Collapse Series (Book 10): State of Hope Read online

  As the scenery flits by, I think about the satellites, horrifyingly revealing, showing real-time footage of highways and cities, a reminder that Omega always has the upper hand – if only because of their technology alone.

  “Do you think we’re going to be able to get in?” Vera asks, turning in her seat to face me. “I mean, Compound C is no joke. It’s a pretty big facility, and if Veronica is there, Omega is going to have a crap-ton of security onsite. It’s a mission for a hundred men, not four of us.”

  “We don’t have a hundred men,” I reply. “We have no radios, we have no support from Camp Cambria or Boyd. We’re on our own.”

  “But if we could get out a message that the game has changed-”

  “You know it won’t do any good,” I interrupt. “Admiral Boyd is not going to send backup. He made that very clear. We are alone.”

  “And what if we can’t do it?” she demands. “What if we have to go back empty-handed because we can’t penetrate the compound? I think President Banner would understand – he would give us more men.”

  “That’s probably true,” I agree. “But by the time we make it back to Camp Cambria, Veronica and the Angels and the first family could be moved to a different location – and this time, we wouldn’t find them. We only got lucky now. We won’t get lucky twice.”

  Vera nods, understanding.

  “So if we get there,” Andrew says, “and we find the first family and the rest of the Angels…what about Veronica? If we have the opportunity, shouldn’t we capture her? That would be a massive blow to Omega’s leadership here on the western front.”

  “If we have the opportunity, yes,” I answer. “But our priority is getting the Angels out and then rescuing the first family. After that, we roll with it and see what we can pull off.”

  We continue to discuss Compound C as we drive – Andrew is the only one who really knows anything about it. To the rest of us, Compound C is a relatively new subject, one that we’ve never discussed. The Omega stronghold was considered destroyed at one point, but apparently that intel was wrong.

  Yet another example of Omega’s superiority. Their intel is current, and ours is not.

  I lean my head against the window, frustrated.

  Will we ever catch a break?

  Knowing that everyone is in Compound C IS your break, stupid, my subconscious whispers. Use this information and go get the job done. Don’t be ungrateful.

  Good point. Even in the midst of this hell, we have had at least some good luck, and I should be thankful for that. But as we drive, my stomach clenches with worry, terrified that my friends – my family – will perish at the hands of Omega, dying on a mission that I commanded, and I will feel responsible for their demise until the day I, too, die.

  “Cassidy,” Uriah says.

  I look at him.

  He seems troubled, and he tells us, “If Veronica is here, she’s getting bold. Which means Omega knows something that we don’t. Couple that with the fact that someone on our side is feeding top secret intel to both her and General Titan-” here, he makes quotation marks with his fingers “-we can assume that the Athena Strike is moving in. They might be attacking sooner than expected.”

  I reply, “General Beckham and Admiral Boyd should be prepared for that.”

  “We’d better hope so.”

  I do hope so. After all, hope is all we have left.

  Chapter Thriteen

  The storm rolls in, flooding the foothills with rain. Mud tumbles and slides down the side of the hills, blocking roads. Creeks rise and spill across fields, ripping up trees and tearing through barbed wire cattle fences.

  “I say we stop and take a breather,” Andrew suggests. “The roads are flooded and we can’t see anything anyway…”

  I see the logic in this, but I want to push on, to rescue the others before it is too late…

  “Good plan,” I say instead. “Let’s do it.”

  We drive a little farther until we see a small farmhouse wedged into a canyon between two larger hills, hidden by coastal trees and brush.

  “Looks abandoned,” Uriah muses. “Let’s check it out.”

  Andrew takes the pickup as far as it will go, parking it behind a clump of foliage, hidden from the sky and the road. We slough through pouring rain and sticky mud before we reach the property, hoisting ourselves over fences.

  I make a motion and we circle the property before cutting into it. We huddle around the back door. Uriah kicks it in. We pour inside in our regular team formation, clearing the kitchen.

  The home has been abandoned for a long time. Dust covers everything. I beam my flashlight through the kitchen, taking in the peeling yellow wallpaper, the decrepit fridge, and the pile of fossilized dishes in the sink. We sweep through the rest of the house, moving through a living room, dining room, and two bedrooms. Everything is abandoned, as if the residents of the home simply disappeared in the middle of their daily tasks and never returned.

  Probably not far from the truth…

  “First floor is clear,” Uriah announces. “Let’s sweep the second story.”

  We climb the staircase, moving around the corners and inspecting a long, dark hallway. There’s only one door up here. I’m guessing that it leads to a master bedroom. I kick it open and I move inside with Uriah and Andrew; Vera’s the last to sweep the room.

  There is no bed in here, no furniture of any kind. There are only books: mountains of books and papers and scribbles. Writing and drawings line every square inch of wall, and in the corner of the room, I catch a whiff of something fetid and rotten.

  Andrew coughs, and I beam my light toward the corner – it’s a corpse. A woman, by the looks of it. Most of her flesh has been eaten away, along with her clothes. I take a step back, fighting the urge to gag.

  “God,” I say. “That’s strong.”

  Andrew takes a step closer, examining the body.

  “She’s been dead for a long time,” he observes. “I’d say she was living alone, too…”

  I look at the books piled here. Mostly titles centered on international history, geography, and science.

  “Cassidy,” Uriah says. “Look.”

  He takes a step backward and illuminates the wall. I realize that what I had initially perceived to be meaningless scribbles is actually one large mural. Drawn completely in black marker, the wall is one massive illustration of the globe. Everything is bathed in flames, and above the mural, written in rugged text, it reads:

  HOW MUCH TIME DO WE HAVE LEFT?

  “Okay,” Vera says. “That’s freaking creepy.”

  “She was studying,” I realize, opening the first pages of a geography book. “Look, she’s highlighted everything in here.”

  There are highlighting marks, sticky notes, bookmarks, and notepads filled with gibberish. We all go through book after book, in awe of the amount of reading this dead woman must have done.

  “Look!” Vera exclaims, pulling a yellow legal pad from beneath the dead woman’s body. “It’s a letter.”

  “Read it,” Andrew says.

  Vera sits down.

  “Oh my God,” she whispers. “She wrote this right before she died.”

  “Go ahead,” I encourage.

  “My fellow survivors,” she reads. “If you are reading this, then I am dead, and you are not, which means there is still hope left in the world. My name is Anna Nettles, and I have lived here all of my life. As the end of the world descends and my small life comes to a close, I leave behind a small legacy…my books, my knowledge, and my hope for a better future for what remains of mankind.

  “Omega, as I’m sure most of the world knows by now, is not a normal enemy. It is, in fact, an enemy of the most dangerous kind. Ancient, intelligent, and all-seeing. The world will not last under their regime. If victorious in their sweep of the western hemisphere, there will be nothing left of this Earth but a robotic and tyrannical existence that will reduce the population of the world to but a small handful – for that is
Omega’s supreme goal: extermination of the current generation, and their subsequent replacement with hand-trained drones, instructed to raise a new breed of humans…humans who will know nothing of the world as it was before. Humans who will know only Omega and will worship it as a god.”

  Vera pauses, looking up at this, troubled. “Do you want me to keep going?” she asks.

  “Yes,” Uriah replies.

  “When the Collapse happened,” Vera continues, “I was here on the farm. I have always lived alone, and I admit it took me several weeks to understand the full impact of the fall of our civilization. One by one, my neighbors were taken for labor or killed for resistance. And then they came for me…but I hid. I felt so clever, hiding in the barn, waiting until they passed. And here I have stayed ever since. The farm and its crops sustained me. I most likely would have survived for many years, if not for my sickness. Not so clever after all, I suppose.

  “Without my medication, I knew it would take me sooner or later. But I was content to die here, among my friends. My books, these wonderful pages. Here, you will find histories and stories of the world – please save them. Someday, there will be millions of children who will know nothing of a pre-Collapse world. Remind them. Show them hope. Good can prevail over evil; indeed, without the remembrance of yesterday, we can have no tomorrow.

  “Whoever you are, please don’t give up. Omega is darkness, but we are light. If there is but a single person to carry the torch, there is hope for the world. Please protect these books – protect all of them. I beg you. Without them, we will all be lost, even if we do win this war. Go in peace, my friend. Be strong, be brave. And believe. Always. – Anna Nettles, Age 37.”

  Vera exhales, setting the letter on her lap.

  “She’s right, you know?” Andrew mutters. “The next generation won’t even know what the world was like before all of this. Our definition of normal will be planets apart.”

  I stare at the wall, at the mural of the earth covered in flames.

  “We’ll bury her,” I say. “It’s only right.”

  Uriah nods, and he and Andrew both set to work moving the body of the woman named Anna Nettles out of the house. I sit down on the carpet and thumb through the books, tracing a map of Europe with my finger.

  “I hate this,” Vera says, suddenly. “This death. Seeing people dead like this, without any dignity.”

  “She had dignity,” I reply. “She died how she wanted to die. There’s goodness in that.”

  “That’s how it should be, I guess. Dying on your own terms,” Vera sighs. “Without that, what’s the point of dying, right?”

  I fold my hands together, pensive.

  Yes, the point of our existence is to fight, and if we die, we must die fighting, because that is at the core of our being. Our deaths must have meaning, or there is no reason for us to continue to stand in the midst of this destruction and hopelessness.

  “If I don’t die fighting,” I say, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  Vera smiles sadly.

  “I know,” she replies. “Me, too.”

  We head downstairs to help dig a grave for Anna Nettles, the woman with the books.

  ***

  “We’ve already lost so much time,” Andrew mutters the next morning.

  The storm is raging, and the roads out of the canyon are blocked with massive mudslides.

  “We’ve got to get out of here and head toward Compound C, or we’ll never make it in time,” Andrew presses.

  “In time for what?” Vera demands. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Andrews says something under his breath, and we all meet in the kitchen.

  We breakfast on meager rations and a few supplies left behind in the cupboards, mostly canned goods and dehydrated camping food packets. After, when it’s apparent that the storm isn’t going to let up anytime soon, I examine the books that Anna Nettles was reading, studying her highlights and trying to make sense of her gibberish notes.

  “This is incredible,” I say. I throw open the curtains, shedding gray light inside. “She wasn’t just reading or doodling…she was charting a historical order of Omega’s uprising. Look.” I point to a book of ancient world history and then lay the second volume beside it. “She has everything chronologically ordered.”

  I open the page of a modern American history book.

  “Chapter Five,” I say, pointing to a picture of the Mayflower. “She wrote here, Omega was part of the American founding, and had they succeeded in their plans, the American Revolution would have never happened, and Europe would have maintained its hold on the Western Hemisphere, and their global dominance would have been asserted long ago. Isn’t that amazing? She’s right – that’s what Veronica Klaus told us when we were onboard the Athena flagship. She said that the existence of America itself was one of Omega’s biggest failures.”

  Vera chews on her lower lip, watching the windows.

  “I don’t like staying here,” she says, as if she heard nothing that came out of my mouth. “I mean, we’re pretty hidden, but still.”

  “Well,” I reply, “we can try to brave the storm, but…”

  “No. I’m just saying. I don’t like it.”

  “I know. I get it, trust me.” I study more books, amazed at the accuracy and order of Anna Nettles’s slightly obsessive fascination with Omega’s roots. “We have to come back for all of this at some point,” I say. “There’s a treasure trove of information here on Omega.”

  Uriah walks in, his dark hair hidden under a baseball cap – it sits backward on his head, and he looks a little younger in that moment, almost boyish. He folds his arms and asks, “Are you guys reading? Don’t we have better things to do with our time?”

  Surprised with his flippancy, I open my mouth to make a stinging retort, but Vera beats me to it.

  “Sure,” she says. “By all means, please go ahead and brave the hurricane-level winds and mudslides outside to get to Compound C. You first, True.”

  Uriah doesn’t twitch.

  “I’m going to go find Andrew,” she says. “See you kids later.”

  She slips outside and I turn back to my book.

  “Cassidy,” he says, quietly, kneeling to the floor. “I want to talk to you.”

  I don’t look up from the book.

  “Okay,” I reply.

  “Somebody’s been feeding Omega intel, right?” he says. “Have you been thinking about who it could be?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nobody makes any sense.”

  “Actually, a lot of people make sense. I just don’t want to see anyone else I care about turn into an Omega traitor,” I comment. “It’s depressing and really puts a damper on my mood.”

  “I can see that.” Uriah leans forward. “Someone in Camp Cambria told them we were coming.”

  “Diego Santiago?” I offer.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yeah, but it’s possible that before he died, he was feeding Omega information.” I shrug. “It’s a possibility. Maybe he gave them enough intel for them to anticipate our movements.”

  “We have to find the rest of the team,” Uriah answers, simple.

  “God, what if they’re already dead?”

  “They could be.”

  “You’re a real optimist.”

  “I’m a realist. You know that. Just like you.”

  Silence. I look away.

  “Out of all of us, Cheng is the one I suspect the most,” Uriah remarks. “He’s Veronica’s son. He’s got the most incentive, and he’s got the connections. I can’t think of a better candidate for betrayal than the son of the chancellor.”

  I press my hands to my face, slamming the book shut.

  “God, Uriah!” I say. “I have to trust him. I have to trust everyone. We’ll have nothing left if we can’t trust our own friends. We have no choice but to trust them. Don’t you get that? We’re nothing without trust at this point. If we start turning on each other, we’ll never survive. We won’t s
tand a chance.”

  “You’re holding onto the hope that people are good at heart,” Uriah replies, slowly. “That’s a lie. People aren’t good. They’re corruptible, they’re selfish, and they look out for their own welfare. Warfare brings out heroes…but it also brings out cowards. Don’t expect good out of anybody, Cassidy. You’ll be disappointed.”

  “So I shouldn’t expect you to be good, either?” I retort, slightly offended.

  “No,” Uriah answers, stepping closer. “I’m not good. I’m not like Chris Young. I wasn’t a war hero before the Collapse. I was a murderer. A damned convict on death row. I’m a bad person, Cassidy, because I like to kill men. I enjoy it.”

  He inches closer. I can feel his breath on my cheek.

  “I should scare you,” he goes on, his voice shaking. “I bring out the dark side in you…you should get far away from me. There’s a reason why Chris was always in the way with us. It was because he was the right man for you. I’m not. I never will be. If you choose to love me, Cassidy, I’ll drag you down. That’s the truth.”

  I retort, “You’re a good man, Uriah! I’ve seen it. We all have our bloodthirsty moments…that’s what this world has done to us. You don’t bring out the dark side in me – Omega does. That is not your doing.”

  “Isn’t it?” He laughs roughly. “Look, I just don’t want to hurt you. I want to hurt a lot of people…but not you. Never you.”

  I think he is going to kiss me then – he’s so close. But he doesn’t.

  “You’re already hurting me,” I say. “I hate this.”

  I’m surprised at my honesty. Do I feel this way because Chris has only barely left us and I am acutely affected by Uriah’s advances…while at the same time, pushing them away? Is it because I know better than to be involved with someone like Uriah, who really does condone the darker parts of my soul?

  I don’t know.

  I think of my life, and how it used to be. How simplistic and calm and secure it was, even in the midst of the day-to-day dramas that found their way into my weeks. But after the Collapse, with Chris, our relationship seemed to be plagued with arguments and disagreement as the war closed in around us. Chris found it so difficult to trust me – to let me in. How many years did he lie to me, after all? Lies about his past, lies about his wife, lies about his history with the Navy.