MoonFall Read Online Free PDF Page B

to get out of the goddamn way. It was another thing altogether to see it and believe it. Noah blinked a few times before he really registered what was ahead of him.
    The soldiers dragged him between deserted buildings, densely packed by the standards of this part of the world. They could have still been in the town where they had found him, or in another like it. Noah could only guess one way or the other. The one thing he was sure of was the street ahead was blocked by a wall at least a dozen feet high and built of all kinds of rubble. There were sections of battered bricks, probably pulled from the ruins of other houses and crudely mortared together. There were lumps of stone, some rough, some neatly cut and stacked. There were stretches of old iron work, overturned trucks with corrugated plates bolted across the gaps. It was the patchwork quilt of defensive positions, like something God’s grandma might have made out of the scraps in the bottom of her sewing box.
    It was the best built new thing Noah had seen since the sky started falling.
    He dragged one foot forward and in the space of a few stumbling footsteps managed to get himself upright. The soldiers stepped back, the man shaking his head in amusement, the woman just scowling.
    “Holy fucking Jesus on a scooter,” Noah said, then thought of how his Ma would have responded to such language. That grandma thought had flung family into the forefront of his mind. “Pardon my language, but that there is impressive.”
    “Keep moving.” The third soldier, the one who’d knocked Noah out, strode past them and gestured towards the gates being held open by two more impatient looking guards. They wore the same red bandanas and logo that was daubed across his captors’ body armor, across the better patches of wall, even on a ragged red flag fluttering above the gate.
    When Noah didn’t respond, the woman gave him a shove with the butt of her musket, sent him stumbling on down the road.
    “No need for that, sweetheart,” Noah said. “Pretty smile like yours, all you had to do was- of.”
    The lead soldier wasn’t much gentler than he’d been at the school, his fist hitting Noah’s stomach with a force that spoke to anger and frustration or a really good workout.
    “Respect the guard, Dionite,” the soldier said, grabbing Noah by the collar and dragging him towards the gate.
    In other circumstances, Noah might have fought back. The fellow was about the same height as him, and though his extra bulk looked to be all muscle, not everyone knew how to use their own strength. But there was the armor, the gun, the two other guards behind them and more up ahead. And self-preservation aside, Noah was intensely curious to see what lay behind those walls.
    “Lieutenant Poulson.” One of the guards on the gate saluted Noah’s captor, and Poulson let go of Noah long enough to return the gesture. Then they were through, and those gates of plate steel were dragged back on what looked to be wheels taken from old cars. They clanged to a stop and bolts were thrown into place with a terrible finality that echoed down the street.
    And what a street.
    Every building was intact. Sure, some of them had seen repairs, like the hardware store with plyboard and plastic windows where its glass front had once been or the house down a side street with a canvas roof. But many of them looked untouched by the ravages of the past twenty years, and not one had been allowed to slip into neglect. The walls were clean, paintwork fresh, everything upright and in order. Little statues stood out front of many of the houses or stared from windows – some guy with goat’s legs in one, a fat Buddha in another, a bearded man clutching a thunderbolt in a third. Religious icons, too – several crosses, squiggly script he didn’t recognize, a couple of Stars of David. It seemed this was a praying sort of town.
    The people matched the street’s fine condition. Noah had met some folks in decent health in