Finding Home (Zak Bagans Daughter)

Chapter Thirty-One

A ringing sound pierced my ears. I had somehow fallen onto the ground and I couldn't remember what had happened in the last few seconds. I looked up to Jeff looking down at me with scowl.

He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me off the floor. I couldn't hear anything but ringing. It felt as if a bomb blew up right beside me. I touched the left side of my head, but no blood.

He talking to me and trying to say something, but I had no idea what. I just gave my supposed-to-be killer a questionable face and said 'what?' or at least I thought I did.

He gave a very angered expression and pulled me out of the house and into the driveway, then into the trunk of a very old car and closed it; leaving me in the darkness.

It took a while for my hearing to come back. My best guess was that it had taken about 30 minutes to an hour. When I fully regained my energy and hearing I kicked and screamed as hard as I could. I tried to kick the hood up, but nothing budged. I eventually gave up, knowing at one point he would open the trunk, which he eventually did.

The light was a shock to my eyes, part of me thought I would never see the light of day again.

"Get out and keep your hands up" he said. When I looked at him I noticed he was pointing the gun at me again.

I slowly climbed out of the trunk of the car with my hands up.

"Now turn around and put your hands behind your back"

I hesitated and put them behind me. Now is when I realized I was screwed. Maybe if I had faked sleep in the trunk I could've kicked him in the face and bolted when he least expected it. Guess I can't do that anymore.

I felt him press the front of the gun into my back.

"Walk" he ordered and jutted the barrel into my back. This is when I decided to look and see where we were. He had driven us somewhere in the middle of a desert; nothing was around us for miles.

"Why didn't you kill me back at the house?" I asked.

He was silent, but then he answered. "Because I knew that's not how I wanted you to die. Plus I didn't want anyone to find out I had killed you. I left a note saying you had run away and for no one to come looking for you"

"You purposely missed" I mumbled.

"That's right. If you were hoping I had some kind of change of heart, I didn't; I still want you dead"

A tear rolled down my cheek. I didn't feel like preparing myself for yet another death.

"Stop" he ordered once again. I stopped walking and fidgeted my hands that were tied together with ropes.

I felt the barrel leave my back and the sound of Jeff walking away.

"Turn around" I heard him yell. When I did, I noticed he was probably ten feet away from me, standing there aiming his gun at me.

I closed my eyes, but then I realized I didn't want to die with the image of darkness in my mind. So, I opened them and looked at the sky. It was an unbearably hot day, especially since we were in the middle of a desert. I looked at Jeff, you could see the sweat glistening on his forehead as he aimed his gun at me, I couldn't figure out what was taking him so long.

That was when I realized multiple Nevada police cars had gathered in the distance. How did they find us? A spark of hope ignited in my heart. All I had to do now was to distract him.

"I'm only 17" I yelled. He looked at me. I was trying to make him humanize me and not see me as just some revenge killing.

"I turn 18 in five weeks. I've always wanted to go to film school and be a director for movies, I love movies. I've always wanted a sibling, but my mom said she didn't want another child because of how much I cried when I was a baby and she couldn't do that again" I was just yelling random facts about myself. 

He slowly put the gun down and rested it in his right hand by his waist.

When the police were close enough they yelled at him to put the gun down, which immediately caused him to aim the weapon back at me.

There was a total of ten police officers standing behind the doors of their cars, all gun aimed at Jeff, who's gun was aimed at me. I felt as defenseless as a newborn baby.

"Put the gun down" I told him. "It's over"

He stood his ground, getting angrier by the second. I could tell by the look on his face, he had made his final decision and he wasn't going to back out.

So, once again I looked away and into the sun. That's when I heard the shot, you could hear as the single bullet tore apart the air and concentrated silence as it made its way into my chest.

I hit the hot sandy ground right after. My first thought was to put pressure on the wound, but my hands were still tied behind my back, I couldn't do anything except watch as the police each took one shot into Jeff's body. He hit the ground seconds after me, there was no doubt he was dead. The blood coming out of his mouth from internal injuries confirmed it. 

I couldn't breathe. It felt like hundreds of boulders were stacked upon my chest. I could feel the blood pouring out of me, causing my body to feel as if it were in a freezer instead of in the middle of a hot Nevada desert.

"Charlie!?" a man in a police uniform runs up to me. The first thing he does is cover my bullet wound with his hands and push. The rest was fuzzy. I just helplessly watched as he called for an ambulance and as they picked me up and put me into a stretcher. Just after they put me into the ambulance my heart stopped for the first time that day.

"She's flatlining!" one yelled.

"I need to start chest compressions!" another yelled.

I watched as all three EMT's tried their hardest to revive me.

"How much longer till we get to the hospital?!" yelled the one giving me chest compressions.

"Five more minutes. Keep her alive you hear me? She is not dying in here!" yelled the driver.

For the next five minutes my heart continuously began to beat, and then stopped. Just like how my mother died.

Once again, my heart began to beat on its own. The EMT's watched hopefully as this was the longest it had been working the entire ride to the hospital.

The single female EMT leant down and whispered in my ear, but as I stood at the end of the truck I hear it as if she were standing right beside me.

"If you want to live you need to keep fighting, you made it this far, the finish line is just up ahead sweetheart" She rubbed her hand softly down my cheek and smiled, as if she knew I would live.

"She's a fighter" said one of the male EMT's.

"You're damn right she is" she said.