State of Chaos (Collapse Series)

by Summer Lane

  I touch my temple, feeling soreness there.

  “Oh. I’m fine. Go on.”

  “You need to be checked out by the medic.” He stands up, keeping a firm grip around my arm. “Come on.”

  He starts leading me through the camp. “You’d make a stellar nurse.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what’s the deal with Alexander, then?”

  “I had to change my mindset when I started training this militia,” Chris explains. “I had to realize that we’ve got extremely limited numbers in comparison to Omega, and losing any personnel could be devastating. Everybody from old women to little boys is contributing to this war effort, and we can’t afford to have anybody killed.

  “As a rescue unit, we don’t go in solely to kill – although that comes with the mission. This is a war. But we’re there to liberate prisoners, take supplies and create chaos. We want to keep everybody on our side alive. That means no blunt maneuvers or strategies that start with the basis of acceptable losses. There are no acceptable losses. I want everybody out alive.”

  We find the medic’s tent, and there’s a crowd of militiamen gathered around. The people with the most serious wounds have first priority. It could be a while before I’m seen. Chris and I hang back from the tent.

  “Alexander’s style is upfront and exactly how we’d do it in the military,” Chris sighs. “There’s nothing wrong with his execution. He’s a good soldier. He just doesn’t have the right mindset. He can’t sacrifice our men like that. It was unnecessary. The goal is to leave with minimal losses. Alexander’s just going to have to wrap his head around that.”

  “So long story short, Alexander’s just more reckless than you are,” I remark.

  Chris chuckles.

  “No. He sees us as a professional army,” he says. “And we’re not...yet.”

  “We will be. I thought we did pretty good tonight.”

  “We did. There’s a lot of room for improvement.” He looks me over. “You did well. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks.” I twirl my hair around my finger. “So what’s next for us?”

  Chris cocks an eyebrow.

  “Ready for another mission already?”

  “Not right this second...but yeah. I know what it’s like to imprisoned, and I’d like to liberate some more POWs. Create some chaos. You know. The basics.” I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

  He hooks his arm around my waist.

  “My pleasure.”

  The rest of the night is spent waiting to be checked out by the combat medics, which are actually a couple of EMTs who were liberated from Kamaneva’s labor camp. By the time I stumble back to my tent with the Young family, the adrenaline has finally worn off and I’m exhausted. I fall asleep on my camping mattress with my clothes on. Later, I’m briefly aware of Chris lying next to me, pulling me into his warmth.

  I sleep like a rock until I feel something tugging at my hair.

  I slap it away and roll to the side, coming face to face with Isabel’s blue eyes.

  “Wake up,” she grins. “You overslept. Like, a lot.”

  I sit up and rub the grit out of my eyes.

  “What time is it?”

  “Who cares? Everybody’s eating breakfast already.”

  I muss my hair with my hands, sniffing my jacket. Ugh. Smells like smoke.

  “Do I look as nasty as I feel?” I ask.

  “Worse.” Isabel jumps to her feet. “But that’s okay. I still like you.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  I stand up and follow her outside. Mrs. Young and some other women in the camp are working on serving breakfast to the army waiting in line to be fed. I stand and stare at the scene for a second. There has never been such a ragtag bunch of fighting men and women in history.

  Well...recent history, that is.

  Chris is already eating at a makeshift table with Derek and Max. He gives me a wave, signaling for me to join them. After I’ve grabbed some food, I head over, but not before I catch a glimpse of Harry hiding out in the corner of camp again. He’s talking to a recruit I’ve never seen before, and their conversation doesn’t last long. A sour expression flashes across Harry’s face as he walks away, his eyes briefly flicking up to mine. I half expect him to stick his tongue out at me, but instead he just levels his gaze and stands up, stalking away. No doubt searching for a more suitable dark hole to crawl into and mope.

  How inspiring.

  “Morning,” Chris greets. “Sleep good?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  Derek has an empty bowl in his lap as he sizes me up.

  “Nice work, Hart,” he says, giving me a casual salute. “You’re a good shot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, impressive,” Max agrees, taking a drink of water. “We would have gotten out of there without too many losses if Alexander hadn’t screwed up at the end and rushed those guards.”

  “Freaking Alexander Ramos,” Derek mutters.

  “He won’t do it again,” Chris says.

  They look at him in silence.

  “He won’t. He’s set in his ways, but he’s not stupid. He’s a good soldier.” Chris sighs. “All in all, last night was a very successful mission. Omega’s scrambling right now. They have no idea what just hit them.”

  As I sit there and listen to them talking, I get a flashback of myself crouched on the floor of the empty storage facility at Kamaneva’s labor camp. I was waiting to be executed. I was going to die. I shouldn’t be thinking about this right now, but I can’t help it. Near death experiences have a way of sticking with you.

  I etched my name into that wall. That little building will never forget me.

  Will people remember who we are a hundred years from now? How will this war end up? Will we win? Will we lose? Will they even have a name for us in the history books...or will we be a depressing footnote in a teacher’s notebook?

  “We need a motto or something,” I say suddenly.

  “Excuse me?” Derek asks.

  “You know. In the movies guerilla warfighters always have, like, a can of spray paint that they use to write their names over all the stuff they’ve destroyed or conquered from their enemies.” I gaze up at the trees, thinking. “We need to leave something behind for Omega to find. Something that tells them exactly who they’re dealing with. Something that people can remember us by.”

  “She’s right,” Chris agrees, his lips curving into a smile. “Half the battle is creating an image. Psychological warfare. Omega will learn to be afraid of us.”

  “So what’s it going to be?” Derek asks.

  “I thought we were the Free Army,” Max shrugs.

  “We are.” I take a bite of my food. “We need something short but dangerous. Something easy for Omega to say, you know? Something powerful.”

  “How about the tigers?” Sophia suggests, plopping down beside me. “That was the mascot for the basketball team at the school where Kamaneva set up the labor camp.”

  “Well...that’s good, but not quite,” I reply. “We’re not tigers. We’re...” I close my eyes. “We’re like Minute Men or something.”

  “How about The Resistance?” Derek says.

  “Almost.”

  I don’t know yet. I’ll have to give this some serious thought. If Omega’s going to be seeing a lot more of us, they need a name that they’ll know and recognize instantly. Something that will scare them. Something that they’ll be forced to respect. The Free Army is good, but...we need something else.

  As the day passes, Chris gathers everybody together and gives us a recap of what went down last night, also known as a mission debrief. He congratulates us all on a job well done and tells us what we could have done better. He talks about how Alexander rushed the guards at the end, and how we all need to avoid sacrificing unnecessary lives if we can avoid it. He talks about improving our aim and making sure we don’t break cover too soon.


  “We need more ammunition and clothing for the fifty new recruits we picked up last night,” he says. “This can be our next opportunity to strike Omega and get the supplies we need at the same time. If we can keep our troops fed and clothed, there’s no reason we can’t be a serious threat to Omega’s forces.”

  Those of us who have been trained by Chris and his team are supposed to start helping the newbies that we liberated from the labor camp last night learn the basics of fighting. That means I get to teach other people how to shoot.

  Oh, yes. The hunted really have becomes the hunters.

  It will be a few weeks before the new recruits are ready to go out and fight, but we don’t want the sting of our attack to be forgotten by Omega. We need to hit them again.

  “Omega regularly sends patrols into this area here,” he says one day, indicating an area on a map being held up by a couple of militiamen. “On the east side of Dunlap, about thirty-eight miles out of Fresno – about ten miles from where we are right now. Those patrols are well armed. We could use more weapons and ammo. I say we hit the patrol.”

  “I say we do, too,” Max agrees, folding up the map.

  “Me too,” I agree.

  “I’m coming too,” Jeff says, looking like his brother as he stands up, hands balled into fists. “I’m not staying behind this time.”

  Chris doesn’t answer. In truth, Jeff should be out on the front lines with all of us. He knows how to handle a weapon. He’s eighteen years old, strong, healthy and willing to fight. I just know better than anybody else that Chris would never forgive himself if something happened to his little brother. But Chris isn’t stupid, either. We need every able-bodied men and woman on the front lines, fighting this war. Jeff is more than capable.

  Chris nods. “We’ll talk,” he says quietly.

  Everybody knows how Chris feels about keeping his family out of the firing line. I don’t blame him. I don’t want anybody in the Young family to get hurt, either. They’re all I have. My dad is missing – who knows if I’ll ever see him again? I’d like to hang onto whatever I’ve got left.

  And so would Chris.

  I do a lot of sneaking around. It’s cool and dark right now. The moon is shrouded by drifting clouds. We’ve left the pickups and trucks about five miles away. I’m following Chris through tall grass, and we’re nearing the main highway. A lump forms in my throat. Dunlap is more wide open than I was expecting.

  Max has gone on ahead of us with his team – as usual – setting up the homemade reconnaissance and explosives. Omega will be passing through in a small convoy, and we intend to ambush them.

  It will confuse them and give us time to enter the area, take their weapons and split. We sink into the tall grass, right at the edge of the road, watching the stretch of highway. All of us are wearing scarves over our faces, covering everything but our eyes. My hair color is also hidden with another scarf, over which I’m wearing a hat.

  Keeping our identities secret from Omega will go a long way in keeping us alive. If they know us by sight and by name, they can track us down quicker. So we’ve found ways to work around that. Every time we bring in new recruits, they’re not told anybody’s real names. Codenames work. Omega doesn’t need to know anything about us – we should be a dangerous mystery to them.

  Chris is Alpha One.

  Thanks to my reputation as a speedy little riflewoman, I’ve been codenamed Yankee, if that makes any sense.

  Sophia is Echo.

  We don’t refer to each other by our real names unless we’re in private, and those who know what our real names are never to use them unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  “Let’s make this clean and fast,” Chris says.

  “Roger that, Alpha One.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “What? It’s fun to say.” I settle back into the prone position, sweeping the road for any signs of Omega. “Right, Echo?”

  Sophia stifles a laugh beside me.

  “Copy that, Yankee.”

  “Shut up, you two,” Derek hisses, but I can tell by the way his eyes are crinkling that he’s smiling. “They should be coming any minute now.”

  Heck yeah. Max and his team are making their way back to us, coming around behind our group. “All set?” Chris whispers.

  “Ready to go.” Max dips his head. “We’ll have to move fast. Some of our scouts are saying there’s at least five vehicles. Big ones.”

  “We can handle that.” Chris throws a glance at me. “Stay in place, Yankee.”

  “Yes sir, Alpha One.”

  The clouds momentarily part, letting the moonlight shine through. A shadow falls across my face. I look up, startled, and then relax again when I hear the soft call of an owl. He drifts across the sky and makes an epic dive towards the ground, nabbing a small rodent for dinner.

  “That’s so nasty,” Sophia mutters.

  “That’s the great circle of life,” I say.

  “Still. Nasty.”

  “Not if you’re an owl.”

  “Hold. Here they come,” Chris snaps.

  He’s right. Because it’s so still, I can feel the slight rumble of vehicle engines as they make their way up the road. I look down my rifle sights, shutting my mouth, flicking the safety off. Listening and watching.

  Below us, Alexander Ramos is in place with his team. He’ll be the first one to hit Omega after the explosion takes out their cars. Despite the arguments and tension between him and Chris, there’s no denying that Alexander is a good soldier, and not utilizing his skills would be a waste. He just has to learn to be a guerilla fighter.

  The trucks come into view. They’ve got their headlights on, rolling slowly, seemingly unconcerned with hiding themselves from potential enemies. I’m guessing they’ve never encountered any trouble in this area before. As they round the bend in the road, I brace myself for the explosion. Max is counting down under his breath.

  Nothing.

  “Where are those detonations?” Chris hisses.

  “I don’t know.” Max leans forward, watching the convoy rumble past the spot in the road where the explosions were supposed to go off. “They didn’t go off.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sophia says.

  As the seconds tick by, the convoy crawls towards us, getting closer to our ambush point. We remain still, camouflaged. “What do we do?” I whisper, tense.

  “We can’t engage them now,” Chris replies. “We can’t-”

  The sonic thunder of automatic weapons fire cuts him off. Of the five vehicles in the convoy, the first two swerves off the roadway, rubber squealing against the asphalt as the drivers desperately try to control the vehicles. One hits a tree and bursts into flames, spitting out billows of black smoke. Another vehicle tumbles down an embankment, doing a rollover, its tires still spinning as it lands on its roof. I stare, openmouthed at the sudden destruction and confusion. A daisy chain of linked blasts detonates under the wheels of the remaining vehicles, tossing one aside and forcing the others to grind to a halt.

  “What just happened?” Sophia demands.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Engage,” Chris says. “Now.”

  Our team opens fire. I relax into position and set my sights on the scene below. Omega troopers stumble out of their vehicles. Most of them are slow and disoriented, making them easy targets to take down. Rapid gunfire rips through the trees – both from us and from below. Alexander and his team have opened fire, too. Omega troopers are dropping left and right, smoke is spilling into the night sky. Screaming and yelling echoes off the otherwise silent foothills. Omega doesn’t even have time to return fire. We’re cutting them down too fast. And in the middle of all of this insanity, I’m firing as fast as I can, dropping an empty magazine onto the ground, inserting another one into my gun.

  I’m a real Amazon warrior princess these days. Whoopee.

  It doesn’t take more than a few minutes for the bloodshed to cease – but it seems like hours. My ears are ringing f
rom the gunfire and I’m choking on diesel fumes and smoke.

  “Should we go down there?” I ask.

  “Let Alexander check it out first,” Chris answers.

  We stay in position as Alexander brings his team to the so-called “kill zone.” They check the dead and attend to the wounded. He gives us the all-clear signal and we slip out of our hiding places and make our way down the side of the hill, walking onto the road, keeping our formation, constantly scanning the perimeter.

  “Okay, just like you practiced,” Chris tells me.

  I nod, kneeling at the feet of a dead Omega trooper. I have to make a monumental effort not to gag as I touch his lifeless fingers. They’re still warm, reminding me that just a second ago, this guy’s heart was beating.

  Stop, I warn myself. Just do your job.

  I take his weapons – guns, ammunition, and knives. The works. Next I strip off his jacket and boots, including the helmet on his head. I also commandeer his socks, because mine are full of holes.

  “Pants too,” Chris says. “You’ll need them, believe me.”

  Awkward. I shouldn’t have to be yanking the pants off dead people, but I guess that’s one of the less glamorous aspects of guerilla war fighting. When I’m done, I’ve got the full uniform of an Omega soldier in my arms, along with all of his gear. Sophia hands me an empty backpack and I stuff all the items inside – everything except the rifle. I sling that across my back and toss the backpack to one of the men.

  We move fast, collecting everything in record time. When we’re done, I have to fight the urge to take a can of spray paint and etch some kind of epic slogan over the vehicles. “You’re thinking of graffiti right now,” Sophia remarks.

  “You know me too well.”

  She shrugs.

  Chris gives the signal and we clear out of the area, retreating back into the hills. Our trucks are only parked about a mile from here. Alexander has some of his men take the Omega trucks that are still running. They’re full of food, water, and best of all, more weapons. I give him a suspicious look. Obviously he was responsible for stopping the convoy when Max’s detonations failed.