The Last Orchard

by James Hunt

  “Dad, what are you talking about?” Charlie gestured to the fields. “Look at this place.”

  But Harold only shook his head. “You’ve done more for this place over the past five years than I did after close to forty. Your mother might not let me read the accounting books, but I saw the notices in the mail. Overdue, Past Due, Late.” He chuckled. “Just never could get it exactly right.” He finally looked at his son. “But you’re not like that. Never have been. Got your mother’s brain, thank God.”

  A red flush crept up Charlie’s neck and warmed his cheeks. It was rare that his father was ever sentimental. He cleared his throat.

  “I never got the recognition I wanted from my father, and I know that I’m not one to express myself very well, but I didn’t want you to think that I wasn’t so damned proud of you.”

  Harold swiped his big hand at the corner of his eye, and Charlie smiled. He’d seen Harold Decker cry only twice in his lifetime. The first was when Charlie was eight, when his grandmother had passed away. The second was right now.

  “I love you, Dad,” Charlie said.

  Harold cleared his throat and swiped at his eyes one more time before he turned around and smiled. “Love you too, son.” He wrapped his boy in a bear hug, and then picked up the basket of apples. “Grab that ladder.”

  Bowlegged and tired, Harold carried the apples down the row of trees while Charlie trailed behind, letting the old bear take the lead. He knew how hard it was to admit that his tenure as boss was ending, but as far as Charlie was concerned, there was still only one opinion that mattered in this place. And it belonged to that gentle giant ahead of him.

  When Charlie returned to the house, he packed up some food and water and started his trek toward Mayfield. His mother begged him to take someone, but Charlie didn’t plan on walking.

  Charlie found the dirt bike where he’d left it in the woods after he’d led the terrorists on a wild goose chase and checked the fuel. He still had three quarters of a tank, enough to get him to Mayfield and back with some to spare.

  Charlie tightened the straps of his backpack and then hopped onto the seat of the dirt bike, pressing down hard on the kick starter, revving the two-stroke to life.

  Wind blasted Charlie’s face, cooling the sweat that had already formed on his body, the shirt and pants sticking his chest and legs.

  Charlie glanced at Don and Amy’s house as he passed, knowing that both of them were counting on him to retrieve the medicine Doc needed to keep Don alive.

  And while he had the rifle slung across his back and the pistol on his belt, Charlie still hadn’t determined how he was going to handle any pushback from anyone other than a masked gunman.

  The world and its resources were going to get considerably smaller over the next few weeks if things didn’t improve, Charlie had no doubts about that. Which was why he had hoped Dixon would make good on his promise and return with a military escort that would help alleviate the self-policing state that would inevitably follow.

  But Charlie focused on what was ahead of him. Two lives, and who knew how many future lives, depended on it.

  7

  The walk from the bridge where Charlie ditched the dirt bike to Mayfield was just under thirty minutes. He stashed the bike before town because he didn’t want to give away the element of surprise should there be more terrorists nearby.

  Charlie stuck to the woods on his trek but made sure the road never strayed too far from view. The walk was made longer by the rocks and hills and curving paths of the mountainous terrain.

  But nature brought the added serenity of peace and calmness in a world that had become decidedly louder and scarier.

  Charlie had always enjoyed the quiet, which had set him apart from a lot of kids he went to school with. When he was little, his teachers always used to tell his parents that he was aloof, or absentminded, but he’d just always been introspective.

  There was something about the quiet that helped extract Charlie’s thoughts. It allowed him to dig deeper, examine all the sides, turning the idea over in his mind.

  Darker clouds rolled in above his head, and while he was thankful for the reprieve from the sunlight, he didn’t want to get caught coming back in the rain. Time wasn’t on his side, and rain would only slow him down, even with the dirt bike.

  Thirsty, Charlie reached into the side compartment of his pack for a bottle of water. He paced himself, knowing he had another one, but wanting to ration it for the walk back or if he was forced to stay longer than he would have liked.

  He pressed the bottle water on the back of his neck. He tilted his head back, letting the cool water droplets run down his neck. When he opened his eyes, he saw the road sign for Mayfield, so he returned the bottle to his pack.

  Closer to town, Charlie’s senses were heightened, and he kept a keen lookout for any guards that the terrorists might have stationed in the area. After all, it was what he’d done on his own farm.

  Flashes of Seattle peppered his mind, and just like the big city, the little town was at a standstill. Charlie kept hunched forward, his muscles poised to strike at any movement. But like the town ahead, the forest that surrounded him was deadly silent.

  Charlie hovered near the tree line, using one of the big maples for cover as he scanned Main Street.

  Cars were stopped dead in their tracks, though the number of vehicles that clogged the road in Mayfield were significantly less than the thousands of vehicles that had broken down on the streets of Seattle.

  Charlie removed the rifle from his shoulder and used the scope for a better look at the buildings and the sidewalks. He maneuvered the crosshairs over the town, expecting to find some people, but the streets were empty.

  Charlie lowered the scope. The ghost town ahead of him was somehow worse than finding it overrun with the terrorists.

  Charlie kept the rifle in his hands, then emerged from the woods. He moved quickly, rushing to the cover of the first building, which was an antique store.

  The mountains were littered with them, bursting at the seams with hipsters and couples who wanted to score something unique for their loft or home back in the city.

  Charlie peered through the darkened front windows, finding the inside void of any ransacked looting or destruction that was so prevalent in Seattle. He’d always believed that small-town folks were different, and he was glad for the affirmation of that not changing when times got hard.

  Hunched forward, both hands gripping the rifle, Charlie hurried toward the hospital near the edge of town.

  Gusts of wind jingled bells and wind chimes that stretched along the front porches of the businesses along Main Street. Every building was separated by a narrow alley, barely wide enough for a single car to make it through, which led to the personal parking lots for the business owners and employees.

  Charlie paused at every alley, checking to ensure he wasn’t ambushed by friend or foe, and when he stepped onto the front porch of a florist’s shop, the pump of a shotgun froze him in place.

  “Drop the rifle, friend,” a man’s voice said. “Off to your left, and do it real slow.”

  Charlie did as the man asked, setting the rifle down.

  “And go ahead and slide that pack off your back,” he added.

  Charlie again complied, setting his backpack next to the rifle. He kept his hands raised in the air and kept very still.

  “Good. Now turn around, nice and slow. Keep those hands up,” the man said.

  A lump caught in Charlie’s throat just before he was able to make out the image of the middle-aged man aiming the shotgun at him, surprise flashing over both of them.

  “Holy shit, Charlie?” Doug Collins lowered the shotgun, his jaw dropping in the same motion.

  Without a word, Charlie walked over to Doug and the men wrapped each other in a bear hug.

  Charlie smiled. “Good to see you.”

  Doug was Charlie’s height, but ten years older. Charlie had grown up with Doug’s younger brother, Billy, who
joined the Marines after high school. Three months into his first deployment, a roadside bomb took out his convoy in Afghanistan.

  Doug laughed. “You too. Is everything all right? The orchard okay?”

  “We’re all right,” Charlie answered, going back for his weapon, which he holstered. “I was heading to the hospital for some supplies. Don Bigelow’s hurt pretty bad, and Doc needs some medicine to keep him alive.”

  Doug wiped his palm along the rough red stubble that crawled over his cheeks and neck, ending at his Adam’s apple. “Shit. That’s not good.”

  “I know, it’s sort of a time crunch, so—”

  “No, I mean going to the hospital,” Doug said. “It’s at the end of town and it’s crawling with those fuckers who stormed through here yesterday. They shot anything that moved, or anything that didn’t.” He looked out into the streets. “Me and a few others got the bodies out of the road and turned them over to their families if they had any. The rest we covered out back, but we need to get them in the ground soon before they start to rot.”

  Charlie followed Doug’s gaze into the streets and the carnage that lingered behind. Blood stains were still on the pavements from where the bodies had been removed, and a few rays of sun illuminated the bullet casings that littered the pavement, which stretched down the length of Main Street.

  Doug glanced around them, nervous. “We should talk inside. C’mon.”

  Charlie followed Doug around the backside of the building and Doug knocked on a pair of metal cellar doors, paused, then knocked twice.

  A few seconds later and a lock turned on the inside of the doors, and after they opened, the end of a rifle poked through.

  “Charlie?” Mr. Collins scrunched his face in disbelief and then stepped out of the cellar, extending his weathered hand, which gripped hold of Charlie’s with a firm tenacity that didn’t match the aged man it belonged to. “Good to see you, boy.”

  “You too, Mr. Collins.”

  “Well, better get back inside before those bastards pick us off with whatever snipers they have hiding in the area.” Mr. Collins waved his big hand and turned back down the steps of the cellar, Doug letting Charlie go in first.

  The basement was cool and dark, save for the few candles that they had burning, and it was just the two of them down below, but Charlie didn’t expect anything different. The pair had always been loners, especially after Doug’s mother passed away. It was right after the death of Billy. That was a rough year for the Collins family.

  Mr. Collins collapsed in a chair, setting the rifle across his lap and rubbing his left knee, wincing as he worked his knobby fingers over the surrounding muscles. “Your family hold up all right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Charlie answered.

  “He’s heading to the hospital,” Doug said. “Don Bigelow’s hurt and Doc needs some supplies.”

  “The vet?” Mr. Collins exclaimed. “Christ, things must be bad if Doc has swapped farm animals for people on that steel slab of his.” He ended the work on his knee and then leaned back into the chair. “Hospital’s locked up pretty tight. Not sure you’d find anything if it wasn’t though. Those masked folks have probably pilfered that place clean.”

  Charlie leaned forward, hoping to learn more about the foreign enemy that had invaded their homes and communities from the pair of roughnecks in the basement. “Do you know how many men they have?”

  Mr. Collins sucked in his lower lip and glanced toward the ceiling, as if he were counting them individually. “I’d say around three hundred.”

  Charlie popped his eyes open in surprise. “Three hundred? The group that came down our way couldn’t have been more than a dozen, maybe two.”

  “They’ve been coming through the woods,” Doug said. “They’re in those same sizes you described, but they’ve been arriving during all hours of the day and night.”

  “Bastards have stationed themselves off the road toward the electric plant,” Mr. Collins said. “They’ve occupied any building near it and killed anyone that tried to stop them.” He snarled as he shook his head in a manner of disgust. “They’ve got machine guns for Christ’s sakes, the people out here don’t have that kind of weaponry!” He huffed, his breathing growing labored and his cheeks reddening the more he thought about it.

  “Your blood pressure, Dad,” Doug said. “Just take it easy.”

  Mr. Collins tugged at his shirt collar and grumbled to himself, and Doug turned to Charlie.

  “What about you?” Doug asked. “Hear anything?”

  The expressions on the Collins’ faces ranged from disbelief to laughter when Charlie brought the pair up to speed.

  “All of Seattle?” Doug asked.

  “From what I could tell,” Charlie answered.

  “And how long has that lieutenant been gone?” Mr. Collins asked.

  “A little over a day now,” Charlie answered. “But I really do believe he’ll come back.”

  “So long as his CO doesn’t have a problem with it.” Mr. Collins bit the end of his fingernail and bounced his right leg, thinking. After a moment, he nodded to himself. “We need to get organized. There’s no guarantee that help is on the way.” He pointed at Charlie as he looked to his son. “He’s got the right idea. He’s getting ready.”

  “Dad, we tried getting people to do something, and it didn’t work.” Doug leaned forward and then backpedaled toward the steps that led up to the cellar doors. “There’s maybe only another dozen or so people that know how to shoot around here, and half of them are long gone.”

  “We fight with the men that we have,” Mr. Collins said, his voice challenging his son.

  “Against three hundred trained soldiers?” Doug waved the notion away. “You’re out of your god-damn mind.”

  “Doug’s right, Mr. Collins,” Charlie said. “We won’t stand a chance in a fight against that many numbers, even if we had more. But we can gather supplies.”

  Doug slouched, a pained expression on his face and a slight whine to his voice. “Charlie, I just told you how many men they’ve got down at that hospital, and now you want to go running straight into that? You just said yourself that fighting them head-on isn’t a good idea.”

  “I’m not talking about fighting them, I’m talking about getting the supplies we need, and then getting out.” Charlie stepped closer to Doug. “We know this area better than they do. We can do it.”

  Mr. Collins stood, pushing the chair back behind him, the legs scraping against the old wooden floors. “He’s right, boy. We can’t just sit around. Action is what we need. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but medicine that’s good for you never tastes that way.”

  “Says the man who won’t take his heart meds,” Doug said, spitting the words back at his father. He leaned back against the wall, shaking his head, raising his eyebrows at Charlie. “You really think that this is a good idea?”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with how good or bad the idea is,” Charlie answered. “It’s what we have to do to survive. Plain and simple.”

  And just like that medicine Mr. Collins talked about that tasted so bad going down, Charlie knew that the hard truth he’d just spoken was equally as bitter.

  8

  The journey between the cellar and the hospital was short. Charlie let Doug and Mr. Collins lead the way. They kept to the back side of the buildings on Main Street until Charlie convinced them the woods were a better source of cover.

  The thick brush, rocks, and unlevel terrain slowed them even more, but Charlie was more comfortable in the concealment that the forest offered.

  The three men bunched up together as they neared the hospital, and Charlie peered through the scope of his rifle to get a better look.

  Mayfield’s hospital was small compared to the big facilities in Seattle. It was three stories and was a near-perfect rectangular box.

  A pair of bodies lay outside the back entrance.

  “No terrorists,” Charlie said, performing another scan, this time keeping his moti
on slower, making sure that he didn’t miss anything. “If we can sneak through the back, I think—”

  A pair of masked men stepped into Charlie’s line of sight, walking down the hospital’s west perimeter. Both were armed, though their posture was relaxed. He followed them around toward the back, where they entered the hospital.

  “Shit.” Charlie lowered the rifle. “Two of them just walked inside.”

  “Only two?” Mr. Collins asked. “That’s manageable.”

  “We can’t assume that they’re inside alone,” Charlie replied.

  “Goddammit,” Doug said, muttering under his breath. “So, what do we do now?”

  Charlie tucked the rifle’s stock under his arm, tapping the chamber with his forefinger. A crease was set in his forehead, the way it always did whenever those hard thoughts traveled through his mind. “We’ll circle around to the other side, check and see if there’s another entrance, or if they’ve got more guards stationed.”

  “Well, let’s keep moving,” Mr. Collins said. “Every time we stop, my damn knee freezes up.”

  Luckily the backside of the hospital had a nice wooded area and provided the threesome with plenty of cover on their journey toward the east side of the hospital’s perimeter, which they found clear of terrorists.

  “And you’re sure they don’t have anyone stationed out front?” Charlie asked.

  “I was down here just before you walked into town,” Doug answered, his tone dancing between confident and perturbed. “Ain’t nobody sitting out front.”

  Charlie nodded, flexing his grip over the rifle in his hands. It was as sure of a bet as he was going to receive in these conditions. “We keep quiet when we’re inside, only speaking if we have to. Doc said the meds and equipment he needs would most likely be on the first floor in the center of the hospital, away from the patients and waiting rooms. We get what we need, and we get out.”