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 Revised March 2012 Edited by Judith Reveal @ Just Creative Writing & Indexing Services Cover photo © 2011. Image from Bigstock.com 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?” Nate stood frozen in the doorway, his back to his son. “I never said you could not cry.” “I didn’t say that.” The boy wiped his face. Nate 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 a massive man like his father. “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.” Nate’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 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. They had suffered 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. A twenty-acre field of white stretched toward the river. Brown straw from dead grass poked through the white powder 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. The scent of eggs cooking and fresh brewed coffee reached his nose before Nate got to the kitchen . 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 stood by the stove, looking at nothing. Nate sliced a loaf of bread and put four slices 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 as 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 pushed the jar 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?” Nate shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. The egg thief I guess. I wish he would just come on in and introduce himself instead of sneaking around in the dark and stealing.” He motioned for Brian to step back before he swung the pick, driving it into the frozen soil. It took him only seven minutes to loosen the two inches of frost covering a five-by-five foot area. He put the pick aside and started digging. There was not enough room for both of them to work, so Brian watched as he leaned on his shovel. After a few minutes, he lifted his chin from the handle end and looked at his mother’s grave. “You think she knows? Do you think Mom knows?” Nate stopped shoveling and looked at his son. “Some would say Beth is already in her mother’s arms and being welcomed to heaven.” His chest rose and fell. “I don’t know about after we die. Hell, I’m just doing the best I can about the here and now. Certainly little Beth was as good a little girl as there ever was. Don’t you think?” Brian looked away. Then he nodded. “She never did much wrong. She was better than me anyway.” “You dig a while, will you?” Nate stepped away. After digging silently for several minutes Brian said, “It seems like we should put something on their graves to tell who they were.” “We will. I just haven’t had time. Think about what you might want on them besides their names and when they were born and died. I’ll have to chisel it out of wood, so don’t make it too long.” “Wood will rot.” Brian leaned on his shovel. “I was going to use that 12 by 12 treated timber. We can drive a hole through, square it up with a chisel and put a smaller piece on, like a two-by-four, to make a cross.” “Okay.” “You rest a while. I’ll dig.” Nate carried her out of the house. He had her wrapped in a blanket. She seemed even smaller in his massive arms. Brian smeared his cheeks and turned away as Nate threw the first shovel load on her. Nate began to shovel faster, with desperate force and speed. By the time he had her covered a few inches he was drained and fell to his knees, his chest heaving. Brian turned and saw his wet face. Nate looked down at the fresh soil. “It’s the same as before—throwing dirt on someone you love takes a lot out of you.” He pushed himself up from the ground and continued to shovel dirt on his little girl. When finished, they stood over the mound of dark dirt for a few moments and said nothing. “Well,” Nate finally said. “We’ll miss her. Miss them both.” He picked up the pick and shovel and started for the barn with Brian following, carrying a shovel over his shoulder. “I will milk the cow and feed it,” Brian said. “Will you start on the crosses today?” “All right. You can help after you’ve fed the chickens and shoveled the manure out of the stall.” It took Nate half an hour to saw through the 12 inch square pressure treated timber with a two-man logging saw. The usual strength he was accustomed to had left his shoulders and arms. He placed the two five-feet-long pieces on sawhorses and was using a hand brace to drill through one a foot from its end when Brian came in with an empty wheelbarrow he had just used to haul manure to a pile behind the barn. It would be used for fertilizer come spring. Nate stopped drilling just short of going all the way through. It was the third hole he had drilled, all in line with one another. He put the brace down. “Grab the other end and help me turn it over so I can drill from the other side so it won’t splinter the edge.” When he finished drilling the second timber, he used a wood chisel and hammer to chisel out the wood between the holes and enlarge and then square off the hole that was just large enough for a two by four inch board to slide through with a little hammering from a mallet. Nate put the hammer and chisel down. “Now we have to think of what we want to put on them.” Brian looked away at nothing. “I haven’t had time to think about it.” “You could have thought about it while you were working.” “I was…thinking about them.” “Okay. Let’s go inside the house and maybe look in books or the Bible for something.” Brian sat at the dining room table and turned another page in his mother’s Bible. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.” “You’re supposed to be looking for a short passage that would be fitting. Remember, there isn’t much room and the letters should be large enough to read from a few feet away at least.” “Well, I can’t find anything. This stuff is weird and hard to understand anyway. I don’t think it’s even English.” Nate read while he talked. “Look at that other book of poems then.” “This was Mom’s?” Brian held a book in front of him. “She read poems sometimes.” Nate continued to read. “What about this one?” Brian slid the book over so his father could see. He shook his head. “Way too long. And I don’t think it can be shortened without ruining it.” They continued to search the books. Thirty minutes later, Nate spoke. “Here is something. It’s a little long, but I can chisel it into that last piece of timber and put it behind the crosses for both of them. We’ll set it horizontal with those two granite blocks we have on each side of the driveway as pillars to hold it off the ground. We’ll put their names and everything on the crosses themselves and this on the other timber.” Brian looked across the table at his father. “Those rocks are heavy. How are we going to move them?” “I can get them on the utility trailer. We’ll use the tractor.” “I wish you could chisel it into the stones.” “That would be better,” Nate said, “but I don’t have stone chisels and have never worked with stone. The wood will be good for now.” He read it to his son. The sun falls and the sun rises and so has she, ascended to heaven The sun shall fall again and the earth grow cold and dark, but she shall live forever in God’s warmth and light. Brian looked out the window. “Okay.”