Fallen Earth | Book 1 | Remnants

by Morrow, Jason D.

  No, he could never do that. He would kill again. There is no question of that. Killing had become a part of him.

  Savage wasn’t the kind of person who thought he was unjustly imprisoned. By all accounts, he deserved to be behind bars for the rest of his life. He deserved to be put to death. He had no problem with that fact. Still, the burden was on law enforcement to impose their code of justice against him. He would not turn himself in and he would not give up by killing himself.

  He thought about the sheriff’s daughter. He thought about his code. He thought about his life and how it had all led up to this moment.

  He hated himself. He didn’t hate anyone more in this world than himself. Even the sheriff who had taken the life of his daughter was not an object of loathing in the same way that he felt about himself. He hated that he had a following within the prison. He hated that his reputation drew in the worst kind of people. He hated that his charisma and talents had led him to a life of murder, and other terrible, terrible crimes. It was as though there was a different person inside of him that had the ability to change his actions, to take over his free will. It was that man inside of him that wanted revenge.

  He considered himself Jim. He considered the dark side of him, Savage. Jim was the man he was, the man he wanted to be, the man who loved his daughter. Savage was the man who wouldn’t let him alone. He was the man who wanted revenge. He was the man who killed for pleasure. He was so much stronger than Jim and took over his mind so easily. Attempts at therapy only made Savage stronger, angrier. There was a little left for Jim to do but to give up and let Savage take over.

  Savage would kill them. There was no doubt of that. But he wanted to be free of Savage. Thoughts of suicide were quickly erased by Savage anytime they popped up. Savage was stronger than Jim. He wouldn’t let Jim be rid of him. He wondered if Savage would leave him alone once his revenge was satisfied.

  Jim was afraid he wouldn’t. But the only way he could ever be rid of Savage would be to try and try and try. Eventually, someone would kill him. Even Savage would not be able to survive. He hoped that would be today. Maybe, just maybe, if he satisfied Savage’s lust for revenge, he might slip up. He might just let himself be exposed enough to be killed.

  Leland was out there. Savage could sense it. He would be coming for his daughter soon, and Savage would meet him with as much anger and intensity as possible. Savage would not rest until Leland felt the pain that he felt.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  There were brief moments when Henry felt like a complete idiot. Why was he here? Why was he helping the sheriff? Why wasn’t he running through the woods, making his way toward Chicago? He had a brother there who might consider giving him shelter. Sure, this whole power outage thing was concerning. But so was running around in a jumpsuit pretending to be part of a group that had just taken over a town, murdered people, and held the town hostage. What these other prisoners didn’t realize was that Savage had a personal vendetta against the sheriff. They were following him because they liked him. Or at least they liked the idea of him. But he was using them as soldiers to further his agenda. He didn’t care anything about them. He didn’t care if they were free or in prison; he didn’t care if they lived or died. Henry knew about Savage, and he knew that the man was a sociopath. He cared nothing about the lives of others. Maybe there was a time where he had cared about his own family, but his indifference toward life was only reinforced when the only person he cared about was taken from him. In other words, Savage had nothing to lose. Revenge was the only thing he had left to live for.

  Henry hated leaving the prison guard where he was. He had noted the patch on his uniform that said Alex, but he didn’t remember ever seeing him, which wasn’t surprising given the size of the facility he had broken out of. Henry didn’t hold disdain for prison guards like many of the inmates did. In fact, a lot of the prison guards liked Henry because he never caused trouble. He was the kind of guy who nodded respectfully when told to do something but wasn’t too quiet. Alex was right though. He didn’t have long until someone came up and killed him. Henry wasn’t so sure it would take that long for prisoners to realize they didn’t have much to gain by sticking with Savage. The man was leading them all to their graves, and none of them had a clue.

  Henry was walking down the street, but he didn’t know exactly where he was going. He knew he was headed in the direction of the library, but was that really the best plan? He had learned everything he was supposed to learn. He knew how many enemies they faced, and he had a vague idea of where the sheriff’s daughter was, and he knew that Savage was in charge of it all. What more information would the sheriff need?

  Still, he found himself walking in the opposite direction he should’ve been going. Why he wasn’t running through the woods toward Leland, he didn’t know. Something in him pushed him forward. Some part of him wanted to see what was going on in the library. Something wanted him to know how the prisoners were acting and how they were organized. He especially knew it was stupid because he knew someone might recognize him.

  He kept his eyes low as he walked. He noticed quite a few prisoners running around yelling orders at each other, some of them red in the face and angry.

  There was a group of prisoners, maybe seven of them, who charged up the street toward him. Part of Henry wanted to bolt but he knew that would be stupid. So, he kept his pace until the group was almost upon him.

  “Hey, you,” one of the inmates said. “You go with these two to Autumn Avenue and I’ll take the rest. She should be around here somewhere.“

  Henry looked up at the group. “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  One of the prisoners slapped Henry’s chest with the back of his hand and shrugged. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Henry suddenly found himself traveling with two other prisoners up the street in search of someone. He didn’t think it would be strange for him to ask what was going on, considering how disorganized this group seemed, so he did.

  “She got away. The moron let her get away,” one of them answered.

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said. “But who got away?”

  “The girl, I don’t know her name. She got away.”

  Henry looked at the other prisoner. “The girl?”

  “Yeah, the one the boss needs us to take care of.”

  That was plenty of information for Henry. Neither of the prisoners had said it, and perhaps they didn’t even know it, but the girl they were looking for was the sheriff’s daughter. That was the only person Savage cared about at the moment. Somehow, she had gotten away. This would possibly be a good chance to help her escape. Then he realized if he did spot her, he would have to face off against two prisoners who were armed as heavily as he was. Was he really ready to kill them? He didn’t know the sheriff that well. He certainly didn’t know his daughter. Why was he risking his life for them?

  He knew the answer. It was because it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t expected of him, particularly considering the clothes he wore. Part of him wanted to take on the persona of what his jumpsuit meant and really try not to care about what happened to the sheriff or his daughter, but there was something inside him that wouldn’t let him do it. Lives were in trouble, innocent lives.

  The sheriff had seen something in him, too. He had seen that Henry was willing to do the right thing. He had taken off his handcuffs. He had even given him a gun. There must’ve been something about Henry that made people trust him. He realized that was a big responsibility. It wasn’t necessarily a responsibility he wished to bear. Still, he knew that he had not been imprisoned justifiably. Oh, he knew that the law said he should be in jail for the rest of his life, but what the law said and what was true weren’t always the same.

  They walked past several houses and looked in the windows of each. The leader of the group then had them turn down Marble Street at the end of the road. They were actually getting further from the town center, which Henry found to be a good thing. If he needed to,
he could tell the others he was going to check out a house near the corner and would meet up with them in a minute. Then he could make his way to the woods and back to the sheriff.

  When he was about to suggest it, however, the group stopped in the middle of the road, where a woman stood in front of them at the corner. All were silent for a moment as the group stared at her. At first, none of them moved, not even the girl. Obviously, Henry didn’t recognize her, but there was something that told him they had found who they were looking for.

  She didn’t look like the picture from her middle school years that Leland had shown him. The worn picture of a girl with braces and a wide grin showed only hints of the woman in front of him. There was something about her that made Henry stop breathing for a moment.

  “Get her!” one of the inmates yelled, breaking into his thoughts.

  She didn’t run away as they charged after her. There was a frightened look on her face, but she stood in the street as the three prisoners ran toward her, guns in their hands, and she held her hands up in the air in surrender. She held something in her right hand, and when Henry and the two others approached her, he realized she was carrying a bottle of medicine.

  “So, where did you run off to?” the leader asked her.

  “Miss Morgan needed her medicine,” she said. “I didn’t know if she would make it without it.”

  One of the prisoners snickered at her and took a step toward her. He snatched the bottle out of her hands, twisted open the cap, and dumped the pills on the ground. The other prisoner laughed as he did this. In an added measure, he stomped on the pills grinding them into dust in front of her. Henry watched her as her face burned. If she could have, she would’ve killed each of them where they stood. But in this moment she was powerless. Henry was powerless to help her, too.

  He looked down at her hoodie and noticed a bloodstain that had trickled down her side. It was fresh, but it didn’t seem like it was her blood. She didn’t seem injured. Henry was about to say something to get them to move, but one of the other prisoners noticed it as well.

  “What’s this?” He traced his finger along her side, giving no consideration to her personal space.

  She didn’t say anything, instead, she let her eyes fall onto the ground, her face still red with anger.

  “What house did you just come out of?”

  They didn’t wait for her to answer, and they pushed her toward the nearest house and stormed inside. Henry didn’t need to be here. He didn’t need to help discover whatever was about to be found. He needed to get out of the house. He needed to get away from the town. But he couldn’t very well go to the woods, find Leland, and tell him he helped catch his daughter without trying to get her out.

  They found the body in the bathroom. Blood was all over the floor, the prisoner’s neck slashed. It was a gory mess and Henry’s stomach churned at the sight.

  One of the prisoners looked at her. “Did you do this?”

  She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to answer to them. They had encroached on her town, and she had every right to defend it. But why had she come back into the street? Why didn’t she bolt for the woods behind the house? Had she really escaped just to get a bottle of medicine for someone else?

  The two prisoners pulled her by the arms and led her out of the house, while Henry trailed behind. When they got out into the open, he looked all around him. There were some prisoners, but they wouldn’t have thought much about it if they saw him start walking in the opposite direction. This was a moment he could have fled into the woods and met back with the sheriff. Instead, he walked behind them. When he got to the road, he bent down and picked up one of the surviving pills that hadn’t been completely pulverized. In his prison jumpsuit, he didn’t have a pocket, so he kept the pill tucked in his palm as he walked. This was going to be his message to her. This was how he could relay to her that he was on her side. He wouldn’t have to say anything, he wouldn’t have to tell her that her father was in the woods waiting for Henry to give a signal. He would hand her the pill, nod to her, and she would know. She would have to know. Then he would be on his way. Henry knew the longer he stayed here, the more danger he was in. But the sheriff would never forgive him if he didn’t at least assure his daughter that she wasn’t alone. So, against his better judgment, and against his survival instinct, he followed them to the library.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Gwen felt guilty for how much she hated this town. She had given it so much grief during her teenage years. She had made fun of people, particularly the old-timers who stirred up a fuss about young teenagers and their rebellious ways, echoing the narrative of her father. She had never fit in here. But today, she felt a connection with them she had never felt in all of her life. It was the connection of pain—the connection of struggling together against a common enemy.

  She felt shaken. Her stomach was empty of food, and her hands were clammy. Her mission to get out of the library and get medicine for Miss Morgan had accomplished nothing except placing her in a category of killers. Out of all the people in this town now who had killed someone, there were the prisoners and there was Gwen. She felt ashamed and sickened by what she had done. Looking at the situation, she couldn’t even convince herself that what she had done had been in self-defense. She had lured the man out of the library with promises of a good time, then cut out his throat. She didn’t even know she was capable of doing such a thing. She had talked about it, like when her dad taught her how to defend herself, but she never thought she would have gone through with it.

  Now, she didn’t have the medicine and Savage was probably going to torture her for escaping.

  That was unless he was busy taking care of the shootout that had just happened. From the other side of downtown near Miss Morgan’s house, she hadn’t been able to tell if the guns firing were prisoners killing citizens, or if they were meeting resistance near the edge of town on the opposite side. Obviously, her first thoughts had been for her dad, but there was no way for her to know if he was near. If he was, he was planning, she knew. He wasn’t the kind of person to charge into a situation without analyzing it first. He would make a calculated decision, then strike. She just hoped he was okay.

  Despite the prisoner destroying Miss Morgan’s medicine, Gwen’s mission hadn’t been a complete failure. She tried to keep herself bent forward as much as possible to keep the guards from brushing against the hard metal in her hoodie pocket. The gun was loaded and ready to fire. She had already killed once today. What were a few more inmates from Lone Oak? She could start with the three that led her through the town toward the library.

  No, this wasn’t the time. If she pulled out a gun, the inmates in the town would converge on her like vultures. She might be able to take a few of them out, but ultimately she would be captured or killed. She needed to save the weapon because it might be her last line of defense.

  Savage stood at the entrance of the library with his arms crossed. He stared at Gwen with cold, uncaring eyes. He wanted her there. He wanted her to be near when her dad finally showed his face, but he didn’t seem angry or even upset.

  “Seems like you’ve been busy,” Savage said. His eyes traveled up to the prisoners. “Who was guarding her? I thought I left her with Blake.”

  “It was Mitchell,” one of them said. “She killed him.”

  Savage raised both eyebrows. “I have to say, I didn’t expect you to be so ambitious.” He sighed and shook his head, looking at the ground as though he had a tough decision to make. “I’m sure you heard the gunshots?”

  Gwen didn’t answer.

  “Your father is out there,” he said. “Who else could it have been? Who else isn’t here that should be here?”

  Savage had a point. Other than Bryson McClure’s family, she couldn’t think of anyone who might be scoping the town taking potshots at men in jumpsuits. And as early as it was, and as far away as they live from downtown, Gwen didn’t think the McClures would know about the takeover yet
.

  Savage turned suddenly and stormed into the library. A couple of the inmates followed after him, leaving her with just one.

  She looked at him, then past him, wondering if she should try to make a run for it.

  “No,” the prisoner said almost as an answer to her thoughts. “It’s not time to try and escape yet.”

  “How would you know?” she asked. “You obviously don’t know what that man is going to do to me.”

  “Believe me, I do.” He stepped forward and Gwen felt her muscles tense. Whoever forced themselves upon her first would get a bullet in the chest. But he didn’t force himself onto her, nor did he make a pass. Instead, he reached out and grabbed her wrist, opened her hand, and placed a small, yellow pill into her palm.

  Miss Morgan’s medicine!

  “Why are you giving me this?”

  He didn’t have time to answer before a group of inmates paraded out the door with Savage at the front, dragging a man into the street beyond them. Gwen recognized the man immediately. It was Mayor Roberts.

  He had blood trickling down his head where he had been struck, probably during the extraction from his home.

  Gwen didn’t know the mayor well, only that he and her dad didn’t get along much and always butted heads during meetings, but he was the elected leader of their town, and he was about to be executed.

  She had to do something. She had to stop Savage.

  She took a step forward. “Wait just a minute! You can’t...”

  A hand grabbed her wrist, and she saw that it was the prisoner who had given her the pill.