by Summer Lane
State of Destruction
Collapse Series #7
Summer Lane
Copyright 2016
All Rights Reserved
Summer Lane
WB Publishing
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except to quote on blogs or reviews, without the expression permission of the author. Any unauthorized distribution of this work is illegal and punishable by law.
Covert Art Created by Steven J. Catizone
This novel is a work of fiction. Any parallel to persons alive or dead is purely coincidental and is not intended by the author.
For Pepper.
You were the best little friend I ever had, and the most faithful writing companion.
I miss you and love you.
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
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Prologue
The grove of redwood trees was eerily quiet. Orange lamps and torches flickered alongside dirt paths weaving through the forest. It smelled of damp earth and smoke. Beautiful, white cabins were nestled snugly in the shrubbery. The trees overhead provided a canopy of darkness, nearly blotting out the night sky entirely.
Crickets chirped. Owls screeched.
And somewhere, there were voices.
In the center of the grove was a bonfire. It crackled and sizzled, devouring new pieces of wood. The fire burned around the base of a magnificent statue, a depiction of the earth, perfectly spherical and smooth. Benches surrounded the statue in a neat circle. People were gathered around, talking in hushed tones.
A woman sat in the middle of the crowd. A long, red skirt was draped over her legs, touching the ground. A curtain of black hair was piled on her head in an elegant coif, highlighting an attractive, angular face.
She stared at the flames.
A hand touched her shoulder. The woman could not see his face in the shadows, but she knew his voice.
“Lance,” she whispered.
“Veronica.” He sat beside her. He wore tan slacks and an open, white shirt. His face was slightly aged, his hair dusted with gray. “I trust you have everything in order.”
“Of course,” she replied.
“Good. We are on schedule, then.” Lance leaned back on the bench and cast a sideways glance at Veronica. “What happened to the enemy’s strike team in Sky City?”
“The militias call them the Angels of Death.” She said this with a sneer. “I don’t know. We’ve lost contact with the base.”
“I want them dead,” Lance replied. “Every last one.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“Don’t disappoint me.”
Veronica raised an eyebrow.
“The militias are dangerous,” Lance went on. “Out of hand. The bombs should deter their enthusiasm.”
“Fear is the best weapon,” Veronica whispered.
“Always.” Lance looked at her. “You must be prepared to destroy everything in order to control it. Remember that.”
Veronica nodded.
Lance stood up.
“And Veronica?” He leaned close to her face, only inches away. “I want every militia leader’s head on a stake. Make it brutal. Make them scared. I want blood. Lots of it.”
Veronica lifted her icy gaze.
“It will be done,” she said.
Lance drew back.
“Excellent,” he replied. “I’m looking forward to it.”
He walked away. Veronica remained motionless, and the flames of the fire burned blood red.
Chapter One
The dark, dank smell of the cave seeps into my bones and chills my soul. Dim, flickering firelight crawls up the walls, throwing a shadow across my face. I hug my blanket tightly around my shoulders, shivering. It is painfully silent.
There are people everywhere—about thirty of us—but there is no talking. No whispering, no laughing. We are too tired to talk. Too cold. Small fires have been lit here in the cave, but it is hardly enough to remedy the cloying chill of the winter storm.
It is all sharp angles and rocky slopes in here. There is no soft surface, no privacy. Most people are asleep right now. It has become the only way to make the time pass quicker. Waiting, as we are, for the storms to end. For this harsh winter to be over.
But it is not getting better.
It is getting worse.
I cough and shudder. We have been trapped here for weeks. I feel as if the walls are falling down around me, devouring me. I close my eyes tightly, brushing my calloused fingers over the familiar, worn grip of my rifle.
Soon, this will all be over.
Soon, we will all be dead.
*
“Ashes,” I said. “Why ashes?”
I asked the question but I knew the answer.
“Nuclear,” Chris whispered.
I shuddered. A dark shadow crept across my mind. A cold, splintering fist shoved its way into my heart. Whatever blue beauty the sky held was quickly becoming shrouded by a blanket of gray pollution. Like a curtain being drawn across a stage. The act was over, and something new was coming.
“Get back inside,” Chris said immediately.
But I couldn’t move. I could only stand, horrified, as the wave of gray rolled across the sky and rained ashes on my head. The trees and dirt became thick with it, and soon, the snow was gray, too. Every branch, every stick, every rock. I stepped under the cover of the entrance to the bunker. I looked down at my gloves. Ashes had stuck to the rivulets of dried blood on the leather.
“This is the end,” I whispered. “They’re killing us.”
Chris never answered.
We both knew it was true, and the ashes of the dead rained on.
*
“Radios are still dead,” Andrew mutters. “Everything’s dead.”
He is leaning against the wall of the cave, long, lean legs propped up on a rock. His short, cropped hair is greasy with ash. Just like mine. Just like everyone’s. He adjusts with his radio again and again, getting nothing. Not even static.
“What do you think it is?” Vera asks.
Her once dazzlingly beautiful blond hair is now limp and filthy, hanging in greasy strands to her shoulders. Her eyes are dull, her cheeks pale. She sits near Andrew, huddled against his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Andrew replies.
But it is a lie. I can tell.
“How much longer?” Vera whispers.
“Until the blizzard lifts,” he says.
I say nothing. Toward the front of the cave, where the light doesn’t touch, Chris is standing, alert and restless. Stir crazy, just like the rest of us. From here, I can only see the shadow of his six-foot-four body, the nervous habit of combing a hand through his shoulder-length dirty-blond hair.
“What if everyone out there is dead?” Vera asks. “What if we step outside and we all get radiation poisoning?”
“We would have been dead a long time ago if that had been the case,” Andrew answers. “We had to walk at least ten miles to get to this cave. We would at least be showing signs of radiation sickness by now. It’s been two weeks.”
“Don’t remind me
,” Vera says, monotone.
Still, I watch Chris. He leans against the wall, and I can’t tell if he is looking at me or not. I don’t care. My gaze turns into a detached stare, fading into the slick, black walls of the cavern.
We burrowed inside this place two weeks ago, right after we had taken Sky City. Right after we had received a bizarre satellite message from a woman named Veronica Klaus, claiming to be the Chancellor of Omega. Right after she warned us that something was coming, and ashes began raining from the sky.
Omega. My enemy. Our enemy.
The enemy.
We had decided that the bunker that we had taken in Sky City was not safe to hide in. Omega troops could come back for it. Besides, there was an apparent satellite connection, making it unsafe. So we took off, moving through the mountains. But our radios had stopped working.
Something was wrong.
More than just ashes.
*
He’s supposed to be here, I thought.
“Where is he?” Vera screeched.
We were bathed in gray, soaked in it. The trees were almost black. The snow was a dark slush, our footprints scant outlines in the burned flakes. The open meadow was empty. Andrew fiddled with every radio we had.
Nothing.
Not even static.
And Manny wasn’t there. He should have been. He was supposed to be there, landing his Caribou in the middle of this meadow as we whooped and hollered, a victorious strike team, the Angels of Death, as they called us.
Instead there was nothing.
Nothing but ashes.
“What do we do, Chris?” I asked quietly.
“Give him time,” he replied.
“What if he doesn’t show up?”
He didn’t answer. We all knew he should have been here. Without radio communication, the backup plan was to meet here. But he wasn’t here, and we knew it, and the ashes rained on, and the fear crept in.
“The storm’s getting worse,” Uriah warned.
His dark eyes flashed. He locked gazes with me, and I realized what he was saying without a word passing between us.
“We need to find shelter,” I said.
“We can’t go back to the bunker,” Vera replied. “It’s not safe.”
I looked at the rear of the group—about thirty people, dressed in black, armed to the teeth—and saw the stretcher with Alexander Ramos’s limp body.
Alexander. Our friend. Our comrade. Our fallen warrior.
We had taken the stretcher from the bunker, administered medical aid to him there. And then we had left, hoping our comrade’s wounds would heal.
“Is it…okay to be out in this…weather?” Vera asked cautiously.
I bit my lip. All of us were wrapped in thick layers of clothing, our skin covered from head to toe, our eyes protected with goggles.
Yet nobody would say it. Nobody would use the term “nuclear bomb.”
Because to speak it would be to make it real—and how many of us have avoided the reality of horror by keeping silent?
“I don’t know,” Andrew said. “The blast radius for a weapon like that is miles. There would be several zones—a hot zone, a warm zone, and a cool zone. We’re probably on the fringe of whatever blast went off. That’s the only thing keeping us alive. Plus, there’s the issue of the prevailing winds and the jet stream. Pretty sure the air is being pulled west to east, so most of the radioactive fallout is being blown out of state.”
Again, nobody used the words “nuclear” or “radiation.”
We didn’t really need to, I guess. The ashes were enough of a confirmation.
The wind picked up. The warm, humid air from the nuclear cloud began to dissipate as the frigid front of a winter storm swept down the slopes of the high mountains. I shivered. My rifle was slung across my back.
“We can’t stay here,” I said at last. “We’ve got to go.”
We needed to get to Camp Freedom, to tell the militias about our conversation with the woman named Veronica Klaus. But the fort was a long distance from here. A blizzard was coming, and on top of that, there was nuclear fallout in the air.
“I know a place,” Andrew told us grimly.
Vera looked at him, desperation in her expression.
“Show us,” Chris commanded.
*
“I don’t like him being here,” Vera whispers.
“Who?” Andrew asks.
“Harry.”
I shift my gaze to Harry Lydell, his brown curly hair unwashed, his face unshaven. His glittering, beautiful blue eyes are dull. He is sitting by himself, away from the rest of us, but we have not left him unwatched for a moment.
We don’t trust him. He is a prisoner, and we should have left him alone in Sky City, to let him die like he deserves. But we couldn’t, because he could have told Omega where we had went.
“Well, would you like to go shoot him, then?” Andrew quips.
Vera’s gaze is dark and predatory, and Andrew’s smile falters. His joke falls flat, and I grit my teeth. We’re all about ready to shoot each other down here, trapped like foxes in a hole. I want to move, breathe. I want to run and scream and warn the others about the woman named Veronica Klaus.
When I close my eyes I can picture her pixelated face: porcelain skin, blood-red lips, and long, glossy black hair. Her coquettish, mocking tone. And her eyes…there was something about them that was wicked.
Absolutely, completely evil.
I shake myself.
Veronica Klaus is not Satan, I think. Let it go.
But I can’t. Her words replay in my mind, over and over.
“Where are you?” I ask again. “In the United States? Out of the country?”
“Does it matter?” Her voice is saccharine sweet and deadly. “Darling, I’m coming to you. The war is almost over.”
What did she mean by that? When the ashes began raining from the sky, and it became obvious that a nuclear bomb had detonated somewhere on the West Coast, I knew it was the beginning of something new and terrifying. A different kind of warfare. A global one.
Yet despite the threats, the bomb, the ashes—the end—one thing keeps replaying in my head:
“Commander Chris Young,” Veronica says. “I must say, it’s nice to talk with you again.”
These past two weeks, that is all I have been able to think about. Veronica, alluding to some kind of prior contact with Chris Young, our fearless leader and the man I have come to love. I want to ask him how this could be—and if Veronica was telling the truth—but I can’t. Not yet. First came the mad scramble to escape the winter blizzards, and now it’s the mind-numbing cabin fever of hiding in a cave.
I don’t want to start an argument.
Besides, I have to trust Chris. I always have. I always will.
“Cassidy.”
Someone places their hand on my shoulder, and I know instantly that it is him. I look up. His expression is grave. “It’s Alexander,” Chris says.
He does not have to say it. I already know.
Alexander Ramos—our friend and fighter—is dead.
Chapter Two
When we reached the cave, it was dark. The black clouds had blotted out the sun. The curtain had closed. The final act was on its way. We were trekking through a solid layer of gray, icy sludge. The wind howled. The sky was a combination of angry red swirls and blackness.
The earth itself seemed terrified of what was happening.
I couldn’t even see the trees anymore. They were little more than towering sticks soaked in wet ash and charcoal. The ash rushed through the forest on currents of hot, humid air.
I was thankful to have the proper protection from the elements.
Especially if the fallout was carrying radiation.
The mouth of the cave was hidden by trees and shrubbery, but Andrew knew exactly where it was. He dove in first, whipping out his high-powered flashlight. I grabbed mine from my backpack and ducked through the entrance. It smelled of damp earth and pine dust.
I had to turn my body to squeeze between the rocks in one place, following Andrew into the honeycomb of darkness, our flashlights carving a white pathway through the gloom.
At last, we came to a wide, open space in the cave. It was cold. The walls and ground were slick and dark. Our voices echoed. I looked over my shoulder, watching the rest of the team file in, along with Chris.
His lips were set in a grim line.
“This will have to work,” he said.
I nodded.
The men carrying the stretcher came in, gently setting Alexander in the corner. He was still unconscious, his skin paling and his lids flickering. Dreaming? I hoped his dreams were better than this depressing reality.
“Home sweet home,” Vera muttered, sitting on the rock.
Our eyes met.
“We’re all going to die in here,” she whispered.
If it was meant to be funny, her sense of humor was seriously lacking. I dropped to the floor, exhausted, and closed my eyes. I hoped the storms would pass quickly.
All of them.
*
I sit on top of the mouth of the cave, the air brittle and cold. I wear my night-vision goggles, because even in the middle of the afternoon, the ash and debris is as thick as a curtain. My balaclava and thick plastic dust mask are protecting my mouth so that I can breathe without choking.
As I sit, I strain to see through the shower of filth. I am resting cross-legged, my rifle in my arms, looking for game. The first week in this cave, there was plenty of game. I was able to shoot a deer. This last week has been more difficult. I found only two rabbits. Now there is nothing.
The game is gone.
Nevertheless, I remain aboveground for hours, waiting for a glimmer of movement, a flash of some wandering animal—anything that might provide us with extra rations.
I am not so lucky.
I stand up. The wind is whistling. Pieces of ice cut into my clothes. I shiver. Not because I am cold, but because this winter is mingled with something far more sinister than freezing snow and frigid temperatures. There is death in it.