Mercy (The Last Army Book 1)

by Freeter, John

  The convoy suddenly veered off the road and stopped at a large clearing about a mile from the staging area. The guys jumped off the truck and stretched with exaggerated moans before setting up camp.

  The fires from other campsites dotted the darkness surrounding the Christian gathering outside New Jerusalem. Some of those scattered camps might have had almost a thousand people in them—ours had less than fifty—but it was clear that those who didn’t believe in Christ—or at least not in Brother Tim’s version of Christ—had decided to camp away from New Jerusalem and away from the frenzied, well-armed Christians camped next to town.

  “We’ll go over the plan after we’ve had something to eat.” Arjun leaned against the truck’s cabin. “I assume you’ll join my squad?”

  “Uh… yeah, sure,” I said, shrugging. Arjun grinned and strolled away with his rifle cradled under an arm. The sight of the militia force must’ve boosted his confidence, as well. Arjun’s easy strides reminded me of Martin.

  A sense of embarrassment crept upon me, not just from the realization that maybe—just maybe—I was into older men, but from having to once again latch onto a group I didn’t really belong to. I recalled the sight of Tommy bleeding to death in front of the convenience store and stroked my silver cross with the tip of my fingers—silently praying that this time things would go better.

  ***

  As we advanced toward the city, the sun rose behind our convoy, staining the dawn’s purple sky with a rosy hue. None of us had slept during the night, but rather than being sleepy, I felt restless, grinding my teeth as I went over the battle plan in my head.

  The military units that had held the perimeter around the city for the last few weeks—around five thousand troops—would punch through the center of the enemy’s outer perimeter along the Cross Island Parkway and then head straight for Manhattan’s southern tip. Once in Manhattan, they’d clear away the enemy presence as they pushed north toward the Bronx. The civilian militia would rush through the gap in the enemy’s outer perimeter and then advance along the military’s flanks, protecting them from counterattack. Brother Tim would lead his Christian militia—sixty thousand strong—along the southern flank and then swing south, storming the enemy positions in Brooklyn.

  Meanwhile, those shunned by New Jerusalem—numbering almost twenty thousand and wearing white armbands to avoid friendly fire—would advance along the military’s northern flank, which had a lot less ground to cover. They'd hold any remaining bridges connecting Queens with Manhattan or the Bronx still left standing while the military stormed Manhattan. Several units of army engineers would advance behind the attack force and seal any subway entrances still accessible after the earthquake—very few according to Brother Tim—in order to trap the demons in their underground lair.

  Easy peasy lemon squeezy… God help us all.

  I wiped the cold sweat that was streaming down my face. The plan seemed highly optimistic as well as complicated, but as Arjun had summed up the previous night when his squad pelted him with a torrent of questions, all we little people had to worry about was killing whoever shot at us.

  I found the thought strangely comforting. It took my mind off of the state of our professional military forces. Martin and I had run across a few squads of soldiers patrolling the island’s road network during our trading expeditions. I had always assumed their haggard appearance and scarce equipment was due to the task being assigned to the weaker units, maybe as a way to give them a rest from the front lines. As it turned out, they had been their most battle-ready forces.

  The troops speeding past us in military cargo trucks and Humvees looked as though they’d been fighting for months rather than weeks. Many of them had exchanged their shredded military gear for suitable civilian alternatives, keeping only the bits and pieces of their uniforms and equipment that identified them as members of the military. Almost every soldier had either blood-soaked bandages wrapped around fresh wounds or the ghastly scars of old ones. Apart from their iconic M-16s or M-4s, some soldiers also carried civilian weapons slung to their backs—probably due to ammunition shortages rather than a desire to look cool. Most of all, I noticed their tired faces and the cold, uncaring eyes with which they stared back at us.

  “Look at that,” Arjun whispered, nodding toward a roadside mall’s sprawling parking lot.

  “Oh God,” I said, covering my mouth. A mound of charred bones stood in the center, almost twelve feet tall.

  “That’s… that’s people, isn’t it?” His gaze and those of everyone in the truck were fixed on the macabre spectacle.

  “Yeah.” I looked away. “The monsters burn up in the sunlight, even their bones. There would be nothing but a pile of ashes left of them by now.”

  One of the younger guys in the squad bit his lower lip, staring at his handgun—the only weapon he had on him. His chest heaved as if he were choking.

  “That’s a good thing,” I said, poking the panicked guy with the tip of my boot. “It’s a lot of bad guys who won’t be shooting at us today.”

  He nodded, swallowing hard. I smiled at him even as I got a sinking feeling in my gut. If guys like him lost their nerve when facing the enemy and fled, the rest of the militia would follow suit, and the attack would unravel like a cheap sweater.

  I think I’ve made a huge mistake.

  Chapter 44

  Artillery shells thundered around the junction between the Grand Central and Cross Island parkways at exactly seven thirty in the morning, signaling the beginning of the offensive.

  Our part of the attack force took cover just half a mile away, at the edge of a golf course. The ground shook beneath us as sparse dust clouds rose over the park and residential areas ahead. Arjun and some of the guys started chanting in unsteady voices. I crossed myself and recited the Lord’s Prayer in my head, but the artillery barrage stopped before I’d reached the bit about forgiving our debtors.

  “That’s it?” one of our guys said, looking around almost in panic.

  “They must be running low on artillery shells,” Arjun said, loosening the neck of his sweat-stained polo shirt.

  All of us kept shaking well after the barrage had ceased. Cold sweat soaked the back of my dark-brown shirt. I regretted not taking a bathroom break while we waited for the artillery strike to begin—the jokes and giggles directed at the women who'd marched into the bushes had seemed too much to bear at the time—but at least I was fairly sure there’d be few dry pants left among us after the attack was over.

  A chorus of hundreds of engines roared to life at our left. A handful of armored personnel carriers rushed down the Grand Central Parkway toward the city, firing their small cannons in rapid bursts. A wave of Humvees a quarter-mile wide advanced after them, spilling out of the surrounding greenery. My chest thumped with the crack of their machine guns. Large olive-green trucks rushed by next. Soldiers fired from the truck beds while even more troops swarmed around them on foot, running toward the enemy perimeter. Soon they disappeared behind a thick haze, the rattle of gunfire intensifying as they reached the enemy positions.

  “Okay, this is it. Get ready!” Arjun screamed and operated the bolt action of his scoped rifle, chambering a round.

  I looked over my shoulder. Mr. and Mrs. Raj’s team had set up their rockets on top of one of the golf course’s grassy mounds, a thousand yards behind us. A dozen other rocket positions dotted the golf course—obviously the Indian settlement wasn’t the only one with homemade artillery—but it didn’t look as though they’d be firing them yet.

  “Anyone left alive after this gets a kiss,” I said, glancing at the terrified faces around me. “From Arjun,” I added and got a few nervous chuckles from the squad. A bit of tension lifted from my shoulders. Making a stupid joke beats crying every time.

  “It’s a deal,” Arjun said, smiling at me. I blinked and parted my lips to reply, but dozens of whistles shrieked behind us before I could string together a thought.

  We dashed out of the golf course and
onto the busted road ahead, brandishing our weapons and screaming. Short mounds of crushed red brick flanked us at either side—the ruins of an apartment complex. A solid wall of vegetation stood before us, less than five hundred feet away.

  Lights flashed from within the dense foliage. Gunshots. I veered away from the road and leapt behind a pile of bricks, scraping my forearm. Scores of people collapsed onto the pavement, howling with pain, but the militia’s unrelenting charge drowned out their cries. I popped out of cover and fired at the flashes. My rifle’s recoil kicked my shoulder hard, though not as hard as Martin’s hunting rifle.

  I squeezed out only five shots before noticing Arjun’s squad had reached the foliage.

  Crap, they’re leaving me behind!

  I leapt over the rubble and ran along the broken sidewalk until I reached the shade of the trees ahead. My eyes took a second to adjust, and I fell into a shallow trench dug by the road, banging my shoulder on the ground.

  “Oww! Shi—oh, God.” The pain radiating from my sore shoulder dissipated as I looked around.

  Heaps of bodies lay at the bottom of the trench, some of them so mangled they must’ve been butchered with axes and machetes. Dozens of members of the attack force crawled around the bodies, oblivious to the stench of spilled guts. Some of them wept from fear, curling into a ball, but most looked for weapons and ammo among the corpses. I found one of the guys from my squad a few feet away, clutching an old rifle in one hand and trying to yank a magazine out of a dead raider’s ammo belt with the other. I strode over to him, ducking my head to avoid the fighters still pouring into the shade and leaping over the trench.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I screamed, unhooking the raider’s ammo belt. “Here”—I slung the ammo belt over the guy’s shoulders—“Now come on, we’ve got to go!”

  I grabbed him by a sleeve and crawled out of the trench, feeling a sting from my bruised shoulder. We ran a few yards, onto the Cross Island Parkway. Handfuls of volunteers lay scattered on the pavement, shot dead. I couldn’t spot anyone from our squad during my dash across the parkway, where another green area awaited us.

  The effects of the army’s brief artillery barrage were evident there. Wide bomb craters dotted the ground in between shredded trees and corpses. Not all of the dead were raiders, though. Some of the bodies wore the militia’s white armbands. The raiders who'd survived the barrage had probably shot them down. I cursed myself for hanging back during the initial charge and ran across the park with the Indian guy, who panted behind me as he struggled to fasten his new ammo belt.

  I finally caught up with Arjun and the rest of the squad at the park’s western edge. They, along with several hundred members of the attack force, had assembled along the road, facing Queen’s suburbs. My chest tightened, and I suppressed a sob, as I saw the aftermath of the earthquake. Only a few wrecked buildings and large trees stuck out from the destruction spreading before us.

  A short dust plume rose from the rubble about two miles southwest of our position, marking the professional military force’s advance. If we didn’t hurry, their flanks would be left exposed, leaving them vulnerable to a raider counterattack.

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked Arjun, grabbing his shoulder. “Is everyone all right?” The others were wide-eyed with fear. They answered with brief nods, clutching their weapons in a white-knuckled grip.

  “We’re waiting for—”

  The ear-piercing wail of rockets answered my question. Hundreds of them soared over our heads, crisscrossing the blue sky with white trails of burnt propellant. Scattered columns of dust and smoke rose over the horizon as the rockets carpeted an area about two miles to the northwest of the park. The force and sound of the blasts reached us a few seconds later, shaking the trees around us. A drizzle of leaves fell over our heads. The inaccurate rocket barrage couldn’t have been very effective, but when everyone around me rose to their feet and cheered, I couldn’t help cheering right along with them.

  The trill of whistles sounded once more from within the ranks, and we charged toward the bombarded area. Enemy resistance among the suburban ruins was minimal, nothing more than snipers firing from the rooftops of surviving buildings or a few squads of raiders garrisoned among the ruins. I didn’t stop running. I didn't want to be left behind again. Shooting at the defenders on the move would’ve been a waste of ammo, so I just gritted my teeth and prayed not to get shot before the overwhelming force of our assault swept them away.

  Most of the raiders fled instead of holding their positions to the bitter end, though. I quickly realized they were just a screening force, intent on slowing down our assault rather than stopping it.

  An hour had passed since the attack had begun, and we’d barely advanced a couple of miles into the city. Meanwhile, the sun carried on its relentless journey across the sky. If we didn’t hold the city by the time the sun sank over the horizon and plunged us into darkness, the monsters would pour out of the subway and tear us to pieces—leaving the rest of the island practically undefended.

  It took us almost half an hour to advance a little over a mile and a half, reaching the Clearview Expressway—where we met our first real challenge since the assault had begun.

  Chapter 45

  A series of barricades over ten feet high blocked the streets three blocks west of the Clearview Expressway. Though crudely built out of earth and rubble, the fortifications still posed a considerable threat. Not only did sharpened rebar and shards of broken glass stick out of their steep slopes, but the muzzles of rifles poking from the top of the barricades made it clear they weren’t undefended. Many of the larger buildings in the area—much more plentiful now that we’d penetrated a few miles into Queens—had survived the earthquake, and offered an ideal vantage point for snipers.

  A sand-colored hotel, at least ten stories high, had me particularly worried. It stood only a few blocks behind the barricade in front of me and seemed relatively intact except for a smoking gap on the second floor—the work of one of our rockets.

  The rocket barrage had missed all other buildings as well as the barricades, though. At least the scattered impact craters could provide some cover during our advance, and the trees around the area had caught fire, creating a light smoke screen.

  Our squad rested at the side of the expressway, waiting for the rest of our attack force to catch up before assaulting the barricades. I switched my rifle’s magazine and gave my cross a light kiss, praying for Jesus to keep me alive for at least a few more hours. One of the guys furrowed his bushy eyebrows, and I replied with a frown of my own. He looked away, embarrassed, and offered me a water bottle from his backpack.

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling as I took it. He smiled back.

  The cool water slid down my throat, alleviating the soreness from all the screaming and running. I drank half of it and felt like pouring the rest over my sweaty, grimy face, but a glance at the rest of the squad—their eyes fixed on the bottle—made me hand it over to them. By the time the bushy-browed guy stuck the empty bottle back in his backpack, a few thousand militia fighters had gathered by the side of the expressway. I crossed myself just as the shriek of whistles pierced the air.

  I dashed out of cover and ran near the front of the assault wave, ducking below the row of abandoned cars on the left side of the street. Raiders surfaced from the top of the barricade and opened fire on the mass of people rushing toward them. The cries of pain around me were muted by the ringing in my ears as the charging militia shot back at the raiders with their disparate weaponry.

  I halted my charge, rested my rifle on top of a blue car, and fired at four raiders whose uninterrupted muzzle flashes gave their weapons away as being automatics. Four brass cases bounced off the car’s roof, and the well-armed raiders slumped over the barricade. I couldn’t help laughing as I resumed the charge, firing from the hip at the raiders to keep them suppressed as we dashed toward them.

  A deep crater lay some fifty feet from the barricade. A militia squ
ad had taken cover inside. One of its members held a stove lighter with unsteady hands while the others pressed the fuses of Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs to the flame. I crouched behind the broken remains of a house next to the crater, changed the magazine on my rifle, and covered the squad while they hurled their flaming bottles and bombs at the barricade. A wall of fire rose from the mound of earth and building debris, followed by large explosions that rattled my chest like the bass at a rock concert.

  I charged forward under a rain of debris. Heat struck my face as I crawled my way up the barricade, followed by the nauseating stench of burnt hair, skin, fat, and muscle. Once I reached the top, I aimed down my rifle’s sights, looking for targets, but the smell and smoke made my eyes tear up. Only blurred figures struggled in front of me, covered in an orange glow from the flames dancing around them.

  The butt of a rifle struck the side of my face, making me see stars. Pain flared from my jaw as a raider clutched my rifle and tried to tear it from my hands. The rifle slipped out of my weakened grip, but its sling caught my arm. I toppled down the barricade, toward the enemy, rolling through dirt and rubble and onto the cracked pavement below.

  The raider bolted down the barricade after me. With my head still spinning, I drew my handgun and frantically pulled the trigger, emptying a clip at him. The raider’s corpse tumbled down the barricade as a muffled chorus of screams—as if underwater—reached my battered ears. I holstered my handgun and picked up my rifle. A column of raiders charged toward the militia pouring over the barricade, their guns flashing before them. I lay flat on the blood-slicked pavement, among the stench of burnt corpses, and fired my rifle at them.

  The murderous glint in their eyes dimmed as they fell under our barrage, but the raiders behind them kept charging, trampling over their squirming comrades. My rifle’s chamber was left exposed when I emptied the magazine. I knelt to swap the magazine, and a raider just a few feet away headed toward me, raising his double-barreled shotgun to my face.