Rest in Peace

by Darrell Maloney

  “When you’ve got the basics down we’ll move to the other rifle,” he said.

  “One of the first things I’ll teach you is how to dismantle it and clean it, then how to put it back together again.

  “A dirty weapon will eventually jam, and it can be dangerous. It’s important you know that from the beginning, and understand I will not let you fire a gun unless it’s clean and serviceable.”

  “What’s serviceable?”

  “That means everything on it works.”

  When Markie finally got to fire his father helped him with his sight alignment and the fundamentals: the breath control, trigger control and muzzle control.

  Occasionally Mark stopped his son by saying, “Misfire. What do you do?”

  By mid-afternoon Markie knew the procedures for dealing with a jammed weapon as well as clearing procedures and all the shooter’s fundamentals.

  He was a natural sharpshooter and was knocking the bulls-eyes out of the paper targets Mark was setting up for him.

  Mark knew that his son would learn more if it wasn’t all hum-drum and boring.

  He remembered when he was that age, and automatically tuned out anything that wasn’t fun.

  “Okay,” he said as supper time drew near.

  “Clear and ground your weapon and let’s do something different.”

  Once the BB gun was rendered safe and on the mat, pointed down range, Mark pulled out the back pack he’d brought with them.

  He handed Markie a bottle of water.

  Then he pulled out several items.

  “Hey, those are my model airplanes.”

  “Yep.”

  “What are we going to do with them?”

  “Promise you won’t tell your mother?”

  “I promise.”

  “We’re going to shoot them to pieces.”

  -55-

  Adults typically have a handful of pleasant memories which last them a lifetime.

  Their first kiss.

  The day they sat behind the wheel of their favorite car and turned the key for the very first time.

  What it felt like to finally master bicycle riding after crashing a dozen painful times, and finally feeling the rush of the wind upon one’s face.

  The first time one holds their newborn baby in their hands.

  Markie’s memories, late in his life, would be anything but typical.

  For he was born in a mine.

  He never saw the sky, never felt the sun upon his face, until he was almost seven years old.

  Never knew what grass smelled like, or how it felt beneath his bare feet.

  Perhaps waiting so long for such things to happen would make the memories better.

  Probably not.

  On this particular day Mark took his young son to the back of the mine to teach him how to shoot.

  For countless generations, it’s been one of those activities which endears itself in a father’s heart as well as his son’s.

  For the rest of their lives both of them would recall this day fondly.

  Mark was so proud of the way his son listened intently to his instructions and followed them to the letter. How he’d learned the safe and correct means of handling and caring for weapons.

  How he seemed to understand that caring for a rifle and keeping it clean was in many ways as important as knowing how to shoot it.

  How he picked up the fundamentals as though he were born with a rifle in his hands; how he seemed to have a knack for it from the very beginning.

  Who worked with him on sight alignment, telling him not to worry he couldn’t focus on the front and rear sight and the target all at the same time. And telling him it was okay, that he’d get the hang of it.

  As he stepped back and watched his son fire, Mark felt an overwhelming sense of pride.

  He understood this was much more than Markie merely learning how to use a new tool.

  No, this was providing Markie with an essential skill he’d need for survival.

  A skill he would pass on to his own son someday.

  This act marked a step closer in Markie’s journey to manhood.

  Markie, on the other hand, was grateful he had a patient father who didn’t yell at him every time he forgot to point his barrel down range.

  Who gave him the confidence he’d need the following day, when he got to fire his .22 for the first time.

  Despite his admonition to Markie not to tell his mother about the airplanes, Mark took great pleasure in telling her himself.

  He made a great show of dumping a backpack full of shattered model pieces, wings and cockpits and what used to be fuselages, onto the floor of their RV.

  “Put these in a box and shove them under your bunk, partner,” he said to Markie.

  “Someday when we’re bored and have nothing to do we’ll glue them back together as best we can.”

  “And then what will we do with them?”

  “When we’ll shoot ‘em again.”

  “All right!”

  The two bonded that day, in a way boys and their dads are meant to bond. Mark got a feeling of pride in his son, Markie a feeling of appreciation for his dad.

  They’d made an agreement the next day to take both rifles with them.

  “But before you can even touch the .22 you have to prove to me you remembered everything you learned today.”

  “I will. I know I will.”

  “Just one mistake and we’re gonna put the .22 aside and go back and do it all again. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  That night Markie did something he almost never did.

  He went to bed early.

  He couldn’t wait for the next day to arrive.

  **************************

  Thank you for reading

  Final Dawn Book 13:

  REST IN PEACE

  Please enjoy this preview of the next installment in the series,

  Final Dawn Book 14:

  A DAY OF RECKONING

  **************************

  Marty Haskins and Bob Ashton were close friends, yet their friendship was enigmatic.

  Ashton was in many ways a very private person.

  On the surface he was a gregarious and outgoing man. The life of every party. A practical joker extraordinaire and everybody’s friend.

  But there were many things about his life; many secrets, that he kept to himself.

  Nearly everyone else in Eden called him “Ace.”

  But not Marty.

  Marty wasn’t quite the social beast Ace Ashton was.

  Oh, he could hold his own at a cocktail party or backyard picnic. He was a friendly sort people gravitated to in much the same manner they ran to Ace.

  Under other circumstances they might easily become competitors in a social scene.

  It was the whole “Ace” thing that bugged Marty. Not Ace the man, but rather Ace the nickname.

  Marty asked him early on where the name came from.

  “That’s something I don’t share with others.”

  Now, Marty was a great guy. He was not only the first one to help out a friend in trouble; he was there to help strangers as well.

  He was always ready to give a hand up to the downtrodden. His wife liked to say Marty wouldn’t only give someone the shirt off his back, he’d wash it for him first.

  But Marty had his quirks.

  One of his biggest was he hated when people kept things from him.

  It was really the only bone of contention between the two.

  Oh, it wasn’t bad enough to prevent the two of them from being friends; not at all.

  Just bad enough for Marty to tell Ace he’d call him “Bob” until he was more forthcoming with an explanation.

  Ashton never told him, but Marty calling him “Bob” was fine with him.

  In fact, Ashton hated the nickname “Ace.” He wished he could wash it away and be done with it.

  He wished everyone would take Marty’s lead and call him Bob.

 
; One of his biggest secrets was that in his younger years he had a big-time gambling problem.

  Oh, he didn’t see it as a problem.

  A twenty year old man seldom sees the forest for the trees. He’s too green to see the big picture.

  And for a young Bob Ashton, a poker player who won more often than not, gambling was a virtue. He was skilled. He had game. He won more than his fair share of the tournaments he entered, and he was moving up in the national standings.

  He was called “Ace” for his uncanny ability to turn up the top card when he needed it most.

  And back then he liked the name.

  He embraced it.

  He even had tattoos placed upon each of his biceps to immortalize the moniker.

  On his left arm was a full-sized playing card: the ace of diamonds in dazzling red.

  On his right arm was the word “Ace” in the same font used on Bicycle playing cards, his favorite brand.

  No, he saw no problem with his gambling habit until the night his brother was killed.

  He was struggling to raise money to cover the entry fee for his biggest tournament ever.

  This one was in Las Vegas and had a ten thousand dollar buy-in. The pay-out, if he won the tournament, was a cool half-million.

  Even better, the winner was guaranteed a spot in the International Tournament of Champions.

  The problem was Ace was a big-time partier at that stage in his life. And poker wasn’t his only habit.

  He also liked the tables.

  A week before the entry deadline he lost two grand in the Lucky Lady’s blackjack lounge.

  And that put him a thousand short to make his buy-in.

  “No problem,” said his brother Simon. “I’ll float you a grand. I know you’re good for it.”

  “Wait a minute. Isn’t that the thousand you were gonna use to fix the brakes on your car?”

  “Yeah, but they’ll hold another week or two. It’s not a problem.”

  Only Simon was wrong. It was a problem.

  Simon lived in Apple Valley, California, a mere three hours from Vegas.

  When Ace advanced to the semi-finals he decided to surprise his brother by joining him.

  He took two days off from work and headed north on the I-15.

  Fifty miles north of Barstow his brakes went out on a long down grade.

  Ace got word of the accident an hour before his semi-finals game.

  He walked away and never looked back.

  And he never played poker for money again.

  The problem was he couldn’t shake the nickname. And the nickname was a constant reminder of his brother’s tragic death.

  Even after moving twice before winding up in the tiny town of Eden the name followed him.

  All it took was for someone to see him without his shirt.

  Or for someone to dig back a year or three on his Facebook page and note one of his old friends using the name.

  If it was up to him, everyone would take Marty’s lead.

  If it was up to him he’d go by Bob.

  Because in his mind it wasn’t Bob who killed his only brother.

  It was Ace.

  Ace had another secret he held closely to the vest.

  Before he quit college to play poker full time he was studying theology.

  After Simon’s death he went back and got his degree and became an ordained minister, though he never had his own flock.

  That was actually what brought him to Texas.

  Someone told him that in Texas there’s a church on every block.

  That’s an exaggeration, but there are an awful lot of churches in Texas. And that’s appropriate, for every Texan firmly believes that God Himself blessed Texas as a special and wondrous place.

  Ace moved from Apply Valley to San Angelo, intending to set up his own church. There he would preach God’s lessons, as well as other more personal things, such as the evils of gambling.

  There was a glut of churches in San Angelo. So much so it would be extremely difficult to lure parishioners from other ministers.

  And every clergy member knows a minister without a flock is merely one who thumps his Bible to empty halls.

  And he is never heard.

  Someone pointed out Ace might have better luck in a small town.

  Someone else pointed out Eden might have a place for Ace and his teachings.

  Ace and Kathy bought a house in Eden and were in the process of securing funding for an abandoned church building on the east edge of town.

  To Ace the setting was perfect, and a sign from God above.

  He planned to name it

  EAST OF EDEN

  Christian Church

  Then, on the day he was to go to the bank to sign the final papers, a breaking news alert crossed the screen of every television in the world.

  NASA SCIENTISTS WARN OF IMPENDING

  METEORITE COLLISION WITH EARTH

  Saris 7 was upon them.

  Ace knew this wasn’t the second coming, for the righteous would be killed as well as the sinners.

  He couldn’t understand the need for such a cataclysmic event.

  He couldn’t understand the need for so many millions to die.

  And Bob “Ace” Ashton lost his religion.

  He and Kathy had been in Eden for a very short time when news of Saris 7 broke.

  They hadn’t had a chance to establish themselves.

  There was just a small handful of people who knew their intentions: the bank’s loan officer, the realtor who listed the old church, their next door neighbors.

  All died in the first freeze.

  All by their own hands.

  Now only two of the survivors knew that Ace was once a minister. Kathy and Ace himself.

  And they’d held their tongues for ten years.

  Now Ace was rethinking the whole thing.

  Now, on the day Eden was tasked with burying eight people, including three of Ace’s good friends, Eden needed a man of God.

  Now more than ever.

  **************************

  Final Dawn Book 14:

  A DAY OF RECKONING

  will be available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Hastings Books, and more than two dozen on line book stores in July, 2018.

  **************************

  **************************

  Those of you who’ve been reading Darrell Maloney’s novels for awhile may have noticed they’re all rooted in reality.

  He doesn’t do zombies because zombies defy logic. Zombies are entertaining but could never happen. Not really.

  However, an electromagnetic pulse bombarding the earth has happened before and WILL happen again.

  A meteorite impacting with earth has happened before and WILL happen again.

  The super volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park has erupted before and WILL erupt again.

  Scientists around the world aren’t quite sure what will happen in the years ahead as it pertains to climate change.

  Heck, they can’t even agree on what’s causing it.

  But whether it’s caused by a normal cyclic thawing of the earth or by burning fossil fuels, it’s definitely happening.

  And the one thing the scientists can agree on is that as the polar caps thaw, the people of earth will be exposed to spores and pollens mankind hasn’t seen in thousands of years.

  This, in PANDEMIC, is a story that could really happen.

  In our lifetimes.

  Please enjoy this preview of Darrell Maloney’s upcoming new series,

  PANDEMIC

  Pandemic

  Chapter 1

  Scientists knew it was coming for decades.

  At least they claimed to.

  And perhaps some of them did.

  Most of them, though, were as surprised as everyone else when the ice packs started to melt.

  Thus began the great debate on what was causing it.

  Those with a certain political leaning claimed it was gr
eenhouse gases, the exhaust from machines and smokestacks, which was causing global temperatures to rise.

  Others, with different political agendas, scoffed and said it was a natural occurrence of the earth, going through its normal heating and cooling cycles.

  An American vice-president used a poorly thought out choice of words and the term “global warming” was born.

  The term made him a laughing stock with nay-sayers when winter temperatures dropped to all-time records all over the globe.

  A Nobel Prize winning geologist named Martin Sorenson noted that if he’d used the term “global climate change” instead of “global warming” he’d have been taken more seriously and not set a program to combat the problem back many years.

  In any event, and regardless of who was right and who was wrong, the earth was indeed changing.

  The rising of ocean waters, which all reputable scientists agreed would be a major problem, would happen gradually.

  There was plenty of time for seaside communities to build sea walls or elevate homes close to the water.

  The climate itself would also change slowly, allowing human beings a chance to adjust.

  In short, there was no real need to panic.

  Everybody agreed that clean air was important, and the world community continued to work to that end. But the “sky is falling” attitude some had was largely unfounded.

  Dr. Sorenson also famously stated, “We’ll just have to get used to harsher winters and more hurricanes and tornados. But mankind will adjust, just as it always has.”

  Dr. Sorenson maintained that, although some might die from stronger hurricanes and tornados, no one would die as a direct result of climate change itself.

  So followed many years of climate change occasionally making headlines, but largely being placed in the back of one’s mind.

  Meanwhile, the ice packs started to shrink.

  The thaw in Antarctica wasn’t a problem to the global community.

  And least not in ways that would be noticeable.

  The polar bears and sea lions in the area had to change their migration and mating habits, and some had to relocate to colder locales.