
bly Tawni and Cole, too—there are plenty of bad kids in
here as well.
Real bad kids.
Kids that will
knock an old lady over on the road, steal her walker, and then break it down and sell the parts.
Like the giant tattooed guys I’d been dealing with in the last couple days.

There i
s a lot of violence in t
he Pen.
Kids form gangs, fight over turf that doesn’t belong to anyone, try
to control the cigarette and booze trade.

I am
no stranger to violence.

I remember my first week in the Pen.
I was scared, didn’t know anyone—
which
didn’t change much in six months—didn’t know what to expect.
I was sitting in the yard, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, working on my
leave-me-the-hell-alone
vibe, wh
en I saw a fight break out.
I’m still not
sure what it was about—one guy looked at the other guy’s girlfriend maybe.
Anyway, all of a sudden the punches started flying.
And I don’t mean like a schoolyard fistfight, where one kid gets a bloody nose and it’s over.
This was a no-holds-barred, savage, kick-him-when-he’s-down kind of fight.
And neither guy would relent.
They were both twice as big as me and had clearly fought before.
By the end of it they were both covered in blood, staggering around like they were drunk, probably suffering from concussions
, or worse
.
Eventually one of them went down for good, but that didn’t stop the other guy from stomping him into the ground un
til the guards finally came to break it up
.
I never saw either o
f the kids again.
For all I know the guy on the ground i
s dead and the other guy
is now an Enforcer for the sun dwellers.
Bottom line: the Pen i
sn’t a friendly place.

Early on, I had a little trouble from a couple of the guys.
I can promise you they weren’t bothering me because of my brains.
They wanted something else, something I wasn’t about to give them.
Their legs are still broken more than four months later.

No one messed with me after that
—at least not until that day with Tawni
.
I’m not sure if it
is because of the message I
sent with my fighting ability, or simpl
y because my lack of hygiene mak
e
s
me less and less attractive with
each
passing day, but whichever it i
s, I am
thankful for it.

I
do
n’t ha
ve a problem with violence.
I’ve
grown up in
a violent world, where miners a
re killed every day by cave-ins
,
and sun dweller Enforcers roam
the streets cracking the knees of anyone unwilling to cooperate with
them.
My dad taught me to only use violence when provoked.

Today i
s one of those times.

I am
sitti
ng in the yard by myself.
We’
ve
just
finished going
over the plans one fina
l time and now Cole and Tawni a
re walking along the perimeter of the fence, doing what Cole like
s
to call “his zoo thing
,
” staring at any people passing by on the
outside, growling and carrying on
like
a caged animal.
I guess he does
it for kicks.

I
showered after breakfast for the first time in weeks.
I did a way better job than usual, scrubbing all the nooks and crannies, even rubbing the bar of soap through my hair.
The water was freezing, but I suffered through it.
I smell
good for the first time s
ince entering the Pen.
I want to be as clean when I leave
as when I
arrived
.
Call it a symbolic cleansing of sorts.

No one, besides Tawni and Cole (and a few obnox
ious girls in the bathroom), have
spoken to me in months, but now
a gang
guy
saunt
ers
up, st
aring at me the whole way.
It’s the guy who approached me before, when I first met Tawni, when I first saw Tristan.
The tatted
-
up gang leader
with the big muscles and the small brain
.

“Hey, beautiful,” he says, in the exact same way he did before.
Like I said, no brains.
My dad used to say the definition of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Or maybe that was the definition of crazy.
Either way, it sprang to mind when the guy spoke.

“Like I told you before, leave me alone,” I say.

“Not gonna happen,” he says
.
“
Not this time.
You see,
you’re looking even better today, and
there’s something I want.
And when I want something, I get it.”
I’m trying to act tough, but inside I am
trembling, scared shitless, but I learned a long time ago that inside the Pen you can’t show your fear.
The others thrive on it, smell it, gravitate
toward
it
,
like bats to blood
.

I could
run from
him, try
to hide,
perhaps
av
oid him f
or the rest of the day until we escape
, but that’s not how I was raised.

I fi
ght.

I stan
d up, finally making eye cont
act with him.
His black eyes are vicious and uncaring.

“You ready to play,” he says
, licking his lips, eyeing me from top to
bottom and back up again.
I do
n’t wait for him
to make the first move, w
hich is another thing my father
taught me.
Especially not wh
en your opponent i
s bigger than you.

I kick
him hard and
below the belt.
Then I follow
it up with a roundh
ouse kick to his head, which has
dropp
ed to waist level as he clutches
his groin, groaning in agony.

I hear a yell, which likely co
me
s
from
one of his mates, who are surely
watching the exchange with interest
, getting a good laugh up until the point I’d kicked him
.
Then I hear
s
hoes pounding on the barren rock.
Coming
toward
me.
But I’m not worried about the footsteps
, because strangely enough t
he Pen has
a code of sorts.
With the exception of multiple
gang member brawls, fighting i
s limited to those
involved in the fight.
There i
s no jumping in, no ganging up
.
You can
watch, bu
t not intervene.
The code wo
n’t protect me the following day or the next week, when
, had I been staying in the Pen,
I would most definitely have to fight the rest of the gang
members in succession, but I am
relying on it now.

“Get up, boss,” I hear
o
ne of them say.
I almost smile.
Verbal encouragement i
s
permitted.
The guy he refers
to as
boss
is a tough guy, and he would get
up despite t
he brutality of the wounds I have
alread
y inflicted on him, but I’m not about to let him, not
about to underestimate him
like he has me
.

So as soon as he pushes up to his knees I kick
him in the face a
gain.
He spi
n
s
away from
me
, lifting slightly off the ground before crashing onto his back.
I think his skull hit
s the rock because blood starts
seeping
from the back of
his head
where I didn’t kick him.
This time he i
sn’t getting back up.