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“Your actions have consequences, Deputy. I’ve gathered all your friends here in Fall’s End to atone for your sins. You’re welcome to join us. After all, if it weren’t for you they wouldn’t be in this predicament… This is your last chance to say Yes, Deputy. Don’t be late.”
The radio crackles and then beeps as it goes silent. Despite knowing that after delivering that little speech, John has definitely turned off his radio to keep her from responding, Wren can’t help but jam her thumb into the talk button as hard as she can.“JOHN!” She yells and of course the only sound she hears is a few a song birds in the trees around her. “FUCK!” She throws the radio through the open window of her car, hearing it slam into the passenger door as she turns on her heel. As she paces up and down the dirt road alongside her car, gravel crunching underneath her feet, rage and fear rise in her chest.He said he has her friends and that they were waiting in town, so while he can have anyone he probably has Pastor Jerome and Mary May for sure since they were both almost always in town and the leaders of the resistance there. Outside of that? It could be anyone else or it could even be just those two. The idea of him having Nick floats across her mind. Not that long ago the pair of them had sneaked onto John’s ranch and vandalized his precious plane. In her mind he had more than deserved it when she remembered that it had been John that had blown her and the Marshall off the bridge that night they had foolishly tried to arrest Joseph. There was no way that John wasn’t holding a grudge against the two of them for that little stunt.That thought is immediately followed by Kim, who is very pregnant and would definitely provide John with a great means of revenge against Nick.Shitshitshitshit, is her only train of thought as she jumps into her car and slams the gas pedal to the floor. The tires spin and the back end slides until they manage to gain traction and then she’s flying down the dirt road and further into the valley towards Fall’s End. It’s not safe or smart to be going so fast, she knows, but she can feel every second that ticks by like there’s a countdown on her friends lives.
Don’t be late.
Shitshitshitshit what the hell did he mean by that? Is there a time limit? Did he just say that to have her rushing over there which is a very John Seed thing to do? It’s not like he could know exactly where she is, exactly how long it would take for her to get to town, and plan on doing something horrible if she takes even a second too long, right?Right he definitely wouldn’t do something like that after she had definitely made a big show out of destroying his giant Yes sign. Which she doesn’t regret in the slightest actually.At least not yet.The car fishtails wildly for a moment before Wren can again control of it once she hits the blacktop, not bothering to slow down for the corner or the change of road make up. She only takes her foot off the gas for the second it takes to straighten the car out before she floors it again, tires squealing against the pavement.The streets are unusually empty Wren notices as she flies down the road at speeds she would definitely get arrested for and it’s incredibly unnerving considering not a few hours ago she passed both peggies and resistance members regularly. Perhaps the peggies were told to stay off the roads, keep clear so she could get to Fall’s End, but that doesn’t explain the lack of resistance patrols. Maybe they heard John’s little broadcast too and decided to get the hell out of the way.She shoves those thoughts to the back of her mind as she down shifts to take the turn to Fall’s End. It’s a straight shot now right into town and she pulls her pistol from it’s holster and sets it in her lap ready for a fight. John hadn’t mentioned where they would be in town so she has to be ready for anything. That’s when she hears Bad Moon Rising come on over the radio, playing just loud enough to be heard over the roar of the racing engine. Part of her wants to laugh because it’s just so damn perfect right now, this is a bad situation and she knows it. In fact it seems like it’s so bad even the person who runs the radio station knows.
“I see bad times today.”
The other part of her is having a moment of startling clarity that this isn’t just but a dire situation and John has played her right into a corner. Her only two options are to not go and possibly let more of her friends end up locked away in John’s bunker; or to go and probably get locked up with them all while looking for a way to escape.No one is coming to save you, Joseph’s words in the wreck of the helicopter repeat in her mind. Which right now at least is true because usually she is the one doing the rescuing. One of the two times she needed saving from John, Pastor Jerome had saved her and he was almost definitely already caught.“Guess I’ll have to figure out a way to save us all,” she mutters, slowing down as she enters the town proper. There is a distinct lack of peggies and town citizens as she drives in but given that there’s only two roads through Fall’s End, it’s not hard for her to figure out where John is having this little get together.Even from back in front of the Spread Eagle she can see the black cult flag hanging in stark contrast to the white siding of the church’s bell tower. There’s also two peggie vans and a truck sitting out front, John seems to have brought enough of his own people to vastly outnumber the few citizens that had remained in Fall’s End. Which means he’s not underestimating her anymore and while she is glad that he finally recognizes her as a serious threat, it’s going to make getting out a whole hell of a lot harder.“I know the end is coming soon,” Creedence Clearwater Revival comes through the radio louder now that the engine isn’t racing. In fact besides the current musical prophecy playing through her speakers, the town is silent. When she was here yesterday the town was alive with sounds of people talking, a truck being repaired in the garage, and even cows mooing as they were herded through town back to their pasture.Today though it’s just her and Bad Moon Rising. Wren doesn’t want to think about it too much but the words ghost town flash across her mind before she can stop them.She rolls to a stop behind the peggie vans outside of the church and sighs deeply. Apparently John and the cult have seen fit to redecorate in the gory way the cult does but with John’s typical flair. There’s a red carpet rolling from the second van to the steps that is so John Seed that it’s almost painful in it’s predictability, they even built a little archway that they covered in flowers and lace. Actually that wouldn’t be so bad -hell even pretty- if they weren’t Bliss flowers which are definitely going to mess with her as she walks past. The dead crows nailed around the door and even impaled on stakes on the bell tower kind of detract from the whole presentation a bit though, all dark and dead and at such odds with the rest of the church.“Hope you, are quite prepared to die,” plays through the speakers and Wren slaps the radio off. Now it’s starting to feel too much like the song or fate or hell maybe even Joseph’s Voice is speaking directly to her for her liking. However if the prophetic radio station would like to give her a hint as to how she’s going to get out of this one alive, before she has to atone because John is definitely not going to let her live through that, she’d be a little more willing to listen.She pulls the keys from the ignition and pockets them before turning to her rifle in the back seat. It’s not practical to take it, not in such a tight space, and absolutely not when she knows perfectly well she’s walking into a trap. The first thing they’re going to do is take all of her weapons and she’ll be damned if she’s going to let the peggies just take her favorite gun from her.
Again.
So she leaves it and grabs a second pistol from the glove box before she exits the car, slamming the door for extra emphasis. Of course she has no doubts that the peggies and even John having been watching her since she rolled up and she has the sudden urge to keep them waiting. Self preservation be damned, she’s going to fight John every step of the way or at the very least annoy the ever loving shit out of him. That would show him.With that decided she ejects the clip out of the pistol in her hand, making a show of counting the rounds before slamming it back in and tucking the weapon into the back of her jeans. Then she pulls her dark hair out of it’s typical bun, shaking it out before she starts the process of trying it back up again. That’s when Wren notices the other little decorations the cult has added to the church. There are large baskets on the stone pedestals with more bliss flowers growing from them, white cloth runners hung almost expertly along the stone fence, and a few bouquets of wild flowers attached to the sides of the arch.How long had all of this taken? How long had John and the cult been holding her friends hostage in the church while they decorated the outside? An hour? Two? Twelve? The thought of it makes her stomach turn as her arms fall back to her side, task completed. If she didn’t know better -and if the crows weren’t nailed to the church- she would think that it was decorated for someone’s wedding. It’s all kind of nice and done with a meticulous attention to detail, not to mention that besides the red carpet and the wild flowers, everything is white.That thought brings up entirely too many conversations she’s had with Sharky and Addy. Hell if either one of them were here that probably would have been the first thing they would have pointed out. Which would have lead into even more awkward conversations where they try to convince her John Seed is only acting like this cause he wants her while she tries to find a place to hide because absolutely not no fucking way.Good thing they aren’t here though and all she has to do is pretend like she didn’t have that particular thought cross her mind.As Wren starts to walk to the church -since she can’t think of anything else to do to procrastinate- she remembers she’s wearing her favorite sunglasses and goes back to her car. Sure they’re a cheap pair but considering she had to tear apart a garage and four cars to find them, she’s not going to let the peggies take those from her either. Or worse break them in the impending struggle. As she tosses them on the dash she realizes that she may not even need the glasses once today is over. That leads down a very dark road though so she stops that train of thought before it even leaves the station, focusing on how she’s going to get herself and her friends out of this instead as she walks up to the front of the church.They’re definitely going to take the weapons they can find but maybe she’ll get lucky and they won’t find the knife she keeps in her boot. Of course for that to work she would need her hands bound in front of her and for the peggies to not pay her any attention for a few minutes which is definitely not going to happen. Plus there’s nowhere to hide in the church and John won’t leave her to sit by herself a second time. Maybe she can get the knife to someone else Wren thinks as her boots hit the weirdly -but not surprisingly- plush carpet.She holds her breath as she passes under the arch and the Bliss flowers, but her vision still goes kind of sparkly and hazy around the edges. Thankfully it doesn’t last long and by the time she hits the steps, her sight is clear and she can breathe again. Almost instantly she wishes she hadn’t though. Judging by the awful stench the crows have been rotting in the hot summer sun for a quite some time. Wren doesn’t let herself gag or cough though, instead she takes a step back to get a few breaths of mostly fresh air before holding her breath again as she approaches the door.Of course it’s a trap, so of course there is a peggy waiting for her on the other side of the door. That still doesn’t prepare her to be hit hard in the face by the butt of the peggy’s automatic. Wren topples backwards from the force of the impact, stars exploding behind her eyes and her face throbs as she goes down. When she lands she’s halfway out the open door, staring up at the blue sky with her vision swimming.The last thing she hears before she completely blacks out is what sounds like Mary May yelling from further inside the church don’t you dare fucking touch her!