Collapse Series (Book 7): State of Destruction

by Summer Lane

  “I’m here to see the daughters of Eli Morales,” I say, speaking to the guard, an older man with thinning hair. “My name is Cassidy Hart, I’m a militia commander.”

  He squints at me, eyes darting to my red hair.

  “So you are,” he breathes. “A pleasure to meet you, ma’am,”

  He salutes me.

  I am in no mood to be recognized today, but I return the salute anyway.

  “I can take you to their quarters,” he says. “They haven’t left the complex all morning. Follow me.”

  He takes me through the gate and we climb cold, marble steps to the front door of the first building. The façade is a muted gray color. Large, picture windows overlook the bay.

  “What business do you have with Eli and his children?” the old man asks. “If you don’t mind me prying?”

  I hesitate before answering.

  “Eli is dead,” I tell him, deciding the truth is the best answer. “I’m here to break the news to his children.”

  The old man pauses, staring at me with watery eyes.

  “Dead?” he whispers.

  I nod.

  He shakes his head.

  “Too bad,” he mutters. “He was a good one.”

  And that is all. We climb the stairs to the second level, walking down a hallway. The last door on the left is where I find Eli’s quarters.

  “Leave us,” I tell the old man. “I’ll be down shortly.”

  He understands, hesitating for only a moment before he returns to the staircase, back to his post at the guardhouse. I swallow a lump in my throat. Nervousness tingles along my fingers and flutters in my chest. Facing someone and telling them their father is dead is a responsibility no one asked me to take on…but one I feel obligated to carry.

  I knock.

  No answer.

  I knock again.

  Still, no answer.

  I take a deep breath and give it a few more tries. There is still no answer, despite the fact that the guard downstairs said that Eli’s children are home.

  Something is wrong.

  I shove my boot into the flimsy wooden door and break it open. It slams against the interior wall. I blink. It’s dark inside. Something stirs in my stomach. It is not fear…it is instinct. I flip my gun over my shoulder, flicking the flashlight on my scope. The beam cuts a path through the dark room. I see a couch, a kitchen to the left, and two bedroom doors. The curtains are drawn on the living-room windows. I walk straight ahead and pull them apart, shedding bright, gray light into the room.

  I turn around. My grip tightens on the gun. The furniture here has been upended. Two lamps and a coffee table are broken. I keep the stock of my weapon firmly pressed to my shoulder and kick open the door to the first bedroom. It is empty. There is nothing here but a bed and a dresser. I sweep it one last time, then move to the last bedroom. The door is standing open. I move cautiously into the room, clearing the corners first, breath sticking in my throat.

  Something has been scrawled on the wall. I slip over to the windows and pull the curtains back. The room lights up, and, to my horror, I see two still, silent figures lying on the bed. They are lying side by side, their eyes closed, their hands at their sides.

  I lower the gun, breathing rapidly. They are not children. They are young women—about my age—dressed in standard-issue militia garb. Their hair is black and curly, their skin dark as walnut.

  They are dead.

  Both have gunshot wounds in their upper chest area. The blood has seeped into the bed and stained the comforter. I can smell it. Acidic and pungent. The scent of death.

  And on the wall, above the bed, sloppily written in red spray paint, is the same warning that Eli Morales carried to me:

  San Francisco Will Be Your Death

  I stare at the wall, trembling. Sweat slicks down my neck, even in the freezing apartment. The dead women on the bed and the writing on the wall claws its way into my brain.

  I sink to the floor and lay my gun across my knees.

  I hold my head in my hands.

  I cry at last.

  Chapter Nine

  I sit on the steps of the apartment building. Chris is talking with the guards in the guardhouse. Elle is upstairs with Bravo, searching the building. Uriah, Andrew and Vera are with her. And I am here, numb. Wracked with guilt.

  Eli Morales is dead, and so is his family, because of me.

  Why would someone do this? Maybe if I had listened to him that night I came to visit Harry Lydell, this never would have happened. Maybe the series of events could have been stopped. Maybe I could have avoided the slaughter…

  “Cassidy, look at me.” Chris kneels in front of me. His anger is gone, replaced with a soft understanding. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  “Sure,” I say. “You can say that, but you know it’s not true.”

  Chris goes on, “I believe that whoever threatened him was holding his family hostage, and when he failed to convince us to stay away from Red Grove, they killed him and his daughters.”

  “But who would be able to get into the complex?” I ask quietly. “Who would be able to get into Alcatraz, kill Eli, leave him by my cell, blow up the docks, and kill Eli’s daughters all in one night?”

  “It would take a team,” Chris says.

  “What’s happening? Why don’t we have any theories?”

  Chris holds my face in his hands. I close my eyes.

  Such a small gesture, yet so comforting.

  “We will,” he replies.

  He stands up, pulling me with him. I see a spark of passion in his green eyes. He slips one arm around my waist and pulls me close to him. He is warm, and the familiarity of his embrace sends a rush of peace through my body.

  “I miss you,” he says quietly, his brow knit.

  I meet his gaze.

  “I know,” I whisper.

  He slowly kisses my forehead, then takes a step back, releasing me. Footsteps hit the marble steps, and Vera exits the apartment building, Andrew beside her.

  “What I just saw upstairs was sick,” she spits. “What’s going on here? We have a serial killer on the loose? Some idiotic psycho doing whatever Omega wants them to do?”

  “This wasn’t some random psycho,” I interject. “This was an attack.”

  “Vera,” Andrew says, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to find whoever did this. Bravo can track the scent of the killer.”

  “Like he did on Alcatraz?” she snaps.

  “Vera,” I say, my voice firm. “There’s an explanation for this. We will find out who’s behind it.”

  She rolls her eyes, clenching her fists. Andrew rubs his thumb along the back of her hand, murmuring comforting words. She stands there, fuming. Typical Vera.

  The sun has broken through the fog. Everything glows in the morning light. The Golden Gate Bridge radiates beauty, floating above the sea of fog hovering over the water.

  “Commanders,” Elle says, emerging from within the building. “Bravo’s got something.”

  Bravo is desperately pulling on his leash, dragging Elle forward. He is sniffing the ground, locked onto a trail, moving with purpose.

  “Great, another wild chase,” Vera mutters.

  I ignore her and hurry after Elle and the dog. Chris is right there with me, and eventually, I hear the footsteps of Vera and Andrew. I don’t know where Uriah is, so I assume he is still inside the apartment building, examining the scene of murder.

  Bravo hunts, pulling us down the street, taking us through alleys in some places, popping into the roads and then back into the alleys again. A jolt of recognition hits me: we are at the prison.

  Chris runs ahead to alert the guardhouse that we’ve got a dog tracking, putting them on alert, and they let us pass through the front gates. Bravo plows ahead, stopping and barking at a locked, metal door.

  It is the maximum-security section.

  “Open the door,” Chris commands the guard who is on duty. He is a young, skinny boy wit
h splotchy red cheeks. He scrambles to open the door and Bravo rushes in, frantically tugging Elle faster and faster. He stops at Harry Lydell’s cell. And he barks, and barks and barks.

  Elle quiets him and hands him a treat from her belt. Bravo gobbles it up, happy. To him, this is just a game, and he is pleasing his master. To me, he has just told me something important.

  Whoever killed Eli and his family was here in the prison—recently.

  “It wasn’t Harry…was it?” Vera asks, bewildered.

  Harry is asleep on his cot, his throat bandaged, his chest barely moving with each breath. He is pale and soaked with a fine sheen of sweat.

  “No,” I say. “But whoever did this…they were the ones who tried to kill Harry.”

  “Harry tried to commit suicide,” Vera replies.

  “That’s what it was made to look like.”

  “But who…who would do that? What’s the point?”

  I look at Chris.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  The insanity is not lost on any of us.

  “We don’t have time to search for one man when we’re fighting a war,” Chris says. “I’m done with this. We’ll lock down Alcatraz, and focus on getting into Red Grove. Someone is going to a lot of trouble to keep us away from that place, so it’s exactly where we’re going.”

  The words leave his mouth, and the ground shakes.

  I think I am imagining it. But the rumble continues, and I hear shouts from outside. I recognize the sound, the feeling. Chris and I lock gazes, and we are the first ones out the door. I step outside. Soldiers are running down the street, toward the bay. I run to the edge of the water. The fog has cleared. The nuclear cloud that hovers over the valley and the mountains is thinner here, and I can almost see blue sky.

  But something else draws my attention. I see the baseball stadium—the stadium that is housing the thousands of survivors and refugees. People like Mrs. Young and Isabel. Black, deathly smoke is rising from the inside of the stadium.

  “No,” I whisper. “Not the refugees.”

  Chris does not hesitate to take action. He commandeers a Humvee from the militia housing complex and all of us pile inside, Bravo included. I slide into the front seat, clutching the armrests as Chris screeches onto the road, toward the stadium.

  I hear more rumbling and my heart thunders.

  Please, don’t let the refugees die. They don’t deserve this.

  It is a hopeless prayer. As we race closer and closer to the stadium, I become more anxious. The radio in the Humvee crackles with frantic chatter. Messages are pinging across the airwaves.

  ““…Detonation at refugee stadium…”

  “…Unsure of casualties…”

  “…Active shooters sighted. Five…”

  I grip my rifle and make sure I am locked and loaded as we roar up to the stadium. Blackhawks are thundering overhead. The sidewalk surrounding the Willie Mays Gate is flooded with refugees, most of whom are women and children, smudged by smoke, coughing, and clutching each other for support.

  I throw the door open and jump out of the Humvee. There are screams. I hear gunfire. I tug the cloth around my face tight and snap my goggles on, bringing my rifle into my shoulder. Such a familiar movement for me.

  Chris takes the lead. Andrew falls in behind me, and then Vera, Elle, Bravo and Uriah. I see other militia vehicles arriving.

  Bam, bam, bam!

  Gunfire is rattling somewhere within the stadium. We move through the gate and enter the inside of the stadium. There are rows of stairs and different entrances. All of them are open. We work our way through the first one, and the massive expanse of the stadium lies before us.

  Refugees are rushing through the baseball field—which is now nothing more than a large collection of tents and tables. The stadium seats tower into the air behind us, and on top, a chunk of the bleachers are missing. Smoke spills from the spot. Survivors are frantically clawing their way down the risers, attempting to escape.

  In the middle of the field, three active shooters are firing gunshots into the air, causing mass panic. I see countless dead bodies on the ground. Just beyond the outfield of the baseball diamond, the harbor is visible.

  I do not hesitate to dispatch the shooters. I take one clean, easy shot and hit the first one dead center in the middle of his forehead. He hits the ground like a lead weight. Uriah nails the second shooter and Chris gets the third. Militia soldiers come into the stadium and begin funneling survivors out of the baseball field in an organized manner.

  I run through the crowds, the smoke drifting over the diamond, the screams of women and children ringing in the air. I kneel by the first dead shooter and pull his facemask off. He is a middle-aged man, clearly foreign, with dark skin and a scar on his cheek. His clothing is unmarked—all black with no Omega symbol.

  A daisy chain of bombs detonates along the top of the stadium bleachers, sending bits and pieces of chairs and bleachers into the air. I shield my face from the hot shrapnel. I hear more screaming. Chris grabs my arm and helps me to my feet, my ears still ringing from the force of the explosions. I stumble once, watching with morbid fascination and terror as balcony seats and private boxes explode, crashing to the ground below in a flourish of flames and glass.

  The stadium begins collapsing around us. Militiamen and woman are yelling at the top of their lungs, corralling the last of the refugees out of the structure. Vera screams at me, but I cannot hear what it is. Andrew and Elle follow with Bravo, and I see Uriah at the tail end of our small team.

  We fight our way through the wreckage and push outside, onto the sidewalk, putting as much distance as possible between the wreckage and us. As we move farther away, I hear one final, massive roar as an explosion rips apart the inside of the ball field. The entire stadium shudders and folds in on itself, one level at a time, collapsing. Waves of suffocating, billowing smoke rolls over the asphalt, heading straight toward us. I am thankful for my goggles and heavy, radiation-shielding clothing. Many of the refugees are dressed in protective garb, as well. As the smoke rolls over us, it blocks out the sunlight, trapping us in a bubble of darkness.

  Everything looks dusty and muted. I can’t see or hear. I can only feel the grit working its way into the corners of my mouth and inside of my nose. I grip Chris’s hand fiercely, afraid to lose him in the cloud of debris.

  We move blindly backward, pushing toward the downtown district. As we push through the smoke, I grab the hand of a small child, screaming for her mother. I can barely make her outline out in the darkness, but I drag her along, afraid that she will get trampled in the rush of people.

  It seems to take hours before we reach cover. The survivors of the refugee camp enters the first floor of a building that has long since been abandoned, a former restaurant of some sort. Some of the refugees jam themselves inside here. Others go across the street. Others go farther still, evading the smoke.

  Inside, I can see once again. I look at the wave of litter and shrapnel sweeping through the streets outside, then kneel down to the little girl who I have been leading through the darkness. She is maybe five years old with long, stringy brown hair and a tear-stained face.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, hugging her. “I’ve got you.”

  “I want my mommy!” she wails.

  I look up at Chris. His expression is hidden behind a thick scarf and goggles, but I can see his eyes. I know that he is thinking the same thing that I am:

  Did his mother and Isabel make it out alive?

  I pray that they were among the lucky ones.

  Chris’s hand flies to the radio on his belt. My ears are ringing so badly that I can barely decipher the radio chatter.

  “They’re going to evacuate us!” Chris yells. “Everybody on the roof!”

  I look back at Uriah. He is leading a woman through the crowd of panicked refugees. She surges past him and yanks the little girl away from me.

  “Mommy!” the child says, throwing her arms around her neck. />
  Good. One less thing for me to worry about.

  “Cassidy!” Elle says, her hand wrapped around Bravo’s leash. “Did you kill them all?”

  “The shooters?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Every shooter I could find. If there were any left, they’re dead now.”

  Anybody left in that stadium is dead.

  Chris leads the way to the back of the restaurant, finding the emergency stairwell that leads to the roof.

  “This way!” I tell the refugees. “Climb! Hurry up, move it! Help is coming, you’ve got to get to the rooftop!”

  Confused men, women and children stumble up the stairwell in a long line, Chris first, and Uriah, Vera, Andrew, Elle, Bravo and me herding them in the right direction. We are the last ones up the stairs. The building is nearly twenty stories tall. My legs burn by the time we burst through the metal door on the roof.

  From here, we hover just above the smoke, and I can see the flattened remains of the baseball stadium. I run to Chris and place my hand on his arm.

  “Where will we evacuate these people to?” I ask quietly.

  “There’s plenty of militia housing throughout the city,” Chris replies. He frowns. “It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?”

  “Never a dull moment,” I deadpan.

  In the distance, a fleet of Blackhawk helicopters is ripping through the sky, toward us. I look across the rooftops of the buildings in this area, seeing refugees there, too.

  “Isabel!” I yell, spotting a head of wild blonde hair.

  Mrs. Young is with her. She is clutching the young girl by her shoulders, both of them looking at us from a rooftop across the street. A sigh of total relief floods through my body. I look at Chris and I can see a bit of the tension leave him, too.

  His mother is alive. Isabel is unhurt.

  There is some good in this.

  I stand and watch the Blackhawks move across the bay, over the shoreline, and make their way to us. I get a flashback of Manny piloting an enemy helicopter over Hollywood, when we were rescuing Chris from a POW Holding Center.

  One of the Blackhawks hovers over our building, thundering with every sweep of its blades. My hair whips into wild circles. Bravo hunkers down. He knows what a helicopter is and what it means. Elle eggs him forward, tugging on his harness leash. He rises and follows her, always loyal.