Focus, steady, I tell myself. Get ready, girl.
They come closer. I can feel my blood rushing through every inch of my body. I swear that I can hear Chris’s heartbeat next to mine. I barely move my head, enough to see Uriah on the ground with his team about two hundred feet to my right. Vera has her team two hundred feet to my left. Sophia and Andrew’s teams are further ahead. We form a curved lineup, a crescent moon. We are pulling the enemy in, trapping them inside a corral made of soldiers and bullets.
Ten, twenty, fifty, eighty…
I count under my breath. There are at least two hundred Omega troops here. I wrinkle my brow, a twinge of worry in the back of my mind. Harry had at least five hundred troops in the dunes. Where are the other three hundred? Probably spread out around the city.
I shake myself.
Five hundred troops is not really enough to inflict damage when you’ve got militia warfighters and United States military forces guarding a heavily fortified city. The warships on the coastline… they’re not firing any more cruise missiles because they fear retaliation from the Alliance.
But Omega has always fought dirty. Why would they follow the rules?
A thought strikes me.
“Oh, my God…” I whisper. “Chris…”
He looks at me. He makes a sign to remain silent.
I have gone completely pale. Blanched like a sheet.
Where’s Manny? I think. If he’s been flying, he must know, too.
I am bursting, dying to tell Chris what is going on inside my head. This is important, this is life or death. If I’m right, this could be the difference between Monterey falling into enemy hands or us achieving a major victory against Omega.
The front line of the Omega troops are close enough to hear their breathing.
Chris gives the signal by firing the first shot, hitting a soldier in the head. He jerks backward. There is a momentary, split-second where the enemy is frozen. And then everything is chaos.
We are at war once more.
I bring my rifle back into my shoulder, taking a shot. My first bullet hits my target, but I am off by a couple of inches, nevertheless.
“Hang in there,” I tell myself aloud.
The smattering of gunfire in the quiet of the forest turns into a barrage of white noise, of shattering limbs and desperate, guttural pleas for mercy. Sprays of blood fill the air. I move in formation with the rest of my units. Dropping to one knee to shoot, fire and return fire. Then I sprint to the next area of cover, repeat the action, and do it all over again. There is no break in the fight. It is one massive blur of instinctive movement. Of action and reaction. I make sure that I am in the former category.
I want Omega to react to me.
Chris and I stay together. I am always right behind his shoulder as we move from position to position. Our lines move in a circle around the Omega forces. We surround them from all sides, boxing them into our circle of fire.
It is a technique that we once used when we were fighting Omega in the hills of Squaw Valley and the smaller Central Valley farm towns like Sanger and Dinuba. We are so well camouflaged that Omega can barely see us as we move from point to point. It must seem as if they’re being attacked by ghosts.
If they only knew how much they outnumber us.
An Omega soldier manages to worm his way to the front of the enemy line and charge forward, evading gunfire for a few moments. He is very young — almost childlike in his appearance. I am kneeling behind the trunk of a tree, reloading my weapon. I see him coming. He is holding his gun carelessly, a wild look in his eyes. I know that look. It is the expression of someone who knows they are about to lose a fight.
He sees me behind the tree. I am the first person to make eye contact with him. I snap my rifle into my shoulder but he is faster than me. He is crazed with terror and the knowledge that he is about to die.
That is the difference between us: he doesn’t care.
He squeezes the trigger on his automatic weapon. A sputtering of gunfire hits the tree right above my head, tearing pieces of bark off the trunk, tossing splinters into the air like confetti.
I duck down, flinching. I fire off a couple of shots, hitting him twice in the shoulder. He jerks backward and rolls into the brush. He crawls on his stomach. His weapon is out of reach, his teeth are gritted in pain. Blood seeps from the sides of his mouth. I drop to my hands and knees and grab the butt of his weapon, bringing it to my feet, away from his grip.
I will not shoot him again. He will die. My job is done.
“Cassidy!”
Uriah sprints to my area of cover from a few yards away. He stops on the other side of Chris, who is methodically and calmly finishing off the front lines of Omega’s defenses.
“Manny’s here!” Uriah yells.
“GOOD!”
I have been worried about Manny, and even more confused that he shares the last name as Elle, the girl with the bomb dog. It ran through my head that they could possibly be related… but on the other hand, lots of people have the last name of Costas. That doesn’t mean anything.
But what did Elle say to me on the train ride to Monterey?
I was at a ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains. My Uncle’s place, after the EMP. I went back afterwards… it was empty. He was gone. Everything I thought I knew was changed. That fast.
Was it possible…?
Bam!
I hit the tree chest first, the wind knocked out of my lungs. I collapse on the ground, ears ringing. I look down at my body, scanning for injuries. My armored vest has not been pierced. I don’t see anything. But I feel it.
My hip is screaming with pain. It feels like it’s on fire.
Chris is instantly by my side. He fires off his gun and I turn. The dying trooper on the ground is gripping a handgun. There is now a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
“You’ve been shot,” Chris says.
I touch my hip. Hot blood seeps through the material of my pants. I probe the wound with my fingers, flinching.
“I don’t think it hit bone!” I yell over the noise. “It’s just a scratch!”
“Are you sure?” Chris asks.
“I’ll let you know when I need to get carried off on a stretcher!”
I kiss his cheek and force myself into a kneeling position. My hip is throbbing, but it’s not unbearable. The adrenaline of warfare will keep the pain at a minimum for now. I tear my medic bandage off my vest and slap it on my hip, sealing the wound up. It’s only skin deep. I should be fine.
We continue this pattern, pushing and shooting and moving until there are no survivors. Until there is nothing but the sound of weapons being checked and the heaving breaths of tired soldiers.
Sweat runs down the sides of my face, plastering my clothes and my hair to my skin. I lick my lips, dry and cracked. I taste blood in my mouth — I must have bitten my cheek during the fight, concentrating on hitting my marks.
I turn to Chris. The jarring thought that occurred to me before the beginning of this battle is back, demanding attention.
“Chris,” I say. “This doesn’t make sense.”
Chris takes a drink of water from his canteen. The Lieutenants are sweeping the area, checking for any survivors. Putting down anyone who is left alive.
“What?” he breathes.
“Two hundred here, three hundred there,” I say, shaking my head. “This isn’t enough to take over a city. This is a distraction.”
Chris looks at me. I can tell by the way he closes the lid on his canteen that this is a thought that he has had, too, but he said nothing. It does no good to upset the nerves of your troops right before a battle, after all.