State of Chaos (Collapse Series) (16 page)

“You had a situation,” Chris replies calmly, “but you didn’t have it under control.”

“What was all that crap about ‘the best soldier can improvise?’” Alexander hisses, getting in Chris’s face. “I improvised, Young, and you screwed it up.”

“You were making a mistake.” Chris crosses his arms. “Go see to your men. We’ll discuss this later when we debrief.”

Little Isabel pokes her face out of the crowd and runs towards me, wrapping her arms around my waist in a hug. I kiss the top of her head, holding my breath.

“I won’t forget this,” Alexander warns, rolling his shoulders back.

“Good. Don’t.” Chris closes the pickup door. “And one more thing.”

Alexander raises his eyebrows.

“Don’t question my orders in combat again,” Chris says quietly. “You’re dismissed.”

It’s not insulting. Just a reminder of who’s in charge.

Alexander stalks away, the vein in the center of his forehead bulging, his face a dark shade of red. Almost purple. The entire militia has their eyes on Alexander as he shoves his way through the crowd, swearing under his breath. Yet he doesn’t continue to argue with Chris, and that alone is the deciding factor in this mini-mutiny moment. Chris calmly unfolds his arms and takes a look around the camp. People disperse, whispering under their breath. I meet Chris’s gaze.

“You handled that well,” I comment, forcing a smile.

He nods.

Mrs. Young pushes her way through the crowd, reaching for Chris. It’s one of those rare moments when her long gray hair is hanging loose to her shoulders, framing her petite face.

“Chris,” she says, embracing her son. “You’re safe. Thank God.”

Chris doesn’t reply. He just hugs her back and closes his eyes.

“I’m glad you’re safe, too, Cassie,” Mrs. Young adds, pulling me into a hug.

“And I’m sad I had stay behind and guard this stupid campsite,” Jeff sighs from the corner of the tent. “Did I miss all the action?”

“Oh, sure. Nothing like death and blood to put some pep in your step,” I reply.

He rolls his eyes. Whatever. He’ll see what it’s like soon enough.

“What was Alexander upset about?” I ask, crossing my arms. “I mean, I could be wrong here, but he wasn’t exactly stoked about our victory.”

The militiamen are unloading the commandeered trucks. Everything from water bottles to boxes of canned goods have been confiscated from the labor camp – plus, we’ve got nearly fifty hungry new recruits if the liberated prisoners decide to join us and fight.

“Alexander has a different style than I do,” Chris says, taking a seat on a camping chair. He pulls his hair loose from his ponytail, letting his long hair frame his face. “It’s not entirely his fault – I was trained the same way, but the difference between us is that I’m looking at our group as a rescue unit rather than a kill squad.”

“I have no idea what you mean by any of that,” I state, squeezing next to him on the chair. “Explain, please?”

Chris sighs.

“In the military, they train you to defend your brothers and kill your enemies,” he answers, keeping an eye on the pickups. “They train you in such a way that you’ve already mentally accepted the fact that there
will
be casualties on your side. Losses are accepted and acknowledged ahead of time. That’s the price of war.”

Sophia worms her way through the crowd, walking towards us. She gives me a nod to let me know she made it back to camp safely, and wanders off into the crowd, giving us our privacy.

“As a SEAL, I was trained to kill,” he replies. “We specialize in counterterrorism, special reconnaissance, guerilla warfare, even. But we go into that situation knowing that somebody in our group may die – even though we’re doing everything we can to prevent that.” He pulls my hair away from my face, examining
the bruise on my forehead. “What happened to your forehead?”

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 be 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.”

“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.