by Summer Lane
Vera is dead silent. She was far enough behind the front lines during the attack earlier today to avoid any injury, but I can tell that the episode rattled her nonetheless. A sign that Vera Wright is, perhaps, somewhat human.
“You girls stay here,” Angela says. “I’m going to speak with Chris for a moment.”
I say nothing as she walks away, leaving me alone with Vera.
A force of one thousand men is gathered here. I’m pumped full of pain medication, my hands have been bandaged, and my arm still has glass stuck in the skin. I am at the lead vehicle of the foremost line of defense. The kill zone, I’ve been told. The sacrifice.
Colonel Rivera is following our militia force of five hundred men with his own force. Thinking of him trailing behind us like a dog with its tail between its legs make me sick. What a coward. What a user. I can’t believe we’re leading this assault all on our own.
“You know,” Manny told me earlier, “The Romans used to send mercenary forces ahead of their troops to weaken the enemy. The mercenaries were always the sacrifice. The kamikazes.”
“And that’s what Omega did to us? Flooded us with mercenaries to shake us?”
“To attempt to weaken us.” He winked, then. “But it won’t work, will it?”
“You look tense, Hart,” Vera remarks.
“Sorry. I must have been thinking about the five thousand death troopers coming our way,” I reply.
“No need to be sarcastic.”
“This coming from the queen of vitriol.”
She impulsively checks her gear again, taking a deep breath.
“Look, I know we have a misunderstanding-” she begins, but I cut her off.
“You know what? You’ve been nothing but mean to me since the day I showed up at Camp Freedom,” I say, surprised at my calmness. “I don’t know what I did to you, and frankly, I don’t care. Just leave me alone, okay?”
Vera swallows, red blotches appearing on her pale cheeks.
“I couldn’t let you compromise my authority in camp,” she says. “My mother and I worked hard for what we had with the Legion.”
“I worked hard for what I had with the Freedom Fighters.” I shake my head. “We’re not doing this right now. This is not the time.”
“We might not get another time.”
Both of us lapse into silence. I realize for the first time tonight that I am trembling from head to toe. Shaking like a leaf.
I’m not cold. I’m terrified.
At that moment Angela returns with Chris. Chris’s hair is pulled back tightly. He’s wearing all of his combat gear. Uniform, boots, vest, weapons, radio. His vest weighs about sixty pounds. The one I wear is tailored to my smaller build, but it still weighs twenty pounds. And when you’re running for your life, twenty pounds is a lot.
Unfortunately, vests are a necessary item out here. It might save my life.
“So how does this work?” I ask. “Do they come around the corner and stare at us before we charge at each other, Narnia-style?”
Chris smiles weakly.
“It won’t be so obvious,” he says.
“No. It won’t.” Jeff approaches, along with Max, Derek, Uriah and Sophia. “We have to work together, guys. Remember that. We’re a team.”
“Can I say something?” Derek asks.
Nobody objects.
“We’ve all be through a lot together,” he says. “I mean, from banding together in the foothills and duking it out after that last ambush in Sanger, we’re pretty tight, right? We’ve got guts. And there’s no reason we can’t come out of this alive, too. We can do this, you guys.” He pushes his blonde hair off his forehead. “And I just want to say that I’m glad that I can fight for our homeland alongside people as honorable as you.”
I press my hand against my mouth to hide my trembling lips. A tear rolls down Sophia’s cheek. Chris claps Derek on the shoulder, and everyone goes around exchanging handshakes and farewell hugs.
Sophia and I pull each other close.
“I’ll see you when this is over,” I promise.
“Okay.” She places her thumbs on my cheeks. “Thanks for being my friend.”
“No,” I shake my head. “Thanks for being mine.”
She joins Derek and Max as they separate into a different platoon – what would have been Alexander’s platoon but is now combined with Max’s.
“Uriah’s with us,” Chris explains.
Jeff says something to his brother in a low voice and Chris squeezes his shoulder. I bend down and check the laces on my boots, feeling inside the pocket for my pocketknife, and below it, my last will and testament. The one I wrote while I was still at Sector 20.
My other knife – the lucky one that Jeff gave me – is strapped to my belt. I’ve got my shiny new rifle on my back, ammunition, and a black beanie stretched over my head, hiding my curly red hair.
As the others disperse, Vera takes up her position towards the front of the line. Our vehicles will only get us so far, and now we’ll have to go on foot from this point on. Omega will have tanks on the freeway, anyway, and we don’t need to get our vehicles blown up. We’ll have a better chance this way.
“Hey,” Chris says, catching me around the waist. “You ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I reply, breathless. “You?”
He doesn’t answer the question.
“Be careful,” he pleads. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” I tell him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Right now, I couldn’t be more honest.
I slide my hands behind his neck and pull him into a soft, final kiss. He snatches the beanie off my head and ruffles my hair, pulling back only to kiss my cheek.
“Give me my hat back,” I tease, grinning.
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll shoot you. Right between the eyes.”
One of the first things I ever said to him during our escape from L.A.
He falters then. For a split second, I see the emotion flickering behind his brilliant green eyes. The realization that everything we’ve been through – everything we have in this moment – might end tonight.
“I love you,” I whisper.
I press my cheek against his vest, wishing I could hear his heart beat through the armor and uniform. I always took such comfort in it during past moments of distress.
And so begins round two.
Chapter Fifteen
The beginning of the end doesn’t look or sound anything like I thought it would. There is no lineup of opposing forces on a large field. No long pause as we stare at each other. No trumpet. No epic charge. No horses with chariots or Roman warriors with spears.
It simply begins.
The militia is arranged in a unique pattern. Platoons divided into groups of one hundred have pushed on ahead like the tip of a spear, allowing Chris and I to infiltrate the bubble of advancing Omega troops. The platoons up front bear the brunt of the first assault. The rest of the militia buries itself into the hillside, hiding in the small ravines and ditches. Guerrilla warfare at its finest. This is where our skillset will be applied in the most desperate of situations.
A wall of vehicles and limited tanks block the exit down the interstate at the bottom of the canyon – the Grapevine. And I am lying in the tall grass on the side of a hill, watching the open freeway below us. Chris is near my side. Vera and Angela are with Legion. Derek, Max and Sophia are with one of the platoons closer to the frontlines.
Technically we’re all on the frontlines, but still. They’re closer.
“Watch em’ come around the corner,” Uriah mutters, crouching next to me. “They’ll be expecting something. They know we’re out here.”
“We’ll surprise them anyway.”
He doesn’t look too sure. He flicks his long, slender fingers over the stock of his rifle, taking a position next to me. “We’ll see if your reputation as a great sniper is true or not,” he r
emarks.
“Don’t get your hopes too high.”
“Hope? I don’t have hope anymore. Just common curiosity.”
I roll my eyes, never pulling my gaze from the scene below. The interstate curves slightly, and where the corner hides the rest of the freeway from sight, a line of soldiers appear. They are not wearing the uniform of an Omega soldier. Their clothing is midnight black, a slash of red on the sleeve. The red is the only distinguishing difference between them and the uniform of a mercenary.
Red in Chinese culture symbolizes joy and happiness, a teacher once told me in High School. That is why brides often wear red wedding dresses in China when they are married.
I watch them closely through my scope, noting their black helmets, boots and vests. Black is considered a neutral color in Chinese culture, the same teacher also said. I stare at their faces. The pale skin. The dark, cropped hair. I grip my rifle much too tight, hit with the feeling that I’m no longer holding a deadly weapon – just a toy.
“Steady,” Chris breathes, holding his hand out. Reminding us to wait.
It is not my job to take the first shot today.
They keep coming around the corner, and I can’t help but think that they look like a leaky faucet. Slowly spreading across the ground. Like water. Like ants.
“Chris…” I say. “There’s got to be at least three hundred right now.”
“Hold.”
I take a deep breath. Uriah is motionless beside me.
I scan the crowd of Chinese with my scope. I can’t pinpoint a leader among this group. Wherever he is, he’s well hidden, and they’re trickling in for a reason. They’re anticipating guerilla war fighters. They’re anticipating us.
I stop looking down the scope for a second. I close my eyes. I say a brief, unspoken prayer that we’ll all come out of this alive, and then I look at Chris.
He’s watching me. Wordlessly. Silently.
The middle of the flood of Chinese troops explodes. I grit my teeth, steeling my nerves. The troops are tossed into the air like rag dolls, sprays of cement and mud and body parts hurling through the air. For the first time, the Chinese seem to realize what we have done.
“Good boy, Max,” Chris says.
Max, Derek, Sophia and the rest of their divided platoons have planted enough land mines on and around the freeway to blow up the forward advancing forces. The smell of smoke and burning flesh waft up the hill. I keep my lips together, not quite enough of a warrior yet to avoid feeling at least a little nauseous from the stench.
The Chinese scatter. It looks like hundreds of red water droplets running down the interstate. It’s obvious to them now that they will have to leave the path of the freeway and climb down the hills themselves if they don’t want to get their legs and arms blown off.
Finally, something actually goes according to plan.
As grim as it is, this is the only way to get the Chinese to deviate from their course and weaken their forces. Drive them into the hills. Drive them straight into our waiting arms, so to speak. Our Blackhawks and smaller aircraft are keeping the long distance Omega troops at bay – keeping us from being pummeled by bombs and rockets.
It takes an enormous amount of effort to force my body to remain still, to quit trembling. The Chinese hit a few more landmines. The screaming and confusion is palpable from my vantage point in the tall grass. They disperse off the interstate in squad formations and begin climbing through the hillside, many of them struck with horror. Some approach at a full sprint, foolishly believing that if they’re moving fast enough, they won’t set off any landmines.
Only a few are that stupid, though. Some of them still linger at the sides of the freeway, wary of leaving the path. They’re not all idiots. They know what’s waiting out here. I’m sure they’ve all been briefed by their commanding officers on the threat of guerilla war fighters in the central valley.
Yeah, we’re definitely as dangerous as they told you we’d be.
As soon as the thought floats through my brain, a group of fifty Chinese start climbing the side of my hill, scaling it nearly on hands and knees. It’s steep enough to make it difficult to walk, and at the same time, draw them closer to us.
“God,” Uriah whispers, “they’re actually falling for it.”
I don’t reply. The Chinese are pouring over the sides of the interstate, spreading over the hillside by the hundreds. They send sacrificial scouts fifty yards in front of the body of troops to make sure there are no landmines planted in the dirt.
There’s not, but they don’t know that.
This pattern is repeated for two hours. Two hours of waiting motionless on my stomach, barely daring to breathe. Our entire platoon is comprised of riflemen from our militia, many of them with a skillset far greater than mine.
“I think it’s time, mate,” Uriah says, glancing at Chris.
“I agree.”
He gives a wordless signal to our snipers in the grass, and I lick my chapped lips. Why didn’t I take another sip of water from my canteen? I had two hours to do it. Too late now.
Warfare doesn’t wait.
Chris takes the first shot, as always. And that shot is the signal to begin the attack. The Chinese have merged by the thousands into the canyon, all of them driven off the road, into the grassy slopes. Right into a box, unknowingly surrounded on all sides by the National Guard. Not to mention the Air Force, if we need them.
The first shot hardly fazes the Chinese. They look around, almost dazed, searching the hillside for the fool that could have accidentally fired a shot.
“Open fire,” I say, talking into the radio sewn into my shoulder.
We do. It’s the most brutal, ruthless attack I have ever been involved in. Chinese troops are literally razed to the ground in systematic sweeps. The ones who are deep enough into the crowds turn on their heels and run south. Some drop and return fire, aiming blindly at muzzle flashes. It won’t do them any good. They’re surrounded on all sides. As they pull away from the troops who are dead or dying, they expose themselves, too. And so they die.
I struggle to see through my scope at one point, brushing away moisture from the eyepiece. I blink a few times, tasting salt on my lips. Tears? I’m crying?
I can’t do that right now. I shake myself and keep fighting. Someone from our militia fires an RPG into the middle of a mass of Chinese soldiers pushing their way north. It lights up the dark hillside with an orange glow. The screaming is horrible. The smell of gunpowder is sharp.
So this is what winning looks like, I think. I don’t feel victorious.
Yet at the same time, the knowledge that these troops have invaded our homeland and killed every innocent man, woman and child in their path softens the pain of killing. I’m not a murderer. I’m a defender.
They forced my hand. They expected us to surrender silently.
They underestimated our will.
And now they are paying the price.
The attack goes on for hours. Until the twilight hours, when the hills and sky are one shade of muted gray and the sunrise throws color over the battlefield. It is at this point that there are barely any standing Chinese troops left to fight. The rest of the forces – which number at maybe two and a half thousand - never even come around the corner.
“Alpha One, I’ve got a situation.” Chris’s radio crackles with Max’s voice.
“Give me details,” Chris replies.
“They contacted us. They want to parlay.”
“Are they crazy?” I snap. “It’s too late for that.”
“What are their terms?” Chris asks.
“Just you and their messenger. He’s got something to say to us, apparently.”
“We should be talking directly to their commanding officer,” Uriah spits.
“We’ll parley,” Chris replies. “But they come to us, and they come up.”
“Roger that, sir.”
I lay down my rifle, exhausted, sweaty, and emotionally spent.
“What
do you mean, up?” I ask.
“They’ve still got two thousand men out there, almost three thousand,” Chris answers, popping his canteen open. “If we can avoid getting any of our men killed, I’d like to do that.”
“We’ve had no serious casualties so far.”
“Don’t think the Chinese will be stupid enough to come into the canyon twice.” Chris offers me a drink. I take it gratefully. “Eliminating the rest of them will be more difficult.” He wipes a droplet of water from my chin, smiling softly at my shaking hands. “And a break in fighting will be good for everybody.”
“Where are we going to meet with their messenger or whatever?” I press.
“On top of that hill,” Chris says, gesturing to the hill behind us. “We’ll make them come up to us.”
“Dang it. Then we have to climb the hill,” I sigh.
“No. We’ll ride up.”
The sun peeks over the eastern horizon, glowing brilliantly even through the haze of smoke and debris in the air. I hang my head and close my eyes, praying that this parley will bring good news – not bad.
The puzzle of Omega has always been the question of who are they really? Chinese? Korean? Syrian? Russian? Who controls Omega? And who decided to unite all of these radical factions to gang up on us? Is it one man? A group of men? A woman? A body of government? A mysterious, legendary secret society come to destroy us all and take over the world?
I don’t know. And sometimes not knowing who the enemy is can be maddening. They’re standing right in front of us, and we don’t know who they are.
All part of the plan, Walter Lewis would say. Nothing they’ve done has been spontaneous. They’ve been planning this for a long time. The only question is who they are.
As we wait at the top of the hill, Colonel Rivera joins us. There is a static tension in the air between our militia and his presence. When I look at him, I see the man that refused to send us backup when we were in need. I can’t help but feel resentful.
