Jake's Law (Book 2): The Law Giveth Read online

  The Law Giveth

  A Jake’s Law Novel

  J.E. Gurley

  Jake’s Laws

  Aim high; shoot straight.

  Long noses often get lopped off.

  A fool and his life are soon parted.

  Don’t bring home more problems than you left with.

  In a lawless land, the biggest gun makes the law.

  Bad people deserve bad ends.

  Trust yourself first; others seldom.

  Use the tools you’ve got.

  Always have an exit strategy.

  Serve revenge in big doses.

  Be willing to lose it all.

  Stay focused.

  First things first.

  The heavier the burden, the less likely someone will want to share it.

  Shit not only happens; it happens often.

  If it you break it, you buy it.

  Love isn’t just cruel, it’s string your guts out on a clothesline to bake in the sun cruel.

  Shit sticks to everything. Fling it at your own peril.

  If you’re going to bitch slap someone, have a pistol in your hand.

  If the day sucks, call it Monday and start your week there.

  Trust your instincts.

  1

  June 10, 2017, 8:00 a.m. Hatch, New Mexico —

  Six heavily armed men moved on foot with military precision toward the center of town. Three provided cover fire for the three advancing in defilade, moving silently, hugging the sides of abandoned buildings to avoid detection by zombies or anyone else that might feel like shooting strangers in uniforms. Each man wore black clothing. The dark color was an effective camouflage at night, but it was now early morning and all it did was soak up the summer sun’s rays. At a hand signal from the group’s leader, two of the men broke away from the formation and raced ahead down an alleyway to reconnoiter the area.

  One of the two men was Jake Blakely, former Arizona Pima County Deputy Sheriff. To say he was unhappy with their present circumstances would have been a gross understatement of his ire. Ideally, the group should have reached their target well before dawn and been in position at first light. Zombies did not sleep, but they could see no better in the dark than could humans, making infiltrating the town less dangerous at night. Unfortunately, a washed-out bridge had delayed them, and the team leader, Captain Luis Lambrini, would not postpone their mission. His orders were to survey the town of Hatch, New Mexico, to determine the feasibility of reclaiming it as a site for a new community for survivors, and he intended to do just that.

  Jake and his companion took turns covering each other as they leapfrogged across empty streets toward their target, the municipal building three blocks away. Jake crouched low on the left side of a narrow alley reeking of decayed garbage across from their target, searching for any signs of movement. Other than three Staggers-infected Shamblers mindlessly ambling up and down the street a block away, the area was deserted. It was too easy. He believed wholeheartedly in Jake’s Law #21 — Trust your instincts. His innate sense of self-preservation had saved his ass on numerous occasions. Right now, his ass felt exposed. He had a bad feeling, an itch between his shoulder blades that would not go away no matter how much he scratched.

  It was not just the eerie silence lying over the town like invisible, sound-dampening fog. He was used to silence. He eyed the rusting, dust-covered cars and pickups lining the streets, but it was more than the lack of early morning delivery vans or commuter traffic clogging the streets. Nor was it the absence of bleary-eyed housewives preparing breakfast for husbands soon off to work, or the children laughing and frolicking on their way to school. It was summer, and schools would normally be out, but school had been out for a long time now. It had been almost two years since the Staggers Plague. The zombie apocalypse had swept through the land, leaving only the bones of thousands of dead towns and silent cities. He remembered a line from Alice Cooper’s song, School’s Out: School’s out forever. Damn right!

  It was not the disconcerting silence or the late mission launch that had him on edge. It was the absence of zombies. Zombies infested every city he had investigated so far, the new cockroach of the post-apocalyptic world. Zombies were not immortal creatures. They could starve to death, but it took a long time. Only three Shamblers seemed too much out of the ordinary. Where were the fast Lopers? There should have been either more zombies or more live people. Something wasn’t right and it bothered him.

  “I don’t like it,” he whispered to his companion, Howard Estes, a 42-year-old former bank manager from Wilcox, Arizona.

  Estes looked over at him frowning. “What’s wrong, Jake?” he asked, annoyed by Jake’s hesitation. He was eager to get the job done and return to Marana. They had been in the field for five days, and he was tired of canned beans and bacon.

  “Where are all the zombies? Hell, there aren’t even any dogs roaming the streets.”

  Since the zombie apocalypse, dogs and coyotes had taken over territory once inhabited by man, feeding on corpses. Packs of either branch of the canine family sometimes took down zombies. Wild dogs were as ubiquitous after the apocalypse as Starbucks had once been.

  “You should be happy there aren’t any zombs. Let’s do this.”

  Jake shook his head. Estes was competent with a weapon, but he carried too much excess baggage, harbored too much anger and resentment at the deaths of his wife and children by the Staggers Plague. That made him both restless and reckless, two dangerous traits in a world where patience and caution kept you alive. He was not Jake’s first choice as a recon partner, but few people chose to become Arizona Rangers. The pay sucked, the hours were long, and the chances of dying were high. Having a natural immunity from the Stagger’s spores wouldn’t stop a bullet or a zombie.

  “Something’s not right,” Jake insisted.

  He could see Estes’ edginess in his nervous hands caressing the trigger of his weapon. If Estes was eager to get himself killed, that was his business, but Jake did not care to join him. Estes usually deferred to Jake’s judgment, but the two-year anniversary of his family’s death was only two days away, and the bitter memories lay heavily on his mind crowding out caution.

  He growled his annoyance. “Come on, Jake! For God’s sake. Three slow zombs, and they’re a block away. We check out the building, report back to the captain, and eat breakfast. Then we go home. It’s a sweet deal, a simple in-and-out.”

  It sounded easy enough, but one thing Jake had learned since E-Day, his personal End of the World Day when the president of the U.S. had finally declared Martial Law for a country descended into chaos: Nothing was ever simple. Simple had died with three hundred channels of crap on the television, drive-thru fast food, the World Wide Web, and romantic walks in the park with your best girl. He lived life by a set of self-imposed hard and fast rules, Jake’s Laws. Two applied to this particular situation. Jake’s Law #3 — A fool and his life are soon parted. Estes was being a fool and was trying to drag Jake along with him. The other was Jake’s Law #7 — Trust yourself first; and others seldom. He had long ago learned to trust his gut instincts, and they screamed for him to crawl his ass back out of town.

  He tried reasoning with Estes, to make him question the obvious. “Why aren’t there more zombies in town? Why no corpses, no skeletons, or no fucking dogs?”

  Estes sighed. “It’s a small village, less than 1,600 people according to the last census. Maybe they all died in church, or maybe they left town when things got rough. Hell, maybe they’re having a fucking picnic in the park, and we weren’t invited.”

  Jake dismissed Estes’ caustic reply, though he did like the part about the picnic. His instincts had kept him alive in throu
gh two tours of Afghanistan, twelve years as a Pima County deputy, and two years of zombie apocalypse. “That’s a lot of maybes.”

  Estes snorted. “Look, I’m not sitting here roasting in the sun while you think about it.” He cocked the lever of his Winchester .30-30 to chamber a round and stood. “I’m going in. You can sit there all day for—”

  He never finished his thought. The side of his head exploded like a kicked Jack-o-Lantern. Blood and brains sprayed the paint-peeling wooden wall beside him. His eyes rolled up as if he were trying to stare at the small hole that had suddenly appeared in his right temple dripping blood down the side of his face. The report of the heavy caliber rifle echoed through the empty town a second later, as Estes slowly crumpled to the ground at Jake’s feet. He twitched once, twice, and then went still. His eyes stared up at the clear blue sky, but they didn’t see anything. He finally made it to be with his family.

  Estes’ death did not strike Jake personally. The impatient bank manager turned Arizona Ranger had been a comrade but not a friend. He no longer had friends. Friends died, and he had seen too many deaths in his lifetime to allow anyone else get under his skin. Almost instantly, the com receiver in his ear burst into life.

  “What the hell was that?” Captain Lambrini shouted at him.

  Jake winced at the feedback screeching in his ear. “Estes is down. Sniper. Sounded like a .243 Browning,” he reported succinctly, keeping his voice calm and controlled, a trait that had drawn comments of ‘cold fish’ and ‘ice water for blood’ from his fellow Rangers. He didn’t mind. It made it easier for him to remain aloof. He preferred keeping as much distance between himself and others as possible, a personal buffer zone.

  He hugged the ground and peeked around the corner of the building, ready to jerk his head back if he saw anything. “From the angle, the shot had to come from the municipal building, left corner front window.”

  Jake waited impatiently while Lambrini considered his options. The captain was deliberate and cautious. Normally, both traits were desirable in a leader, but when quick decisions counted, it was irritating. “Hold your position. We’ll be there in two mikes.”

  A bullet ripped a divot from the cracked asphalt beside Jake. The sound was different this time, a heavier caliber weapon. The shooter from the left window had no line of sight at his position. The shooter was not alone.

  “The hell with that. There are at least two shooters. I’m engaging.”

  “Blakely! Hold—”

  He ripped the ear bud from his ear and let it dangle from the receiver clipped to his belt. He didn’t need Lambrini’s useless chatter in his ear. If there were more than two shooters, one of them could move between him and his team and cut him off, leaving his ass hanging in the early morning breeze. To make matters worse, the shots had attracted the zombies’ attention, rousing them from their aimless rambling. Now, like vultures, the smell of Estes’ blood drew them to his position, staggering like drunks from the parasitic infection slowly eating away their brains. By their emaciated condition, the slow moving Shamblers had not eaten in a while. They would eventually die without sustenance, but they weren’t dead yet and still posed a deadly threat. He was immune to the airborne spores, but without immediate medical attention, a zombie bite was certain death.

  He waited until the three zombies were in the street between him and the shooters, and then leaped up and ran straight at them. One zombie went down almost immediately, its chest blown away from behind by a shot meant for him. He sidestepped a second zombie’s reaching arms, spun the third one around, and shoved it ahead of him with his foot to use as a shield. Its head exploded, scattering wads of the tiny, wire-like parasitical Staggers worms all over the asphalt. He carefully avoided the wriggling bloody gore and leaped for a 1995 Chevy pickup lying on its side up against the curb. He landed heavily and rolled behind it just as bullets tore up the street behind him. Another bullet ripped through the thin bed of the truck bed beside his head, sending shards of rusty metal flying. One lodged in his cheek. Great! All I need is tetanus.

  He plucked the metal shaving from his cheek, hugged the ground, and crawled to the front of the truck where the heavy engine block and metal chassis offered better protection. Peeking through the grill, he detected slight movement at the edge of a window on the right side of the one-story building, a shadow within the shadows. Like Estes, he carried a lever-action Winchester 1873, a sentimental affectation the territorial governor insisted on for the Rangers, but his was an Italian-made Uberti .44-40. He preferred the heavier 240-grain .44 caliber over the normal .30 caliber round for the extra punch it offered. It was in line with Jake’s Law #5 — In a lawless land, the biggest gun makes the law. He always wanted the biggest gun on the block. There was no such thing as too much firepower. Right now, he wished he had a LAWS rocket.

  The shadowy figure was very cagy, moving back away from the window between shots, but he possessed the fatal flaw of most amateurs; the shooter moved to a steady rhythm beating in his head. He methodically sighted and fired, slowly targeting along the truck’s hood with each shot searching for a gap through the mass of metal before retreating to the shadows. Jake had learned one important lesson with the First Recon Battalion in Afghanistan — never let the enemy know where your next shot was coming from. It made you a tempting target for a sniper round or an RPG.

  Jake watched the shooter for a couple of minutes, matching his internal rhythm to the shooter’s pattern. In his mind, he could see the shooter slide back the bolt of the rifle, load a bullet, slide the bolt closed, and move to the window. After the next shot, he began counting down; then, he stood, hoping like hell that the first shooter wasn’t aiming at him, and sighted through his 20X scope at the spot he knew the first shooter would be. He did not rush. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, as he gently squeezed the trigger. At one, he fired. The window exploded just as the shooter stepped in front of it. Jake had a quick glimpse of a bearded man’s startled expression as shards of glass peppered his face, followed by the heavy .44 caliber slug tearing through his skull.

  Jake dropped down behind the truck just as the second shooter’s shot gouged a crease in the truck’s faded blue, left front fender. He smiled when he heard answering fire. His reinforcements had finally arrived. Lambrini had not been too far off on his two minute ETA. Fighting down memories of Afghanistan, Jake cocked his rifle, took a deep breath, and sprinted across twenty yards of open ground for the building’s front door, expecting a bullet in the gut with every step. At the last moment, he veered sharply and fired through the plate glass window beside the door. He leaped head first through the shattered glass, rolled across the floor, and came up on his knees, pointing his weapon toward the shooter’s position. Through the office’s open door, he saw the shooter, alerted by the breaking glass, turn away from the window to face him.

  Jake eased the pressure on the trigger slightly as he saw the shooter’s face. The kid couldn’t have been more than fifteen with a bad case of acne and no face fuzz marring his thin cheeks. He was shirtless and barefoot in dirty jeans, and his ribs pressed tightly against his sallow skin. He looked as if he had missed more than a few meals. His dirty, long blond hair hung in filthy curls to his shoulder. In his trembling hands, he held an old bolt-action Browning .243 caliber deer rifle with a scope. Jake’s anger rose when he realized the kid was the one who had shot Estes. Still, he did not want to kill a frightened teenager who should have been hunting his first deer with his father or hanging out at the mall checking out girls if the world had not ended about the time he hit puberty.

  “Arizona Ranger, kid,” he called out. “Drop the rifle.”

  The kid hesitated when he saw the sun glinting off the badge on Jake’s chest. For a split second, Jake thought it was over and began to breathe a sigh of relief, but he stopped short when the kid raised the rifle to his hip and pointed it in his direction. He no longer looked like a frightened boy. He looked like a predator with cold, lifeless eyes. He reminded J
ake of a younger version of Levi Coombs, the man who had almost killed him. He swore softly to himself. He had almost forgotten Jake’s Law #12 — Stay focused.

  He fired two quick rounds into the kid’s chest. At close range, the .44-40 slugs ripped out his back, painting the faded grey wallpaper with splashes of crimson blood. The kid stumbled backwards into the wall and slid down it to the floor, leaving a glistening blood smear across a two years out of date calendar depicting a roadrunner perched on a branch of a palo verde tree, head cocked to one side as if listening for the kid’s last gasping breath. His dark brown eyes were open, staring at Jake, no longer cold. They were frightened and pleading. A tear rolled down one cheek. His lips moved, but no words came out.

  “Damn you, kid!” Jake shouted, but the boy did not hear him. He was dead.

  At the sound of glass crunching, he turned, weapon at ready, and saw Captain Lambrini step through the broken window. His face was grim as he stared at the dead boy.

  “I told you to hold,” he shot at Jake.

  Jake cradled his rifle in his arms and glared at Lambrini. “I was too exposed.”

  “You could have retreated and waited for us.”

  Jake’s irritation at the senseless death of the boy bled through his words. “There were two of them,” he snarled. “There might have been more. I couldn’t take the chance you guys might leave my ass hanging out.”

  “Dammit, Jake, you’ve got to learn to trust your team.”

  Jake’s Law #7 raced through his head — Trust yourself first, others seldom. “Yeah.”

  Lambrini stared at the dead boy and frowned. “He’s just a kid.”

  The captain’s misplaced sympathy for the dead boy irritated him. “He’s old enough to blow half of Estes’ head off. I gave him an out, but he wouldn’t take it.”

  “Did you have to kill him? Couldn’t you just wound him? You’re a good shot.”

  Jake frowned and shook his head slowly. Lambrini was a rarity, a man of honor dedicated to rebuilding a crumbling society using the law. He was a good organizer and a likable person, but he was pitifully out of his depth when it came to dealing with the lawless. He hated to kill. A good heart just made a bigger target. It irritated Jake that Lambrini thought he had killed the kid for no good reason.