The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash

by J. S. Carter

  “Awesome...”

  I hovered a hand over my face and stood above what I could only loosely describe as the seventh circle of hell and began to mentally prepare myself. I wouldn't have ever said that I was above any type of work by any stretch of the imagination, but I did have to remind myself that it would at least be better than what I had originally signed up for, or rather, what I had been coerced into doing.

  I sucked in my pride. “Do you have any gloves?” I felt fortunate enough to see the man pull out a pair and hand them to me, and had already put them on by the time another weapon-toting bearer of bad news walked up to us.

  “Yo. Ryan wants to see you guys, pronto.”

  I could see Jeremy’s face slowly change for the worse. “What for?”

  The man only shook his head. It was unsettling.

  Nick bumped them out of the way and threw his bucket down, taking the lead. “Who the hell cares?”

  I couldn’t say I was surprised when we walked into Ryan’s tent. It was one of the biggest and held furniture inside, accommodating a plush sofa, coffee table, and even a full wooden desk with papers strewn all about. It must have belonged to the admin before they left. Now it belonged to a new asshole.

  “Took you long enough.” Ryan took a sip from his mug. It could have been coffee. I would have thought about killing him right then and there for it if one of his men hadn’t been sitting next to us. “I want you to do something for me.” He grabbed a map from his desk and handed it to Jeremy, surprising me with a pistol holstered to the side of his hip. I took him as someone that wouldn’t carry a gun. He saw me look at it and I made sure to return the favor.

  Jeremy checked the map for a moment, only to shake his head. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  “There’s a gas station I want you to check for supplies a few miles to the West of here. Get your guys together and I’ll have my men escort you out.”

  “The trucks aren’t back yet. What if we find something?”

  “Bring it back.”

  Scott tried reaching for the map, but Jeremy held it from him. “This is the same place I almost got to yesterday...” He seemed to wait for a response only to have Ryan take another drink. “What happened to the guy I brought back?”

  Ryan snatched the map back from his hands. “He's dead.”

  I couldn't see how that might have been surprising, especially considering the condition he had been in, but Jeremy wouldn't let it go.

  “How?”

  “Well, he either bled out or I took him outside and shot him in the back of the head for asking too many questions. Which one do you prefer?”

  Jeremy took a moment, obviously annoyed. “Look, even if there’s nothing there, it’ll still take us a whole day just to walk there and back. If we leave first thing tomorrow morning—”

  “Today.” Ryan walked back to his desk and put his mug down. “Right now.”

  “But if we wait for everyone else—”

  “Change of plans. They’re coming back tonight. Which means if you want a ride back into town, you better be here before we leave.”

  And with that, the plan that we had spent all night going over had been utterly decimated. The whole idea was to leave at night before the trucks got back, before we became increasingly outnumbered and risked the possibility of them tracking us down on wheels.

  I could see the clockwork behind Jeremy’s head spin into gear, his eyes darting back and forth across the ground, but there were too many things to consider, too many unknowns. I had to stall.

  “I'll go.”

  They all stared and I wasn't sure of what else to say, so I just kept at it.

  “I'll do it. I don't care. ”

  Ryan cocked an eyebrow at me. “If I can't get eight men to bring me back food, water, and gasoline, then what the hell are you supposed to do?”

  Eight?

  I had to remind myself to close my mouth. Jeremy, Scott, Nick, Mike, Murphy and Simon already made six. If Ryan was thinking about sending them so far outside with only a pair of armed guards, than he had to be stretched thin. Something must have been wrong on his end. Regardless, it would be Jeremy's best chance to get away. They'd easily be able to overpower any company and could take their guns, not to mention have a solid lead on food and water. It was too perfect not to pass up.

  Jeremy took a step towards me. “We can still use an extra hand—”

  “No,” said Ryan. I could feel my life expectancy snap in half at the word as he fell into his seat. “She stays here.”

  Jeremy started at it again and I interrupted him. “It's fine.”

  We started to look at each other for too long, both of us daring ourselves to see how forward we could be before Ryan would start to notice just exactly what was going on, but Jeremy wouldn't budge. I kept my eyes frozen on him, now confused more than anything else. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by trying to convince Ryan to bring me along.

  So why are you still trying to help me?

  He finally opened his mouth just as Nick walked in-between us and leaned in towards Ryan. “Listen, I've known this guy a while... and if anyone can do it, it's him.”

  Ryan's head bobbed between the three of us like a buoy, his patience visibly wearing thinner by the moment. “That's fucking good for you.” He nudged Nick off the table. “Why the fuck are we still arguing about this?”

  “Fine,” said Jeremy. I could see him hide a scowl, but even he must have finally succumbed to the lure of freedom. “I just need her for a minute.” I tried to follow him out before Ryan called for me.

  “Jessica...” he started, and I stopped to see him set his feet up on his desk with two heavy thuds, his hands already on his lap. “...Is staying for a little conversation.”

  I looked back at Jeremy and Scott for a sign of resistance, a wink of the eye, anything that would signify what I could expect to happen while on my own, but they only stared back with hollow eyes. It was over. We couldn't even get a quick word between the two of us, but at least they would finally be getting away.

  I caught Jeremy's stare again, but Scott gently pulled him along. “Come on, we're burning daylight.”

  They left, sunken and silent. Only Nick walked by with open arms, his back to the men that were holding us all hostage. “How about one for the road?” I was surprised when he gave me a hug and even more so when he grabbed my ass.

  I pushed him off of me. “What the hell?”

  He gave me a wink and the guard in the room shoved him out.

  They left me and Ryan alone together and I hated every second of it. I wished he would have gotten angry and yelled in my face or threatened to hurt me. I wanted to fight him right then and there, but nothing came out. He was the last person on earth that I wanted to talk to and all he did was prolong it. I watched him absently roll the ring on his finger and take me in silently. The pause seemed too long by the time he finally let me have it.

  “What do you know about Knox?”

  Hearing his name caught me off guard. I remembered seeing the word plastered on every television screen along with the rest of the world, but I hadn't thought about it since what seemed like the beginning of it all. Knox had been behind every protest, especially those that had turned violent, making it perfectly clear that there had been a leader in the uprising that followed Zoey's death, the name synonymous to the movement, the ideals bleeding over from city to city and ultimately crashing into conflict in the middle of the streets.

  I remembered the sleepless nights. Knox idealism had been nothing short of persecution. Anyone that might have been judged impure of heart was dealt with one way or another, though the punishment had usually been severe and dealt publicly without restraint. None of it could have been done without the fear, and with the fear—hate. The hate had turned into violence and the violence had turned into death. I remembered thinking that Knox had somehow been responsible for it all, but how could anyone prove that the actions of thousands, even millio
ns of people were the result of one single person? How could one do so much?

  I struggled, unsure how to answer, but also because I was scared of where the conversation might have been heading. “He killed...”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow and he put his feet back down, pressuring me onward.

  I started to relive what it was like coming home day after day to be connected to a constant stream of unfortunate events, to be surrounded by a web of anxiety. I had watched, just like anyone else, how Knox had targeted the government, how he had accused them of allowing the Catastrophe to happen and blamed them for the inequality and suffering in daily life. And it had only exponentially grown worse with time. Towards the end, the footage of beheadings in the middle of the street surrounded by cheering mobs and servicemen powerless to stop them would have been too much for anyone to forget. Even Ryan.

  I tried again, this time more sure of my words. Anything else would have been putting it lightly. “He murdered them.”

  “Who, Jessica?” He waved his hands as if to find the answer about to fall into his lap at the blink of an eye. “Who did he kill?”

  I ground my teeth against his condescending belittlement. Everyone left alive knew what had happened. They knew how the target had shifted, how the hate had spread. He only wanted to hear me say it, just like the rest of them had. I forced the words out as Ryan continued to stare, his attention only fueling my ire. “You don't even care, do you?”

  He stood up and walked to the front of his desk, leaning against the top while crossing his arms. “Why should I?”

  You know why...

  He wouldn't let up, a thought that was driving me insane until I realized that we were also alone. I imagined how close I'd be able to get to strangling him to death, but quickly remembered that he was still in charge as long as he had a gun strapped to his hip.

  “You don't care...” I could feel my muscles give way as realization finally washed over them. He really didn't. He really didn't care about anyone except for himself.

  He watched me eagerly and the small hint of a smile curled past his lips. He was much more dangerous than I knew. “You've made some new friends here pretty quick. It makes me wonder what a Sed would do if one were standing right in front of me.”

  Sed.

  There was that word again. I squeezed the knot past my throat as Ryan reached back to pull something out from a drawer within his desk. “The problem is that they're good at hiding—every single one of 'em—right in plain sight.” He brought his hand forward, but kept whatever he had taken out covered and made me wait a tense moment. The next part didn't make me feel any better whatsoever. “Come here.”

  I did as he ordered and forced my legs to get me to stop just in front of him.

  “The man who died last night... He said he knew you.”

  Impossible. I watched Ryan carefully. Was he trying to trick me? I racked my brain for an answer before deciding that there would be no harm in risking it. “You're lying.”

  He gave me a short smile. “Then why did he give me this?” He lifted his hand and let go of a small silver heart-shaped pendant that hung from a chain around his fingers. He kept his full attention on me the entire time, trying to gauge my reaction, almost as if he were about to teach me a lesson.

  I wasn't sure what he had expected me to say. “It's not mine.”

  “So then you won't mind holding it?”

  Should I?

  I watched the small trinket rotate in front of my face and I held out my hand, palm facing up. I stretched my arm out and watched the delicate heart dangle just above the center of my glove, my eyes only turning to him when he spoke.

  “You're sure that there's nothing you'd like to tell me?” He grinned anxiously and I tried not to look into it.

  Even if there was, what would it matter now?

  I brought my focus back to the floating piece of silver just as Ryan let go. It fell into my hand and the chain attached to it coiled around like a snake in an instant.

  Nothing.

  I looked back up at Ryan. “Thank you?”

  He furrowed his brow and immediately fought against a new onslaught of words but held them back, his confusion ultimately melting away to anger and annoyance. “We're done here.”

  “You sure?”

  He walked back behind his desk and glared up at me. “Don't you have shit to clean?”

  I balled a fist around my new piece of jewelry and watched him flip through a stack of papers, confused, but it wasn’t enough to keep me there. Even a turd was better company than him. I left as soon as I got the chance.

  Jeremy and the others were already gone by the time I got outside. I found myself walking through the morning sun without any idea where I was going. I was surrounded by a fence and people that I didn’t know, completely by myself and without any idea of what to do. I couldn’t help but think that dying in the middle of nowhere would have been exactly the same.

  I stopped and looked down at my outstretched hand to see the silver heart stare back with just as much lifelessness as it had the first time, though now it looked incredibly smooth to the touch. Curious, I bit the tip of my other glove and pulled it off, throwing the necklace onto the flesh of my exposed palm and waited for a moment. I poked the pendant and could feel the cool metal begin to seep the warmth away from my skin, but nothing else happened.

  Figures...

  I looked away and shook my head. I shouldn't have let Ryan's craziness get to me.

  Then it began to burn.

  I gazed down to see a silent blue flame completely engulf my hand and lick its way up my arm.

  That... can't be right.

  The thought barely crossed my mind just as a searing headache crashed itself through my skull. I tried screaming while the flames twisted up and over every square inch of my body, but the sound never made it past my paralyzed nerves. My legs gave out and I dropped down onto my knees, only able to struggle in agony as I felt a thin glowing bar dipped in molten hot metal drive itself past my eyes. The sensation effortlessly progressed deeper towards the back of my skull, every inch given leading to a new feeling, one of absence and unknown familiarity.

  I wasn’t in my own body anymore.

  Everything stopped. It was as if the sun in all its intensity had been extinguished, throwing me into a complete and utter darkness with the last thoughts of my mind suddenly absent but lingering on edge—unattainable, yet strikingly familiar—the world a lost cause off the tip of my tongue.

  I opened my eyes, but they weren’t mine anymore. They were hers. I felt what she felt. I moved as she did. It wasn't until we were together that we both forgot what it was like to be so alone.

  The cries of men dying ceased to exist. The sensation of hundreds of humans fighting for their lives lost all form, leaving in its place a hollow shell of distant surroundings that yearned to be filled. The clash of metal and blood lust from a span of fifty men below me, while once all encompassing, now echoed off into areas not seen, but I did see the few that managed to get inside.

  They moved as one, bursting through the closed doors without so much as a pause before two arrows drove themselves into the throats of the guards that stood in their way. I felt their surprise, felt their anguish, felt their alarm at not being able to cry out in pain, yet the group moved on before the bodies had time to reach the ground. They quickly eliminated any form of resistance as they hoped to reach me in time. The long flight of stairs labored their breathing, but the steady stream of fresh corpses that blocked them before only strengthened their resolve to face their fears head on.

  I felt them the whole way, each mind unique and backed by a name that had once meant something. I didn’t even bother to watch them breach the doors and rush into my room with their weapons drawn and locked onto my heart, ready to be released at the first hint of movement if need be.

  But they hesitated.

  With a flick of my wrist, I knocked two against the wall and redirected the now useless st
icks that had flown at me. Another tried rushing at me with his weapon raised, but it was all he could do as a shard of ice as thick as his forearm met his chest, slowing his heart and halting his breathing as he dropped to the ground. The rest stood helpless. I could have done more, but I only turned and focused on the task at hand.

  They could be spared.

  Yet I suddenly found my mind closed, fully immersed in an alien world with complete absence of thought and feeling, only able to look with a dull sense of surprise into a pair of fierce blue eyes filled with as much remorse as they were hate, inches from my own.

  My hand reached down and grasped the edge of a blade in front of my chest, but the rest kept going unhindered and continued out my other side. It wouldn’t budge, though it wouldn’t have to. I was sure I wouldn't get another breath. I sputtered, almost with a grateful smile. “You promised.”

  The familiar pair of blue eyes remained motionless with no hint of a response. Finally, their owner answered with a hoarse voice. “I’m sorry.”

  The eyes never left me, but it didn’t matter. Now I began to smile. She began to smile, something that I knew would put him on edge despite just stabbing his childhood friend and lover through the heart. I began to slip away as her last breath had past her lips: soft, quite, a whisper in the dark. The words chilled me to the bone. “You’re too late.”

  Awakening

  I knew I was back when I woke up. I automatically pushed against the hand on my forehead until I realized it belonged to Martha standing above me. The familiar face did little to slow the pounding in my chest and I checked to make sure it was still intact. I meant to say something, but couldn’t quite figure out how.

  She used the opening. “Are you okay?”

  I sat up and caught my head in between my hands. It felt like lead and throbbed with a dull ache, a sensation a million times more enjoyable than whatever I had just put myself through. I kept my face hidden and made no effort to come up with an answer. How could I have been okay after that? At the very least, I was relieved to hear my own muffled voice. “What happened?”