And We All Fall (Book 1)

by Michael Patrick Jr. Mahoney

  “Shut up!” Jackson pulled Jax roughly by the arm through the doorway and to the outside. “Come on!”

  “What the hell, dad?” Jax asked as they stopped a few feet from the door, now outside the store.

  “What’s your problem?” Jackson asked as he yanked Jax close to him by the arm.

  “You just stole food! We have to go back inside and pay for all that!”

  “Come on!” Jackson yelled and then pulled Jax by the arm towards the truck. Jax could barely stay on his feet, they were moving so fast. “Get in the truck!” Jackson demanded as he opened the passenger door. Jumper looked at him as if he knew something was wrong too.

  “There’s the money right there” Jax said as he eyed the wad of cash next to Jumper’s paw. “Let’s just go back inside real quick and pay.”

  “Get in!” Jackson lashed back, drawing even more attention from the other customers in the parking lot. “Hurry up!”

  Jackson ran around to the other side, threw the camo bag on the passenger floorboard, and started up the truck, as Jax slid into the truck. Jax watched his father gather up the wad of cash off the seat, some of it stained with blood, and stuff it into his pocket. He reversed out of the parking space. The tires squealed after he slammed the gear into drive and hit the gas.

  “I don’t understand dad!”

  “Shut your mouth,” he said to Jax as if he hated him. “Not another word about this! You understand? Not another word you little shit.”

  They were on the highway two minutes later, heading south.

  Jackson took all of the stolen merchandise out of the bag. He unwrapped one of the sandwiches and savagely took a bite out of it as Jax watched in disbelief. Jackson fed some to Jumper who devoured it in one gulp. Jackson laid the other sandwich, both bags of chips, and the bottle of water on the dashboard close to Jax.

  “Eat,” he said.

  “No.”

  “What the hell is your problem?” Jackson felt Jax’s eyes burning a hole into him.

  “You stole it! What the hell is wrong with you, dad!”

  “I said I don’t want to hear another word about that. You hear me?”

  Jax folded his arms and made the angriest face he ever made in his life as Jackson fed Jumper another bite.

  “I thought Jumper couldn’t have too much table food!”

  Jackson shrugged. “Won’t kill him.”

  Jax was steaming, but worked to calm himself, so desperate for answers. “Dad?”

  “Yes?” Jackson ripped open a bag of chips and started shoving them in his mouth as the Chevy flew down the interstate.

  “Why did you steal this food when we had money for it right here in the truck?” Jax couldn’t stop the tears from forming in his eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  Jackson stopped crunching chips in his mouth and stared into nothing with his cheeks bulging, as if he was paralyzed. He started chewing again, swallowed, and answered Jax, who was staring at him. “I don’t know.”

  Jackson appeared to be genuinely confused.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I said I don’t know. I just felt like I could… take whatever I wanted.”

  “But you're no thief. Never in your life! What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know! Fuck! I’ll mail them a check to make up for it! Okay? Get off my back!”

  The two didn’t say anything again for a long while. Jax ate his sandwich and his chips eventually, every bite seasoned with guilt and resentment for his father. After he put the last chip in his mouth, the silence was finally broken.

  “I want to talk to mom,” he said as he picked up the dead cell phone.

  “We’ll charge it up at motel and you can talk to her before we go to sleep.”

  Jax wanted so badly to believe in his father again. “Are you really going to send a check to that store?”

  “Yes. When we get home.”

  Jax was looking straight ahead, like a statute. He couldn’t look at his father. “Promise?” he asked in a weak moment where he looked into his father’s yellow eyes.

  “Promise. Look. I’m sorry I did that, Jax. I really am.”

  “Why, dad? Why would you do something like that? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I wish I knew.” Jackson fought back the urge to fall apart, so unsure. His lip quivered. “I don’t know what came over me.” He felt so guilty all of a sudden. “I honestly don’t know! It’s like I’m doing things outside myself. God! What is happening to me?”

  He looked lost, so lost. Jax could see it. “It’s okay, dad. Just send them some money and it will be like it didn’t happen. Alright?”

  “Yeah,” Jackson agreed halfheartedly. Like it never happened at all.

  Chapter 34

  Jewell opened her eyes and moaned in the back of the dark van speeding south on the interstate. She moved her head from side to side, trying to shake away the grogginess. Her head felt like it had been pounded with a baseball bat. Repeatedly. It was worse than any hangover during her wild college days at the University of Texas at Austin.

  The smell that lingered in her nose was foreign, contradictory. It was sweet, yet offensive, like the way a bathroom smells when air freshener is needed, but too much, and also not enough, was used. “What the…?” she said aloud to herself.

  As time and space began to come into focus, she remembered a dart flying past her face just before the feeling of a damp cloth being smashed against her mouth. That’s the last thing she remembered happening to her. Whatever occurred between then and now was a mystery.

  There was no light in the back of the van. She couldn’t even see a millimeter in front of her face. “Hello?” she yelled out in to the obscurity.

  The putrid smelling liquid on the cloth carried the unfortunate side effect of headaches that were five times more painful than a migraine. It had been held against her mouth by a hand that came around from behind her head as she stared at the dart that lodged into the side of the news van. She had just finished her newscast at the high school. Her camera man slash driver had gone into the woods to pee.

  “Damn you, Stu.”

  She thought about that creepy eye painted on the brick wall at the school, the artistic painted message warning everyone to ‘Run For Your Life’. She thought about the skull and crossbones, the white and black tattoo on the man’s hairy hand that pushed that rag against her mouth.

  Then, just darkness.

  She didn’t scare easy, but this was enough, and it was obvious when she spoke. “Where am I?” she asked aloud as she turned her head in every direction, trying to see something.

  Anything.

  All she knew for sure was that she was in a moving vehicle with a lot of space. A van? She remembered what the back of the dark van looked like in that split second she saw it parked in front of the Rally home.

  Did the CDC kidnap me?

  She wondered if she was in the cage. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Her wrists were tied together behind her back with zip ties. Her ankles were tied the same way. She couldn’t find any leverage.

  “Hello? Is anyone there? Where are you taking me?” she screamed out.

  There was no answer, though she heard what sounded like someone or something in pain, grunting, with her there in the darkness.

  “Hello? Who is that?” There was no reply. “Is someone here with me?” Jewell asked, but received no reply.

  The other presence in the cargo area of the van started moving, becoming more animated every passing second.

  “Can you understand me? Hello?”

  Whatever it was responded with a strange repetitive grunt and seemed to be pacing in a very short space, which was the area that contained the cage that she could not see. She heard its captive banging into it.

  Jewell moved herself closer to the sounds, noticing that whatever was making them was growing more and more excited as she inched herself closer to it. She heard it forcefully take in the smell.


  Her smell.

  She froze and listened.

  “Why aren’t you answering me?” An animal? she wondered as her feet hit the metal bars. Whatever was inside the cage stopped moving and didn’t make a sound.

  “Hello?” she asked again.

  Seconds later, the animal in the cage launched into a wild frenzy, grabbing Jewell’s bound feet and pulling them into the cage as far as they could go. It began to devour Jewell from the feet up as she screamed out in agony and flailed helplessly like a fish, trying to break free.

  “Did you hear that?” Will asked Gus in the front of the van as More Than A Feeling blasted from the crappy speakers.

  “What?” Gus asked.

  “Be quiet. Listen.” Will turned down the classic rock radio station and rolled down his window as the men listened in concert.

  “Shit!” Gus yelled.

  Moments later, the van pulled off to the grass beyond the shoulder and parked so the back area couldn’t be seen by the interstate traffic.

  The agents ran to the back with the engine still running and unlocked the swing doors. They flung open with gusto, revealing the horrific sight of blood and entrails everywhere. Jewell’s hands were still bound above her head. Her stomach was in the cage being eaten by Hector Ruiz. His victim’s horror-stricken eyes were still open.

  “Oh, my God!” Will yelled out in disgust as he raised his gun and aimed it at the animal. He looked nothing like the docile man that was there when they tossed Jewell in the back of van with him.

  “Don’t!” Gus ordered and pushed down Will’s weapon.

  “We can’t let him eat her!”

  “He already has! There’s nothing left of her man!”

  Will dropped his gun to his side. He and his partner stunned, watched the animal, covered in Jewell’s blood, pull what was left of her carcass hard against the cage. Its appetite appeared to be insatiable as her head kept banging against the bars, unable to fit.

  Gus turned around and pulled his phone from his back pocket, unable to look anymore. He put it up to his ear after pushing a few buttons to speed dial. “We have a problem,” he said into the phone. “The reporter is dead.”

  “Fuck. What happened?” Chief Special Agent Cavanagh sounded like he was about to crush the phone in his bare hands.

  Gus turned around and begrudgingly looked at the horror again. “The husband we picked up pulled her limbs through the grates of the cage somehow. He’s eating her in the back of the van. He keeps growling at us.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “I’d say. The only thing left of her is her head sir. ”

  “Wonderful.” He sounded like he would choke out the next person he saw. “Bring him and whatever is left of Ms. Hill to the air transport and wait. I’ll find out what the Chief of Staff wants us to do with her.”

  They all knew this could spell trouble for them. It didn’t really matter that much to Gus and his partner as they watched the monster Hector became acting on its basic instincts, and it was terrifying.

  “Yes, sir.” Gus hung up the phone and pushed it back into his pocket. He hopped into the back of the van and cautiously walked towards the cage.

  “What did he say?” Will asked.

  “Come help me.”

  “Do what?

  “He wants us to secure what’s left of her and get it on the C-130.”

  Will jumped inside the van, figuring this was going to be like taking a bone from a mean dog. As the two men moved closer, the animal inside the cage rose to its feet and grabbed the bars, snarling at the agents with Jewell’s blood all over its face and hands.

  “Easy, Hector” Gus said to the beast as he and Will squatted down to their knees. They slowly moved closer to Jewell’s head.

  “Cover me,” Will demanded as he reached over to grab Jewell’s hands, her arms still connected to her frame at the bone.

  Just as he grabbed them and began to pull her away from the animal, it reached through the bars and sunk its nails into Will’s hand. It pulled him to the cage with such ease and force that the 220-pound agent’s facial bones cracked after slamming against the bars. Will screamed out in pain as the animal bit off his ear.

  “Shit! Damn it, Will!”

  Will screamed as he frantically tried to escape the animal’s grip, thrashing desperately as the animal bit into his orange suit-covered shoulder in the most chaotic, violent frenzy Gus had ever witnessed.

  Gus drew his weapon and fired three times at the monster, striking the quick moving target repeatedly in the chest. If it wasn’t secured in the cage, Gus couldn’t imagine how he would have been able to hit it. It released its grip on Will and fell to the floor.

  Will stumbled away from the cage holding the spot where his ear used to be as Gus dropped his weapon on the van floor. He crawled to Jewell, grabbed her hand, and yanked the remnants of her mangled body far away from the cage. He snagged a ruffle in Will’s protective suit and scooted hurriedly to the back of the van, pulling Will along with one hand and Jewell’s remains with the other.

  Gus left Jewell at the edge as Will fell out of the van holding his wound. Gus grabbed the metal box in the corner and hopped out of the van. He rushed to Will’s side where he lay in a fetal position in the grass, trying to scream while a look of terror dominated his expression. His mouth was moving, but no noise was coming out.

  Gus looked over to the animal in disbelief as it rose back to its feet and growled while it attacked the metal bars of the cage. The shots to its torso only seemed to stun it briefly.

  “Jesus Christ. Mother fu...,” Gus said aloud as he stood up and slammed the van doors.

  “My ear!” Will cried out. “My fucking ear!”

  “Hang on, buddy,” Gus said as he rushed to unwind a rolled up bandage from the metal box. He wrapped it around Will’s head as he eyed the traffic zooming by, covering the space where Will’s ear used to be. He pulled a syringe filled with morphine and a sedative out of the box and rammed the needle into Will’s neck. He threw the needle back in the box and cursed as he stood up and then kicked some debris from some recent wreck there.

  “Did you kill it?” Will asked less than a minute later, calming down as the morphine coursed through his blood.

  Gus knelt down next his partner and good friend. He shook his head. Will sat up and noticed the bloody hole in the shoulder of his suit. “Fuck.” He looked Gus in the eyes. “Son of a bitch bit off my ear.” Will started to cry as he looked to Gus with imploring eyes. It was unnerving for Gus, who had worked with Will for so many years now and never once saw him cry about anything, even when he probably should have.

  “I know. I’m sorry, buddy.”

  “What now? What do we do?” Will already knew the answer as he began to feel sleepy, but he wanted to hear Gus say it.

  “Complete the mission. Get you, I mean… them, to Atlanta.”

  The two men stared at each other, each one thinking the same as the other about the bleeding wound on the side of Will’s face, not to mention the bite wound on his shoulder.

  A vehicle began to slow on the shoulder of the highway and pulled up by the van, which seemed to be asking for that, parked on the grass with the windshield facing the highway. The driver rolled down the window. “You all need some help he asked?”

  “Get out of here!” Gus yelled as he stood up wearing his orange protective suit and waved the driver on as if he was going to kill him if he didn’t comply.

  He would have.

  “You don’t have to be rude,” the man said as he rolled up his window. “Geez.”

  Will looked at the van doors as the helpful but irritated driver pulled his car back onto the interstate. “I’m not going back there with that thing,” he said as he raised his head, fighting sleep.

  Gus helped Will to his feet.

  “Come on. Easy does it,” he said as he walked Will slowly to the front of the van and helped him get in to the passenger seat. “You know I love you, man,” he said forebodingly
to Will who looked like he just spent days walking through the dessert with no food or water, and the poison of a hundred scorpions coursing through his veins.

  Will nodded with his eyes closed and his nose pointing at the ceiling, but said nothing as he drifted off to sleep, shivering.

  Gus rolled up the passenger side window and closed the door gently. He walked to the back of the van and opened the doors again to see the monster that used to be Hector going crazy in the cage, trying to get out, seemingly very close to succeeding. It was as if the monster’s strength was growing. There was no blood coming out of his bullet wounds.

  Gus noticed the red paint on Jewell’s fingernails and found himself overwhelmed by all the red everywhere he looked, not to mention what he knew he had to do. He grabbed his weapon that was on the floor, along with Will’s head gear lying next to it.

  He slammed the back doors with all his might and felt his body going limp, fatigue overtaking every muscle in his body. He walked lethargically to the front of the van and climbed on to the driver’s seat. He pulled the door shut as he studied Will who had not moved. He wasn’t sure how long it would take, but knew it would happen. “I’m so sorry,” he said as he cried hard, but briefly. He placed the headgear over Will’s head and then wiped his own sad eyes.

  Seconds later, a single gunshot echoed inside the van as a bullet struck the bullet resistant glass window from the inside.

  Gus drove the van back on to the interstate and began his journey to the nearest transport hub identified by the CIA. Not long after, the cell phone in Jewell’s purse began to ring again. It was the third time since Gus laid her purse on the dashboard.

  Chapter 35

  “Where the hell are you, Jewell?” Sargent Nole Barnes asked aloud franticly with his desk phone receiver smashed against his ear. Jewell’s phone rang and rang until it went to voicemail. Again. This was the third time he tried call her in the last two hours. “Come on. If something has happened to you…”

  Sergeant Barnes hung up and walked to his chief’s office. “Sir?” he said as he knocked lightly a couple times on the open office door.