Fallen Earth | Book 1 | Remnants

by Morrow, Jason D.

  “A clever way to try and get out of torture,” he said. “You have a tough exterior, but that’s another thing about fire. It softens tough exteriors.”

  He nodded at his two henchmen, and before Gwen could stand, she felt two sets of arms grab her from behind. She flailed her arms and her legs, but both of them were nearly twice her size and she could barely move once they pinned her to the desk. One of the men lay over her back, pressing her chest into the desk while the other grabbed her left arm and pulled it over the side of the desk.

  “Leave her alone!” Bryson yelled from his cell, but no one paid attention to his cries.

  Savage stood and grabbed one of the candles and then knelt beside the desk. “It’s a small flame, but it will do the trick.”

  Gwen couldn’t move. Her airways seemed to close up as she watched the murderer tilt the candle toward her exposed wrist. He stopped just short of her skin though she could feel the warmth of the flame.

  “So, you need to tell us where your father is and you won’t have to worry about burn scars,” he said. “Have you ever seen deep burn scars? The kind where the tendons have melted away and muscle mass couldn’t grow back? The fingers curl up, the hand twists. And that’s nothing compared to the extreme pain you will feel, even in the healing process.”

  Gwen felt tears sting her eyes as she stared at the flame of the candle. Such a small flame, a tiny torture device. If she made up a location, they would find out and torture her anyway. If she told them she didn’t know, they would torture her anyway. There was no scenario in which Savage wasn’t going to burn her skin. Bryson’s screams for them to stop fell away into echoes in her mind and all she could hear was the pounding of blood vessels in her ears.

  The fingers on her right hand blindly crawled on the desk, searching for the pocketknife as she stared at the flame. She wouldn’t be able to use it now, but maybe soon. Maybe if they didn’t kill her right now.

  “Please,” she whispered. “I don’t know. I don’t know where he is. He was out on a call last night when I went to bed and I haven’t seen him since. I woke up and I haven’t been able to call him. Please.”

  The fire licked her wrist and she screamed as it seared her skin. Savage only let the flame touch her for a few seconds, but it was enough to make her entire arm hurt. She clenched her teeth so tightly she thought they almost broke.

  “Where is he?” Savage asked in a calm voice.

  Tears fell freely down Gwen’s face. She had nothing left to say. Savage wanted to torture her. She had nothing of value.

  The fingers on her right hand felt metal and she silently grasped the knife, covering it as much as she could with her hand.

  “I don’t know,” she said again.

  This time, as the flame came close to her skin, she said, “Wait!”

  Savage stopped and stared at her eyes.

  “I don’t know where he is, but I can get you the combination to the safes. There are more than enough guns in there to arm all of the inmates.”

  Gwen felt like a coward. She felt like she was letting the entire town down, though most of them wouldn’t know anything until they woke up in the morning. Worst, she thought about how much her dad would be disappointed if he found out.

  Savage set the candle on the table and nodded at the two men who then let go of her. She collapsed to the floor, holding her arm to her chest as tears fell down her face. She felt relief and pain at the same time.

  They weren’t watching her closely enough to notice her slipping the knife into her large hoodie pocket.

  Savage pressed his fingers together and looked toward the ceiling as though he was thinking about what she had said. Finally, he nodded. “Sure, that will do. They are keypad locked so we need the combinations.”

  Gwen looked down at her wrist, ashamed. Savage had only held the flame to her skin for seconds. The spot was red and it throbbed, but it wasn’t debilitating. Yet she caved.

  She told them where to find the paper with the combinations. Worst case scenario, she thought, they would get the guns and have a shootout with law enforcement tomorrow. Surely this power outage wasn’t going to last long. Someone would hear about this takeover sooner or later.

  Savage waited a moment, then nodded. “Put her back in the cell.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Leland felt shaken. It had been a long time since he had fired a weapon on the job, now a man was dead and Leland’s nerves were on edge.

  He remembered the day when such an event would give him an adrenaline rush, which would eventually go away, and he would be able to stabilize before he went home. Now, all he could think about was how many more enemies he would have to face before the night was over. He wondered how many times he would have to pump his shotgun and unload buckshot into another man's chest. He knew he would do so without hesitation, particularly if the man were wearing a prison jumpsuit. But that didn't mean he liked doing it.

  Under the moonlight, he glanced at Henry who no longer wore handcuffs on his wrists. He knew he was taking a risk by freeing up the fugitive, but he feared the greater risk of not getting to his daughter in time.

  Leland's thoughts about Henry had been confirmed, considering the boy had stayed with him instead of running off the moment he was uncuffed. It showed that Henry was smart and liked to think ahead. If this problem were widespread, he wouldn't have the means to survive. Part of that was because, at heart, he wasn't a killer. At least, he wasn't a murderer. Or whoever he killed really deserved it. If this weren’t the case, why wouldn’t he have killed Leland when he had the chance? He could have shot the sheriff, gotten the keys off his belt, and been a free man. So, freeing his hands didn’t bother Leland so much, even though what he had just done was against the law. According to the law, Leland had the responsibility to keep Henry in custody and secure him until the proper authorities took him away. Giving Henry the option to go free compromised Leland's oath of office as sheriff.

  At the moment, he didn't care.

  This wasn't the first time he had broken the law while wearing a badge in uniform, but he didn't like to think about that. He never liked to think about the things he was able to justify in his own mind.

  Despite Henry being a prisoner, Despite having only known him for a few hours, despite having traveled most of the way to Hope in silence, he trusted Henry. He even felt more comfortable now that Henry wasn’t wearing handcuffs.

  Hour-by-hour, Leland felt more and more concern. Concern not for himself, not even for the people of Hope so much, but for Gwen. As long as Gwen was safe, Leland could handle any situation. He had to make sure she was safe before doing anything else. It meant everything to him. In fact, there was nothing else in the world that mattered. She was all he had left here. And if Jim Savage were headed to Hope…he shook his head. If that psychopath were heading to Hope, Leland was already too late.

  With another two miles to go, his legs burned and his back ached. Still, he quickened his pace.

  "You sure are going fast," Henry said

  “I obviously have a reason to get there quickly."

  "Yeah, but you don't want to go in there with guns blazing, you know that. We have to take a slow approach because if there are inmates there that means there could be hostages.”

  Leland had already thought about this and he wasn't sure how he wanted to approach the town. He needed to be tactical, he needed to be quiet, he needed to be quick, but there was just no way to formulate a plan without knowing what he was running into.

  "You also don't want to be exhausted when you get there," Henry said.

  "So, you think I ought to just take my sweet time, do you?"

  "No," Henry said. “We need to think about what we're going to do."

  "You're going to help me?"

  "I'm going to survive," Henry said. "And from the looks of things, staying with you for the time being looks to be my best chance. That said, if you're going to be reckless, then I guess we should split."

  “W
e’re two miles from town,” Leland said. “That could take us a little while, especially if there are more inmates along the way that we have to deal with."

  “Two miles isn’t that far,” Henry said.

  Leland couldn't really argue with Henry. His mind was reeling, wondering, strategizing, putting forth every scenario he could possibly think of in his brain as his legs carried him quickly toward Hope. Almost none of his thoughts were coherent, and what he really needed to do was sit down with a pen and paper and come up with a real plan based on what he knew about the town—the best way to enter, the easiest buildings to take shelter behind and still have a good view of the town. That said, strategies changed depending on how many people they were up against. Still, he wouldn't have hated to look at a map of the town and think for a while. He had a decent map in his head, but that didn't account for the woods surrounding the town, and some of the buildings scattered on the outskirts.

  Finally, he nodded and swallowed, then looked at Henry. "You're right. I need to slow down my brain as much as I need to slow down my legs.”

  Leland slowed his pace, but his mind was still speeding. Why was everything that had electrical power suddenly shut off? Why was he walking down a dark road having no idea what to do? Why was this fugitive trying to help him? Was Jim Savage there waiting for him with Gwen?

  He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When he opened them back up he looked all around him at the trees shrouding them in darkness, up at the moon casting a blue-white glow over their heads. He had never felt so unprepared in all his life. Finally, he looked at Henry and said something he would've never seen himself saying before: "I need your help."

  Leland wasn't sure in the darkness, but he thought he saw the hint of a smile on Henry's face. It wasn't a smile of victory nor a smile of vindictiveness, rather he seemed relieved that Leland was willing to ask for help at all, particularly from him.

  "I need to get into the mind of some of these people," Leland said. "I need to know how a typical inmate would think in this scenario."

  "They, like anyone else, will be in survival mode,” Henry said.

  Henry watched Leland, and it made the sheriff feel uncomfortable. "What are you willing to do?"

  "What do you mean?" Leland asked.

  "I mean, are you willing to enlist the help of other people? To let them do the work of law enforcement since there is no law enforcement other than yourself? Do you know of anybody who would be willing to help?”

  Leland wasn't prepared to enlist the help of other people, particularly citizens of Hope. It was a quiet town with barely any problems. Leland could count on one hand how many arrests he made in a typical year. But then he thought about the boy he’d arrested the day before. Bryson McClure. Then, he thought about their family and how they, in their own way, reminded him of a band of escaped prisoners.

  “It depends,” Leland answered. “There’s a guy about your age I arrested last night and tossed him in jail.”

  “First of all, that’s one person,” Henry said. “Second, do you really think having someone you threw into jail is the best first pick?”

  “No, but his family might be. They are the rough sort who never shy away from a brawl. They may not like me for the simple fact that I wear a badge, but if I tell them their son is in danger then they might be willing to help.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “Quite a few. Four or five. And I’ll tell you, his grandmother is probably the one person I would choose to help me in a fight over all of them.”

  Henry nodded. “That’s good, so long as they don’t take the inmates’ side once they find out the town has been overrun.”

  “We don’t know that it has,” Leland said.

  “Preparing for the worst, of course.”

  As they talked, Leland hurried his pace again, and they were making their way down the road almost as quickly as before, though his mind felt more focused. Henry didn’t object.

  “What about weapons?” Henry asked.

  “I’ve got a few safes full of them in the office,” Leland answered. “That’s if it hasn’t been broken into, and there is the possibility we wouldn’t be able to get to the office without being spotted. Besides, if we can convince the McClures to help us, I think they would have more than enough.”

  This conversation felt surreal. He knew they were just preparing for the worst, but to think that Hope could actually be overrun with prisoners was ludicrous, wasn’t it? Of course, the thought of a jailbreak that freed every last prisoner was ludicrous, but it had apparently happened.

  “Still,” Leland said, “I tend to think that most prisoners would simply like to move on and escape unnoticed. They’ve got a nice opportunity before them. What do they have to gain from taking siege of a town?”

  “I never said they would,” Henry answered. “I just think it’s worth thinking about. A lot of these guys aren’t like regular people. Some of them are crazy. Some of them don’t care if they get caught again. Some of them just want a chance to kill some cops.”

  Regardless of how many inmates were in Hope, Leland was sure of one thing: Savage would be waiting for him. Maybe he was hiding in the abandoned barn on the edge of town. Maybe he was sitting in Leland’s armchair at home. Either way, Leland had a feeling before the day was done, he would face Savage and the outcome would be bloody.

  “When it comes down to it,” Leland said, “there will likely be a handful of inmates in the town—even if they’re just passing through. We’re just gonna have to scout the town when we’re nearby.”

  Henry nodded.

  “If possible,” Leland said, “I need to get to my house and see if Gwen is there. If she is, then I need to get her to safety.” He paused, looking at Henry. If Leland was going to be working with this kid, he wanted to know who he was working with. He knew it didn’t matter what he asked or what Henry would say because the fugitive could just lie to him. Still, he wanted to hear it from him.

  “What did you do?” Leland asked.

  Henry looked at him. “What?”

  “I said what did you do? You know, to become a lifer?”

  Henry turned his head away. He hadn’t been expecting the question, or perhaps he had and he still wasn’t prepared to answer.

  “I shot a dog,” he said. “It wouldn’t shut up, you know. It just kept barking and barking…” His voice trailed off, then he sighed.

  Leland rolled his eyes at him and sighed. “And the truth?”

  “I killed a man,” he said. “It was premeditated. It was calculated. It was an execution. By the standard of the law, I have every reason to be in jail for the rest of my life.”

  “But you don’t believe that entirely,” Leland said. “Because you escaped.”

  “Just because I deserve to be there doesn’t mean I have to choose it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Let me ask you this,” Henry said. “If you knew a man had killed someone you loved and got away with it, and you knew he would probably do it again and get away with it, would you kill him?”

  The law side of Leland wanted to say no, to tell him that he would go through the proper channels to seek justice. But the human side—the side that had gotten the best of Leland on more than one occasion, knew that wouldn’t be an honest answer.

  “I suppose I would,” Leland said.

  “I could have been smarter about it. I could have covered my tracks better and maybe spent more time finding out a way to do it where I wouldn’t get caught, but I didn’t. So, I ended up in jail.”

  Leland noticed Henry wasn’t giving a lot of details, which didn’t bother him. “But the man deserved it? He was a killer? You thought he would kill more?”

  “That’s what I said,” Henry answered.

  “Well, if it involved family or someone you loved, then it was a crime of passion then, wasn’t it?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “To me it does. Sometimes to a
jury it does.”

  “Well,” Henry said, “the courts aren’t all that merciful to premeditated crimes of revenge. It actually worked against me that I took my time planning what I was going to do.”

  “Do you regret it?” Leland asked.

  “No.”

  Leland nodded and stared at the road ahead of them as they walked, unsure of himself. He wasn’t the kind of person to be unsure of himself either. Leland was the man who tracked down fugitives with a gut feeling—the man who had arrested the infamous Jim Savage and brought him to justice, capturing him on instinct. Not that his instinct was always right.

  He had also freed an inmate out of fear because he wasn’t sure of himself. Because he didn’t know what to do.

  There was a large part of him that didn’t trust Henry and his motivations. The man had spent most of the night trying to get away from the prison, away from the custody of the state, and was now walking freely next to a law enforcement officer toward a potentially dangerous situation. Sure, he needed supplies, he needed food, and the power outage was concerning, but Leland couldn’t help but think that if he were in the same boat, he would have taken off long ago.

  “What’s your aim?” Leland finally asked him.

  “What?”

  “I said, what’s your aim? Why are you sticking around? Why haven’t you taken off? I’m not going to chase you this time.”

  “I told you,” Henry said. “I think you’re my best chance of survival at the moment. Like I said, I’ve read about stuff like this. If it’s what I think it is, then it doesn’t matter where I go.”

  “You don’t have family to get to?” Leland asked.

  “Eventually,” Henry said. “But a trip to Chicago on foot doesn’t seem like the best idea at the moment. If we can get a car going then maybe I would consider it.”

  Leland knew he had to let it go. Henry Tash didn’t matter to him right now. He never really did. All that mattered was that Jim Savage was likely in Hope. Leland didn’t know what Savage knew about him. Did he know he had a daughter? Did he know where he lived? How much research could a man do about someone while in prison?