Liberty or Tyranny

Apocalypse Law 5

Liberty or Tyranny

John Grit

The middle-aged woman lay on the floor. Her dead eyes stared up at the ceiling. Nate Williams looked down at the dried puddle of blood and tried to ignore the sickening metallic smell in his nostrils. The cold weather helped, but the smell still made him wish he could walk outside and get some fresh air. He couldn’t do that. As acting sheriff of the county, he had to find the killer. It didn’t matter that once he arrested him there was no court system to try him and no prison system to take the killer off his hands. In the end, justice would most likely be in the form of a bullet, little different from the murder that started the manhunt in the first place. In this post-apocalyptic world, right and wrong had become a matter of a person’s conscience, not of law.

Second-guessing his conscience consumed too many sleepless nights. Being a man of short temper with little tolerance for people abusing others, he had long ago taught himself to control that temper and seldom acted without first thinking things through. It had saved his life many times through the years. It didn’t, however, spare him sleepless nights.

Nate avoided looking at the woman’s face and wouldn’t allow himself to wonder what kind of person she was. There was a time before the plague when most Americans were never a part of violence, unless they served in the military or were in law enforcement or were first responders of another sort. Those days died along with most of the world’s human population. Killed by the plague. Societal infrastructure collapsed for want of manpower, and violent panic spread like a wildfire across every modern city around the world. The thin veneer of civilization that had taken humankind thousands of years to build had been stripped away, laying bare the ugliest of man’s nature. The eyes of everyone left living had witnessed many horrors. Their nostrils had smelled death in most every home and in every street, their souls tortured by the tragedy.

Early morning sunrays slanted in through the open front door of the small, two-bedroom home and caused the bloody shoeprints that led outside to glisten. Nate shivered in the cold and followed the tracks – never a complete shoeprint but only a dab or smear of dried blood here and there – down the drive and onto the street. He took note that the steps were short. Perhaps the killer was small, or perhaps he was carrying a heavy load. The house had been ransacked and it appeared items had been taken, so he leaned toward the heavy load premise. The blood trail faded, and it became more difficult to see the partial tracks on the rough asphalt, but Nate was able to follow the trail to the house next door. He hadn’t been able to determine the killer’s size, but the tracks did tell him where he went. Was he still in the house?

The body had been found by a hungry neighbor who wanted to ask the woman if she could spare some food. She found the front door ajar and looked in. When she saw the body, she ran screaming for home. Her seventeen-year-old son went for help. That was just after sunrise. The victim had been dead for at least two hours. No one had heard the gunshot.

Atticus and Tyrone kept watch for danger, one armed with a shotgun, the other a rifle, while Nate rushed to a tree in the front yard. A shot rang out, and bark flew from the oak near Nate’s head. He dropped to a knee, keeping behind the thick trunk.
Well, this case isn’t going to take much detective work. Damn fool.

A woman yelled from the house through the same window the shot had come from. “Go away!”

Nate stayed behind the tree. “We can’t do that. A woman has been murdered. Shooting at us is just going to get you killed. Being arrested is better than getting shot.”

“I have children in here.” With her victim lying dead, she had little reason not to kill again. “You shoot and you’ll be shooting at innocent kids.”

Nate fumed.
You get the mother of the year award.
“Then come out with your hands empty before they get hurt. You’re not going anywhere. You might as well give up now. I’m not certain what the outcome will be, but you’ll get some kind of a trial. Maybe the Army will take you off our hands.”

While he was yelling at the woman in the house, Sergeant Deni Heath drove up in a Humvee and jumped out wearing full body armor, topped off with a Kevlar helmet. She had learned of the murder from a citizen. Deni had made up her mind she would spend the last two weeks before leaving the military helping Nate stay alive, while he kept his promise to a friend to act as sheriff until they could get married and return to Nate’s farm with his teenage son. She heard the shot from three blocks away. Her face revealed relief when she saw Nate was unharmed.

With her M4 carbine held at the low ready, she ran and took position behind a thick tree in a yard across the street. A shot rang out. There was no evidence where the bullet went. Perhaps it went high and plowed into the roof of the home behind her.

Nate took the time to make sure she had not been hit, momentarily directing his attention away from the house the shooter was in. He felt safer knowing she was backing him.
Just stay behind that tree.

Tyrone, who had been a deputy before the plague and the only real lawman among them, tried to rush for the backyard, so he could stop the murderer from escaping out the back of the house, but a shot forced him to take cover behind the engine block of a disabled small car in the murdered woman’s drive. He was in a dangerous position. A rifle bullet could go through the thin metal of the car and kill him. He got up and ran for the front door of the house. Sometimes being a large man had its drawbacks, and he struggled to move fast. A volley of shots rang out, answered by Atticus’s shotgun and Nate’s rifle. Forced to take cover, the murderer stopped shooting before she managed to get a bullet into Tyrone, who disappeared into the victim’s home.

Deni bided her time, exposing only one side of her head enough to see past the tree she used for cover. She searched for movement in the windows facing the front of the home the shooter was in. The woman shot at Nate again. The resulting muzzle flash in the dark living room illuminated the woman’s face for a split second. Deni fired. Her three quick shots were followed by a promising silence. Was it over?

Nate’s radio squelched and Tyrone’s voice emitted from the speaker. “I’m in position to storm the backdoor. It’s closed and probably locked, but it looks like I can go through it pretty quick.”

Nate put the radio to his mouth. “Hold off on that. Wait for Atticus. You’ll need him to back you with his shotgun. Also, Donovan gave me a flash-bang grenade the other day. When I throw it through a front window, you go in through the back door.”

Tyrone agreed. “Just make sure you cover Atticus while he makes his way back here.”

“Deni’s across the street. Between the two of us, we’ll keep the shooter’s head down.”

The plan seemed simple enough, but if the shooter was still alive, it could all go to hell at the speed of a bullet. Nate hand signaled Atticus to make his way to Tyrone.

For an old man, Atticus moved fast, but age and past injuries slowed him, and he took twice as long to get to the victim’s front door as Tyrone had. Nate and Deni were ready to provide cover fire, but no one shot. Nate fired into the windows a few times anyway, to interrupt the woman’s aim. He began to think Deni in all probability had killed the shooter.

Tyrone’s voice came over the radio. “We’re ready.”

Nate pulled the grenade from a jacket pocket and readied himself. He jumped up and ran until he was so close he knew he couldn’t miss the window, threw the grenade, and swerved to his right, jumping behind a small cedar that was nowhere near thick enough to provide cover from rifle fire, but it was all the cover he had.

The grenade went off. A flash of bright red flame lit the interior of the room the woman was in and smoke billowed out of the broken windows.

Despite the cold, Nate and Deni sweated in their clothes and held their rifles to their shoulders, looking over the sights, ready to fire at a second’s notice.

Silence.

Tyrone’s breathless voice blared from Nate’s radio. “It’s over. She’s dead and she was the only one in the house. No children.”

What they found inside was as unpleasant as the scene in the victim’s home.

Nate glanced down and saw the body, then turned, blocking the front door. “Deni, will you stay out front to keep the gawking neighbors away?”

She stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “So it was my bullet that got her.”

“Maybe.” Nate motioned down the street. “There’s the woman who found the body, and several people are with her. You would be helping more by learning what you can from them and keeping them out of our way.”

She double checked the safety on her rifle. “Must be a gruesome sight. It’s not like you to coddle me.”

Nate cast his eyes down for a second. “It’s no worse than anything else you’ve seen, not as bad, really. But what’s the point of you having the image burned into your memory?”

She shrugged. “Okay. If it makes you feel better to be the big man who shields his woman from the world.” She turned and walked away.

Nate unloaded a load from his lungs, certain he had just pissed her off, but glad she wasn’t going to see what her bullet had done to the woman’s head.

Atticus appeared from the kitchen. “Looks like what we were told by the neighbors was accurate. They said someone must have killed the woman for her food, because some of her supplies were missing.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “There are canned goods and other food piled everywhere. She must’ve made several trips after killing the victim.”

Tyrone added, “The victim had a reputation as a survivalist or what they call a prepper. She had a lot of supplies stored in her home and had been handing food and other supplies out to the neighbors until a few weeks back, when she said she could spare no more, having little left for herself. Some of the neighbors, who had grown accustomed to getting at least a little something from her just by showing up at her door and asking, grew angry, saying she was being selfish and was lying about being out of extra supplies.”

Atticus shook his head. “I guess it’s kind of a miracle it didn’t happen months ago. She should never have let anyone know she had the stuff. This one decided she would just go over and kill the woman and take what she could haul off.” He had found a sheet in a back room. Speaking as he spread it over the woman’s upper body, he said, “Neighbors say both were widowed by the plague. It seems one was killed for being too kind, the other for being a vicious murderer. Uh, that and shooting at us.” He looked at the other men. “I guess God will sort it out now.”

Tyrone wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. “I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, but neither one was too bright.”

Nate stepped out onto the front porch and watched Deni talk to the growing crowd of a dozen or more neighbors, who spoke in subdued tones, their breaths misting in the cold. He joined them, standing beside Deni. “It appears she killed her neighbor for her food. Are the people around here that hungry? The warehouse food will not run out for months, so why would she be so desperate?”

A mother holding her baby in her arms spoke. “Yes, we’re hungry. The warehouse handouts have been cut in half. The Army says it must last until that farm people are working on starts producing more, and no one knows how long that’ll be.”

Her husband added, “We need food now, not six months from now. Starvation rations will just prolong the agony. People keep asking why I don’t help on the farm. But how can I work when I’m so weak from lack of food?”

Atticus had followed Nate to the street. He stood beside him and stared the man down. “No one’s gaining weight, but most of us are pitching in and doing what we can. If you represent even ten percent of the people in this county, we’re all going to starve. Everyone must do their part if we’re going to pull through this.”

The man glared at him. “Yeah, right. All you do is carry a gun.”

“Oh, shut up, Larry,” a woman standing nearby said. “I’m sure they’ll give you their job, if you like getting shot at and being forced to kill people. I offered several times to advise you on how to grow vegetables in your backyard and give you some seed, but you always said you had other things to do.”

Atticus snorted. “Job? A paycheck usually comes with a job. None of us are paid a thing. And the last two months, all I’ve had to eat is beans and rice. Once, I had eggs for breakfast.”

Tyrone walked up, glanced at Atticus, the man who raised him as his son, and then faced the crowd. “Atticus is a little short-tempered at the moment, since we just had to kill a woman who tried her best to kill us. That aside, we’ll ask Colonel Donovan about the rations. If he’s reduced them, there must be a reason.”

Nate’s patience ran thin. “For now, we could use some help with the bodies. I understand the victim’s name was Wilma Thresher. Maybe some of you who have enjoyed her generosity could see to it she receives a decent burial and contact Reverend McKnight. He may be willing to attend and say some words over her.” His stare wilted those in the crowd who had a conscience. “That is, if any of you think she deserves such consideration.”

“What about the food the killer took?” Larry wanted to know. “She won’t need it.”

Ignoring him, Nate continued. “If either of the women had relatives or friends in town, I would appreciate it if one of you would inform them of their deaths.” He walked away, shaking his head.

Deni caught up with Nate. “Don’t be too hard on them. They’re just people.”