Fallen Earth | Book 1 | Remnants

by Morrow, Jason D.

  That wasn’t happening today. The same power outage that allowed the prisoners to escape Lone Oak was the same power outage that kept the SWAT teams from storming the town. It was the same power outage that kept the news teams grounded. It was the same power outage that placed Leland as the only officer of the law who had a clue what was going on in this small town. If the outage was as big as it felt, then everyone else had their own problems to deal with. Other officers would be putting out fires popping up all over the region. Possibly all over the country.

  Leland didn’t like to think about that—the possibility of this being a country-wide phenomenon. If that were the case then they were all in serious trouble, particularly if this outage lasted days or even weeks. The stock market, the economy, all of it would crash like a plane with dead engines.

  Leland knew there wasn’t much sense in contemplating the problems of the rest of the country. His problems at home seemed insurmountable on their own. If other issues arose because of the outage later, they would deal with them then. But he had to face the reality that for a lot of people in Hope, it might not matter what the future held for the country. Not with fifty inmates holding them hostage.

  In a way, Leland blamed himself for this problem. He didn’t know the ins and outs of everything that had gone on in Hope throughout the night, but he had an idea that Savage was either the leader of the group or was one of the leaders. And he had led them there because of his lust for revenge.

  Leland’s choices weighed heavily on him. The choice to become a police officer. The choice to move to Wisconsin. The choice to run for sheriff. A whole line of choices had brought him to this moment where he was responsible for an entire town being taken hostage.

  Leland had to succeed. He had no other option. He had seen how senseless death could be. How meaningless. It was something he wrestled with all the time, especially when thinking about his family. He often wondered what the point of it all was. Sure, he had had great moments with his son. Wonderful experiences with his wife. But what did it all mean if they had left this world before Leland? The last thing a man wants is to bury his child. The next to last thing a man wants is to bury his wife. Why was the journey of life to death so much longer for some than it was for others? Why did so many who died young accomplish so much? Why did so many who lived to be a hundred accomplish so little?

  There was a time when Leland wanted his life to mean something. He wished he had never been so ambitious. When he was younger, he would have lived for a moment like this to shine, to be a superhero to a group of people.

  Ambition was a young man’s vice. Ambition only helped if the groundwork had already been laid out for success. No one could succeed to their highest potential on their own. Of course, these were the thoughts of a man who had made friends with regret. Leland had spent half his life wondering what he was going to do with it, and it seemed he had been spending the second half of his life wondering what he could have done with it.

  He felt like a ninety-year-old man with a lifetime of regrets, forgetting that he was forty-five and would seemingly have a lot of life left to live. His profession, however, could shorten that lifespan in a moment. And it seemed with his current plan, that maybe his thoughts were the thoughts of a man getting ready to die.

  He was ready. Or, at least he was as ready as he could be. If dying meant saving Gwen from the hands of those monsters from Lone Oak, he would do it in a second. He just had to make sure she was safe before he died. This whole mission depended on him staying alive and saving Gwen. If she were to be killed by Savage, there would be no point.

  If Savage killed Gwen, Leland would go out in a blaze of glory.

  Chapter Forty

  Alex had been in a hopeless position before.

  He had been a prisoner of war. He had resigned himself to death. Now that he found himself in a similar situation, he had that same feeling creeping back to him—the same feeling that eventually forced him to quit the Army and find a quieter job.

  So much for that…

  That didn’t mean he didn’t have hope of an escape, rather it was a moment to accept the fact that he probably wouldn’t survive the day. He was already lucky to be where he was now. Savage had no good reason to keep him alive. But none of this made sense. As far as Savage was concerned, Alex should’ve been a liability. He was just the kind of risk that could foil his plan, whatever it was. At least when he had been captured as a soldier the enemy had a good reason to hold him hostage. The enemy thought they had leverage. The enemy thought Alex had some value. In this situation, Alex was no more valuable than the citizens of this town. Savage had already killed one of the most valuable hostages when he killed the mayor.

  None of this was supposed to make sense, though. Savage was desperate. They were all desperate but in their own way. Some needed leadership, someone to tell them what to do. Some needed a purpose. Savage needed revenge.

  Alex wondered if the sheriff had realized that showing himself in this town would mean a death sentence for most of them. It was clear to Alex that Savage was waiting around for the sheriff to show his face before doing anything too drastic.

  Alex had a renewed hope of survival when Henry showed up, telling him that he was with the sheriff. It was baffling for Alex to come face-to-face with the prisoner who had escaped hours before the power outage. It was bizarre to think that he was now working with the sheriff to try and defuse the situation. What was his play? Why was he motivated to help the sheriff if he himself was on the run from the law? Didn’t Henry Tash know that when this was all over, even if he did help the sheriff retake the town, he would go back to jail? Maybe he and the sheriff had worked out some sort of deal that would help Henry escape once the sheriff had his daughter safe. It wasn’t a crazy thought, considering the situation.

  Still, Henry had not given him much information other than the fact that Alex was not the priority. Of course, if Henry or the sheriff found Alex to be a potential ally in this conflict, they would return to him and ask him for help. Alex was more than ready to begin the fight. In reality, however, it was possible that Henry and the sheriff would see him as no different than the other civilians. It wasn’t like they knew Alex had a military background, a combat background at that.

  He thought about his parents and how he still hadn’t seen them. He figured that was a good thing considering most everyone had been stuffed inside the library. They were probably there too, but he also knew that some people had died in their homes. The prisoners hadn’t been careful. Anyone offering resistance was no doubt killed right off the bat. His parents were older, not as strong as they used to be. His mom would have complied with the inmates, but he wasn’t sure about his dad. He hoped with everything in him that his dad didn’t try to put up a fight. He couldn’t imagine the loss, not this way. If anything happened to them, Alex would hold himself responsible. He had been the one trusted with the keys. If he and Roger would have held fast, the prisoners would more than likely still be stuck within the prison. Instead, they were here, and all of them, including his parents, were in danger.

  Alex was biding his time. He thought he would be able to overtake his guards next to the grocery store, but he didn’t want to cause a ruckus or bring attention to himself from other prisoners in the area. He was stuck between a place where he needed to take his time and watch the prisoners, and hurry because it may not be long until someone realized there was no point in keeping him alive. There also was no telling how long Savage would be able to keep prisoners’ loyalty. If any number of inmates decided Savage was no longer fit to be their leader, Alex would be one of the first people to die. By that point, it would be too late to fight for survival or try to escape.

  He needed to talk with Henry again to formulate a plan. He hadn’t been so far from the main road that he didn’t see the mayor’s execution. Savage was getting antsy, and he wondered if there would be more to come.

  He looked around him at the prisoners who walked in random direction
s with their guns. No purpose. No real direction. At best, this group was disorganized and most of them had no idea what they were doing. At least, that seemed to be the case earlier. Since the gunfire in the woods, they appeared to at least be on high alert.

  Alex’s heart started pounding when he saw Savage walking down the street alone. Well, he wasn’t entirely alone. Inmates surrounded him, but they kept their distance, effectively giving Savage the entire street.

  Savage turned and barked orders to a group of about ten prisoners, and they started counting their weapons and ammo. From here, Alex could hear Savage telling them that they needed to hide in the building next to them as a trap. He was certain if an enemy came, they would be coming by way of the north side of town. He instructed two more with rifles to go to the rooftop of a nearby business with a good view of the northern entrance.

  Savage was preparing for war.

  Then he turned, his eyes finally finding Alex. Alex’s instinct was to look away, but Savage wouldn’t want that. That was the one thing that had kept Alex alive from the beginning. He hadn’t looked away. He had stared at Savage in defiance. He should have been killed then and there, but here he was, sitting on the curb next to the grocery store, left alive on the whim of a madman.

  Savage walked toward Alex and he wondered, was Savage coming for another long existential conversation, or did he have more purpose in his steps this time?

  Alex stood from his seat on the ground, keeping his eyes on Savage until he stopped about a yard from him.

  “Why are you still here?” Savage asked him.

  “What?”

  “I said, why are you still here? Why haven’t you tried to escape yet?”

  Alex thought it was an odd question, and he certainly hadn’t been expecting it. He decided to keep it honest. “Because you have two guards on me instead of one,” he said. “One, I could take out no problem. Two, well, it gets more complicated.”

  “So, you’ve been thinking of ways to escape and haven’t been able to find one yet,” Savage said.

  Alex looked at the ground, thinking, then back at Savage. “Of course.”

  “And what would you do if you escaped? There is no place to go. No one to call. No vehicle to get you to where you might want to be. What would you do?”

  “Keep going until I found what I needed,” Alex answered. “Keep going until I was safe.”

  “You wouldn’t look for your family?”

  Alex felt the blood drain from his face. There was no way Savage knew about his parents here. He couldn’t know.

  “I suppose I would,” he said, slowly. “Kind of a distance from Northrup, though.”

  Savage took a step forward. “If Northrup is too far away, then where else would you go?”

  “If I’m running from here, I would try to find the police,” Alex said. “That’s all I can think to do.”

  Savage studied him. Watched him. He sensed a lie.

  “You have family here, don’t you,” Savage said. “That’s why you haven’t made more of an effort to escape. I’ve left you with some lousy guards. Most of them haven’t paid any attention to you, but you’ve sat here waiting on the curb.” He shook his head. “You lied to me, Alex.”

  Alex didn’t answer. He wanted Alex to argue with him, to plead with him. Alex wasn’t going to beg for his life. He wasn’t going to give Savage the justification he needed to kill him, though he may have already done it.

  “Walk with me,” Savage said.

  Alex did as he was told and the two of them made their way down Main Street. He tried not to look too hard at the crowd within the library as they passed, but it was impossible not to sense the tension, as though the entire town was about to explode. And perhaps it was. Maybe the people stuck inside were about to rise up and take back the town that had been ripped from them in the wee hours of the morning. He wondered if his parents could see him through the glass doors.

  Having been through so much throughout the night, he wondered what it must have felt like to have been ripped from his bed, not even knowing there had been a massive power outage. At least Alex had some context to the madness happening all around him. He had seen the prison descend into chaos.

  “I just wanted to know if you realized most of us probably aren’t going to survive this,” Savage said.

  Alex didn’t say anything.

  “The fact is, I’m here for selfish reasons and everyone else is here because they have nowhere else to go.”

  “I don’t get your point,” Alex said. He glanced over Savage’s shoulder and noticed two inmates half a block away.

  “Do you not feel fear?” Savage asked. “Do you not feel anger about how your colleague was killed at the prison last night? At how the warden was killed? Aren’t you afraid that it’s all going to happen to you, too?”

  “You’re in control of that,” Alex said. “You can end all of this right now.”

  “But you know I can’t. I have to have my revenge.”

  “And when that’s done?”

  “Then I die,” Savage said.

  “You’re going to kill yourself?”

  “I don’t think I will need to,” Savage said. “The power is going to come back on at some point, and I’m not going back to prison. So, whether I run or stay, the cops will reach me eventually and will have to kill me.”

  “But all you want is for the sheriff to be killed first.”

  “His daughter,” Savage said. “In front of him. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  Alex shook his head. “Sorry, yes, but it just seems like it’s not going to satisfy you. Do you think you would die with a smile on your face if you accomplished your goal? Do you think you would be at peace?”

  “A man like me doesn’t die with peace,” Savage said. “My whole life has been in turmoil. Why would that change at my death?”

  “And you just want to take some people down with you?”

  “A very particular few,” Savage said.

  Alex sighed and looked up toward the woods. Whatever the sheriff had planned needed to happen soon or Savage was going to lose his mind and kill all of them.

  “I’m honestly having trouble understanding why fifty other men are following you all the way to the end like this,” Alex said. “What do they see in you?”

  It was a bold question, perhaps too bold, but Alex’s honesty had been what kept him alive so far. Savage wanted the blunt truth from him. He wanted to be challenged.

  To Alex’s surprise, Savage burst with laughter and nearly doubled over. “Now that’s why I’ve kept you around!” He shook his head. “No one else in the world would dare ask me a question like that. Not a single person. But you do!”

  “It’s an honest question.”

  “I know it is,” Savage said, his face turning serious. “And the answer is that I have no idea. I have offered them nothing. All I have done is portray myself with confidence. I told people what to do. These men have been told what to do so much, they don’t know how to make choices. They have to ask to take a leak, to move from one area to another. They aren’t used to the free will they currently have, so they need someone who is willing to tell them what to do.”

  “Not all the prisoners are like that,” Alex said.

  “No,” Savage said. “That’s why there are fifty here and not hundreds. Many of them are men who learned to trust me from the prison. Some of them are just tagging along. Those are the ones I’m more concerned about because I don’t know them. Why do you think I cut Henry Tash loose so quickly? He’s not one of us. He’s not the kind of man who is going to sit around and wait to be told what to do. Obviously, he’s the kind of man who takes action on his own. Well, those kinds of people are dangerous to authority. So, in this case, they either need to be killed or let go. I decided to get some use out of him.”

  Alex felt only a little bit of hope about seeing Henry go free. Was he going to meet the sheriff? He wasn’t sure what kind of plan the two of them would be able to
formulate, but there was no doubt they would try something.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Alex said.

  “Then you wouldn’t feel betrayed if I felt the same way about you?” Savage said.

  Alex looked at him with lowered eyebrows, but then he saw the pistol in Savage’s hands, pointed at Alex, ready to fire.

  Alex stiffened some, then looked from the gun to Savage, a quizzical look on his face. Was this a test? Was this another chance for Savage to see if Alex was still going to challenge him on some superficial, and somehow intellectual level? Alex decided it was the only chance he stood against a man like this. Begging for his life would only mean a death sentence.

  Alex did the only thing he knew how to do in this situation, particularly when it came to Savage: he stared Savage in the eyes, showing no fear.

  Savage’s eyes narrowed. “You are afraid,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

  “I expected this would be the way it all ended,” Alex answered. “No sense in being afraid of the truth.”

  “But you’re looking at the end of your life,” Savage said. “Does that not mean anything to you?”

  “Of course it does,” Alex said. “If I had a choice, I would not choose to be gunned down by someone like you. Or gunned down at all, for that matter.”

  “So, why aren’t you afraid?” Savage took a step closer.

  Alex thought for a moment, considering the possibility that Savage’s test ran deeper than testing the man’s fear. He was testing his honesty. Savage only wanted a reason to kill Alex—any justification he could work up in his mind to allow himself to pull the trigger. If Savage could sense that Alex was lying to him, well, liars deserved to die. It wasn’t Alex’s lack of fear that would put him to death, it would be his lack of honesty. And Savage had seen his eyes when he talked about his family. He suspected Alex had lied already.