The Red X_Complete Edition

by Robert P. Sullivan

  He let out a huge sigh and rolled his head back to the sky. “Hey Jake, wait here for a little bit, I forgot my knife.”

  I answered him earnestly enough. “Ok.” Was all that I said.

  “Hey, don’t run off.” He said looking at me intensely. “I’m trusting you.” With that he left to go back to his house.

  I waited for him for a good while. Eventually I started to realize that I wasn’t seeing anyone coming. I sat down and watched the wind blow through the trees when I realized something. If I wanted to I could just run away and no one would be the wiser. I mean sure I might have gotten my handler in trouble, but that wouldn’t matter too much to me since I would be gone. I started to wonder if they were ever going to trust me, and knew that freedom was beyond the trees.

  But, the thought of Gale came creeping back into my head, and I realized that I had to trust her. She was right, life without a purpose isn’t really life at all, and here, even if it took a while, I could eventually make meaningful life. So I decided to wait.

  The time drug on for about an hour before I nodded off waiting for someone to come back. I was fast asleep when I felt someone nudge my leg with their foot. “Hey wake up!” the voice called out from over me. When I opened my eyes I saw Harold Lamond, the sheriff looking over me with a few of his men. They were all in fairly good spirits.

  “What’s going on? You guys aren’t part of the hunting party are you?” I realized that they couldn’t be as that would take too much of the police force away from the town.

  Harold offered me a hand and helped me to my feet. When I was standing, he motioned to one of his men, who handed him my pistol. “Here I guess you can have this back.” He said and offered it to me.

  I grabbed it and looked it over briefly to see that everything was in place, and sure enough it was well kept. “Wait.” I said stopping from my inspection. “Does this mean you trust me?”

  “Well I’m sorry to have pulled such an elaborate set up son, but it was the only way.” I didn’t catch his meaning at all, and so I just stared at him blankly. “Hold on.” He let out a shrill whistle, the kind you make with your fingers. I never could do that. Well anyway, as he whistled he pointed out over to the tree line. I saw a man who was exceptionally well camouflaged come walking out of the forest with a rifle in hand. “Ya see son, we had no way to know if you were with us or not. But we figured if we gave you the chance to get away, then that would prove that you were either part of us, or… well you get the idea.” When I realized that they set me up to be shot if I tried to escape I was shaken. Harold just patted me on the shoulder and congratulated me. “Welcome home I guess, you don’t need a guard anymore.”

  I sat back down when the men had headed back to town. The only one left was the one making his way from the forest. When he approached I could just barely tell that it was Mark under all the paint. “You? You were going to shoot me if I ran away?” I asked in surprise.

  “Nah! I know you better than that Jake.” A grin came upon his face, and he peered around me to make sure that the rest of his men were out of earshot. He slid the slide on his rifle back to reveal that it was empty, and put his finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture. “I didn’t even bring bullets.”

  Chapter 29

  “The days after that went very well. There was little trouble from the ‘X’s and we decided to move further away from them. Although it was only a couple of miles, it put the rest of the town in between us and them. They were more focused on getting supplies than hunting people down, so simply being outside of the town proper made us much harder to find. But still, the city became our shield because their attention was focused there, and because of that we named the place Aegis. Most of us lived out in the hills though, but times eventually changed. Only a handful of us still live out here.

  I had gained the trust of the people, and because of that I was able to start teaching them the things that they needed to know. We planted crops, hunted, made clothes, and did everything we needed to start our society up again. Heck, some of the men even went out and found some old chemistry books from the library and figured out how to make gun powder again, which kept us well defended and well fed.

  Now if you want to hear something funny though, remember the girl that stole my clothes when I was first captured?” Jake inquired of Barry.

  “Yeah? What about her?” He asked.

  “Wouldn’t you know it? She became my wife.” Jake closed his eyes and chuckled a little. “She was all too sorry after that, although it took a while to get an apology out of her. When they figured out that I wasn’t such a bad guy, she changed her mind. Yeah Sarah was a great woman. She gave me a daughter, a son, and through them grandchildren before she passed on a few years ago.” Jake stopped speaking for a moment. “I miss her…”

  “Wait you have a son too?” Barry asked Jake.

  Jake was still lost in his thoughts for a moment before coming back to the conversation. “Oh yeah, he went out to the coast when the new government was formed. I suppose he just wanted to see the ocean for once in his life, but when he came back I guess he must of had a great time out there, because he moved just as soon as he could. That was after pretty much all the raiders had been rid of and the land returned to peace.”

  There was little genuine interest in Barry’s words. “I guess you don’t see him much then?” he said more out of politeness than because he cared.

  “Well, he comes by for the holidays, and just to visit a couple times a year. I mean it’s only a few hours away in a car, so I guess I could see him a bit more often if I wanted, but we still talk on the phone from time to time too.” Jake put his attention on Barry who had since completely stopped caring about the story. “What’s wrong?”

  Barry faked a smile trying to be considerate. “Well that is the end of the story right? I mean you taught Aegis how to get food and stop scavenging, and the rest just kind of happened.”

  “Hold on there Barry. There is plenty left to this little tale.” Jake adjusted himself in his seat. “It’s true that about six years give or take passed, and not a lot happened but everyone learning how to fend for themselves. But for me, I had married the woman I loved, had my first child, and finally turned from confused teenager, into a man. I had people to take care of, both family and friends, and I was one of the people that was looked up to in society as an adviser. But that didn’t mean that I was exempt from going out and doing the work that needed to be done still.

  So I joined up with a group to go out and hunt some deer. It was simple and had become routine. The men by that point knew what they were doing, and so I didn’t have to be so close to them, which made things go a lot faster, because the further spread out you are the easier it is to find game. It was cold that morning, even though there wasn’t any snow on the ground yet that year. The rain had brought all the greenery back to life from the heat of the summer, and it was nice to have to put on a jacket for once.

  As I was walking I found a buck grazing off a bush. He hadn’t noticed me yet, so I tried to creep as close as I could, but I lost my footing as I was walking and the sound scared it. It ran off into the brush, with me following it. Normally I wouldn’t run after one like that, but we were a little low on food, so it made sense to try and track it down while I could.

  I ran after it and came to a small creek that ran through the forest. I jumped in the water and stopped to try and see where it had run off to. But when I jumped down in the water something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It was a woman, crouched down by the creek getting a drink of water, wearing an old jacket that had a large red X on the back of it… I froze.”

  Chapter 30

  Barry perked up at word of the ‘X’s. “That’s what you’re interested in.” Jake said, a slight grin making its way slowly across his face.

  “Yeah, we are trying to figure more what happened to them then how Aegis got founded, so please by all means continue.”

  “I noticed the coat
at first. It was a faded black with red stripes, worn from the sun and use. The paint on the back had been reapplied several times, and patches had been sewn in here and there. I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but I had one just like it long ago, and because of that I recognized the face. It was worn and weary much like the coat, but I knew who she was.

  “Clara?” I asked completely stunned. She stared at me trying to figure out who I was until it snapped together in her head.

  “Jake.” We were both silent until it dawned on us that we were on opposite sides of this conflict. We raised our guns at each other’s faces, but neither of us brought ourselves to fire.

  “How?” I continued with anger and confusion in my voice. “How could you become one of them after what they did to your brother?”

  Her eyes started to water, but she rubbed one eye against her arm and adjusted her grip on the gun. “I know what they did!” she yelled at me.

  “So why?” There was silence between us as she searched her past to find what to say, but it was I who broke the silence. “You don’t have to be a part of their group anym-“

  She cut me off. “Yes I do.” Her resolve got firmer when she said that. I couldn’t believe it, the last time I saw her she couldn’t even go near them again, but now she was a member of the ‘X’s.”

  Barry was on the edge of his seat when he asked. “Do you know why she changed sides?”

  “I can’t even fathom an explanation for that. I mean I have heard of Stockholm syndrome. You know, where a prisoner starts to love their captor because they either care for them, or simply just due to the fact that they don’t always abuse them. I don’t buy that crap though, not with her. She knew that they had done her wrong, and that it was their fault. I don’t see how she could have come to sympathize with those bastards. Now I can’t say I knew what was going on in her head, but I knew this, she was with them, and I was not.

  I asked her again. “Come with me? You don’t have to be stuck with them anymore. You can start a new life.” But she wasn’t listening. It was silent and the wind blew shaking the trees just like it did when it moved the grass in the field, back when she left me. I tried once more to break through her shell and find out what was going on. “Why did you become one of the ‘X’s? Why are you doing this?”

  She answered me with a quiver in her voice as if she were about to cry. “I did what I had to do.” she said, and I knew that there was nothing that I could say to sway her.

  “So, what are we going to do then?” I asked.

  “We could just walk away?” she suggested, but it was more begging than asking.

  I started to waiver, I was thinking about just putting the gun down and doing exactly what she said. But then I thought back to the time that I let the ‘X’ live when Gale saved me, and in that moment I realized that Gale was right. I couldn’t save her, and letting her go was the same thing as telling the rest of the ‘X’s where we were. She was one of them, and they were killers. I had a family now, and thinking of the red ‘X’s finding them tore my heart in two. I didn’t want to kill her, but I knew that I had to in order to protect the ones that I love. “We can’t do that.” I said, and I pulled the trigger.”

  Barry looked startled, but satisfied with the words that he heard. “You’re sure she died?”

  Jake continued, “Oh I’m sure, I shot her right in the head and she fell into the water limp, face down. I was shaking, because that was the first time that I had ever actually killed a person. When I approached her, I saw another ‘X’s off in the distance looking at me. I reacted quickly by pulling the old pistol back up to aim at him, but he ran into the forest as I squeezed off a couple rounds. I knew he was going to get away, but there was nothing that I could do about that.

  I walked over to the body in the creek. There was a hole in the back of her head where the bullet had come out and the blood ran down the stream getting thinner as it went. I looked at her. “I didn’t want to do that.” I stared down at her trying to figure out what to do. “I’m sorry.” I said more to myself than to her.

  “What’s going on?” I heard a voice yell from the distance, it was one of the people that I was hunting with.

  “I just killed someone!” I yelled back. I heard the men coming from the woods and within a few minutes they were all standing on the shore looking at the body.

  “Good riddance.” One of them said, but I didn’t even respond, I figured the less they knew the better. “Well are you just going to stand there? Pull her over here.”

  I pulled the body out of the stream and we started to check for supplies, and any information we could get about the ‘X’s. We opened the back pack and found a list of things they had been looking for. Salt, food, medical supplies, they were simple things, the kind of stuff you take for granted nowadays. They were putting their lives on the line for that kind of stuff.

  They asked me if I had seen anymore of the ‘X’s, and when I said that one got away, they went off to see if they could find him. But I knew that it was foolish. He was long gone by the time the men had even showed up, and there was nothing that was going to change that. So when they went off to try and find him, I buried the body next to the creek. I carved into the tree that became her tombstone, ‘I did what I had to do.’”

  Chapter 31

  “I don’t know why, but after that the ‘X’s started trying to find us harder than ever. The number of scouts trying to find our settlement just kept getting higher and higher. I knew that they were getting desperate, but none of us realized that it was getting that bad.

  They kept coming and kept getting closer to our home. We knew it was only a matter of time before they found exactly where we were, but this time we were too settled to move so we got ready to fight. It was a good thing we did too, because they came in force.

  When it happened I was out helping some of the locals harvest a crop, two gun shots rang out followed by a pause, and then a third. That was the signal that there was trouble. A lot of folks just tried to hide, but I had a family, and I had to go make sure that they were ok. I dropped what I had been harvesting and ran. When I got closer to the town I could hear things getting worse and worse, more gunfire and screaming. I came into Aegis and saw down one of its long streets that the ‘X’s had come with everyone who could fight. It was what we had feared was going to happen. The civilians that knew how to fight got their weapons and started to barricade the streets to prevent them from getting any further, but I was too occupied with trying to get my family to safety to stop and help out.

  The ‘X’s were coming close to where my wife and child were and I had such a feeling of dread, but when I made it into the room and saw them, I was relieved to see that they were alright.

  “Oh thank goodness!” my wife Sarah said with tears in her eyes.

  “Come on we have to go!” I yelled at her while trying to get her to her feet. I took her hand and lead her to the door. A man burst in holding a shotgun. I let go of my wife and rushed him. There was no hesitation this time. I didn’t falter. I grabbed the barrel with one hand and forced it away from us. He fired, but he didn’t hit anything that would be missed. I hit him in the temple with my free hand and he lost his balance. I shoved him to the ground and wrenched the gun away from him. I aimed at his face. He looked at me with fear in his eyes, but I blew it away.

  I took Sarah and lead her to the back of the town, where they were looking after the people who couldn’t fight. I was afraid that this would be the last time that I would see her, but I didn’t have time to stop and think about what was going on, so I told her. “Stay here until the fighting stops!” And with those words I made my way back to the front lines.

  I caught up with Harold who was in cover behind some old rusting cars with a few of his men. “What can I do?” I asked them.

  “I think we can keep them from getting too far here. It’s narrow and-“ A bullet left a hole in the car next to his head. “Shit! Ok go two streets south to Rober
ts Ave, I haven’t heard anything back from the boys I sent over that way, but I can still hear them fighting. Get there and give them a hand!”

  I left Mr. Lamond and did as I was commanded. I ducked and weaved through the enemy fire, but somehow didn’t get hit. I guess I was lucky. When I made my way to where I was headed I realized that Harold was right to send me. There were only three men left defending the street, and one was caught behind an old truck a good hundred feet in front of the other two. As for the rest, I could see their bodies strewn across the street, at the feet of the ‘X’s where they had taken ground.

  I crouched with the men further back from the fight. “I was told to give you a hand.” I said almost a little cheery.

  “Good, things aren’t going well. We need to get Mark out of there.” One of them pointed at the man behind the truck, and sure enough it was Mark.

  I heard one of the ‘X’s cry out, “Oh come on, there are only three of them left. Let’s get ‘em!” I went to pop up and shoot but the men held me down.

  “No wait!” They haven’t realized you’re here yet. Stay in cover and circle around through the alley. You should be able to get a few of them if they are focused on us.”

  I crawled back around the corner and went around the side of the buildings. I could see that the ‘X’s were keeping an eye on the alley though, so I climbed up a fire escape that led to the top of the building next to Mark. I looked down at Mark who was checking to see how much ammo he had in the magazine of his rifle. It didn’t look like he had much so I had to make a move before they advanced on him. I took aim, but before I got a shot off I realized there was something off in the distance, a sound that I hadn’t heard in a while, the churning of a motor.