State of Rebellion (Collapse Series) (3 page)

“It’s good to have you back, Cassidy,” he says, kissing my forehead. “I’ve missed my little girl.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” I look around. “But now that you’re here, do you mind explaining how you ended up commanding a militia outfit?”

“I have a feeling it’s not much different than how you ended up with the
Freedom Fighters
,” Dad replies. “But yes. I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

“Good.”

I look at Chris. He’s watching the two of us closely, and I can’t help but notice that Dad is returning the inquisitive expression.

Yeah. At some point, I’m going to have to tell my father about Chris and me. And I have a feeling it may not go over well.

“The night the EMP hit,” Dad begins, gripping a cup of hot coffee, “I was in Santa Monica. A good twenty minutes from our house on a moderate day of traffic. You had just texted me that you were going to bring home Chinese food for dinner.” He smiles wistfully at the memory. So do I. It was the last thing I ever did on a cellphone.

Chris is sitting next to me. He hasn’t put his arm around me or offered a comforting touch
since Dad showed up. I’m guessing he’s waiting for me to break the ice and tell Dad about
us
before he makes a move.

Smart boy.

It’s dark now. We have no campfire. Heat comes from portable camping stoves and the warmth we siphon off from hugging thermoses of steaming coffee. We’ve taken a few moments to rest, having started our journey towards the
Rangers
’ basecamp immediately.

Sophia sits next to me.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

Silence. We suddenly hug each other.

“We’re still alive,” she says. “Can you believe it?”

“No. We should be dead.”

“I know. But we’re not.” She shrugs. “Sorry, Mr. Hart. Please go on.”

He takes a drink.

“I knew what had happened the second my cellphone stopped working,” he says. “I didn’t even try to find my car. The first airplane hit less than a mile away from where I was. I’ve never seen such a level of hysteria.” He drains the last of the coffee from his cup, leaning forward. “It took me three days to get back to the house. Rioters were going berserk throughout the city. There were massive fires, vandalism. Crime everywhere.”

“It didn’t take long for people to go crazy, did it?” I remark grimly.

“Unfortunately, no. When I got back to the house, the Mustang was missing. I knew exactly where you’d taken it, Cassidy. To the cabin.” He
smiles proudly. “You took the supplies you would need, and I took mine. I had to get out of the city on foot. It took me days to get through the chaos. And you know what was strange?”

I shrug.

“Not a trace of Omega anywhere,” he continues. “Omega started setting up relief camps about two days after the pulse hit, right? They rolled in right away. They were prepared and ready to go. But in Los Angeles? Nothing.”

“That makes perfect sense,” Sophia mutters.

“Why?” I say.

“Do you remember when we were in Kamaneva’s labor camp?”

“How could I forget?”

“There were the rumors that all the big cities like L.A. and New York had either been
nuked or attacked with a chemical weapon.” She outlines her initials in the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “Why would Omega bother sending their forces into a city where they were going to kill everybody with a big weapon?”

A lead weight settles in the pit of my stomach.

“God,” I breathe. “You’re right.”

“I figured about as much,” Dad says. “It took me weeks to get up to the cabin, and when I finally arrived, you weren’t there. That was the worst. I didn’t know if you
had
been there and left or if you never made it.” He shakes his head. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. I looked for you around the mountain communities. It was a mistake.”

“Why?”

“A woman turned over my name to
Omega officials,” he answers. “It’s a long story, but I guess my name and what I did for a living didn’t sit well with Omega. They came and tried to pick me up. They didn’t get me. I left the cabin and didn’t come back. I couldn’t. They would have just waited for me there.”

“I found your backpack on the floor,” I say, frowning. “We probably just missed each other.”

“So you
did
make it up to the cabin at some point.”

“Yes. But that’s another story. Finish yours first.”

“Right.” He lets his shoulders fall, relaxing against the back of a fallen log. “I wandered around the hills for a few days, trying to throw them off the trail. For the life of me, I couldn’t
figure out why Omega cared about capturing me. All I was doing was staying off the radar.”

“That makes you an instant target,” I say. “We found that out the hard way, didn’t we?”

Chris nods.

“Yeah, I figured that out, too,” Dad continues. “I ran across a group of capable men living up in the higher mountains and we combined forces. Started doing everything we could to disrupt Omega’s supply chains and transportation routes through the mountains. Our militia kept growing, and well…you know the rest.”

“I can’t believe we’ve been so close to each other all this time,” I say.

“It happens,” Dad sighs. “I didn’t believe you were dead, Cassie. You had to be alive somewhere, and I figured you’d find a way to
fight back. You never did like being told what to do.”

I crack a grin. “Omega was asking for it.”

Chris stirs, sitting upright, his leg brushing my knee.

“How many men do you have all together?” he asks.

“About a hundred.”

“Where exactly is your basecamp?”

“Like I said, four days from here on foot. There are other survivors there. A lot of military protection.”

“Whoa. Did you say
military
?” I interject. “As in,
the United States
military?”

“Yes.
Former
military. Other militias like us.”

“I thought our military was on the East Coast somewhere.”

“What’s left of our forces are gearing up for something a hell of a lot bigger than Omega’s push on the Eastern Seaboard,” Dad replies, grim. “Most of our military is staked out on the West Coast, from Washington to the bottom of California.”

“What’s coming?” Sophia whispers.

I glance at Isabel. She’s gone completely silent.

“Backup,” Dad says. “The next wave of the invasion is on its way.”

Chapter Three

I’d always figured that Omega was waiting for backup. When I was imprisoned in a labor camp with Sophia, we were forced to harvest food for a massive amount of troops…a number so large that there was no way it was for the Omega forces already here. We theorized that backup was coming.

Omega, we figured, was a combination of rogue elements from North Korea, China, and Russia. Who knows who else was involved? At this point we don’t even know if the United States was the sole country affected by the EMP. For all we know, the entire world could be dark.

“China,” I state.

Dad blinks.

“China has to be sending the backup,” I clarify. “Right now Omega’s got mercenaries and international troops crawling all over the states, but there really aren’t
that
many. Think about it. Not enough to take over every nook and cranny of the nation. So what country do you know of that has a population big enough to supply enough troops to invade the United States on foot?”

“China,” Chris agrees. “Absolutely.”

“Not a bad theory,” Dad shrugs. “And if you’re right, I don’t see how we stand a chance against an invasion like that.”

“We still have nuclear weapons, right?” I ask. “We must have
some
kind of government left in place. The President and Congress and all of those people…they’re still around, aren’t they?
Don’t they have some sort of emergency plan for a scenario like this?”

“I have no idea, Cassie,” Dad replies, frowning. “I haven’t heard anything about our governmental structure still being in place. As for the President and everybody else, they might be dead. If the big cities really
were
nuked, our population has been significantly reduced, people are starving, and our borders are practically wide open for an invading force. What’s left of our military is on its own.”

“There’s
nobody
in charge at all?”

“Well…” Dad shifts his position. “You’ll understand once you get to Camp Freedom – that’s what we call our basecamp. It’s not gigantic, but it’s well hidden and we’ve got a good number of volunteers.”

“And you’ve got people there who have authority?” Chris asks.

“Somewhat. We’ve got a governing body. Like I said, you’ll see when you get there.” Dad looks at me. “We need to accept the fact that the United States as we know it is long gone. Right now it’s nothing but an anarchic society, and our enemies are taking advantage of our weakened state. They’re simply taking over.”

“We can’t let that happen,” I grit out, anger ripping through my veins. “This is
our
home. How can people be so
stupid
? How could they let something like this happen? Didn’t our military or government or
somebody
know this was coming? They had to have some kind of clue!”

“They probably did,” Dad says, patting my knee. “But Cassidy, when it comes right down to
it, people are going to save themselves first, and then worry about everybody else. You can bet that our government – if they knew this was coming – took that approach. The population was collateral damage. We’re on our own, and if we want the invaders out, we’ll have to take care of it ourselves.”

Great. Just wonderful.

“That’s not fair,” I say, exhausted. All I can think about are the poor men and women that died yesterday. Horrible, agonizing deaths. And they weren’t soldiers. Not really. They were former schoolteachers and parents and plumbers and insurance salesmen. People that should never have to go to war. “I hate it.”

Nobody speaks. The peripheral crowd around the campfire falls silent.

Irritated, – no,
terrified
– I get to my feet and stalk away from the fire, fear threatening to overpower me. I might break down and start sobbing if I’m not careful.

First the EMP.

Then Omega.

And now China is sending a million man army to the west coast.

We’re dead. It’s over.

I sit on my butt at the base of a sugar pine. The sweet scent is refreshing, but it’s not enough to lift my spirits.

“Cassidy, you can’t get discouraged.”

Sophia sits down next to me, threading her fingers through mine.

“I know. I’m sorry, I just…” I trail off. “It’s been a long two days.”

“It has.” She leans forward, stretching her legs out. “We’ve never talked about what our lives used to be like, have we? It’s always war, war, war. Fight, fight, fight. My mama and I owned an art gallery in New York. Did I ever tell you that?”

I smile, picturing Sophia wearing a beret, puttering around a penthouse apartment with a paintbrush in her hand.

“No,” I say. “You never did.”

“Well, we did.” A longing expression crosses her face. “My mama was an artist, and we sold her paintings out of a little shop near Long Island. My parents were immigrants, you know, and it was always their dream to open up an art gallery for my mother’s paintings.” She sighs. “My father was a shoe salesman at Macy’s.” She starts laughing. “Isn’t that funny? An artist and a
shoe salesman. And there I was in the middle, just trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”

“Well…” I say. “What
did
you want to do?”

“Art. Just like my mama.” She licks her lips. “My brother was going to school to be a graphic designer, you know? We were so proud. The first person in our family to ever go to college.”

“You must miss them.”

“I do. Every day.” She squeezes my hand. “But that was then and this is now. We have to deal with each day that’s given to us. It could be worse. We could be dead, couldn’t we? At least we’re here. At least we can
talk
about happier times.”

I bite my lip, fighting tears.

“You’re right,” I say. “You’re completely right. What would I do without you?”

“I have no idea.”

We both giggle, embracing each other.

“Now it’s your turn,” she tells me.

“My turn?”

“Tell me something happy. Something that you remember that makes you smile.”

“Don’t you think we’re going to make ourselves sad talking about all of this stuff?” I point out. “I mean, it’s gone, right? We can’t go back.”

“No,” she replies, offering a rueful smile. “We can’t. But if we don’t remember what it was like yesterday, we’ll forget what we’re fighting for.”

“Normalcy,” I say. “We’re fighting for yesterday.”

“Right.” She grins. “Now come on. Tell me something happy.”

My mood lifts. Something happy?

Yeah. I think I can do that.

We leave for Camp Freedom the next morning. I’m feeling better. I mean, sure. The fact that Omega is sending a boatload of troops onto American soil is eating at my nerves
big time
, but you know what? There’s nothing I can do about it at this point. I can only take one day at a time, and right now that means my first priority is putting one foot in front of the other.

As we walk, a familiar, friendly face pops up beside me.

“Hey, Cassie,” Jeff Young says, winking. “You holding up okay?”

“Yes.” I shove him playfully in the
shoulder. He bears a remarkable resemblance to his brother Chris, but where Chris is a man, Jeff is still a boy. And I mean that in a metaphorical sense.

“You look a lot better than you did two days ago,” he remarks. “That was a nasty hit you took.”

“Yeah. I’m trying to forget.” I sigh. “Do you have any idea where we’re going? Did Chris or my dad say anything about the location about the basecamp?”

“No,” he shrugs. “I guess after what happened with Harry Lydell, everybody’s a little uptight about sharing information.”

“It wouldn’t kill Dad to share some information with
me
,” I grumble.

“He probably doesn’t want to give you info that could get you killed.”