by John Grit
APOCALYPSE LAW 4
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 ©2013 by John Grit
All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover photo © 2013
Chapter 1
Brian stood his ground and fired the first shot. That left ten of them, moving in for the kill. One large-framed but gaunt pit bull streaked across the street, deadly intent in his eyes, tawny hide rippling over straining muscles, teeth bared. When Brian dropped him with a shot to the chest, the other nine scattered, fleeing into an overgrown vacant lot. The poor creatures hadn’t eaten in days, and it wasn’t the first time hunger had gnawed at their guts. Their cushy lives as pets had ended more than a year before when their masters died in the plague, along with most of the human population. Hunger and natural instinct forced them to revert back to their primeval origins – creatures of the wild – and they had long since become as ferocious as wolves. Their world was ruled by the fang.
Brian and his friend Kendell had little enough food for themselves, much less extra food to feed stray dogs. They also didn’t like the idea of being eaten alive, so they killed in self-defense, but with reluctance and some sorrow. Still, they were not about to let it bother them much, not after being forced to kill human beings who had suffered the same fate of the dogs, in that they too had reverted back to their primal origins and had become merciless predators armed with guns and cunning, rather than fangs and instinct.
Brian could hear them back in the thick brush, growling. “I think that last one was the leader.”
His black friend moved closer, bolt-action rifle shouldered, the barrel held low. “Damn dogs are hungry. They’ve somethin’ to eat now, though. Once we get back in the house, they’ll eat the ones we shot.”
At sixteen, Kendell was two years older than Brian and three inches taller. The growling seemed to be growing louder. “I hear ‘em. They’re comin’ back!” he warned. He raised his rifle and fired at the same time Brian did. Two more dogs fell.
This time, the pack kept coming and was advancing on them fast, spreading out to make it more difficult to keep an eye on all of them at the same time. The safety of higher ground seemed the better part of valor. Without a word, the two ran for the truck in a panic. Kendell ran faster. Using the back bumper for a step, he catapulted himself up onto the overloaded flatbed, landing on his back. Two large boxes full of nails they had scrounged out of an abandoned hardware store flattened underneath him, leaving his back jabbed in a dozen places, but none of the punctures were deep.
Brian jumped onto the hood of the truck, landing on his stomach. One of the larger dogs, a German Shepherd, easily jumped right up on the hood with him and lunged for Brian’s neck. He twisted around onto his back just in time and hammered his attacker with the butt of the rifle. Then he kicked the snarling animal off the truck. In two seconds, the enraged brute was back on the hood. He tried to kick the dog off him again, but the German Shepherd clamped his jaws down and ripped at his boot. Seeing his chance, Brian rammed the muzzle of his rifle against the dog’s side and pulled the trigger. The big male went limp and slid off the hood onto the pavement, leaving a wide streak of blood on the side of the truck. Panting more than the barking dogs below, he sat up and started firing again, killing two more. Kendell joined in with his bolt-action and added one more kill before the few left alive turned and ran, evidently not liking the new odds.
“Run for the house!” Brian yelled.
Kendell was closer and made it into the front door first. He veered to the left, out of the way and left the door open.
Brian followed, checking for pursuit before closing the door behind him. “I think they’ve had enough. No sign of them now.”
Kendell caught his breath. “I’m stayin’ in this house anyway.”
“Yeah.” Brian glanced at the bedroom door, expecting his father’s sleep to have been disturbed by all the gunfire. He peered inside the bedroom and found him lying still, eyes shut. Closing the door, he turned to Kendell and said, “Damn. He didn’t wake up, even with all that shooting. I wonder if he’s okay.”
“Bullet to the head can be serious,” Kendell said. “That doctor woman ain’t got any of the usual stuff doctors have, like x-ray machines and drugs, so she’s just guessin’ how bad he’s hurt.” Noticing the look on Brian’s face prompted him to add, “But yesterday she said he seemed to be gettin’ better. She also said there wasn’t any infection. I think he’ll be up and walkin’ around soon.”
“He better get well.” Brian sat on a couch in the living room, one of the few things in the house that was not covered with a thick layer of dust from setting empty for many months until recently, when they brought Brian’s wounded father there. Most of the homes in the little town, in fact most of the homes across the country and the world sat empty, or perhaps occupied only by the moldering skeletons of their long-dead owners. This modest home was not unlike millions of others. It just happened to be nearby when Brian’s father was shot in a battle against a violent gang of youths. “He’s the last family I have left.” A shadow of sadness draped across his face, and he gave his friend a grave look. “Neither one of us will live long in this crazy world without him. I heard my friend Mel call what we have now WROL, meaning without rule of law. Both of us are pretty good shots and everything, but we won’t make it without my dad. He knows things we don’t, and not just about fighting.”
“He’ll be alright.” Kendell sat in a worn-out easy chair. “It ain’t likely he would die after makin’ it so long. Besides, he’s as tough as they come. I expect he won’t leave you alone to fend for yourself. If death wants him, there’ll be a fight.” He pulled ammunition out of a jacket pocket and topped off his bolt-action rifle’s five-round magazine. “You should reload yours, too.”
They could hear the dogs outside snarling at each other as they ripped into their fallen comrades, devouring them with gulps of bloody flesh.
Brian nodded. “Yeah. You never know when trouble’s coming. I just wish my dad would wake up and get better.”
~~~
In a fitful and sometimes indecipherable dream, full of symbolism he didn’t understand, perhaps brought on by the head wound, Nate Williams looked down from above on a day in his past life and watched his father cry. It was the first time in his life he had seen it. Before that day, he hadn’t been sure his father had ever cried, even as a baby. But then, he had never been able to picture his father as a child, much less an infant. A younger man stood beside his father, a man he recognized as himself. Next to him stood Susan, holding their baby girl, and next to her stood Brian, nine years old and small for his age, or at least it seemed to Nate at the time. Later, he accepted the fact Brian wasn’t going to be as big as his father and grandfather. The long line of big Williams men had come to an end. But Brian had a lot of Williams in him on the inside, and that was all that mattered. The rest of him came from Susan, and he loved Brian the more for it.
A preacher was saying something over a casket that would be lowered into the open grave below, to be embraced by the cold, dark earth. His mother was in it. It was at that moment he understood that his father loved his mother dearly. The tragedy was that understanding had come so late, too late. It had taken his mother’s death to bring his father’s feelings for her to the surface, where he could see it and know it for the truth that it was. He didn’t know whether to be angry at his father for being so cold on the outside or at himself for being so blind and not able to see the truth that wa
s before his eyes, a truth that had been there all along. He had had his doubts his entire life, and at that moment he realized he had been blind his entire life. The grief he saw on his father’s age- and-weather-creased face, the sense of bewilderment and being totally lost, his soul adrift without its anchor, caused Nate to fear he was going to lose his father too, perhaps before he had a chance to see his mother buried. Without thinking, he put his arms around him. To his shock, his father didn’t stiffen and pull away; instead he held Nate with his oak-limb arms and racked his shoulders that constant hard work had not allowed age to soften, his grief spilling out burning-hot, as lava from deep in the earth. The sight shocked Susan and Brian so much they stood there with their mouths open. A dozen friends and relatives also stood shocked.
Startled, the preacher stopped for a second to look at the faces of everyone around him, then went on reading from the Bible.
After only 30 seconds, his father’s big shoulders stilled and the tears stopped flowing. He pulled away from Nate, no longer needing his support. Producing a handkerchief from a pocket and drying his face, he looked over at the preacher, who had finished. “Preacher,” he said, the hardness in his voice already returned, “I think we’ve done all we can for her. It’s time to put her in the ground. I’m sure she’s already where she’s going to be, whether we stop crying now or a month from now.” The preacher and the farmer stood staring at each other from across the casket, neither one understanding the other. “But if you want, you can keep reading from the Bible while they lower her and put the dirt on.”
The preacher nodded and went back to reading out loud.
The door had closed, and Nate never saw his father cry, nor did he ever hold him again. But he no longer had any doubts about what was hidden behind that broad, rust-colored iron gate of a face, padlocked to the outside world from the interior.
The experience made him realize he didn’t want to be his father; it was too painful a life. And he wasn’t going to wait until his wife was dead to let the world know he loved her. He held his wife and children every day after that and seldom raised his voice in the house. His father warned him he was spoiling his children, making them weak, but Nate let his words fall off his shoulders like rain.
In his dream, Nate relived the deaths of Susan and Beth, when the sickness took them. He remembered the boy he had been raising, spoiled to some degree, as his father had warned, but the world had changed, he had changed, and his son was no longer a boy. Had he gone too far in the other direction in his effort to give his son a chance to survive, becoming too much like his father? He prayed he had not.
~~~
The next day.
Nate’s head still ached from the gunshot wound. Though he had been awake several times since he had been shot and even had spoken lucidly with Brian and friends, his memory wasn’t clear. He vaguely remembered his son and friend explaining to him how they had taken him to the vacant home while he was still unconscious. That was when he had woken in the middle of the night for only a few moments. He wondered if seeing Brian and Kendell’s relieved faces had not been a dream. Dragging his bulk was an enormous task for the teens, but adrenaline helped. He wasn’t that surprised the two had managed to carry or drag him so far. He had seen people accomplish many unbelievable feats in time of extreme emergency and in the defense of loved ones many times. Nothing really surprised him anymore. As a boy, he had heard many stories of World War II that were difficult to believe until he was able to later verify them. One veteran explained how American mechanics in England worked on heavy bombers for as long as 90 hours straight to keep them flying over Germany. He had never heard of a human being going so long without sleep or rest, especially while doing the hard work of repairing bombers that returned from missions heavily damaged. He thought it was the exaggeration of an old veteran whose memory had been warped from the passing of many decades and perhaps fueled by respect for those who kept the planes he relied on for his very life flying. Years later, Nate watched a documentary that supported the old vet’s claims. He learned that the mechanics felt fortunate after witnessing the return of dead and wounded bomber crews and honestly believed they had it made as ground crew, where the enemy was much less likely to get a chance at them. Keeping those planes in top condition was the least they could do.
Tired of lying in bed and feeling the throbbing pain that kept time with his heartbeat, Nate sat up and touched the bandage. A roar emanated from between his ears and grew louder. After turning to sit on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor, he looked around the room and listened. It took him ten seconds to realize the roar and pulsing was not coming from his head but outside the house. Fighting off dizziness, he stood and walked to look out the window. Helicopters flew low over the neighborhood of empty homes at high speed. He was not able to get a look at them, but in the distance, three more helicopters flew in formation – troop carriers. They appeared to be heading to the downtown area.
The bedroom door burst open and Brian rushed in, his face flushed with excitement over his father being awake and standing. His excitement over the helicopters was a close second, though; it meant friends might be arriving soon. “The Guard is back! I guess those choppers woke you up.”
Nate turned from the window. “I couldn’t tell. Might be regular Army.”
“Do you think Deni and Caroline are with them?” Brian’s face made it appear he was more pleading than asking.
“It looked like they were heading downtown.” Nate held onto the back of a chair to steady himself. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Brian grew somber. “You okay? You remember who you are and everything?”
Nate smiled. “I remember I’m your father, and that’s what defines who I am. Get your stuff and we’ll see what’s going on downtown.”
Brian turned to run out of the room and yelled over his shoulder, “Your backpack’s near the front door.” Excited and not noticing his father’s unsteadiness on his feet, he ran down the hall to grab his own pack and rifle.
Nate nearly fell over from dizziness when he bent down to grab his boots. He sat on a plain wooden chair and put them on, tying the laces military-style. He admitted to himself that he hoped Deni and Caroline were in one of those helicopters as much as Brian did. For a moment, a feeling of loneliness overtook him when he thought of Deni’s face and voice. He shook his head and pushed away such thoughts. He was way too old for her, and she had a fiancé. He reminded himself that part of him died with his wife Susan.
Brian waited in the living room. When his father appeared from the hall, taking small, careful steps, realization washed over his face. “We don’t have to go. If Deni and Caroline are with the soldiers, someone will tell them where we are. They’ll come to us.”
“No. We’ll see what’s going on.” Nate braced himself by keeping a hand on the wall as he inched his way to his pack. He did not even try to swing it around and put it on. He grabbed his rifle with his other hand and said, “Let’s go. I want to see them as much as you do – if they’re with the soldiers.”
Brian opened the front door and stepped aside to let his father pass.
Outside in the driveway, Nate dropped his pack on the bed of the diesel truck between two heavy boxes, where it would not bounce off.
Kendell sat on a wooden crate atop the flatbed with his rifle, keeping an eye out for feral dogs and dangerous men. All that was left of the dogs they had shot the day before were brown spots on the concrete and asphalt. More dogs had come in the night and dragged the bodies away to finish devouring them. “So, you’re awake finally. I told Brian you’d be okay. Goin’ somewhere?”
Nate slung his rifle on his shoulder. “Now, don’t you boys fall over yourselves in happiness over me surviving a head wound.” He smiled. “It looked like those choppers were heading downtown; we’re going to check it out.”
“Brian was sure excited about those choppers.” Kendell smiled. “Does he have a girl in the Army?”
; Brian walked up red-faced. “I never said that. She’s just a friend of ours. She’s like twenty-five or something – way too old for me.” He threw his pack next to his father’s.
Nate’s eyes lit up, but he didn’t rub it in. He had pretty much stopped ribbing his son many months back, when Brian started taking on the characteristics of a man. “Load up. We’ll have to get there to find out what’s going on. There’s no point in sitting here and guessing all day.”
The boys climbed into the cab and waited for Nate to pull himself up behind the wheel, which he did with some difficulty. He had trouble getting the engine started because the fuel was old, something they and everyone else had been dealing with for months. After three tries, he drove toward downtown, the truck’s twin exhaust pipes spewing black smoke from poorly burned diesel fuel.
The neighborhood streets were empty of traffic as usual. Debris from the initial rioting and looting that took place more than a year before blocked the sidewalks and lined both sides of every street. Most of the homes they passed still contained skeletons from the mass die-off. There simply had not been enough healthy people to bury or burn all of the dead, and many refused to touch them even with gloves, for fear of the plague. Occasionally, Nate had to swerve around burned-out vehicles in the road. Many homes and businesses were windowless and doors swung open in the breeze. Someone had cleared some of the streets in the downtown area with a bulldozer, but no one had taken on the monumental task of removing all the trash from the sidewalks or clearing the streets of every neighborhood, where few people still lived anyway. Abandoned vehicles that had been pushed out of the most-used streets now sat in a jumbled mess on sidewalks and in front yards, along with other debris. There were more important tasks than cleaning up the town, like staying alive and finding enough to eat.
Besides the population reduction from the plague, one reason for the lack of traffic was the scarcity of fuel. Gas was either used up or too old and useless for vehicles, and diesel fuel was running out. Soon, there would be no fuel, and everyone would be on foot. Only those who managed to convert gas engines to liquid petroleum would have anything that ran, and that too would be used up someday. Anyone who had a horse or mule wasn’t about to trade it for any price. The few who still held out hope the government would come and save them, bringing food, medicine, and fuel, were scoffed at. It was obvious there was no local or state government left, and many believed that not much of a federal government had survived.
