The Last Orchard [Book Two] Read online

Before the other soldiers came to help, Charlie pulled down one of the boxes, which was heavier than he expected, and set it on the floor. He reached for a crowbar nearby and cracked open the lid. The stranger came over to look, and the pair both raised their eyebrows, eliciting a low whistle as Charlie hovered the lantern inside the box.

  “That’ll definitely help us out,” the stranger said.

  Charlie reached inside, grabbing hold of the rocket launcher that was broken into two pieces, while the stranger carefully picked up one of the explosives that rested inside.

  With the help of Dixon’s men, the Humvee was loaded up quickly, and they rolled out of Mayfield with a dozen rocket launchers and enough ammunition for them to make a very sizable dent in whatever forces the terrorists were able to throw their way.

  But while the ride to Mayfield was quiet, Charlie couldn’t quiet the questions running through his head on the way back to The Orchard.

  “Why did you do it?” Charlie asked. “You had all of the cards. You could have done whatever you wanted so long as you had those computer components.”

  The stranger nodded, chewing the end of his nail. “Dixon would have eventually gotten them anyway.” He turned to Charlie. “At least this way I have some goodwill with him.”

  “It’s not going to get you as far as you think it will,” Charlie said. “Dixon’s a soldier. He takes orders and gives them, but he doesn’t give himself a lot of time for free thoughts. It’s a philosophy that’s served him well over his lifetime, and it’s not something he’s apt to change any time soon.”

  “Then I suppose that’s when these rocket launchers come in handy,” the stranger said, gesturing back toward the crates, a smile spread wide across his face.

  When they returned to The Orchard, Charlie was glad to see that his men and the blue clan had at the very least tolerated one another, and the sight of so many men along the front lines helped Charlie believe that whatever evil was heading their way, they’d be able to handle.

  Parked at Doc’s, Charlie’s crew greeted them upon their arrival, and without a word, Charlie opened the back of the Humvee and removed one of the rocket launchers, handing it over to Jason, whose eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas.

  Shelly looked to Charlie, then to the stranger. “You should come over more often. Maybe we’d be able to get more cool shit like this.”

  “I want them stationed at every main guard post,” Charlie said. “And let’s make sure everyone understands how to use them before we load them, okay?”

  The orders were followed, and Charlie and the stranger turned toward the line of men that stretched behind the makeshift barricade. The pair made it two steps before a noise caught Charlie’s attention, heightening everyone’s senses and sending a buzz of electricity through the entire front line.

  Charlie peered into the woods, narrowing his eyes as the drums of war drew closer. “We shoot to kill! You find a target, and you bring it down!” He marched down the line, barking his orders like a general. “We hold this line!”

  The stranger barked similar orders, and Charlie reached for a rifle when a harrowing whistling rocketed through the air. Charlie glanced toward the clear afternoon sky, unable to locate the object from the brightness of the sun. “Take cover!”

  Charlie ducked near the front line, the surrounding fighters with their arms over their heads, and then the battle started with the shaking of the earth and the rain of soil and dirt.

  16

  The harsh ringing lingered in Charlie’s ears, and he lifted his head once the vibrations stopped. He peered over the sandbags and scrambled for his rifle which he’d dropped into the dirt, his fingers fumbling blindly over the soil, searching for the familiar touch of metal and composite.

  More explosions rocked the line of soldiers hunkered down on their side of the road, though Charlie couldn’t hear the whistling that preceded the explosions.

  Charlie planted his elbows on the sandbags, firing into the tree line, the scope thrusting him deep into the woods, and even with the cacophony of gunfire raining down upon him, he still managed to drop two enemy soldiers before ducking back below to check on the stranger.

  “You need to get toward the east end of the line!” Charlie shouted. “That’s where the bulk of your men are located. Hold the line, and save the launchers as a means of last resort.”

  The stranger nodded, then sprinted away. Meanwhile, Charlie took a moment to examine the surroundings. The first blast that landed near him breached a hole in the wall to his left, and body parts were scattered about the ground.

  He stared at the severed limbs for a moment, the blood still pouring from the veins, the flesh and muscle and exposed bone all dirtied from flopping on the ground. Charlie couldn’t pull his eyes away from the gore, and it wasn’t until a hand slapped onto his shoulder that he finally turned away from the sight and stared into Shelly’s eyes.

  “You all right?” she screamed above the gunfire and the war raging around them, her face already covered with sweat, blood, and dirt, but the blood wasn’t her own.

  Charlie nodded. “Make sure the pressure points hold, and keep passing out those launchers!” He returned to the open space on the sandbag wall and planted his elbows, ready to take more of the bastards down.

  The explosions had stopped, the majority of the fighting now concentrated to the exchange of gunfire back and forth between their forces and the terrorists.

  A few more explosions rocked the asphalt and their line, but whatever devices they were using to launch the material seemed to have tapped out at a certain range, which meant so long as they held them to the tree line, they couldn’t fling them deeper onto the orchard.

  Empty shell casings littered the ground around Charlie’s feet, picking off terrorist after terrorist who ventured too far to the front of the trees. After a dozen kills, he was forced to reload, and while he ducked down behind the protection of the sandbags, another explosion rocked the opposite side of the wall and Charlie was bucked forward, landing harshly on the dirt.

  His body ached, and his vision danced between darkness and light. He wallowed on the ground, disoriented from the blast. He struggled to get to his feet, falling back to his stomach twice before he managed to get to all fours.

  More screams and more gunshots thundered in the distance, but they all sounded so far away. Charlie finally managed to get his bearings and turned toward the front line, finding a crater where he had just previously been.

  But there was more screaming now, the ringing in his ears subsided, and the harrowing cries for help grew worse. Charlie finally forced himself to his feet and scoured the ground for his weapon. He was naked without it, and he was weaker.

  A rifle lay in the dirt. It wasn’t his, but it would do the job. He snatched it off the ground, the particles of dirt sticking to his gloves, the layer of grit between himself and the weapon causing trouble for his grip.

  Charlie wiped the dirt on his pants, and then wobbled to stay on both feet as he headed back toward the line, but before he reached his point of defense, a man sprinted through the column of smoke and darted past Charlie.

  It was one of their men.

  Not wanting the rest of the forces to break, Charlie sprinted forward into the chaos, coughing and hacking through the smoke, and blinking in astonishment when he finally broke through.

  The terrorists had planted themselves in the ditch on the opposite side of the road, all the way down the entire line of defense, with more coming out the woods. Hundreds of them were crawling forward, trying to infiltrate his home, trying to destroy everything they had built.

  One of the rocket launchers lay across the chest of a dead man, and Charlie dropped the rifle. He picked up the piece of heavy artillery. He made sure it was loaded, and then lined up the sight to the targets ahead.

  The crosshairs lined up with a pair of faces, and Charlie squeezed the trigger. Smoke jettisoned from the end of the carrier, and the opposite side of the road exploded into a ball
of fire and smoke. Charlie dropped the heavy piece of artillery and then charged forward, waving the rocket launcher as he caught the attention of the remaining fighters.

  “Hold the line!”

  Faces smeared with soot and sweat and blood turned toward him. Expressions of fear and uncertainty, of confusion and desperation.

  “For the orchard! For our families! For our future!”

  A roar of cheers erupted down the line, and the fighters cowering behind the lines rose from the depths of their fear and pushed forward, joining Charlie in his charge to engage the enemy head on. Charlie scooped the rifle back off the ground, keeping his aim as steady as he could muster on the run, and killed two men in the ditch before he felt a bullet strike his chest.

  The hammer-like force of the contact slowed him, but Charlie didn’t stop. He refused to slow, refused to be run out of his own home by people who no longer appreciated who he was. He needed to show them just how strong he could be. He needed to show them what he could do.

  The stock of the rifle thumped against his chest, and Charlie pivoted his aim between the enemy in front of him. He didn’t look left or right to the men who joined him, but he heard the explosions and witnessed the balls of fire rising from the rockets being launched into the enemy.

  And the more they pressed the hostiles, the faster they retreated into the woods. Charlie led the assault, marching over the asphalt, closing in on the enemy until they were close enough for hand to hand combat.

  One of the hostiles, who was still on the ground, lifted their weapon to shoot, but Charlie kicked the tip of the rifle away with his boot, sending it flying from the enemy’s hands. He planted a hunk of lead in the terrorist’s skull.

  Charlie stole quick glances to his left and to his right, the wave of his assault cramming the enemy back into the depths of the forest. But they were retreating too quickly, running away faster than Charlie would have expected, even for their purpose of acting as a distraction.

  After all, the stranger’s intel told them that they were trying to draw troops away from Mayfield, and the battle hadn’t even been going on long enough to call for aid.

  Had they just overwhelmed them? Had they not expected this level of fight or resistance from a bunch of farmers? Charlie continued to push the enemy back into the woods, firing round after round, dropping body after body.

  But Charlie slowed when he stepped into the woods, watching as the enemy cowered away into the thick of the forest brush. Something wasn’t right. They were putting too much distance between themselves and the area.

  “They’re running from something,” Charlie said, whispering to himself, the gunshots roaring around him, the screams of fear and anger and victory and death erupting everywhere. But something buzzed in the distance, catching Charlie’s ear as he turned toward the west.

  It was faint at first, and undecipherable, yet familiar. Charlie stepped toward the sound, and it grew louder on the horizon. Charlie shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

  The branches of the trees blocked the view of the sky, and Charlie sprinted out of the woods, heading toward the open space of the street. The shade from the trees disappeared and the heat of the day beat down on him. Charlie lowered the rifle in his hands, staring up into the sky, shocked by the sight soaring above him.

  “No,” Charlie said.

  They were still nothing more than dots on the sky, but Charlie recognized the planes heading their way. They were flying low, and the only thing that Charlie could think of were the schematics for the bombs that they found in that house.

  Charlie turned, waving his hands as he headed for cover. “Run! Get to cover!” He turned back around, firing into the sky, a desperate attempt at trying to bring the enemy down. But his shots missed wide left and right, and the old prop planes retaliated with machine gun fire, the bullets raining down from the sky like hellfire.

  All three planes zoomed past, and Charlie remained unscathed, but he turned to watch them fly overhead as they headed toward the bulk of his and and the blue clan’s forces.

  “NO!” Charlie screamed, his face reddening, as he chased after the planes, firing into their backside, but they were too far.

  There was no cover on the road, and Charlie watched in horror as man after man was torn apart by the bombs dropped from the planes and the machine guns raining bullets from the sky.

  Body after body dropped to the asphalt, their screams cut short by the vicious thunder of gunfire, leaving a trail of shell casings and blood along the pavement.

  Charlie ran toward the wounded and knelt at the first man he came across that was still breathing. The bullet has torn through his stomach, and the man clutched at the wound, blood pouring between his fingertips and blood dripping from his lips.

  “Just hang on,” Charlie helped keep pressure on the wound, and the man trembled horribly beneath Charlie’s touch. He glanced around for any of the medical staff, but it was nothing but a sea of bodies.

  People crawled, they moaned, they cried out for help, but there was no help to give.

  Charlie looked back down at the man in his arms, and the pair locked eyes. Charlie shook his head, unsure of what to say, but sure that the man would die. “I’m sorry I failed you.”

  With a bloodied hand, the man reached up and grabbed hold of Charlie’s collar. His grip was weak, but forceful. He opened his mouth to speak, exposing the black hole of blood and darkness inside his mouth, but past the point of being able to produce any speech.

  The final bit of strength went out of the man’s hand, and he went limp in Charlie’s arms. Blood continued to pour from the wound, spilling over the man’s side and dripping onto the black pavement of the road.

  Charlie gently lowered the man to the ground. He didn’t know his name. There had gotten to be too many residents in the orchard for Charlie to keep track of everyone. And yet, he still felt responsible for the man’s life. He didn’t need to know his name to understand that he was a part of this place. He helped keep it running. Everyone played a part.

  But now those parts were scattered across the pavement, bloodied and beaten, the bulk of Charlie’s forces vanquished in less than a minute.

  Charlie turned toward the forest, expecting the bulk of the terrorist forces to return in full stride, wiping out the rest of the survivors, and then continue their march toward Mayfield to destroy the power plant.

  But the familiar whine of the prop planes grew loud again, and Charlie looked down the long stretch of road littered with the dead and dying.

  As the noise of the prop planes grew louder and louder, Charlie saw them turning toward the trailers and RVs.

  The ground rumbled, and more explosives were dropped from the planes, decimating not just the remaining survivors but The Orchard’s land as well. Charlie watched as the trailers and RVs were consumed in the massive explosions, the plumes of red and black devouring their homes.

  And as the explosions drew closer, Charlie closed his eyes, prepared to die along with everything else. He had reached the end. And it was time for him to atone for his failure.

  17

  When Charlie had shut his eyes, he never expected to open them again. So when a blinding light greeted him as his eyelids fluttered open, he was in shock. He wiggled his fingers and toes first, unable to move anything else. He coughed, and his chest ached, pained by even the simple motion of breathing.

  He rolled to his side, his senses dulled, save for the pain that rippled through his body. Eventually the blinding light faded and the landscape took shape, though the more he saw, the more he wished he could have stayed unconscious.

  Craters lined the street, and what wasn’t turned to rubble was covered in blood. The bodies were scattered few and far between, but Charlie quickly realized that it was only because of the bodies had been torn apart from the blasts, pieces of the fighting core of both the blue clan and The Orchard scattered among the field of battle.

  Covered in dirt and bits of asphalt, Charlie rolle
d off his back and propped himself up on his side. His heart pounded, and he blinked away the flecks of dirt that dangled from his eyelashes. His breaths sounded echoed and muffled, like he was underwater.

  Charlie fingered his ears, but it didn’t rid himself of the clog. He examined his immediate surroundings, searching for a weapon, unsure of how long he’d been out.

  With nothing within reaching distance, Charlie forced himself to stand, the ground uneven beneath his feet. He drew in another ragged breath, still squinting from the brightness of the sun. He stumbled forward, away from the road and the forest, unsure if the enemy was still in the area, and headed toward the decimated land of the orchard.

  The harsh slope of the terrain off the side of the road sent Charlie jogging off the pavement, and he slammed into what was left of the sandbag wall for their original defenses. He looked back toward the forest, noticing the hurried tone of voices, unable to understand them. He wasn’t sure if that was because it was another language or his hearing just hadn’t come around, but he wasn’t in the mood for taking chances.

  Charlie quickly leapt over the wall, landing awkwardly on his side. He rolled to his right, and a body lay in the ground next to him, a pair of lifeless eyes staring down at him. But a rifle was still clutched in the dead man’s hands, and he removed it from the lifeless grip, the voices growing louder, clearer now. And they weren’t speaking English.

  Charlie made sure the weapon was loaded, flicked the safety off, and then peered through the cracks of the sandbag wall, where he spotted a pair of legs, and then hands gripping rifles themselves.

  Charlie shut his eyes, trying to get his bearings, and trying to make the world not tilt to either the left or the right, but he couldn’t keep his body straight no matter how much he tried. All he could do was wait until they were close enough for a shot. He didn’t trust his body to keep steady to hit anything that wasn’t point blank.

  Boots crunched soil, and Charlie hung low, waiting until the enemy was directly on top of him before he aimed the rifle upward, firing the first shot into the nearest enemy’s head, then lined up another while the second was still in shock from the sudden ambush.