There’s a first time for everything.

It’s getting stuffy fast back here, and as the doors continue to slam and militiamen and women keep piling into the trucks, I suddenly wish Chris were here. As our commander, he’s in the lead Humvee with Angela. I chose to stay with the Freedom Fighters in the transport trucks. I didn’t want to leave Sophia alone.

But I’d rather be with Chris.

The convoy roars to life. The trucks roll forward, diesel engines roaring to life, spitting strong fumes, the hard suspension of the vehicles hitting every pothole in the road with a bang. It jars my teeth. With nothing but dark walls and human faces to stare at, the jerking, rocking motion of the truck is enough to make me seriously carsick.

I am aware of the exact second we cross Camp Freedom’s boundary line. The convoy speeds up, reaching the amazing speed of 15 miles per hour. Sophia and I share a sad, meaningful glance.

“Goodbye, Camp Freedom,” I whisper.

She nods, tears glistening in her eyes. But she doesn’t cry.

If Vera overhears me she doesn’t say anything. She just sits silently, her lips pressed together in a thin line. Maybe leaving the camp is just as hard for her as it is for me. I don’t know. At least she didn’t have to leave her mother behind.

Goodbye, Dad…

Goodbye everything.

The central valley is something I haven’t seen in a long time. After being a guerilla war fighter in the high mountains and foothills for months, the open space of farmland is disorienting. Everything is wide, bright and magnified. The trees are spaced far apart. No more pines, cedars or lodge poles. No more scent of mountains, of forest.

This is just hot. Heat and dryness. And stillness, as if the land itself is waiting for something patiently.

Orchards line the side of the road we take to Fresno. Most of the trees are dead. With no water and no farmers to care for them, they’ve been killed in the summer heat. The fruit basket of the world is looking pretty fruitless, even with all of the slave labor Omega is using — or was using — to harvest crops and get food to their invasion forces.

I realize that this is one of the first signs of weakness I’ve seen from Omega. If they had a firmer grip on the central valley, this farmland would be utilized. With a Chinese army on the way, they’ll need food and water. And I’m not seeing a lot of that today.

Good news for us, bad news for them.

We hit the outskirts of Fresno in about three hours. The roads that the convoy takes are backcountry dirt avenues and boulevards woven between abandoned orchards and farming property. Colonel Rivera gave very specific instructions and coordinates that allow navigation through enemy territory without being spotted by scouts. We hope.

Growing up in Culver City, I didn’t have much of a reason to travel north to a place like Fresno unless I was visiting relatives or going on a school field trip. It looks nothing like I remember. As we roll into town, I look out the back of the truck, studying the scenery as we flash by. Gas stations, strip malls and cracked asphalt. Dead trees. The foul stink of long-burning fires eating through piles of rubble. Fast food restaurants with shattered windows and broken doors. Billboards covered with bright, vulgar graffiti.

Not the most beautiful tourist hotspot in the world.

“It’s not right,” Sophia mutters.

“What’s not right?” I ask.

“This. Being out of the trees. In the open.” She shakes her head. “I don’t like being exposed. It makes me nervous.”

“We’re all nervous,” I reply. “We’ll adjust.” I smile with confidence I don’t have, then change the subject. “You know, my dad and I used to take vacations up to our cabin in the mountains. We’d stay up there during the summer and then go back to Culver City. It took me a few days to adjust to all the cement and pollution in the city after being up in the wilderness for so long. This is like that.”

“It’s a lot different,” Vera says suddenly. “Because this isn’t like coming back from vacation. This is just going from one warzone to the next.”

I meet her cold, blue-eyed gaze.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I answer.

“If you only had a brain,” Sophia adds, and we both stifle laughter. Vera flushes bright red and curses us under her breath. Ticked? Maybe. But she had it coming.

And that’s all we say. I’m in no mood to get into a pointless argument with the ice queen today. Besides, we’re almost there. Even against the pale moonlit sky I can make out street signs still hanging from rusty streetlights. Just a few more minutes.

Our convoy rumbles ahead, never stopping. Never hesitating.

“We’re here,” I say.

“The linkup point?” Sophia asks.

“Yeah.” I stand up, walking to the rear of the truck. I step onto the back gate and stand there, one arm on the truck wall to keep my balance. The outriders on motorcycles and quads buzz past us, checking point and flanks for danger. I know that Manny is somewhere high above us, watching for danger from his vantage point in the sky. “Standby,” I say, turning to Sophia.

The truck is slowing down. Not too much. But enough. “Just stay put.”

A convoy of National Guard vehicles and troops are waiting at the far edge of a former Wal-Mart. The parking lot is a sea of dead vehicles. Weeds are growing through cracks in the pavement and sidewalk. Our outriders on the small vehicles roar back and forth in front of us, giving us the all-clear to move ahead. From here I can see the lead Humvee that holds Chris and Angela blazing the path for the rest of our vehicles. Our convoy heads straight towards the National Guard forces behind the building.

I keep a firm grip on the truck’s handholds, praying under my breath that we’ll make it to the base in one piece. We’ve been safe so far… but that doesn’t mean something couldn’t go wrong from here to there. I hold my standing position, unable to force myself to sit on the bench and stare at the wall until we get there. I need to know where we are.

After a steady ten minutes of following the National Guard forces, we pull away from the city a bit, staging on the outskirts of town. There are empty fields here, clustered with half-built construction sites and scattered debris.

Up ahead, a chain-link fence stands around a burned out building marked Poison Control Center. The back of the edifice has been blown up. Black smudge lines the cement. There’s not a lot of glass left in the structure.

The convoy slows to a crawl while a heavy steel gate swings open. We follow the lead vehicles to the rear of the building. The road slopes, dipping into an underground parking garage. The door rolls up just enough to fit the vehicles under the ceiling. The sound of the engines echoing off the walls is deafening.

And then, without warning, there’s a blast from a siren — three times. The convoy halts. I help the guards unlatch the truck’s tailgate. Militiamen and women leave the transport quickly, eager to stretch their legs.

Vera gets up, wordlessly hands me my backpack, and leaves the truck. I swing it over my shoulder, wondering why she bothered to hand me anything, and wait for Sophia. We stick close to each other, and I’m vaguely reminded of being rounded up out of a semi-truck not so long ago when I was imprisoned in a labor camp with Sophia...I look at her and she gives me a halfhearted smile.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” she says.

“We’ve been through this before.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“At least we’re not enslaved this time.”

“Never again.”

We’re here by choice. When I step off the truck, my boots hit blackened cement. The ceiling is high above us. About two stories high, actually. Pipes and support beams wind their way across the ceiling. We’re inside what looks like a giant garage, lit by white lights powered by generators. Our men are leaving the vehicles, looking around the place with dazed expressions on their faces.