After the Fall: Jason's Tale (21 page)

John looked at the rest, as if coming out of a nightmare,
and started to sob, great choking sobs. Betty and Catherine both put their arms
around him.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I didn’t mean to break down.
I don’t know what’s come over me.”

“It’s the shock—the violence,” Tom said. “It gets everyone.
You were thrown into the deep end without any training. Hell, John, even those
with training sometimes can’t handle this. We’ll all have nightmares for a
while.”

Jason said, “John, you and Catherine go up on the west ridge
and help bring Billy’s dad back down. Betty, help Tom to the pickup. All of you
wait there for me. I have some things that must be done. I’ll join you later.”

Catherine asked, “You’re not going to kill them are you? The
ones we tied up?”

Jason looked at her and paused. Finally he said, “No. I’ll
figure that out later. But don’t be alarmed if you hear gunshots, some of the
wounded are still alive and might try to shoot.”

“Be careful,” Catherine admonished.

There could be no mercy from Jason’s point of view. These
were not men he could help medically, nor were these men he could trust. This
was not about rehabilitation; this was about preservation, for him, his family
and the valley. Part of him was repulsed by what he had to do, but he felt
trapped, without an alternative. He would just have to deal with the emotional
cost later.

I didn’t start this fight, but I will finish it… for
good.

He hoped Big Jacks was down there somewhere. He wanted to
make sure he was dead. Without him the remnant of the gang would likely
disperse. He would make Big Jacks and this battle a signal not to enter this
valley.

He worked his way towards the bridge, executing the wounded
he found. He had an approximate idea of where Big Jacks was, but couldn’t be
sure. He had to consider the possibility that he could still move, even if
injured. He crept down the side of the trucks exposed to the valley, going
slowly past the first and the second one. Big Jacks would be on the other side,
sheltered from the ridges.

Jason moved slowly and quietly. This was no time to be
careless. He kept his breathing calm and quiet as he listened. As he reached
the back of the second truck, he stopped. He could hear labored breathing
ahead—
Big Jacks?
He waited.

Suddenly a voice shouted out, “Show yourself, you son of a
bitch! I know you’re there!”

Jason did not reply. He worked his way back to the front of
the truck until he could sneak a look around it. There was Big Jacks, lying on
the sheltered side of the next pickup, staring at the back of the second one.
He had a rifle at ready in one hand, wavering in the direction he was looking.
Ever so slowly, not making a sound, Jason got into a prone shooting position.
Then he sighted on the rifle and fired. Big Jacks shouted in pain as Jason’s
shot shattered his arm and sent the rifle flying.

Now, he slowly walked up to the huge man, still an imposing
sight, even lying on the ground crippled by his wounds. Big Jacks glared at
him, his eyes filled with hate. He had gone from dreams of being bandit chief
of a city to lying on the ground, badly wounded, staring at his nemesis.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Just me, my family and some neighbors,” came the answer.

Big Jacks looked at him in scornful disbelief. “You’re a
liar.”

“No reason to lie. It’s all over.”

“I don’t believe you,” Big Jacks said with a sneer.

“It doesn’t really matter, now.”

“So you’re gonna to shoot me?” he challenged Jason. “The
rest of my gang will be back. They’ll kill you yet.”

“No they won’t. They’ll disappear. They don’t want anything
to do with me, or this valley.”

Big Jacks unleashed a torrent of swearing at Jason who just
stood there looking at him. Lying wounded on the ground, the anger seemed
almost sad. The force of terror was gone from the outlaw.

“You can curse ‘till you’re hoarse; it won’t do any good.
Your game is over, big man,” Jason said. He squatted down on the pavement, just
out of Jacks’ reach.

Big Jacks glared at Jason, his impotence gnawing away at him.
He inched his left hand, still working towards the pistol lying on the
pavement.

Jason studied the man. Now that the fight was over, he
wondered why Big Jacks would choose such an obviously dead-end course to
follow. “Why didn’t you just settle down on a farm and raise some food? You had
your gang, they took orders from you. You could have set yourself up like a
country squire.”

“Fuck that farming shit!” Big Jacks cursed. Then he let out
another round of cursing as he inched his left hand forward. At the last
moment, he reached for the gun and Jason shot him in the hand and then the
elbow.

“Can’t let you do that,” he said without passion. He
realized there would be no sensible answer from this man. He lived outside the
law and his instincts were to take, not produce. He was a parasite in the end;
a dangerous, deadly parasite.

Suddenly Jason got up. “Where you going?” Big Jacks
demanded.

Jason just looked at him and began to clear all the weapons
out of his reach. “I may be back, or I may let you bleed out here. The animals
will come tonight, the dead will draw them. Maybe you can keep them away from
you, but they’ll want your flesh at some point.” Jason then scrounged through
one of the trucks and came up with a piece of rope. He tied this around Big Jacks’
neck and then to the side of the bridge. Big Jacks could only crawl, if he
could even move, towards the side of the bridge. He could not get to any
weapons.

“Don’t you leave me here,” Big Jacks shouted as Jason walked
away.

When Jason returned to the pickup, Ray was lying in the back
with the others holding him. Tom was in the cab. Jason jumped into the cab and
they drove off. They drove back to Anne and Sarah where they would tend to Ray
and Tom before getting everyone back to their farms.

Anne came out to meet them as they drove up. “You are safe.
Thank God!” she exclaimed. Then, seeing Tom and Ray, she hurried back into the
house to gather what limited bandages she had.

After Jason and the others left that morning, before the
shooting began, Anne convinced Sarah to let her suture her deepest cuts. It
would be painful but Anne knew that some of the defenders might be wounded when
they returned. She and Sarah needed to be ready.

Tom’s wounds were cleaned and disinfected with alcohol.
Suturing materials were boiled and ready. With Betty’s help the largest opening
was sewn shut. Then clean bandages were wrapped around his upper arm and
shoulder. Ray’s wound was more serious. A bullet had gone through his side and
exited. They couldn’t tell whether or not any organs had been damaged. There
didn’t seem to be too much internal bleeding, so his entry and exit wounds were
cleaned and bandaged. He was in pain and had lost blood, so they put him in a
bed to rest and hoped for the best. The women insisted he shouldn’t be moved in
his weakened state.

When everyone was stabilized, Jason said he was going back
out to retrieve Andy’s body. Billy asked if Jason wanted him to go, but he told
him to stay with his dad.

“I’ll go back with you,” John said.

“I’ll go also,” Catherine added.

“You don’t have to. John and I can handle it.”

“I’ll go. If nothing else, I can keep watch in case anyone
comes back. Plus we have to deal with the two we left tied up.”

The three drove back to the bridge in silence. Catherine shouldered
her rifle and kept watch while John and Jason hiked up to the ridge to retrieve
Andy’s body.

“Okay, what do we do with our two prisoners?” Catherine
asked.

“They’re our prisoners because you didn’t want me to shoot
them. What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know, but I still don’t feel right shooting them.”

“I have to agree with Catherine,” John said. “I know you
finished off the wounded while we were getting Ray. We heard the shots. But
now, it would seem more like murder,” John continued.

“We could let them go. Some others got away and ran back to
Clifton Furnace,” Catherine said.

Jason felt trapped by the dilemma presented, but with the
rush of the fight past, even he had no more appetite for killing. “I guess we
could let them go. The problem is they have a pretty clear idea of how many of
us there are. The others who ran off don’t know and probably think we’re a well
organized militia ready at all times to do battle. These guys could encourage
the rest of the gang to try us again.”

“I think they may be scared enough of us to not want to come
back,” Catherine responded.

Jason thought for some time. “Okay, I’ll let them go, but we
do it my way. I want them to think I’m a crazy killer. And should they ever
come back, they’ll die. Both of you wait in the pickup. I promise I won’t shoot
them but before I let them go, they’re going to think I’m a homicidal maniac.”

He went over to the men with a rope. He yanked them to their
feet, tied the rope around their necks and walked them to the bridge. They
stared at all the dead bodies as they passed them. When they got to Big Jacks
he had them sit on the pavement. Big Jacks was still conscious, glaring at him,
hating him for destroying his plans.

“Here’s the deal,” Jason said as he squatted down again in
front of Big Jacks. “I am the head of this citizen’s militia group that
defeated you today. There is no other authority in this area, so I am your
judge and jury.”

“You got no authority over me,” Big Jacks snarled.

“I do. I’m the victor so I’m in authority and it is up to me
to try you.” Standing, Jason continued, “Big Jacks, you are charged with
murder, murder of civilians in Clifton Furnace, murder of a member of my
defense group and attempted murder of my family and all the families in this
valley. How do you plead?”

Big Jacks let out a string of curses.

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?” Jason asked.

“Go to hell, you’re just a vigilante, no better than me.”

Jason waited until Big Jacks had finished another round of
cursing. His cursing was repetitive, unimaginative and now quite futile. There
was no art or nimbleness of expression from him. Lying there on the pavement,
he was just noisy and profane.

“If you have nothing to say on your behalf, I’ll pronounce
sentence,” Jason intoned.

“Go fuck yourself,” was the reply. The two captured men
watch in fear, sitting very still. They both wondered if they were to be next.

“On behalf of the people of this valley, who you assaulted
when you could have left them alone, on behalf of the people left in Clifton
Furnace who you could have spared, on behalf of all the other people who you
and your gang killed, I sentence you to death.” Jason turned to the two
captives, “You two get up and come here.” He untied their hands but left the
rope around their necks in place. “Grab him and pull him over to the side of
the bridge.”

The men grabbed their leader and dragged him across the
pavement.

“You gonna to hang me?” Big Jacks asked with some fear
slipping into his voice.

“I might just stretch that knot around your neck to a part
of the bridge and let you choke to death, I might just tie you to the bridge
and let the animals eat you, or I might shoot you.”

“You can’t leave me here for the animals,” Big Jacks voice
now betrayed his fear. “Don’t you leave me to be eaten!” He was now shouting,
clearly in fear of some animals chewing on his body while he was alive.

“I can. I’m your judge and executioner.” Jason threw the
rope tied around Big Jacks’ neck to a cross beam of the bridge and pulled him
up tight. Strangling sounds came from his mouth as he twisted his neck to keep
breathing.

“No, don’t,” he croaked, hardly able to speak.

Jason stood in front of him and looked at him. He didn’t
deserve mercy, but Jason had no desire to torture him, to drop to his level. He
was now like a terrified animal, responding in wordless fear. Jason had touched
a nerve and brought fear to the man who had brought destruction to so many.
Time
to end it
. He pulled out his 9mm and shot Big Jacks though the forehead,
once, and twice through the heart.

Then he turned to his captives, awaiting their fate, “You
two are rapists and cannibals.” He had them sit down again and tied their hands
and feet. “You deserve to be castrated or executed…or both.”

“No, we didn’t eat anyone. The others did, but not us,” one
said.

“How long have you been in the gang?”

“We just joined,” the man said.

“If you lie to me, I’ll kneecap you right here and now and
leave you for the animals. I killed the last person who joined your gang—the
sniper. I’ll ask again, how long have you been members?”

The other man spoke up, “I’ve been in for about six months
and he was here when I joined.”

Jason thought about that. These men could have been part of
the gang that killed Sam and raped Judy. His anger began to rise.

“You both deserve to die. But I’m going to set you free, not
because I’m merciful, but because you’re going to deliver a message for me.
What happens to you is what will happen to anyone who comes back here. You are
to get out of Clifton Furnace. I’ll be coming to kill the rest of you very soon
if you’re not gone. But first you’ve got to pay for your crimes.”

With that, Jason grabbed the first man, pinned him down on
his back, grabbed his hair and began to carve the word ‘
rapist’
on his forehead with his hunting knife. The man screamed
and squirmed.

“If you make this harder, I’ll just cut you more.”

When he finished he grabbed the second man, who was
desperately trying to squirm away, and did the same to him. Then he untied them
and gave them some scraps of cloth.

“Tie these around your foreheads to soak up the blood. I’ll
give you one minute to get down the road and around the bend before I start
shooting to kill.” The men took off running as fast as they could go.

The first men to return had already told lurid tales of the
ferocity of the firefight and the accuracy of the shooters on the ridge. The
last two men dragged themselves into the town two hours later their faces were
covered with blood. They could hardly speak. One of the gang reached out to
remove the bandage. The man tried to stop him, but was too weak. They all
stared at the wound. They could make out the bloody cuts shaping the word ‘
rapist’
. The two men reported the
execution of Big Jacks by a crazy man, the one who had cut them. When they said
that he was coming to Clifton Furnace, the gang immediately began to gather
their gear and load themselves into the remaining pickup trucks. Before
nightfall, they were headed south, out of Clifton Furnace, to an uncertain
fate.

Jason returned to the pickup and they drove back in silence.
He was drained, emotionally and physically. No one spoke. John rode in back
with Andy’s body. Catherine kept staring at Jason. She had heard the screams of
the men. Still she was reluctant to ask the question, to question this man who
was instrumental in saving her life. He had given his word. When he finally
looked over at her, he just shook his head and mouthed the word “no”.