APOCALYPSE LAW

150 Pages·2011·0.69 MB·English

by  Grit John

APOCALYPSE LAW
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
Cover photo © 2011. Image from Bigstock.com
***
Also by John Grit
Feathers on the Wings of Love and Hate:
Let the Gun Speak
(Volume 1)
And
Feathers on the Wings of Love and Hate II:
Call Me Timucua
(Volume II)
Coming soon

Apocalypse Law II
Contents
Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

A REVOLUTION CALLED OFF

LET THE GUN SPEAK
Chapter 1
Nate Williams watched his four-year-old daughter die.
He sat by her bed and cried for thirty minutes before he could go to his son’s
bedroom to tell him. By the time he woke Brian, he was strong again.
Brian rubbed sleep from his eyes and blinked in the undulating glow of the
kerosene lamp. He saw his father’s unshaven stony face looking down at him,
holding the lamp out from his side at arm’s length. The smell of the burning
kerosene mixed with his father’s unwashed body. He had been by Beth’s side
ninety-seven hours. There had been no time to take care of himself.
“She’s not hurting anymore,” Nate told him.
Brian’s face tensed, holding back tears.
“It’s a lot for you to take. You’re not thirteen yet—and now you’ve lost your
sister only two weeks after losing your mother. I’m sorry this world has been so
cruel to you.”
Brian sat up in bed. “What do we do now?”
“When it’s daylight we will bury her beside your mother.”
Brian looked at his father for more than a minute. “It’s cold.” He sat on the
edge of the mattress and crossed his arms.
“Get dressed and put some wood in the stove. I’ll go out to the chicken coop
and get some eggs. By the time we’re through eating and cleaning up the kitchen
it will be almost light enough to start digging.”
“I’ll go out and pump some water,” Brian said.
The father’s eyes flickered in the lamplight and his voice rose. “No. You stay
inside. It’s about twenty out there.”
“Dad, I’m stronger than…” He began to cry.
“It killed your mother too. And the sickness is still a danger to us both.
There’s no need for you to be out there in the cold anyway.” He turned for the
door.
“Do you ever cry?”
Froze in the doorway with his back to him, the father answered. “I never said
you could not cry.”
“I didn’t say that.” The boy wiped his face.
He turned, walked to a nightstand, and put the lamp down. “Come here.” He
held his arms open.
His son rushed to him and they held each other as the boy’s grief spilled out,
his head more than a foot lower than the father’s shoulders. He took more to his
mother’s side and had yet to show any sign of growing into the massive man his
father was.
“I’m sorry,” the father said. “I loved them both, but I couldn’t save them.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be okay as long as you are. You’re all I have now. We two have to help
each other make it.” The father’s face was etched with years beyond his age, but
his eyes were dry. He had done his crying; now it was his son’s turn.
Out in the chicken coop, Nate Williams gathered eggs in a two-gallon
galvanized pail. He found only five. Something had been in the coop again. A
raccoon? There was no sign that any of the hens were disturbed or attacked by
an animal, no feathers or blood on the floor. No animal could have torn through
the hardware wire, and the door was latched every night.
Nate walked outside and searched the ground’s blanket of granular snow,
holding the lamp high. It had been three severe winters in a row. Snow was
uncommon in north Florida, but last winter it had gotten six inches deep. No one
had heard of snow ever being more than a light dusting this far south. Florida
sugar, it was called. Only his own tracks marred the white. Whatever it was had
come and gone before the last snowfall. He went inside the house and locked the
door behind him. When he came out of his bedroom, he had his heavy caliber
revolver in a holster under his long coat. He kept the coat unbuttoned.
“You scramble the eggs while I get some water,” he told Brian.
The hand pump lever resisted all but his last pound of upward pull and then
broke loose with a sudden start. Nate nearly slipped on thin ice from water
spilled on the concrete slab by Brian the afternoon before. After a dozen strokes,
he had the five-gallon plastic bucket three fourths full and bent down to grab the
wire bale. His breath misted and hung in the still cold air as he stood and looked
around for sometime before walking to the front porch.
He put the bucket down and turned, standing there searching the graying
dawn. Nothing but snow-white trees on three sides. Toward the river was a
twenty acre field of white. Brown straw from dead grass came up through the
white powder in places around the edge near the tree line where the blades of his
tractor-drawn cultivator stopped when he plowed cornstalks into the earth after
harvesting his last crop. The river misted, gray clouds of cold moisture hung
patiently, waiting for the rising sun to warm the air and pull it up into the sky.
Searching all he could see of his farm from the porch, he saw no movement.
Whatever the egg thief was, there was no sign of it now. There was danger out
there though; he could feel it in his guts.
Nate felt like a fool standing there presenting an easy target for anyone
hiding in the brush on the far side of his field. But they had to tend the stock,
pump water, and they had to eat. The farm was their source of food. They would
starve if they just stayed in the house.
Before Nate got to the kitchen, he could smell the eggs cooking and the
coffee.
Brian looked up from the wood stove but did not speak. His eyes were red.
“We have to go on,” Nate said. “You know that. There’s no use in giving
up.” Nate noticed the eggs were burning. He grabbed a rag and took the pan off
the stove, walked over to the table and pushed half of the eggs on one plate and
half on another with a large spoon.
Brian was still standing by the stove, looking at nothing.
Nate sliced a loaf of bread and put them in the pan and the pan on the stove.
“Get the butter out.”
“There’s not much left.”
“We will churn some more later when we have time. Might was well use it
now.”
Brian’s chest rose, but he did not move for some thirty seconds.
Nate said nothing.
Finally, Brian brought the mason jar of butter over to his father, who used a
knife to butter the sliced bread in the pan.
Nate looked at his son. “I need you to be strong. We have to go on.”
Brian cringed as if he had just been struck a painful blow. “What’s the
point?”
“What’s the point in giving up?”
“You said she’s not hurting anymore. That sounds good to me.”
“So you want to leave me alone?”
Brian did not answer.
“Well?”
Brian said nothing.
“I would never leave you, not if I had a choice. Your mother and sister
fought like hell to stay with us. And I intend to fight to stay with you.”
Brian wiped his face.
“It could be that the two of us have a resistance to the sickness. Look, life
has handed you a bushel of pain. But you’re young, with your whole life in front
of you. There’s no telling how much better it can be for you someday. This
sickness and everything else will pass in time. We just have to survive until
then.”
“But they’re gone. Dead. What about them?”
“I did all I could for them, and now I’m doing all I can for you.” Nate stared
at his son. “We’re going to bury your little sister this morning, and then we’re
going to do our normal chores around here.”
“What for? We’re all dead anyway. Everyone is. Our neighbors, everyone.”
“We two are not dead. Now stop that nonsense. I need you to help me
through this as much as you need me.”
“I mean there’s nothing to live for.”
“I’m living for you now.” Nate put a thick slice of toasted bread on each
plate. “People have to deal with losing their loved ones. Nearly everyone loses
their parents and siblings, some lose their spouse and children too. I’ve lost
everyone, everyone but you. That means you’re all I have and I’m all you have.
But you will have a wife and children someday. Then you will understand why
I’m now living for you. And why you’re wrong about not having anything to
live for. There is a life for you…if you will just have the courage and strength to
live it. Now let’s eat.”
Brian sat down and lifted some eggs to his mouth with a fork, then put it
back on the plate. “I burned it.”
Nate poured his son a cup of coffee. “Yes you did, but it’s not bad. Put some
hot sauce on it.”
“I always use ketchup.”
“We don’t have any.” Nate sipped his hot coffee.
“We could go into town and get some…and other stuff.”
“Your eggs will be kind of cold by the time we get back.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know. Just eat. We have a lot to do today. The eggs aren’t that bad. Here’s
some strawberry preserves to put on your toast.” He moved it closer for his son.
Brian did not touch it. “There is no God, is there?”
Nate looked at his son, his jaw set. He forced himself to swallow. “I don’t
know. Some say there is. You’re mother believed. She was a good person, so she
believed in good.”
“I prayed Mom would live and she died. I prayed and begged Beth would
live. I promised to do anything the Bible says we’re supposed to do. But she died
anyway.”
“God never made a deal with anyone, Brian. Bargains are for the Devil and
your soul.” He looked away. “I’m sorry. Don’t get cynical like me. You’re too
young for that. I don’t know why people like your mother and little sister have to
suffer and die. You’re not the only one who prayed for them.”
After breakfast, they went out to the barn and got shovels and a pick.
Nate stood by his wife’s grave, looking. He searched the tree line, slowly
sweeping, until he had searched the entire area with his eyes.
Brian watched. “What are you looking for?”