by John Grit
APOCALYPSE LAW 2
By
John Grit
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2011 by John Grit
All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Revised March 2012
Edited by Anna Genoese
Cover photo © 2011. Image from Bigstock.com
Chapter 1
Nate Williams knew the men were killers.
Five of them, all armed. Two rode a Caterpillar bulldozer. Three more rode on a trailer pulled by the Cat, rifles at the ready, their eyes searching for prey. The Cat dozer was clearly marked with bold black letters on yellow paint as county property. They were not county employees.
Nate hid in brush in the shade of trees and observed through 10x50 Zeiss binoculars as they turned off a clay road onto the one-lane track leading to his farm.
Heat waves distorted his view through the glass. A bright summer day, relentless in its reminder that he was in Florida in August, made the shade he utilized for camouflage all the more effective. However, there was no refuge from the muggy heat. Tension made the day seem hotter.
When he first saw them coming, Nate had hoped they would keep going down the road. He sighed and pushed the safety off his M14 with the back of his trigger finger, shouldered the rifle, and waited for a chance to kill them cleanly, with one shot each. That was his plan.
The forty-foot-long flatbed trailer was loaded with diesel fuel in fifty-five-gallon drums near the front. Just in front of the drums, three men rode on a crude bench seat made of scrap lumber.
A gray steel shipping container sat on the back end of the trailer. Nate had no idea what was in it, but guessed it was food and other items necessary for survival. More than likely, they had killed for it.
Slipping the rifle sling onto his left arm while watching the Cat inch closer, he prepared to fire from standing. He needed to be able to shoot fast at moving targets. The prone position would not allow enough speed, and there was too much brush in the way to see while that low to the ground.
Aiming for the driver, Nate held his breath and started to squeeze the trigger.
A nagging doubt stopped him.
Just maybe they’re not a threat. Am I about to kill innocent men?
The longer he waited, the more risk he took.
One hundred yards now.
Nate still hesitated.
They’re not coming to my farm to invite us to a Sunday church meeting.
Sharpening his sight picture, he started to squeeze the trigger.
When he heard the Cat’s engine slow, he stopped again. They parked eighty yards away. The driver killed the engine, got out of his seat, stepped off onto the track, and then jumped to the ground. He bent over backward, stretching.
Another man who was riding the Cat jumped down off the far side and said something to those on the trailer. They slung their rifles across their backs and jumped down. Two of them went to the back of the shipping container and opened the double doors. Swinging them all the way open, they backed off ten feet and motioned to someone inside.
Nate watched the scene unfold. Is someone in that thing? It must be over one hundred degrees in there.
A woman in her late twenties staggered out and lifted her chained arms to shield her eyes from the sudden sunlight. She wore tattered jeans and nothing more. Her bare feet were crusted with dried blood and dirt. Her body was marked with bruises, her raven hair tangled and matted. She looked around after her eyes adjusted to the brilliance. When she turned Nate’s way, he saw signs of repeated beatings on her face. There was little life in her blackened eyes, only dread. It seemed to Nate that she was looking right at him.
Nate lifted his rifle and waited.
One of the men standing by stepped closer, swung an open hand, and slapped her down. She landed on her face in the dry dust.
Nate’s ears stung when the crack of the impact reached him.
All of them laughed as she pushed herself to her hands and knees.
The same man kicked her in the ribs. She fell on her side and coiled into the fetal position, breath knocked from her lungs. She held her stomach and gasped.
How much of that can she take? That may have broken her ribs.
Another man who was close to her, reached down, grabbed a fistful of hair, and dragged her away from the trailer to an open area off to the side.
All five leaned their rifles against the shipping container and gathered around her. She looked up at them from the ground, her eyes flitting from one to the other as she lay on her back, covering her face with her arms. The next blow could come from any direction.
One of the men went back to the trailer and pulled a canteen out of a backpack. He turned to watch, and laughed as the others circled her, each kicking as she squirmed in the dirt.
When he brought the canteen to his lips, his head exploded.
A mad rush for their weapons was cut short by a flurry of shots from Nate’s rifle. Only one was able to touch his before he died.
~~~~
A thirteen-year-old boy and a man in his forties worked in a field of vegetables. Rifle shots echoed through a stand of pines and oaks. The boy put a wheelbarrow loaded with tomatoes down, slid his lever-action rifle off his shoulder, and ran toward the driveway and the sound of the shots, rifle in hand.
Mr. Neely dropped a hoe he was using to weed between rows of tomato plants and ran for the house, his shotgun already off his shoulder. “No, Brian!” he yelled. “Get in the house.”
Brian kept running as fast as he could. His father needed help.
In the kitchen, Deni and Mrs. Neely had been making tomato paste and canning it in Mason jars when the shooting started. They both had a rifle in their hands in seconds and looked out windows, searching for danger.
Mrs. Neely looked at the tree that she knew her daughter was under, standing guard over those working in the field.
“Cindy’s okay,” Deni said. “The shooting came from the road where Nate is.” Nevertheless, her eyes searched the tree line on both sides of the field.
A little boy came running into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”
Mrs. Neely spun around, rushed to her son, and pushed him under the dining table. “Lie flat on the floor and don’t move!”
The little boy’s eyes rounded, and he did as ordered. “More bad men have come to hurt us?”
“Shut up and just lie there!”
The little boy shook as he cried.
Mrs. Neely’s face softened. She turned to her son, who peered up from under the table.
Mr. Neely charged through the front door and slammed it behind him, bolting it. “Brian has run after his father.” He heard his son crying. “What’s wrong with Tommy?”
“He’s scared, and I yelled at him.” She dropped to her knees and motioned for her son to come to her. The boy crawled out from under the table and hugged her, still crying. “Shh, it’s okay,” she said.
Deni’s eyes met Mr. Neely’s. “Check the back windows, Ben. Make sure they’re all shuttered. Martha and I have the front covered.”
Ben ran into the living room. Finding all the window shutters closed and barred, he ran down the hall to check the rest of the house.
Strained with worry, Deni’s face belied her young twenty-four years. She looked through the window down the dirt drive where Brian had disappeared. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. What’s going on over there?”
Ben came back into the dining room. “Windows and doors are all secure.”
Martha spok
e, still holding her little boy. “Ben, maybe you should go.”
Deni snatched up two thirty-round magazines for her AR-15 from a small table by the door and stuffed them into back pockets of her baggy jeans. “No. I owe them. You stay here and protect your family.”
“We all owe them,” Ben said. He looked at his wife. “Don’t we, Martha?
Deni did not wait for her to answer. She opened the front door and said, “I’m going.”
~~~~
Nate waited ten minutes before making his way around to the back of the trailer, keeping in the woods and behind cover, trying to see into the shipping container.
The woman had not moved. She just laid there on her side and stared at the dead men, a demon-like smile on her face. Yellow clay dust was plastered to her sweaty body.
That suited Nate. She was out of the way. He could shoot without worrying about hitting her. He still did not know what was in the shipping container.
He was forced to leave the cover of trees and walk onto the clay one-lane track in order to see into the open end. Carefully, he “sliced the pie” of angles, jerking his head back after quick looks, until he had edged around enough to see most of the inside.
There was a cage on the right, just inside the door. Its dimensions were four feet square—a cube. A nude girl sat in it, her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them, her head bent over uncomfortably. Nate judged her to be about fifteen.
No one else seemed to be inside the container. There were many boxes and barrels, some marked with brand names, but no other people.
Nate eased closer, keeping his offside foot in the lead and his rifle shouldered, the way he had been trained in the Army.
The woman on the ground began to laugh. Her bruised body shook, and her laughter became more and more hysterical. She rolled from her side onto her back and looked over at Nate, her face full of amusement and glee, giving him a toothless smile. “Shoot the bastards again! Do it. I want to see it. Shoot them again. I don’t care what you do to me after. Just let me see it again.”
The look on Nate’s face made her laugh more. She tried to turn her lungs inside out with her crazy cackle.
He circled around her and walked up on the men. Not wanting to be shot in the back, he pulled his .44 magnum revolver and shot them in the head, one at a time.
The woman shrieked with glee with each shot. “Oh, thank you! Do it again.”
Nate kept her in the periphery of his vision and walked up to the cage.
The girl inside recoiled and pressed herself against the back bars with her bloody feet. She shivered and made a sound he had never heard come from a human being. The cage stank of raw sewage.
“Oh, God.” Nate put a hand to his mouth. The smell didn’t bother him as much as the sight of her.
Boots pounded on the hardpan clay. Heavy breathing rushed nearer.
Nate ducked behind the shipping container, swung around, rifle shouldered, ready to shoot. He peered over his rifle sights, around the corner.
His eyes flashed fear. “No, Brian. Stay back.”
Brian stopped, his shirt soaked, chest heaving, and eyes wide.
“I’m okay. It’s over,” Nate told his son.
When he saw his father was not hurt, he looked at the woman on the ground. She was still staring at the dead men, laughing like a crazy woman. His jaw dropped at the sight of her bare breasts.
Nate rushed to him and turned him around. “It’s over. Go back and get Deni. There are two girls here who need help.”
“What happened to them?”
“They’ve been beaten up.” He took a canteen from his load-bearing harness and poured some water over Brian’s head while keeping an eye on the laughing woman. He handed it to him. “Take a drink.”
Brian gulped it.
“Whoa. Slow down. Not too much. You’re way overheated. You shouldn’t have run up here. You know you should have stayed at your post to protect the farm and the others. Walk when you go back for Deni, don’t run. They need help, but a few minutes are not going to make any difference.”
“You were alone,” Brian said.
“I’m okay.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know.” Brian looked up at his father. “What do you expect?”
Nate did not answer. He looked at the laughing woman. She was crawling toward the dead men. The guns were what concerned him. There was no telling what she would do. “Go on. Get Deni. Do what I say for once. You’re not helping me here.”
“All right. All right.” Brian walked away.
Nate put himself between the guns and the laughing woman.
She stopped crawling and looked up at him, her chained arms raised above her head as she sat in the dirt, shivering in fear. Her wrists were rubbed raw and bleeding.
He opened his canteen and reached it down to her. “I won’t hurt you. Have a drink.”
An animal sound came from her lungs, and she snatched it from his hand. She kept her eyes on him while she drank, gulping it down. When he took it back, it was empty.
Reaching her wrists up to him, she made a sound: “Ugh.” Her eyes were insistent, pleading.
He saw that the chain had been tightened on her by putting bolts through two links on each wrist and turning the nuts down with wrenches or pliers. Her hands were swollen from lack of blood circulation.
“We’ll take them off as soon as we get you to our home where the women can take care of you and the girl. I’ll need wrenches to get the bolts off.”
Her eyes told him that she did not believe him.
“Hey!”
He turned and saw Deni taking cover behind a tree seven hundred yards away, her rifle ready.
“It’s safe,” he said. “Come on over. I need your help.”
Deni came running up, scanning the scene as she ran.
“It’s bad. There’s a girl locked in a cage.” He motioned toward the container. “You watch this one for a second.” He walked behind the woman so she could not see and made the crazy sign by circling his ear with his right index finger and mouthing the words, be careful with her.
Deni nodded and stepped back.
Nate stripped T-shirts off two of the dead men and then handed one to Deni. He draped the other across the woman’s arms, so she could hold it to her chest. “I’ll watch her. You do what you can for the girl. Try to determine if it’s safe to let her out before we take them home. I don’t want to leave her in there, but if she’s…”
Deni nodded and walked toward the back of the shipping container. Ten feet from the opening, she stopped in her tracks and gasped. Recovering, she walked closer, trying not to gag. Behind the bars, she saw an undernourished, filthy, bruised, and scarred human being looking back at her with terror-filled eyes through tangled black hair plastered to her skin with dried blood and her own waste.
“The men who did this to you are dead. You’re safe now. We will help you. Do you understand?”
The girl nodded. “Will you let me out?” She seemed to be calmed by Deni’s voice and demeanor.
“Of course we will.” Deni pulled on a padlock. “Do you know which one has the key?”
She shook her head.
Deni stepped back.
“Don’t leave me.” The girl pressed against the cage.
“I’m getting the key. It will just be a few minutes.”
She started breathing fast and shaking the bars. “Oh, please let me out.”
“I’ll be right back with the key.”
Nate heard them talking. “Watch her. I’ll find it.”
The woman was still sitting in the dry dirt, laughing with glee at the sight of the dead men. She had already dropped the T-shirt Nate gave her. Deni kept watch from a safe distance.
First, he gathered all the weapons he could find and put them on the front of the trailer next to a barrel of fuel, including the two handguns and five knives he found on the bodies. Then he emptied all the guns of ammunition, putting all of it and the knives in a toolbox on the Cat.
Only one of the men had any keys in his pockets. Nate handed them to Deni.
“Be careful,” he said. “She’s been through hell.”
Deni took the keys. “She seems okay, but I’ll definitely be careful.”
The woman shrieked. “Don’t let her out! She’s crazy.”
“Calm down. We’re trying to help both of you,” Deni said.
“I tell you, she’s crazy. She killed one of them. That’s why they put her in the cage.”
Nate watched as the woman’s eyes went from wild to tearful.
“Oh, how they beat her for hours and hours, taking turns when one got tired.” She lifted her arms and tried to cover her ears, but could not because of the chains. “Her screams. Why didn’t she die? It should have killed her. How could anyone live through that? Oh, God, put her out of her misery. The poor girl.”
Deni shivered and walked to the back of the trailer.
When the girl saw Deni, she rattled the cage. “Let me out.” No longer pleading, her voice resonated with sharp command. “Let me out.”
“I will. What’s your name? Mine is Deni.”
The girl stared at her as if she had just said the strangest thing she had ever heard.
“Name?” the girl asked.
“You don’t remember your name?”
“They hit me. My ears ring in my head. I can’t think.” She shook the bars. “Let me out. Everything hurts. I can’t move in here.”
“Think about your name while I find the right key. Can you remember?” Deni pretended to try several keys.
She tilted her head, eyes staring a thousand yards. “Bitch.”
Deni looked at her. “What?”
“That’s my name.”
“No, it isn’t. That’s what they called you. They’re dead now. You’re not a bitch. You’re a teenage girl. What’s your name?”
She stared out of the cage into a less-dark place in her mind. “My mother called me Carrie.”
Deni smiled. “That’s a nice name. We are going to take care of you, Carrie.” The lock opened with a turn of the key and Deni swung the cage door out of the way.
Carrie recoiled in terror, pressing against the back of the cage. “Oh, no! Not again.”
“Think, Carrie. No one is going to hurt you. Those men are dead.”
