Invasion: New York (Invasion America) by Vaughn Heppner Read Free Book Online Page A

down, and this soldier still needed more to slake his thirst.
    Jake was a stocky young man with good shoulders, barely out of his teens and already a hard-bitten fighting man. He had survived Amarillo, Texas last summer when the Chinese had surrounded several U.S. divisions. It had been grim butchery, but Jake and a number of his compatriots had fought their way free of the encirclement and headed northwest. Jake had been the only one to reach Colorado. He’d arrived in time to go to Denver. There, he had survived the historic siege of Denver, the equal to the siege of Stalingrad in World War II. During the fighting, he had worked up the ranks from private and fought his way free with the rest of the Eleventh to the Rockies.
    “Gotta be an open bar around here somewhere,” Jake muttered. His eyesight had gone sideways and he had to squint what seemed like down a tunnel to tell where he went.
    There. He spied a blinking light. It was down a long alleyway with old trash barrels lining the route as if they were sentries. The light had red and blue colors, a neon sign. Surely, that must be a bar or a place to drink, at least.
    In a lurching step, he set off for the neon sign.
    Jake hadn’t always been a good soldier boy who obeyed every order. Originally, he had found himself in a detention center, in a cell, learning that it didn’t pay to protest the President and his dictatorial policies. Jake had been kicked out of college because of the protests. He’d made them with others because they hadn’t cared for the illegality of some of President Sims’ decrees. Homeland Security people in the detention center had known how to take care of such talk and such ill-advised thoughts. They had special cells for that.
    Jake spat in the darkness. In truth, he hadn’t learned his lessons very well. They’d let him go to join a Militia battalion because his old man, Colonel Stan Higgins, had been a hero in the Southern California fighting. His father had also been a hero in 2032 in Alaska. His father presently commanded the famous Behemoth Regiment. His father was a war hero and Jake was proud of his old man. He wanted to be like his dad and like his grandfather, who had died in the Alaskan War, killing Chinese invaders.
    The Higginses knew how to soldier. That was clear to anyone with eyes to see. Jake was young, and he had learned about old-style America where a man spoke his mind. His father had taught him history, and his father had taught him that America was a unique and special country, the apple of God’s eye. Jake spoke his mind, and Homeland Security people didn’t like that, no thank you.
    Yet he was a militiaman of the Eleventh CDMB, a hard-fighting man in the Homeland Security apparatus. The higher-ups in the organization liked him, including the steroid monster, the lieutenant. Go figure. In fact, the lieutenant was one of the two men snoring in the last bar.
    Jake laughed, although it had a sour note to it. He loved America, but he didn’t like holding back about what he thought. He’d bled for his country. He’d put his life on the line more times than he could remember. Even more, he’d killed for America. The killing was why he was out here staggering around looking for more to drink.
    It was funny. No one had told him about this. Killing a man…it took something out of you. Sometimes his dreams—
    Jake shook his head, and he cursed. He didn’t want to think about his dreams. He wanted to forget them. He wanted to forget about exploding bodies and pieces of bloody human sticking to his cheek. He wanted to forget about jabbing a knife into Chinese soldiers, or gunning them down as they ran away. Most of all, he wanted to forget about how good it felt when they ran and how good it felt to kill another human being so he could live another day.
    Jake worried about himself. He worried about what sort of person he had become. Sure, the Chinese had invaded them. They deserved no better than death. But should he