Redemption Trilogy (Book 2): Penance Page 2

  It had to be something the government did. Or some other government. Maybe the Russians finally figured out some kind of biological weapon that turned people into demons and they let it loose in America.

  Maybe it’s just our time to be done. God’s had enough of people acting like he don’t exist, so he’s giving finally giving us the finger.

  The splintered towers of New York City loomed all around him, casting broken, jagged shadows against the streets, like great black teeth in a mouth that threatened to swallow Jed whole.

  The street was quiet and empty. Weak sunlight glinted off shards of glass, making Jed think he’d somehow stepped into a magical land for moment. Then he saw the dead again. Bodies decorated every surface, twisted into writhing poses. The dead monsters’ clawed hands were bent at the wrists, making them all look like spiders that had been poisoned. Here and there a human body caught Jed’s eye. He could tell they’d been human when they died because there wasn’t much of them left. The monsters ate what they killed.

  But some of the dead people were still pretty much whole, except for a few bite marks or deep cuts. Some of them even had gunshot wounds. Jed paused to check the body of one woman who’d been killed in her car. She’d been shot in the chest and hung limply in her seat belt, half slumped across the front seat. A neat round hole marked the windshield in front of where she’d have been sitting. The doors of the car were open like wings that would never fly. Jed edged around the open passenger door and checked out the back seat.

  The seat belt had been sliced through with a knife or something sharp. The one up in the front was the same: sliced neat and clean.

  “What the—?”

  He stepped away from the car, shaking with a new kind of fear, something he’d never felt before and nothing like the raw animal terror he’d known these past few weeks.

  If someone is kidnapping people…

  He reeled at the thought and what it might mean. But he also felt a new strength flowing through him. He couldn’t save Meg in the sewer, but maybe he could still help someone else. The monsters weren’t smart enough to use knives or guns, at least not that he’d seen. And he doubted they’d just kidnap someone instead of eating them on the spot.

  New York had another kind of enemy in it now, and it was one Jed could beat.

  With his heart pounding, he continued heading north into Harlem. Central Park was a couple blocks to the west. If he had to, he could probably find a place to hide there, at least until he got hold of a weapon. He thought about that as he moved through the city. If he could stomach the idea of looting the bodies of fallen soldiers, he could arm himself pretty good.

  Gotta do right by the dead, though. Can’t just take their gear and leave ’em lying there.

  The street cleared up a bit the farther he got into Harlem. It seemed like most of the action had been in the Upper East. Or maybe that was the only part of Manhattan that Jed had seen since the world ended two weeks back.

  The fuck do I know about what’s going on? A whole lotta nothin’.

  Jed stopped in the middle of the street and turned in a circle. Cars had been driven into storefronts and office lobbies, like the drivers were trying to avoid something here in the roadway. The drivers hadn’t got very far. Bodies were lying half in and half out of their seats in most of the vehicles in the area. The back seats and passenger seats were all empty, and some of the seat belts were sliced up just like in the first car he’d checked.

  But these were civilians, just people who had probably been trying to get away. And they’d been shot. Every one of the drivers had been taken out with a round to the head or the heart, and sometimes both.

  And the blood doesn’t look that old. This happened last night, or early this morning.

  The rattle of small arms fire snapped Jed’s attention away from the dead people in the cars. He whipped his head left and right. The CBRN suit pulled against his shoulders, preventing him from getting a clear look at his surroundings.

  Swinging around where he stood, he scanned the shattered buildings. Gunshots popped again from a few blocks away. It was hard to tell with the CBRN gear muffling everything from sight to sound to touch. He crouched by the nearest car’s front grill.

  The gunfire sounded again, this time from back the way Jed had come running. He looked over the hood of the car and automatically locked his eyes onto the dead person inside.

  “The fuck is happening? Why’d they kill you?”

  Great, now I’m talking to dead people. What’s next for Jed Welch?

  Jed lifted a hand like he’d wipe the sweat from his face, and he had to laugh when he felt it bump impotently against the suit’s hood.

  At least I can still laugh at my own stupid ass.

  He thought about heading back toward Queens, but he’d seen enough of his old neighborhood on the trip into Manhattan. That was the hot zone everyone had run away from.

  “We were supposed to be safe here,” Jed said to himself, huddling by the car’s grill and no longer laughing. The clouds had come back and cast deeper shadows around the area.

  The monsters like the shadows.

  More small arms fire rattled nearby. Jed darted his head left and right, up and down, trying to spot where the shots might be coming from. Then a scream echoed through the dead streets, followed by the howls and animal shrieks of the monsters on the hunt.

  — 3 —

  Gallegos and Reeve shared a quiet meal, tossing their empty MRE wrappers through a hole in the floor. They’d blown the hole with the last of their demo. She closed her eyes and rocked gently where she sat, remembering that night. It had been a nervous damn twelve hours of waiting for explosions out there in the city. The Air Force was letting something loose, and it was killing the sucker faces. But she’d seen some of them crawling away, like they were unaffected by whatever was falling out of the sky.

  I thought for sure they would find us that night. Thought for sure we were over and through.

  But they’d lived, and Mahton had been fast with the demo triggers, setting the charges off so the noise would be drowned out by the explosions outside.

  That was doubly important with the collaborators only two blocks away. Gallegos was the first to spot the black truck driving slowly through the surrounding neighborhoods. The driver had to be braver than any man she’d ever known or just plain stupid. At least, that’s what she’d thought at the time.

  Then Reeve spotted the prisoner swap. He’d called her and Mahton to the roof, and together the three Marines had witnessed the most horrific crime any of them had ever imagined. The black truck carried a fire team tied up in the bed with hoods over their heads.

  The driver stopped the truck in front of the bus depot and waited. A group of the sucker faces came crawling out of the ruins across the street. They were at least a dozen strong, and Gallegos thought it had to be a mistake, that the driver didn’t see the things. It was cloudy that day, and their greasy white flesh was covered in shadows, giving them a natural camouflage against the backdrop of ash and smoke.

  How she had prayed the driver just didn’t know what was happening.

  But whoever was in the truck clearly knew what was going on. They honked the horn twice, long and then short. That’s when the big fucker came out from the shadows and started grunting and barking orders.

  It stood easily seven feet tall and it waved its arms as it commanded the smaller ones. The sucker faces all scrambled into the truck bed and hauled the prisoners out one by one, taking them back to the shadows from where they’d emerged.

  Reeve had wanted to fire into the group, take everyone out if he had to.

  “It’d be mercy, Sergeant. Am I cleared hot?”

  Gallegos had wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t let him do it.

  “Not now, Reeve. We can’t take them all, not from this range. Not before those fuckers know we’re here and come running for us next.”

  Reeve was so mad, white spittle flew from his lips when he spoke
.

  “Someday. Tell me we’re going to make them pay for what they did here today. Someday and soon. Rah?”

  Gallegos had given him what he needed to hear, and she believed it when she said it. Reeve’s eyes had burned with rage as he stood down. Gallegos had wanted nothing more than to clear her team to open fire. She could see it happening in her mind and felt the command rising in her throat.

  But she’d swallowed the words. With their minimal strength, she doubted whether they’d be moving on the collaborators anytime soon.

  Maybe never unless we get a miracle. Three Marines are equal to a whole lot more than a dozen sucker faces, but we don’t know how many we’re up against. Or how many collaborators are on their side. The monsters don’t shoot back, but the col-labs…

  Since then, nothing had seemed normal. Every time they were in the same room, she and Reeve and Mahton avoided mentioning the collaborators or the two successive prisoner swaps they’d witnessed. And now she sat on the floor eating dinner out of a plastic bag and pretending like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  For us… Me, Reeve, and Mahton? This is the new normal.

  Gallegos stayed where she was, eyes closed, ass on the cold floor, and dry gristly meat between her back teeth. Her eyes snapped open when Mahton stepped into the room and set his weapon down.

  “You’re supposed to be on watch.”

  “Reeve’s out there now, Sergeant.”

  Gallegos flicked a look to her left. Reeve had left half his meal behind. And the wrappers were still scattered around where he’d been sitting.

  “Pinche— Fuck it,” she said and leaned over to scoop up Reeve’s trash and toss it down the hole.

  The remains of their flashlights were scattered nearby. She scraped them into the hole, too. She had hoped the red lens lights wouldn’t attract the sucker faces, but she hadn’t counted on their vision being as good as it was.

  Any kind of light at all. Any movement. Any noise. They’d see it or hear it and they’d come running.

  Reeve had smashed the flashlights while the flyboys were dropping the chemical bombs. He’d needed to smash something, and she figured why the hell not.

  What’s left to care about anymore? Why not just smash it all to pieces? Isn’t that what we’ve done?

  “I was gonna rack out, Sergeant. Rah?” Mahton asked.

  “Errr,” Gallegos answered. The shorthand was easier now, even though she knew that open communication was the key to keeping them all alive. She worried about what would happen if they started grunting at each other and doing nothing else.

  Is one of them gonna snap first, or will it be me?

  After two solid days of staring at the same dead city and watching the same horrors play out on the street below, Gallegos wasn’t sure how much fight she had left. They’d lost the rest of their company in Operation Reaper. They’d lost most of their platoon finding this bus depot.

  They’d lost Gunny Pacau running from the sucker faces, not five minutes after they got into the depot.

  Now it was just her, Reeve, and Mahton.

  Three US Marines against a city of the damned.

  Gallegos reached for her MRE wrappers. Her hand automatically shifted direction and latched onto her weapon when a shriek ripped through the neighborhood outside. The pop of small arms fire came next, and Gallegos was on her feet, racing to Reeve’s position and shouting for Mahton as she ran.

  ***

  Jed rushed away from the wrecked cars and into the neighborhood around him, toward the firefight. He was done hiding out and knew that if anyone in New York City still had a weapon, they knew how to survive in this hell that had taken over his world.

  Or maybe they’re just damn lucky.

  The monsters still split the air with their violent cries and shrieks. He couldn’t see them anywhere, but he shot a look left and right, up and down, as he moved.

  Nothing. Where the fuck are they? Where are they hiding?

  Jed stumbled up against a storefront and thought about ditching into the building. The thought vanished as quickly as it came when he heard a man shouting.

  “Pull back! Menendez, keep ’em down! Sustain—Shit, right flank! Right flank!”

  The familiar cadence of a leader’s command, followed by the chatter of a SAW, spurned Jed to action. Another surge of strength pulsed in his veins. Someone who knew how to fight was still alive in this city, and they needed help. Spinning away from the storefront, Jed ran again toward the sounds of battle and soldiers in need.

  “I’m coming!” he shouted, hoping someone would hear him. The firefight raged on and it had to be only a block away. Storefronts and bodies blurred in Jed’s vision as he ran. The pops and rattles of automatic fire came louder and more frequently now, mixed in with shotgun blasts. Grunts and shouts of pain followed. Then it suddenly went quiet except for an agonized moaning. A final pop of a handgun was the last sign that a firefight had taken place. Jed slowed to a jog and then a careful walk.

  The monsters didn’t seem to be around any more. They’d stopped shrieking at least, and all he’d heard was gunfire since then. Gunfire and shouting. But nothing that told him the pale-skinned horrors were nearby. Their claws always made a sharp scraping on the walls and streets when they moved, and their joints always clicked like a ratchet. He waited, straining his ears inside the CBRN hood, trying to catch any sound that would mean the creatures were in the area.

  Jed held his breath and willed his ears to pick up any sound that would tell him if they were near. The city gave him nothing but silence in return for his vigil.

  Then he caught a sort of scuffling and scraping on asphalt. He flinched, hearing first another grunt and then a van or truck door being slammed shut. A heavy engine started up. Jed almost ran forward, but something in his gut made him stay put. The crunch of wheels over broken glass told him the vehicle, whatever it was, had to be big.

  And it’s leaving.

  Jed’s feet slapped the pavement as he poured everything he had into reaching the next corner. The truck engine revved once, rumbled into a steady rhythm, and faded into the neighborhood. Jed’s ticket out of hell was slipping through his fingers. He almost shouted for them to stop, but his gut again told him to chill and he kept his tongue. He pulled up at the next corner, beside the door to a now empty liquor store. Smashed bottles covered the floor inside and the reek of stale booze wafted out of the building; it was so strong it even made it through the breath filter on the CBRN hood. He also caught another smell, one that he couldn’t place. It was like the rotten fruit stench of the monsters, but the hood still blocked most of it.

  A groan came from around the corner and Jed stepped out of his hiding place to take in a scene of horror and carnage. But this was nothing like what the monsters had done to the city.

  Seven dead soldiers were spread around the street, slumped against cars and buildings. Two were up against the wall of the liquor store. Jed went to them first. They had their battle rattle on, but both had taken head shots. And their weapons were missing. Another fire team by a car on the sidewalk had taken shotgun blasts from close range. Their weapons were gone, too.

  Thinking about how the creatures liked to ambush, Jed ducked down and scanned the rooftops around the street. Emptiness and silence greeted him again. The narrow street was like something from a slasher movie, nothing but shattered windows with smears of blood on the sills, bashed in doors hanging off their hinges, and broken flower pots tumbling down stoops. Something had gone down in this neighborhood, but it wasn’t the monsters that did it.

  The groaning came to his ears again and Jed snapped his attention back to the battlefield, scanning the area for wounded. Across the street, behind a smashed up SUV, two soldiers lay on top of each other in a tangle of limbs. The one on the bottom moved his leg. Without a second thought, Jed sped across the open street to help the wounded man.

  The one on top was dead with two bullet holes in his back. He hadn’t been wearing any armo
r. Jed moved the body off the wounded soldier and found a young man lying on the ground. His face was dark with grime and blood. A dark pool slowly spread under his back and stained his uniform around his left shoulder. Jed quickly put his hands on the bloody jagged hole under the soldier’s left arm.

  “Hey man. Hey, I’m Welch. PFC Welch. What’s your name?”

  Jed felt the blood’s warmth as it flowed between his fingers. He pressed harder, but he knew the wound was too severe for him to be any help. The soldier’s time had come, and Jed couldn’t change it.

  A weak voice croaked out of the young man’s lips.

  “Pivo—Pivowitch. Spec-4—”

  He coughed twice and blood frothed around his lips. He didn’t look much older than Jed himself. But the scars of war ran in deep lines around his eyes, like he’d had to squeeze them shut too many times. Jed kept pressure on the wound and did what he could to make it easier for the man whose life he knew he couldn’t save.

  “You been in the sandbox, Pivowitch?”

  “Yeah. Used to be.”

  “What unit you with? I was in the corps.”

  “You a jarhead?”

  Jed chuckled. “Now ain’t the time to be talking shit, rah?”

  The wounded man tried to grin, but it slid off his face as he said, “Hey man, can you—”

  A spasm pulled Pivowitch away and Jed had to lean forward to keep his hands pressing on the wound. The blood still flowed and Pivowitch’s face looked almost as white as the monsters’ skin. Jed nearly let go, but he fought the impulse. Pivowitch wasn’t turning. He was dying.

  “What do you need, man?” he asked, scooting on his knees to stay close to Pivowitch in case he jerked away again.

  “Can you pray—for me? Don’t wanna die without that.”

  “Yeah, of course, man,” Jed said, wondering if God would hear a single thing he had to say. It had been years since Jed bothered thinking about prayers much less making them.