Battle Cry (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 4)

by Kyle Andrews

“Control the situation. I want HAND vehicles on the streets. I don't want those people within a mile of—”

  The Governor was cut off by a loud crash, which shook the entire hospital. The crash caught Marti as off guard as it did everyone else, and she nearly fell over.

  What was happening? What was that sound? Part of her wanted to run toward it and find the source, but she had other work to do. If Freedom was storming the front doors, she and Justin were the only members who were already inside and on the upper floors.

  Her mind was racing with possibilities. She could use the oxygen supply that ran to each room to burn the place down. She could load syringes with sedatives and go on a spree. She could pull the fire alarm and set off the sprinklers, adding to the chaos.

  Another crash shook the building.

  And another.

  And another

  Marti really wanted to know what was happening downstairs, but she had to keep a clear head. She had to keep moving forward. She could make up a plan as she went along.

  The Governor looked around the lounge, as though he wanted to make sure that the walls were still standing.

  He then looked to his people, utterly shocked as he said into the phone, “They're here. We need reinforcements, now! Shut these people down! Shut the entire city down! Now!”

  There was an explosion, which sounded different than the other crashes. After the explosion, every light on the fifth floor went out. Marti was suddenly surrounded darkness, listening to the officials in the lounge scramble to figure out what to do next.

  “We need helicopters!” someone yelled.

  “Sir, we need to get you to the roof. It's the only option,” someone else said.

  “Let's move!” the Governor's voice roared in reply.

  31

  Justin watched Collin Powers speak, and his heart began to pound in his chest. Every wound on his body began to throb. Every muscle began to tense up. For the entire length of Powers' address to the city, Justin was holding his breath.

  When it was over, the screen went black and Justin stared at it, waiting to see what happened next. Part of him thought that he might have hallucinated the entire thing—That maybe the drugs that the doctors had given him were playing with his head, or his failure to take his supplements was hitting him very hard, very fast.

  He looked around the room and saw all of the other conscious patients staring at the TV. One nurse was stopped in her tracks, and she looked to Justin when the address was over.

  “What do we do?” she asked him, as though he had been briefed on the protocol for how nurses should react to an uprising.

  Justin sat up, ignoring all of the pain that surged through his body. He looked at the nurse and said, “I need clothes.”

  “I...” the nurse started, but her thoughts were completely scattered.

  Finally choosing to ignore her and the other patients in the room, Justin walked barefoot into the hallway. He was still wearing his hospital gown, but he would be damned if he was going to allow the world to change while his ass was waving in the wind.

  The hallway was starting to spring to life as people ran around, trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Doctors were barking orders to nurses. HAND officers were answering calls on their earpieces and running toward the stairs.

  Justin didn't have his earpiece. He didn't have his uniform. He didn't have his gun. He didn't have anything that he would have wanted to have in a situation like this.

  He turned to look in the other direction and a pain so sharp that it forced him to shut his eyes cut through his ribs. He forced himself to start moving, reminding himself that whatever pain his body threw at him, nothing was broken and nothing was critically damaged. It was just pain, and as he had been told so many times, pain was something that happened to his body, not to him. He had been trained to work through pain. To withstand torture. To set aside anything that would cause him to hesitate, and to keep his mind focused.

  Many of the other officers were weak, in Justin's eyes. They could withstand a little bit of pain, but they could also be taken down by it. They listened when their bodies told them to stop. They hesitated when their bruises told them to rest.

  The thing that set Justin apart from those people was that he wasn't merely trained in the ways of a HAND officer. He was also a religious man. He believed that he was a soul inside of a body. They were two separate things, as far as he was concerned. To Justin, his body was a vehicle that he rode around in. Pain was the engine light that went on when something wasn't working properly. He could ignore it and set it aside when he had to.

  He also didn't fear death. To him, it would be a relief. Possibly the only relief he could ever hope to get.

  All of those other officers were prisoners of their own bodies. To them, that was all there was and all that there would ever be. No matter how loyal they were to their superiors, there would always be a part of them that they held back for the sake of themselves.

  Justin moved down the hallway until he came across a supply room. He opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

  The commotion outside of that room was only somewhat muffled by the door. Justin could still hear people yelling and running, but he was no longer a part of it as he examined the shelves in the supply room. There were no medications in there, as he would have expected to find. Instead, he found shelves full of latex gloves, pillows that were sealed in plastic, blankets, hospital gowns and other supplies of low importance to most people. He stopped when he came across packages of scrubs. There were three different colors: blue, beige and gray. Justin grabbed a package of the gray scrubs and hurried to put them on.

  If he had been concerned with hospital rankings, he would have chosen the blue. That was the color that the doctors wore. Nurses were beige. Orderlies were gray, so he was dressed like the lowest ranking of the bunch, but he didn't care. Gray seemed the most HAND-like, and Justin wasn't attempting to fool anyone into believing that he actually worked in the place.

  Once he was wearing actual clothing, Justin stopped to think about what he should do next. If Freedom really was going to charge into the hospital, they would be coming in through the first floor or the parking garage, most likely. That was the assumption being made by all of the HAND officers that he passed in the hallway. They were headed downstairs for battle.

  Justin wasn't sure that he would be most useful down there. If he joined them, he would be forced to either drop his cover entirely and kill the HAND officers, or keep his cover and kill Freedom members. He didn't know how the day was going to turn out yet, so losing his cover might not have been the best option. Besides, he thought that he might do more damage to more impressive targets if he went in the other direction.

  VIPs were being treated on the fifth floor. If it were left entirely up to Freedom to get to those targets, those men would be on a helicopter and gone before Freedom could even reach them. Justin decided that he was most useful getting to those people. If he had to give up the cover that he had been building for the past six years, at least he could go out with a bang.

  From somewhere below Justin, there was a crash. The floor shook, forcing Justin to put his hand on a wall to keep from falling over.

  Justin tried to imagine what had caused that crash, but he had no idea what was happening downstairs, and he couldn't allow himself to get distracted by it.

  He hurried out of the supply closet as more crashes shook the building. They came from different directions, and this time, the shaking was more violent.

  Justin joined the flow of officers who were trying to get to the stairwell. They were moving quickly, which was fortunate, because Justin had no intention of standing in line and waiting.

  An explosion rocked the building. The lights went out. From somewhere on the floor, a startled scream cut through the darkness. It must have been from a doctor or a nurse, because no HAND officer would have screamed like that.

  Moments later, emergency lights we
nt on, and a fire alarm started to sound. Justin was getting more and more eager to know what was happening in this battle, because from his point of view, Freedom appeared to be doing a pretty good job of shutting the place down.

  In all of the commotion and chaos, Justin had almost forgotten why Freedom was charging into that building. He was so focused on taking out the bigger targets that he overlooked the little one.

  Collin Powers said that the little girl from the stadium was being held in that hospital. As soon as Justin remembered that, he remembered Marti handing Sim the small cup of carob milk.

  Justin stepped out of the flow of people and looked back in the direction from which he had come. He could picture that little girl, nervously reciting the pledge. He could see the big tears in her eyes once she had spoken the wrong words and her parents were killed in front of her.

  Cover or no cover, Justin realized that he needed to find that girl before HAND had the chance to move her. The only problem was that he had no idea where she was.

  32

  Rose saw Collin Powers on several of the monitors that lined the city streets around her. The glow of those monitors lit the path before her. The reflection of his image filled countless windows.

  Gripping the steering wheel as tightly as she could with her one good hand, Rose took a deep breath and held it. She watched Powers speak for a few moments, soaking up the energy of that act of defiance. She could have lingered there all night, but if she did that, she would have missed all of the fun.

  Before the message was over, Rose put the van into gear and pressed on the gas as hard as her foot would press. The wheels of the van skidded and rebelled against moving at first, but quickly gripped the road and soon the van was speeding through the city. Rose didn't care how many HAND officers saw her. The more, the merrier.

  There was a grin on Rose's face as she sped down the streets, slamming the brakes and making turns so sharply that the rear of the van fishtailed. To anyone watching, it may have seemed as though she couldn't control those turns, but Rose knew what she was doing. She was being loud. She was being visible. She wanted the people in nearby buildings to look out their window as she passed by them.

  Monitor after monitor that was once filled with sickening propaganda from the authorities was now showing Collin Powers' address. They were the only monitors that Rose could see anymore. Though others were tuned into different stations, those images melted into the background. They no longer mattered.

  Before too long, the address was over. Those monitors turned black, and even that lack of an image on the screen was a sign that Freedom still controlled the station.

  In her head, Rose could picture all of the HAND officers in the city, scrambling into action. Grabbing weapons. Preparing to slaughter those who would dare to rebel. But they had no idea what Freedom was capable of.

  A small light caught Rose's eye. It was barely visible, but she watched as it moved across the sky in front of her. It was a drone. It was also a reminder of just how much power the authorities had over their city.

  Rose's jaw clenched tightly, and she pictured the face of Mandi Hollinger, with terror in her eyes. It made her mad, and mad was exactly what she needed right now..

  The HAND hospital was just up ahead. Rose could see the inside of the building through open blinds. Bright lights, with not a flicker to be seen. Clean walls. It was a place where patients were actually treated, which was a stark difference from the civilian hospitals, where people were forced to wait around for hours until they were eventually sent home, even worse off than before they tried to seek help.

  That hospital wasn't just a target because of the kid that they might have been holding inside. It was a target because it represented everything that was wrong in their world. It was Libby's mother, Amanda, almost dying in the group home. It was bodies stacked to the ceiling after a flu had ripped through the city.

  On top of that, seeing the hospital reminded Rose of the last hospital that she had been in. The Garden. Her home. Her people, screaming in terror, being gunned down as they tried to get free.

  Rose held onto the steering wheel and aimed the van toward the covered emergency room entrance.

  “Might want to hold onto something,” she told her fellow soldiers.

  Letting out a loud roar, Rose drove the van through the 'Emergency Room' sign in the front of the building, and straight into the front entrance of the hospital, twisting the wheel so that the entrance was completely blocked by the van once it was stopped.

  Without missing a beat, the soldiers in the back of the van threw open the back doors. A couple of them opened fire on the HAND officers that were rushing toward them, while the others pulled the trunks out of the back of the van and threw open their lids.

  Freedom members who had been waiting for their cue now rushed toward the van and began to take on the officers who were coming their way.

  A few of these Freedom members were already armed. Those who weren't grabbed guns from the trunks at the back of the van and opened fire.

  Doctor and nurses ran for cover. A light fixture fell off of the ceiling in front of the van and was now dangling by a wire. Smoke and dust filled the emergency room, and only got worse when some of the Freedom soldiers started throwing homemade grenades and smoke bombs.

  Rose pulled out her own gun and pushed open her door, using it as a shield as she opened fire.

  Moments later, she heard more crashes as other vehicles rammed through other entrances, blocking the exits and ensuring that any HAND officers who were inside the building would be staying there.

  With Freedom members firing on HAND officers who were either wounded or who had been caught off guard by the attack, the initial push into the hospital was quick and successful, but it didn't take long for the HAND officers to get their bearings and take cover. Though many were now bleeding on the floor, others were behind the admitting desk, firing back at Rose and her team.

  Rose watched as one of the Freedom members fell to his knees and then slumped over to his side. Try as she might, she couldn't lay down enough cover fire to protect everyone.

  Bullets were bouncing off of the van door, barely missing Rose. She fired back, taking time in between shots to study her surroundings and come up with her plan.

  A patch of floor near her feet exploded as a HAND officer's bullet struck. Shards of tile bounced off of Rose's legs, making her feel very exposed. She needed to move, and that move needed to be smart. Freedom needed to push their way into the building, and every second that passed gave HAND more time to get their men downstairs and into a position where they could block entrance to the rest of the hospital. Rose would be damned if she was going to get stopped at the front door.

  There was a sign on the wall up ahead, indicating that there were elevators and a stairway off to the side, beyond a door which also led to admitting and waiting areas. The stairs were her goal. If she could get to them, she would have access to the entire hospital.

  Behind her, more Freedom members were rushing through the entrance, taking out the HAND officers that were firing at them. She wasn't needed there, and if they didn't push deeper into the hospital soon, the most valuable targets would find a way to escape.

  With bullets flying in every direction, Rose left the relative safety of the van door and rushed toward the doorway that led toward the stairs. As soon as she was through that door, she could see the elevators up ahead, and the door to the stairs just to the side of them. They were located beyond the hallway where she now found herself, and beyond the admitting desk, where HAND officers had taken cover, waiting for someone to come through that door.

  If Paul could see her now, he would tell her that she should have listened to him. She should have stayed back, because charging into battle with one good arm was insane. She could hear his voice in her head, and she knew exactly what words he would use, and he might have even been right, but none of that mattered now. She was there.

  The first three HAND offic
ers that Rose saw near the admitting desk had bandages on their bodies and blood on their uniforms. They had already seen one battle that day, but they didn't hesitate to leap back into action.

  Each of those officers had their guns drawn and aimed at Rose. She ducked out of the way as soon as she saw them, taking cover behind a defibrillator cart, opening fire without paying attention to where she was aiming, and hoping to throw those officers' aim off as they scrambled to find their own cover.

  Though she hadn't realized it when she ran through the doors, Rose had a group of Freedom members behind her, each with guns of their own, firing on the HAND officers that approached them. It was a good thing that they were there with her, because more HAND officers began to appear near that admitting desk at the end of the hallway. Most, but not all of them had guns drawn.

  Rose fired three shots down the hallway before ducking behind the cart once again, wishing that she had grabbed one of the rifles that held more bullets than her handgun. She had six magazines on her belt, each loaded to capacity. She could hold her own in this fight for a little while, but a backup weapon would have been nice.

  A bullet bounced off of the metal frame of the cart, right next to Rose's head, causing her to lose her balance and fall back against the wall. If she had been alone in this fight, she would have undoubtedly been swarmed by officers and killed right then and there, but the other Freedom members covered her until she could get back to her feet and take another two shots around the cart.

  With one of those shots, she heard someone grunt and fall. Whether or not they were dead, she didn't know, but she was pretty sure that she had at least hit someone.

  Once again taking cover behind the cart, she looked at the people who were covering her back and she realized that only one of them was a trained soldier from the Underground. The rest were either complete strangers, or members of Freedom who normally had nothing to do with weapons or fighting.

  “What do we do?” one of them yelled to Rose.