Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 23383 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 117(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 78(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23383 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 117(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 78(@300wpm)
Most humans fled south and east, but we dug in. It’s been a wild ride that’s for sure.
“I’m not shutting up.” He sneers my way. “We have an offer that will set us up and get us out of here and both of you are too stubborn to see the forest for the trees!” Levi shoves a stick of bacon in his mouth.
“We’re not selling. Not one inch.” My grandfather pokes a finger onto the tabletop. “My grandfather bought this land, my father started this marina and it’s all of ours.” He circles his finger in the air. “No one, orc or human, is pushing us out. We will stay strong, we will come through this. The world will calm down, you’ll see. These aren’t the first hard times to come around.”
Levi rolls his eyes on a huff and the ache in my stomach tightens into a hot ball. He wasn’t always this way, not this bad at least. After our parents died and the orcs came, the world lost its collective mind and the distance between us multiplied. He looks out for himself, masked as what is best for us all. He’s got my father’s dark eyes, but that’s all I see of my parents in him.
“Not. One. Inch.” I repeat my grandfather’s words, narrowing my eyes across the table.
“You’ll both be sorry. The offer expires tomorrow.”
“They’re just trying to intimidate us,” I spit back. “And you.” I point. “You are caving to it. Coward.”
He stands, pushing back his chair, leaning on fists toward me. “What did you fucking call me?”
I stand as well, going nose to nose with my older brother who I can’t imagine is genetically related to me. “C.O.W.A.R.D. Can you piece that together?”
My grandfather’s face drops to his hands, shoulders sagging. I hate leaving his wonderful meals untouched, but goddamn it, this dining room table is more a battleground than a place to eat.
Levi shakes his head, glaring at me. “We’ll lose everything because of you. You’re so smart, you had three years of pre-law and business whatever? Little smarty savant, graduating early, valedictorian, what good is that doing you now in this world? You think when he dies you and me are just going to hold hands and run this place together? I’ll sell my share to the highest bidder before they shut the casket.”
Rage clouds my vision as I look to see the pain in my grandfather’s eyes.
“You are not even human!” I seethe at Levi, then look to my grandpa. “I won’t let it happen. I’ll die on the docks before I let him sell.”
“Enough!” My grandfather bursts, slapping a hand on the table making me jump but my appetite is shot and yet another meal is going to go to waste.
I’ve worked here since I was six years old. Our parents worked alongside grandpa until three years ago when there was an explosion while they were repairing a big fishing boat’s engine. Fumes built up, there was a spark and…they went down with the ship, so to speak.
It wasn’t a month later the first orc ships arrived. The irony of that curled in my gut like a viper. Since then, even when the sun shines, there’s still always clouds.
The initial wars between orcs and humans have calmed. The old ‘camps’ where the government tried to contain them long since burned to the ground. There was always myths and legends about the small orc population on a cold Nordic island that suddenly and completely disappeared three centuries ago.
When they returned, they’d spend that time in hell. Used, enslaved and tortured by an alien race hoping to clone and use them for the work they could no longer do. Only, even in the darkest of species, there is always light. A growing dissent among the Moban grew and eventually, with the orcs help, the Moban revolutionaries overthrew the leaders then sent the orcs in ships back home.
Well, to Earth but probably not what they imagined when they remembered home.
I storm out the back door of the century-old house. The white paint needs touching up. The porch boards are cracked and the cement walkway is in shambles, but it’s home. And if my brother, or anyone, thinks they can take this from us, they’re going to have to go through me first.
As I walk toward the marina and breathe, there’s a hint of that perfect fall scent on the air. Every third slip at the has a boat, some abandoned, some still paying what they can. Our place is on Lake Frederick. Our property surrounds the lake for six hundred acres. Six hundred acres people have been trying to take from our family for three generations.
But, we’re still here, and it’s still ours. That’s not going to change on my watch. There’s a tributary on the far side of the lake that leads into the Pierce River which is still one of the main water transport rivers in the state. Anyone gaining control of our place, would have access to controlling a lot of the commerce going up and down the river. In this new world, that’s real power and something I know, orc and human alike would kill to have.