Chapter 97
Charlotte forced herself to stand. Claudia’s body remained slumped against the fence post, one shoulder crooked into the wire, her face turned toward the pale stretch of pasture.
The sight hit Charlotte with a force that almost dropped her back to her knees.
There wasn’t time for grief, not the kind it deserved. There was barely time to breathe.
She pressed her gloved fingers once to Claudia’s sleeve, a touch so brief it felt meaningless, then turned away before her courage failed. She had left Mason at the barn to look for Claudia only minutes ago. He was still in there. Charlotte snatched her rifle and ran.
The yard had become a confusion of smoke, animal noises, and human shouting.
Chickens burst from beneath the porch in a spray of feathers.
A horse screamed somewhere behind the house with a sound so raw it barely seemed to belong to something living.
Charlotte sprinted through the mud, every muscle in her body straining toward the barn.
Gunfire cracked from the eastern side of the property. Men shouted to one another through the noise, their voices carrying with the hard, practiced rhythm of people who had done this before. The invaders were inside the fence line, taking the farm piece by piece.
“Mason!” she shouted.
The barn doors were half open. One of them swung on a bent hinge, thudding softly each time it hit the frame.
Inside, the dimness swallowed shapes and distance.
Dust floated through angled blades of morning light.
For one terrible second, she saw nothing at all, and her mind offered her every possible horror before reality caught up.
“Charlotte?”
He was crouched behind a stack of feed sacks near the far wall, so still she might have missed him if he’d spoken any softer. His child-sized mask made his face look even smaller. The dog found him first, racing ahead and pressing against his side. Mason grabbed the animal with both hands.
Charlotte reached him and dropped in front of him.
Her hands shook as she pulled him to her and felt the violent flutter of his breathing through his coat.
He was trembling so badly that his shoulders knocked against her arms. She held him anyway, one hand at the back of his head, the other gripping his jacket as if she could anchor him by force.
Another burst of gunfire rattled from somewhere beyond the paddock, much closer now. Something heavy crashed outside the barn, followed by the frantic scatter of hooves. Mason flinched so hard he nearly tore out of her grip.
“Listen to me.” Charlotte leaned back just enough to make him look at her. “The farm isn’t safe. Do you understand?”
He nodded, but his gaze kept darting past her toward the open barn doors.
Outside, voices overlapped in jagged fragments.
Charlotte could hear the seizure of the place happening in real time, the ruthless sweep of armed men through pens and outbuildings, and the collapse of the only refuge the people had managed to carve out of the end of the world.
Mason’s fingers knotted in the front of her coat. “Where’s Aunt Claudia?”
The question almost finished her. Charlotte cupped the sides of his mask with both hands, steadying him because she couldn’t steady anything else. “We have to go,” she said. “Right now.”
A shadow crossed the barn entrance. Charlotte saw it in the shift of light before she heard the boots.
Instantly, she dragged Mason lower behind the feed sacks and dropped to one knee, rifle coming up.
The dog bared its teeth without barking, a low vibration running through its body.
Someone paused just outside. Charlotte could hear equipment rattling, breath moving through a filter mask, the scrape of a weapon against wood. Then the footsteps moved on.
Charlotte waited a few more seconds, every tendon pulled so tight it could snap.
More gunfire erupted near the house. A woman cried out and was cut off so abruptly that the silence after it felt like another shot.
Mason made a tiny sound in the back of his throat.
Charlotte turned and caught his face again before his eyes could slide toward the doorway, toward the yard, toward whatever was happening out there.
“Mason.” She spoke with such force that he locked onto her. “You stay with me now. Not the barn. Not outside. Me.”
He stared at her. “I’m scared.”
“I know. So am I.”
She slung the rifle over her shoulder, feeling the weight of the moment, and gently grasped the back of his jacket, guiding him toward the side door on the opposite side of the yard.
Each step felt like a bold move into the unknown, and every sound from outside felt like it could be a threat lurking just beyond the shadows.
The barn, which had once seemed like a haven, felt suffocating, as if it were closing in around them. As they reached the narrow doorway, Mason tried to glance toward the yard, his anxiety noticeable.
Charlotte tenderly caught his chin, urging him to meet her gaze instead, wanting to reassure him they were in this together. “Don’t look at anything,” she whispered. “Just look at me.”