Jacob wanted to kill this man. He wanted to snuff him out of existence for the barbarous acts he had committed against his wife. No doubt, he had been in this room before with other victims—each as helpless as the last. His escapades of torture had probably become a game to him. Maybe he liked to start out by breaking his victim's noses, or fingers. Maybe he preferred to sodomize them, or suffocate them. The list was endless, really.

“I’m not like you,” Jacob said simply. “I’m just not like you. I refuse to be. I’m a good person. I’ve always been a good person. I won’t stop trying to be a good person… no matter how much you people piss me off.”

And with that, Jacob pulled Emily out of the room. Together, the stepped toward the guard at the end of the hallway.

“Is there another way out of here besides the front entrance?” Jacob asked the guard. His voice was hoarse now from all the yelling he had done.

The guard nodded his head.

“Ya-ya, youbegonnagodizway,” the guard said while pointing to the door behind him. He spoke in the dialect most city-dwellers used. It was a garbled rambling of lazy, simplified words. 

Jacob and Emily squeezed past the guard and exited out the door. A horse stable and a generator greeted them on the other side. The generator chugged away off the bio-diesel burning in its innards, while several horses rested not far away in their stalls. Jacob kissed Emily soundly on her lips before he parted from her side. He left to prepare the horses. Emily found a place along the wall. She relaxed against it. From time to time, her eyes would shift uneasily to the door beside her. 

At the front of the sentry's office, a crowd of city dwellers was starting to gather. The gunshots had roused them from their shacks. It didn’t take long for someone to make their way to the back of the building. When they spotted Jacob and Emily, they motioned excitedly for the others to join them. 

“Hey-man, hey!” someone said to Jacob as he finished saddling the first horse. “Whatchabedoinghere?”

“Yeah, whatdat?” someone else asked. “Whatjoobedoin?”

Fearing the size of the crowd, Jacob fired a shot into the ground near one of the city-dweller’s feet.

“Get back!” he shouted. 

Incensed by the rebuke, the crowd started throwing mud and debris at Jacob. 

“Stop!” Jacob shouted. “Get back! Get Back! I just want to leave with my wife! Get back!”

The crowd began to mock Jacob. 

“Whodat lady? I take’er fo’ me! Ha-ha!” a man laughed. “Makeyo' watch!”

“Youbego’n noplace, son!” another threatened. "Nowherez! Noplace!"

Cornered, weary, afraid… Jacob raised his weapon level to the crowd.

“Jacob!” Emily warned. 

Jacob unloaded the weapon’s clip into the crowd. Once spent, he dropped the gun and retrieved the other one strapped to his shoulder. Without thinking, he fired again. He sprayed a hail of bullets into the fleeing crowd. With one rifle remaining, and several moaning bodies now sprawled across the ground in front of him, Jacob stood and stared at what he had done in disbelief.

"No," he breathed.

Unable to comprehend, he finished saddling the second horse in silence, for the crowd was now finally dispersed. 

Emily stood quietly by the door. At first, she had been shocked by the bloodshed, the noise, and the flashes of light; but now… all she could do was watch Jacob. She watched him finish preparing the second horse. She watched him move with a quiet calm. When he was finished, he helped her onto the horse’s back. Jacob mounted the other horse, and together they left the city in time to see the sun disappear behind the horizon.

Proceed to Chapter Five