The Orphan Army by Jonathan Maberry

Author:Jonathan Maberry
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Noooooooooooo!”

His cry was lost in the thunder as explosions tore apart the camp. Walls of flame sprang up, creating a labyrinth of destruction all around him. They were like curtains going up on a scene from the end of the world. One minute the swamp foliage stretched before him, offering safety and cool shadows in which to hide; and in the next second there was fire everywhere.

Just like in his dream.

The walls of fire shot upward a hundred feet, and the heat they generated was like a fist that punched Milo off the ground and flat on his back. As the flames rose, he could see it carrying bits and pieces of the things he knew. The food cart rose as if pulled by strings from above, and its doors and windows flew open, spilling sacks of potatoes that instantly burned to coals and cans of soup and beans that swelled and then exploded like grenades. Weeks’ worth of food, some of it scavenged by teams that hiked inland for more than fifty miles—gone in an instant. Tents rose with it, their canvas coverings whipping and turning inside tornadoes of flame. Even vehicles rose up—two Jeeps, an old SUV used for supply runs, and the command Humvee his mother usually drove. They seemed to jump into the air, and as they rose to treetop height, their gas tanks detonated—one, two, three, four.

Milo saw all this with shocked numbness. Then his eyes snapped wide as he saw the burned debris reach the height of its rise, pause, falter, and then succumb to the inexorable pull of gravity. Tons of blackened, twisted metal began plummeting toward where he lay.

The wreck of the SUV whumped down less than two yards behind him, and the shock wave picked him up and hurled him back toward the center of the camp.

He hit, tried to curl and roll like he’d been taught, bungled it, went bumping and thumping sideways, and came to a bruised stop against the burned skeleton of the tent his mother used to manage the resistance. All that remained of it now were charred poles that curled toward one another like the rib cage of some ancient giant. Everything else—the shortwave radio, the chests of arms and ammunition, the personal trunk with family photos and all of the pictures of Dad—was gone. Burned to a pile of ashes atop which small, fading fires danced.

Milo lay there, sprawled, hurting, shocked, and dazed.

And then he heard the roar of heavy engines, and he looked up to see a round drop-ship descending from the smoky sky. It had a glowing green engine core ringed by pads that sprouted like petals from a daisy. On each pad stood an armored shocktrooper. As Milo watched, the pads detached from the hovering landing craft, and the ’troopers began floating downward between the walls of flame, firing blue pulse weapons as they descended.

Milo forced himself to his knees and stared across the camp.

Across what was left of it.

The soldiers and everyone else were gone.

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