Luna's Arc

Chapter 27 of 29

Morning light cut through the open front of the hangar. Luna woke to a low sound outside, a dry clicking that carried on the wind. She sat up with the album still under her arm. Harper was already at the door, rifle in hand, staring at the treeline. Luna knew that sound now. It was the herd that had killed her father, and it was coming. Harper turned. "They found us. We move today, but not until the little ones are safe." She pressed a rifle into Luna's hands and showed her the switch, the grip, the way to brace it. "Short bursts. Aim low. Don't waste it." Luke and the older children took weapons too. The youngest ones huddled against the supply wall, crying. The herd broke from the trees. Skeletal deer led it, then hunched shapes with too many limbs, and a towering thing with a spiked skull. It spread across the open ground toward the children. Ghost Kid 1 shouted and the older kids opened fire. Luna braced her rifle and squeezed. The recoil punched her shoulder. A deer dropped, then rose again, and she fired lower and put it down. One of the teenage girls fought beside Luna without flinching. She had a black ponytail and a vest heavy with pouches, and she reloaded faster than anyone. Between bursts she spoke, her voice flat and hard. "I lost my first family in a town like this. I watched the herd take them." She fired again. "These kids are mine now. I'm not losing another family." Luna understood then why the girl stood at the front and never stepped back. The children reached the armored bus. Luke herded the small ones up the steps. Harper covered the door. Luna backed toward the bus, still firing, and did not see the crawling thing come around the front tire. It lunged for her legs. Before it reached her, the ponytailed girl threw herself between them. She jammed her rifle into its jaws and fired. The creature collapsed. The girl fell hard against the bus, breathing fast, but alive. "Get on," she said, and shoved Luna up the steps. Harper dropped into the driver's seat. The bus roared and smashed through the last of the herd. Bodies thudded off the reinforced grille. Luna held the rail and watched the hangar shrink behind them. Every child had made it aboard. They drove for hours. Then the woods opened into a clearing. A large white farmhouse stood there, siding cracked, roof half gone. Across one wall, in tall painted letters, someone had written I WILL BE HOME. Luna's breath caught. She knew her father's hand. This was the building from the photograph, the place where the harvest began. The answers waited inside. Harper stopped the bus, and no one moved.