Collapse Series (Book 9): State of Allegiance

by Summer Lane

  I sprint through the madness as the Black Hawks circle above us, driving the Ku away from the fort, pounding them into the dirt. Ku begin to withdraw from the camp, screaming, some of them dragging themselves to escape the wrath of the Hawks. They don’t get very far.

  I fight my way to Lani, and then I am beside her, helping her to drive off a group of Ku who are relentless in their intent to destroy us. I am tired, so tired. I lift my rifle into my shoulder and squeeze the trigger. I cut through the men pushing toward us, and they fall in a massive heap.

  I lower the rifle, exhaling.

  Lani drops to her knees.

  Hanale lays there, blood spilling from his mouth.

  Dead.

  I stare at his body, shocked. But then I see Chris across the fort, pushing the Ku away from the barracks along with Manny and Andrew. Lani is frozen, staring at Hanale’s body. I cannot help her now.

  I begin to run across the open stretch of the compound toward Chris. The Ku are retreating, and hundreds of them lay dead around the fortress as the Black Hawks continue to finish them off.

  “Cassidy!” someone screams.

  I turn, seeing Harry Lydell stumble from the shadows, frantically screaming my name.

  Just beyond Harry, I see him: The Prophet.

  He stands there, watching the death of his people, the might of his demented kingdom fall. He calmly holds a rifle against his cheek, staring me down. I am in his sights.

  Oh, God. I’m dead.

  The thought races through my head so quickly—I barely register the fact.

  The Prophet squeezes the trigger on the gun, and I wince, bracing myself for the kill.

  But I am not dead. Harry Lydell slams into me, two gunshots spilling blood through his shirt, slumping slowly to the ground, eyes widened in shock.

  Move,my instincts tell me. More accurately, they demand movement.

  I lift my handgun—with only one round left in the chamber—and I pull the trigger. My shot is straight and true, and I watch the bullet hit the Prophet right between the eyes. A perfect kill shot, something that should have been impossible in this visibility and this distance.

  Yet, I watch him fall, and as I do, Harry groans.

  I lower my gun.

  What is the world coming to?

  Chapter Twenty

  Black smoke hovers over the sky, mingling with the dark clouds. The combination creates the illusion that smoke is spilling from the summit of the volcano, a fiery monster ready to blow.

  “Harry,” I say, breathing hard. I hold his head in my hands, propped in my lap.

  He stares up at me, blood oozing from the sides of his mouth, soaking his shirt, his face drained of all warmth and color.

  “Why, Harry?” I whisper, trembling.

  “I’m sorry,” he chokes, spitting up more blood. “I’m … sorry.”

  His cold, slick fingers grasp mine desperately as he stares into my face. There is fear in his eyes—terror like I have never seen. And then suddenly he is still, a marble statue in the middle of the smoke of the battlefield.

  “Harry?” I say. “Harry?”

  I shake his shoulders. He is dead, his eyes staring at the cloudy sky.

  Cold and weary acceptance of Harry’s fate washes through me—this man, whom for so long I wanted to kill, is now dead in my arms.

  Harry Lydell saved my life, I think, shocked. How? Why?

  I slowly lay his stiff body onto the dirt, wiping tears from my cheeks.

  Why am I crying? Don’t cry, Cassidy. Stop.

  “I forgive you,” I whisper, closing his eyes, and then standing once more. The smoke is beginning to settle, and the bodies of hundreds of dead Ku lay all around me like broken dolls. Almost everyone is gone. There are less than one hundred militiamen left standing—my men and the Hawaiian fighters.

  Father Kareem and the Mad Monks ghost through the haze of the battlefield, checking the perimeters and killing the straggling Ku that remain. The Black Hawks—seeing that their job here is done—slowly curve back toward the Pacific.

  Thank you, Admiral,I think.

  Fort Pohokuloa is little more than ashes now, metal barracks melted and twisted into strange shapes. Fires rage throughout the fort, cars sizzle with flames, and bodies are being dragged into a pile by the Hawaiian militiamen.

  I look away, searching out my team. I see Vera and Andrew with Elle. Bravo sits at her feet, looking exhausted, his fur matted with blood. Manny has his arm around Elle, embracing her as Cheng looks on, holding two blood-soaked swords in his hands. Lani kneels solemnly at Hanale’s dead body, tears pouring from her eyes. She cries, silently, holding the hand of her dead husband.

  I can’t imagine such loss.

  Uriah is helping Devin limp away from a burning building. Em runs toward me, saying, “Cassidy, are you okay? You’re covered in blood!”

  “Knife wound,” I explain. She has a medic kit strapped to her hip, and she quickly wraps my arm. That, at least, should keep me from bleeding to death.

  “Where’s Chris?” I ask, suddenly aware that he is not anywhere in my line of sight.

  “I don’t know,” Em answers. “I haven’t seen him.”

  I lick my dry, cracked lips and move across the camp, searching through the dead bodies and the militiamen. I call for Chris, becoming more and more panicked as minutes drag by and I do not see him.

  Thunder rolls and sheets of lightning crack across the sky. The clouds suddenly let loose their rain, and the wind begins to roar. The storm has arrived at last, and seemingly all at once.

  “Chris!” I cry.

  Where are you? Please, answer me.

  “We have to go!” Uriah falls into step with me. “Cassidy, listen to me!”

  He grabs my shoulders and shakes me.

  “Cassidy, we have to get out of here—there are some Ku left alive!” Uriah says. “They’ll regroup, and they’ll come back to kill us. We have to get out of here, and we have to get off the island before the Athena Fleet attacks!”

  “I’m not leaving without Chris!” I scream.

  I shove Uriah away, and I dart into the darkness, the rain washing the blood from my skin.

  “Chris?” I continue to shout. “Chris, where are you!?”

  An eerie, distant buzzing thrums through the night sky. I see two drones barely outlined against the sky, and I make the connection: Veronica is still watching us. She knows we are still alive.

  She will come for us next.

  Uriah tears after me, relentless, but I am faster than him when I want to be. The destruction of the battlefield becomes a dark blur, riddled with piles of burning bodies, the flames slowly becoming quenched by the heavy rainfall.

  And then I see him. Chris is there, just on the edge of the fort, stumbling through the mud. I scream his name and run to him.

  “Chris!” I say. “Chris, are you okay?”

  Relief, relief, relief. It beats through my veins like a pulse.

  He grabs my shoulder, and he loses his footing. I try to catch him, but he is too heavy, and he takes us both down.

  “Uriah!” I yell.

  But he is already there. He slides his strong arms under Chris’s shoulders, and we both help him to his feet.

  “What happened?” I ask Chris.

  “Got caught in a blast!” Chris yells. Blood is pouring from his ears, and he has gone pale. “I’ll be okay!”

  Please be okay, please be okay.

  We don’t let go of him. Uriah and I help him walk, moving quickly. There is a large pickup left here at the remains of the fort. Haku is revving the engine, and there are two more vehicles behind it, filled with Mad Monks and the remaining survivors of the Angels of Death and the Hawaiian militia.

  We quickly hoist Chris into the truck cabin, laying him across the seat, his head practically in Haku’s lap.

  “I’ll be in the back,” I tell Chris. “This is almost over!”

  I kiss his forehead, and then I slam the door and get into the pickup
bed. Manny jumps into the bed beside me, followed by Em, Cheng, Vera, Andrew, and Elle with Bravo. Devin is lying on the floor of the bed, grimacing. His leg is covered in blood, and the flesh is torn apart in places. Em kneels beside him and holds his hand.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she breathes.

  And then I see Lani. She is still kneeling in the mud, staring at Hanale.

  “Lani!” I scream. “Come on, hurry!”

  She looks up, hair plastered to her face, and stares.

  “Go on,” she mouths. “Just go.”

  I share a glance with Uriah, and he shakes his head.

  Cassidy, it’s not worth it,he’s saying.

  I don’t care. I jump from the pickup and sprint to Lani. I grab her shoulders and say, “On your feet, soldier! We’re getting out of here!”

  “He’s dead,” Lani says, moaning. “It’s my fault. My selfish ambition—”

  “Lani! Now is not the time. Come with us, or your fate will be the same as the Ku.”

  Lani slowly gets to her feet, trembling.

  “I deserve to die,” she whispers.

  I grab her arm and drag her toward the truck. She trips and falls like a drunk, and Uriah and Manny haul her into the pickup bed. We are crammed together in the bed, the rain pouring and making it difficult to breathe.

  “Go!” I tell Haku.

  We do. We tear out of there, back onto the road. Haku drives as quickly as he dares in this weather. Lightning flashes around us in frantic streaks, the thunder shakes the ground.

  “Faster!” I cry. “Veronica knows where we are—I saw the drones!”

  Haku floors it as much as he dares, and we plunge into the darkness of the empty highway, fighting against the rain. I keep my head down. At this speed, exposed in the truck bed, the rain cuts into my skin life thousands of knives. Uriah wraps his arms around me, and I press my face into his chest to protect my skin from the cutting torture of the rain.

  I have no idea how long I stay like this, huddled up against Uriah, worried about Chris, clutching Uriah’s arms to keep from getting thrown from the truck every time we hit a bump or a pothole. At last, we reach the Kona Airport. We floor it down the long, straight road that leads directly to the terminal. We screech to a halt right outside, and Uriah says, “Cassidy, it’s okay. We’re here.”

  I pull away from him and look around the terminal. Dark, abandoned. Wet.

  We pile out of the truck, and Uriah, Manny, and Haku help Chris to his feet. Chris holds his head in his hands, then says, “I’m better. Let’s just get out of here.”

  I take his hand, and he smiles weakly at me.

  “It’s okay,” he promises. “I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

  “I love you,” I say. I don’t know why, but it is important to say it now. Out loud.

  His expression softens, and he is about to say something, but we have to move. Fast. The storm is getting worse, and Manny is yelling, “Hurry up! I’m a fantastic pilot but there’s only so much fight to be had with a hurricane!”

  Cheng takes Elle’s hand, and all of us—the Mad Monks, the Angels of Death, the surviving Hawaiian Militia, and my dearest friends—race through the terminal, praying that there will be something there that can get us off this island, away from Omega.

  “We’re in luck!” Manny exclaims.

  He gestures wildly to a small plane that remains on the tarmac, sitting untouched. It is one of several, actually.

  “I pray this bird actually works!” Manny shouts.

  What if it doesn’t? And if it does, why didn’t Hanale tell his people? Why didn’t he give them a chance to get off the island?

  My questions are lost in the recesses of my mind as we approach the plane.

  Suddenly, the island is ablaze with light. Streaks of hellish red contrails streak through the sky, peppering the ground, exploding on contact. The ground trembles. The detonations are powerful.

  “Omega,” I say. “They’re going to destroy the island. We have to get out—now!”

  I have no doubt in my mind that Veronica has watched our entire battle with the Ku from afar, hoping that the Ku would kill us off, finishing the militias and the Monks and the Navy. With that avenue exhausted, she now intends to exterminate every living thing on the island.

  Beside me, Chris’s hand suddenly goes limp.

  His body drops like a stone to the wet tarmac, and I barely catch his head before it cracks against the pavement. I scream, “Chris!”

  He doesn’t answer. His eyes are closed, and he is still and cold.

  ***

  On the plane, Chris lays on the carpet of the center aisle. Manny is in the cockpit with Father Kareem. Most of the people here are sitting in a seat, strapped in, aware that this is going to be a quick and bumpy takeoff.

  My hand rests on Chris’s chest. His heartbeat is steady, but he will not wake up. I touch his cheek, beg him to open his eyes. He is still. Pale, frozen. Unmoving.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I breathe.

  “He’s probably had a concussion,” Andrew replies, checking Chris’s pulse, placing his hand on his forehead. He peels back his eyelids and shines a flashlight into his pupils. “Did he say what happened to him out there?”

  “He said he was close to an explosion of some kind,” I reply, trembling.

  “That would do it. He’s lucky to be alive.” Andrew rests one hand on his knee and looks up at me. “If it’s really bad, he’ll have bleeding on the brain. In that case, his chances of survival are—”

  “Andrew, shut up!” Vera hisses. “He’s going to be fine, Cassidy. You’ll see.”

  She squeezes my hand, and I lean against her shoulder.

  “It’s never easy, is it?” I whisper.

  “I know. I know, it’s never easy.”

  The plane jostles slightly as we coast down the runway. Manny and Father Kareem are yelling at each other, and I say a silent prayer that we will make it off this runway alive.

  Boom, boom, boom!

  Outside, the red glow of the rockets and the missiles and the lava are lighting the stormy sky. I can practically see Veronica sitting in her velvet chair, sipping a glass of champagne and smiling with satisfaction as she watches the island burn from her spot on the Athena flagship.

  The plane picks up speed. I grab the armrests of the seats on both sides of me and suddenly I feel the weightless sensation of takeoff. The plane dips, we are slammed back to the earth, and Manny yells, “HOLD ON!” over the intercom.

  “God, that freaking crazy maniac!” Vera shouts.

  Cheng wraps his arms around Elle and she, in, turn, wraps her arms around her dog, whose ears are laid flat against his head.

  Em hunkers down next to Devin, pressing her face into his chest, and Uriah crouches next to me, taking my hand.

  “Here we go,” he says softly.

  Again, the weightless sensation of being airborne. I brace myself for another bump, but we continue to gain altitude—quickly. My head feels lightweight, and I clutch Uriah’s arm for support as the plane tilts upward. Odds and ends slide from one side of the cabin to the other as we continue to rise. The roar of the engines and the smattering of the rain and the monstrous turbulence of the storm toss us back and forth like a baseball between two catchers’ mitts.

  I close my eyes, and Uriah whispers, “It’s going to be okay.”

  He says this not because of the storm, but because of Chris. Because he is lying motionless at my feet, possibly dying, and there is nothing we can do about it.

  Fear of losing him cuts through my heart like a gunshot. I clutch my chest, struggling to get a breath, to calm myself, as the plane levels out a bit. The turbulence is horrible, but it’s to be expected in this storm.

  “Where are we going, Commander?” Em asks, eyes wide. “Back to California?”

  I struggle for an answer.

  “Yes,” Uriah says, holding my gaze. “We don’t have a choice. We can’t land this thing on the Roberta, and we ca
n’t go back to the island. We have to go back to the Pacific Coast.”

  “And where will we go?” Elle cries, standing. “San Diego? The entire Athena Fleet is on the move—we’ll be facing the biggest invasion in modern history in just a couple of weeks!”

  “We’ll go back home,” Uriah replies. “Until we can sort out our next move.”

  “Home?” Em echoes.

  “The mountains?” I whisper. “The Sierras.”

  “The Sierras,” Uriah confirms. “We’ll be safe there. Admiral Boyd said the California militias are still intact.”

  I purse my lips, wracking my brain for another answer—another location. Where could we go now, where we would be safe?

  Nowhere.

  “Get Admiral Boyd on the radio,” I tell Andrew. “I need to tell him where we’re going. We need to know how to get in touch.”

  I think of the nuclear weapons, dispersed through the Pacific Ocean, waiting for an attack order from the chain of command. As I understand it, the Pacific Northwest Alliance, if they were to achieve a majority vote to launch the weapons, would be the ones to give the order.

  But the Alliance is no longer intact.

  Who gives the order now? Admiral Boyd—whenever he wants?

  I shudder. Perhaps we have made a mistake, allowing the weapons to rest in his hands. How are we going to control how he decides to use the trigger?

  Another question, perhaps, for another day.

  Andrew hurries to get in contact with the Roberta, and I stay next to Chris, my hand on his chest, my anchor in the chaos of the storm that threatens to destroy us all.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We don’t make it as far as we need to.

  The fuel in the plane only lasts so long, and Manny is forced to bring us into a landing on the California coast. In the hours of the late morning, Manny practically lands blind on a strip of highway mired in heavy coastal fog, unable to fly the plane any longer on fumes.

  The plane comes to a stop, screeching and bumping all the way.

  But we are here. We are back.

  “This is where the ride stops,” Manny announces, pushing out of the cockpit. “Please be sure to gather your personal belongings, and remember, take your small children by the hand. I’m talking to you, Elle.”