I sleep like a rock until I feel something tugging at my hair.
I slap it away and roll to the side, coming face to face with Isabel’s blue eyes.
“Wake up,” she grins. “You overslept. Like, a lot.”
I sit up and rub the grit out of my eyes.
“What time is it?”
“Who cares? Everybody’s eating breakfast already.”
I muss my hair with my hands, sniffing my jacket. Ugh. Smells like smoke.
“Do I look as nasty as I feel?” I ask.
“Worse.” Isabel jumps to her feet. “But that’s okay. I still like you.”
“Thanks.”
I stand up and follow her outside. Mrs. Young and some other women in the camp are working on serving breakfast to the army waiting in line to be fed. I stand and stare at the scene for a second. There has never been such a ragtag bunch of fighting men and women in history.
Well…recent history, that is.
Chris is already eating at a makeshift table with Derek and Max. He gives me a wave, signaling for me to join them. After I’ve grabbed some food, I head over, but not before I catch a glimpse of Harry hiding out in the corner of camp again. He’s talking to a recruit I’ve never seen before, and their conversation doesn’t last long. A sour expression flashes across Harry’s face as he walks away, his eyes briefly flicking up to mine. I half expect him to stick his tongue out at me, but instead he just levels his gaze and stands up, stalking away. No doubt searching for a more suitable dark hole to crawl into and mope.
How inspiring.
“Morning,” Chris greets. “Sleep good?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
Derek has an empty bowl in his lap as he sizes me up.
“Nice work, Hart,” he says, giving me a casual salute. “You’re a good shot.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, impressive,” Max agrees, taking a drink of water. “We would have gotten out of there without too many losses if Alexander hadn’t screwed up at the end and rushed those guards.”
“Freaking Alexander Ramos,” Derek mutters.
“He won’t do it again,” Chris says.
They look at him in silence.
“He won’t. He’s set in his ways, but he’s not stupid. He’s a good soldier.” Chris sighs. “All in all, last night was a very successful mission. Omega’s scrambling right now. They have no idea what just hit them.”
As I sit there and listen to them talking, I get a flashback of myself crouched on the floor of the empty storage facility at Kamaneva’s labor camp. I was waiting to be executed. I was going to die. I shouldn’t be thinking about this right now, but I can’t help it. Near death experiences have a way of sticking with you.
I etched my name into that wall. That little building will never forget me.
Will people remember who we are a hundred years from now? How will this war end up? Will we win? Will we lose? Will they even have a name for us in the history books…or will we be a depressing footnote in a teacher’s notebook?
“We need a motto or something,” I say suddenly.
“Excuse me?” Derek asks.
“You know. In the movies guerilla warfighters always have, like, a can of spray paint that they use to write their names over all the stuff they’ve destroyed or conquered from their enemies.” I gaze up at the trees, thinking. “We need to leave something behind for Omega to find. Something that tells them exactly who they’re dealing with. Something that people can remember us by.”
“She’s right,” Chris agrees, his lips curving into a smile. “Half the battle is creating an image. Psychological warfare. Omega will learn to be afraid of us.”
“So what’s it going to be?” Derek asks.
“I thought we were the Free Army,” Max shrugs.
“We are.” I take a bite of my food. “We need something short but dangerous. Something easy for Omega to say, you know? Something powerful.”
“How about the tigers?” Sophia suggests, plopping down beside me. “That was the mascot for the basketball team at the school where Kamaneva set up the labor camp.”
“Well… that’s good, but not quite,” I reply. “We’re not tigers. We’re…” I close my eyes. “We’re like Minute Men or something.”
“How about The Resistance?” Derek says.
“Almost.”
I don’t know yet. I’ll have to give this some serious thought. If Omega’s going to be seeing a lot more of us, they need a name that they’ll know and recognize instantly. Something that will scare them. Something that they’ll be forced to respect. The Free Army is good, but… we need something else.
As the day passes, Chris gathers everybody together and gives us a recap of what went down last night, also known as a mission debrief. He congratulates us all on a job well done and tells us what we could have done better. He talks about how Alexander rushed the guards at the end, and how we all need to avoid sacrificing unnecessary lives if we can avoid it. He talks about improving our aim and making sure we don’t break cover too soon.
“We need more ammunition and clothing for the fifty new recruits we picked up last night,” he says. “This can be our next opportunity to strike Omega and get the supplies we need at the same time. If we can keep our troops fed and clothed, there’s no reason we can’t be a serious threat to Omega’s forces.”
Those of us who have been trained by Chris and his team are supposed to start helping the newbies that we liberated from the labor camp last night learn the basics of fighting. That means I get to teach other people how to shoot.
Oh, yes. The hunted really have becomes the hunters.
It will be a few weeks before the new recruits are ready to go out and fight, but we don’t want the sting of our attack to be forgotten by Omega. We need to hit them again.
“Omega regularly sends patrols into this area here,” he says one day, indicating an area on a map being held up by a couple of militiamen. “On the east side of Dunlap, about thirty-eight miles out of Fresno — about ten miles from where we are right now. Those patrols are well armed. We could use more weapons and ammo. I say we hit the patrol.”
“I say we do, too,” Max agrees, folding up the map.
“Me too,” I agree.
“I’m coming too,” Jeff says, looking like his brother as he stands up, hands balled into fists. “I’m not staying behind this time.”
Chris doesn’t answer. In truth, Jeff should be out on the front lines with all of us. He knows how to handle a weapon. He’s eighteen years old, strong, healthy and willing to fight. I just know better than anybody else that Chris would never forgive himself if something happened to his little brother. But Chris isn’t stupid, either. We need every able-bodied men and woman on the front lines, fighting this war. Jeff is more than capable.
Chris nods. “We’ll talk,” he says quietly.
Everybody knows how Chris feels about keeping his family out of the firing line. I don’t blame him. I don’t want anybody in the Young family to get hurt, either. They’re all I have. My dad is missing — who knows if I’ll ever see him again? I’d like to hang onto whatever I’ve got left.
And so would Chris.
I do a lot of sneaking around. It’s cool and dark right now. The moon is shrouded by drifting clouds. We’ve left the pickups and trucks about five miles away. I’m following Chris through tall grass, and we’re nearing the main highway. A lump forms in my throat. Dunlap is more wide open than I was expecting.