He racked his brain to try and figure out where Gwen might have gone, or worse, where Savage might have taken her.
He thought about the house where the incident between Leland and Savage had happened five years ago, but he shook his head. Gwen wouldn’t have gone there on her own, and Savage wouldn’t have reasonably expected Leland to look for them there.
Then it struck him.
Home. Gwen would have gone home. And if she didn’t go there by herself, Savage would have taken her there. It would be poetic justice for Leland to find Savage with his daughter there. Leland had stormed into Jim Savage’s dwelling place and killed his daughter there. It didn’t matter that it had been a horribly tragic accident. It didn’t matter that Leland had lived with deep regret since then.
Once Leland had the thought, he had no doubt in his mind that the two of them would be there. For a moment, he thought about trying to round up a few people with guns to help him, but this wasn’t about survival for Savage. Savage wouldn’t care if he was surrounded by a hundred guns or if he was completely alone, so long as Leland saw his daughter executed.
Because of this, Leland hesitated to go there. He didn’t want to set things in motion that he couldn’t stop. But he couldn’t very well ask someone to storm the house for him. He didn’t know where Henry was, but even if he did, could he really ask the fugitive to go toe-to-toe with Savage to save his daughter?
No. This was Leland’s fight. There was no backup. There was no one to call on the radio. If he didn’t face Savage, the psychopath would kill Gwen anyway. Running from it was certain death for her. Facing him gave her a chance. A small chance, but a chance.
Leland’s feet carried him down the side street past the sheriff’s office. He thought about going in to see if there were any useful weapons left but decided his pistol was all he would need.
When the house came into view, he thought his heart would beat out of his chest.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Gwen sat next to the front door as she glared at Savage, who held his pistol steady on her. He stared at her with emotionless eyes and didn’t say anything at first, but then the questions came.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gwen said. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“I’m sure my daughter was terrified when your father broke into the house and shot her.”
“You and I both know he wouldn’t have done something like that on purpose,” Gwen said. “He regrets it.”
“Is the only purpose of justice to inspire regret?” he said. “Is that enough?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. All I know is you make yourself worse by getting revenge.”
“I couldn’t be worse,” he said. There was a tone of reflection in his voice, remorse it seemed. Gwen believed him—that he felt his self-loathing genuinely. He knew that getting revenge wouldn’t satisfy him, but he wasn’t looking to be satisfied. He was just trying to finish a task. He was trying to carry his twisted sense of justice.
“You want to kill me,” Savage said.
“I want you to be out of my life,” Gwen answered. “I don’t care if you die or not. I just wish you weren’t here.”
“I wish I didn’t have to be.”
“But you don’t have to be,” she said. She kept her voice as calm as possible, hoping she didn’t sound like she was pleading for her life.
“You and I both know I do,” he said. “I don’t know another way.”
“But you do.”
He shook his head. “You could never understand. I can’t exist without justice being carried out.”
“You mean your version of justice,” she said. “What you think is justice and what actually is justice could be two different things.”
“But it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Is it not true that we all have a standard system of justice that lords over us, but at the same time we all have a sense of real justice inside us, telling us what actually is right? When you lie, you justify it. When you steal, even the smallest of things, you justify it. You pick someone else’s rosebud and tell yourself that they will never notice or that they don’t appreciate rosebuds like you do. The fact remains that you stole, but you don’t feel bad about it because you feel justice has been served. You condemned them guilty of not appreciating a rose as much as you, so you stole it.”
“So, you’re going to kill me even though I’ve never done anything wrong to you?”
“Unfortunately, justice calls for your death,” he said solemnly. “You are the rosebud. Once the owner is condemned for not appreciating it, the rosebud is cut from the bush, and it dies. This is the way of justice.”
Savage was going to kill her. It didn’t matter if her dad showed up or if he didn’t. By the end of the day, she would be dead at this man’s hand because of his twisted mind.
He watched her closely, waiting. Then, his eyes traveled behind her as he looked through a window and smiled.
“He’s here.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Leland didn’t get to the door before his worst fear was realized. Savage opened the door and shoved Gwen onto the front porch. He held a fistful of her hair with one hand, and with the other he pressed a gun to her head. He stood so close to her, Leland wouldn’t dare to try and shoot.
Rage pounded through Leland. The sight of his daughter in the hands of his enemy made him want to rip Savage to pieces with his bare hands.
“Everything’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” Leland said, holding out a hand.
“And what makes you think that?” Savage asked.
“Let’s talk about this,” Leland said.
“First I want you to admit that you murdered my daughter,” Savage said. “I want to hear your confession.”
“It was an accident,” Leland said. His hands shook. He knew he was going to have to get off a shot somehow. Savage was preparing him for the execution. This was how he wanted to get his revenge. He wanted a confession, then an execution. “I would have never done something like that on purpose, you have to know that.”
“Say it!”
Leland looked at Gwen and a tear slipped down his cheek. How could it have come to this? Why had he gone after Savage all those years ago? Why had he been so ready to pull the trigger that night? Why did he have to go after Henry last night? If he had been here, he could have protected Gwen. He could have come up with a plan to save the town from all of this bloodshed.
Leland had failed on almost every level. As a sheriff, as a father, as a man. He hadn’t been the person he was supposed to be, and now he faced the death of his daughter at the hands of a lunatic.
As he looked at Gwen, he noticed her right hand slowly slipping into her hoodie pocket.
“Say it!” Savage screamed.
He looked at Savage, then at Gwen again. A glint of silver reflected the sunlight and a flood of relief washed through Leland as he took a deep breath and let his eyes travel back to Savage. A calm serenity flowed over his shoulders.
Leland slowly bent his knees and set his gun on the ground, then raised his hands above his shoulders.
“I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life,” Leland said. “Terrible things. Unspeakable things. I have every right to be in jail with you. I’m sorry I killed your daughter. You don’t know how sorry I really am. I think about it every single day, and I hate myself for it. But it truly was an accident. Whatever issue you have with me should be with me, not Gwen. I’m the one who killed your daughter. Revenge should be against me, not her.”
“I want justice,” Savage said. “I want you to feel the same pain I’ve felt. I’m not going to kill you. I want you to live with the knowledge that I killed your daughter and that it’s because you so recklessly killed mine.”
“I’m sorry,” Leland said, “but I don’t think that’s the way it’s gonna happen.”
Gwen twisted to her left, pointed the gun behind her, and let off three rounds. The bullets went straight through Savage’s s
tomach and out his back. The man’s eyes widened as he fell to the floor.
In the same instant, Gwen jumped from the front steps as Leland scrambled for his gun and passed Gwen on his way to the porch.
Savage crawled into Leland’s living room, gun still in hand, the rug soaking up his blood. When Leland got to the front door, Savage flipped slowly onto his back, letting out a deep groan as he stared at the ceiling. Savage’s gun had dropped to the floor, and he held his bleeding belly with both hands.
Leland looked behind him and saw Gwen staring from the front yard, her hands trembling, her eyes wide with fear. She had been so brave through all this. She had done so well. The prisoner’s wounds would probably kill him, but Leland had to make sure. He couldn’t just save the man’s life. Leland couldn’t live knowing that the man was still out there plotting a second attempt at revenge. At justice.
“Are you going to finish this?” Savage said in a whisper. “Are you going to be my executioner?”
A man can justify almost any action he takes if he needs to. Whatever it takes to be able to live with himself.
Leland’s job was to get first responders here—to try and save Savage’s life so he could face another trial for his actions today. He was already serving a life sentence, but he would be put in a more secure place within the prison.
But Leland wasn’t the sheriff right now.
He took two steps to the front door and wished Gwen was far away for the moment. He closed the front door softly, then turned back to Savage, pistol in hand.
Now, he wasn’t just a father, he wasn’t just a man. He was a protector. The one to make sure the threat to his family was gone forever.
He was the executioner.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Gwen had watched the funerals with a blank expression, feeling numb as others wept. So much death in such a little time. She was part of it. How many people in Hope had shed blood in the last two days who had never even held a gun before?
When she slept, which had been very little since the prison break, she had nightmares of either shooting or stabbing someone who was trying to kill her. She didn’t know if that would ever go away. The images of blood and death were etched into her mind, and she hated every bit of it. She needed to get out of here. She needed to be away from the familiar faces, if even for a few days.
Her dad had already determined he was going to make his way to Chicago. Whatever this power outage was, it hadn’t changed, and her sister, Cora, likely needed help.
Gwen hadn’t told her dad yet, but she was going to Chicago with him. He would argue the point, but she had a few ideas to convince him.
The prisoner, Henry, was going with him too. Gwen had been wary of him at first, but he was actually very nice.
Her dad had given as much of the story to her as he could, and it seemed strange that he would trust Henry, but she figured if her dad trusted him, that was good enough for her.
She tried to push the events from the previous two days from her head, but that had proven to be impossible. She had taken to sleeping in a friend’s house, unable to step back into her own home. There was still a bloodstain on the carpet where Savage had died. She tried not to think of the shot that ended Savage’s life, the loud boom behind a closed door. She tried not to think about shooting through his stomach or slashing a man’s throat earlier that day. So much violence. So much death.
Blood was on her hands, and she would never be rid of it. She would carry it with her for the rest of her days. She thought about the world as it was, wondering if the power outage was as widespread as some thought. If the rest of the country was in chaos, she wondered how much more blood would be shed. She wondered how much more killing she would do.
Hopefully, all of this would be over soon. Though she wanted to move on from it, she would never forget it. The deaths, the killings, they would haunt her forever.
Chapter Fifty-Five
It had been two days since the prisoners of Lone Oak had taken over Hope. Two days since twenty of Hope’s citizens had lost their lives. Two days since Leland had executed Jim Savage in his own living room.
And the power was still out.
The town had sent volunteers out by foot to neighboring towns, and they had just come back with similar reports. No power. Some crime. A few had even seen prisoners in jumpsuits, though no one nearby had experienced the same turmoil Hope had. That was because none of the other towns had Savage come against them.
Graves for the dead had to be dug by hand since no one was able to get a backhoe started for the jobs. This was particularly difficult for the large number of prisoners who had been killed in the fight. Several people in town were still working on graves for them near the outskirts of town. The survivors, all five of them, were locked up in Leland’s jail, but he didn’t know what he was going to do with them. He figured he would give it a week or two and hope the power would come back on so he could hand them over to a higher authority.
The fact that the power was still out without explanation was disturbing to Leland, and the talk throughout the town seemed to confirm Henry’s theory that this was some sort of an attack—a bomb set off to knock out America’s power grid. Leland didn’t know about all that, but he did know if this problem had stretched to Chicago, then his other daughter, Cora, was in danger.
A place like Hope, the prisoner takeover notwithstanding, would generally be a safer place in a crisis such as this. The larger cities would easily descend into chaos. Looting. Rioting. Murder. And two days was plenty of time for all that to begin.
One of the mechanics in Hope said he thought he could figure out a way to get an older vehicle up and running. Once it was ready, Leland would be on his way. If his daughter had stayed close to her apartment, Leland would be able to find her.
When some in the town had heard of Leland’s plan, they didn’t try to talk him out of it, but they worried about a resurgence of prisoners. Leland assured them he wouldn’t be gone long, and he dispersed his guns among them. They were now a well-armed town that wouldn’t so easily be taken out of their beds in the middle of the night and herded into the library again.
Besides, Leland hadn’t said as much, but he wasn’t their sheriff any longer.
Leland stood in the middle of the cemetery alone, staring down at his wife’s headstone. Near it was Travis’s grave. He didn’t wear his uniform and had instead decided on jeans and a button down shirt with brown jacket. He held his badge in his hands and flipped it over in his palm.
“I’ve never been able to do this right,” he said. “The badge is meant for bearers of truth and justice. For people who enforce the law. Not for people who take the law into their own hands. Not for people like me. I should have given this job up a long time ago. But you knew that, didn’t you? You’re the only person who ever knew me. The real me. I can’t tell you how much I wish you were here.”
He wanted to say more, but his throat caught and he swallowed back tears. He looked at Travis’s grave and shook his head. Justice didn’t mean anything to Leland anymore. He wondered if there was such a thing at all.
Leland bent forward and placed his badge on his wife’s headstone, sniffed, then cleared his throat.
Then he walked away.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Henry had spent most of his time over the last two days keeping a low profile, usually staying in the library where nobody wanted to be. He had gotten rid of his jumpsuit and hoped that no one in town would recognize him for who he was. It wasn’t difficult to keep to himself. Hope was so preoccupied with burying their dead and trying to make sense of the world that they didn’t even notice him.
The sheriff was working on a plan to get to Chicago, which was Henry’s ticket out of here. It wasn’t necessarily a safer option, but no one would recognize him there, and he would have a chance to find his brother. He was just about all the family he had left and that was worth holding onto.
He still held to his theory about an EMP attack, a
nd he didn’t think Leland truly understood how bad things could get. Their town needed to be preparing for the worst. They might have thought they had already seen it, but what they had just experienced was an anomaly. They, along with the rest of the country, were possibly headed for a harsh winter, starvation, and even war.
He had seen enough of war a couple days ago. Alex had saved his life going into the fight with him. Together, they might have saved most of the town. He was glad to know the prison guard had found his parents safe and unharmed. Other than the sheriff, his daughter, and one or two others who might have seen him in the fight, no one in Hope recognized Henry for who he was.
Henry’s past didn’t matter anymore. He supposed this was true for all of them. No one was looking for him. No one was trying to put him back in prison. There was no functional prison for him to return to anyway.
This was a fresh start, though not an easy one. Life was no longer about breaking from the restraints of the past to make himself a better person.
No, life was about surviving. Living day-to-day. There would be new rules. New ways of living. There were no police. No one was telling them how to live.
No laws.
The world was about to get a lot darker than any of them knew. They were all about to get to know themselves better than they ever have before.
They had entered a brand new world.
Epilogue
Screaming. So much screaming. The voices echoed in the streets. Sometimes there were gunshots, then screaming. Sometimes there were large fireballs that lit up the entire street, then more screaming.
Cora was on the tenth floor of her apartment building, and the water wasn’t running. She had used up all of her bottled water. The last time she had ventured out of her apartment, she had gotten to the fifth floor where she saw a group of people breaking into apartments, stealing everything they could. When she saw one of them fire a gun into an apartment blindly, she had run back upstairs, locked her door, and shoved her couch against it.
Fallen Earth | Book 1 | Remnants Page 24