Hard Mercy

Chapter One

Gone Crazy

Would nothing ever be the same again? The answer was no!

Grimly, I glanced away from the mile-long line of people waiting for a handout of food from the FEMA wagons. Once again I made myself the promise that I would not be one of those people.

I hurried on, but as usual, my appearance in town attracted notice, because I always brought food with me. Fresh food and not the prepackaged salt bricks that FE-MA passed out.

What the long-term effects of consuming such pre-packaged food would be I did not want to speculate as to. The desire for something better than it already had people clamoring about me offering anything and every-thing by means of payment for what I carried in the sack on my back, but shouldering past them, I stepped up the stairs of the town's surviving church that had been turned into an orphanage and made my way inside leaving them behind.

Once again, I was surrounded by a clamoring mob, but this time I didn't mind. Pastor Joseph Orndorff glanced up from where he sat at a desk and gave me a broad smile and said by way of greeting, "Bless you Ad-am! This is your second trip to town this week! Things going better with the plantings than you anticipated?"

"They are believe it or not. Must be your prayers doing it though." I responded back with as I passed off the heavy sack of food to him.

He took it and with his other hand, he squeezed my arm as saying in a softer tone of voice not meant for the kids to hear, "Thank you Adam. You know how I hate to feed them that garbage from the wagons."

I ducked my head down and shrugged as I turned to view the room full of excited kids of varying ages ranging from toddler to preteen now filled with joy at the prospect of eating something good for dinner.

"Don't mention it." I said softly.

Pastor Joseph patted my back hard, "I will most definitely mention it before God tonight! You're a living an-gel Adam!" He said before moving off with the bag into the inner reaches of the church that nobody for the most part wished to attend anymore.

To a large degree within the minds of the community God had failed them and so they had moved on to make the best of what was the toughest of situations. A poor choice in my opinion, as life without God, in my opinion really wasn't worth the living.

A few others felt that way, but that was it, just a few. The rest of the town of Transverse Oklahoma were out to survive the apocalypse of our time by any means at their disposal.

The fireballs that had destroyed life as we knew it had come just two years ago. The countryside had been decimated, with the cities a sheer disaster of unimaginable horror the likes of which kept one up at night and spurred the need to carry a gun. That is if guns were al-lowed.

Any gun seen was confiscated on the spot and its owner denied food rations for two weeks. Needless to say every gun within the county had disappeared a long time ago into one of the white vans that made continuing circuits about the land doling out there prepackaged food meant to survive a millennia if need be.

No, life would never be the same. All there was to do now was to make the best of it and seeing that these children had something good to eat for the moment was my best attempt at doing so.

I cared far less for the adults, who roamed the town, as they had the ability to help out their situation, but none cared to try and so I'd given up on them. Growing your own food was by no means easy in the current climate let alone dealing with what the fat cat billionaires had done to the world in their gift of GMO products and population control chemtrail dusting.

What plants that had managed to survive through the dry conditions and fluctuating cooler temperatures didn't really stand a chance when it came down to trying to survive the soil itself. The soil had been destroyed, at least the upper fertile layers of it had been.

In a combination of GMO enzymes released into the ground by GMO plants and ingredients within the heavy metal laden chemtrails doled out heavily just before the disaster two years ago the result achieved had been the rendering of the upper soil levels becoming inert of any nutritional or biological value. The soil literally wouldn't grow anything or anything half decent anyway.

The only solution that I had found was to dig down and harvest soil not affected by the sprays and use it for vegetable propagation. It was hard work and few wished to do it, especially as there was no gas to fuel the ma-chines that could easily accomplish it.

The majority of people preferred to just rely on the white vans to feed them, as if they had become addicted somehow to the concept of not doing anything that would be too hard on themselves. The reality of it though was that they had seemed less and less human to me the longer time went on.

Even now they stared at me beadily from wherever they hung about the town, as if they were rats concocting a master plan of domination. I didn't care about being popular and I could take care of myself with or without a gun and yet the downward spiral I was witnessing in the majority of the populace left me wondering just where it would all end.

I struck out of town not bothering to take any of the wide open roads presented to me. I knew my way and without a qualm I stepped into the dry brush of the fertile land that had become a wilderness of sparsely located weeds.

Weeds seemed to be the only thing flourishing these days as at least they had some tolerances to the chemicals used to render the soil's nutrients unavailable for normal plant growth.

My pace was quick as it was always a concern to me when I left my place unattended for any length of time. I doubted anyone in town despite the allure of food would ever care to make the five-mile hike, seven miles by road, journey to my place, but still there was the off chance that they would. That was why I always varied up when I came to town so they could never build a routine of my movements by which to anticipate my actions.

Two years in the Marines had taught me to be cautious about ever establishing a pattern. As a former sniper, I well knew the benefit of keeping an erratic schedule.

Being a Marine was one thing in my life though that I'd like to escape from and I had tried. I'd come to this remote area and bought my farm and for five years things had been blissful and I had found a peace of sorts, but now... now my new found dream had been taken from me by circumstance and a global conspiracy of epic proportions.

Now more than ever my particular skill set of once being a warrior seemed to come to the forefront. I hated it, but at least it served me some good. Like right now!

I ducked and the arrow shot from a makeshift looking crossbow skipped on by me to slam into some brush. I rolled away athletically and sprang up to my feet to run a short distance before diving into more cover.

I kept moving and within seconds I was in a hidden, undisclosed position out of the direct gaze of where my hunters had been located. Patiently I waited.

Minutes stretched by and I felt the palm of my hand holding a five inch double bladed boot knife get sweaty. Then in the distance came a cranky sounding voice, "Oh come on Zeke. That wasn't no towel head anyways."

"So what. He might've had something on him that we could use for trade."

"The only trade item we need is some more towel heads. Now come on! I'm starting to not like the smell of these scalps so much. Besides that they're making me hungry."

Both men laughed together and I stole out of my position and crept to a ridge that gave me an overview of the two men walking away across the wilderness. They were scalp hunters, paid killers for the government, such as it was.

Their sole job was to travel through the outer areas and look for the fall guys that had been blamed for the decimation of the cities in the East. The rumor went that when the asteroids had wiped out the West Coast along with other parts of the world that Middle Eastern jihadists had seen their chance and had taken it in the societal upheaval that had followed the disaster.

They had set off dirty bombs all along the east coast and millions had died and millions more when one bomb had gone off as an EMP and taken down the electric grid for good. Ever since then every survivor of what was left of the country had taken it upon themselves to eradicate every last Muslim looking person that they came across as some sort of honor bound civic duty to those who had been lost.

The zeal was such in fact, that one stood to gain profit by the killing of them and subsequently face scalping had become a highly profitable commodity if one could prove to the authorities that the face was Middle Eastern and hence likely Muslim. How far America had fallen in but two short years.

Right now I'd rather be anywhere else in the world than this former entitlement society brought to grips with stark reality. Getting out of the country now though was a complete loss.

The East was unrecognizable and you'd grow a third ear before clearing the radiation along the coastline from all accounts. This was assuming that all the reports one heard were true.

Who really knew for sure. As it was I knew of no one who had actually come from the East to verify all of the gossip of the FEMA personnel that had been passed along as if it was the gospel truth. In general, I trusted FEMA as about as far as I would trust a snake with a sour disposition.

Once more the urge to strike out and find something better than the decaying reality I faced daily hit hard. The question remained though of who would feed the children?

My consciousness wouldn't condone the thought of having them turn into the bigoted zombies that the rest of the town seemed hell-bent on becoming. The urge to go after the two men and kill them was overwhelming, but it would be murder, and above all else I wished to leave killing behind me.

I pulled back from view of them and headed back on my way to my homestead. About an hour later I saw the buzzards.

They of all the bird species seemed to be flourishing the most. I knew what their presence signaled and I wished to avoid the death, I knew I would find beneath their drifting spirals, but my feet took me that way any-way.

Some things no matter how terrible, just had to be seen. It took me twenty minutes to come upon the four bodies in the sand.

Their faces were scalped clean away, but it was obvious by other visible trait markers to see that this family of four on the run had been of the locality of origin that had been branded with universal hatred by all remaining Americans for extermination. Looking now, though on the bodies left to rot faceless in the sun all I felt was shame.

What right did humanity have to exist when we perpetrated horrors like this upon each other? Americans felt they were justified to murder an entire people group based on the hearsay of others as to what they had done, but the timed event of over twenty dirty bombs going off at the same time along the eastern seaboard was a hard nut to crack for anyone let alone terrorist cells hampered by a surveillance state the likes of which the NSA was capable of producing.

No, I tended to think otherwise, but I kept my objections to myself and unsaid as the message of the day seemed to be one of hate. People were out of love for one another and yet needing a powerful emotion by which to feed off of they had latched onto hate as some-thing out of the ordinary and Muslims fit the bill nicely by which to enact it upon. The hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees that had been imported just be-fore the world chaos had ensued were meeting grisly fates like this every day.

There was little I could do for the bodies as I had no tools with me and the ground here was too hard to dig by hand. Taking my hat off I said, "God nobody deserves to die like this. I feel bad for these folks, but I guess what makes me feel bad the most is that, well, I guess, because I know they're not with You. That would make things better knowing if that was the case, but... I pray that You'd have mercy on them anyway."

I put my hat back on my head and looked away as the bleakness of reality settled upon me hard once more. What was the purpose in trying to survive this apocalypse of the caring natures of humanity lost?

"Where have all the good guys gone to, God?" I breathed out softly.

"I'm looking at one." Came the quiet response from within my soul.

Shaken, I looked about, but I knew. I knew who had spoken to me and knowing that I had God's attention caused me to fret as to what to do all the harder. I couldn't bury the bodies, but I could do more than leave them like this.

Feeling the weight of a Divine gaze upon me, I set about dragging the bodies closer together. That done, I went about prying up rocks and laying them gently over top of the bodies.

It was hard work in the afternoon heat, but I labored on until a solid layer of rock stood between the dead and the buzzards. Satisfied, I nodded to myself and turned to leave this forlorn scene of death, which is when I saw her.

How I had missed noticing her up till now I did not know other than the fact that her clothing blended in like camouflage with the apocalyptic desert of sparse weeds growing about her. Her eyes were what attracted my attention the most though.

They were directed fully upon me and they were all I could see of her face, as a traditional hijab covered the rest of it along with her head. She'd gone to some effort to conceal herself and it had worked, as she yet had her face and life to attest of, but she wasn't going anywhere.

As my eyes took her in I found the evidence of an arrow shaft pierced through the calf of one of her legs. Then, with a collapse of energy her head fell back to gaze up at the sky as she breathed heavily for a moment.

That arrow had been reused who knew how many times to take down fellow kinsman of hers let alone, others like me who just happened to be moving through. I had no doubts at all to the infection the girl must now have raging within her.

What to do?

I couldn't take her with me being what she was. It didn't sit right to leave her here suffering either though.

About the only thing that did make sense was to finish what had been started and end her life as mercifully as I could and then bury her with the others. My stomach turned sour and twisted into knots as I stood gazing at her heavy breathing form.

She seemed to be unconscious. It would be easy to do. I could snap her neck quick and clean and it would be done and over with.

Raising a hand to my sweaty brow, I took in how bad it was shaking. I let it fall and glancing at her lying there helpless I turned away as I had no will within me to do what needed done.

I made one step forward toward my homestead and stopped. It was as if an unmovable wall constructed of my own consciousness stood barring my way forward.

I gazed skyward, for a long moment. Nothing made sense anymore.

Turning my head, I glanced back to see her looking at me again. Nothing made sense, but being somebody else other than myself made the least amount of sense of all.

Turning as I was galvanized into an action that would likely cost me my life I went over to where she lay. She'd pulled debris over herself as best as she could and I had to admit to a certain degree of respect for her.

She was a fighter. She deserved a chance.

"God help me, for no one else will!" I breathed out as I leaned downward to start tossing the rocks and debris that she'd covered herself up with away.

Her eyes were very feverish, but interestingly with closer inspection, they seemed more slanted as an Asian persons would be. She was breathing heavy and in her one hand she gripped a rock but it went unused.

I slipped my hands beneath her and cradling her gently I lifted her up out of the shallow depression that she lay in. She was a slight little thing for sure, but the prospect of making it the remaining two miles or so to my place was not a light task with her now in my arms. Still, I owed it to her to try.

Her eyes stared at me and watched my every move and walking forward I heard the rock in her hand fall to the ground. Like it or not, right now I was her only chance and she knew it.

I cradled her to me ever mindful of the arrow through her leg, but still it was made abundantly clear to me the pain that she was in by the softly expressed cries that is-sued forth past her tight pressed lips beneath her veil. It was torture to hear her pain and I thought about snapping her neck all over again.

It would be more merciful by far to do that, but those eyes! The way they bore into me kept me pressing for-ward as quickly as I could go towards my homestead.

Chapter Two

Promise Made

It was dark when Robbie's deep barks alerted me to the fact that at least all was well at my place. I got to the railing of the gate and Robbie jumped up putting his big paws on it as he sniffed at the unconscious woman in my arms.

"Come on get back!" I groused out as I awkwardly unlatched and pushed at the gate at the same time.

Robbie got down and I slipped through the gate and re-latched it. With Robbie padding heavily along beside me I made for the house in the late evening gloom.

Robbie got to the door first and fastening his large mouth around the handle he twisted his head and the door popped open.

"Thanks buddy." I said, as I moved into the dark house and made my way through it by memory.

Reaching my bedroom I laid her down on the bed. In the darkness I placed my hand to her chest to confirm that she was still breathing.

Awkwardly, I brushed my hand over one soft padded mound of a breast to rest my hand in between the shallow valley in between. She was breathing, but barely.

Rising up I fiddled in the darkness and soon had a candle going, which gave me the light I needed to fire up my oil lamp. Its brighter glow lit the room up and I hung it overhead the bed on a hook. I rarely used it, but this was certainly the occasion for it.

Glancing down I went still as my eyes took in her face that had become uncovered. Her features bespoke of the mixed parentage of Asian and something else most likely European in nature. She wasn't the typical Middle Eastern refugee that one ran across out here for sure. All that dually noted what grabbed my attention the most was how utterly beautiful she was.

Pulling my gaze away, I took in the arrow wound that was killing her. The arrow had passed cleanly through the lean muscle of the back of her calf and indeed as injuries went it wasn't life-threatening, but the infection from it was.

Angry red lines ran out from the wound up and down her leg. At this point saving her leg was doubtful, but I was going to try.

I pulled a bag out from beneath my bed. It was a grab bag that I kept there if ever I should need to leave the house in a hurry.

I accessed the medical side of it and pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I doused her leg wound thoroughly with it as well as the arrow shaft itself.

Pulling my knife out I cut the fletching off of the back of the arrow. That done, I stood up and fetched a hack saw I had in the other room.

Sweat rolling down my face I gripped a hold of the carbon arrow shaft and began sawing down at it from the backend in an attempt to split it into two pieces. Despite my hard stabilizing grip on the arrow shaft her leg was moving and glancing worriedly I checked to see if the pain from the motion had jarred her awake.

It hadn't and the fact that it hadn't drove me to work harder, as I felt sure she didn't have long. I pulled the hacksaw blade out and sawed down from the top briefly until a half section of the hollow shaft fell away with a clink to the floor.