I have to shake myself to move, too. The first explosion is always a surprise, no matter how many times I go through one. Chris goes deeper into the ditch and I follow him, surprised to see Jeff coming towards us.

“Get back to your platoon!” Chris barks.

“You’re going to want to see this,” Jeff replies, ignoring his order.

Mortar round number two explodes, this time a lot closer to the ditch than I’m comfortable with. I throw my arm out to keep my balance. My ears start ringing. The smell of burnt soil and metal sizzles through the air.

Yeah. All too familiar.

“Get back to your post, Jeff,” Chris commands, turning to a soldier kneeling on the ground with a radio. “Or take your issues up with Cassidy.”

Oh, so I’m a mediator now?

“Come on, Cassie,” Jeff says. “You need to see this.”

“This isn’t the time to get sentimental!” I reply.

Mortar round number three detonates somewhere in the distance, too far away for me to see. I grimace. It’s like Omega is reaching out with their feelers, trying to figure out exactly where we are. Reconnaissance fire, Chris would call it.

The look on Jeff’s face is serious. Alarmed, even.

I follow him up the side of the ditch, ducking into the undergrowth of weeds and bushes. His platoon and vehicle convoy is a few hundred feet back. To my surprise, Sophia is standing at the rear of a vehicle, arms crossed. Staring at a screen of some sort.

“What is that?” I ask. “It looks like a laptop.”

“It’s a thermographic camera,” Sophia replies, avoiding eye contact. “It gives us a heat reading of what’s coming our way.”

“Where’s the camera itself?” I ask.

“Hidden farther down the interstate,” Jeff replies, frowning. “It’s one of several that Alexander’s scouting team was planting when they came under fire.”

Oh.

Sophia’s face is stony as I step next to her and look at the screen. After all this time, using electronic gadgets seems strange, but if they give us the edge we need, why not?

The screen is a seething mass of red and yellow.

“What is all this?” I ask. “It looks like drunk radar.”

“It’s people,” he replies. “Thermography picks up the body heat of living things. That wave of color right there? That’s the wave of soldiers on foot just around the corner. They’ve got tanks and artillery up front. RPGs, and mortars. We’re so outnumbered it’s not even funny.”

“We knew we would be outnumbered,” I state.

“But this is insane. Their weaponry is so advanced.”

“We’ve got plenty of our own weaponry. That’s why we joined the National Guard.” I pause. “We can do this.”

As if to mock me, something bright and flaming streaks through the air above us. I stop what I’m doing and stare at it, realizing a second too late what it is. Artillery fire, blind fire from troops miles away.

Thankfully, the blast doesn’t hit anybody on our front lines, but these blows are getting dangerously closer. Way too close. They must have spotters hiding in the brush, giving map coordinates to the big guns. Our snipers should have taken them out by now.

A disturbing thought occurs to me then.

I take off through the brush, sliding down the side of the ditch, ignoring the rungs on the ladder. “Chris!” I curl my fingers around his forearm, focusing his full attention on me. “Listen. Omega isn’t even here yet, and they’re already hitting us? That’s not normal, right?”

“If you have a theory—”

“—Yes, I do.” I lower my voice slightly. “Remember when we were going through Bakersfield the first time? Just you and me? There was Omega troops there and other people. Mercenaries.” I let my words sink in for a moment before continuing. “What if we underestimated Omega’s number? What if our scouts were wrong and there are way more than five thousand troops coming our way? If Omega is using mercenaries to supplement their ground troops…” I trail off, noting the look of hardened resolve in Chris’s eyes.

“If you’re right,” he says, “then we need to pull back and reassess. We were prepared for five thousand, not ten thousand or anything more.”

Another mortar round. Another blast of artillery fire.

“That thermo graphic camera they’re looking at in Jeff’s platoon isn’t showing us everything,” I say. “Omega’s not stupid. They can find ways to cloak their numbers.”

Chris sets his jaw.

“We’ll hold our position here a little bit longer. If things go—”

His words are drowned out. A ball of flames streaks right into the ditch. It happens in slow motion. I see what’s going to happen before it even does. A group of men dive for cover as Chris throws his arm around my waist, pushing me behind him. We drop to the ground. All I feel from that point on is a wall of pressure. Like getting sacked by a three hundred pound linebacker. I can’t breathe, I feel heat and thousands of tiny fingers tear at my skin.

Chris is shielding my body with his. I squeeze my eyes shut, nothing but the harsh ripping sound of the explosion turning to a high pitched ringing — and then silence. After a few beats — minutes, perhaps seconds — I barely manage to lift my head off the ground. Dust and smoke permeate the ditch, turning me almost blind. I can’t hear anything. I am deaf to the world around me. Something hot and wet slicks down the sides of my neck. Blood. My eardrums have burst. Chris rolls into a crouch, looking far more balanced than I feel. His neck is covered in blood, too.

“Pull back!” he mouths.

I rise to my feet and fall back down, my legs shaky. My heart is pumping way too fast. I’m dizzy, and as I stumble to the side of the ditch, I fall over the dead body of one of our own. His body is twisted at an unnatural angle, the side of his face burned, skin sliding off bone. I have never seen anything so horrifying. I gag and fight the urge to vomit.

“Pull back!” I yell. I can’t hear my own voice, and that is somehow the most disturbing thing about this situation. “Pull back!”

Dear God. How did they get so close?

They must have sent mercenaries ahead of the troops in small enough forces to go undetected and unnoticed, slip behind our lines and cause insane chaos. Disrupt our organization.

Stop thinking, just move! I tell myself.

I can feel the detonations of other mortar rounds. Our men are slowly pulling back, but in my opinion, leaving the ditch could be more deadly than staying. The ditch is what’s keeping us from being fried as mortars explode around the hillside.

Even as these thoughts pass through my head, I look up and catch glimpses of movement in the grassy hillside to the sides of the ditch. Air support is already streaking through the air, our Blackhawks moving like hulking, airborne ships, keeping the enemy ground forces from getting too close.

“They’re ambushing us!” I yell, as if anyone can actually hear me.

Or maybe ambush isn’t the correct term. Maybe guerilla warfare are the words I’m searching for. Because that’s what’s happening, isn’t it? These small Omega mercenary forces are using our own tactics against us.

I hadn’t counted on this.

I’m sure other people did, but honestly, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Just like we weren’t supposed to get ambushed in Sanger during our last attack.

The influx of the mercenary forces makes it impossible for us to stay here. Our soldiers start pulling back, scrambling up the side of the ditch, ducking into the undergrowth, running back towards the platoons ensconced in the safety of the vehicle convoys. I climb up the ditch, too, stopping at the top to see where Chris is. In true leadership form, he’s waiting until the last soldier is out of the hole until he climbs up. My heart seizes in my chest as he makes his way towards me. I pray that he’ll make it to the top.

Please, please, please…

He does.