by Summer Lane
Alexander went MIA on a scouting mission a couple of weeks ago before we lost Chris. It was difficult on everyone to lose such a respected soldier. It was hardest on Sophia Rodriguez – she loved Alexander.
If only she had come with us.
“I find it hard to believe that Sophia stayed behind,” Alexander comments. We’re standing in the kitchen of the mansion. I’ve got a cup of water in my hand. My fingers are shaking. I don’t know why. Raw nerves and fatigue, I guess.
“So do I,” I reply. “But she did.”
“She’s loyal to you, though.”
“She’s…hurt. She thought you were dead and then Jeff died.” I take a sip. “After Chris went missing, she just got angry. Maybe she got tired of trying.”
“Sophia has…” he trails off. “I may have underestimated you, Cassidy.”
“I wish people would quit being surprised by me,” I say.
“It’s not a bad thing.”
“It could be.” I shake my head. “How did you end up here, Alexander? What happened?”
His face remains serious. He doesn’t show a flicker of emotion.
“I wasn’t wounded,” he answers. “I was separated from my team. We were a few miles out and Omega mercenaries were working their way towards us. A few of my men were killed, others were wounded, and the rest of us scattered to stay alive. I ran out of ammo, then I got captured by Omega scouts.” He folds his arms across his broad chest. “I was in a truck with a few other men. Halfway back to Los Angeles, the truck stopped and the guards pulled us out of the trucks. They interrogated and killed the prisoners in the truck, one by one, while I watched. Harry recognized my face. He wanted to keep me alive for questioning.”
“How did you escape?” I ask.
“I got lucky.” He exhales deeply. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Alexander Ramos look truly sad. “Omega got lax in security because I was the only prisoner in the truck. I had nothing to lose. They tied me up, but I managed to get free. The guard in the truck turned his back on me – his last mistake. When the truck slowed through a curve, I jumped out and ran. I ended up in Toluca Lake, the Underground picked me up, and now I’m here, running recon for them.”
“Is this where you want to stay?” I press. “Or do you want to join the rescue unit? Or…do you want to go to Fresno with the National Guard?”
“I’d rather be with the Mountain Rangers in the hills,” he replies. “But that’s not going to happen.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Such a long time goes by before he answers that I almost think he forgets that we’re having a conversation. At last he says, “I’ll come with you. And then I’ll go back to Fresno with the National Guard.”
A warm smile touches my lips.
I had a feeling that Alexander would find his way back to Sophia.
I was right.
“What are you going to do when the war is over?” I ask.
“Build a house. Leave the war behind me,” Chris answers.
“Me too.” I’m lying on my back, looking up at the sky. It is a warm summer afternoon. The newest recruits for the militia are training in the background. Chris and I have just returned from a successful reconnaissance mission.
“Cassidy?” Chris whispers.
I turn to look at him. His handsome face is troubled. He slowly takes my hand, studies each finger, then finally brings it to his lips in a soft kiss.
“Are we going to make it?” I ask.
Chris is the most positive, uplifting figure in the fight against Omega. But every once in a while, I see the vulnerability seep through. And I’m pretty sure I am the only one who is close enough to him to detect it. It worries me.
“We’ll make it,” he promises. “But it won’t be without sacrifice.”
“Maybe the United States military will step in,” I suggest. “Maybe we won’t have to do all of the fighting ourselves.”
Chris smiles. It’s a weary smile. He pulls me closer.
“We can’t count on anyone but ourselves,” he says.
“Is it really that bad?”
“Being on our own isn’t a bad thing. Look at these people – they’re inspired. They’re fighting for something that they believe in.” Chris hooks his arm around my waist. “It’s made us stronger.”
It always amazes me that Chris can pull something positive out of even the bleakest situation. I press an affectionate kiss against his lips. He grins – the first time he has seemed relaxed in days.
“I would do anything for you,” I hear myself saying.
Does that sound desperate? I don’t care. I mean it.
I still mean it.
After spending the night at the Underground base in Toluca Lake, I am well rested and ready to go. The militia stayed upstairs. Huge rooms have been stocked with mattresses, blankets and pillows. I stayed in a bedroom by myself at the end of a hall – the former master bedroom, I’m guessing.
When I wake up I find myself lost in a pile of expensive sheets and blankets. It’s not even close to what I’m used to sleeping on: the dirt.
I roll out of bed. The room is dark. I light a lantern on the dresser in the corner; the room is huge, decorated with modern art. I sit on the floor and lace up my combat boots.
Come on, I think. Wake up, Cassidy. It’s time to go to work.
I stand up. I pull my hair into a ponytail to keep it out of my face. I cinch up my belt, throw on my jacket and look myself over. Do I look like a battle-hardened commander? Or am I just a stupid kid from Culver City trying to play the part of a soldier?
Privately, I feel like a combination of both.
I grab my gear and open the door to the hallway. The militia is getting up, gathering their belongings. It’s probably five-thirty. I find the stairs and enter the living room. Alexander is waiting, a grim expression on his face.
“Get a good night’s sleep, Ramos?” I ask.
He grunts.
Yes. That’s the Alexander I remember.
Uriah is standing silently in the shadow of the front door, tracing his finger down the length of a photo frame. His mood radiates depression. Under normal circumstances I would offer to cheer him up, but today I avoid him.
“All present and accounted for,” Vera reports, descending the staircase. “Can we just get this over with?”
“Getting antsy, Vera?” I ask.
“I don’t like sitting around here, doing nothing.”
I don’t disagree.
Manny suddenly barges in through the back door, tracking mud into the house. He looks wild and windblown – almost like he’s been flying.
“What are you doing out there?” I ask.
“Checking on the horses,” he replies. “They’re settled in fine. Katana’s comfortable.” He jerks his thumb behind his shoulder. “The stable’s just about as fancy as the inside of this mansion. Bloody horses are going to be spoiled rotten by the time we get back.”
“They deserve a little pampering,” I say.
“So do I,” Manny answers.
I chuckle, stationing myself by the front door. The militiamen and women begin trickling downstairs, geared up and ready to go. Derek and Andrew are standing near each other, exchanging words in muffled voices.
“Well,” I say, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “This is it. We’ve made it this far. We can make it the rest of the way.”
There’s a murmur of agreement.
“You have your orders,” I continue. “We don’t stop moving. If we play our cards right, we’ll reach the prison today, and we can carry out our plan. Does anybody have any questions?”
Silence. There are a thousand questions to be asked, but in the end, only one thing matters: will we survive? I hope so. For Chris’s sake. For the militia’s sake. A lot is riding on this rescue mission.
To say nothing of the fact that if we do survive, we have to return to Fresno and face the wrath of Colonel Rivera.
“Let’s go,” I say
quietly.
Solemnly.
Alexander opens the front door and we step outside together, into the pre-dawn. It’s a dark October morning. Zero-dark-thirty, as Chris would say. It’s cold, and it looks like the past week of fair, sunny weather is no more. The sky is cloudy. I smell rain.
“Commander?” Andrew says, falling into step with me.
We stand and wait as the gate rolls open. I stare at the empty street in front of us. Two expensive, abandoned cars are sitting on the side of the road. Leaves are piled in the gutters. The silence is like a physical weight on my chest. I feel overwhelmed with the forlorn atmosphere of this neighborhood – of this entire city.
“Commander,” Andrew says again.
“Yes?”
“Are you okay?”
I raise an eyebrow. Then I lift one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug.
We move, locking and loading, rolling out in patrol formation, moving from cover to cover in the dull lighting of the early morning hours. Because of the caution we must proceed with, every city block seems to take hours to travel through. In reality, it only takes a few minutes. I’m acutely aware that every building could be hiding an enemy. We all are. Our rescue unit moves through the neighborhood with the silence and prowess of cats. Our presence here should go completely unnoticed – if all goes well.
By the time we reach the urban epicenter of Los Angeles, the classy, abandoned neighborhoods are no more. What remains is the part of Los Angeles that I was more familiar with as a child. The apartment complexes, the liquor stores crammed side by side with beauty parlors and pawnshops. Before the apocalypse, this was a bad area. It’s almost improved with anarchy. There’s not a soul in sight.
There is graffiti on the walls. Shapes and symbols in bright colors. Semper Fi is painted in yellow letters across a billboard for men’s cologne. Weeds are growing through the cracks in the pavement, twisting around rusty cars and dead streetlights.
“Red light,” Uriah mutters, standing at an intersection. The stoplights are bent, hanging at odd angles. A pile of rubble sits in the middle of the street. The back half of a strip of stores has been blown open. By the looks of it, it happened quite a while ago, too.
Wait a second.
I take a few steps closer to the back of the buildings. A deep crater is there. Black, charred, ashy soot is smeared along the remains of the structures. And in the center of the crater is a passenger jet. Or what’s left of it. It’s huge. The cabin alone spans the length of five shops. It looks like something exploded inside, causing the ceiling to rupture. The plane is sitting in two halves – as if it split right down the middle.
“This is one of the planes that went down the night the EMP hit,” I breathe. “I heard them go down. I saw the first one.”
“Nobody walked away from this,” Vera remarks. “They died on impact.”
“How many planes went down that night, do you think?” Uriah asks.
“However many got the brunt of the EMP’s attack,” I answer. “Some planes are protected from that kind of thing, and a lot of them were probably fine. But not all of them. Not enough.”
What a horrible way to die. Hurtling to your death in a metal box, in a room full of strangers. None of the people that died here would even know why they were going to die. They probably thought it was a bomb or a freak accident.
How many children were on this plane?
I shudder.
“We should keep moving,” I say. “It’s not safe to stop.”
I pull away from the decimated passenger jet, silently mourning the innocent civilians that died here. Everything within the city block has been totaled – destroyed by the explosion of the crashing plane.
I could have easily been caught in one of those explosions that night.
But I wasn’t. Why did so many people survive – and why did others die? Why did mothers and infants and children have to lose their lives? They were innocent. Why did Omega’s takeover require so much bloodshed?
It’s an impossible question to answer.
We find two more passenger jets within the next hour. All of them were either landing or taking off from the Los Angeles International Airport – or LAX, as it’s more commonly called.
Or was called.
I wonder if my mother survived the EMP? I think.
Since Omega’s invasion, I have often wondered if my mother is alive. Where was she when the EMP hit? Did she leave the city? Did she escape Los Angeles before Omega attacked it with a chemical weapon?
Despite the fact that I was never close with my mother, it bothers me that I will never know what happened to her. And I guess that puts me in the same boat as millions of other people. People that have no idea what happened to their family members and friends.
Through everything, my focus was on two things: survival and finding my father. Once I found my father, survival was still my main focus. It still is, I guess. Only now I’m surviving for a reason. Surviving to fight Omega another day.
“Here’s what worries me,” Uriah says in a low voice, falling into step with me. “If Los Angeles was attacked by a chemical weapon, are we breathing poison right now?”
“Unlikely,” Andrew answers, overhearing us. “I’m betting that Omega used Sarin. We’ll be safe to walk through the city without dying of radiation poisoning.”
“What’s Sarin?” I ask.
“It’s an odorless, deadly poison,” Andrew replies. “Before the EMP, there was a lot of it being used in the war in the Middle East. It’s a popular way to attack people without firing a shot.”
“How long does Sarin last?” I say. “The effects, I mean?”
“On the body? It doesn’t take more than a teaspoon to kill you.” He shrugs. “It doesn’t really linger in the air, though. We’d be dead already if it were still here.”
“Good to know,” Uriah says. “We could be breathing in poisoned air.”
“That’s the chance you have to take, coming back into Los Angeles,” Andrew points out. “Besides, if Omega has set up headquarters here, it’s got to be safe.”
Good point.
Then again, Omega might know something that we don’t.
As we burrow into the heart of the city, I see signs of Omega’s presence. Posters and billboards have been covered over with the Omega symbol: the white O containing the continents of the world. One poster is taped to the inside of an abandoned storefront window:
UNITE
OMEGA REQUIRES ALL CITIZENS TO REGISTER
FOR THE CENSUS
REPORT TO GENERAL HEADQUARTERS
COMPLIANCE IS MANDATORY
Uriah says, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that registering for the census is a command, not a suggestion,” Vera answers. “Anybody left alive in this city is probably registering. There’s no such thing as flying under the radar once you give them your information.”
“If they don’t already have it,” Andrew says. “Omega could probably pull up information on every citizen in the state based on Facebook pages alone.”
“But the EMP wiped out the computers,” Uriah replies.
“It didn’t wipe out everything,” Andrew counters. “Remember, Omega’s got satellites and televisions and access to the digital cloud. The EMP was directed to wipe out our access to technology – not theirs.”
“So you’re saying my Facebook page is still accessible to Omega?” Uriah says.
“You had a Facebook page?” I remark, grinning. “What was your relationship status?”
He grimaces.
“Probably ‘it’s complicated,’” Andrew snickers.
Uriah whacks the back of Andrew’s shoulder, and I laugh for the first time in hours. But when you really stop to think about it, there’s a massive pool of information on the Internet that Omega could use to pull up information on anyone they want. That’s how they found out where my dad used to work. That’s how they knew Chris was a Navy SEAL.
The Internet. A scar
y place in more ways than one.
“I don’t know what book face is all about,” Manny comments,” but I never had one. And I’m glad I didn’t. Omega won’t be able to find anything on me.”
“They’ll be able to find something,” Andrew answers, “if they really want to.” He pauses. “And it’s Facebook, not book face.”
“Facebook, book face,” Manny rolls his eyes. “Same thing.”
“Citizens that are enrolled in the census,” Andrew continues, turning to me, “have to report weekly to General Headquarters. They only get a certain amount of buying power in the stores, and they’re given mandatory Omega jobs. Otherwise known as slave labor.”
“How do you know this?” I ask.
“I listen to the Underground radio.”
“It sounds like Omega’s turned L.A. into a dystopian society.”
“Dystopian? No. It’s blatantly obvious that things are controlled by Omega,” he says. “They’re not trying to hide it. There’s no illusion. The question is, who’s really in charge?”
“So nobody can buy or sell without Omega approval?” Vera asks.
“You’ve got to have a registered Omega identification card to buy or sell anything,” he explains. “And even then you can only buy a certain amount. I don’t know what people are using for currency. The dollar is worthless.”
“They’re probably selling their souls, for all we know,” Vera says.
During the fourth hour of our journey through the city, we change our route. The signs of Omega’s presence are very strong here, and as we progress, I hear something in the distance. Voices? Machines?
We move through an alley. I stop, eyeing a fire escape at the back of an apartment complex. “I’m going to take a quick look,” I say. “Stay here and keep an eye out.”
“I’ll come with you,” Uriah volunteers.
Of course.
I curl my fingers around the rusty rungs of the ladder and climb. The building is only four stories. I reach the top and roll onto the roof. I can see clearly in all directions from here. Miles of buildings wind across the landscape in every direction. I can almost see the ocean from here.