Moonflower: Chapter One

(Don't forget to read the prologue first.)

Job Done

08/09/24

Four years after the end of the world

A shadowy figure stumbled on the uneven ground, desperately ducking and weaving through debris as thunder rumbled like a bomb above the silent city. The gasping breath of the frantic man was the only sound in the street that was louder than the storm. Discarded bones cracked under heavy footfalls as he scrambled through the rain for an exit, searching wildly through ivy-covered alleyways, yet somehow always meeting a blocked path. There had to be a way out, there had to—

A deep guttural cry stilled the blood in his veins. It was here. He tried to run, barely preventing a fall on the slick pavement, scrambling uselessly to escape what he knew could not be stopped.

Far above on an ugly blockade of rubble and ruin, numerous pairs of sunken eyes glared a hundred feet down, locked on their lured bait below. The rumbling thunder above barely managed to drown out the sound of their aching stomachs for more than a few seconds at a time before their gnawing pain continued on. The steel rebar of a makeshift cage covered the entire roof of the prison, protecting the men inside it from the ever-present threat that infested this godforsaken city. The crude enclosure made it possible for them to step outside of their safe haven, defying any instinct of self-preservation sparked by the deadly arena below. A torrent of rain pelted their fragile forms until they were drenched, soaking through their saggy gray prison clothes as they shrunk back fearfully in the stormy haze.

There was only one man at the edge. Raindrops pinged off of the long rifle he steadied on the rebar railing as he aimed at the desperate speck below, trailing their movements and biding his time for the perfect moment to strike. His dark blond hair stuck to his face in the cold wind, slick with water and obscuring his vision. He breathed out nervously and swiped it back to realign his shot with a shaking hand.

“Focus, Jacob.” The huge man looming behind him was whispering in his ear, sending a chill of fear under the gunman’s skin and seeping it deep into his bones. “Focus.”

He blinked through the droplets on his light brown lashes. Steady, steady...

Jacob breathed in, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. The bright green of the paintball lit up the victim's silhouette like a neon target in the thick mist. The man clutched at his chest like he’d really been shot, confused by the unseen attack from far above.

The big man stepped back and smirked. “Edlund?”

A scrawny young inmate emerged from the crowd with an elated grin at the call of their leader, detonator firmly in hand.

“Dinner bell!”

A bright and fiery explosion of fireworks rocked the streets. Though the prisoners were safe high up on their vantage point, the colorful lure had never failed to shock the waiting inmates. They ducked away from the bright lights before scrambling back to the edge to watch the show of the frantic mouse caught in the trap below.

Jacob recovered quickly. He looked up to the highest buildings, his eyes as blue as a frozen lake flitting over the ragged towers tensely. He was scanning for the threat everyone else was cheering for. Dark clouds loomed low over them, hiding the fractured skyscrapers in shadow and obscuring their shapes in the torrential downpour. The city was silent again as the seconds ticked by.

The once-chattering crowd had grown quiet. They waited with bated breath, an uneasy air settling in with the cold rain.

Jacob wiped the drops from his clammy pale skin. “D’you—”

Before the question could be finished the deafening SLAM of an enormous claw rattled the primitive cage surrounding them. Its colorless form raced over the bars so impossibly fast that Jacob didn't get a chance to look, and the thought that it had been on top of them this entire time was a bone-chilling realization.

Now the indistinct shape of the huge creature was scuttering down from its perch—a ghostly silhouette, wretchedly close to that of a human's, moving through the mess of decaying buildings like a spider on all fours as it closed in on the prisoners' sacrifice. The bright green painting the desperate man shone through the downpour to draw the starving monster's attention, and the crowd whooped and jeered in morbid anticipation.

The figure tried to run, but the marksman knew it wouldn't matter—and he suspected the prey could feel it too. There was no way out of this city—the inmates had made sure of that. He was a dead man now.

Jacob had long been numbed to their screams. He watched on with an empty expression as blood painted that tiny corner of the crumbling city a deep maroon, the dying wails of their trapped bait cut off in an instant while the crowd behind him roared with laughter. Job done.

“Another hit, another falls,” the big man behind him chuckled, clapping him on the shoulder smugly, his black and silver hair slicked back and drenched through. “Good shit, kid.”

“I told you, Goliath.” The drawl in Jacob's voice was a touch stronger than the others as he placidly watched the brutality playing out below. “I don't miss.”

It was over now. The beast had been satiated for a time, their hearts kept beating by its protection here after the doom of humanity. The cruel joking calmed as the men turned to take shelter inside their prison walls once again.

Before he could step away to join them in their victory, Jacob stiffened, struggling to focus through the haze in front of him. His sharp eye had caught a hint of movement on the ground past the downpour.

“Porter?”

He didn't respond, only craned his neck slightly out over the edge, scanning the block where he thought he had spotted it. There was a dark something beside the trap they'd just sprung, shielded from the creature behind the decrepit line of abandoned cars. He squinted suspiciously at the silhouette's faint and undefined shape. He wasn't quite sure what it was, or if that dark blob was actually anything at all. Wait, it couldn't possibly be another person, could it?

“Hey, Porter,” Goliath repeated with a hint of curiosity. “You seein’ somethin’?”

Whoever it was stayed veiled in the rain, only a half a street away from the hungering monster tearing into its latest meal. A chill shuddered down his spine like one of the bolts of lightning flashing in the distance. He had to tell the others, they had to keep the beast fed.

“Porter?”

The increasing downpour dampened the shout of his name from the goliath behind him as his eyes anxiously scanned the hungering monster and the sole survivor. He held his breath, torn, his heartbeat the only constant in this conflict of fear and conscience.

“Hey, Porter!”

This life was his choice.

Jacob watched the outline of the unholy creature finishing its feast in the rain as his mind quieted to give him clarity in the storm. It was over for now—it had eaten enough today.

“Jacob Porter! You listenin’ to me?”

“Sorry, i-it's nothin’.” He could feel the sweat on his neck mingling with the chilling rain as he stood with his back to the crowd, the lie quick on his lips, his hand clenched white around the wet rifle at his side. “It's just… so peaceful out here.”

“Peaceful?”

The rough men could barely contain their laughter.

“Haha! It's so peaceful!”

The group of vulgar inmates mocked him, laughing away at his oddity on their retreat back inside to hide from the storm. Jacob took a silent breath of relief and glanced over his shoulder at the dead city one more time before following behind them with his head held low.

The shape below had vanished.

Job done.

08/10/24

7:02 AM

The next morning

Being as tall as he was, you would imagine Jacob Porter could never get lost in a crowd, yet this riot of prisoners in Dawson City Jail was proving otherwise.

It was always like this at the beginning of each day—especially the morning after a feeding. Everyone was starving and no man was thinking of anyone other than himself. A passing shoulder slammed into his and nearly sent him to the floor, though thanks to years of practice Jacob could recover quickly enough to keep himself upright. He was almost invisible in the hungry crowd, his lanky build ensuring that he could go unnoticed most of the time, despite his height. Jacob was six foot three and a hundred and fifty pounds—at least, that's what he had been before… everything. He hadn't stepped on a scale since, considering how he was a little bit preoccupied with fighting for his life.

The undernourished man checked the date and time on his tarnished old silver watch and filled his lungs with a big sigh. Rationing had become stricter and stricter, this huge room twisting into more of a battleground than a cafeteria. He woke up hungry everyday—and some days he wouldn't even make it there early enough to nab a bite of food from their limited stash. Not having access to daily meals was wearing on him, his fingers becoming bony and his skin clinging even closer to his ribs than before. At least they had power to light the prison, thanks to the city's solar panels and the strangely common number of electricians in their midst—a blessing of the highest order in their world.

A hundred and twenty-one ex-prisoners here at the edge of extinction… It was a wretched existence built on brutal decisions and rare meals of cold canned ingredients, each day a never-ending cycle of every man for himself. Jacob's weary gaze rose to the high wall. Another dead stranger, another familiar tally mark. He shifted uncomfortably and re-knotted the overshirt tied around his waist as he glanced across the rowdy room. Inmates were crowding the tables, each with their daily ration of a single can of food in hand, tarnished gray prison garb and white undershirts turning the room into a loud and monochrome mass. Everyone wore their uniforms differently, but after four years in the same pair of clothes, he was finding the stiff fabric more and more uncomfortable. Not that he could complain—it was the apocalypse.

“Well that was fucking terrifying.”

The red-haired and freckle-faced Brayden Edlund appeared at his side, signature detailed hand-drawn map on the clipboard in his hand, checking another box off his list as if it was any other day to him. Jacob supposed that it was a good thing that their explosives expert wasn't skittish.

“How did you not see it was on top of us?” Brayden questioned casually as he distractedly chewed at the eraser of his already gnawed pencil. “You had the scope.”

Jacob grimaced at the memory and nervously scratched at his stubble. “I was lookin’ down, not up.”

“Hmph.” The young man pushed up the cracked glasses over his thin nose and scanned the next page, speaking to his friend with a slight squint and an uncharacteristically cautious word of warning. “Careful. You know what happens if you get too sloppy.”

He tried to avoid looking at the looming marked wall. Brayden was right. The sacrifices they made were a semi-frequent occurrence, but they were still dangerous—and they still scared him.

“Yeah.”

The two young prisoners stood side by side and watched the rest of the noisy cafeteria from the sidelines, with nothing left to do but look on with longing eyes at those men who were fortunate enough to snag a meal in this chaos. It was hard to think of anything other than how good a cold can of slimy beans would taste at that moment. Their eyes fixated on the messy mouths of the lucky inmates devouring their rations like starved circus animals, their chins dripping with juices that were quickly mopped away and consumed before a single drop could even hit the table. Nothing went to waste in their world, and nothing was shared freely, either.

Brayden was the first to break the hungry silence.

“It was fascinating to see it up close. I wish I had a better view…”

The throw-away comment about the horrifying creature living outside their safe haven contorted Jacob's expression into a disturbed wince. Brayden was the youngest inmate still alive, yet sometimes he could come across as even more callous than the hardest man in the room.

Jacob glanced away from the tables and shook his head at his friend in disapproval. “I hope I never have t’see it that close again.”

Brayden ignored the sharpshooter's rebuke and absently flipped through his clipboard to distract himself from his rumbling stomach. “It's damaged. Those who've seen its face say it’s practically caved in on one side—so it can't see for shit.”

Despite its weakened state, Jacob still shuddered at the thought of the ravenous beast outside their walls. Seeing the monster from up high was one thing, but eye level was a whole other. The scare the day before had been as close as he had ever gotten to it. Any other details were pure hearsay: a crooked smile, one blind eye and the other a piercing green, a shape-shifting voice to replicate your closest loved ones… None of it—or any of it—could be true.

“I think it's not healing because it's not getting enough food.”

The idea stiffened the gunman's shoulders as he pictured the small shadowy figure he had let escape the day before. “Oh?”

“We're not getting nearly as many survivors coming through here.” Brayden took a moment to scribble in the margins, casually theorizing as he filled out a list of building modifications for the prison they called home. “The cells are empty where we used to keep ‘em locked up. Now we have to rely entirely on random chance for its meals. Who knows, we might have to start sacrificing our own soon enough if we want to survive.”

The brutal concept chilled him to the bone. “What?”

“That's what Goliath said.”

His jaw clenched tight. Jacob knew, if push came to shove, he was a replaceable cog in this lethal machine. He was a damned good shot—nevertheless, there were plenty of others who could step right up to the plate just as easily as he had. Regret for letting that mysterious survivor go unnoticed ate at his nerves. Dawson City Jail was not known for second chances, and neither was their fellow prisoner-turned-figurehead, Goliath—there was a reason they called him Goliath, after all. The towering Maori man was the only one taller than Jacob, and his hearty strength made him an extremely physically-imposing figure. Plus, of course, his even-more-imposing personality.

Jacob felt the same creeping dread from the rooftop return at the sound of Goliath's booming baritone. He was gathering them back together to the front of the room, his bright red shirt standing stark and offensive against the monotone gray all around him. Jacob nudged Brayden to ask what this was about, but the young man just shrugged curiously and pointed with his chin to where the giant was speaking. He was just as clueless as Jacob was to the meaning of this impromptu meeting.

“Before we're all done here,” Goliath announced in an uncomfortably positive tone for his big voice, “there's one acknowledgement to be made that has been a long time comin’. Torres?”

The crowd shifted uneasily as Javier Torres slowly stepped out from the throng. Jacob nervously watched as the man silently shuffled up to the counter at the front of chow hall that Goliath was patting, their leader's toothy grin at the approaching prisoner prominent under thin lips.

Javi was even more gaunt than Jacob. He was older, around sixty or seventy, with bony hands and curly silver hair pulled back into a little ponytail for his work in the kitchens. Javi had always been decent to him—one of the more pleasant inmates in Dawson City Jail—enough that Jacob could truthfully say that he liked the man. His senses heightened almost instinctively as he watched the slim figure standing small beside their daunting leader. It was an eerie scene. What could the only authority left in this godforsaken place want with an old man?

“Torres has always been a friend. A loyal worker, hm?” A big hand squeezed Javi's shoulder and drew a nervous laugh from the inmate. “We have him to thank for our stores of food and our distribution every day so you sons-of-bitches can all work hard to keep us up and runnin’.”

Javi nodded repeatedly. “Th-thank you, sir.”

He smiled with a fond look at the man shaking beside him and sighed. “Four years of dependable service… damn.”

Andre, one of Goliath's most loyal men, produced a thick cigar and handed it up to him, the flick of the lighter echoing in the dead silence of the cafeteria. Every man might have been itching to dig into their assigned can of food, but no one would dare make a sound while their leader was speaking. The puff of gray smoke billowed from the side of Goliath’s mouth as he put out the fresh cigar on the spotless counter.

“And then…”

Javi's expression morphed from veiled anxiousness to utter horror as Goliath nodded to one of his personal guards, who produced a bag and tossed it far, the contents of canned food smashing open and spilling out across the floor at the feet of those at the tables. The ragged prisoners stood in a flash, astonished at the small stash of rations as a wave of concerned chatter rippled through the entire room. Jacob felt his blood run cold as he watched Javi stand there, speechless, helpless to stop what they both knew was coming.

“P-please, Goliath—”

He didn't get to finish. The big man grabbed a hold of his collar, throwing him violently onto the handful of cans on the ground with a cry.

“This man has been stealing your hard-earned wages! Your food, your very life!”

The words boomed through the hall as the uproar grew louder and louder. Jacob craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the pleading inmate, his stomach dropping at the sight of his panicked expression.

“Please!” The doomed man's cries were falling on deaf ears. “I can’t survive on one can… I-I just need a little more, please…”

Jacob's throat tightened, and he stepped back to try and make himself smaller. The rest of the men rose around him to jeer, standing and crowding the accused. He didn't want to see this, but he couldn't force himself to look away.

Goliath nodded to his guards and the shine of a sawed-off shotgun glinted in the stark white light. Javi's voice was frantic, but Jacob bit his tongue and turned his face the other direction.

“No, wait—”

BANG!

The sound of a body thumping to the floor drew another cruel round of wild cheering. Jacob wiped the sweat from his palms on his baggy trousers and gathered the courage to look back, his heart pounding out of his chest. A pool of blood and bits enveloped the smashed cans underneath the once-gentle man, his lifeless corpse crumpled in a silent heap, his face now left in carnage by the work of the shotgun shell. The disheveled crowd roared at a deafening volume as Jacob battled to control his breathing with a hard swallow.

It took effort to tear his pale blue eyes from the brutal scene. The body was thin, emaciated. Javi had not had the advantage of a young constitution like Jacob to help him through this purgatory. A fist balled at Jacob’s side and the other hand thumbed anxiously at his prominent collar bone as he watched Goliath sneer over the screaming jail. Jacob scowled fearfully, hidden in the shadows. There was no way Goliath would have been able to maintain that level of muscle mass with the rations they were on—it just wasn't possible, though no one ever said it. Jacob held his stomach, his wiry hand bumping past protruding ribs.

“Javi… he was starvin’, wasn't he?”

Brayden glanced over at him when he spoke, the terror from the casual bloodshed still visible in the younger inmate's ruddy face. “W-what?”

He ground his teeth. Keep your head down, Jacob. Don't draw any attention to yourself if you want to make it in here.

“… Nothin’.”

“Goliath should've locked him in a cell…” Brayden's voice was wavering as he adjusted his glasses over and over again in a paranoid pattern. “That's a wasted body.”

Jacob stared at the precious supply of food now being soaked with blood and winced. It was revolting, but he needed to eat… Pushing the brutal murder from his mind, he left his companion and slunk around the rowdy crowd alone, searching for an opening for the polluted cans spilled out on the floor so he could silence the hunger pangs in his gut.

“Porter!”

The familiar gruff tone of Andre Williams broke his concentration. Jacob bristled even harder than before. Andre was a rough, stocky, and markedly unpleasant man whom Jacob had always tried his hardest to steer clear of, even before the apocalypse. Now he was approaching fast, the newly fired shotgun slung over his shoulder and the band scraping against the coarse prison uniform as he smirked, grabbing Jacob's arm forcefully and dragging him away from the tainted meal.

“No no no, you don't get to eat yet, lil man! There's been a change of plans. You're on inspection with me, pronto.”

“What?” The startled response quickly melted into terror as he skidded to a dead stop outside of the crowd. The words twisted his hungry stomach into a knot. Jacob had never been ordered outside the prison walls before, ever. “But I-I'm the shooter, I've never done perimeter checks, I'm not—”

“Goliath asked f'you personally.”

Shit. Yes, Andre was one of their unchallenged leader’s most loyal men, but he was also the most brutal. The idea that Jacob had been assigned such an important task with this particular inmate warned the overwhelming voice of fearful intuition in his brain. Something was not right.

He scanned the throng desperately for some way out of this. The big man's signature red shirt made him easy to find, but when Jacob’s eyes finally landed on his towering form, the startling sight froze him in place. Goliath was already staring back before he’d even had a chance to look.

Jacob glanced away quickly but the creeping feeling had already taken hold. Was he watching him?

Digging his nails around the old scar on his forearm, Jacob struggled to soothe himself, his stomach complaining endlessly in the torturous silence.

I never should've let that person go.

Andre’s slap on the shoulder woke him from the daze. “Heh. You don't got a choice here, buddy. Grab the map from Edlund—we're goin’ in now.”