Collapse Series (Book 10): State of Hope Page 5

  “Uriah!” I scream.

  I see him on the outskirts of the building, taking cover behind a pickup parked on the curb of the sidewalk. I hunch down and make a break for it. Gunfire is ripping from the windows of the medical building. Militiamen and American troops are surrounding the building now, and it won’t be long until we take it back.

  “What’s happening?” I yell.

  “Don’t know!” Uriah replies, popping a new mag into his rifle. “A small group of men set off a bomb in the communications center, then barricaded themselves in the medical building.”

  “Assassination attempt on the president?”

  “That’s what it looks like!”

  “Uriah, Chris is in there.”

  He must see the terror in my eyes, because he places a hand on my shoulder and says, “Don’t worry. We’re going to smoke these suckers out.”

  I nod weakly, then grip my rifle and look toward the medical building.

  He’s right – there can’t be more than ten people inside. They are hunched at the windows, firing wild shots at the troops closing in on the building. Once they run out of ammunition, there will be nothing stopping us from taking them.

  I take a few shots at the windows, but it’s almost impossible to see anything – it’s too dark.

  Manny runs to our position and kneels behind the pickup, too. Breathing hard, he exclaims, “I see you dropped that gunman in front of the communications center like a fly!”

  “He was yelling something in Russian, I think!” I shout. “Must be Omega!”

  “Well, who else would do something this sloppy?” Manny nods toward the medical building. “This is a suicide mission…there’s no way they’re surviving this!”

  He’s right, of course.

  This is a suicide mission.

  Did they succeed in killing the president? What about Admiral Boyd?

  These thoughts race through my head as we steadily pepper the medical building windows with gunfire. Then, true to my prediction, they run out of ammunition. I see flashes of them in the dim lighting – American soldiers, familiar uniforms.

  Omega turncoats. Infected ranks. Again.

  I suddenly wonder how many of the troops President Banner summoned here are working with Omega. How safe are we, really?

  Sudden silence reigns.

  Commander Miller yells across the open expanse of street, over the smoke mingled with the fog: “Come out of the building and put your weapons on the ground! You have thirty seconds, or we will enter the building and kill you all!”

  I like Commander Miller. Simple, direct.

  No answer.

  I hold my breath, counting the seconds.

  “Something’s not right…” Uriah mutters.

  Bang!

  The medical building explodes in a brilliant volley of flames and shrapnel. Pieces of glass and metal crack through the air, shattering car windows. Dozens of tiny shards nick my skin, white hot and bloody. The explosion makes my ears ring. I grab Uriah’s shoulder for balance.

  Sound and light ebb and flow, like a pulse.

  I stumble to my feet, eyes and ears struggling to catch up with the rest of my body.

  The medical building is on fire.

  Dead militiamen are scattered around the outside of the edifice. Walls of flames and black, acrid smoke devour the structure from the inside out.

  “Chris!” I scream.

  Panic. Blind, overwhelming panic.

  I sprint for the building, Uriah shouting my name. I ignore him – I ignore everything. I plunge headfirst into the medical building, wrapping my bandana around my nose and mouth, clawing through the black smoke, sweltering in the unbearable heat.

  The dead bodies of the traitorous soldiers are on the ground – I count eleven. I fight my way into the hallway. A wall is missing here, and the ceiling has completely collapsed. The flames are close – too close. My left arm screams with pain. I ignore it.

  I am getting burned, and I don’t care.

  Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris…

  I am blinded by the smoke, but I keep going, tears streaming from my tortured eyes, smoke filling my lungs. I fall, crawling on hands and knees through the intensive care unit. I see hospital beds, bodies…everywhere, fire and blood.

  “Chris!” I choke.

  I struggle to my feet, forcing myself onward, toward the place where I know his bed is. The cot is tipped sideways, and through my burning vision, I see the outline of his hand, blood running down his fingers. His IV bags have burst; his heart rate monitor is missing. He lies sideways on the floor, the stitches on the back of his shaved skull broken, bleeding.

  I crawl to his side, press my face against his face, feeling the rough stubble of his jaw against my cheek. “Chris!” I scream. “Baby, wake up! Please, please!”

  The words are forced, desperate. I need help – I can’t move him myself!

  I grab his wrist, I feel for his pulse.

  I don’t feel anything.

  I tell myself it’s because I’m delirious, because the smoke is choking me out, because I’m being burned by the flames that are closing in around me.

  I scream at him, I grab his head and get in his face, shouting his name, telling him to wake up, to move.

  “Come on, Commander!” I beg, and now I am sobbing.

  I am choking to death in the smoke, and I can’t control my crying.

  I cough and cough, and suddenly – I can’t breathe anymore.

  I have reached my limit with the smoke.

  I feel strong arms around my waist, a wet cloth pressed against my nose and mouth. I jerk backward, and then I’m being dragged away from Chris, away from the smoke, away from the fire, into the cold, night air.

  I gag and vomit onto the pavement, vaguely aware of the chilly air on my skin – my flesh is searing with pain, my cheeks are red-hot. Someone shoves an oxygen mask over my face, and I breathe deeply. I can’t open my eyes.

  Arms are still around me. Uriah – I know it’s Uriah. He presses a cold cloth against my eyes, and then I tear it away, forcing my eyes open, blearily staring at the medical building. I force myself to stand, making a weak attempt to head back toward the building.

  Suicidal? Yeah, sure. But I don’t care. Chris is still in there.

  “Cassidy!” Uriah yells.

  He grabs my shoulders, forces me down, slams the oxygen mask over my face.

  “Don’t move! You’ll die!” he commands. “You swallowed too much smoke!”

  I cough again, tear the mask off my face and cry, “CHRIS IS STILL IN THERE!”

  “HE’S DEAD, CASSIDY!” Uriah yells. “If you go back in there, you’ll be dead, too!”

  His words shock me. They shake me to the core of my very being.

  I stare at him, frozen, unable to move – unable to process what he is saying…

  I drop to my knees and hold my head in my hands.

  “Let me die!” I beg, vomiting again.

  I look to the sky, into the smoke and fire reaching into the fog.

  Agony. Disappointment.

  Horrifying, nightmarish loss seizes my body, rendering me weak, almost paralyzed.

  “Get away from me!” I shout, shoving Uriah in the shoulder. “You should have left me in there!”

  “I wasn’t going to let you die!” he replies.

  “I hate you! You should have LET ME.”

  He winces – as if I’ve held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

  I place my hands on the curb and lift my chin, blood running down my face, hair stuck to my cheek.

  An inhuman, tortured scream rips from my mouth, and I watch as the flames destroy the one good thing I had left in my life – Chris Young, my rock, my foundation.

  My everything.

  Chapter Five

  At last, I am broken.

  I don’t know how long I sit in the alehouse, Desmond hovering over me with a med kit. I am made of stone, motionless. I breathe into the oxygen mask, numb. I hear not
hing that anyone says to me. Vera shakes me by the shoulders. She kneels at the chair, pressing her face into my lap, heaving sobs wracking her body.

  I stare.

  Tears run down my cheeks, but I don’t scream or pick up my chair, smashing it into the wall. I just sit there, encapsulated in a nightmarish daze, still coughing up smoke, my ears ringing. Bandages are wrapped around the exposed skin on my fingers and neck. Desmond stitches up a gash on my forehead – I hadn’t even noticed it.

  Uriah stands solemnly near the door. Here, the wounded are being treated since the medical building is destroyed. The only surgeon in Camp Cambria – Marianne Woods – is among the dead. I see Desmond pull a sheet over her face, her body still and cold on top of a table…the best makeshift cot we have at the moment.

  I feel nothing.

  People come and go – some of them talk to me. Vera remains on her knees, her arms wrapped around me, refusing to leave my side. She keeps talking to me, begging me to listen, to react.

  I tune her out. I know she is trying to tell me that everything is going to be okay, that we can survive this, too…that I will survive this.

  But she’s wrong.

  I won’t.

  Manny bursts into the alehouse at some point, his gaze falling on my dirty, pathetic form. He stands in front of me for a long moment, silent. I look up at him and see that his eyes are red. Tears streak his grimy face, slipping down his wrinkled skin.

  He is crying.

  I cannot move.

  He falls to his knees and holds my face in his hands.

  “My girl,” he whispers, his voice broken. “I’m sorry.”

  He pulls me close, and I drop to the floor, suddenly weak and limp and unable to find the strength within myself to sit upright for another moment.

  I press my face against Manny’s leather jacket, inhaling the familiar smell of fuel and whiskey and gun smoke. I cry. Rhe pain of my loss is like a knife in my chest, enough to kill me, enough to stop my heart, sever my hold on life.

  I would gladly take death over this pain.

  I stay with Manny for a long time, until Uriah comes and hoists me into his arms, wraps me in his jacket, and sits with me in the alehouse until morning comes, and I fall into an exhausted sleep.

  The world has changed.

  I have changed.

  This time, I don’t think I can face it.

  ***

  Long ago, there was a girl.

  She survived because of him. Because he taught her how to fight. He made her independent, strong. He created a warrior – someone who no longer needed him but wanted him. He was selfless and brave. A commander who changed the course of the Collapse, a man who singlehandedly led the militias to victory after victory.

  He created her.

  She loved him for it.

  And now, she would stand alone, facing the ravages of war again.

  I sit on the edge of the window in my private quarters, the half-dream fading from my mind. I see flashes of my history with Chris, bits and pieces of a jigsaw puzzle flickering through my brain, dancing in my memory. I feel his fingers on my skin, his lips on my mouth, his taste of coffee in the morning, the scent of fresh earth after a morning hunting expedition.

  “What’d you find?” I asked.

  “Not much. A couple of cans of food and a rabbit,” he replied, brushing his hair out of his face, smiling weakly. “It’s better than nothing.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  We hunkered down in the early morning sunlight, hiding in the grass of the foothills. The sky was clear and blue – the temperature crisp. The grass moved in the breeze. Overhead, a falcon circled its prey on the ground…probably a rabbit, just like our breakfast.

  “You know,” I say. “I’ve learned more about life from you in one day than I learned in L.A. in five years.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Chris replied.

  “Please do. You’ve got a gift for making life worth living.”

  He stopped then.

  “Yeah?” he said. “So do you.”

  He kissed me – playfully. Ruffled my hair, flipped a can of creamed corn into my hands.

  “Your breakfast, my lady,” he joked.

  I laughed. For a moment, all was right.

  I blink back tears, gripping the windowsill.

  I have hundreds – thousands – of memories like this in my head, once so cherished and spectacular. Now, torture. I want to scrub them from my mind, remove them from my life forever.

  I want to forget I ever knew Chris Young, ever loved him.

  Because this pain…this is unbearable.

  It’s the pain I always feared, the pain I always knew would destroy me.

  Knock, knock.

  Someone is at the door. I slowly get to my feet, sore from my burns, a raging headache pounding in my skull like a jackhammer. I open the door, and Vera is there. She stands with a plate of food and a bottle of water.

  “Hey,” she says, forcing a smile. “I brought you lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I reply.

  “Well…too bad, Hart. Eat anyway.”

  Her tone is serious – but she is trying to be sweet. I can’t fault her for that.

  I step away from the door and sit on the bed. Vera sets the plate on the nightstand next to the bed, offering me the water bottle.

  “Drink,” she says. “I know you haven’t had anything in hours.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” I reply.

  “You can’t starve and dehydrate yourself to death!” she snaps. “Knock it off! Put on your big girl pants and eat the damn food and drink the damn water.”

  She is glaring, angry.

  I swallow, and I slowly take the dry sandwich from the plate and nibble. It tastes like cardboard, sand. I force it down, chase it with water.

  “Again,” Vera commands.

  I roll my eyes, but I do it anyway.

  I do it because it will make her happy – it will make her think that she is helping me in some small way, which is what she needs to think. I want her to know that I appreciate her, but that I don’t need her to do this.

  “You need to come see the president,” Vera says, quietly.

  “He survived?” I ask, snorting. “Figures.”

  “Cassidy, you’re the top dog now. The commander.”

  “Stop. I don’t want to be.”

  “But you are. Chris would want you to step up.”

  I slam the water bottle down.

  “Chris…is dead,” I grit. “And so is my purpose here.”

  Vera exhales, walking to the window.

  “I know how it feels to lose someone close to you,” she whispers. “We all do – you’ve lost people before. I know that this is different…this is Chris Young, for God’s sake. He’s not supposed to die. Damn, he was supposed to be untouchable…” She shakes her head. “But you and I both know that this is war. Chris would want you to keep fighting. Because that’s what he would do. He would fight – always. He would never back down.”

  I run a hand through my hair.

  “I know,” I reply. “You’re right.”

  She’s right. Of course she is.

  But I can’t face this reality. Not yet.

  “We need you downstairs,” Vera presses. “The sooner you get back in the fight, the sooner you’re going to be able to get your head in the game again.”

  “This game has taken everything from me,” I say.

  “Cassidy, you’re a fighter. You’re heartbroken right now,” she replies, and then she starts to cry. She sinks down to the bed, tears rolling down her cheeks. “So am I. I’m heartbroken for you. I know what you went through with Chris. I saw your love for each other. It was so powerful – so special. So…once in a lifetime. But you have to keep going, because if you can’t, then I can’t either. None of us can. We need you. I’m begging you, Cassidy. Please.”

  My lower lip trembles, and I sniff.

  I will not cry. If I start to cry,
I won’t stop.

  “Give me time,” I whisper.

  She nods and then she squeezes my hand.

  She leaves me alone.

  I look at the gold ring on my finger, a promise of love and normalcy, of happily-ever-after. I take it off and roll it around in my hand, closing my fist around it.

  Fairytales are for idiots. Nothing ends happily. Not in this world.

  I take the ring and slip it onto the chain around my neck.

  “I won’t forget you,” I say aloud. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Now I cry, bracing myself in front of the mirror, staring at the lonely, frightened, heartbroken girl in its reflection.

  “I will not be broken,” I whisper. “I will not be broken.”

  Chris is gone. Chris is gone. I am alone.

  Alone, alone, alone.

  “Liar,” I say, standing upright. “I’m not alone.”

  I go to the pile of supplies I have stashed in the closet, pull out clean clothes, boots, a belt. I clean myself, tend to my burns, my stitches…I shower, comb my hair back, tightly. I carefully tuck the gold chain and ring under my shirt.

  I feel brittle – like a piece of cold glass, submerged in scalding hot water.

  I tighten my fists.

  Omega has taken everything from me.

  Beneath my heartbreak and the shock of loss, I can feel the rage simmering. It is growing hotter, hotter. Uncontainable, more intense than I have ever felt before. It is the rage of loss and the thirst for vengeance. It is my lifeblood, the heart of my existence now, the only hope I have to make it out of this alive.

  Hope, I think. Does it still exist?

  I don’t know.

  I guess I’ll find out.

  Chapter Six

  The medical building is a charred, blackened mess. I walk past it, refusing to look at the building and the ashes that claimed the life of the man I love.

  He was dying, anyway, my conscious whispers. Now, at least he doesn’t have to lie in a coma forever, a prisoner of his own body…

  Perhaps. But the injustice is still there.

  He could have recovered. I know he could have!

  The loss hits me again, and I bend over, hands on my knees, struggling to catch a deep breath, feeling sick.