Mercy (The Last Army Book 1) (21 page)

We travelled eastward on the Long Island Expressway for almost an hour, riding the relatively smooth green area in the middle until we reached a large, triangular outlet mall, no more than two thousand feet north of a small lake. Martin slowed down as we neared the settlement. It didn’t take long for me to see why, as several armed men took aim at us from the rooftops of the stores.

The stores—which acted as a defensive wall—enclosed a spacious parking lot filled from end to end with hundreds of makeshift tents. Three rows of cars had been placed at the mall’s entrance to seal the perimeter, laid out in such a way that it was necessary to zigzag around them to enter the settlement. I didn’t fail to notice a car outside with a piece of white fabric tied to the antenna.

“What do you want?” a bearded man asked from behind the first row of cars as Martin parked the motorcycle in front of him. He didn’t aim his shotgun at us, but still pumped in a shell. Two men behind the barricade covered him, as well as several others on the rooftops.

“We’ve got some fresh venison we’re looking to trade,” Martin said, kicking down the motorcycle’s stand. He got off the bike and carried the box with the meat to the bearded man. He studied Martin and me for a few seconds—his eyes shielded by aviator sunglasses—and grabbed a parcel. The man opened it and took a long, deep whiff. He laughed, patting his considerable belly.

“Maybe this will add some flavor to the hot water that passes for soup around here. Sorry for the rude welcome, but since the army boys have left us to fend for ourselves, we’ve been hit pretty hard by those raiders sneaking in by boat.”

“At least the army’s keeping those monsters at bay,” Martin said, taking the box back. “People are much easier to kill.”

“Yeah, thank God for small favors, I guess. Hey, Bob! Show our visitors to the kitchen, all right?” The bearded man shouted to a scrawny guy behind the third row of cars.

Without a word, the man approached us, pulling his baseball cap lower over his forehead as he walked out of the shadow and into the punishing summer sun. He took the box from Martin with a squinted glance and walked away. The bearded man patted Bob on the back and signaled for us to follow him.

Bob marched ahead of us through the narrow alleys separating the blocks of tents and shacks that made up the camp. The simpler ones consisted of little more than a plastic sheet held in place by rocks, bridging the gap between two parked cars, but a few had more elaborate building materials like planks of wood and sheet metal. People dressed in dirty, tattered clothes stared at us from inside the tents and shacks. The stench of festering garbage was heavy in the air.

“Are all of the eastern settlements so awful?” I whispered, nudging Martin’s side. Creepy pastor or not, New Jerusalem seemed downright heavenly by comparison. I thanked God I hadn't succeeded in dragging Karla along with me.

“Looks like the place has gotten a lot more crowded recently,” Martin whispered. “The raider activity over here must be worse than I thought.”

One of the larger shacks caught my attention. About twenty children had gathered inside, sitting on a carpet, while a young, blond woman stood in front of them, reading from a children’s bible. Two college-aged guards stood outside the shack, armed with rifles—white armbands pinned to their shirts.

The young woman brushed hair back, and I caught a glimpse of Amy’s smiling face.

“Oh, crap.” I shuffled around Martin to hide myself from her.

“What is it?”

“Those guys… they’re from New Jerusalem,” I said, my body growing cold despite the afternoon heat.

“Huh. So they’re reaching out to other settlements. That’s nice.” Martin looked at the shack.

Yeah… scavenging for souls instead of supplies.

Bob looked over his shoulder at us. I smiled at him—perhaps too eagerly—and he quickened his pace toward a large, cube-shaped building sticking out in the middle of the sea of makeshift structures. Once we got close enough, I realized the place was a food court, its rows and rows of identical tables visible through cracked glass doors. We kept walking around the building until we reached the loading area for the food court’s miniature restaurants. An old man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt greeted us from behind a table at the entrance, fanning himself with a clipboard. He was listening to Brother Tim’s broadcast on a small radio on the table, next to a cash box.

Bob finally broke his silence. “Hey, Stan. These people have brought some venison and are looking to trade.” He placed the cardboard box on the table.

Stan shut the radio off and unpackaged the meat cuts. He placed them on a scale—it indicated close to forty pounds—and wrote on his clipboard. While he was doing this, a couple of men in hunting attire walked into the place and filed up behind us. They each carried a shotgun in one hand and a dead duck in the other. Stan opened the cash box and extracted three crisp twenty-dollar bills.

“Here you go,” Stan said, sliding the money across the table to us.

“Are you serious? What are we supposed to do with this, play Monopoly?” I inspected the bills. They’d been marked with a blue stamp from one of the restaurants.

“You can use that money in any of our lovely stores,” Stan said, and chuckled. “I’m actually being a little generous, but you have to appreciate it when people bring us food that’s ready to cook. It shows that they care.” He gave the pair of hunters behind us—and their feathered ducks—a pointed look.

“Oh… okay, then. Thanks.” I pocketed the money.

“Tell me what store you’d like to visit, and I’ll open it for you,” Bob said.

We walked for a few minutes in front of the outlet stores lining the settlement. Several letters spelling out the stores’ names on the façade had fallen off during the earthquake, but it wasn’t hard to guess which store was which. I soon found a decent clothing store. The metallic curtains had been closed over the entrance, but Bob extracted a heavy bundle of keys from his pocket and read the small tags on each of them until he found the right one. He crouched with a little difficulty and unlocked the steel curtain. Martin helped him raise it. Bob grunted his thanks.

“Go ahead,” he said, looking at me. “But don’t take too long—I’m needed at my post.”

I peered inside. “It’s kinda dark in there.” Only the light coming in from the entrance illuminated the warehouse-like store, leaving most of it shrouded in darkness. Bob sighed and rummaged inside his pockets.

“Okay, here you go.” He handed me a small keychain flashlight with a couple of keys still attached—probably the ones to his home. I switched it on and stepped inside, sweeping the pale yellow beam around the store.

Specks of dust danced in the air. Half-empty shelves and racks stood on the fractured polished-concrete floor. Shattered roof tiles had been swept up into little mounds next to naked white mannequins. I felt like an explorer raiding an ancient tomb. I couldn’t help but imagine the steel curtain slamming shut behind me and the miniature flashlight flickering out until there was only darkness… followed by glowing demonic eyes.

Fortunately, the place was an outlet store rather than an Egyptian pyramid, so even in the relative darkness, I found my way around with ease. The male mannequins at my right suggested that the women’s area was on my left, so I changed my course, and before long I stumbled upon a pile of women’s jeans lying on a table. Most of them were skinny jeans—great for hanging out with friends or for a casual date, but not so much for a slog through the woods. It took me almost ten minutes to find a pair of plain dark jeans in my size. I decided to look elsewhere for more clothes.

I soon came upon a wall rack and found a few pairs of earth-toned pants still left between the rows of empty hangers. They turned out to be cargo pants, made out of thick, sturdy fabric. Given their slightly masculine cut, it wasn’t surprising to see that they’d been on sale—two for the price of one—but I was guessing they were popular with post-apocalyptic shoppers. I managed to find two pairs in my size—one mossy green and the other dark sienna—before Bob’s heavy footsteps echoed in the store.

“I thought I told you not to take too long. Are you done yet?”

“Pretty much. I just need to find a couple of shirts.”

“Let me see that.” Bob reached for the pants I’d picked out. I handed them over, and he checked the price tag. “You’re going to have to put one of these back.” I hadn’t even glanced at the price tags. The cargo pants had been marked up considerably, the new price marked in red pen—obviously after the earthquake.

“Oh, but… these pants are on special. Two for one.” I illuminated the bright-yellow sign over the rack where I'd found the pants.

For the first time since we’d met, Bob laughed. It wasn’t exactly a torrent of raucous laughter, but it was obvious that for a second he forgot about the huge shit sandwich that life had served all of us.

“All right, fine,” he said and then tore the sign off.

***

With the cardboard box gone and only my brand-new clothes strapped onto the back of the motorcycle as we rode back to the cabin, there was more than enough room for Martin and me to sit comfortably, but I still pressed my chest against his back, holding tightly onto his waist. The musky scent given off by him wasn’t too terrible, considering we’d spent the day hunting, and subsequently butchering, a deer.

“Are we dropping off some more food for those people tomorrow?” I screamed over the wind that rushed through my hair.

“That place is a little out of the way, Rebecca. To be honest, I hoped I could convince you to stay, but… I didn’t know things had gotten so bad over there. I guess I’m stuck with you.” He chuckled. I gently punched his side.

I felt a small pang of guilt over all those hungry refugees huddled in the outlet mall’s parking lot, but I didn’t press the issue. At least Martin had dropped his plan of making me move into some other settlement.

I did have some lingering doubts about how he’d gotten the cabin and the bike, but I pushed them aside. Sure, he might’ve done some bad things… but so had I. Killing Tommy, framing Mr. Forcellati, and even stepping over injured women and children as I escaped from the gym on the night of the attack on New Jerusalem… I’d done what I had to in order to survive.

I held on tighter to Martin, the feeling that things would only get worse weighing in my chest.

The demons had launched another assault. Exactly two weeks after their first attempt at wiping New Jerusalem from the map, the rumble of an incoming thunderstorm reached our cabin. The night sky lit up with distant flashes of artillery. Up until then, raiders had attacked the army’s perimeter around the city, but the army had never needed to resort to using artillery against them. The artillery strike could only mean a demon attack.

I stood all night by our radio—finally provided by Mr. Raj—listening to the broadcast from New Jerusalem as they reported on the demonic horde advancing toward the town, supported by thousands of raiders. Meanwhile, Martin rushed around the cabin, gathering ammunition and supplies—not to aid the townsfolk, but in case we had to flee further east.

Fortunately, he’d wasted his time. The troops stationed around the city checked the demonic offensive just five miles away from New Jerusalem, aided by almost two thousand members of the town’s militia under the command of—if the broadcast were to be believed—none other than Brother Tim.

The good news didn't last, though. Raiders from the mainland attacked more than a dozen settlements throughout the island just a few hours after the demonic thrust was beaten. The airport at which Mr. and Mrs. Raj lived at had been attacked for the first time right before dawn. Martin and I couldn’t help them, either. By the time the sun crested the horizon, the raiders had gone, taking valuable supplies and even vehicles with them.

***

Since we were dressed and ready by then, we decided we might as well go hunting. As I trudged next to Martin on the northern edge of the woods, the few coherent thoughts I could get through my pounding headache were centered on Karla. I was technically a runaway, so I couldn’t just stroll into town to check on her. I looked to the west. Even though the town had been saved, the thick smoke columns marking the battleground did little to put me at ease.

“You’re scaring all the game away with your stomping,” Martin said, looking at me, his eyes reduced to slits by the bags beneath them.

“So what?” I kicked away a rock. “We’ve got enough canned stuff to last us weeks, and we’re not exactly burning through our ammo by hunting defenseless animals, so we don’t need to trade for more anytime soon.”

Martin halted his march and grabbed my sleeve. “Listen, we couldn’t do anything for the people at the airport, and I didn’t stop you from dying for those narrow-minded pricks over at New Jerusalem, so stop being childish, okay?” His scowl deepened with every word.

“I know,” I said, yanking my sleeve free. “It’s just that…”

It's just that one of those narrow-minded pricks just happens to be my friend, you idiot.

Tears gathered in my eyes. I strode ahead before Martin could see them. That painful feeling of helplessness I'd had in New Jerusalem returned—the frustration of not being able to do anything beyond surviving. My stride turned into a sprint. I gasped for air to keep myself from sobbing.

The grass behind me rustled just as the highway at the edge of the woods came within sight. I turned back and found Martin dashing toward me. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve.

“What do you—?”

A scream rose in my chest as his coarse palm covered my mouth. Martin wrapped his left arm around me, pinning my arms to my body. I swung my knee at his thigh. Martin pressed his cheek against mine, his stubble scraping my flushed skin.

“Calm down. I’m not trying to hurt you. Listen…” He turned his gaze to the highway. I glared at him, flushing. All I could hear was my drumming heartbeat and birds singing.

“Don’t scream; I think it’s a truck,” Martin whispered, his breath hot on my ear. He peeled his hand off my mouth. “It’s too early for traders to go through here. Something’s going on. Let’s go check it out.”

We sprinted to the chain-link fence that ran between the woods and the highway. Our clothes blended perfectly with the bushes and vines growing along the fence. Covered by the trees’ thick shade, we became practically invisible.

Martin readied his hunting rifle as he stared down the highway. An engine’s grumbling approached from the east. I brushed aside the vine leaves and spotted a large white truck crawling in our direction. It had a strange ramp sticking over the cabin, as if for unloading from the front of the truck. Only when I noticed the airplane painted on the side of the bulky cargo box did I realized it was one of the airport’s catering vehicles.

“What the hell are those guys doing?” I whispered, wondering why the Indians at the airport would head in that direction.

“Wait a minute. Look who’s driving,” Martin whispered.

A couple of white guys sat in the front.

“It’s them. It’s the raiders.” I tracked the vehicle with my handgun. They’d probably taken a longer route to the shore to avoid ambushes, in case the survivors at the airport called for help. Given the way the truck idled along the road, it was safe to say they'd left the airport around the time it was attacked. “Cover me; I’m going for it.”

“Wait! Rebecca, don’t—”

I discharged half my clip at the truck’s windshield. Blood splattered across the fractured glass.

A cloud of birds scattered across the sky, the noise of their flight drowned out by the ringing in my ears. I climbed over the chain-link fence as the truck ground to a halt. Martin chased after me and signaled for me to hold my position while he flanked the truck.

Something moved inside the cabin. The passenger door swung open, and a man soaked in blood staggered out, clutching a rifle. I trained my gun on him just as a blurry shadow moved at the edge of my sight, to the right.

A bullet whizzed by my head. I froze, but the crack of Martin’s rifle as he shot the bloodied passenger jerked me back into the fight. I dove to the ground just as the raider who’d jumped out the back of the truck fired at me again. I lined my sights on his gut and squeezed the trigger. His rifle clattered on the pavement, and the raider clutched his stomach. I fired at him twice more as he went down.

Although the gun was not quite empty, I ejected my magazine and slapped on a fresh one before getting off the ground. I aimed again at the raider, who was choking on his own blood. Before I could finish him off, another raider darted from the truck and ran toward the trees on the other side of the highway. A long mane of dark blonde hair spilled out of her baseball cap as she fled. Martin hesitated to fire even though she held a rifle. I didn’t, though, and squeezed out three shots in quick succession. The woman let out a high-pitched shriek and slumped onto the highway. Chunks of pavement shot into the air as I kept firing at her crawling figure. Though I missed my shots, she soon stopped moving. A short red streak stained the pavement behind her.

The man I’d shot in the gut still floundered in agony, weeping and gurgling as he stretched out a hand toward his rifle. The image of the doe I’d wounded during my first hunting trip with Martin flashed before my eyes. Two shots through the chest ended the man’s suffering.

My shirt stuck to my back, drenched in sweat. I had an extra magazine in my belt and three more in the large pockets of my green cargo pants, but I hesitated to reload. Maybe the man and the woman were the only raiders watching over the supplies plundered from the Indians, but maybe more waited inside, ready to spill out like clowns out of a miniature car. I was about to riddle the whole cargo box with bullets when Martin stepped around it, aiming his rifle at whoever remained inside.

“Come out of there with your hands in the air—now!” he screamed, looking through his rifle’s sights.

Within seconds, a middle-aged man stepped out of the truck with his hands in the air. He had a samurai sword fastened to his belt as well as a black revolver holstered at his side. Combined with the camo pants and black tank top he was wearing, the weapons made him look like an evil henchman from a third-rate action flick. It would’ve been funny if I hadn't heard the sound of weeping coming from the back of the truck behind him.

I kept my gun aimed at the raider and slowly circled around him until I could see inside the cargo box. My heart skipped a beat once I made out three young Indian girls among the plundered supplies, their hands tied behind their backs. One of them whimpered at the end of the cargo box. Her torn white blouse was stained with blood. The other two cried over each other’s shoulders. Their clothes had also been ripped to shreds, baring their breasts. I leapt inside while Martin disarmed the captured raider and headed straight to the wounded girl.

She grimaced. Her cinnamon skin was drenched in sweat. She must’ve been around my age. The other girls, a little younger, tried to hide their bruised faces as they sobbed—apparently afraid of me.

“Y-you’re not one of them, are you?” the wounded girl stuttered, her jaw trembling.

“No, I’m a friend.” I showed her my empty hands. “My name’s Rebecca. What’s yours?”

“Esha,” she whispered.

“You’re going to be all right, Esha, okay? Everything’s going to be fine, so just hang in there for a second.” I tried to locate her wound.

Oh, shit.

A bullet had hit her shoulder—one of my bullets. A ray of sunlight filtered into the cargo box through a bullet-hole at the back of the truck’s cabin. I untied the girls and dragged one of the younger ones over to Esha.

“I need you to keep pressure on her wound,” I said, placing the girl’s trembling hand over it. “Just until we get her to a hospital, okay?” The girl nodded, her other arm over her bare chest. I dashed outside.

“Martin, we’ve got to take that girl to New Jerusalem, or she’s going to die.” I pointed inside the cargo box. “Oh God, she’s bleeding bad.”

“Keep an eye on this guy, and I’ll go take a look.” Martin jumped into the cargo box.

The stench of urine hit me as I approached the raider. A dark stain ran down from the crotch of his camo pants all the way to the ground, where he knelt. His hands were tied behind his back, the samurai sword and his revolver lying a few feet behind him. I picked both up and pressed the revolver to the back of his head. The raider’s sobs turned into outright weeping. I extended my trigger finger along the side of the gun so I wouldn’t shoot him by accident.

“You’re not so brave now, are you? Don’t feel like slapping
me
around a little?” I hammered his head with the revolver’s grip and got a yelp of pain from him. Tears ran down my face. The guilt I felt over wounding the Indian girl slowly changed to anger. I glanced inside the cargo box, where Martin had bandaged Esha’s wound with strips from his shirt.

“Please, I beg you, don’t kill me. They made me do it, I swear,” the raider mumbled and turned his eyes toward the man who’d staggered out of the passenger seat—his brains now strewn along the pavement by Martin’s shot. “It was that guy; he was the one in charge. If I hadn’t obeyed, he would’ve killed me.”

The one in charge…

I grabbed one of the man’s flabby arms. That bastard would tell me everything he knew about what was going on and about who was in charge—not just the head of their squad but the leader of the raids, and possibly even the demons, as well. I didn’t want Martin to interrupt our little chat.

“Get up. Get on your feet, you bastard.” I yanked him up. The raider managed to stand despite his trembling legs. “Okay, we’re going for a walk now.” I prodded him toward the trees at the other side of the highway with the tip of his sword’s smooth black scabbard.

We walked past the blonde woman’s corpse. I pocketed the revolver and slung her rifle—a military model with a solid plastic handguard and scratched wooden stock—over my shoulder, as well as her ammo belt. The belt’s green cotton fabric had been stained brown with the woman’s blood, still oozing from the three bullet holes on her back.

“Okay, that’s good enough,” I said once under the shade of the trees. I kicked him in the small of his back. He collapsed to his knees with a whimper. “You said
they
made you attack people, steal their stuff, and… and rape…” I kicked him again, a spasm of rage shooting through my body. “Who is
they
, huh? Who’s in charge of all you bastards, of planning your attacks?”

“I… I don’t know,” the raider said, chin tucked against his chest. “The guy you killed was in charge of my group, but I don’t know anything else. Please, they’ve got my family. I had to do what they wanted, or—”

I struck the side of his head with the sword’s handle. “That’s crap.” I drew the samurai sword from its scabbard. “You’re obviously into this whole raiding thing, aren’t you? I bet you fancy yourself as a Viking or something, just raping and pillaging, huh?” I held the sword’s edge against his neck. The raider moaned, leaning away from it. “If you don’t tell me the truth right now, I’m going to chop your head off.”

“Okay, okay, but please don’t hurt me!” he screamed in between gasps. For a second, I worried he’d have a heart attack before he could confess. “I’m… I’m not a bad guy, really. I’m not. I spent three days hauling rubble and sleeping in a cage with fifty other guys. If someone offered to set you free just to steal supplies for some stupid town, wouldn’t you do it?”

“Stupid town? What are you talking about? Aren’t you taking those supplies back to the mainland?” I pressed the blade until a sliver of blood ran down the raider’s neck.

“No, I swear! It’s all for that town.”

“What town?” I asked, pulling the sword away from his neck. Somehow, I already knew what he’d say.