Collapse Series (Book 10): State of Hope

by Summer Lane

  The Freedom Fighters and Angels of Death stand at attention before the casket. Vera is crying and so is Manny. In my left hand, I clutch a small mound of damp earth. I swallow, and then I drop the dirt into the grave. It rains over the casket. I drop the gold chain, I drop the ring.

  Tears stream down my cheeks, blurring my vision.

  “I love you,” I whisper.

  “Until my heart stops beating…”

  His has.

  I take a step back. I manage to stand through the remaining moments of the ceremony.

  Margaret Young is with President Banner. She is sobbing, her face buried in a handkerchief, weak. She is coaxed away by kindly militiamen, cared for by Isabel, who glances at me as they pass by, tears in her eyes.

  At the end, when it is all over and the casket has been covered with dirt and Chris is buried under a mound of soil – another body in the ground, another casualty of the war – there is Uriah.

  Everyone else has gone already.

  Refugees and militiamen have left hundreds of gifts around Chris’s grave – hand-picked flowers, notes, cards, trinkets, crosses, ribbons, candles…he was so loved. So respected by everyone in this fight. He was legendary, unbreakable.

  I stare numbly at the sea of well-wishing presents, and then I pick up a candle and smash it against the ground, screaming, crying with the agony of this loss, the finality of this damned burial.

  I drop to my knees, my face in my hands.

  Over and over again, the loss hits me, and all I can do is picture Chris’s face – warm and real, sweet and kind – and compare it with the image in my head of a coffin, cold and sterile. Another body in the ground, left to rot.

  Uriah kneels beside me. He doesn’t touch me.

  He doesn’t move.

  But he is there.

  And that is enough.

  ***

  The next day, I wake with a pounding headache. I have cried so much, there are no tears left. Nothing but a gaping, empty wound. I sit up in bed and look around the room.

  Cold. Barren.

  I set my feet on the floor.

  Chris takes my hand, pressing it against his chest. He’s warm, and I can feel his heart beating in a steady rhythm under his skin.

  “As long as we’re both alive,” he says, tipping my chin up, “and our hearts are still beating, there’s still a chance. I won’t go down without a fight, and I know you won’t, either. That gives us a chance, Cassie.”

  I meet his firm gaze, and what I see there is encouraging. Exhaustion? Yes. A little uncertainty? You bet. But there’s also hope, and if Chris is still holding onto it, maybe it’s not so bad after all…

  The memory slips away, like a wisp of smoke – the days of searching for my father, when the thought of standing against Omega and fighting was a dream and not a reality…a faraway goal, and not some grim nightmare.

  My rifle is laid at the foot of my bed, within easy reach.

  I touch it, cradle it in my arms like a child.

  Protect your rifle, I think. Without it…I’m in big trouble.

  I smile wistfully and walk to the window. Camp Cambria is beginning to wake, the sun rising over the crest of the coastal hills, cutting through the thin fog this morning. I rest the stock of my rifle on the windowsill and look at the flags fluttering in the wind, the Humvees parked on the curb, the guards standing watch over the camp.

  Chris never lost hope.

  Even when everyone around him was dying…even when the war brought out the worst in the people he loved most – like me – he always held on.

  Chris was hope.

  I place my hand on the window.

  Let me be hope, too, I pray. Let me be strength. Let me be courage.

  I lift my chin.

  Let me be victory.

  Chapter Nine

  I am at the munition building when Diego Santiago approaches me.

  I am checking our weapons – tomorrow, we will board a Black Hawk and fly to the northern coast of the state on a crazy rescue mission to save the first family from Omega’s clutches. If we are successful, we will have spared the world from a premature nuclear firefight.

  “Commander Hart,” Diego says.

  He looks better – color in his cheeks, clean clothes on his back.

  “Hey,” I reply.

  The munition building is on the edge of the campground, surrounded by trees. It is fenced in and heavily guarded, but I am alone inside, tracking how much ammunition we will need, how many guns to take…

  “I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about Commander Young,” he goes on, bowing his head. “He was a great leader – the people loved him.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter. “So did I.”

  “Was he like family to you?”

  I swallow a lump in my throat.

  “Look,” I reply. “I don’t want to talk about it. But thanks for the sympathy.”

  I walk. The building is large. Concrete floors, metal shelves stocked with weaponry. No windows, dimly lit. It smells like gunpowder and iron.

  Diego follows me.

  “I need to talk to you,” he presses. “It’s very important.”

  “Go for it,” I answer. “I’m all ears.”

  “This mission…I’m glad you reconsidered it. Was it the information in the satchel that changed your mind?”

  Hardly. The information Banner gave me concerning Omega was nothing more than surface-level intel regarding Red Grove and Chancellor Klaus. Nothing I didn’t know already. Been there, done that.

  “Disappointing, really,” Andrew had said.

  “I’m only doing it because President Banner has an itchy trigger finger,” I snap.

  “Maybe. But I think you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do.” Diego shrugs, then digs in his pocket. “Here, take this with you.”

  It’s a flat, round, metal disk.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s something from Atlas One,” he explains. “It’s a tracker. We’ll be able to pinpoint your location no matter where you are. Both myself and the president have been carrying one since the Collapse. It’s how Sector 13 knew the president was alive – and why they waited for his order to deploy.”

  “Don’t you need it?” I ask.

  “Not anymore. But you do.” Diego smiles softly. “HQ is already set up for this. They’ll be able to follow your team as you move. If you get caught or captured, we’ll know where to find you.”

  “Admiral Boyd won’t send in a rescue team,” I reply, nonchalant. “I don’t think this tracking device will do us much good. Besides, why didn’t anyone mention it during the briefing if it was so important?”

  “Just take it,” Diego insists. “It might save your life.”

  I fold his fingers around the device.

  “Thank you,” I reply. “Really. But no.”

  He looks hurt, and for a moment I feel bad…but the moment passes.

  I reach for a box of bullets on a shelf above me, intending on checking the quality of the ammunition inside. Diego suddenly snaps forward and knocks the box from my hands, his other free hand closing on my throat, slamming my head back against the shelf.

  I feel the cold edge of a steel blade on my neck, and I freeze.

  My heart beats, my blood pumps…I force myself to control my breathing, to be calm.

  “What do you want?” I demand, coughing.

  Diego’s face is just inches from mine. I see icy desperation in his eyes. His body trembles as he presses the knife closer, drawing warm blood. It trickles down my collarbone, into my shirt.

  I wince, and he says, “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  His voice is a hiss – the same hollow, detached voice he used when I first met him, starving and terrified on a fishing boat, alone with the President of the United States.

  “Diego, I don’t know what this is about, but you have-”

  He cuts me off, slams my head against the shelf again. My vision blurs, and my sk
ull aches from the impact of the hit.

  Stay conscious…

  “I’m going to do everyone a favor,” he says. “I’m just going to kill you now – make it easy, make it simple.”

  I summon all of my strength, ready to make a last-ditch effort to get away…but I can’t move. The blade is digging into the skin of my neck. Just a little more pressure and I’ll bleed out—

  Uriah slips into the shadows behind us, and I force myself to look away.

  Of course he found me – he always knows when I’m in trouble.

  I swear, he can smell it.

  “Goodbye, Commander Hart,” Diego breathes, too close.

  Uriah rips Diego off me. Diego screams, and the knife slices my throat enough to make me bleed even more – but not nearly enough to kill me. Uriah throws him to the ground, like tossing a ragdoll away.

  I try to tell Uriah to keep him alive – we need to question him – but the words don’t come out. I hold my hands to my throat and I try to stop the bleeding. I stumble to my feet. Uriah’s face is angry and wild, full of unbridled fury and vengeance.

  “Uriah-” I croak.

  He ignores me.

  He keeps kicking Diego, over and over, until he finally pins him to the floor and beats his face with his fists until there’s nothing left but a torn, bloody mess. I am rooted to the spot, staring. Diego is still. Uriah stands.

  Diego is dead.

  Uriah takes me to the makeshift medical building – a white tent erected in a parking lot – and he doesn’t speak for a very long time.

  ***

  I’m not hurt badly. I have a few bruises on my throat, and the nurse gives me three stitches to bind the cut from Diego’s knife. Uriah sits and watches in silence, his hands covered in Diego’s blood, the knuckles on his left hand split from so many punches thrown to the dead man’s face.

  When I’m discharged, I say, “President Banner will want an explanation.”

  “I’ll give him one,” Uriah replies.

  “You shouldn’t have killed him. We needed to question him.”

  “No, we didn’t. Now the problem has been eradicated.”

  I shake my head.

  “But why would he try to kill me?” I say. “It doesn’t make sense. Now we’ll never know why he flipped.”

  “He’s an Omega spy, just like the ones who attacked the camp, and the ones who killed Chris. They don’t deserve our mercy, Cassidy.”

  “Hey, I never said they did,” I answer, palms up. “I’m just saying…we could have questioned Diego. Before you killed him, he tried to give me this…”

  I hold up the tracking disc in my hand.

  Uriah furrows his brow taking it in his hand.

  “It’s just like the one Ling had,” he murmurs.

  Ling – the Omega pilot who turned his back on Veronica Klaus and flew us to safety when we were supposed to be flying to our execution. Uriah is right. Ling had a tracking disc inserted into his skin. It was how Omega kept track of his whereabouts, and all of their troops, for that matter.

  “Is it Omega?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.” Uriah slips it into his pocket. “I’ll have Andrew take a look at it. Let’s keep it between us. Don’t tell the president.”

  “He’ll want to know.”

  “He won’t if you don’t tell him about it in the first place.”

  “Why do you think Diego wanted to kill me?” I repeat, serious. “Just a few days ago he was trying to get me to take the rescue mission into consideration. He told me the president was a good man. And now he flips like this and tries to assassinate me before the mission when I don’t take his tracking device? Why? Or was the tracking device just an excuse to talk to me?”

  “A good question.” Uriah stands up. He gently touches the bruises and the stitches on my neck. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

  I take his wrists in my hands.

  “Thank you for taking him out,” I tell him. “I mean it. How did you know I was in trouble?”

  “I was following you,” he replies, without missing a beat.

  “Why?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “You’re worried about me,” I state. “Because of what happened to Chris. You think I’m going to do something stupid – kill myself, maybe?”

  “You wouldn’t do that. You’re too strong.” Uriah threads his fingers through mine. “I hate seeing you hurting like this, that’s all. I’ve been watching you…like he would. He’d want me to. He’d want me to take care of you.”

  I bite my lip.

  “You’re a good man, Uriah,” I whisper. “No matter what, hang onto that truth. Promise me.”

  The words pop out before I can stop them, and I’m not sure why.

  It seems urgent, suddenly, that I tell him this. That I beg him to hold onto the fact that he is good, that he is right.

  “You’re good, too,” he replies.

  He is close, so close. I can feel his breath on my cheek, warm and ragged…

  I pull away, because I am not ready for this, not now – not yet. I brush my hair back and slip off the examination table, grabbing my jacket.

  “We’d better talk to the president,” I say, quickly.

  “Yeah,” Uriah agrees, unflinching.

  We leave the tent together. The sun is warm on my face, and I am thankful for that. By the time we get to HQ, I have run through the scene with Diego a hundred times in my head, examining it from every angle.

  It simply doesn’t make sense.

  Why would he try to gain my trust…and then try to kill me? What would cause such a sudden, powerful flip?

  Inside HQ, President Banner and Admiral Boyd are waiting in the briefing room. Beside them, there is a tall, stoic man with dark, shaved hair. He is in uniform – Army – and he glares at me when we enter the room.

  “Commander Hart,” President Banner says grimly. “Have a seat.”

  Uriah and I both sit.

  “My Secret Service man is dead,” he continues, looking at Uriah. “Care to explain why?”

  “He tried to kill Cassidy,” Uriah replies. “I did what I had to do.”

  “It never occurred to you to simply subdue him?”

  “He was going to kill Commander Hart.”

  “He was my Secret Service man!”

  “Mr. President,” I reply. “This is a battleground. Diego Santiago had a knife to my throat and intended on taking my life. Uriah did what he had to. Diego should have known better than to try something like that here in camp. What happened to him was justified.”

  Admiral Boyd tips his head.

  “Mr. President,” he says. “Commander Hart is right. It was self-defense.”

  “Diego was beaten to death,” President Banner growls. “I saw the body.”

  “Then you should know that anyone who crosses me ends up dead,” Uriah responds.

  Silence.

  “Commander,” Admiral Boyd says, breaking the tension. “This is General Dan Beckham; he’s the commanding officer of Sector 13’s forces.”

  Beckham nods. He’s fairly young – maybe early thirties.

  Uriah holds up the tracking disc that Diego tried to give me.

  “Mr. President,” he says, “Diego Santiago attempted to talk Cassidy into bringing this with her on the mission tomorrow. Do you know what this is?”

  I am surprised that Uriah brings this up…didn’t he just tell me to keep it secret?

  “It’s a tracking device,” he replies simply.

  “He said that both of you have been carrying a tracker since Atlas One,” I interject. “Is that true? Is Sector 13 keeping tabs on your movements?”

  President Banner scratches his chin, irritated.

  “Yes,” he admits. “It was a necessary device.”

  “Did you know Diego wanted me to carry this?”

  “I did not.”

  “Any idea why he would try to talk me into it?”

  “None.”

  “I have one,” Ur
iah remarks, glaring. “He was an Omega spy, and he was attempting to relay our mission movements to the enemy in an attempt to disrupt our rescue operation and get us all killed. How’s that for a theory?”

  President Banner shakes his head.

  “After all this time?” he mutters. “Diego has always been loyal to me – he saved my life many times. Why would he turn on us? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sometimes, fear will make people do crazy things,” I reply. “If he’s afraid that Omega is going to take California, he may have been trying to get on their good side, to save himself before they arrived. I’ve known men like that before.”

  President Banner walks to the window.

  He looks exhausted.

  “I’m sorry,” he replies. “I reacted in anger – I understand that you were right in what you did to him. You have to understand…he was the only friend I had for a long time, after everyone was killed. I was just shocked. I didn’t mean to lash out at either of you.”

  “Trust me, I get it,” I tell him. And I do.

  “Let’s try to keep this quiet,” Admiral Boyd advises. “The camp and the troops are nervous enough since the attacks on the communications center and the medical building. We’ve lost too many people – we need to keep morale up.”

  “I think they should know,” I counter. “Lying to them and covering it up will only make the deception worse. They need to understand that there are spies here and that not everyone can be trusted.”

  “Commander Hart,” General Beckham says – his voice is controlled, refined. “Forgive me for interrupting, but I have to disagree. In times like these, the people have to trust each other. If they don’t, the organization will crumble. This must be kept quiet…we can’t afford any more doubt in the leadership of the President or Sector 13.”

  “I think it’s a mistake,” I mutter.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter what you think,” Beckham snaps. “It only matters what we say.”

  I meet his steely gaze, unimpressed.

  “You’re a real charmer, aren’t you?” I remark snidely.

  “Enough,” President Banner interrupts. “All that matters is that the rescue operation goes smoothly and that you are successful in extracting my family. If you succeed, you can do or say whatever the hell you want, Commander. I’ll be forever if your debt.”