by Summer Lane
He is flushed, his eyes flashing, his hands fisted.
I look at him for a long moment, tears pooling in my eyes.
“Yeah,” I say at last. “But that doesn’t mean we have to be like them.”
I want this to be over.
And I want it to end with our humanity still intact.
“We have to retreat, Chris,” I say softly. “I talked to Veronica. Whether it’s by chemical weapon or foot army, she’s going to take this city. We’re outnumbered.”
“We’ve been outnumbered before.”
“This is different. And you know it.”
He flinches.
“And then what? Omega will have their foothold.”
“We might have to allow that,” I reply. “If we don’t pull back and regroup, we’ll have no one to regroup with.”
He says nothing. I know that he knows I am right.
Everyone here sees the facts. Everyone here knows what we are facing.
“So we retreat,” Chris says quietly. “And then we regroup. And in the meantime, Omega lets their foot soldiers crawl up the coastline and break through our defenses for the first time since the invasion.”
“We have to make a sacrifice in order to gain a bigger victory,” Arlene suddenly interrupts. Her white hair has fallen out of its bun, tangled and bunched at her shoulders. “Chris, Cassidy is right. We need to listen to her.”
“Veronica is the only member of the Western Council that’s still alive,” I tell Chris. “She’s hell-bent on revenge for what we did to Red Grove. She will not give up until we’re all dead. Every single last one of us.”
The entire room goes dead silent for what seems like an eternity.
Nobody speaks. Even Bravo remains motionless, without a sound.
“This changes the game,” Chris says, slowly. He looks tired—beaten. “We’ll have to start over. The Pacific Northwest Alliance…it’s gone. We’ll need new alliances, new soldiers. Everything.”
I look at him.
I know. We all know.
And I know that Chris understands this—he’s understood it all along, better than anyone else. The problem is that no matter what, he’ll never stop fighting, he’ll never surrender. He will always keep going, even if it means he’ll die trying.
“We’ll retreat,” Chris says at last, his eyes rimmed with red. “There’s a place in the desert where we can pull back to. Sector 27. It’s one of the last militia strongholds left on the West Coast.” He pauses. “But we won’t leave anything to the enemy. Nothing.”
I nod, slowly.
Bravo bristles as a bright light sears across the night sky. Counterstrike missiles colliding with incoming rockets. I take a deep breath.
We’re going to burn this city to the ground.
We will leave Veronica with nothing.
We will leave Omega with ashes, just as they have done to us.
*
I can see them coming. The sky is dark, but that darkness is now illuminated with fires burning all across the city. Flames leap into the air, painting the world with orange and red. I move quickly, running behind Chris and Uriah, Vera and Andrew behind me, and Elle following with Arlene and Bravo.
Several members of the Angels of Death come with us, as well, and we all move through the city, shouting orders to any militiamen who will listen. Chris signals the units on the frontlines through his radio, ordering them to retreat.
Our retreat is something we’ve called the Scorched Earth Protocol—something that was planned long ago, but never spoken of, because we never thought we’d have to implement it.
The Scorched Earth Protocol is essentially a form of self-destruction. In the process of pulling out of the city, we will destroy every inch of usable property, leaving nothing for Omega.
It is a final option, a last-ditch effort to cause damage, despite the odds that are stacked up against us. Militiamen and women begin pulling their vehicles from the frontlines, racing through the city, dousing buildings in diesel and gasoline, striking matches and igniting furious flames.
Chris and I get inside the front seat of a retrofitted pickup truck. Uriah, Elle and Bravo get in the backseat. The rest of the team piles into a small convoy behind us. Chris slams his boot against the accelerator and we are roaring through the city, away from Market Street, away from the docks and the piers, away from the ravaged remains of the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Cassidy,” Uriah says.
“Yeah?”
“They moved the prisoners out of the holding center downtown.”
“And?”
“Harry was missing.”
I turn around in my seat.
“What?”
“He’s gone.”
I clutch the armrest on the door, shocked.
Veronica must have sent someone to free him. Occupied with defending the city, his absence probably went unnoticed for hours before the evacuations were implemented.
“We don’t have time to worry about it,” I say. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
San Francisco is turning orange—burning blood red from the flames that are engulfing the buildings. The tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline—the Transamerica Pyramid, a narrow building with a pointed spire—shudders as one of our own sends a volley of mortars and rockets into the side of the highest levels. Glass and metal spills onto the streets below and the top half of the building begins to collapse, tumbling to the ground in a dramatic cloud of concrete and shrapnel.
The spire is gone, and more buildings in the skyline follow in the pattern of destruction, detonating, toppling to the streets. My breathing comes sharp and quick. I clutch my chest, feeling sick.
The city collapses around us as we hook up with a bigger convoy on the edge of the downtown district. And it is here, on the hill, that I can see the army moving across the coastal hills. The Omega battleships are bobbing close to shore. Boats are cutting through the water, carrying soldiers, and thousands of men in black-and-white uniforms are working their way up the hills, into the city.
Just beyond the invasion force of the Omega soldiers, the militia is scurrying out of the city. Our boys look like specks running away from a flood of black ants, quickly consuming the city.
“Where will we go?” I ask Chris.
And when I turn to him, tears are running down my face. Elle is clutching Bravo in a fierce hug, her expression still and somber. Uriah stares out the window, his fingers glued to the barrel of his rifle.
“Sector 27,” Chris replies, his eyes on the city. “The last stronghold.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
His voice is detached, almost dreamlike.
Is this really happening? Are we really seeing this?
A Blackhawk roars overhead, and I know that it is Manny, flying overwatch, supervising our evacuation out of the city. The convoy begins moving again and we leave San Francisco behind in a volley of destruction as Omega moves in, forcing their way into the fiery streets, and staking their next claim on the West Coast.
Chapter Sixteen
We drive for hours. Days.
Our destination is Sector 27, one of the few hidden militia bases left in California. I am delirious with exhaustion. I doze, dropping in and out of sleep, waking only to swallow more pain meds and to clean the bandage on my wound. Our convoy moves silently through the abandoned highways and back roads of the state. All eight thousand of us—the militia, and the remainder of the Pacific Northwest Alliance on the West Coast.
We drive through the wet, muddy country roads of the Central Valley. We screech through empty cities and plow through crowded freeways with dead vehicles. We cross the Tehachapi Mountains, weaving through dozens of identical roads, twisting our way through miles upon miles of dirt trails and gravel pathways.
Somewhere, in the midst of it all, we come to a stop. We find ourselves at a chain-link fence, topped with the now-familiar coils of barbed wire. National Guardsmen ar
e waiting for us when we arrive. They open the gates and we roll through the checkpoints, into a gradual slope that dives beneath the shadow of a rocky, desert mountain, hidden from the sky.
The base looks much like Sector 20—all cement ceilings and floors, bright white generator-powered lights and endless activity humming through the perimeter. We have so many vehicles that we can barely fit the entirety of our eight-thousand man force inside the standing area of the base.
I get out of the pickup, weak and shaky.
I look around, feeling just like I did when I first stepped foot into Sector 20—when I decided that I was joining the alliance of the militia and the National Guard. When I left my father behind at Camp Freedom.
I feel afraid, and I feel small.
Very small.
Outside, a Blackhawk lands on the airstrip. I stand at the mouth of the base. I put my arm around Elle’s shoulders as Manny jumps out of the helicopter. His leather duster is stained with soot and blood. His tangled gray hair is smudged with the same, and his expression is grim.
He pulls both Elle and me into a tight, somber embrace. He takes a step back, his wrinkled face void of humor or happiness.
“Thank God we all made it out together,” he says.
Arlene hurries to Manny and they embrace, weary but happy to be together. I look over my shoulder at Chris. He is standing at the front of the pickup, watching the troops pile out of the vehicles.
I have never seen him so despondent.
I have never seen him so defeated.
“Now what?” Elle says, her voice quiet.
I look at her, kneeling down and gently scratching the fur just behind Bravo’s ears. “We’ll figure it out,” I tell her.
She doesn’t look so sure.
Arlene turns to me and strokes the hair on her niece’s head.
“There is a backup plan, Cassidy,” she says.
I meet her gaze.
“A backup plan?”
“There’s a place. A safe place.”
I slowly stand.
“Safe is a debatable term these days,” I tell her.
“It is safe,” she says. “But it’s not the kind of thing that’s ever talked about in the militias, because most people say it doesn’t exist.”
“Great. Another mythical safe zone,” I snap. “Is it as safe as Sky City, Arlene? Because we all know how safe that was.”
My voice rises in pitch, and people have begun to stop and listen.
I don’t care.
Arlene flinches, as if I’ve physically slapped her.
I don’t feel bad. I am right, and she knows it.
I turn on my heel, storming out of the loading area, Chris watching me with a disappointed expression on his face. Before I leave the loading area and find my way to the rest of the base, Arlene yells,
“It’s in Alaska!”
I stop. I turn. I look at her. The loading area has gone stone silent.
“Alaska?”
“There’s a survivor colony there,” she replies. “Omega has never had an interest in Alaska. The colony has been untouched since the beginning. We could go there. We could hide out, regroup. Heal. Plan. Come up with a strategy.”
My gaze briefly flickers to Chris’s. He doesn’t seem surprised.
“You know about this,” I say. “You knew about Alaska.”
He sighs.
I feel a sharp pain in my chest. I take a deep breath.
“Is it true?” I whisper.
“It’s true,” he confirms, looking away. “But I never wanted to leave California. Because leaving the state meant that Omega got their foot in the door. It meant that we failed.”
I run a hand through my hair.
There is a heavy silence.
“I want to go,” I say.
“We can’t just move the California militias thousands of miles away,” Chris replies. “We’d have to cross Canada. We’d have to fly through airspace that’s heavily occupied by Omega anti-aircraft.”
“You’re right,” I say. “We can’t do that.”
I look around.
“But I can.”
Chris focuses on my face, shocked.
“What are you—”
“I’m going.”
I push my way through the crowd of people, into the heart of the base. A hushed murmur breaks out through the soldiers, and soon the noise in the room is thundering with voices again, as people begin talking about Alaska and the survivor colony there—and whether or not it actually exists.
I reach the edge of the crowd, near an open area with metal staircases diving underground, into a bunker, and aboveground, into militia barracks. I look behind me and see Chris and my team watching me leave.
I steel myself.
The game has changed. Omega is here now, on our soil, finally making good on their vow to dump millions of foot soldiers into the West Coast. We are being pushed out. We have only two options: stand and fight, or try something new.
I tear my gaze away from Chris.
I’m ready for something new.
It’s time.
Epilogue
It has come to this.
At last, we have met our first major defeat. Since the beginning, it was our determination and our motivation that kept us alive in the fight against Omega. It was the knowledge that we fought for home and family, for life and love, for liberty and humanity.
But now everything is different.
People are gone. Families are dead. Life is fragile. Love is broken.
Liberty is damaged. Humanity is ravaged.
We fight for survival, now. For the preservation of an idealistic society, one that still holds onto the belief that mankind deserves the right to live in peace, without fear of death or injury.
Our world has changed. Gone are the early days of guerilla warfare, when we could hide in the shade of oak trees in Squaw Valley, fighting our battles by night and toasting to our comrades by day. Gone are the days of vigorous determination and vibrant inspiration.
We are spent. We are exhausted. We are struggling for our very lives.
San Francisco is gone. The Western Council has been eliminated, but the threat of nuclear destruction still hangs over our heads, as surely as the presence of Omega’s foot soldiers flooding our shores, breaking through our strongholds and penetrating our military barriers.
And so we will leave.
We will find new allies. We will find a new way to fight our enemy.
We will not give up.
I am ready.
Are you?
To Be Continued In
Book Eight of the Collapse Series
Coming Spring 2016 from #1 Bestselling Author Summer Lane
This is the story of a dog.
This is the story of a hero.
More Titles from Summer Lane
The Collapse Series
State of Emergency: The Collapse
State of Chaos
State of Rebellion
State of Pursuit
State of Alliance
State of Vengeance
State of Destruction
State of Fear (Coming Summer 2016)
The Zero Trilogy
Day Zero
Day One
End of Day
Graphic Companions
Collapse: The Illustrated Guide
The Bravo Saga
Bravo: Apocalypse Mission
(Coming Spring 2016)
Acknowledgements
Cassidy Hart has come a long way, from a frightened girl in Los Angeles to a hardened post-apocalyptic warrior. I like to think that her evolution is my evolution, in a way. We have both grown a lot through this process of penning these books, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
State of Destruction was written over a six-month period, a time in which visions of a gray, ashy California swirled in my head. I did a lot of research on nuclear warfare and radiation fallout, and I had to decide which direction my ch
aracters were headed. I chose San Francisco as the backdrop for this book, always and forever mesmerized by the beauty of the Bay City and the Golden Gate Bridge. Sorry that I had to destroy it. It’s just how post-apocalyptic authors like me do things. (Trust me, I’ve got even bigger, and possibly more destructive, plans ahead!)
My series requires a lot of time and effort, and much dedication. I have written eleven books now, and I’m always grateful to Don, Jake, Steven, Dave, Giselle and Ellen for their help. It’s a million tiny things that make a book come to life – and it’s two million that help that book reach an audience.
During the final stages of editing this book, I lost my faithful writing companion and friend, my sweet kitty whom I affectionately named Pepper Belle. She sat on my desk for the creation of almost six books, woke me up at exactly seven o’clock every morning, snuggled me when I was crying, sat in the passenger seat of my car for Saturday afternoon French fry runs (and every cashier in the drive-through windows would exclaim, “I’ve never seen a cat who enjoyed taking car rides before!”), and all-around made my life a happier place. I wanted to make sure her passing was memorialized in some way, so I dedicated State of Destruction to her. It’s really incredible how one single creature can bring so much love into your life.
Most importantly, I don’t think I would have been able to survive any of the publishing madness that was 2015 without the support of my fiance, Scott, ever insightful and always there for me. I love you dearly, Scout!
2016 is bringing many more books and releases for me – five or six titles, to be nearly exact. Yes, nearly. I am excited to share the story of Bravo the bomb dog with you in the Spring, and happier still to edge Cassidy Hart closer to the conclusion of her tale in State of Fear, which will release in June 2016.
Lastly, gratitude and credit to the one who makes writing, creativity and imagination possible: the Creator of the universe, Christ Jesus, my Savior - and yours, too. All inspiration springs up in us because of His grace. I am forever grateful.