Luna's Arc

Chapter 28 of 29

Luna stepped off the bus first. The farmhouse loomed white and cracked, her father's words huge across one wall. She turned to the children behind her. "Everyone stays with the oldest," she said. The tall, dark-skinned kid who had led them for weeks nodded and pulled the little ones close. Luna took Luke's hand. Harper carried her rifle. The three of them crossed the yard toward the porch. Up close, the house looked wrong. The steps were swept. A boot print marked the mud by the door. "Someone's here," Luna whispered. "Or was." Harper raised the rifle and pushed the door with her boot. It swung open onto a dim living room. Dust hung in the light. Luna heard breathing, shallow and slow, from the far corner. A man lay on the floor. He was thin and long-limbed, his brown beard matted, his clothes worn to threads. His chest rose in tiny jerks. Luna gripped Luke's hand tighter. "Stay back," Harper said. She lowered the rifle and knelt. Her hands shook as she rolled the man onto his back. She went still. The color left her face. "Keith," she said. The name came out broken. Luna did not understand. Then she saw the photo album from the crates in her mind, the same face beside her mother, younger, laughing. Her father. The man they all believed had died at the clearing. Harper pressed her hands to his chest and let out a cry that filled the whole house. It was not sorrow. It was rage and joy tangled together, a sound Luna had never heard from her. Luke stumbled forward. "Dad?" His voice cracked. "Mom, is that Dad?" Keith's eyes fluttered open. They found Harper's face. His cracked lips moved. "You made it," he breathed. "The children. You got them out." He was too weak to lift his head. A dark stain spread under his ribs where cloth had been packed against a wound. Luna dropped to her knees beside him. "You wrote the wall," she said. "You said you'd be home." Keith turned his eyes to her. Something in them broke open. "Luna," he whispered. "You found it." His hand rose an inch off the floor toward her, then fell. Harper tore open a pouch and pressed a cloth to the wound. "He's bleeding out," she said. "He needs help now, and we have nothing here." She looked up at Luna, and the joy was already draining from her face into fear. Luna stared at her father. He was alive. He held the answers about the harvest, about all of it. But he was dying on this floor, and the house held no medicine, no clean water, no way to save him. Behind her, the children waited by the bus. Outside, somewhere in the woods, the herd still moved. Luna gripped her father's cold hand. "Then we don't let him go," she said. "Not now. Not after all of this."