Read Online The Charred Lands: Apocalypse of Fire by Josh A. Murphy - Free Book Online Page A

body most likely did.
    The walls
cracked and fell as fire ravaged them. Any defence that Haven had
was now nothing more than burning rubble. The flames that had
consumed Dexter Payne had ignited the walls. I didn’t know how long
I had been unconscious for, in that time the fire had spread around
pretty much all of the perimeter. There was nothing I could do now,
any attempts to stem the spread of the fire would be useless, the
damage had already been done.
    The barn still
stood, that’s where Toby and Amber had stayed, under my
instructions. If only I had told Florence to hide in there too,
perhaps she’d still be alive now.
    Despite the
blistering pain in my head, I slowly staggered to my feet, the
world around me spun as I desperately tried to gather my balance. I
scanned my surroundings; I couldn’t see a single living soul around
me. Dexter’s charred corpse remained sat in the harpoon turret,
just as Grandpa and Antonia remained where they fell. But my mother
was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t see what had happened when the
dragon crashed down upon the farm house, for all I knew, the
monster could have landed directly atop of her, or worse; she could
have been crushed by any number of the debris that had been sent
flying when the farmhouse collapsed. The Haven grounds were covered
from one end to another in bricks, wood and glass. Not too far from
where the building had once stood lay a large pile of rubble. I
couldn’t help but imagine my mother’s broken, tangled corpse under
it.
    “ Mum?” I called out, my voice croaky and dry. I felt ready to
pass out as I began stumbling towards the barn, the world around me
continued to spin.
    “ Toby? Amber?” I tried, once again I was met with nothing but
the sounds of Haven’s walls crackling under the flames.
    I stumbled up
to the barn door and almost collapsed against it. My entire body
felt weak and my head throbbed like nothing I had ever felt before.
I held myself against the door frame and looked inside. I felt like
my heart had been tore from my chest when I realised that neither
of my siblings were inside. I noticed that several of the guns and
other supplies from before were gone. This gave me hope, though
only a little.
    I knew neither
Toby nor Amber would leave here on their own; or would they be
strong enough to take even one of the automatic machine guns – that
meant an adult had been here. I could only pray that mother, Andrea
or even Laura had took them out of harm’s way.
    “ Hello?” I tried one last time in case somebody was hiding away
inside, but just as I suspected, nobody replied. As far as I could
tell, everyone had left. But why did they leave me? Did they think
I was dead? The more I thought about it the more the blistering
pain inside my skull intensified.
    With a sigh, I
decided that the barn was empty. I turned around to scan the yards
of Haven once again. Still, nothing moved. The dragon’s humongous
tail had managed to knock down a part of the wooden fence that
belonged to the farm animals, they had either been herded away by
someone or all ran away. It felt strange to see the farm yard to
empty.
    Even hard to
comprehend, was the fact that a dragon, twice the size of the farm
house lay atop of what was left of the building – the very building
that I had spent my entire life growing up in, the same building
where I had instructed Florence to wait for her protection, when
all that met her was a horrible, crushing death. There was nothing
here for me anymore. Nothing in the farm house was salvageable, of
that much I was certain.
    Haven had
fallen. The main house was destroyed, the walls were burning and
several of the small shacks that housed some of our people had even
caught fire. Forty-two years’ worth of growing, building and living
had been reduced to rubble in less than twenty minutes. It was
tough to swallow, but nowhere near as hard as it was to even begin
to comprehend the loss I had just encountered. My Grandpa was