State of Chaos (Collapse Series)

by Summer Lane

  Copyright 2013

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any

  form, except to quote on blogs or reviews,

  without the express permission of the author.

  Any unauthorized reproduction of this work is

  punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any parallel to persons living or dead is purely coincidental and is not intended by the author.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-63003-434-4

  Praise for State of Emergency (Book 1)

  “I sat down to read State of Emergency and found myself unable to stop. The characters were well developed, the story constantly kept me on edge and I found myself quickly compelled to read more. Most novels take me about a week to read. I finished State of Emergency within two nights.”

  – Ruth Silver, Write Away Bliss and Author of Aberrant

  “It was very compelling, and I enjoyed it all the way! You [Summer Lane] are quite a talented writer with an amazing gift for narration. Congratulations on a book well done!”

  - Janice White, Author and Editor

  “This book is awesomesauce. Literally. Summer effortlessly tells the story of one girl’s need to survive whatever has happened to her country. She paints a realistic picture of the what if. “

  – Hannah Membrey, The Girl in a Café

  “Even though SOE is a full length novel, I read it so fast—because I needed more!—that, when I finished, I felt like I had read a novella. It was fast paced, surprising, romancy, thrilling. A great book from the first word to the last!”

  – Juliana Haygert, author of Destiny Gift, Her Heart’s Secret Wish and His Allure, Her Passion

  “State of Emergency is written with an assured and strong voice and the narrative moves (like the car Chris and Cassie escape, and LA thrown into chaos) with considerable speed; building tension and momentum with every turn of the kindle page.”

  – Summer Day, author of Pride & Princesses & Wuthering Nights

  “I felt these two were quite likeable interesting characters, and I was impressed by Summer’s writing style. I can’t wait for the sequel to SOE. I rate this fantastic book five stars.”

  – Mark Mackey, author of Curse Girl

  “Held my attention firmly from start to finish, a really well written good story...Lovable characters, fun tension between Cassidy and Chris, and fingernail-scraping-on-chalkboard cringing trouble they frequently find and escape from.”

  - John B. Campise, author of The Simplicity Factor

  “State of Emergency does its job very well! It thrills you, it scares you, it keeps you reading like crazy because you just have to see what happens next, and, most important of all, it makes you feel. And that is not an easy feat for a book. I’m REALLY looking forward to reading what happens in the next book!”

  – Karla V., Not Just Nonsense

  “I loved pretty much everything about this book. The pacing was great, and I never once got bored. There was always something happening to keep things interesting, whether it was meeting strange people, trying to survive, or action scenes. I loved it.”

  – Briana Snyder, Reviewer

  “Summer Lane knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat! This book is just one cliff hanger after another...Cassidy is a strong willed and strong minded girl with sharp wit and a mouth full of sassy comebacks. I absolutely loved her. The secondary MC, Chris - the incredibly hot navy seal who saves the sassy Cassidy’s butt on several occasions is swoon worthy and written very well.”

  – Bonnie Rae, author of The Nether Trilogy

  “State of Emergency is an engaging read that is compelling and believable. Some dystopian novels are so far removed from reality that it makes it difficult for the reader to connect with the story; not the case with State of Emergency. It’s fast paced and enjoyable. If you like this genre, then you will love this book.”

  - Roy Huff, author of the bestselling Everville Saga Series

  “Really enjoyable post apocalyptic story...the struggle for survival keeps the story flowing nicely. Can’t wait for the next installment as this book ends on a cliff hanger.”

  - Suzanne Webster, Reviewer

  “It was so exciting and I never knew what would happen next. At the end it said, “To be continued” and I hope that means there will be a sequel! I want to know what happens to Chris and Cassie, and to the country.”

  - Patricia Willems, Reader & Reviewer

  “This book is truly amazing, the second I picked it up I couldn’t put it down. Just waiting in anticipation for the second one to come out!”

  - Kaylee Herbst, Reviewer

  For Rocklin, my best friend.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Prologue

  I remember when I had a life. Sure, it wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but at least it was something. I had a nice house, a car, and a stack of books in my closet that rivaled the leaning tower of Pisa. I didn’t have any friends, but I had a father. I didn’t have any money, but I was working on that.

  It was normal.

  I don’t know what “normal” is anymore. Before an electromagnetic pulse disabled the country, I thought the worst crisis that could possibly hit my world was my parent’s divorce or accidentally draining the battery in the car overnight.

  I was so wrong.

  Life is nothing like it used to be. Things used to be easy. Flip a switch? On goes the light. Press a button? You’re calling your parents. Swipe a credit card? You just paid for lunch. Easy, simple, convenient. Nothing is like that anymore. People are dying, starving. They’re being executed on the streets. A shadow army called Omega is rolling its forces across the country, imprisoning and killing everybody or anything that gets in its way. I don’t know where our military is, but there are rumors that they’re fighting Omega on the East Coast.

  So what does that mean for the folks in California? Folks like me? It means we’re on our own. I would be dead right now if it weren’t for the help of Chris Young, the most amazing guy I’ve ever met and a Navy Seal to boot. But we’ve lost our families. They’re imprisoned somewhere in the city, arrested as war criminals for committing one simple crime: They survived the EMP.

  Chris’s family – his parents and brother, Jeff – were kind to me. My own dad was taken along with them, and what happened to my estranged mother is anybody’s guess. We lost a friend of ours to Omega, too. Isabel, a twelve year-old girl we rescued from an abandoned McDonald’s.

  Yeah. Things kind of suck right now.

  It’s just me and Chris, toughing it out in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, trying to stay off the Omega radar. Because according to them, we’re wanted fugitives. They tried to take us down a couple of times and they failed, so that makes us America’s Most Wanted, I guess. We’ve nearly been killed more times than I care to count.

  So what happens now? Do we give up? Do we live the rest of our lives sleeping in the dirt and eating grubs or plants for dinner? Do we just let Omega take our families and rip everything that’s important to us out of our lives?

  No. Chris wants to fight Omega – literally and figuratively speaking. I just want to find our families and get the heck out of Omega’s crosshairs. But to do that, we have to f
ind our folks first. And so far there’s only one place where we can think of that Omega would bring war criminals:

  The city.

  We have to go back.

  Chapter One

  If you’ve ever tried hiking in the mountains, you know that it doesn’t take long for your leg muscles to start burning and your hand to start reaching for your water bottle. After a couple of hours of climbing uphill, you’ll take a rest, contemplate heading back and renting a motorcycle, and then decide to tough it out.

  You’ll reach your destination, eat a picnic lunch with Cheetos and Gatorade, take a few random pictures of the carpenter ants that have crawled up your arm, and hike back down. You’ll get in your car, drive home, and that’s the end of it.

  For me? Not so much.

  My life has been a perpetual walk-a-thon since December of last year. And considering it’s now February, I wouldn’t mind pigging out on a picnic lunch with a bunch of fried chicken and a few gallons of Sprite.

  But I never get a break. Even now, I’m pushing my way through a big field of golden grass in the foothills right below what used to be Sequoia National Park. It’s freezing – there’s ice on the ground – and the sun is just coming up over the horizon.

  “Could you slow down for two seconds and let me catch my breath?” I pant, placing my hands against my waist. “I’m shriveling up back here!”

  Chris turns around. He shoves stray pieces of hair away from his face, looking more than a little annoyed with my complaining. He’s wearing a wool shirt under a thick leather jacket, pants tucked into his combat boots. His hair is pulled tight into a ponytail, accentuating the angles of his face.

  “Sweat it out, Cassidy,” he says, not sympathizing. “We’re almost there.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re like a fitness maniac.”

  He snorts, unconsciously flexing the muscles in his arms, and starts walking again. At six foot four, he towers over me by more than a foot, which makes it even harder for me to keep up with his pace. Just one of his steps is like three of mine.

  “Could you at least not take gigantic strides?” I ask, halfway jogging beside him. “I can’t keep up when I’m tired.”

  He rolls his eyes. Even in the near darkness he looks handsome, his goatee thicker than it used to be, his green eyes bright against his dirty blonde hair. He’s also ten years older me, and I like to think of him as my boyfriend.

  Technically, labeling someone your “boyfriend” at this point in time is about as worthless as paper money, but I like to pretend that at least one thing about our situation is normal. Chris is twenty-eight, I’m just nineteen. He’s a former Navy Seal with a serious reputation for kicking butt.

  I, on the other hand, am an abandoned teenager with a reputation for whining about cold temperatures and suffering obscene taco cravings. And trust me, since there’s no such thing as Taco Bell anymore, I’ve been left with serious withdrawals.

  “It’s totally insane anyway,” I mutter. “We’ll never make it there in one piece.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” He shoots me a stern, disciplinary look. I get that a lot from him. “You know that.”

  I exhale, creating a little white cloud over my mouth.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  And I do. I just didn’t think we’d be able to come to a decision to pull it off.

  Rescue our families from Omega, I mean.

  When the electromagnetic pulse hit in December, the world pretty much died. The modern world, that is. An electromagnetic pulse, or an EMP, is an invisible energy wave that disables all forms of technology based in computer mechanics. Your cellphone, your laptop, your television, your cars, your generators, your radios. Everything dies instantly. Nothing works. Helicopters, airplanes, buses, trains, trucks, satellites, you name it. Anything with a computer chip. And the worst part of it is that once something’s been hit with an EMP, it’s fried forever. You can’t revive a computer once it’s been killed. It’s gone.

  An EMP hit the entire United States. For all I know, it could have hit the whole world. I was in Culver City, California when it happened. Right down the street from Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard ordering Chinese takeout. Planes started falling out of the sky like nuclear bombs and everybody started panicking. I only got out of the city because my dad, as a military guy and a doomsday prepper (yeah, I had one of those parents), always insisted that we be prepared in the case of a national emergency.

  I threw a bunch of emergency go-bags in the back of my old Mustang – which is EMP-proof because it doesn’t have a computer based electronic ignition – and booked it. I was separated from my dad, but we’d had a plan in case anything like this ever happened: Meet at our family cabin in the mountains.

  Plans rarely pan out. Especially for me. I’m like a bad karma magnet, something Chris can attest to. I met him when I was escaping the city. He was wounded, I helped him, and in exchange for a ride to his family’s home in the foothills, he helped me survive.

  Too bad our car got stolen by a group of desperate rioters. We had to travel by foot, and in the process, we passed by Omega emergency relief camps. Only they were being used as concentration camps, killing people off. Taking over. We came to the conclusion that maybe Omega sent out the EMP as an excuse to take control of everything and yeah...they pulled it off.

  Long story short, now Chris and I are on the run from Omega. My dad, as far as I know, was taken by Omega officials and imprisoned as a war criminal because he wouldn’t go to a “relief camp.” Chris’s family, his parents and his brother, were taken, too. Their house was burned down. A friend of ours named Isabel was also arrested.

  So now it’s just the two of us.

  We’ve been keeping a low profile in the foothills for about two months. Omega officials would love to arrest us and ship us off to a happy harmonious death camp, but we’re not really into the whole execution-without-a-trial thing.

  We’re not even criminals. The only thing that sets us apart from the masses is that we chose to avoid the concentration camps and stayed off the radar rather than take the bait. That makes us a target, I guess.

  Sucks to be us.

  Chris, as a Navy Seal and a special ops guy, has kept us fed. The dude can make a meal out of a piece of grass. It might not be great for the taste buds, but his skills have kept us alive. And I’m learning from him, too.

  I’m pretty good at finding shelter, locating at least something edible, and keeping away from danger. But while I tend to go into shock in the middle of an intense situation, Chris is the one who goes into battle-mode and takes control of the situation, usually saving both our butts.

  So, yeah. He’s cooler than me. Before the EMP, that would have bothered me a lot more than it does now. I would have had to one-up him at everything, but since my life depends on little things like finding food or avoiding getting shot by an Omega soldier, I just don’t go there.

  Conversely, Chris is way out of my league. If we hadn’t been forced together when the end of the world came crashing down around our ears, there’s not a chance he would have been romantically interested in me. I mean, I’ve never been into self-deprecation, but I’m not exactly dream girl material. I never had a friend in my life, and my idea of a wild night out on the town was picking up Starbucks before hanging out at the library for three hours, reading Edgar Allan Poe.

  My social life was a little lacking, obviously.

  Chris, if doomsday hadn’t popped in to pay us a visit, would be dating some hot swimsuit poster girl for the Navy otherwise. He’s that gorgeous.

  To me, at least.

  When you’re in love with somebody, it’s hard to see anything wrong with them. Even though I’m crazy about him, I can’t get rid of the feeling that he’s only interested in me because we’ve been forced together. Literally. Our families are both in a prison somewhere, if not dead, and we’re the only ones who care enough to find them. We need each other, and that makes the lines between friendship and romance b
lur. I mean, you spend twenty-four seven with somebody for three months and see what happens.

  So what’s our plan? How are we even going to find the prison or camp that our families have been taken to? We don’t really know. We just figure that they’ll do it somewhere they can publicize it, where they can make an example of their “criminals” and scare people into submission.

  There’s only one place we can go to look for our families: the city. But what city? What state? What building? It’s pretty much an impossible rescue mission, but thinking about it and working towards it – even if it’s never going to happen – gives us something to hold onto.

  It gives us hope.

  Chapter Two

  My grandpa used to have a favorite quote. “Give me a ship and a star to sail her by.” Well, I just want a car. Any car. A washed up, dirty lemon from an underhanded car dealer would be better than what we have: Nothing.

  Nothing but our feet and a couple of pairs of socks that are worn through with holes. I’m tired of eating whatever scraps we find in the wilderness. I want a Big Mac and a strawberry smoothie. Unfortunately for me, the rations in my backpack aren’t doing anything to grant my wish. After two months, all I’ve got left is a handful of camping materials, some water purifying tablets, a knife (a gift from Chris’s brother, Jeff) and a plastic bag with one serving of coffee.

  We’ve been saving that last one for a special occasion.

  Lately we’ve been doing our hiking, hunting or foraging – whatever we’re doing to do to keep alive – during the night. It keeps us from freezing to death by staying active, and it’s easier for us to avoid detection if we’re not skipping across an open field in broad daylight.

  Right now it’s barely dawn. Streams of early morning sunlight are breaking through the fog, giving everything a weird in-between appearance of day and night. On the edge of the field there’s a worn chain link fence. It’s the property line of a trailer park, and for us, it’s going to be our camping area all day.