“I am afraid,” Alex said with as calm of a voice as he could. “I’ve never been more afraid in all my life. But what is begging you for my life going to do?”
“Wouldn’t you say anything to save your own life?” Savage said.
“I suppose that depended on the person who was trying to kill me,” Alex said. “You are obviously a man who values truth. Lying to you would only give you a reason to put a bullet in my brain, wouldn’t it?”
Savage just stared at Alex, his eyes studying the man’s face. Alex wondered if Savage had ever been confronted with truth like this—if any of his victims had held up a mirror rather than simply begging for their own lives, spewing anything out in an effort to save their lives, only condemning themselves further by lying.
“I would rather my last words be the truth than lies,” Alex finally said.
Savage stared at him for what felt like a full minute. Then finally, he lowered his gun.
“I’m incredibly frustrated with you,” Savage said. “If a fight broke out I don’t think you would hesitate to blow my head off, but as it stands you are more of an ally than anyone in this town, including the other inmates.”
Alex wanted to say that he wasn’t Savage’s ally, but he thought that would be too much. Still, he let the statement stand.
Savage swore under his breath and motioned for Alex to follow him back toward the middle of town. Alex glanced over his shoulder quickly, assessing the distance from here to the woods. Any cover was too far away and would take too long to reach before Savage whipped his gun around and started firing. But wasn’t it worth the risk? Wouldn’t he eventually die, even if it wasn’t by Savage? Many of the inmates wanted him dead, probably all of them, for the simple act that he wore a prison guard uniform.
When they came by the library, Savage stopped and pointed to the entrance. “I’m putting you with the other hostages,” he said. “As much as I like our chats, I don’t have time to waste talking with you. I need to prepare my men.”
Alex stared at the entrance of the library as though it were a dug grave. This seemed as much of a death sentence as Savage putting a bullet in his head, but he had seen this before. He had watched Savage let others do the killing for him with the warden. He had seen them kill Roger because he had lied to Savage. He didn’t allow himself to kill anyone. Not without good cause. Not without the law in his own mind telling him it was justified. That was why Alex had survived this long. That was why Savage was unable to pull the trigger. Alex hadn’t yet broken any law that Savage lived by, therefore he couldn’t bring himself to kill the prison guard.
Not only that, but if Alex’s parents were in there, one of them might say something or cry out when they saw him enter. The moment that happened, Savage would probably kill Alex.
Alex walked toward the entrance of the library, while the eyes of each prison inmate skinned him alive with each step he took.
He glanced toward the woods one last time, hoping, wishing for something to happen—for either Henry Tash or the sheriff to unleash their bullets on the crowd of inmates. That would pull the attention from him. Savage would all but forget about him.
The two of them walked into the library and the first person he saw was the sheriff’s daughter. Alex tried not to look up, but he heard a gasp only a few feet away and his eyes were forced in that direction. He felt cold when he saw his mother, holding a hand over her mouth, then his father who stared at him with wide eyes.
Alex tried to shake his head so no one would notice, but it was too late. Savage took a step forward, looking at Alex’s parents for what felt like an eternity. Then, he turned and looked Alex in the eyes.
Alex stood firm, his breath coming in slowly through his nose. This was it. This was the moment Savage would make an example of him. By his code, Savage had all he needed to execute Alex on the spot.
Alex wasn’t ready. He would never be ready.
Savage’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head slowly. Alex expected him to pull his gun up and fire a round through his head, but instead, Savage walked past him, brushing his shoulder against him as he stormed out of the library.
Alex was alive. For now.
Chapter Forty-One
Every step away from Hope felt like a betrayal. Leland looked over his shoulder every minute or so to make sure no one was following him, but the feeling remained. He was completely alone and he wasn’t sure his visit with the McClure family was going to change any of that.
The thought of working with the McClures made Leland’s teeth grind. He couldn’t count how many run-ins he’d had with the family since he moved here, and to ask them for their help was a strike to his pride. They were the kind of family that came to mind when there was trouble in the town. Leland wouldn’t be surprised if a few citizens first thought the town takeover was the McClures before seeing all the jumpsuits.
Leland suspected the McClures liked their reputation—the kind that would make people whisper behind their backs, but completely leave them alone. It wasn’t that the people of Hope were afraid of the McClures, they just didn’t want to cross them. They avoided interactions. They certainly didn’t want to associate with them.
The McClures were the outcasts. Former vagrants who had, unfortunately, settled in Hope because a family member had died and left the family free land.
Despite all his run-ins with the McClures, however, Leland had never put any of them away for particularly violent crimes. He had locked up one or two of the brothers for drunk and disorderly, and a few other minor infractions, but mostly he was called out to their place to settle disputes with neighbors who claimed one thing or another.
Leland had made it a point to be cordial with the family, knowing that their reputation only meant he needed to keep an eye on them, not treat them like the criminals everyone claimed them to be.
Leland could smell the burn pile when he was about a quarter of a mile away. According to Hope’s city ordinances, The McClures were within their legal rights to burn their trash rather than pay for it to be picked up. They were just enough beyond the city limits that as a city official, Leland had no power. As a county official, there was no law for him to enforce about them burning their trash. He couldn’t prove that they were burning harmful materials and he wasn’t about to request a search warrant to go rummaging through their ashes to make sure all their trash was within regulation.
The smell made his lip curl.
As he neared the property, he wondered if they would even know that the power had been off. The McClures were without power about as often as they had it. They paid their bills when it suited them, and they paid their property taxes because they knew they wouldn’t have another place to go if Leland was forced to remove them.
The McClures had inherited a rather large plot of land that was covered in old vehicles. It was a junkyard full of car shells, engines set on the ground, and tall shoots of grass working their way through broken floorboards and torn seat cushions.
Leland was in front of the house when three dogs went berserk behind a thin chain link fence. Each of them tried jumping over the barrier and one of them bit at the fence as though it would be able to chew through it. Leland had always worried one of these dogs would get out when he came by and he wasn’t sure he would come away completely intact.
Before Leland could knock on the front door, Roy, the dad of the family, stepped out onto the front porch scowling at Leland. Before He could say anything, he was joined by his wife, Alice.
“What do you want?” Roy said, crossing his arms over his chest. He then turned his head and yelled for the dogs to shut up and they obeyed hesitantly.
“Just coming by to see if you all knew about the power outage,” Leland said. He almost shook his head at himself. That wasn’t the right thing to say. It wasn’t true. He was here to recruit them.
Recruit them? Was he out of his mind? Leland had never been so unsure of himself.
“Why do you have our son in jail?” Alice said.
“Why aren’t you with him, talking to him about what he should and shouldn’t be doing? Did you leave him in there by himself with a cellmate? That’s not safe!”
Leland resisted arguing with her. The protective mother had done little to stop her boys from disturbing the peace and driving drunk, but she was worried about one of them sleeping in a jail cell by himself.
Another figure opened the front door and mostly ignored the three of them. Leland hadn’t seen this man very often but knew him as Uncle Frank, who would come in from Plymouth every now and then. He sat in one of the porch chairs and lit a cigarette, watching the conversation as though it was the only thing to do because the television wasn’t working.
“Something unexpected has happened in Hope,” Leland said.
“My son better not be dead, sheriff,” Roy said.
Alice clutched to her husband’s arm.
Leland shook his head. “He’s not as far as I know, but I can’t get in there to know for sure.”
Roy and Alice stared at Leland and even Uncle Frank looked up at him. The front door then opened and out came their daughter, Ruthie, and another one of their sons, Gregory.
This was good. He needed the entire crew. Where was the other brother? Ruthie was only about twelve, but Gregory was almost eighteen and their other son, Jeff, was twenty-five. If he could get the men to join him, he would have four people on his side.
That’s not enough…What am I doing?
“What do you mean something has happened?” Roy asked. “What did you do to my son?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Leland said. “I was on patrol last night when the power outage happened. I was left stranded a few miles away and when I got here, I found Hope overrun with prisoners from Lone Oak.”
“No way! That’s cool,” Gregory said.
“They shot and killed the mayor a while ago,” Leland said. “They could have killed more before I got there, I don’t know.”
The family had a collective look of shock on their faces.
“And Bryson?” Alice said.
“I don’t know,” Leland said. “He was in his cell when I left him, and I haven’t been back since. But I watched the town from a good distance and I suspect there are about fifty prisoners there. I think most of the town is being held hostage in the library.”
“This don’t sound real,” Roy said.
“I wish it wasn’t,” Leland answered.
The front door opened and their oldest son, Jeff, stepped out holding a rifle in his hands. Leland wasn’t sure whether to feel threatened or encouraged, but Leland kept his hands on the front of his belt, pretending not to feel threatened. Regardless of the small number, he needed these people.
“You haven’t been able to call for backup, right?” Jeff said.
“That’s right,” Leland answered. “No one is coming.”
“And you came here to tell us about our son because you felt guilty about it?” Roy asked.
“No,” Uncle Frank said from his chair, his voice gravelly. “He’s too scared to take care of the situation by himself. Wants us to help him. Isn’t that right, sheriff?”
“It’s not a matter of being scared,” Leland said. “It’s a matter of having enough guns to fight a bunch of criminals. My daughter is down there, too. More than likely, so is Bryson. I’m going down there to fight them off as best I can with or without you, but yes, I am asking for your help in this.”
“Why us?” Alice said. “We don’t owe this town anything. They’ve done nothing but talk behind our backs and treat us like garbage.”
“It’s not just about saving the town,” Leland said. “It’s about saving our kids. It’s about fighting off an enemy who will stop at nothing to terrorize a small community. If we don’t do something about them, they will come here eventually.”
“Let them come here,” Uncle Frank said. “I’ve been needing some good target practice.”
Leland thought of telling them about Savage’s personal vendetta against him, but he wasn’t sure it would serve his purpose. The truth was, they wouldn’t care about any of that. They didn’t care about the reasons or motivations of prisoners. They cared about Bryson. That was Leland’s only play here.
“I am going to be upfront with you,” Leland said. “I have no idea if Bryson is alive or not. I don’t know if my daughter is alive, but as a father, I have a duty to find out. I just thought I would give you the opportunity to help me. I can’t do this by myself. I wish I could, but I can’t. I need your help.”
“You’re asking us to die,” Gregory said.
Leland sighed. “No, I’m asking you to fight. I don’t exactly know what that looks like, but we aren’t going to see our children again if we stay back and do nothing.”
“And you’re gonna go by yourself if we don’t help you?” Roy asked.
Leland nodded. “If I can last long enough, I might get the help from a few people in there. The people of Hope might rise up, too. I don’t know. A few shots fired might also be enough to disperse the prisoners. I wouldn’t think many of them are necessarily loyal to their cause, so the start of the fight might bring the number of enemies down a little.”
“You go in there by yourself, you’re a dead man,” Jeff said.
“I can’t believe you arrested our boy,” Alice spat. “Probably dragged into the street by prisoners.”
“You need to go on, Sheriff,” Roy said. “You’ve caused enough trouble for our family.”
The words shocked Leland. He had expected the McClures to jump at the chance to jump into a brawl—to be heroes of the town. Instead, he found a family scared and too bitter to even attempt helping their own son.
“But your son,” Leland said.
“Wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for you,” Alice snapped. “Go away!”
“Please.” Leland said. “If you’re planning to do something about this, we should coordinate. Don’t let your anger with me keep me out of the discussion. You all have guns—enough firepower to take out the prisoners or at least run them off.”
“Are they all armed?” Jeff asked.
Leland nodded, not wanting to tell them where they had obtained their weapons.
“Go on, Sheriff,” Roy said, his eyebrows lowered. “We don’t need your help.”
Leland stared at them for a moment, unable to breathe. He had wrestled with even asking the family to consider a fight because he thought they would be too eager. Now he was being turned away and would have to face Savage and his cronies alone. This was the nail in the coffin—an almost certain death for himself and his daughter. But there was no way he was just going to sit back and wait this one out. Gwen was in trouble. She was scared. He had to go to her.
Leland was walking back toward the road when he heard a voice behind him. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!”
He turned to see the front door of the house crash open as an old woman, hunched and clutching her cane, slowly made her way down the porch stairs. Leland knew the woman only as Grandma and had rarely seen her out.
She turned to look at her dumbfounded family on the porch. “What is wrong with all of you? One of your own is in trouble and a man is here trying to help you get him back? Grandpa would be ashamed if he could see all of you standing there like a bunch of cowards. Since when did the McClures back down from a fight? Since when did we start abandoning our own children to the world because of our pride?”
“Gran, go back inside,” Roy said.
Grandma snarled, walked up to the porch, and smacked her cane against Roy’s arm. Then she reached up and slapped it against the top of his head. “You’re gonna help the sheriff, that’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna get Bryson back and make sure he’s safe. Every one of you knows he probably deserved to spend the night in jail. It just so happened to be on a bad night. Well, that’s not the sheriff’s fault. And it’s our responsibility to help him.”
“I’ll help get Bryson, but I’m not helping everybody else,” Gr
egory said.
Leland stepped toward the porch, seizing the opportunity. “Since we don’t know exactly where Bryson is, it would benefit us to help everyone down there. He’s likely with the rest of the town. Same for Gwen. Help all of them, you help your son.”
Each of the family members looked down at the ground or off into the distance, thinking about the situation in front of them and what it might mean. Leland hadn’t expected this kind of resistance out of the McClures, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. They were people, just like anyone else. No one wanted a fight of this magnitude. They would likely have to kill to save their children. As much as the family liked to cause trouble, they weren’t killers. Like anybody else, they didn’t like the idea of bloodshed.
Finally, Roy sighed, then nodded, submitting to Grandma.
Grandma then turned to Leland with a smile on her face. “You’ve got all of us, Sheriff. What do you want us to do?”
Chapter Forty-Two
Gwen was surprised when Alex the prison guard was forced to join the rest of the hostages. By chatter from some of the inmates, she had understood him to be a special hostage considering he had been guarded alone at a different location. She feared what his presence here actually meant. Was Savage about to give up? If so, that meant he would take her with him. Maybe even the rest of the town.
She looked around at the hostages, downtrodden and confused. None of them deserved this. They hadn’t even gotten the chance to be confused by the power outage, much less figure out what they were going to do about it.
Gwen looked down at Miss Morgan who slept on the floor next to her. The woman had gotten her medicine, but what was she going to do the next day? Then the next? If they found a way to survive the prisoner onslaught, maybe they would be able to find one or two more pills that had survived the stomping, but what then? The pharmacy might have a couple of months’ worth of pills for her, but was this all going to be over by then? Would businesses be up and running in a couple of months? Gwen had no reason to think they wouldn’t be, but she had heard some of the prisoners talking like this was going to be a long-term problem—that it would take decades for the world to recover from whatever had happened.
Fallen Earth | Book 1 | Remnants Page 20