Survival Rules Series (Book 2): Rules of Conflict Read online

  RULES OF CONFLICT

  JACK HUNT

  Direct Response Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 by JACK HUNT

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to an online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  RULES OF CONFLICT book 2 is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Also by JACK HUNT

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  The Agora Virus series

  Phobia

  Anxiety

  Strain

  The War Buds series

  War Buds 1

  War Buds 2

  War Buds 3

  Camp Zero series

  State of Panic

  State of Shock

  State of Decay

  Renegades series

  The Renegades

  The Renegades Book 2: Aftermath

  The Renegades Book 3: Fortress

  The Renegades Book 4: Colony

  The Renegades Book 5: United

  The Wild Ones Duology

  The Wild Ones Book 1

  The Wild Ones Book 2

  The EMP Survival series

  Days of Panic

  Days of Chaos

  Days of Danger

  Days of Terror

  The Against All Odds Duology

  As We Fall

  As We Break

  The Amygdala Syndrome series

  Unstable

  Unhinged

  Survival Rules series

  Rules of Survival

  Rules of Conflict

  Rules of Darkness ( coming soon )

  Mavericks series

  Mavericks: Hunters Moon

  Time Agents series

  Killing Time

  Single Novels

  Blackout

  Defiant

  Darkest Hour

  Final Impact

  The Year Without Summer

  The Last Storm

  For my Family

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  A Plea

  Readers Team

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Three days after blackout

  Gabriel never imagined he would bury his own blood in some godforsaken woods. He shoveled another scoop of dirt onto his brother’s shallow grave. Several feet apart from him were the four plots of the other inmates from North Dakota. He breathed in deeply the cold pine air, and looked up into a brooding sky over Flathead County, Montana. A hard rain fell on his face, hiding the tears from the remaining group. He couldn’t show weakness nor would he break. He had to stay strong. He could have ordered any one of them to dig the grave but he wanted to do it himself. It was his fault they were gone. He thought splitting up would help, and it had to some extent, but at what cost? Marcus was gone, they were six men short and still on the run from the law. Gabriel looked down at the waterlogged soil that had quickly turned into a brown stream around his boots. He would have given anything to bring Marcus back.

  Once the last heap of dirt was piled on top, he took the shovel and tossed it at the feet of Hauser, the sole survivor of the attack.

  “Dig two more,” he said in a firm tone.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Hauser looked around the gloomy forest. Only the tapping of rain hitting their coats could be heard. “But there is no one else to bury.”

  “There will be,” he said, looking at him as water trickled off his forehead. They had only got as far as the village of Apgar by foot when Hauser met them on the road heading for West Glacier. Minutes earlier they had killed a man for an old beat-up truck that was on its last legs but still running. Five minutes down the road, they spotted Hauser, soaked and shaking from the cold. He told them everything — how they were ambushed, who was responsible and how he ran away like a coward.

  Of course he tried to explain that he had no choice. He would have been killed if he hadn’t escaped. But Gabriel never heard that. He stopped listening after Hauser told him that Marcus was still alive when he fled.

  Convinced his brother would have made it out, they waited until the dead of night before returning to see. That’s when he saw his brother lying against a tree, motionless. Anger rose in him like nothing he’d felt before.

  Right then Hauser sealed his fate.

  The rest of the men watched as Hauser slipped the shovel into the wet earth and began to scoop, and toss it over his shoulder. Once he had a grave that was close to six feet in length and several feet deep, he stuck the shovel in the ground, leaned on it and wiped his face with the back of his arm. Smeared with dirt he locked eyes with Gabriel.

  “Step into it,” Gabriel said trying to hold back his rage.

  Hauser let out a nervous chuckle. “But… why?”

  “It needs to be deeper.”

  “But the others…”

  “Deeper,” Gabriel said in a demanding tone.

  Confused, out of breath, but realizing he didn’t stand a chance out of getting out of this situation alone, he relented. Probably hoping it would all be over soon, Hauser stepped into the grave and dug down a few more feet. Each time he scooped he looked at Gabriel to check if it was enough. Gabriel stared back but said nothing.

  After taking it down a few more feet, he tossed up the shovel. “There. Good?”

  Hauser pulled a face and smiled as he went to climb out.

  “Yeah. Perfect,” Gabriel said. In one smooth motion he brought the Glock from behind his back and squeezed off a round into his right kneecap. Hauser fell back, buckled and screamed in agony as he hit the ground. Gabriel glanced at the other men. They didn’t say a word. They knew better than that. Looking up at Gabriel, a stunned Hauser shook his head, groaning in agony with astonishment in his eyes. Gabriel fired another round, this time into the other knee. Another scream split the silence. With Hauser wailing, unable to rise, bleeding out and rolling around in agony, Gabriel tucked the Glock into the back of his waistband and jumped down into the dirty pit with him. With one hand he grabbed Hauser by the throat and slammed him onto the soft earth.

  “Gabriel? Why?” Confused, Hauser pleaded with him.

  “You ran away and left my brother to die. Yo
u’re a coward and there is no place for cowards among us.”

  “But I didn’t know he was dead…”

  With Hauser pushed back into the slick ground, Gabriel took a handful of dirt and jammed it into his mouth as Hauser tried desperately to fight him off. But it was useless. Without his legs working, all he could do was claw at Gabriel’s top. “Shut the hell up!” he said as he pushed more dirt into his mouth and then began to scoop more of it like water over his head, still holding him down with the other hand. Hauser coughed, spluttered and choked on dirt and loose stones. One second, he would get a pocket of air, and the next, Gabriel would fill it with wet earth. He turned and gestured for Torres to begin scooping soil onto the lower half of Hauser’s body while he continued to hold his head down and cover his face.

  Once a heavy-soaked load was imprisoning Hauser’s lower half, Gabriel balled his fist and struck him in the face four times before climbing out and taking the shovel from Torres and finishing scooping dirt over him.

  When Hauser was hidden beneath the soil, Gabriel stamped on the earth to compact it before he tossed the shovel away, exhausted and overwhelmed by fury.

  All of them looked at him with concern, disbelief and perhaps respect.

  “Who is the other grave for?” Torres asked, his forehead furrowing.

  “For the one who killed my brother.”

  Hauser had provided an accurate description of what he looked like, and it had matched the man who’d come to the cabin. His face was burned into Gabriel’s memory as was his name. And knowing he was a resident of Whitefish and an employee of search and rescue, it would make it a lot easier to find him. And when he did, he would suffer far worse than being buried alive.

  1

  Two days later

  Near Whitefish, Montana

  Hunting was strictly forbidden in Glacier National Park but with a heavy population of bears, elk and moose, and the country in disarray, it was a prime target for those wanting to survive. And survival was all that mattered now.

  Tyler lay in the silence and peered at the elk through the scope of the Browning BLR Lightweight 81 rifle. He’d cut his teeth hunting in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, and private hunting spots, so tracking and hunting elk wasn’t foreign to him. It had been deeply ingrained in his childhood and today was no different. As Corey was in talks with their old man regarding Nate and Erika staying at the cabin, he thought he’d take them out and show them what the future looked like if the power didn’t come on. Suited up in camouflage hunting gear from his father’s store he blended in with the landscape. They had been out there for several hours. Laying either side of him, Erika and Nate didn’t move a muscle as he brought his finger to the trigger and focused the crosshair on the sweet spot, the middle of the lungs.

  The gun let out a crack and the elk took off running.

  “Better luck next time,” Nate said slapping him on the back.

  “Really? All that time for that?” Erika said shaking her head. “If that’s the future, I’m not liking it. There has to be an easier way to get food.”

  “Ah, princess, it must be hard not having Uber Eats, or skip the dishes,” Nate said before cracking up laughing.

  Tyler didn’t say a word, he knew better. Adrenaline pumped through his system. He remained in place looking through the scope. It was common for elk to run a short way and then drop. In years gone by, he would have waited a good thirty minutes before he started his search, otherwise it was possible that a downed elk could get spooked and run farther away and he really wasn’t into hiking miles. His father would often make them wait hours. They would sit around the fire drinking and then when the timer on his watch dinged, he would tell them to get up and begin the search.

  “I hit it. You’ll see,” Tyler said.

  “Please. That puppy just took off at a high rate of speed. No one does that after getting a bullet in them.”

  “Elk do. So do deer,” Tyler replied as he prepared a fire. His father would have forced him to use a magnesium flint but they hadn’t reached that point of desperation yet. Instead, he pulled out lighter fluid, emptied it onto a fire pit he’d created earlier and tossed a match on it. It let out a whoosh, as flames licked up into the air. Tyler began making coffee.

  Nate look confused. “Then why aren’t we going after it?”

  “Do you enjoy running? Give it time to die.”

  “You mean it’s not dead?” Erika said with a look of revulsion.

  “It’s dead. It just doesn’t know it yet,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “What?” Tyler asked. “How do you think we caught animals before this? You do eat meat, right?”

  “Well I’m…”

  Nate started laughing. “I was wondering why you kept eating just granola bars and veggies. You’re a vegetarian, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Is there a problem with that?”

  “There might be if you want to survive,” Tyler said, pulling out a few metal cups from his backpack.

  “Oh, so I have to eat meat to survive?”

  “No, I think he’s saying you have to eat what you’re given, princess.”

  Erika shook her head. “I think we’ll agree to disagree.”

  Nate laughed. “Fine by me.” Tyler knew full well that people could live without meat but Nate was right, you couldn’t be picky when there wasn’t food being delivered. Hell, they hadn’t seen any delivery vans on the road on the journey back from Vegas.

  It had been five days since darkness spread across the nation without warning. Many theories would rise over what caused it, but it was an EMP. It had all the hallmarks — the power grid down, newer vehicles stalling and cell phone communication no longer operating. Oh the landlines had worked for a while, powered by backup generators, but that soon came to an end. They were now living in a new world and one that most weren’t prepared for.

  Tyler sat on a log and poured coffee into metal cups, then he took a moment to look through high-powered binoculars to see if he could spot the beast. They didn’t have all day because Corey wanted a hand lugging a few generators around town. The city was distributing what they had and Corey had offered to help.

  Nate took a sip of his coffee and leaned back against a large boulder prattling on about how he could get used to a slower pace of life. For a while they enjoyed their coffee in peace, and when he was done, Tyler tossed the dregs and put his backpack on, ready to go blood trailing.

  “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “Now? How about I stay here?” Erika said. “Then when you don’t find it, I won’t be as tired as hell.”

  Tyler shifted his weight from one foot to the next. “Think of this as a lesson.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Humor me.”

  She groaned then shook her head as she got up. “Okay but if we don’t find it in the next hour, that’s it, I’m out.”

  “Man, you are high maintenance,” Nate said.

  “That’ll change,” Tyler added. Nate laughed. They took off strolling over the hilly landscape, through dense forest and past a pristine turquoise lake and multiple streams until he found the spot where he’d shot the animal. Although he’d used a rangefinder, he could determine where to head by a distinct landmark, and a tree that the elk was near. He’d also focused on where the elk went after it left the area. Tyler had picked a second landmark just before it disappeared out of sight. From there it was simply a matter of following the blood trail. “It went this way,” he said.

  “How can you be sure?” Erika asked.

  “Experience. Lots of hours. I spent more time out in the wilderness when I was younger than anywhere else.” He scanned low tree limbs, shrubs and rocks for blood and anything that might have hair on it. There were times where the blood trail was inconsistent but it wouldn’t take him long to find more droplets. The blood was pink and frothy, confirming the shot had hit the lung. Contrary to what Erika might have thought of him, he didn’t enjoy hunting. In his mi
nd it wasn’t a sport. It was a means of survival and while they could last on canned goods, dry food and MREs that his father had gathered, staying ahead of the game was key.

  As they came around a large cluster of trees and came up over a steep incline, there was the elk but it wasn’t alone. There were four armed individuals dressed in hunting gear looming over it and talking among themselves. Tyler instantly put his arm out and motioned for Nate to get on the ground. On their faces they wiggled over to an area that provided more cover.

  “Who the hell are they?” Nate asked.

  Tyler squinted. “Stay still and be quiet.”

  They were too far away to hear what was being said but it was clear there was an interest in where the elk had come from. The men looked at the ground where droplets of blood were and two of them slung their rifles over their backs and began following the trail. “Move, move,” Tyler said in a hushed voice. There was no time to get up and run. Even though the forest provided ample coverage, they were still close to the elk’s blood trail. They shuffled to their left until they found a spot behind large boulders that were covered in moss.

  Tyler watched the men traipse past them a short distance away and disappear into the brush. Relieved but frustrated that his kill would be stolen from under his nose, he crept up the incline to get a better look at what they were doing. One of the two men was now standing and talking on a radio. Were they from another town? A local militia? His father had often talked about the different types of groups that would emerge and group together if society collapsed. Families, neighborhoods, old military buddies, hate groups, preppers, gangs and everything in between. The question was, who were these guys?