Mercy (The Last Army Book 1) (28 page)

I spat at the raider as he raised his knife. The wad of spit and blood struck his cheek. A smile spread across his face as he wiped it off. The raider clutched my throat and leaned close to me. Greasy locks of black hair fell over his eyes.

“You want it slow, then.” He pressed the tip of his knife under my left eye.

I felt the sting of pierced skin and squirmed, struggling to break free, but the two raiders at my sides pinned me to the rubble. One of them giggled, his eyes glazed over by drugs or madness, while the other only glared at me. I tried to scream, but the black-haired raider tightened his grip on my throat.

“Shh… don’t worry. I won’t hurt your lovely blue eyes. It’s not much fun if you can’t see what we’re doing to you, is it?” The black-haired raider dragged the tip of his knife horizontally across my cheek, tearing my skin.

Blood and tears mixed under my eye and streamed down my face. The cut was deep, and so was the pain. I couldn’t help crying, but I wouldn’t beg.

“Hey, that looks pretty badass,” the knife-wielding bastard said, swiping the tip of his finger under his left eye. “Now let’s do the other side.” The raider moved his knife over my eyes, dripping warm blood on the bridge of my broken nose. “After that we can—”

A series of blasts rang out in the parking lot. Machine guns thundered to the west. The three raiders on top of me turned their faces to the sound, slackening their grip on my arms. I yanked my right hand free, grabbed my sword, and buried half the blade on the drugged raider’s gut, following through with a slash to the neck on the raider to my right. The drugged raider slumped on the ground, grabbing his stomach, while the other clutched his neck with both hands, blood squirting through his fingers.

The black-haired raider turned back to me and tried to drive his knife into my chest. I blocked his stab with my sword, resting the back of its edge on my left palm. Pain surged through my wounded hands as the raider’s forearm struck the blade. He dropped the knife, screaming in pain, but my sword also slipped out of my grasp. I grabbed a broken piece of brick and bashed him on the head. The raider toppled off me, blood matting his hair and streaming down his left cheek. I got on my knees, grabbed the sword, and stabbed him, grunting with every blow. He flailed his arms and legs, trying to swat away my blade, but his jeans and checkered shirt were soon steeped in his blood. He lay still in a fetal position, his mouth and eyes wide open.

I turned my gaze to the parking lot, shaking and gasping for air. An armored troop carrier plowed through the raiders' ranks, tearing the flimsy metal shacks apart, its small cannon roaring. Thousands of militia fighters rushed in behind it, firing and screaming. Eight Humvees supported their attack, four on each flank, blasting the mass of panicked enemies with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.

At least twenty thousand raiders threw down their weapons and raised their hands. The rest were either dead, dying, or cowering inside the stadium.

The drugged raider was dying next to me. Belly up, bloodied hands over wounded gut, the raider looked up at the sky with peaceful, almost innocent eyes even though he trembled from shock. I whipped the blood off my sword, sheathed it, and got out my handgun. I slid in my last 9mm magazine.

I pressed the tip of my handgun to his temple. He turned his eyes to me and smiled. I turned my face away and pulled the trigger, ending his suffering.

Blood splattered on me, but by that point it already dripped from my clothes. I struggled to get on my feet. Everything throbbed with pain: my face, my neck, my arms, my chest, my stomach, my legs. I staggered a few feet toward the stadium, intent on seeking my parents. My legs faltered, and I fell hard on my knees, splashing into the blood that was pooled around the corpses strewn on the ground. The smell that enveloped me made my stomach cramp. Burning, bitter vomit rose up my throat. I barely had time to wrap my hands around the cross on my neck before a stream of milky white fluid spewed from my mouth, splashing on my hair and all over my clothes.

I opened my hands. The silver cross had survived my vomiting unscathed, but not the fight. Blood stuck to it like strawberry jam. I tried to wipe it off, but everything on me and around me was plastered in blood as well. Having my necklace soiled by blood didn't really bother me, though. Our victory didn’t feel like a miracle anyway.

The few militia fighters from the initial assault who were still alive moaned and cried for help. No one helped them. The newly arrived militia forces—those who'd cleared the bridges to the north, judging by their numbers—busied themselves rounding up raiders and picking up their surrendered weapons. For a second I wished Karla were there to help out… and immediately regretted the thought.

I took an AK-47 lying nearby and used it to prop myself up. My head spun, but I staggered across the carpet of bodies toward the stadium’s main entrance. A couple of Humvees entered the stadium, trailed by several militia squads. I stood in place, leaning on the rifle, waiting for the shooting to start. It didn’t. A single militia fighter rushed out, calling on the nearby squads securing the entrance. They ran inside behind him.

I dropped the rifle and marched forward, carried by the hopeful embers flickering to life inside me. Several militia fighters rushed up to me and tried to get me to sit down, insisting I’d been wounded.

“Get out of my way!” I screamed, my gaze fixed on the entrance. “I’m fine!” In the end, a pair of young guys propped me on their shoulders and helped me into the stadium.

Jesus Christ.

Rows and rows of people knelt on the field’s yellowed grass, their hands tied behind their backs. The raiders' prisoners, at least ten thousand of them. I broke into an unsteady sprint, my gaze sweeping over their emaciated faces.

“Mom! Dad!” I yelled, staggering in between the kneeling prisoners.

“Rebecca? Rebecca, is that you?” a man shouted from within the crowd, his voice weak and raspy. My heart leapt. I almost stumbled to the ground.

“Dad?” I strode toward the voice but didn’t find my dad. Instead, Dr. Lagos—Karla’s dad—stared at me, his dark-brown eyes full of tears. I ran up to him.

“Dr. Lagos?” I knelt before him, barely recognizing the bearded, disheveled man dressed in rags as Karla’s eternally well-groomed father.

“Rebecca… thank God. Where’s my daughter? Is she okay? Where’s my girl?” He looked around me.

I grabbed his shoulders. “She’s fine, Doctor. She’s fine—she’s safe.”

The doctor shut his eyes and sobbed in violent fits, muttering in Spanish in between sobs.

I walked around him and carefully sliced the zip ties binding his rough, blistered hands. Dr. Lagos wrapped his arms around me and cried over my shoulder. I gently eased him away.

“Please, Doctor… where are my parents? Do you know where they are?”

He bit his cracked lips and shook his head. My chest tightened.

“No
what
? You haven’t seen them? They’re not—?” I covered my mouth with both hands. Fresh tears poured from my sore eyes. Dr. Lagos shook his head again. His eyes turned toward the visitor’s dugout, over by third base. I dropped my hands and gasped, smiling. “There? They’re over there?” He nodded, staring at the ground.

I leapt to my feet and ran, ignoring the pain in my limbs, the militia fighters' yells for me to stop, and the pleading eyes of the thousands of prisoners still bound along the way. I jumped over the dugout’s padded railing and looked around. Finding it empty, I raced down the tunnel next to it, only slowing down when the darkness inside made me feel my way forward by brushing my hands along the walls, moving toward a dim orange glow that poured from a pair of open doors ahead.

My spine tingled as feeble moaning came from inside. I drew my handgun and forced myself to keep pushing through the darkness—dread weighing my feet down.

I couldn’t help but gasp as I entered the room, taking in a lungful of the rank air inside.

It was a large locker room, lighted by gas lamps set on small white tables in the middle of the carpeted floor. Filthy mattresses lay around the tables. Wide-open lockers lined the walls. Women had been tied to each locker, left hanging by their wrists. All of them were naked, their heads bowed, knotted hair covering their faces.

“Shit… oh, shit… Mom!” I screamed, my voice breaking as I wept.

A few women lifted their eyes to me and muttered unintelligibly. I dragged my feet around the room, looking for my mother.

“I’m sorry… help’s coming. You’ll be fine. Just wait a little longer,” I said as I stepped past blondes and brunettes, dark-skinned women, short women. None of them could have been my mother.

“Wait…”

“Help me…”

“Please, come back…”

Their faint whispers felt like stabs on my chest, but I moved on. Most of the women hanging along the walls didn’t even notice me—didn’t even stir.

Finally, a woman with long auburn hair obscuring her face stood before me. Shallow cuts and purple bruises covered her slim, naked body. I choked despite my deep, frantic breaths.

“M-Mommy?” I whispered. She didn’t answer. I buried a trembling hand in the mass of red hair covering her face. Her skin warmed up my cold fingers.

“Mom, is that you? Please, wake up.” I lifted her head. I brushed her hair off her face. I gasped. “Oh, God… Mom, what have they done to you?” A dark halo surrounded her puffy right eye. Cuts covered her shriveled lips.

Her eyelids quivered. She barely managed to open her left eye, baring just a slit of her bright blue iris.

“Rebby?” she whispered.

I broke out in tears and wrapped my arms around her. My mother groaned, so I pulled my arms away and stroked her limp, greasy hair instead.

“I’m getting you out of here, Mom.” I tugged on the electrical wire tied around her bleeding wrists. Her arms slumped against her sides, but I caught her before she toppled down. My mother’s body felt frail and limp in my arms. I sat her on the carpet and looked for something to cover her with.

Feet stomped outside. I drew my handgun and placed myself between the doors and my mother. A couple of militia fighters marched in.

“These women need help,” I said, holstering my gun. The guys just stood there, gaping in shock at the women around the room. “Hurry!” One of them ran back outside, probably to get help, while the other untied the nearest prisoner.

I turned back to my mother. Tears rolled down her grimy cheeks as she looked at me. Her busted lips trembled. I put on a fragile smile and knelt beside her.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Mom. I promise. We’ll get Dad, and then… and then we’ll get you somewhere safe, all right?” I patted her arm and struggled to keep myself from sobbing.

My mom leaned into me and wrapped her arms around my neck. She whispered in my ear, “Oh, Rebby. Your dad… your dad…”

I gently placed my arms around her. We wept on each other’s shoulders.

A week had passed since we'd driven the raiders out of New York City, and Brother Tim decided it was a good day to celebrate.

Over two hundred thousand people had gathered in Central Park—all from Christian settlements on the island and around the city—who now breathed a little easier with over a hundred thousand raiders dead.

The pastor had set up his customary wooden stage, skirted with a silky white cloth, south of the park’s reservoir. This time, though, it was larger than usual to make room for the assault’s heroes. Surprisingly, I’d been selected to receive a medal, as had Claire—the radio operator—for using my map to coordinate the counterattack at Citi Field that practically won the battle.

Fifty other non-Christians had been selected for medals, but someone would have to dig up their corpses to pin them to their chests. The rest of the “heroes,” about a hundred, were from Brother Tim’s militia. He’d lost less than three thousand out of almost fifty thousand people during the attack.

Twenty thousand non-Christian militia fighters had left their camps to fight the raiders. Only a little more than six thousand had returned.

At least we'd won… The few isolated areas still held by the raiders when night fell on the day of the attack surrendered or were wiped out the next morning. What remained of the military forces on the island—a little over a thousand people—along with civilian engineers and thousands of volunteers pumped flammable gas into the subway and burned the demons lurking in the shadows. Then they poured cement, as well as a mountain of dirt and rubble, over each subway exit, just in case.

At first, I’d refused to attend Brother Tim’s little celebration, thinking only of the right time to get as far away from New Jerusalem as possible. The pastor obviously held some sort of influence over the raiders, as well as the demons, and was responsible for at least fifteen thousand dead people—people who might’ve become a nuisance for him in the future. People like me.

It was my mother who’d convinced me to go to the Pastor’s celebration. I looked at her, sitting close to the stage next to Karla and Dr. Lagos. She hunched, like an old woman, but her eyes had regained a little of their spark. I could tell it made her happy to see me up on the stage, decked out in a stylish pair of olive pants and a short-sleeved khaki shirt, my hair loose and lustrous, like a princess on safari… except for my broken, swollen face. At least—according to Dr. Johnson and Karla’s dad—all the damage to my face would heal, except for the scar.

Brother Tim droned on and on, preaching at the crowd with a wireless microphone in his hand, his words echoing thorough strategically placed speakers around the park. Oblivious of the Pastor’s words, I searched for Martin’s face.

I thought I’d resent him for not taking part in the battle, leaving me to face the horrors waiting for me in the company of strangers, but as the days passed, and he didn't show up in town or deliver a message by radio or even send a letter with traveling merchants, I slowly began to forgive him. All I wanted was to see him again, but he wasn’t among the crowd.

Claire poked my aching ribs. Brother Tim awaited me at other end of the stage with a glinting piece of metal attached to a bit of white ribbon. I strode toward him, my hatred brewing inside as I studied the smugness in his smile and the insincerity in his eyes. The pastor’s security team hadn’t allowed me to bring my gun, but I could bring my sword since it would add “flair” to the occasion—a dire mistake on their part.

I gripped the scabbard with my left hand when I got within striking distance, my right hand sweaty in anticipation of the kill.

I didn’t go for it. He leaned close to me and pinned the cheap trinket on my chest. His knuckles rubbed against my breast. Still I didn’t kill him.

“We should have a little talk about your future,” the pastor whispered, and offered me his hand.

I shook it… and smiled. If I’d killed him then, it would’ve been meaningless. I’d be making a martyr out of him.

No. I had to figure out just how deep his connections to the demons and raiders were, as well as the source of his prophetic knowledge. What were his motives? I swore I’d let everyone know just what a monster the pastor was.

Then
I’d kill him.