MoonFall (24 page)

Authors: A.G. Wyatt

BOOK: MoonFall

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This was insane. He’d thought he was choosing between living alone or with others, between Molly and solitude. He’d thought the choice was about him and his unbreakable defiance.

But now there was so much more to it. There was a computer, a real computer, still working decades after the rest had fallen silent. A computer with no power source, no generator or electrical grid to keep it going, feeding guidance to who knew where, with who knew what option for the future.

There was the mysterious Astra, sought by both the Apollonians and the Dionites, a mystery all its own. And he hated to leave a mystery untouched.

He rose to his feet and peered more closely at the side of the Oracle. It wasn’t like any kind of computer he’d ever seen. There was no keyboard, no mouse. It didn’t look like the laptops he remembered. The screen seemed to merge with the rest of the device, its shape and size changing to fit the information being displayed. There were no power sockets or inlets for cables, just a thin slot for some kind of electronic key.

He reached out and ran his fingers over that slot. He’d seen one like it once before, just after Mama died. Pa was home more then, for a little while at least. He always had work stuff with him, mostly an odd tablet computer Noah was told not to touch. But at age seventeen, forbidding something made it all the more intriguing. He’d waited a week for a chance to get hold of that tablet, to work out what was so special about it.

“You ever meet a man named Tom Brennan?” he asked.

Sanni shook her head.

“Is he a relative?” she asked.

“My father,” Noah said.

“We all lost so many people.” Sanni placed a hand on his shoulder. “But now we have found each other, just as we have found the gods, here in Apollo.”

Noah had never really known if his father believed in God, but good people didn’t say no when the pastor called round for coffee, and that distraction had given Noah his chance. He’d gone into the back room and picked up that tablet. He brushed at the screen, tapped the buttons on the side, tried anything to stir it into life. He ran his finger again and again along its key slot, sure that this must hold the answer. But it remained just a question, one more mystery around Pa’s work. When he’d heard the pastor saying his goodbyes, Noah whipped out his own phone, took a photo of the tablet and the key slot, and left.

He asked around with the focused determination of a young man trying not to think about his emotional burdens, but he never did figure out what that tablet was, or see another one even remotely like it.

Until now.

Noah ran a hand across the top of the Oracle. The casing didn’t have the same style of coating as his father’s tablet, but that didn’t mean much. His father’s tablet hadn’t been paper thin or glowed, but there was a similar sheen to the screen and, of course, the key slot. That was just the same and that had to mean something. Especially after what Iver had said, how he’d known a Tom Brennan, and how he’d known about Astra. There were too many connections for it to be chance. Noah didn’t put much stock in chance.

He needed answers, and that meant spending time with the Oracle, exploring how it worked, finding some way to question it, not just about Astra, but about his Pa too. No way they’d let him do that here. No way he wanted to share whatever he found out with these lunatics either.

“Do you know who built this?” he asked, part curious, part playing for time while he examined the Oracle and the room around it.

“Does it matter?” Sanni said. “Whoever it was, they were ultimately guided by the gods, given a way to see us through this wilderness, this bleakness after the Fall.”

“Humor me,” Noah said. “Do you know? Any of you?”

He looked around at the Elders, who all shook their heads.

“It came from the gods,” one of them said. “What more is there to say?”

Noah sure as hell didn’t reckon this was from the gods. Probably not the government either. His Pa had always been secretive about who he worked for, but he had strong opinions on the government, opinions that didn’t fit with working for them.

“Are you with us Noah?” Sanni asked. “You have seen our most holy of treasures. You have born witness to the Oracle, that which will guide us back to the light. You have heard what it has planned for you in our town. Will you stay with us? Will you help us find Astra?”

It was so much to process, so much to take in. The Oracle itself, a piece of technology that would have been strange even before the rest died. The link to his father, who might still be out there somewhere, alive and connected into whatever this was. The consequences for the people he knew, people like Molly and Dimitri, that they were being led not by mere superstition but by technology, by knowledge, by some kind of guide to humanity’s survival. A guide their enemies wanted so badly that they’d tried to storm the town for it. If they both wanted Astra, then surely that was what the assault had been about, what Ferguson had died for?

He didn’t know that he wanted to stay – the lies, the strange technologically led religion, the plans they had to dictate his future…that was all too much. But he couldn’t leave, not now, not until he knew more.

Not until he’d found a way to get ahold of the Oracle, to get it away from these lunatics and put it to better use. Like finding his father.

“Reckon I will,” he said.

“In a month’s time the Hand of Apollo will come,” Sanni said. “Then you will be baptized. You will become one of us.”

She smiled, a wide, gaping smile to match the strange gleam in her eyes.

Noah smiled back, but his attention wasn’t on Sanni. It was on the placement of windows around the room, the distance from the Oracle to the door, the way the Oracle bent when Sanni picked it up meaning maybe it could be rolled up and stowed in a bag for an easy getaway.

“Lookin’ forward to it,” he said.

As he walked out of the Council Chamber, he paused at the top of the steps and rested his hand on Bourne. He looked out across Apollo, at the people, the buildings, the bustle of life. Then he looked up into the sky at the bright band glowing in the south as dusk closed in, a band that had once been the moon before the world fell apart and places like Apollo arose from its ashes. A place that might be civilization reborn, or might just be a dozen crazies praying to a computer. But at least it was a place more comfortable than wandering the wilds.

“Looks like we’ve found a place to stay, buddy,” he said, patting Bourne. “Now we just need a plan.”

D
EAR
R
EADER
,

Thank you for letting Noah (and Bourne) take you on an adventure in this crazy and desolate landscape. I hope you had fun! More post-apocalyptic action awaits you in Book 2 of the MoonFall series,
MoonFire
.

If you want to know when the next book comes out,
sign up for my free newsletter
. I will also be giving away freebies and other exclusive content to my newsletter subscribers in the future.

Enjoy the apocalypse!

Sincerely,

A.G. Wyatt

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Editing: Bridgette O'Hare

Cover art: MadHouse

Asteroid icons: MotoTsume

eISBN: 978-1-63230-036-2

Contents

Chapter One - A Rustling in the Trees

Chapter Two - Distant Company

Chapter Three - Dumpsville

Chapter Four - What Passes For Civilization

Chapter Five - A Place of Safety

Chapter Six - Beauty and a Beating

Chapter Seven - Making Friends