Contents
Title Page
Get Free Stuff!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Get Free Stuff!
About the Author (Me)
Call to Action
Soldier of Charity
A Prequel to the Harvesters Series
by Luke R. Mitchell
Copyright © 2016 by Luke R. Mitchell. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Cover by Yocla Designs
Hi there!
Luke here.
I won’t hold you up for long—just wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you.
So thank you. Thank you so much for your interest in my work. I really love telling these stories (and I sure hope you enjoy reading them).
If you want to support my work and stay posted on new releases, be sure to join my reading group.
BONUS: The first 200 people to join through the link above will receive a free advance copy of Book One of the Harvesters Series!
That’s all.
Now let me tell you a story.
Chapter 1
Seven months earlier, had he been sitting where he was now, Jarek Slater wouldn’t have been worrying about much more than how he’d sate his rumbling belly that night, or where he’d find shelter. If anything, he would have been entertaining some grand daydream about how the survivors of the Catastrophe and the long winter were someday going to come together to rebuild a world that was good and just and maybe even worthwhile.
But now, sitting here dangling his legs over the crumbling concrete lip of the rooftop and staring out at the ruined city, all Jarek could see was an ugly night in an ugly world.
And it was about to get uglier.
“Okay,” Jarek said, breaking the silence for the first time in the twenty minutes since he’d settled there. “You can say it. You told me so.”
“It’s not my function to shame you for past wrongs,” Al said, the light trace of his English accent coming through Fela’s earpieces with crystal clarity. Jarek arched an eyebrow, waiting…
“But I did bloody tell you, sir.”
“I swear to god, Al,” Jarek said. “If eBay were still a thing…”—he swept an open hand through the air—“gone! Just like that.”
Al sniffed. “You’d miss me.”
Fela’s sensors informed him of the low rumbling of an approaching vehicle off in the distance well before Jarek could have hoped to pick it up with his own ears. Just the old gas-guzzler he was looking for, by the sound of it.
“Hopefully you won’t be missing me ten minutes from now,” Jarek said.
He still had a few minutes, but he decided to stand anyway. Didn’t want to be stiff when the fireworks started, after all. Jarek clenched his jaw and just managed to keep from crying out as the movement sent waves of sickly hot pain cascading out from his still-fresh bullet wounds—the through-and-through in his left thigh and its more superficial cousin in his mid-back.
He waited, watching. He wasn’t exactly sure how he knew it—maybe it was some nearly subsonic fluctuation on the other end of the line—but he could tell that Al was thinking about what he’d said.
“If it comes to that, sir,” Al finally said, “I’m not so sure that I would stick around.”
“Jesus, man… no pressure, right? Didn’t they dub you the next frontier of human achievement or something? I think you and Fela would have plenty to offer the world once I was gone.”
“Possibly,” Al said, “but it seems far too likely that we’d fall into the wrong hands, and then it would be little but pain and destruction that we’d offer anyone.” After a quiet moment, Al added, softly, “I don’t want that, sir.”
Jarek nodded as the rumbling of the archaic gas engine grew louder and the shine of headlights rounded into view a few blocks away. He reached back, clumsily searching until he found the hilt of the sword slung over his right shoulder but thought better of it and drew the pistol from the holster at his right thigh instead.
“Well,” Jarek said, “guess we better make sure I don’t die here then.”
If Al had possessed a head, Jarek imagined that the artificial intelligence construct would have given him a solemn nod. “I’m with you no matter what, sir.”
Jarek grinned. Al’s hardware was physically housed within the sturdy confines of his exosuit, Fela, so the AI was with Jarek wherever he went, provided Jarek went there in the suit. And given what had happened earlier that night, Jarek didn’t think he’d make the mistake of leaving Fela’s protection again anytime soon.
The truck, an old semi with a short trailer in tow, rumbled closer. A second later, Jarek spotted the headlights of a second vehicle, then a third—the truck’s guard detail. It had been a bit of a gamble, expecting that they’d come up this way to catch I-280, but it had paid off, and now it was time to do what he’d come here to do.
A swirling storm of fear and anxiety began the climb from his stomach to his throat. Jarek took a deep breath and blew it out, trying to focus on the task at hand.
“Alright,” he said, his mouth feeling suddenly dry as the truck drew near. “Time to kill the bossman.”
How the hell had he gotten here?
Chapter 2
It had all started seven months ago, Jarek supposed, on the night that he’d found Rose.
Jarek had been out scrounging for food within abandoned houses and occupied dumpsters alike. It wasn’t an easy thing anymore, keeping a belly full. Before the Catastrophe, wasted food had been easy to come by. Once most of the world’s crops and livestock had died in the long nuclear winter, though, the survivors had gotten rather stingy with what food they could scrape together—go figure.
On the bright side, thanks to Fela’s thermally-regulated interior, Jarek at least hadn’t had to worry about the cold. The exosuit (and Al) had saved him from an early death more times than he could count, protecting him from most everything but the nefarious, ever-present threat of his empty stomach.
On that particular night seven months ago, Jarek had been investigating his next potential target when he’d heard the voices.
His body immediately responded, sinking into a ready stance, his heart accelerating. Running into people that were willing to roam the streets after dark rarely boded well. More often than not, they were the ones who’d spiraled down into true desperation in the cold and the dark following the Catastrophe—the ones for whom once deplorable acts like robbing and killing for food and other supplies had become a simple fact of life.
They’d started as everyday citizens—hungry, cold people begging or borrowing food from their neighbors. But the winter had stretched on; people had grown more hungry, more cold. Inevitably, some turned to violence to get what they needed, and soon enough, entire bands of marauders had risen, roaming from place to place, looting and stealing and killing as needed.
Jarek sometimes wondered whether the marauders would return to the bounds of society if the long winter subsided and the world became more habitable once again—whether they’d have the patience to work the land for what they required when they could simply take it from others instead. He wouldn’t hold his breath when the day came, but it was a
nice thought, at least. For now, it was safe to say that humanity was not what it had once been. Or maybe it was. Maybe now they were simply more of what they’d always been.
None of it really seemed to matter all that much as Jarek leaned into the shadows and waited, listening for the voices and trying to decide whether to bolt or not.
The soft whimper that carried to him through the thin, cold air gave him his answer.
Heart pounding, Jarek headed toward the alleyway up ahead where the sounds came from. He struggled to focus through the surge of adrenaline, and after a moment, Fela’s sensors resolved the murmur of voices into clear words.
“—ly now, girl,” a man was saying. “Ain’t no need for anyone to get hurt, ‘s long as you’re good for us.”
“Oh, I think she’ll be good for us, sweet little thing like her,” another voice said, heavy with a local Bostonian accent. “You’ll be good, won’t you, girl? Treat us right?”
“Please,” a small voice whispered, and then there were sounds of a scuffle, followed by another quavering sob.
Jarek’s stomach went cold. “We have to help her,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Agreed, sir,” Al said. “But carefully.”
“You hear that, Nate?” another voice said up ahead, higher in tone but still unmistakably Bostonian. Jarek’s heart almost stopped, then he remembered that he was still half a block away. The guy was only talking to his fellow Bostonian. “Girl said please! She’s begging us for it!”
Jarek clenched his fists and a wave of nausea twisted through his stomach as he realized what was about to happen. He closed over the last quarter-block, creeping forward with scarcely a sound.
“Jesus, Cooper,” the first speaker said. “Now’s not the time for this. Let’s just nab her.”
Jarek reached the corner of the alley and peeked around. The alleyway was dark, lit only by a single light whose yellow luminescence cast severe, angled shadows from everything it struck. Among those things were the three men who stood in a semicircle halfway down the alley, dressed in mix-matched arrays of thick but worn-looking winter gear.
Before them, standing with her back pressed firmly to the wall, was the girl. She looked cold and terribly afraid, her face turned from the men and pressed to the wall as if she were hoping she might simply disappear into the brick.
One of the men—Cooper, he took it—grabbed the girl and yanked her toward him, spinning her around by the forearms so that her back was pressed to his chest.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cooper said as she struggled in his arms with a series of sobbing gasps. “There’s no time like the present, I always say.”
One of the men shook his head and threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. The other—Nate, his friend had called him—moved in to join Cooper in restraining the girl.
Even in the dim lighting, Jarek instantly recognized the girl by the glint of her copper hair. She was from the little inn around the block—an establishment that he was fairly sure belonged to her father. He didn’t know her name, but Jarek had admired her from afar on more than one occasion over the past couple years.
It might have been for this reason, or maybe it was just the way she trembled and the rapid breaths which condensed from her mouth in the cold night air—Jarek couldn’t have said for sure—but something changed in him as Nate started ripping open her jacket. For just a second, he thought about calling out to the men—about rushing down the alley and beating them senseless.
On a purely logical level, some corner of Jarek’s mind acknowledged that it was possible that he could handle three men. Fela’s armor was supposed to be strong enough to stop bullets, and the exosuit made him far stronger than any normal human. Logically speaking, it actually probably should have been a cakewalk.
The rest of his mind, though, yelled that he was only sixteen and that each of these men had probably killed people and that he’d never even been in a real fight himself. These thoughts berated him until his mouth was dry and control over his own two legs seemed to shut down completely.
Then the girl whimpered, and Nate reached out to slap her. The blow landed on her cheek with a crisp smacking sound, and the adrenaline-spiked swirl of emotions pouring through Jarek crystallized into a sudden, incoherent rage.
From somewhere far away, Jarek thought he heard Al saying something, and it was only then that he realized he was already halfway to the men, and that a wordless cry was pouring out of his mouth. He covered the rest of the ground in the blink of an eye, moving faster than any world-class sprinter.
He was vaguely aware of someone crying, “What the—” and then the words gave way to an audible whoosh of air leaving lungs as he slammed into Nate.
Cooper cursed and the girl screamed as Nate went sailing through the air. He slammed into an old rusted-out dumpster with a sickening crunch. Jarek rounded on Cooper, who crouched behind the girl, thrusting her out like a shield as Jarek cocked a fist and cried, “Get away from her!”
The girl’s expression froze in wide-eyed shock. Jarek took a step toward the pair of them, and Cooper shoved the girl at him, crying, “Back off, freak!”
Jarek caught the girl as gently as he could just as Al barked, “Gun!”
He didn’t have time to think about it as the pistol appeared in Cooper’s hand and the muzzle whipped up toward them; he simply grabbed the girl and spun around to place his body between her and the gun. A pair of thunder cracks rang through the alleyway, and Jarek stumbled forward more in shock than anything as two bullets slammed into his upper back.
“Three steps back. Turn and swing,” Al said, his voice calm and collected.
Jarek complied. One more shot hit his back, and then Jarek was spinning with a shaky yell and batting the pistol from Cooper’s hand. The pistol hit the brick wall and clattered to the pavement as Cooper backed away, clutching at a gun hand that now sported several oddly angled fingers. He paused to glance at Nate, who lay at the base of the dumpster, unmoving. Behind him, the third man was already at the end of the alley. He called to Cooper then turned to run. Cooper, apparently deciding that Nate wasn’t worth his time or effort right just then, backed away another few feet before turning to follow.
Jarek watched them go for a long few seconds, at once bouncing with frantic energy and teeming with stomach-churning dread. Something was wrong. They’d just left Nate lying there—abandoned him at the drop of a hat. He looked at Nate, who was so still he almost didn’t look to be breathing.
“He’s…” Jarek murmured. Oh God. He’s…
“It’s not your fault, sir,” Al said. “They were going to hurt her, and worse. They might have even killed her.”
Jarek said nothing as he walked over to kneel down next to Nate and press his fingers to the man’s throat. A heavy blanket of static fuzz seemed to hang over his brain, muddling any thought he attempted. No pulse. Nothing. He’d only been trying to help…
The girl.
He turned from Nate’s still body to find her watching him, clutching her jacket tightly about herself, her eyes still wide and a little frantic in the dim light of the alleyway.
Jarek stood slowly, trying think the faceplate of his helmet open through Fela’s neural interface as he normally would. When that proved to be too involved of a task in his excited state, he murmured, “Al, faceplate.”
The girl jumped and backed away a few steps as the faceplate slid open with a soft whir.
“It’s okay,” Jarek said, holding his hands up. “You’re okay.” He realized he was breathing faster than he had any reason to be, and he felt hot tears pressing at the edges of his eyes. “I just wanted to help,” he said, his voice coming out in a hoarse croak.
The girl started breathing again, her mouth working soundlessly for a few seconds until she rushed forward to throw her arms around him.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft and breathy. “I don’t know who you are, but thank you.”
Chapter 3
J
arek stood in a comfortably furnished foyer watching the girl (Rose, he’d found out) bury a fresh round of sobs into her father’s chest as he wrapped her in a tight hug.
“I’m so sorry, little flower,” he was saying for the eighth or ninth time, his voice tight and wavering. “I should’ve gone to get them myself. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Jarek looked away, feeling intrusive just for watching. He glanced absentmindedly around the small inn, still reeling too much from what had just happened to really take in what he saw.
He had inadvertently ended a man’s life. Factually, he knew it was true. Conceptually… it was a little too surreal to fully accept.
Rose had insisted on bringing him to the inn for food and shelter when she’d learned that he had neither, and now here he was, about to be thanked for killing a man. The thought didn’t seem to sink in as deeply as he thought it should have—like it was just a series of words that had accidentally left their power behind.
Jarek looked back to see Rose’s father studying him over his daughter’s shoulder, his expression puzzled as he took in the shape of Fela. He gave Rose one last squeeze before disengaging from the embrace and cautiously extending his hand to Jarek.
“I owe you more than I have to give, but there’s warm food and a warm bed for you here if you want them.”
Jarek took his hand, careful not to squeeze too hard. “Uh, thanks. Just wanted to help.”
At the thought of warm food, his stomach rumbled loudly enough to be heard through Fela’s hard shell. One corner of his mouth twisted up in an apologetic smile.
“You’re starving,” the man said, releasing Jarek’s hand and gesturing to the space beyond the stairs where two tables sat beside a small wooden bar. “Please, sit. I’ll get you something.”
Jarek complied and did his best to remain attentive as the man followed him over and continued speaking from behind the bar: “I’m Frank, by the way.”
Soldier of Charity: A Prequel to the Harvesters Series Page 1