When will they just let me die? The armed men behind him led Paxton out onto the roof to finish him off with a public execution. After he killed Roberson, the Agents that poured through the room didn’t kill him like he thought they would. Another government official, one he had never seen on television or anywhere else before, came in with them. He ordered them to take the old veteran away. Those people outside, he instructed, didn’t come all that way for nothing.
His heart began to pound as he could feel his feet reach the edge. Down there, five stories below, he could hear the cries of the people. They tried to hurl rocks or whatever they could find at him. In the midst of the cries, Paxton swore that he could hear a few cheers. His heart sank then, and a feeling of devastation overcame him.
Paxton continued to look down at the crowd. The masses down there were the very people that he was trying to save. They were also the same people that he put in harm’s way in the process. That crusade was only moments away from ending.
His thoughts turned to what he did during his fight. He felt a kick at his knees which forced him to kneel. Once again, politicians had used him. Only this time, those politicians were nothing but pure evil. He thought about what Roberson had told him, about how the USR controlled him and made him do the things he did.
No, Paxton thought as he shook those negative feelings away. A black blindfold was wrapped over his eyes and tied around the back of his head. He knew that his intentions were pure. He knew that he tried to do the right thing, even if he put his own moral code to the back burner. What he tried to do was save this once great country. The feelings he had during the missions, the smiles he brought about Margie and the other’s faces, and his own intentions were things that the USR could never, ever, take away.
Paxton closed his eyes underneath the blindfold. He heard the clicking sound of the gun behind him. Before the bullet tore through the back of his skull, one last, terrible thought entered into his mind.