Sophia and I take our stuff back to our tent and start messing around with it. I rip the Omega patch off the sleeve of the uniform from the dead trooper and replace it with a blue armband. I look over the gun and ammunition, checking our supplies. Even though we got our hands on a lot of stuff, it won’t be enough to last for long. The militia is growing every day. We need more weapons, more ammo, more food, more water and of course, more space.

All of these people bring lots of extra noise, so Chris is thinking about moving our basecamp farther into the mountains. There are pros and cons to that idea. On the plus side, we’ll have more freedom to practice training and indulge in little things like campfires because there won’t be as much of a chance that we’ll be spotted by enemies. On the negative side, we’ll be farther away from Omega hotspots, therefore conducting raids and ambushes will be a longer process because we’ll have to travel farther. Long-range patrols could keep us in the loop about Omega activities while the rest of our forces pull back deeper into the mountains.

In the end, I think safety will win over distance. But there’s always the option of breaking down our forces into smaller camps. I’m not too crazy about that idea, though. I’d prefer to keep our militia together.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” Sophia asks me, picking at her commandeered uniform.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re actually killing people, Cassidy,” she replies, looking up. Her lower lip is trembling. “Are we doing the right thing?”

I fold my hands in the center of my lap.

“It’s kill or be killed. Nothing’s like it used to be,” I say slowly, picturing the dead and dying on the battlefield. “It’s not like we have a choice.”

“But why are we doing it?”

“Who else is going to? It’s our duty to protect our home.” I sigh. “It’s just the way things are. If we don’t fight back, Omega will kill us all. Especially now that we’ve been attacking them. We’re playing offense and defense. They’ve been murdering and enslaving people left and right. We can’t get caught up in our emotions. Either we put up a fight or we let them eat us alive. It’s simple.”

Sophia takes a deep breath.

“But what if this is all for nothing?” she says. “What if we do all of this fighting and sacrificing and Omega still wins? Because if they’re really a huge army with help from places like Russia or China or whatever, we’re kind of screwed, aren’t we? When we were at the labor camp, they were having us harvest food for something big. You said they were getting ready to bring in more troops.” She looks me straight in the eye. “And then Mrs. Young said the big cities have been attacked with chemical weapons, and the rumors about a nuclear bomb on the east coast may or may not be true. How do we stand a chance against an army with that kind of power?”

I run my hands through my hair.

“We’re motivated.”

“And they’re not?”

“We actually have something worth fighting for.”

“What?”

“Freedom.”

She makes a face.

“How many people have said that,” she says, “and then died?”

“Millions.” I stand up, dusting the dirt off my pants. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather die for, though. I’d rather die fighting than hiding in a hole somewhere. Or in some disgusting labor camp.”

Sophia slowly nods.

“I guess so.”

“You guess so?” I hold out my arms. “Sophia, look around you! We were enslaved together, remember? Kamaneva almost executed me on the front sidewalk of an elementary school. That’s not normal, is it? We’re fighting for normalcy. We’re fighting for what we lost. I think that’s a worthy cause, don’t you?”

She rises to her feet, and when she speaks, I can tell she’s trying to avoid crying. “It is worthy,” she whispers. “You’re right. I just…sometimes I think I can’t do this another day.”

“We all feel like that.” I wrap my arms around her neck and pull her into a hug. “Nobody said fighting a war was going to be easy.”

“They sure didn’t. Your boyfriend makes it sound like a walk in the park.”

“He does not,” I laugh. “He just knows how to inspire people.”

We turn to watch him. He’s standing on the other side of the camp. His muscular arms are folded across his chest, his hair pulled into a tight ponytail. He’s listening intently to what one of the soldiers is saying. After a few beats of silence, he responds, pats him on the back, and moves on to the next person waiting to speak with him.

“He’s becoming quite a leader,” Sophia remarks.

I feel myself smiling.

“Yeah, he is.”

The truth is, we’ve all changed. We’ve all matured. We’ve all seen things that have forced us to grow up. It will bring out the best in some of us. In others, it will bring out the worst. But when it comes right down to it, at the end of the day, we’re all on the same team.

We’re all fighting to get our freedom back.

And that’s when the name hits me.

Freedom Fighters.

If anybody would have told me seven months ago that I would be spending my college years as a guerilla warfighter with freaking Rambo as my boyfriend, I would have said they were crazy. But life is weird like that. And considering the fact that everybody’s lives have been turned inside out by the effects of the EMP and the invasion of America, everything’s been on a whole different level of weird.

Weird on steroids.

It’s July now, and the heat is brutal. There have been days when the hundred-degree weather is torture. It’s hard to keep cool. The only thing we can do is stay in the shelter of the trees during the day and move around at night. We’ve been consistently hitting Omega where it hurts: convoys, supply depots, anything and everything that will effect their ability to feed their troops or keep their morale up. This is not just a game of firepower. It’s a game of mind over matter. Which one of us is more motivated to win?

We’ve relocated our camp to a higher elevation. It’s easier to keep hidden when we’re farther away from the valley, anyway. And since Omega is constantly combing through the area searching for our “headquarters,” we constantly change the location of our camp, too. If we stay in one place for too long, we’ll be found.

The Free Army — or the Freedom Fighters, as we’ve come to be called — have become pretty well known in the area. Our forces have expanded. We’ve got a few hundred people in our ranks now, and Chris is becoming an impressive leader. He’s logical, fair and knowledgeable. People trust him.

I’ve become something different, too. Instead of just running with the pack, I work with Derek, Max, Alexander and Chris to train the new recruits. I’ve got responsibilities. I’ve got people who look to me for advice.

I never thought I’d see that day.

Despite the fact that our army is made up completely of volunteers — most of which are civilians who have never been in a fight in their lives — we’re well organized. Chris goes to a lot of trouble to train the new recruits, and to keep the older ones’ skills sharpened. Ever since the day Chris almost killed Harry Lydell, I’ve been painfully aware of the fact that all it takes is one wrong move to turn organization into murder. It’s easy to think that all you have to do is get a bunch of people together and fight the bad guys, but it’s not that simple.

It requires structure.

Chris is the head honcho in this camp, something along the lines of a mini-general, but he makes few decisions without consulting his officers first, which would be Derek, Max and Alexander, who are all platoon leaders. They each command a force of about thirty to fifty fighting men and women. I’m not in charge of a platoon, but I am in charge of training the new recruits. Yup, the “newbies” are all mine. I teach them the basics, go with them on missions and make sure everybody is doing their job. We work as a team, so we basically go on a majority vote. Everybody has a say in everything that goes on at the basecamp.