The Orphan Army (36 page)

Her eyes searched his for a long time. Then she took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Okay,” she said. “Let's go meet your friends.”

FROM MILO'S DREAM DIARY

Last night I dreamed I was sitting on the top of a mountain, which is funny because there aren't too many mountains in Louisiana. But it was a dream, and anything can happen in a dream.

In the dream I was watching a hive ship burn in the sky.

It was strange. I know I should have been happy to see it burn, but I wasn't.

It made me sad.

In the dream the Witch of the World came and sat down next to me. She was older than dirt. And I think that might actually be true.

She said that she was proud of me for what we did.

She said that it would help everyone to have the courage to fight back. The EA, the rogues, the Nightsiders. Everyone.

But she said that it came with a price. That's how she put it.

A price.

She said the crystal egg was more important than we thought. She said that the Bugs will do anything to get it back.

Anything.

The only thing we have going for us is that they can't just bomb us because they have to get it back undamaged.

That still leaves a lot they can do to us.

She said that the Huntsman would come after us. Not just for the crystal egg. He hungers for the Heart of Darkness.

Her word.

“Hungers.”

She said, “He will burn the fields of the earth and topple mountains to find you and get back what you stole.”

Harsh.

Scary, too, 'cause I know she's right.

Tomorrow we'll go back to looking for Mom and Aunt Jenny. And Killer. I hope they're all safe somewhere. I asked the witch about them, but she didn't answer.

Instead, the witch told me something else. Something that I hope was just dream stuff because it really scared me.

She said, “There are horrors more dreadful than the Huntsman, Milo Silk.”

I asked her what she meant, but right about then I started to wake up.

I think I heard her say one last thing before I woke, and I don't know if it was an answer to my question or something else.

She said, “Your father lives.”

That was it. I woke up.

I began my first diary when I was in the second grade and kept writing one well into my thirties. I wrote in it nearly every day, and after a while the old diaries filled many feet of space on my bookshelves.

Writing in a diary is a great way of getting to know yourself, exploring different ideas, experimenting with different ways of thinking, and allowing your imagination to run wild. Imaginations—trust me—should always be encouraged to run wild.

Sometimes my diary entries were simple lists of things I did that day, or things to do, or things I wanted to put on a list. Favorite things. Least favorite things. Like that.

Other times my diary was me having a conversation with myself about the things that happened in my life. The death of my best friend when I was a kid. The first time I saw the ocean. The hurt I felt when I lost a friend after a bad argument. The happiness I experienced when I won my first martial arts trophy.

I also wrote a lot of ideas for stories in my diary. I always wanted to be a writer, and sometimes the ideas I had as a kid have been given new life as a story now that I'm an adult.
The Orphan Army
, for example, came from a story idea I had when I was ten, called “The Shadow Boys.” No idea is ever wasted. Every idea should be written down. Don't trust to memory. Keep a record. Even if you don't yet see the value in the idea, its day may come. Trust me.

But of all the things I wrote about, the most common entry was my attempt to recapture the previous night's dreams. I would record every detail of every dream I had. After a while I became better at recalling those details because the process of writing them down helped me remember more and more.

I learned a lot about myself from those dreams. I still do. Many of my dreams become the stuff of new short stories, comics, and novels.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was the same thing that Milo discovered with his dream journal: When you have a nightmare and write it down, it loses its power to frighten you. When you frame it in words and lock it on the page, you've just succeeded in capturing and caging the things that scare you. Once caged, you can look at them, understand them, and over time discover that the more you understand something, the less frightening it is. And the more powerful you are.

ALSO BY JONATHAN MABERRY

Rot & Ruin

Dust & Decay

Flesh & Bone

Fire & Ash

Dead & Gone
(an e-book original)

Tooth & Nail
(an e-book original)

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Text copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Maberry

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Maberry, Jonathan.

The orphan army / Jonathan Maberry.

pages cm. —  (The Nightsiders ; [1])

Summary: In the future, bug-like aliens are taking over Earth and young Milo Silk learns through dreams and strange encounters that there are other, ancient monsters on the planet that are also threatened by the aliens, and that he may be the hero destined to lead his friends in saving the universe.

ISBN 978-1-4814-1575-0 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4814-1577-4 (eBook)

[1. Science fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Monsters—Fiction.

4. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 5. Heroes—Fiction. 6. Magic—Fiction.]

I. Title.

PZ7.M11164Orp 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014014576