State of Rebellion (Collapse Series) (2 page)

“You’re
lucky
,” he repeated, setting to work. Cleaning it, closing it. Some medical stuff I wasn’t really aware of. At that point I was more than a bit delusional and exhausted after surviving the ambush.

“You’ll live,” he said simply. “It could have been worse.”

Yeah, yeah.

And now he walks up to me, checking my condition. I’ve improved rapidly since he initially treated the injury, and besides some intense soreness, I don’t have anything to complain about. He was right. It could have been worse.

“Status report?” he says, grinning wryly.

“Alive and somewhat operational.”

“Good to hear. Let’s check and make sure those stitches are good…” He does a quick recheck of the wound, nods, and looks me in the eye. “You bounce back quick.”

“Thanks,” I smile.

Chris says nothing, but the worry lines around his eyes relax a little.

“Stay gold, kid,” Desmond says.

He’s so full of wisdom.

I bite my lip, turning back to Chris. Focusing on the situation at hand.

“How could my dad just
leave
me?” I whisper, frustrated. Hurt. Confused.

Ticked off.

“He has a militia to command,” Chris replies, helping me to my feet. “Your dad couldn’t just abandon them and run after you.”

“Oh, that’s nice. He finally finds me and then dumps me when I’m bleeding to death,” I say. “What a great guy.”

Chris rolls his eyes.

We’re slowly starting to move again, tracking our way up the side of the hill, away from the foothills. Because I was unconscious and delirious when we fled the ambush, I have no memory of how we arrived in the forest. We must have ditched our vehicles at some point, because the last thing I recall is being pulled out of the cab of a pickup…and then I saw my father’s
face…and the next thing I know, I’m waking up in the middle of the mountains.

“That’s not how I meant it, and you know it,” he answers, keeping one arm under my shoulders to steady me. “He’ll meet up with us as soon as we reach the RV point with the others.”

I nod.

I’m not an idiot. I know this is how warfare works. You look after your men first, and then you worry about emotions and relationships. But still. That doesn’t ease the sting of knowing that my father was
this close
and he took off.

Such is the way of war, I suppose.

Maybe Chris senses my discomfort, because he presses a quick kiss against my temple, whispering, “Let it go. Focus your energy
on staying in the game. He’ll be back. He’s just doing his job.”

“Right, right.”

We continue to move stealthily through the woods, moving towards our emergency rendezvous point little by little. It’s a pain in the butt to try to walk uphill when you’re recovering from an injury like I am. What usually wouldn’t make you break a sweat becomes a challenge.

I struggle along, sweating with the effort. My clothes are heavy and itchy. After several hours, I stop and place my hands on my knees, breathing hard.

“It’s okay,” I murmur, “I’ll just stay here. Take a nap…”

Words of a true warrior, I know.

But I
do
need to rest. I may bounce back quickly, but I’m still human.

Flashes of the ambush flit through my mind:

Screaming, crying, blood, detonations. Kamaneva, a wicked expression on her face right before she shot me. Harry Lydell, smug as he watched everything go down. As his betrayal lured good people to their deaths. The numbing punch of being hit by a bullet. Me telling Chris I loved him, because let’s face it – I thought we were going to die. And then my father…a short glimpse of his face before the world went black and I fell into the no-go zone of unconsciousness.

I exhale sharply.

I don’t want to think about that right now. I have to stay focused. I have to stay
alive
. The rendezvous point isn’t too far from here, and once we reach it, we can rest and figure out what we’re going to do. We can’t go back to
basecamp…Harry Lydell blabbed the location to Omega. What are we going to do with our militia?

Set up tents next to the creek and start prospecting for gold?

Not a foolproof strategy.

I glance at Derek and Sophia, moving a couple hundred feet ahead of our platoon. They’re keeping low to the ground, quiet. Scouting far enough ahead to warn us of any impending danger that our scouts might have missed – not that that’s a likely scenario, because our scouts are awesome. It’s merely a precaution. The rest of our group is silent, pensive. Exhausted but trudging onward, because we’re almost there.

I curl my fingers against the palms of my hands, watching Sophia walk. Her head is bent,
her lips are pursed. Her face is emotionless. Steely. Others are moving with a reserved, hollow expression on their faces. Some appear angry, some appear frightened.

It’s what you can expect in the aftermath of what we’ve been through.

Up ahead, our scouts walk towards us, slipping out of the dark undergrowth of the forest. They appear out of nowhere, like shadows. It would be frightening if they weren’t on our side. One of the scouts exchanges a few words with Chris, and he signals to Sophia and Derek.

We must be there.

I tilt my head. Chris stops, a deep sigh escaping his lips.

“Finally,” he mutters.

At the top of the slope, a familiar face is peering at me.

“Cassidy, are you okay?” Isabel says.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I answer.

And that’s the truth. For now.

Chapter Two

I’m lying with my head propped up against a bedroll, my feet on Chris’s lap. Isabel, twelve years old, blonde and blue-eyed, is combing the hair away from my face. “I thought for sure you were dead,” she says, braiding some of my strands together. “I was so worried. Everybody was.”

“Well…we’re all okay,” I say.

Lie. Some of us aren’t okay. Some of us are dead.

The rendezvous point is a high spot on the side of a mountain, hidden by a massive rock cliff. The other half is a steep, brushy slope. The one we just climbed up. We can see the enemy approaching long before they get here. A definite plus. We’ve been storing ammunition and
supplies here for months. I’d hoped we’d never have to use it.

“Good to see you made it out alive,” says a familiar, gravelly voice.

Alexander Ramos. He’s limping towards us, a bloody bandage wrapped around his head. But he’s still walking and talking, so that’s a good sign.

“You too,” Chris replies, swapping handshakes. “Thanks for getting my family here safely.”

Chris’s parents barely escaped the basecamp after the ambush. While I was unconscious, our platoons returned to the camp and evacuated the women and children there. We separated our platoons into two sections to avoid detection, and the Young family went with Alexander’s group. Chris wanted them to reach
the rendezvous point as soon as possible – even before
we
did – so he sent them ahead with Alexander.

“Cassidy,” Alexander nods. “I heard you got shot.”

“You heard right.”

“Well.” He pauses. “Stay alive.”

“Um. I’ll work on it.”

The ghost of a smile touches his lips. I tuck the moment away in my brain:

Alexander Ramos smiles for the first time.

“He actually has emotions,” I whisper to Chris as Alexander walks off.

“Give the guy some credit,” he shrugs, grinning. “He’s only human.”

I look down at my hands – slicked down with dried tree sap, mud and crusty blood. “Gross,” I mutter.

“You look awful,” Isabel remarks.

“Gee, thanks.”

“I mean, does it still hurt?”

“Yeah. Getting shot does that.”

Chris rubs his thumb up and down my ankle, his lips pressed together in a thin line. I only have to look at his face once to know that he’s doing the same thing I am: Thinking about the dead we left behind on the battlefield.

“Hey,” I say, nudging him with my boot. “You okay?”

He looks at me, weariness in his eyes.

“Yeah. You?”

I shrug.

I sit up, eyeing the group around me. There’s nearly seventy-five people here. Many of them lost mothers, brothers, sisters and fathers last night. Things are different, somehow. We’ve
been jolted into the reality of war in a way we hadn’t been before.

“What do we do, Chris?” I whisper. “Omega’s looking everywhere for us. They won’t stop until we’re all dead. You know that. I know that. We’re screwed if we stay in one place.”

“We need to set up a new base,” he replies, staring at the ground. Calm, steady. Just like a leader should be.

“Where? We can’t just go set up living quarters in Boyden Cave.”

“No,” he smirks. “Your father will be able to help us.”

I swallow a lump in my throat.

But we can’t stay in one place for too long. That could be lethal. We’re dealing with asymmetrical warfare here. To stay alive we have to stay active. We have to keep moving. If
Dad isn’t here soon –
very
soon – we’ll have to move on to somewhere else. And since we’re a guerilla warfare militia, we have small pockets of supplies hidden all over these mountains.

I don’t want to leave without my father, though.

My father. The Commander of the
Mountain Rangers
. It’s a piece of information that hasn’t completely set in, yet. I need time to absorb it. How many times did we communicate with Eagle One – his codename – and have no idea it was my dad, Frank Hart?

If my life were a story nobody would believe it.

“They must have a basecamp,” I realize. “We can combine with them.”

“Possibly.” Chris throws me a sideways glance. “You know as well as I do that allying
with somebody will change the dynamics of what we have here.”

“Chris, what we have here is a bunch of misplaced volunteer soldiers,” I reply. “And a lot of them are dead now. We can’t be picky. We have to do what we need to do to survive.”

“I know.” He swings his legs around the log, straddling it like a chair. “You’re right.” He closes his eyes. “But it will be dangerous.”

“What isn’t dangerous anymore?”

“Good point.” He brushes the back of my cheek with his hand. “You know, if you could avoid getting shot again, I’d appreciate it. You scared me. I thought you were going to die.”

“Nah,” I grin. “I’m too stubborn to die.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.” I place a kiss on his lips. “I love you.”

He smiles softly. A moment of happiness.

And then a commotion draws his attention to the edge of the slope. People are gathering at the border of the camp, talking in hushed voices. A few
Rangers
appear, dressed in worn clothing. A crude depiction of a white star is stitched onto their right sleeves. My breath catches in my throat.

“Well,” Chris says. “It looks like your dad finally showed up.”

“Good,” I reply, nervous. “He’s got some explaining to do.”

Call me dramatic, but I had pictured my reunion with my father as something a lot better than this. I’d imagined running towards him across some kind of meadow, giving him a hug,
and then we’d walk home to Culver City and things would go back to normal. Just like that.

Nope. Reality check.

I pull myself painfully to my feet, Chris keeping a steadying arm around my shoulders. Dad is wearing dark clothing. A broad rimmed hat is pulled low over his forehead, casting a shadow over his unshaven face.

“Dad!” I exclaim.

“Cassidy!” He smiles widely, slinging his rifle on his back. “Cassidy, my girl.”

He crosses the distance in a few strides, wrapping me into a bear hug – albeit a gentle one, because I’ve been shot. I bury my head in his shoulder, a million emotions flooding me at once. Happiness, confusion, frustration. Mostly happiness.

“Where have you been?” I say. “Why weren’t you at our cabin? How did this happen?”

A tear slides down my cheek.

Embarrassing. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

Dad holds me at arm’s length.

“I’ll explain everything,” he promises. “Cassie, don’t cry.”

He hugs me again, and I don’t even care that everybody in camp is staring at us. Give me a break, people. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for my father? A
long time
.

“Frank?”

Dad slowly loosens his embrace as Chris steps forward.

“Glad you made it here alive,” he says. “I’m Alpha One. Chris Young. Your daughter’s been trying to find you for a long time.”

Dad keeps one arm around my shoulder, offering Chris a firm handshake.

“Chris,” he says. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for taking care of Cassidy for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dad, this is Sophia, and this is Isabel….” I begin introducing the people from my inner circle, feeling excited. Happy that, for at least
one second
, something good has happened.

“We need to discuss our next move,” Chris states, folding his arms across his broad chest. He’s a good four inches taller than my dad.

Dad looks at Chris.

“You have other supplies hidden in these hills, I assume?”

“We do,” Chris replies.

“I have something better.”

“You have a basecamp.”

Dad nods, the hint of a smile on his lips.

“Yes.”

“We need to move out now if we want to stay out of Omega’s crosshairs.”

“No. I want to know what’s been going on with you for the last year,” I interject, turning to Dad. “Why weren’t you at the cabin? How did you end up doing this? What happened?”

“It’s a long story, sweetheart,” he replies.

“Join the club.”

“Still sarcastic?”

“Some things never change.”

Dad chuckles good-naturedly.

“Okay, fine,” he says, grinning, looking at Chris again. “We fed Omega a false trail. Some of my men are leading them away from our position, which gives us a chance to head back to our basecamp.”

“Where is this place?” I ask.

“It’s a four day journey from here,” he replies.

“Four
days
? Where the heck are we going? Disneyland?”

“No. Someplace safe.”

“Define safe.”

Dad smiles again.