State of Rebellion (Collapse Series) (17 page)

Frankly, the technical aspects of aircraft and their uses are way over my head. What I understand is that they’re here to help us, and all I have to do is stick to the plan and do my job – and we’ll all be fine.

Hopefully.

I see Chris standing on the road, speaking to Max and his brother, Jeff. His posture is rigid
as he folds his arms across his chest. Losing Alexander will be difficult for him.

He could still be alive
, I remind myself.

That’s just not likely. I’ve seen enough scouts go missing in the last year to know that what falls behind stays behind. I brush my fingers over my belt, looking down at my lucky knife. The multiple gadgets and gizmos attached to my waist, all courtesy of the National Guard.

Yeah. When I graduated from high school, a career in the military was
nowhere
near my list of life goals. It was either go to college and get a degree in criminal justice or spend the rest of my life working shifts at a café in Los Angeles. I mean,
come on.
Even though the world sucks, at least my skillset has improved, right? I can do more than pour coffee into a cup these days.

I find my way over to Chris.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

His mood is tense. He’s focused on the task at hand.

“Fine.” He pauses, glancing across the

street. “How’s Sophia?”

“She’s devastated.”

“That’s to be expected.” Chris heaves a deep sigh. “We’re moving out, Cassie. This is it.”

“I’m not afraid,” I say.

I’m such a liar.

“There’s not a person here who
isn’t

afraid,” he states.

I blink hard, fighting tears for what seems like the hundredth time in twenty-four hours. Chris slowly reaches out and takes my hand, holding it against his chest.

“We will survive,” he says.

“Alexander didn’t even survive the scouting mission, and he was one of our best men.”

“What happened to him is a part of war,” Chris replies, his eyes darkening. “But Rivera should have consulted me. They
both
should have consulted me.”

“Isn’t it normal to send out scouts, though?” I ask.

“Normal, yes. But the risk of losing someone never goes away.”

“What’s done is done,” I say. “We’re here, we’re ready to fight and that’s all we can do. You can’t change what’s happened – and neither can I. You can’t focus on that right now, or we won’t be able to move forward with this assault.”

Chris, still holding onto my hand, pulls me closer.

“You’re a wise woman,” he whispers, sliding his finger under my chin. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

He kisses me softly, sending a jolt of electricity down to my toes.

“Mother of God, what’s going on here?” Manny swaggers up from behind a parked Humvee, twirling his flight goggles in one hand. “Can’t you go kiss her somewhere else?”

“No, as a matter of fact I can’t,” Chris replies, fixing an annoying glare on Manny. “You ready to fly, old man?”

“I was born ready,” he replies. “And
old
is an incorrect term. I prefer
aged
, like fine wine.”

“Yeah, good luck, old man.”

“No respect from the youth of today.”

“I’ll see you when this is over, Manny,” I say, swallowing.

I’m saying goodbye. Because this might be the last thing I ever say to him. “Stay safe.”

“I’ll be safer in the air than all of you.”

I move forward and impulsively give him a hug. He freezes, unsure of how to respond. For the first time since I’ve known him, I’ve taken him completely by surprise. I step back, give him a two-finger salute and turn away. I slip my arm through Chris’s and walk with him towards Headquarters. When we reach the doorway, I look back over my shoulder.

Manny is still standing there, watching us.

Chapter Thirteen

It’s not like I haven’t seen this before. Trucks. Soldiers. Nervous tension heavy in the air. Yeah, I’ve seen this
plenty
of times. In fact, as I sit in the backseat of one of the officers’ vehicles with Chris, I find myself strangely numb to the entire situation. Like I’m moving through a dream.

Maybe I’m just exhausted. Maybe I’m just so stressed out from everything that I can’t feel
nervousness anymore. Or, maybe, I’m just ready for whatever comes my way. I’ve finally accepted the status quo.

As we roll down the interstate, a hollow feeling of dread seizes me.

Not so impassive after all, apparently,
I think.

The freeway curves upward in the distance, winding into the Tehachapi mountain range. Below us, the freeway branches into two different interstates, the 1-5 and the I-99. I shift in my seat, uncomfortable.

Last time I was here my Mustang had been stolen just hours beforehand, destroyed by panicked civilians turned thugs who were trapped on the road after the EMP.

Mobs aren’t your problem anymore,
I remind myself
. Omega is the problem.

Oh, sure.
That
makes me feel better.

We stop below the slope of the freeway, maneuvering our vehicles behind buildings on the side of the interstate. A massive warehouse on our right, and another small rest stop on our left. Our convoy makes a literal boundary line across the road, all the way from one side to the other. It’s a huge span. They set out a blockade along the roadway and then back up. Where the freeway begins to lift up into the mountains, a huge concrete ditch stretches from one side to the other. It’s the perfect place to hide. A strategic trench.

Our men and women slide into the trenches and barricade themselves in. Our trucks are placed in pockets along the road, like miniature fortresses of steel. In the end, our force of one thousand troops ends up
camouflaged and hidden inside ditches, behind buildings and under freeway onramps.

Because how else can one thousand stand against five thousand without a little ingenuity? Chris and I step out of our transport at the end of the ditch. My radio is attached to my hip. My camouflage gear blends in perfectly with the yellow-gold tone of the grass and weeds at the base of the mountain. The air at this hour of the morning is crisp and cool. A layer of fog has settled over the hills.

“That’s unusual,” I mutter.

“What’s unusual?” Chris asks.

“The fog. It doesn’t usually get foggy this early in the year. It’s only October.”

He smiles thinly. Our conversation has been strained today. The anxiety level around this place is through the roof. I climb down the
side of the ditch and walk through the empty path at the bottom. It’s like a hive of soldiers, all of them geared up with their helmets and rifles and radios. I stop and look down the row of men on both sides of the ditch.

Looks like a picture from World War Two,
I think.

And that makes me think of Walter Lewis, the man who helped us escape from Bakersfield a year ago. He had been a pilot during World War Two. He was the first one to make the comparison of Nazi Germany and Omega’s invasion.

Who knows? Maybe a hundred years from now the battle that’s about to go down will be as famous as the Battle of the Bulge or D-Day. Maybe all of us will go down in history as heroes.

Cassidy Hart, defender of mankind.

I could roll with that.

Angela and Vera are at the other end of the ditch, Max is with Jeff with one of the convoy blockades behind us and Sophia is with them. Derek is back at the encampment at Headquarters, his injuries unable to heal fast enough to get him out to the front lines today. And Alexander…

No, I can’t think about that. Not today.

Instead I focus on Colonel Rivera, climbing down into the ditch with us. The tension between him and Chris is palpable after what happened with Alexander’s scouting party.

“Any new information?” Chris asks stiffly.

“They know we’re waiting for them, just not exactly
where
,” Colonel Rivera replies. “They’re just a few miles away.”

“What do they look like?”

“According to reports,” Colonel Rivera says, “they’ve got trucks, tanks, RPGs and a lot of soldiers on foot.”

“Are they going to try to do a full on push?” I ask.

“I doubt it. They think we won’t provide much of an obstacle.”

“They’re wrong.”

Colonel Rivera’s lips twitch. An almost smile.

“They may be,” he says.

Brother. Everyone is afraid of being optimistic today.

I brush frizzy wisps of hair out of my face, my radio crackling on my belt. It’s one of the few times it’s made noise all day today. We’ve been trying to keep radio communication on the quiet
side, since Omega is scanning for our signals. Transmissions are limited to code words.

I nervously pick at the buttons on my uniform, trying to maintain a poker face. I’m not a commander, but I
am
an officer, and these men and women can sense when their superiors are feeling less-than-cheery about a situation. I don’t want to give off negative vibes. Negativity spreads like wildfire in an environment like this. It’s a big
no-no
.

So I quit picking at my buttons and fold my arms across my chest, careful to keep my face expressionless. I glance at Chris, who is the picture of calm in the midst of an impending hurricane. Nothing about his demeanor would suggest that he’s nervous. I don’t know how he does it.

And then the waiting begins.

Omega is too far back into the hills for us to even try ambushing a section of their party. And even if they
were
here, it’s not like we can simply pop out and pull some guerilla warfare ninja stuff on a five thousand-man army. It’s going to take more than that.

It’s going to require us remaining as hidden as possible. Getting into a head to head push with Omega would be lethal. We’re far too outnumbered. But we’re not necessarily outgunned. We’ve got some great weaponry of our own, and if we pay attention to the strategic smarts of Chris, we can win this thing.

I hope.

The first mortar round shocks me. It’s not that I haven’t been expecting something to hit us
today. It’s more like I was
hoping
it would never happen. But obviously it did, so yeah. Problem.

The mortar whistles through the air like an oversized boulder, exploding upon impact with the ground. It hits a patch of dirt on the side of the hill, shattering into a million pieces of hot shrapnel. The grass catches fire and the troops in the ditch seem frozen for a second.

But only for a second.

“They’re on us now!” someone yells. “Move it, move it!”

I have to shake myself to move, too. The first explosion is always a surprise, no matter how many times I go through one. Chris goes deeper into the ditch and I follow him, surprised to see Jeff coming towards us.

“Get back to your platoon!” Chris barks.

“You’re going to want to see this,” Jeff replies, ignoring his order.

Mortar round number two explodes, this time a lot closer to the ditch than I’m comfortable with. I throw my arm out to keep my balance. My ears start ringing. The smell of burnt soil and metal sizzles through the air.

Yeah. All too familiar.

“Get back to your post, Jeff,” Chris commands, turning to a soldier kneeling on the ground with a radio. “Or take your issues up with Cassidy.”

Oh, so I’m a mediator now?

“Come on, Cassie,” Jeff says. “You need to see this.”

“This isn’t the time to get sentimental!” I reply.

Mortar round number three detonates somewhere in the distance, too far away for me to see. I grimace. It’s like Omega is reaching out with their feelers, trying to figure out exactly where we are.
Reconnaissance fire
, Chris would call it.

The look on Jeff’s face is serious. Alarmed, even.

I follow him up the side of the ditch, ducking into the undergrowth of weeds and bushes. His platoon and vehicle convoy is a few hundred feet back. To my surprise, Sophia is standing at the rear of a vehicle, arms crossed. Staring at a screen of some sort.

“What is that?” I ask. “It looks like a laptop.”

“It’s a thermographic camera,” Sophia replies, avoiding eye contact. “It gives us a heat
reading of what’s coming our way.”

“Where’s the camera itself?” I ask.

“Hidden farther down the interstate,” Jeff replies, frowning. “It’s one of several that Alexander’s scouting team was planting when they came under fire.”

Oh.

Sophia’s face is stony as I step next to her and look at the screen. After all this time, using electronic gadgets seems strange, but if they give us the edge we need, why not?

The screen is a seething mass of red and yellow.

“What
is
all this?” I ask. “It looks like drunk radar.”

“It’s people,” he replies. “Thermography picks up the body heat of living things. That wave of color right there? That’s the wave of soldiers
on foot just around the corner. They’ve got tanks and artillery up front. RPGs, and mortars. We’re so outnumbered it’s not even funny.”

“We knew we would be outnumbered,” I state.

“But this is insane. Their weaponry is so advanced.”

“We’ve got plenty of our own weaponry. That’s why we joined the National Guard.” I pause. “We can do this.”

As if to mock me, something bright and flaming streaks through the air above us. I stop what I’m doing and stare at it, realizing a second too late what it is. Artillery fire, blind fire from troops miles away.

Thankfully, the blast doesn’t hit anybody on our front lines, but these blows are getting dangerously closer. Way too close. They must
have spotters hiding in the brush, giving map coordinates to the big guns. Our snipers should have taken them out by now.

A disturbing thought occurs to me then.

I take off through the brush, sliding down the side of the ditch, ignoring the rungs on the ladder. “Chris!” I curl my fingers around his forearm, focusing his full attention on me. “Listen. Omega isn’t even here yet, and they’re already hitting us? That’s not normal, right?”

“If you have a theory-”

“-Yes, I do.” I lower my voice slightly. “Remember when we were going through Bakersfield the
first
time? Just you and me? There was Omega troops there
and
other people. Mercenaries.” I let my words sink in for a moment before continuing. “What if we underestimated Omega’s number? What if our
scouts were wrong and there are
way
more than five thousand troops coming our way? If Omega is using mercenaries to supplement their ground troops…” I trail off, noting the look of hardened resolve in Chris’s eyes.