The Orphans (Book 6): Divided Read online

  The Orphans Vol VI

  Divided

  By Mike Evans

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  © 2017 Mike Evans, All Rights Reserved

  Thanks to my beta readers Karen, Leslie, Jon, Denise, Ricky, & Rosa. You guys are wonderful!

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  Books by Mike Evans

  The Orphans Series

  The Orphans: Origins Vol I

  Surviving the Turned Vol II (The Orphans Series)

  Strangers Vol III (The Orphans Series)

  White Lie Vol IV (The Orphans Series)

  Civil War Vol V (The Orphans Series)

  Divided Vol VI (The Orphans Series)

  Gabriel Series

  Gabriel: Only one gets out alive

  Pitch Black (Gabriel Book 2)

  Body Count (Gabriel Book 3)

  The Uninvited Series

  The Uninvited Book I

  The Stranger Book II of The Uninvited series

  The Unwelcomed Book III of The Uninvited series coming soon

  Buried: Broken oaths

  Demons Beware

  Deliver Us From Evil Book II of Demons Beware

  Deal with The Devil

  Zombies and Chainsaws

  Dark Roads Book II of Zombies and Chainsaws

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  This book is dedicated to Laura McQuaig, Joyce Stokley and all the other wonderful people we lost in the year 2016. You will be missed, but not forgotten. I can say honestly, as with most writers, that we do not like to lose our readers. To my fans that are in love with my worlds, you may not realize that as indie authors, there are more times than not that our readers become our friends in life through social media interactions or book shows. We grow friendships that we value more than you may realize. They keep us going when words are not flowing, when times are looking bad, when books aren’t moving off the shelf. So, take your vitamins, because I don’t want to lose anymore of you anytime soon!!!

  Love Mike

  Chapter 1

  1 year Anniversary of the Outbreak

  Communications Center, Camp Dodge.

  Clary sat at the communication center’s main console. It was where someone was always frozen to the seat while anyone was off base. They’d lost enough people that he refused to lose any more out of ignorance. There was no task so important at the moment that if someone needed help, they would not need to worry about whether someone would respond to their request.

  Clary set down the small microphone, his world was spinning round and round. He tried to get up but his legs did not respond. The words from Shaun kept coming back to him like a sledgehammer to the temple over and over again. It was a record on repeat which he could not stop.

  He sat there for a few minutes trying to process what Shaun had told him. He heard a pattering sound he was unfamiliar with and looked around the large room. When Clary looked down at the papers he’d kept for taking notes on future projects, he saw tears dripping down onto them and realized he was crying. He’d not felt loss like this since losing his dad to a heart attack almost twenty years ago, and that had been one of the most difficult things which he’d ever had to deal with. He mouthed the words Aslin and McQuaig, shaking his head. Clary knew that there was a fire deep down, building in his stomach. He wasn’t sure if his heart was on fire, or if what was left of his soul was trying to escape—for it could not handle any more pain.

  He tried to stay calm, but it was futile; there would be no controlling the rage that was coming. He thought of Cade and all the men they’d taken out. He immediately began to blame himself, something any good man would do. He kept saying over and over again, “If only I would have fired off more missiles… Then there would not have been any threat. They would all be tank rounds. If only we would have gone sooner. If only we would have not waited, not listened to Aslin. I can’t believe they are all gone. Aslin, McQuaig, Shaun, god fucking damn it!”

  Clary pushed up out of his chair. It flew back, hitting the desk behind him and bouncing off it, coming right back and almost taking him out at the knees. He put one giant mitt of a hand under the backrest, picking it up as he spun, and looked like he could have qualified for the Olympics with the throw he gave the chair. It hit with such force that it was unrecognizable after making contact.

  Pieces of it flew in every direction. He leaned on the console, looking down at the microphone and headset which had given him the worst news he could imagine. He picked it up and began beating it into the keyboard resting on top of the desk. He knew he should take better care of the equipment, but at the moment, hate was all that he let fuel his actions.

  He brought down the base of it into the keyboard until the cheap plastic snapped in half and letters flew all around. He let go, seeing he’d hit it so hard he’d cut his hands open and blood had splattered onto the console.

  ☣ ☣ ☣

  Ellie heard a cry unlike any she had ever heard before. Even after day one, and with all the loss, as well as in the days following, she still had never heard a wail like this. She could only assume that in horror movies, this was what they meant when the characters would explain how the cry of a banshee sounded.

  She raced into the building. She still wasn’t a hundred percent, but had gotten stronger by the day under Lou’s fatherly eye since getting out of the hospital. She was sure that her body knew it didn’t have the time it truly needed to completely heal, even less after the slaughter of almost the entire camp. There had never been such small numbers occupying the base, and in calling it home, she feared that if this happened too many times, there would be no souls with which to replace it.

  She walked up to the entrance, knowing that Clary was manning the station. Anytime someone left, he tried to be one of the people on the radio. He was a firm believer that teams went out and teams came back, and if shit hit the fan, those people were still brought back safe and alive. Those much like himself were the ones that kept a base going. The ones that weren’t so scared of the dead that they wouldn’t go out and try to bring back survivors, which had become less of a priority since a spy had come in and helped to open the gates of hell to enter their home.

  Ellie came around the corner, seeing Clary hunched over, and how it took no effort for him to pick up and throw a chair. He sent it with such force that she didn’t care where it was heading; she was going to get her face out of its line of fire. She’d seen how hard of a time he was having, relearning how to see and deal with a single eye working. She wasn’t about to have the same issues.

  Ellie screamed as she jumped back out of the way. When she came back around the corner, she saw Clary with what looked like a microphone, smashing something in front of him. She heard him screaming… It almost sounded more as if he w
as talking in tongues, like a possessed man. When she heard Shaun’s name she couldn’t hold it in. “What happened to Shaun, and the others? What is it? Are they okay? Oh god, don’t let him be one of those—those things!”

  Clary snapped his head around, getting the spins from it. “No. I mean… they are dead. It was Cade.”

  Ellie didn’t wait for any information. The words “he was dead” were all that she needed to hear to lose her mind. She left Clary standing there, open mouthed and trying to articulate what he was saying. But he was doing a horribly bad job trying to think of the words he wanted to say. All he wanted to do was hate. Trying to explain to someone right now what was going on was nearly impossible for him. The fact that he just told Ellie that the boy—rather teen who was on his way to becoming a man—who she loved more than any other thing or person on this base was dead made his stomach do a flip.

  The thoughts going through her head were probably even worse than the ones he was experiencing, having lost a fellow teammate—the last one that he had. He could hear the door shut to the building and realized there was no telling what she was going to do or how she would react.

  Ellie ran out the door. She, like Clary, had tears falling freely. Visions of Shaun smiling, sad, brave, and intimate, raced through her mind. They were like an uppercut to her psyche, hitting her all at once. She pushed the door open, stopping only long enough for Greg and Kya to look at her. Joey, who had been waiting for a chore to come up that he could help with, didn’t stand there staring at her; he ran straight to her. His lip was quivering, not knowing what was wrong with her, but not caring about that if it meant she was in pain.

  He had a level of caring for others that most people could not reach. He picked her up off the ground, giving her the biggest hug he was capable of giving. Ellie shook, shaking her head no. She refused to believe what she’d heard and would not until she saw it with her own two eyes.

  She wiped her tears on Joey’s hoodie and patted him on the shoulder. “Let me go, okay, Joey. I have something I need to go do.”

  “But what’s wrong with you, Ellie? I know something's wrong, so don’t you tell me there isn’t. You got a broken heart. Who hurt you? Because I’m going to put the hurt on them.”

  “It’s nothing that I can talk about just yet, Joey. I’ll be back later and we can talk then, I promise. Just you and me. I have a feeling I’ll need some more of those monster hugs from you.”

  Greg came up, not liking the looks of her, but she sprinted off towards the south end of the base. “Hey, Joey, what’s up with Ellie, man? What is going on? What’d she say? She never loses her shit like that,” he questioned.

  “She just said that we could talk later. She didn’t say anything about what was going on. I asked her, but she didn’t tell me,” Joey said nervously.

  Greg yelled to Kya, “Hey, did she talk about anything this morning, Kya, that would have set her off like this?”

  “No, she looked as normal as usual. I know Shaun and a few were going out this morning. I saw them packing heavy in the Humvee, and then they rolled out. They had a couple coolers worth of blood with them and more ammo than they’d ever need.”

  Greg began to grow nervous, he didn’t like not knowing where people—who he considered family at this point—were, and wasn’t a fan of them being MIA. “Has anyone heard from Shaun today? I mean, since they left; anything at all?”

  Clary came out of the door wiping at his eyes with his sleeve. Greg had only seen him look that vulnerable once, and it’d been after he taken shrapnel from a rock off a spray of bullets. He hadn’t even given himself the opportunity to partially heal before he helped deliver hell to the doorstep of the intruders that had invaded their base, killing all but a dozen people. When they retaliated, the word “decimate” did not do justice to what they did. They had left only one survivor—the one whom had taken Aslin and McQuaig out. Had Clary known they hadn’t finished off everyone, they would have shot tank rounds until there was nothing left but blackened Earth.

  Greg yelled to Clary. He was well aware there was nothing good about Clary looking like this. “Hey, Clary, what the hell is going on today? I mean it, you look like shit, and Ellie looks like she is losing her mind. What’s up?”

  “Not now, Greg. Where’s Ellie? I don’t want her doing anything stupid.”

  “Why would she be doing something stupid, Clary? Don’t tell me to wait. I contribute, I want to know what is going on; my best friend is out there and you look like someone shot your puppy... in the face… and then did a burnout on its head.”

  Clary tried to step around Greg but Greg stepped in front of him. Clary wanted to ignore what he was saying. Clary, who was in no mood for Greg or his antics, stepped up quickly, putting a foot behind him and never stopped walking. Greg didn’t know he was on the ground until he’d had a chance to watch the sky passing overhead, and felt the screaming signal from his ass letting him know what had taken most of the impact.

  “Well, fuck you too, Clary. I guess I’ll call Shaun myself. Christ, bug up your ass, man?”

  On any other day, Clary would put up with no disrespect; but this was different, and he felt like he was crumbling on the inside. He watched in dismay as Ellie came out of the armory like a bat out of hell, heading where the majority of the vehicles were stored.

  Since the incident with the others coming to their home, they’d stashed multiple trucks, four wheelers, and motorcycles in the woods, fully gassed, stocked to the brim, and locked up tight, ready to leave at a moment's notice. Ellie hit the starter, punching the throttle, and the four-wheeler’s tires barked, skidding out to the side until they caught as she punched the throttle even harder. The tires and engine both screamed under the strain that she was putting on it. The RPM display spiked, and she had to hold on to keep from losing control of the four-wheel-drive ATV.

  Before anyone had a chance to say anything, she was gone and out of sight, only a trail of dust left behind. Clary hit his radio, yelling for the guard's desk at the front of the base to answer, but they were already preoccupied. The two on shift, Aliyah and Jon, were standing out front, waving for Ellie to slow down. Ellie was honking the horn and flashing the lights on the four-wheeler at them. She was motioning to lower the cylinders that came up from the ground.

  “We’re going to get in deep shit if we put that gate down and we don’t have permission to do so,” Jon yelled.

  Aliyah knew better, but she saw the determination on Ellie’s face. She had a look of worry etched into her face. She left Jon standing there looking awkward, not daring to aim a gun at her, and watched, knowing hell would rain down upon him later because of decisions that she made now for the two of them.

  Aliyah ran into the building, hitting the release for the barrier keeping those that didn’t belong out. She watched through the window, hoping Ellie was rational enough to still be able to slow down the slightest bit so she didn’t impale herself on the wall. The last thing she wanted to do was answer why someone who helped found the base and set it up had gotten a broken neck or god knows what on her shift.

  She held her breath, scared to death to breathe until she’d passed. The barrier lowered just a second before she would have caught the undercarriage of the four-wheeler and done bone-crushing damage to herself. Ellie looked back, surprised that she was alive and that she’d timed it just right. She raced off into the distance until she was out of sight. The only thing that could be heard was the screaming of her ATV’s muffler as it echoed down the highway.

  Aliyah came out and Jon looked like he’d messed himself. “What were you thinking?” Jon yelled.

  “I don’t think Lou would be happy if we called to tell him how his favorite nurse-in-training was out on the street with a broken neck, do you? She’s been here the longest; last thing I’m going to do is try to tell her what to do” she shot back. “Besides, Lou is very big and I’m pretty sure he thinks of her like a daughter. Would you want to tell him, ‘oh, the reason her neck is b
roken is because we didn’t want to put down the barrier for her when she looked like she had an emergency on the other side of the gate’?”

  “She wouldn’t be alone if there was an emergency. Nevertheless, you try to remember all of what you just said when Clary comes. He always understands when it comes to people messing up on gate duty,” Jon said.

  “I’ll let him know the thought process I had. If he has an issue with it, then I don’t work the gate anymore. I don’t think that is a big deal. Besides, Clary likes me,” Aliyah said. “I think I remind him of himself somehow.

  Jon was going to say something when his radio started barking. “Do not open those gates, whatever you do! Do not let the barrier down, do you hear me?”

  Jon turned around to hand the radio to Aliyah, who was now nowhere to be found. He felt sick to his stomach. He wasn’t sure if it would have been better to just let her crash, knowing secretly that he would have made himself feel even worse if harm came to someone because of him being worried about following rules. Jon reluctantly hit the mic button on his radio. “It’s too late, she’s already gone. She was going like a bat out of hell; she wasn’t slowing down for anything.”