Dark Side of the Moon Read online

  And then they stepped through into the clearing and found the gardeners in the middle of what looked like a cook-out. Kyle stopped and watched the group of people mingling and having fun and it reminded him a bit of things he'd never had; namely togetherness.

  "Kyle." Stella's voice drew his attention toward her where she stood off to one side. She broke away from the small group she had been talking to and strode over to them. "Welcome back, son," she said and held a hand out to him.

  Kyle grabbed it and gave it a quick squeeze. "Thanks," he said and briefly tried to define why he felt just a teeny bit emotional at hearing her call him that.

  Stella's attention was already on Daniel and Billy. "The lost boys, I presume?" she asked with a smile and held a hand out to Daniel.

  For a moment the younger man looked like he might bolt, then he gingerly grabbed her hand. "I'm Daniel," he introduced himself, his tone as hesitant as his expression.

  "Welcome, Daniel," she said and shifted her attention to Billy. "You must be Billy then," she said.

  "You know me?" Billy asked nervously and glanced first at Daniel, then at Kyle, as if seeking support.

  "I've heard of both of you," she said and made a sweeping gesture toward the clearing. "Join the fun. Get something to eat. Stay if you want to. You're more than welcome," she said.

  "Hey guys." A younger woman about Daniel's age sauntered over to them. "Wanna join the fun?" she asked and locked eyes with Daniel.

  Before he could say anything to that, she had taken his hand and pulled him along. Billy followed in his wake, looking a little uncertain.

  Kyle watched them go for a moment before turning his attention back to Stella. "They both need a safer place to stay. The moron twins are dead and they're both scared stiff of what will happen next."

  Stella eyed him closely, her expression a bit bland. "You did that?" she asked.

  "In part," he agreed. "They took a swing at Daniel. A guy I came in with, Vinnie, swung back. He killed one, but the other got the drop on him. That one I took out. Now the kids are afraid of what comes next."

  "As well they should be. The moron twins have kept others at bay by being brutal idiots. But they aren't the worst of it. There are things around here far worse than the moron twins and you've opened the door for them," Stella said, her expression serious. "But the kids will be okay here. Nobody's gonna let them get hurt if they're part of our group. That's what makes the gardeners so famous," she added and gave him a smirk.

  "Oh?" Kyle said and arched an eyebrow. "I thought it was your rep for shunning others and killing anyone you don't like."

  Stella laughed out loud and grabbed his shoulder. "You listen to too many rumors, my boy," she said. "Let's go get something to eat. I'm starving."

  ***

  The introduction to the gardeners was painless and uneventful. Daniel and Billy found others closer to their own age and both of them settled right in. Kyle stuck with Stella, who introduced him to the others before they joined in the meal being prepared.

  The thing that struck Kyle was the meat being served. It was his impression that anything edible apart from the plants being grown was synthetic. He couldn't imagine that there were animals up here like cows or goats or the like, which made him eye the plate he was handed with a certain amount of apprehension. But then he caught sight of the roast hanging over the open fire and had to admit that the thought that this might be human was ridiculous. Even though the roast was oblong with the remains of front and hind legs sticking out at either end, it was way too big to be even remotely human.

  "What's the matter? Are you a veg-eater?" Stella asked, having noticed that he wasn't digging in like everybody else.

  "Nah, I was just wondering what kind of animal that is," he said and nodded toward the fire.

  Stella looked over there and shrugged. "It's animal," she countered cryptically, then gave him a sharp look. "You thought it was human, didn't you?"

  He smirked. "The thought did cross my mind to be honest," he agreed. "I've heard stories about you guys, after all."

  Stella sent a glance toward where the boys were hunkered down with some of the other younger people. "Your two boys don't seem too worried about it. They're digging in like nobody's business," she observed.

  "Yeah ... that doesn't surprise me. Daniel's been living off that synthetic crap in the mess hall for two years. So has Billy, from what I know. They're not likely to stop and ask questions about the meat right now." Kyle watched them for a moment, then picked up a chunk of the heavily barbecued meat and bit into it. He chewed on it thoughtfully while trying to decipher the taste. "Tastes a bit like beef," he said and glanced back over at the fire. The size of the torso could be a bull, he mused. "Are there farm animals up here?"

  The older woman chowed down on her own meal, then stopped briefly to dry off her fingers and grab a mug of water, her eyes on the torso over the fire. "Not per se, no," she finally said and gave him a curious look. She was obviously interested in his reaction.

  "So ... what is this, then?" Kyle asked and held up another piece of meat. It looked like beef too and, truth be told, smelled like it very much. But if there were no farm animals, he had no living clue what this was supposed to be. "From what I've read, those that have eaten human flesh said it tasted a bit like chicken. So this is definitely not human," he added.

  "It's not," Stella agreed. "It's ... animal. I just don't know what this sort of animal is called." The look in her eyes briefly grew distant, but then she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. "I'll show you tomorrow if you promise not to freak out."

  He didn't consider himself to be the freak-out type of guy. "That's an easy promise to make. But now I'm dead curious," he said and figured since it wasn't human, he wasn't going to make big thing out of it and just enjoy the meal. He wolfed down the rest of it, then followed Stella's example and dried off his hands before grabbing his mug of water and washing the food down with it. He set the mug back on the table top. "I take it that this meat is ... local, then?" he asked.

  The smirk on the woman's lips was somewhat unsettling. "We assume it is, but nobody knows for sure," she said while she watched her people and fiddled with a piece of bone left on her plate.

  With all the things he didn't know about the Moon, Kyle was fairly certain he would have heard about grazing hoards of alien critters that could be cooked like beef. "Is this part of why you think the thing in dome 6 isn't human?" he asked after mulling it over a bit.

  "Both yes and no." Stella pushed the plate back and got to her feet. "Let me show you where you can sleep."

  Kyle rose too, not entirely sure what was going on. Everybody seemed to be getting up now and the mood seemed subdued. "What's going on?" he asked.

  "This meat is good. It's nutritious and, from what we've been able to determine, has no lasting side effects. But extreme fatigue is a side effect from eating it. People go to bed when they've eaten," Stella said and if he hadn't known any better, he would have thought she was drunk by the slight slur in her voice and the wobble in her movements. "Unless you wanna sleep here, you should do the same."

  At first he thought she was making fun of him, but when he took a step to follow her, he realized that he too was affected. A fatigue so bone deep that he almost couldn't convince himself to move at all settled on him, but he managed to push forward and follow Stella over to a smaller path leading off into the wilderness.

  About twenty paces in, there was another clearing, this one littered with tents. Stella pointed at one of the front tents. "You can sleep in there. We can arrange for more permanent lodgings tomorrow," she said and yawned heartily. "Sweet dreams," she added and staggered away from him.

  Kyle blinked heavily for a moment, then shrugged lightly and headed toward the indicated tent. It was rather big and could house up to four people. Daniel and Billy were already there, out and snoring softly. "Hell of a meal that knocks you out like this," Kyle muttered and sank down
on the edge of one of the last two remaining bunks. He smiled lightly. "Hell of a buzz," he added and let himself fall sideways onto the cot while darkness descended on him.

  ***

  The grazers

  In truth it was the weirdest thing he had ever seen. Scratch that, it was the scariest thing he had ever seen. After waking up and feeling a bit out of it like he would have after having overdone the drug of his choice back on Earth, Stella had taken him to see where the meat came from. And these ... things were not what he had expected.

  "They look like ... huge dust mites," he finally managed while watching the plump, overgrown bug-cows. The 'pasture' - if it could be called that - was nothing but lunar dust, which these critters were munching quiet happily on. "Are they?" he asked and glanced at the older woman standing next to him. The fence was made of the same lightweight rock the table in his previous room had been made of and it fenced off a good sized area where the dark heavy topsoil had been scraped away to reveal the lunar surface underneath.

  "I have no clue what they are," Stella confessed. "All I know is that they seem to be interested in only one thing and that's eating. And they eat dust. Once a month, we let them out and they roam all over the dome, removing all the dust that may have blown in from the other domes. And they seem to be able to defy gravity, because they move up and down the inside of the dome as if they were just grazing on a pasture of grass."

  Kyle frowned. "Where'd they come from?"

  "Good question," Stella countered. She had one foot up on the lowest board, her arms folded and leaning on the top board while she watched the space-cattle graze. "They've been here for as long as I have. And nobody has been willing or able to share their secret."

  "How quickly do they ... reproduce? I take it there has to be some sort of reproductive cycle to them or you couldn't just eat them." Kyle felt a little odd about having eaten meat from one of those things. They didn't exactly look inviting.

  "They grow up very fast," Stella said. "As to how they come into being ... I have no clue. They do not seem the least bit interested in each other or anything other than eating. I've watched them for hours on end and I never see them do much more than this. They graze. They are indistinct from each other as you can see, but if you thought cows were stupid, you've got another thing coming. These critters ... all they do is eat. I've never seen one drop dead and I've never seen the birth of a new one. Their numbers seem to be constant. But we can't risk letting them out of this dome, which is why we block off the tunnels to domes 2 and 4 when we let them out of the pen to prevent them from wandering into territory where they would most likely be killed."

  "Or kill someone," Kyle suggested.

  "Oh, they don't eat anything other than lunar dust," Stella disagreed. "They don't even touch soil. Nobody's ever been attacked by them. The only threat they may pose is if you're standing on a patch of dust they want to get at. They will crowd you out of the way. But they will not hurt you. And they will not step on you either."

  Recalling one too many holograms of various types of mites and other creatures that lived in the cracks of human existence, Kyle grimaced. There was nothing cow-like about these beasts apart from their size. They were armor plated like an armadillo and were almost as tall as Kyle at the highest point on their rounded backs. They each had four legs and tiny little heads near the ground. Most of the head seemed to consist of the mouth and the eyes; if those little square patches littering the top of the head were eyes. If they were, they were unmoving like a bug's eyes. "What do you call them?"

  "You don't name your food," Stella countered, her tone a bit surprised. "And they are food. I have no idea who decided they were edible. That was before my time. It was common practice to eat them when I got here."

  "And you've been here for twenty-five years?" Kyle asked while never taking his eyes off the moon cows.

  "Give or take, yes," she agreed.

  "By the way, I wasn't suggesting that you give them names. I was wondering what species they are," he said after considering it for a moment. "How would you even name something like that? You might as well try and name the mites in your carpet."

  Stella chuckled. "Different strokes for different folks. The species doesn't have a name because nobody knows what they are." She pursed her lips and pushed back from the fence. "Call them what you want. They won't listen anyway."

  Kyle dropped his head forward and smiled to himself. "Moon cows," he said and looked up at them again. "Works for me," he added and followed Stella back to the others. "I don't know how comfortable I am about eating something that's undefined. I mean ... what are the long-term effects of these things? Does anyone know?"

  "I've been eating them for twenty-five years and I don't have any side-effects. The meat seems to work like a sleeping pill on everybody, but that's not so bad," Stella explained.

  "Only if the loonies decide to swoop in and eat everybody while they sleep," Kyle suggested and gave her a lopsided smirk when she glanced at him. They came to a stop at the edge of the center clearing.

  "Not everybody eats at the same time. We have guards. And the loonies know better than to mess with us," Stella said.

  "See, that one I don't get. You have a reputation among the others that make people more than reluctant to come here. You say that Mike knows the good seeds from the bad seeds and that's all nice and good. I have a smidgen of that ability too, if I say so myself. But still. You people just seem like a nice bunch. I wouldn't really think you'd be able to fight off crazies if it came down to it." Kyle hunkered down and picked up a big wilted leaf. He unfurled it and eyed the symmetry of it while waiting for Stella to respond. When she didn't, he looked up at her and noted the somewhat dark expression she wore while surveying the clearing ahead of them.

  "You'll see," she said and glanced down to meet his eyes. And there was something there that sent a cold shiver up Kyle's spine. When she looked at him like that, he had no doubt that she was able to break bone with her bare hands. "Just hope it doesn't come to that. As long as we maintain our outward invulnerability ... we've got nothing to worry about."

  He rose again and let the wilted leaf fall back to the ground. It floated despite its heaviness. "Who's worried?" he asked with a smile.

  She rolled her eyes and walked away from him, leaving him standing there. Maybe there was a side-effect of that meat; something you got from being subjected to it over a longer period of time. Maybe it made people schizophrenic or something. Stella didn't seem entirely stable to him; not right now anyway.

  With a sigh, Kyle went in search of Daniel. Even though he probably didn't need Daniel to show him around anymore, he still wanted to know where the kid was and if he was adapting to this place. He did seem pretty okay with it last night, but things had a tendency to change quickly.

  It didn't take long before he located the younger man. He was sitting on a chair on the far side of the clearing and he displayed all the signs of a junkie coming down off a high. Kyle slowed down when he caught sight of him and came to a full stop a few feet from the kid. "Hey," he tried.

  Daniel looked like he hadn't slept all night. "That was some weird meat last night," he said and blinked heavily. "I feel totally spaced out."

  "You look the part too," Kyle said, grabbed a chair and sat down next to him. "I feel a little spaced out myself," he admitted.

  It took Daniel a moment to respond to this and when he did, Kyle couldn't help a smile. "I've never done drugs before."

  "Drugs?" Kyle shook his head. "I don't think you can call that drugs," he mused, but now that Daniel had put it out there, he figured that maybe you could call that meat a drug. It had a drug-like effect. At the same time it also seemed to be nutritious. "It's meat. It's the first real food you've had since you came up here. No wonder you're reacting like this."

  Daniel rolled his head to the left and squinted at him as if having trouble focusing. "You think that's it?" he asked, his words a little slurred.


  "Yeah, I think that's it. I used to get that way too with real beef. If I hadn't had it in a while and then got a good piece of it ... it almost made me a little giddy," Kyle said and didn't feel the least bit sorry about lying. Truth be told, whenever he had something like that back home, he also had his share of drugs to heighten the experience. So, technically speaking, he supposed he could say he got high from meat.

  "Wow," Daniel muttered and rolled his head back to stare out over the clearing. He followed some of the others almost drunkenly. "They look okay," he said and blinked heavily.

  "They're used to it. That's the big difference," Kyle said with a smile.

  "Right. Used to it," Daniel muttered, then let his head drop backward and closed his eyes. "I'm dizzy. And not in a good way."

  "Why don't you go back to bed? I'm sure nobody will mind," Kyle said, got up and took a hold of Daniel's arm. "Come on. I'll give you a hand. You don't look like you can walk a straight line right now."

  Daniel rose and Kyle's suspicion that the kid was still heavily influenced by the hefty meat was confirmed when he staggered a little and nearly sat back down again. He dragged Daniel's arm over his shoulders and guided the unsteady younger man back to the tent where they had spent the previous night, where he, mindful of his previous injuries, eased him onto the cot and pulled the covers up over him. Daniel shifted onto his side, struggling to keep his lids open. "Thanks, man. I owe you a lot," he muttered before he fell asleep.

  Kyle eyed him for a moment, then sighed and gingerly patted his shoulder. "No thanks needed, kid," he said quietly and struggled briefly to suppress a yawn. "Might as well take a nap myself," he added, made a beeline for his cot and dropped down on it.

  Stretching out, he looked up at the canopy of the tent for a moment while his mind started to drift. Yeah, he was still influenced too, no question about that. He figured he would try and find out what was doing that, but couldn't really be bothered about it right now. Sleep was tugging at him, demanding his presence, and after a few more moments he gave in to the pull and slipped easily away into dreams.