Their mother turned and stared at the barn again. She wept uncontrollably as the sound of sirens in the distance paralyzed her. “They’re coming.” She didn’t know what to do. For a moment, she started for the barn door, thinking seriously again about opening it.
The powerful crash into the door, nearly driving it open at that moment, stopped her in her tracks, and refocused her.
“Daddy has to stay in the barn. Come on!”
“Why?” the little girl cried out, her brother dragging her away.
The mother dropped to her knees and focused her daughter’s attention on her. She looked at her intensely, but with all the love she could muster.
“You know why,” she said as she lifted her daughter’s shirt, exposing the bloody gash on her stomach, along with the grayish, marbled skin around it. Her mother traced her finger around the wound, and accidentally poked through the decaying skin.
“Oh, my God,” her mother cried and then gagged.
“He didn’t mean to, mommy. Daddy didn’t mean to do it.”
“I know, sugar.” The mother whimpered as she rose up and looked over to the barn as the cow suddenly bellowed in agony.
“That’s not your daddy anymore. We need to get you to the hospital now, baby girl. Come on now. Let’s go get your shoes on.”
Both of the children started crying like their mother as the three hurried to their house holding hands. They looked back at the barn a few times on the way, each time wiping away the tears that rolled down their faces as the man they locked inside an hour ago was crashing into the door, over and over.
They rushed into the house and locked the front door as police cars pulled up.
As the lock engaged on the front door, the beast in the barn crashed through the two-inch thick wooden barn wall, covered in that sick cow’s blood.
Daddy moved as fast as a cheetah, disappearing into the nearby cornfield with police chasing after it.
For now.
Around the same time in Virginia, Nole slammed on his brakes as a dark figure ran across the road, dashing through the night air faster than anything Nole had ever seen.
He had nearly crashed into it.
“What the hell was that?” he asked himself as he slowed his police cruiser down while he peered into the woods.
He pulled off on the side of the road, grabbed his flashlight and the shotgun, no longer dusty. He walked slowly into the woods, shining light on anything that seemed to move. He felt his heart beat faster with each step, his breathing shallow.
He turned quickly, dropping the flashlight in a panic, but not until he was able to see what it was that moved past him. “Damn it. Just a squirrel,” he said to himself as he picked up the flashlight. “Get it together, Nole.”
He took three steps back towards his car before he felt the impact of what seemed like an elephant crashing into him.
Who knows where his shotgun and flashlight went.
He stood up and stared at the creature, seeing it clearly for a few seconds in the light provided by the lightning flashing in the heavens. It had yellow eyes, and was almost completely covered in what looked like black scales. To Nole, it looked like an animal wearing the remnants of human clothes, an early type of not-quite-erect human from long ago in the evolutionary span of time that used its hands to help with balance and propulsion.
It growled at Nole, and then smelled him hard.
The small town Virginia police officer turned and ran as fast as he could towards his car, not looking back even once.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelled and breathed a sigh of relief as he slammed the door to the cruiser shut. He locked the doors and cranked the engine. Just as he put his foot on the gas, the monster he’d met in the woods flew into the windshield like a missile and began to wildly tear Nole’s flesh apart with its hands and teeth.
No one could hear his screams.
Nole lost consciousness soon after the devil beast began ripping him apart, but not until he thought back to Scripture one last time. And he that kills any man shall surely be put to death. Surely these words are true, Nole thought, as he was finally punished for what he did to Reverend Rally in the park. Still, he wished he had that shotgun now.
The last thing Nole thought of as he choked on his own blood was Jewell’s face. He hoped he would see her again someday in the heaven he had always believed exists.
Chapter 41
“Baby?” Jamie yelled over the noise inside the helicopter as her knees buckled. A teardrop landed on her cell phone screen. “Is it really you?”
“Yes. It’s me,” Jackson said as the Chevy coasted down the interstate far below the speed limit. He was confused, unsure where he was even going. He had pulled over to the shoulder for a while a few times, trying to figure out what he was doing.
Jax thought about getting out each time and running away as fast as he could in the other direction, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave his father. He couldn’t leave Jumper, who looked like he wasn’t going to be around much longer either.
He just couldn’t say goodbye yet.
“Where are you?” Jamie asked her husband.
“I don’t know.” He looked at Jax and Jumper. “Going home,” he continued tearfully from inside the old white and green truck that he repeatedly had to jerk back into its lane.
“Mom! Mom!”
Jamie heard Jax yelling in the background. “Jax!” she exclaimed. “Is our son okay? Talk to me, Jackson! Tell me he is okay.”
“He’s fine.” Jackson was crying. “But I… I…”
“I know, baby. You’re sick. Very sick. You need to pull over, Jackson. Pullover and wait for us.”
“Us?” Jackson asked her.
He looked up to the sky through the windshield, noticing the blinking lights on the helicopter above for the first time. He also had no idea that Detective Chambers was following him in his unmarked police car.
“For me. Wait for me.”
“Is that you? Up there?”
Jax looked through the windshield too and felt some relief, feeling that help was close now. It had to be. He couldn’t take anymore.
“No, but I’m not far now. I will be there soon.”
“Why? Why are you coming?” He sounded intermittently delirious.
“I want to see you, to help you, baby. We can help you. All of us that are here with you.”
“I don’t need that kind of help.”
“You need a doctor, Jackson.”
“I’ll see our doctor when I get home.”
“There’s no time for that. Our doctor can’t help you with this.”
“The… the thin… thing… thing… things I’ve done… Jamie. I can… can… can’t…”
Every word became a struggle.
“It’s okay, Jackson. None of that matters. All that matters is that you get help right now. Everything will be okay.”
“I love y… y… you.”
She knew what it meant, the change in his speech.
Time was running out.
“I love you too, baby. Now please. Please pull over now and wait, Jackson. Please!”
She started crying again and couldn’t manage to stop.
“I ca… ca… can… can’t.”
Jackson held the photo of Jamie in front of his face. His motions were stiff, like a robot. The right leg of his jeans, where he had the latest bullet wound, was strangely absent of any significant blood, despite the gunshot hole in the denim. Jackson ran his pinky finger across the wound, noticing a hard black substance had formed in it. He couldn’t poke his finger through it.
“Yes, you can. Please, Jackson!”
“Do… do… do… you remember… the night we… we… we met?” he asked, struggling more and more to speak.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice cracking. “Of course,” she continued as her helicopter was now flying above the truck. The pilot pointed down at it.
She couldn’t take her eyes off it as tears flooded them, remembe
ring being with him just days ago in the shower. He asked the same question then.
“Pull over, Jackson!”
“I sa… sa… san… sangggg it to… to… to… ooo you,” he said after he turned the photo over and stared at the words on the back. He pulled the handgun he took from the detective from his waistband with the same hand and laid it on the dashboard.
“No, dad! Mom! Hurry!” Jax yelled as loud as he could.
“Jackson?” Jamie cried. “What’s happening?”
“You… you… you… you’re… are… are… my… my… my fan… fan… fanttttt… asy — ah!”
Jackson screamed out in anguish. His body once again felt like it was on fire. His bald head and face turned a shade of crimson.
“Stop the truck!” Jamie said as she watched the truck below weaving all over the interstate, speeding up, slowing down, and speeding up.
“Now?” Detective Chambers asked into his radio as he sped up to keep the truck in sight with a death grip on the steering wheel. He was ready to speed ahead of it and stop the pursuit by himself.
“Stand down,” he heard in response.
“I’m li… li… liv… liv… liv… li… li… life in… in… in… in…”
“Jackson!” Jamie yelled into the phone as Jax watched his father’s body become limp. His head wobbled as he let go of the steering wheel, but he wouldn’t let go of the phone.
Not yet.
“You’re… you’re ev… ev… ev… wom… wom… wom…”
He dropped the phone and grabbed the gun of the dash. He pushed the nose of the revolver against his right temple as he spoke gibberish for a few seconds and then screamed out like someone reached inside him and ripped his soul from his bones. His body went into a complete seizure just after the three helicopters flew ahead of his course.
The old white truck veered across into the northbound lanes, thundering through the grass median that separated the highway, as the three helicopters hovered over the interstate to block the truck’s path a mile ahead in the other direction.
Waiting.
The Chevy was now traveling the wrong way on the interstate, towards the oncoming traffic, though there wasn’t any.
Jackson began to slump forward as the mission to kill himself faded from his stream of consciousness, along with everything else. The barrel of the gun pointed towards the dash board as Jackson’s grip loosened. Some part of him still knew he had to die. He fired the weapon just before he faded to black and fell forward against the steering wheel.
The gun fell to the floor as the bullet lodged into the engine, igniting it.
“Dad! Jax screamed as he grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and struggled to push his father away from it with the other as he saw and felt the flames under the hood. He threw up. “Wake up! Wake up!”
Jax couldn’t control it. Jumper barked continuously as the classic truck barreled off the interstate at the same spot where the father and son stopped days ago to commemorate Stanley’s life, as rain began to pour from the sky.
The Bridge of Roses.
“Where is it?” someone in one of the helicopters asked everyone else over the radio as the machines hovered feet above the highway. Officials were blocking all traffic five miles away in both directions.
All the honking of the traffic piling up on the interstate was menacing.
Jamie waited for the answer with her hands covering her mouth.
It took another quarter mile traveling at a hundred miles per hour before Detective Chambers realized that was the back end of the white truck he just saw disappearing over the edge on the other side of the interstate.
He slammed the breaks to slow down a little and darted across the median, which caused his Crown Vic to fishtail, trying to go the other way as he yelled into his radio. “He’s going the other way! The other direction!” he yelled as he lost control of his own car on the slick tar and toppled over the edge, into the woods.
The fiery truck toppled down the hill past the Bridge of Roses sign, rolling side over side before coming to a stop at the bottom of the hillside, ejecting everyone and everything in it.
Chapter 42
“At least we have hope,” the President of the United States said stoically to his top, most trusted aide with the return of a faint sparkle in his eyes.
The two had been sitting together on the couch in the dimly lit oval office for ten minutes, neither saying a word after the last briefing concluded, and the room emptied into hopelessness. Everyone had their orders.
“Yes, sir,” the aide Stacey replied, though she didn’t sound convinced, and wasn’t.
“Make sure everything is ready to go there.”
His confident tone sounded more like the commander in chief she knew with each word he spoke, though she didn’t know why.
“Sir?”
“HOPE. Make sure we have everything we need.”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“At HOPE, Stacey. Make sure the facility is good to go.”
The President couldn’t mask his frustration, nor his fears. He didn’t try. Of course, he had too much on his mind right now to remember how few people know about the top secret project.
“HOPE? Pardon me, Mr. President. I’m afraid I’m not following. Are you referring to a place of some kind?”
The President rose from the couch and walked over to the desk, realizing that HOPE was beyond Stacey’s pay grade. At least, it used to be. “Oh, it’s more than a place, Stacey. It’s how we are going to survive.”
“Sir?”
The President slowly opened a desk drawer and pulled a folder out of it, all with a slight grin on his face. He loved power and also loved it when he knew something that someone else didn’t know.
He walked over to Stacey and handed the folder to her, a briefing on the massive, self-sustaining, high-walled facility not far from the White House, linked to it through an underground tunnel. The facility was known as HOPE, and acronym, though the commander and chief couldn’t remember what it stood for at the moment.
The aide read through the briefing triumphantly, with joy, as if it was a treasure map. In a way, it was.
She looked up at the President, stunned. “It really has a two-acre hydroponic garden?”
The president nodded slightly. “Growing every fruit and vegetable that currently exists on Earth.”
“We can get there from here?”
The President looked through the window behind his desk, unable to miss the lightning racing across the sky, and then nodded again, harder this time.
“Are you ready?”
Chapter 43
Rain began to fall as Jax woke up on the ground a few feet from Doglick Creek and that lonely, crying willow that was dripping the storm from its branches.
Everything was blurry in the rain without Jax’s glasses, which were nowhere to be found. He finally felt the familiar pair lying on the ground near his face, smashed.
He made out the silhouette of the sideways tree as he sat up in a daze. In the firelight, he saw his father on his knees holding Jumper in his arms, looking up to the sky, screaming in anguish, as if he was on fire inside.
His face glowed red.
Lighting cracked across the sky.
Jax watched Jumper lick Jackson’s face, and then go limp in his arms.
“No!” Jackson bellowed as he looked down at Jumper’s lifeless body and sobbed while Jax tried to stand up. He immediately fell back down, his left leg having multiple fractures from the accident.
He stood up again carefully and moved closer to them, hopping and dragging his injured leg behind him, with the GoPro recording everything he saw as it had throughout the road trip he had looked forward to for a month.
For his whole life.
“No,” Jax cried out as the pounding rain drenched them all, including Jumper’s bloody, matted fur. The accident had caused internal injuries.
Poor Jumper had no chance, and just breathed his last breathe.
Still holding Jumper’s limp body in his arms, Jackson looked up again to the sky, still on his knees. He looked at Jax as the thirteen year old limped closer. The two stared at each other for a moment, acknowledging their mutual loss, and the hell they experienced together since the trip began.
Jax took two more steps and in those seconds, he could see his father trying to speak.
He couldn’t.
The Marine looked to the sky and screamed in agony as lighting brilliantly lit up the sky above again. In an instant, his face changed.
A metamorphosis occurred before Jax’s blurry eyes.
Even without his eyeglasses, he could see all the life that was left in his father draining out. All that Jackson Mills ever was before, was gone.
A memory.
Jackson looked down at Jumper with his mouth open. He sounded like an animal, growling. He stared at Jumper for a moment and opened his mouth even wider, growled even louder, and savagely bit into Jumper’s stomach.
“No!” Jax screamed, loud enough to alarm everyone in the Commonwealth of Virginia as he fell to the ground in despair. His screams reverberated in the wet, Virginia atmosphere amid the endless horn honking in the distance as he struggled to move himself backwards towards the creek as he watched in horror. His father was consuming the entrails of their dog, his face covered in more and more blood with every ravenous bite.
Jax felt the wet, cold steel barrel of the 1917 Enfield under his palm as his other hand reached the creek.
He closed his fingers tightly around it and rose unsteadily to his feet as his father tossed Jumper’s ravaged body on the ground like it was trash. The thing Jackson had become stood up with an odd rigidness, as if it was learning to stand for the first time, neurons misfiring.
Learning.
Its yellow and green bloodshot eyes were focused only on Jax as it growled menacingly.
Jax looked up to the top of the hill where a swarm of blurry faces appeared at the corner of the bridge, looking for him. They started their rush down the hill in the downpour, all of them screaming at him. One in particular was screaming his name.
And We All Fall (Book 1) Page 30