Then what do you know, she led me straight to what I was looking for, people. I can’t say it was a good way to meet anybody you wanted to have a good impression on though. When I came around the corner of a building she ran around I had no less than four guns in my face.
“Hold it right there, hands up.” One of the men in the front told me.
“It’s ok Steve… I don’t think he’s armed.” One of the other ones laughed.
The first man put his hand to his forehead. “Never mind that, cover your junk.” I did what he told me gladly, and as odd as it sounded when I didn’t see and ‘X’ on the back of any of their jackets I was just happy to be there, even if the current condition wasn’t looking so promising.
“Hi…” I told them. I bet my face was beet red when I said “My name is Jake… It’s um… nice to meet you… and drafty.” They weren’t particularly thrilled that I was there and began to talk amongst themselves.
“What should we do?” One of them said to another.
“I don’t know, maybe we should just shoot him?” Those weren’t the words that I wanted to hear.
“No! He hasn’t done anything yet…”
“He could be a spy for the ‘X’s, and I don’t want them coming back here again.”
“Well…” The one who was a little bit more reasonable said, and scratched the side of his face. “We’ll lock him up for now, and decide what to do after that. I don’t think he’s in any position to resist.” There was a slight chuckle among the men at that. “And give him back his damn pants!”
Chapter 27
“I had never been happier to put on a pair of pants than when that happened. They brought me through what was a small town that had sprung up inside of an old neighborhood. I could tell this one was different. There were women and children going about, but when they saw me all of them had a look of dread on them. I knew just how they felt though, if I were one of the red ‘X’s, then it meant that there was going to be trouble. Still, I could tell that this was a better place than Oak Noll, there was a chance for hope here. Even if, at the time they just split the food that I had between them. The men who were taking me to where they were going to lock me up stopped them from going too far and taking all my stuff.
“Don’t take anything but the food.” he said as he held up and looked at my coat. Remember it was one I had made out of deer hide, and it was fairly new. “What the hell do you make of this?” They talked amongst themselves while they pushed me inside of an old sheriff’s building, and put me in a cell. They locked the cell door behind me and told me “We’re not really sure what to make of you yet… I’m going to go find one of our deputies, but it could be a few hours, you’re not exactly high priority now that you’re caught. We can’t take the risk that you weren’t alone. You know how it is, so just shut up and sit tight.” He turned and walked out of the room. I heard his muffled voice from the other side of the door he closed behind him. “Ok, we have to do a perimeter check. Make sure that everyone is accounted for, and ready in case there are more raiders out there. Keep an eye out, and remember, be safe.”
I didn’t even try to talk back to him. I knew that they had me, and there was nothing that I could do about that. I was uneasy about the whole situation, even though there were promising signs around me. I knew that they weren’t going to be as bad as the ‘X’s, simply due to the fact that they didn’t hit me. I knew that if they were going to kill me, it would probably be fast, and relatively painless. I was worried, but not as worried as I could have been, and at least I knew that.
The man was right when he told me that it was going to be hours before they came to check on me. It had been over half a day before someone even came in.
“We found your friends son.” An older man, who according to his badge was the sheriff said to me. He was covered in grease, and looked like he was a bit too old to be running around as the law. There was grey in his beard and mustache, and an honest but tired look in his eye. He was the law there, but only because that is what the people made him, not because that’s what he had chose.
I looked at him baffled. “Cooperate with us and maybe, we won’t have to kill you.” He looked me dead in the eyes as he spoke, but I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.
“I… I don’t have any friends out there.” I said back.
“Are you sure about that?” He asked with a discerning look in his eye.
“As sure as I can be.” I told him just trying to be honest.
He gauged me for a moment to see if I was bluffing, and played with his mustache as he thought. “Hmm, I guess you really are alone huh?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Well, if you had any friends out there you would have just told me to save your skin… But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t allied with those pricks who wear the ‘X’ on their back… it just means there aren’t any of them nearby…” He waited for my response.
“Yeah I’m not with them. They tried to kill me more than once.” I said as I got up and held onto the bars of the cell.
“Hmm… Well, I’m going to have to run this by the higher ups.” He said when he left the room.
After that they let me sit there overnight. I could tell there was a difference in the level of noise in the community after that. They weren’t afraid that noise was going to attract unwanted attention, and so, I could tell they were more relaxed. They had called off any search they had been doing to look for any of my supposed allies, but I still had an eerie feeling that they weren’t comfortable knowing that they had a prisoner.
In the late morning they sent the sheriff in to question me some more. “Alright,” he said and pulled some of my belongings out of a bag. “So you want to tell me where you got these clothes from?”
It was a little hard to comprehend for me at first. “What do you mean? I made them.”
He raised an eyebrow with an unbelieving look on his face. “I’m sorry if I don’t buy that, but you don’t seem like the tailor type.”
“Don’t get me wrong I really messed up the first few of them I tried to make. And if I hadn’t been taught how to do it I never would have been able to, but yeah, I made those.”
After that he tossed the bag aside, and grabbed my bow. “How about this huh?” he asked me looking it over as if it were some kind of foreign technology.
“Well,” I said. “I made it too. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I didn’t know how to make any of this stuff a few years ago. But… a friend showed me how.”
“Oh yeah?” he replied still looking at the bow in his hand. “And where per chance is this friend?” He stopped and his eyes turned to me, even though his head stayed in place.
“She’s dead.”
“A little convenient, but most people die out here after too long…” He paused. “I suppose if I were to keep askin’ ya about the things in this sack you would just keep telling me more of the same?”
“Yeah, I made just about everything I had in there, except for the knife and water bottle.”
He looked at me trying to figure out whether or not I was telling the truth, and when he had made his decision he spoke. “So what you are telling me is that, if we were to let ya out of there, then you could show us how to make these things? Do I have that correct?”
“Yes sir.”
“Hmm…” He placed the things back into the bag and mulled over his thoughts. He took a few paces back and forward. “Well, I’ll see what I can do.” I didn’t know what to make of his response. And after he left I sat there in the cell just waiting for someone to come and fill me in on the situation. They gave me a drink of water and a little bit to eat before the day was done. There was no word that night, but it was a good sign.
However, when the next day broke I found myself being woken up by the same man who questioned me the day before. He unlocked the door to the cell and entered in with a few deputies behind him. He looked real distraught and nervous about what was going to
happen. “I’m sorry about this son…” he said. “But we just can’t take any chances.”
“What are you talking about?” I questioned.
The sheriff couldn’t even look me in the eye as he told me the decision of his superiors. “They want… Look we don’t want this but, you have been sentenced to execution.” He barely grumbled the words, but I understood him clearly. “I’m sorry son, but that is just the way it has to be. You understand we have to protect our own. We can’t take the risk.”
I was more baffled than anything when they put the hand cuffs on me. I didn’t even try to resist because I wasn’t sure that I quite believed the words yet, but the fact remained they were going to drag me out to die. They took me outside to a nice quiet place away from the people, and stood me up to a firing squad. I thought that was the end, and I was ready to embrace the pain when someone called out.
“Wait!” I was thrilled to hear that word. “Wait wait wait!” I heard a man walk toward me from the side. He took his time getting a look at my face, just as close as he could to figure out who I was. “What’s your name kid?”
“Jake Grumman.” I barely spoke.
He started to laugh and slapped his knee. He waved his arms at the men to put their guns down. “You don’t need to do that, I know this kid.”
“Are you sure he’s not one of the ‘X’s?” the sheriff asked.
“Yeah I’m sure. Hell I would bet that the only person that those assholes want to kill more than me is this kid right here.”
I strained to figure out who this man was. For all that I knew he was a stranger. “Do I know you?” I asked looking over his face again and again.
“Yeah, it’s the beards I know. Shit I almost didn’t recognize you either. You got taller.” He looked at me waiting for me to realize who he was. “Oh come on if you can’t remember the man you gave a gun to and left to die I’m going to be really hurt. Besides it would really help the ‘I know who you are.’ case if you remember my name.”
“Mark?” I asked stunned that he was still alive, and as I said the name I recognized his face. It was a little older, and he was right, the beard sure did make him look a lot different. But it was him. “Mark? How the hell?” I was completely lost in the fact that he was alive. “How the hell did you survive?”
“I’ll tell you when we get back inside.” He motioned to the men with his hand. “Let him out of those cuffs.”
Chapter 28
Barry was dumbfounded. “So wait, you’re telling me that Mark, the guy who was shot in the leg, somehow escaped the red ‘X’s and made his way forty miles on foot all the way here?”
“Hang on a minute.” Jake said, getting up from his chair and walking over to the fireplace. He grabbed an old picture off the mantel and looked at it for a moment before handing it to Barry. “I didn’t want to just outright say it at first, you know, so you could get the surprise of it just like I did. But do you recognize Mark now?”
Barry looked at the picture. It was a group photo of the police department, and one of the officers he recognized thoroughly. “Marcus Williams? That’s who Mark is?” Everyone in Aegis knew who Mark was, he had only retired as the acting chief of police five years ago, and he was considered a pillar of the community. He had been instrumental in making sure that the community kept its laws, and was one of the people who after the defeat of the ‘X’s had urged to grant amnesty to the remnants of the broken gang.
“Yup. Funny how the world works right?” Jake took the picture back and set it on the shelf. “Anyways, after they took me back into the sheriff’s office and sat me down at a table, as opposed to a cell, Mark started to catch up with me. He had time to kill while they went back to tell the Mayor, or whoever it was they were talking to about it, that someone in town knew me.
“Sorry about that, you know how the ‘X’s are, and these people are jumpy. But they are good people when you get to know them.” Mark said smiling in awe that after all this time he found me again. “So what does that make? Three times that I saved your life?”
“Oh shit I didn’t know we were still keeping count.” I joked with him. “But hold on, you have to tell me, how the hell did you escape from the ‘X’s?”
The question made Mark a little nervous. “Aw jeez, I wish that story were a little more heroic.” I waited for him to go on. “Well, the first parts not so bad. When you left me behind that rock, with the blood trail leading over to the decoy, they really were caught off guard when I opened fire. It was a little hard to believe that they were that stupid, but hey, it worked. I managed to shoot two of ‘em before the third took cover behind the rock where they thought I was at first. I made sure to get the one that had the high ground. After that it was just a matter of who got in a good shot first. I wound up on top, and he wound up dead.
I couldn’t believe it when it was over, somehow I lived and the three men who came to kill me didn’t. It was a bit surreal. However, I knew that if I were to stay there, I was going to see more of those bastards, so I started to hobble my way off.” Mark took a deep breath. “The rest was just plain luck. I wound up making my way to an old farm house out in the country, literally no more than a quarter mile away, and inside the garage I found an old kick start dirt-bike. So, I fired it up and within two hours of you leaving me, I had made my way over here.”
“You mean to tell me that I climbed a mountain, lived in a cabin, and learned how to do everything that I need to survive for three years, and you got back to society in two hours?” I wasn’t too thrilled at his story.
“I told you, it was more luck than anything. Pretty unbelievable right? Anyway, I’m one of the deputies here now.”
“That’s good, and I guess it worked out in my favor. Wait… why didn’t they try to kill you when you first came here?”
“Oh, well that was still in the first few months of the outbreak. They hadn’t yet encountered the ‘X’s, or any other raiders yet. That was back when they were still trusting to people in need. Shit, I guess I had a hand in making them afraid of the ‘X’s though. When they heard my story they were a lot more cautious about who they let in.”
“Do you still have problems with the ‘X’s?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. Every time one of the fuckers discovers the camp we have to move. They just keep coming back with more people otherwise. At least that was how it was going in the past, but we are getting better at keeping an eye out for trouble and making sure their scouts don’t find us.”
“So why don’t you just move farther away?”
Mark rubbed his forehead. “Well that is a good plan and all, but the real problem is food. We keep having trouble planting crops. None of us really know what we are doing, and to top that off when the ‘X’s find us we can’t very well keep the crop if we have to move. Maybe we could make it work if we could supplement the food we’re getting with more hunting. Bah I’m sorry to bother you with the logistics of this place.”
“No wait I can-“ I started to say but was cut off when the old sheriff opened the door.
“Well,” said the sheriff, “it looks like they are willing to repeal the execution and grant you some freedom amongst the community. Under supervision of course.” He looked at me with a small amount of disapproval. “Don’t make us regret this… Damn you are one lucky kid.” He turned toward Mark. “Make the arrangements, with some of the other men to get him settled in, and supervised. And Mark?”
“Yes?” he replied.
“If this goes bad it’s on your head.” With that the sheriff left the room, and let the door slowly swing shut behind him as he walked off.
“I know, and thank you Mr. Lamond!” Mark yelled after him.
“What’s his deal?” I asked Mark. “When he was taking me out to…” I gulped, realizing just how close I came to getting killed, “be executed, he seemed remorseful. But now, he acts like he wanted me to die.”
“Oh, that’s probably because now he has to keep someone watching you. We don’t hav
e a lot of people here, and wasting time on that could make problems elsewhere. Listen don’t worry about it, it’s just how it has to be for now. I’m sure we’ll get this all sorted out later. Now come on we have to see if we can’t get you someplace to sleep, and some work to do. If you don’t work you don’t eat, that’s how it works around here.”
“That sounds good to me.”
When that was settled, I was taken out to meet my handler. He was some tight-assed man who didn’t want to waste his time babysitting me, and to be honest I couldn’t blame him for it. But nevertheless for the next couple of weeks, I was just being traded off throughout the police force as some kind of necessary duty. At first they were resentful of having to take care of me, but after they realized that watching over me meant they didn’t have to take on other responsibilities, they grew a bit more fond of the idea of getting to spend a day making sure that I didn’t try to escape, because I never did.
They put me to work doing anything that needed doing. I fixed holes in clothes, helped keep track of supplies, and they even had me cook once… Ha, I burned the hell out of it, they didn’t make that mistake twice. But, I knew that they weren’t using me for what I could do for them. I knew how to survive off the land, and they just kept me doing menial work. I could see that they were not going to be able to make it too much longer the way things were going. The supplies that were coming in were less and less each day, and because of that, I started to pester the person that was in charge of taking care of me to let me help them how I could. You know to teach them how to hunt, and farm, how to make clothes from leather and not have to rely on scavenging. They basically told me to shut up at first, but as time went on I think that the strain from the lack of supplies, and having to keep a guard looking after me the whole time eventually changed things. They finally agreed to let me help the way I could.
Early one morning my handler and I went out to meet up with a hunting group. They gave me back all of my things, other than the pistol that I had when I first got there. We went to the edge of the town, where except for about a hundred foot stretch of field, it met the trees of the forest that rested on the foot hills. When we arrived, there was no one there, so we waited for about ten minutes before the person that was supposed to be guarding me started looking through his pack full of supplies. He was just looking for something to eat at first when he started to look more frantically in the pack.
The Red X_Complete Edition Page 13
