Chapter 98
They ran through the chaos. The yard between the livestock pens and the barn had become a killing ground.
A man Charlotte recognized from the fence crew lay face down in the mud near the garden, his rifle beside him.
Two women dragged a third toward the root cellar while gunfire cracked from the eastern tree line where the SNA had taken position.
Charlotte kept Mason’s hand locked in hers and ran low, using the toolshed for cover, then the woodpile, then the open sprint across the last twenty yards to the horse stalls.
The dog stayed with them, its body pressed close to Mason’s legs, ears flat and eyes fixed ahead.
The barn’s interior was mercifully unchanged.
The animals were in a panic; horses shifted in their stalls and a cow lowed from the rear pen, but the structure still stood.
Charlotte went straight to the workbench where the saddlebags waited, exactly as she’d left them.
Charlotte grabbed the state road atlas from the trunk. Claudia’s red pencil markings covered the West Virginia pages, documenting settlements, routes, and checkpoints. After folding the atlas, she shoved it into the outer pocket of her saddlebag.
She pushed through the connecting door into the supply shed, with Mason and the dog following closely.
The shelves were stocked with measured portions.
Dried apples, salt, jerky from the last deer, and water filters that Claudia had traded ammunition to acquire.
Charlotte filled a canvas pack with what she could carry, prioritizing calories and clean water above all else.
“Take this,” she said.
Back in the barn, she saddled the mare first. The animal knew her and stood patiently despite the gunfire outside, accepting the bit without resistance.
The gelding Claudia had offered her was in the north paddock, too far to reach with the yard crawling with SNA troops.
She’d have to make do with the horses she could reach.
She turned to the stall instead. The dark bay stood alert, ears forward, watching her with the calm assessment of an animal that understood when humans were afraid.
Charlotte threw a saddle on his back and cinched it tight.
Two horses were better than one, and they’d need the extra capacity.
“Mason, can you ride?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes, I can.”
“Good. You take the gelding. I’ll stay right beside you.”
She helped him mount. The boy was light, and the gelding stood rock-steady while Mason found his seat and gathered the reins with small hands that remembered what to do.
Charlotte mounted the mare. The saddlebags went across the mare’s withers, and the food pack was secured behind the cantle.
She had the hazmat mask, and Mason had his. The dog sat at the gelding’s feet.
They were still missing medical supplies, extra ammunition, the stronger antibiotics Claudia had promised, and the cabin by the creek with its south-facing windows and the future Charlotte had almost allowed herself to imagine.
All of it was abandoned in that moment, made meaningless by the figures moving through the yard with rifles and the particular purpose of men who’d come to take something.
Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to glance at the livestock pens. Claudia’s body lay beside the fence post, a heartbreaking reminder of the loss that weighed heavily on her heart. In that moment, allowing herself to feel the pain seemed unbearable, a burden too heavy to carry.
“West,” Charlotte said. “Through the tree line behind the barn. Stay close to me.”
The barn doors opened onto the western pasture where the cattle had bolted, and Charlotte guided the mare at a trot across open ground that felt suddenly, terribly exposed.
Mason’s gelding kept pace beside her, the boy’s small body upright in the saddle, his mask sealed and his eyes fixed ahead.
Gunfire continued behind them. Shouts in a language Charlotte didn’t recognize cut through the morning air, and somewhere a vehicle engine growled to life.
She couldn’t tell whether one of the farm’s trucks had been commandeered or destroyed.
The tree line approached. The mare’s hooves found soft earth, then a packed trail, and the canopy overhead began to thicken, offering the first real cover since they’d left the barn.
Charlotte allowed herself a single backward glance.
The farm spread below them with smoke rising from the toolshed and the garden plots and figures moving through the yard with the efficiency of occupation.
The main house still stood, its porch collapsed but its frame intact, and for a moment Charlotte thought, foolishly and desperately, that something might survive.
Then the center of the farm erupted. The explosion began where the root cellar met the kitchen foundation.
It lifted the eastern section of the main house in a single heave of splintered timber and flame, and the force hit Charlotte like a wall of heat, pushing against her back through the hazmat suit.
The mare shied, and Charlotte hauled her around to keep the animal from bolting while Mason’s gelding danced sideways with the boy clinging to the saddle horn.
A section of roof landed twenty yards behind them, trailing smoke and embers.
The sound reached them last, a deep, concussive thunder that rolled across the pasture and into the trees, where it echoed and died.
The farm was gone. It wasn’t damaged. It was just gone.
The main house was a crater framed by burning timbers, and the root cellar where people had been sheltering had disappeared.
Charlotte didn’t stop to look longer. She turned the mare west and urged her into the trees at a pace the terrain would allow.
Mason stayed beside her on the gelding, the dog running at their heels, and behind them the place that had been safety burned.