by J D Jacobs
“What is this letter about? I’m not sending something this urgent if I’m not aware of what’s going on.”
“Oh, yes you will.”
“You wanna try me?”
Dad pauses, air violently blowing through his nostrils. He tries to settle down. “Fine. That letter is for Miguel Ricardo, the mayor of Avvil. I’m simply telling him to keep Jaden safe, at all costs. Even if that means going against Jenkins.”
“Jenkins? What did he do?”
“Grant, don’t act dumb. You know the real reason for this trip: Jenkins wants his daughter back,” Dad reminds Grant. “Jenkins will trade Jaden in for her if he can. This letter assures that exact thing doesn’t happen.”
Grant studies the letter, a recently dried navy blue seal keeping anybody from peeking. “You’re positive about this?”
“The bird is in the courthouse, right? I have the key to her cage.”
“If you’re scared Jenkins is going to hurt Jaden, then let me go on the trip. I told you, I can make sure he’s safe.”
Dad shakes his head. “You know why I need you here. You can’t go to Avvil; you have other places to be.”
Dad turns to walk away, and Grant reluctantly follows him with the letter in his fingers. While the two walk off the roof, Dad points at Grant’s naked hands before they pass through the doorway. “What did I tell you about the gloves? Don’t take them off.”
“It’s hot and I’m on the roof by myself. Nobody is going to see my fingernails.”
“And now you’re about to be on the streets. Put the gloves on.” As the door shuts and I’m left on the roof alone, the scene spirals out altogether.
This time my groans are screams. Cries. I can’t seem to control them.
“It has to be a flashback,” I hear Dad tell someone, “but it’s longer than usual. He’s been like this for several minutes. He keeps yelling your name and my name.” I can’t see what’s going on. Who’s he talking to? “I’m starting to get worried.”
“Give him a few more minutes to recover,” Grant responds. “I’ve never had a flashback this drawn out.”
One more sepia flashback. I feel like this is my last one. I know where I am as soon as my feet hit the ground. My heart drops, my breath escapes me, my chin trembles. Down the hall of the bottom floor of the hospital, walking toward me, is my best friend.
“‘Dr. Foxx…’ No, that’s too formal… ‘Hey, Ant…’ No, that’s too casual…” Cody is talking to himself, rehearsing lines as he walks the halls alone. “‘Hey Mr. Foxx. I know it’s really early, but I couldn’t get any sleep. I know this is a long shot, but I was wondering if there was any chance that I could get a ride back to Westwood… Well, the reason being that there are people who had died that weren’t properly buried, including Terra… Yes, I know my parents were buried, but I feel that every Westwood person should be buried. It’s a sign of respect. Plus, these are people we knew. Terra was someone I loved. I would really like to go back and bury her…’ Yeah, that should be good. I feel like Ant would approve of that. Why not?”
I know where he’s headed. My feet are glued to the floor. I don’t want to follow him.
But I do.
I hear three knocks on my dad’s door. “Hey, Mr. Foxx,” Cody begins through my dad’s closed door. “Sorry, I know it’s early. I just wanted to talk, if that’s okay.” He waits a couple more seconds, then knocks again. After no response, Cody decides to check the handle. Unlocked. He quietly pushes the door open. “Mr. Foxx? You in here?”
My dad is lying on the floor behind his desk, passed out with his eyes rolled behind his head. His left arm sleeve is rolled up. I hear him mumbling my mom’s name. He has to be having a flashback right now. Cody, however, immediately thinks that something horrible has happened to Dad, and he rushes over to help him.
“Mr. Foxx! Stay with me, everything is okay!” Cody checks his pulse, then begins giving Dad CPR. Cody yells for any outside help while he presses down on my dad’s chest, but nobody ever comes. Cody then turns to the walkie-talkie sitting on Dad’s desk and stands up to grab it. However, as he does so, Dad starts coughing from the floor. “Mr. Foxx! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, never better,” Dad answers after a few seconds of constant coughing. He rolls over to his side and rubs his head. Relief floods Cody’s face, and he turns back to return the walkie-talkie to Dad’s desk. As he does so, he suddenly pauses. Not just a pause, a complete halt of everything he was doing. He then reaches in his back pocket with one hand and picks up a paper that lies on Dad’s desk with his other.
“How long was I out?” Dad asks Cody over his shoulder, rubbing his eyes. Cody’s head rushes back-and-forth between the two papers. An unimaginable disbelief surges through Cody’s body.
“You wrote the letter to Miguel Ricardo…”
Dad’s head whips around to see what Cody is doing. He notices the two papers being compared side-by-side, one of them with a broken, navy blue seal stuck to it. But he acts dumb. “What you got there, Cody?”
Cody throws the unknown paper down and grabs the walkie-talkie. “You wrote this…” he says, shaking the letter and backing away from Dad at once. “You told Ricardo to keep Jaden. You told Ricardo to kill Jenkins. Your handwriting matches the letter…”
“No, Cody,” Dad says, slowly making his way onto his feet. “You’re wrong. It’s not what you think.”
“When were you planning on telling Jaden? Were you going to wait until after he killed Jenkins for you?”
“Jaden doesn’t have to know, and Jaden won’t know,” Dad imperiously replies. “And you won’t tell him, either.”
“Jaden has to know! You told Ricardo to kidnap him! What kind of monster does that to his own son!? He has to know what you’ve done.”
“He can’t!” Dad springs to his feet, but Cody has already torn out through the halls, slamming Dad’s door shut behind him. Cody is several yards ahead of Dad, but Dad is seeping with determination to catch him. I look back at Dad to see the blade of a thick hunting knife shining through his fist.
Brrp. “Jaden!” Brrp.
Cody calls into the walkie-talkie as he sprints down the hospital halls. He calls for me once again. This time I respond.
Brrp. “Jaden! Listen to me, it’s Cody. You need to get to the bottom floor of the hospital.” I look back at Dad, who’s at the very end of the hallway. Cody is so much further ahead of him that it makes me wonder how Dad even caught Cody. Does Cody know that my dad is chasing him?
Cody pushes the door leading to the outside of the loading dock. The rain falls heavily. Lightning cracks in the distance. Cody stops and stays under the roof of the loading dock. He doesn’t want to run out in the rain. I honestly don’t think he knows that Dad is right behind him.
“This is important, Jaden. I was wrong.” Brrp.
Come on, Cody. Run. Get away from the hospital. Please, run.
I hear my own voice. Brrp. “Wrong about what? What’s going on?” Brrp.
I run out into the rain. I don’t know what else to do. My heart breaks the longer I watch him stand there.
Brrp. “I was wrong about–”
“Cody!” I call out to him from the middle of the rain. He looks up and sees me standing outside, sopping wet. “Cody, run!”
Cody takes that as a sign to jog out to me, not sensing my urgency. I start running away from him, hoping he will follow me and pick up his pace. But he doesn’t understand. “Woah! Where did you… How did you get down here so fast?” He doesn’t know what’s about to happen. He just knows that he saw his best friend appear out of thin air.
“Cody, please run! Run away from the hospital, man! Don’t ask, just… run! I’m begging you!”
It’s too late. The door to the loading dock behind him bolts open. I crouch down and hide behind a nearby dumpster so Dad won’t know I’m here. Cody doesn’t even bother turning around to see who’s approaching him; the pouring rain may have drowned out the sound of the door opening. He’s
still confused, his head full of questions: why am I begging him to run? Why am I hiding right now? He looks at me through the dumpster shadows with his shoulders shrugged and his palms held out by his side. By the time he hears the footsteps behind him, it’s too late.
Cody turns around to be met immediately by a knife being shoved in his stomach. Cody’s arms freeze before they can defend him. I can’t see the look on Cody’s face, but I can see Dad’s. He’s not even looking at Cody at all. In fact, I think my dad’s eyes are closed. He places his empty hand on Cody’s back, then pushes Cody into another stab. And then another. And another. And another. Cody falls to his knees, and the knife drags up his abs. Cody’s hands finally move to cover his wounds, but they move so slowly. So lifelessly. Dad takes a step away from Cody, watching him clutch his stomach and try to retain any blood and life that hasn’t already spilled out of him.
Dad shakes the blood off the knife. “You made me do this, Cody! I didn’t want to, but you made me!” Dad’s voice isn’t strong, either. “I told you he couldn’t know! I tried to…I didn’t want to do this, but I had to.” Without a word more, Dad steps away from Cody and walks back through the loading dock’s door.
I sit in the shadows of the dumpster and cry. Cry for my friend. Cry for who killed him. Cry for what I did.
But what pushes these heavy tears the hardest is the fact that in this moment, Cody’s last living moments, he didn’t hate me after all. He just thought I had abandoned him.
A few moments later, Jaden Foxx opens the door to the loading dock.
And the words that never fail to mock me, to eat at my every thought, to haunt me until my dying breath, are barely heard through the humid rain.
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
The scene spirals.
Before my eyes open, I hear myself moaning again, my voice drowned in misery. “Xander, stop… Xander… stop.”
My eyes finally open. They’re flooded with tears. I’m still bawling as I look above me. Grant is knelt down at me, checking my forehead for a fever. And my father stands behind him. The man with the vaccination to the Cozmin. The man who is the reason why us three are still alive. The missing third person.
But he’s the man who’s caused millions to die because he wouldn’t release the vaccine. He’s the man who is to blame for Scarlett and Ryan not making it to Tryton. He’s the man who wrote the letter to Miguel Ricardo. He’s the man who… plunged a knife into my best friend… and ended his life…
My father: the immune, the writer, the murderer.
I feel so much hatred. So much disgust and bitterness and malice. Why would he do what he did? How could he be so evil? How could he do the things that he’s done and live with himself?
But I think back to the past, of his alcoholism and abuse, and realize that he never changed. He’s just been hiding his evil intentions for over a decade.
“Son, are you okay?” he asks me. His words weigh me down and clamp on to my neck.
No matter how many times I’ve been told to never be scared, to never let fear overcome me, I can’t help it. I’m immobilized by terror. Only four words seem to slip through my throat.
“I don’t know anymore.”
Epilogue.
Kasec Mountain, Colorado
The mountains have roared with vibrancy ever since the Cozmin spread. Not because of an abundance of life, but because of an existence of movement. The snow often flakes down the powdered slopes, but the snow has been melted for a few months by now. Instead, the rustling of tree leaves against neighboring branches wakes the girl up. The howling of the wind against the ski lodge that the survivors of Kasec Mountain, Colorado have been sheltered in is also a comfortable reminder that nature still exists in the world.
But as for the girl, she loves to sit on her cabin’s porch and look out into the descending slopes that were once filled with hundreds of people who loved the adventure of speeding down a snowy hill. Most people would crash head first and skid down with a mouthful of snow and a laugh on their friends’ faces. At least that’s what she was told. She had never gone skiing before, so she believed the stories from the man who worked at the Kasec Mountain Ski Lodge. That is, until Rob and three others were murdered earlier this year.
She still thinks about him.
She looks out into the mountains, watching the morning sun climb its way into sight. A brilliant orange glow on the dewy grass blades. She can’t wait for snow to fall so she can finally see the famous Kasec Mountain slopes for what they were adored for for years. That’s one thing that the Cozmin can’t take away. And that’s one thing that no other surviving city on this planet can kill.
She lifts the coffee mug to her lips and sips. The pitch black coffee makes its way down her throat and stings her tongue. So bitter, so strong. But so renewing. It’s like her soul is being cleansed with every swallow. It’s a taste that she wasn’t fond of before the Cozmin, but she’s grown to admire the taste now.
The cabin door behind her slides open, and out onto the porch walks her lanky brother. He’s holding large photo prints in his hand, and he slams them on the table that the girl is sitting at. “Look what the drone picked up,” the boy says, his shaggy hair blowing furiously in the wind. “They’re not the best quality, but look!”
The girl sets her mug down and picks up the pictures, studying each one. The photos are low resolution, but she can distinguish what’s going on in them: a shattered puncture in a large amber glass in one, thousands of bodies lying lifelessly across the city in another, and what appears to be suited figures on the top floor of the largest building–all waving at the drone to get its attention–in the third photo. The last photo is of the leader himself, dead and decomposing on a crane hook.
“He’s dead!” her brother tells her, as if she couldn’t tell. “The bastard that killed our people is dead! I don’t know how it happened, but he got what he deserved. It looks like everyone in that city got what they deserved.”
The girl doesn’t seem pleased with the photos. She drops them and looks up at her brother. “You know what that means, right?” she asks, her scarf fluttering with her hair behind her. She doesn’t mind the activity around her neck; she’s been used to that for years.
“What?”
“It means that another city decided to take Avvil out. And we both know the only city that could’ve done that.” She takes one more sip and turns her attention back to the mountains. “It’s only a matter of time before Anthony looks toward Colorado for his next attack.”
Ryan picks the photos up and shakes his head. “You know, Scarlett, you might be right.”
About the Author:
Immediately after his first book of the One Series, Abandoned, was published, JD began writing Imprisoned in-between classes during his junior year at Auburn University. Now a senior at Auburn University, JD plans to graduate in 2019 with a degree in Agricultural Economics and Marketing. Along with writing novels, JD enjoys speaking to students at local schools near his hometown of Woodland, AL about the importance of setting goals.
Note from the Author:
I can’t begin to thank you enough for reading Imprisoned and being a part of the journey through the One Series! Your support has been beyond appreciated, and I’m grateful that you invested time out of your day to follow Jaden’s story! Through all of the laughs, smiles, and emotions that this book may have brought you through, I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.