The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash

by J. S. Carter

  “Okay...” The woman teetered back on track. It was like she was trying to salvage a sinking ship, except that this one would be full of sex slaves and child molesters. I couldn't wait to see it burn. “Who would like to start us from where we left off, hmmm?”

  I was surprised to see a few hands go up, business as usual.

  The woman pointed at a girl in the front row. “Yes, Tammie. Why don't you go ahead?”

  She took a breath. It was the type of excitement one only got when they were the first in anything. “Knox... is a hero...and—and he saved us from the Seds. They wanna hurt us. They—”

  The woman stopped her, squinting. “Well hold on. Slow down. You're going a little bit too far back. Let's think about what we learned last time. We know that Knox wants to protect us, but why? What is it about the Seditionists that make them so dangerous?”

  For the love... please don't pick on—

  “Yes, Rachel?”

  She brought her hand down and straightened her back. “Seditionists are Paranormals that went against society.”

  “That's correct.” The woman gave her a quick reassurance, only for it to fall apart. “And as we all know, Paranormals are very different from the rest us... and very dangerous.”

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I glanced over at Ellie to see her stare at the front, a slight purse to her lips. She must have known better, but for how long? How long had all these girls been forced to listen while Ryan pursued his Knox fed agenda? What the hell was the point in teaching them to hate Paranormals like everyone else if they were just going to be used at bedside and discarded like a piece of trash?

  I couldn't take it anymore. I took another step forward, this time even too much for Ellie to handle. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  The entirely class slowly shifted in their seats and the woman looked back at me with her glassy eyes, so close to breaking, so delicately balanced, and yet I saw no problem in being the one to shatter her into a thousand pieces. She tilted her head again and pretended like it wasn’t the most obvious question in the universe.

  It didn’t do anything to calm me down. “These are kids.”

  She blinked a little too much before taking a breath and starting over. “Jessica... if you don’t sit down, I’ll have to go and get someone.”

  Go ahead, bring Ryan.

  At that point she must have noticed the scissors in my hand. Her sophisticated adult mind had probably put the two together and realized a shitty attitude never copes well with sharp objects. She went to open the door, but for once I was too quick.

  I knocked over a desk to get at her just as she started to fumble. I pushed her away and spun her around, bringing the threat up against her neck to hush her scream. I swung her against the blackboard with my hands still tight on the open blades that pushed up underneath her jaw.

  I could only guess all the girls got up on the edge of their seats to watch, but she instantly gave in. “Please! I swear to God it wasn’t my choice! Please don’t kill me. They made me do it! Please!”

  I just stared as the only real grownup in the room began to break down and cry. She had faltered. She wouldn’t have fought back. I would have met no resistance if I had decided to force her life to slip past a crooked gash in her throat. It would have been a real case of dying from guilt.

  Blood started to trickle down my hand as I held my grip. One of the blades had been pressing up against each of my fingers. I had barely noticed it until then. I readjusted so that I held the scissors with the fine twin points conjoining at her adam’s apple and she flinched.

  Her freckles trembled and I could feel each breath through her neck. Soft wisps of her hair dangled on top of her lips as each quiver in her veins struggled to pump blood throughout her tensing body, yet even then she still wouldn’t look at me. Why wouldn't she look?

  “Jessica...” Someone called for me from behind, but I kept the pressure on. “Tess.”

  I looked at the hand tugging back on my arm again.

  “She's not one of 'em,” said Ellie.

  So what was she?

  I looked back at the woman in front of me, a veiled husk of whatever she had once been. Now she was just an animal, a scared piece of life trying to preserve itself any way it knew how. She could only stare back and know that I was in control. I decided what would happen. I would be the one to complete the next outcome of her life. I was dangling her above the unknown. I controlled her. She belonged to me.

  “Please,” said Ellie. “Don't do it.”

  I blinked, and a wave of uncertainty passed over me. Ellie was right. The woman had probably never hurt anyone. What the hell was I about to do? I found my grip slowly loosening until she slid down with her back against the wall, her head hanging low in her lap. She began to let it all out at the first relief. Coming back from that was almost too much for her to handle.

  I let my hand drop down my side and watched blood start to patter onto the floor. I had no reason to take anything out on her. I knew what death was like and she didn’t deserve it. Nobody did. But I was betting I could still try to find an exception. I grabbed the woman's arm without warning and she started to let it all out again. “Get up.”

  Ellie immediately got in front of me as I forced the woman towards the door. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving.” I tried to move, but she still wouldn't get out of my way.

  “What makes you think they won't kill her too?”

  I held the woman close to me as I thought about it. Ellie was right. Hiding behind a hostage wouldn't do any good if it would only turn into me carrying a lifeless body. She was smart, already a step ahead of me, which meant she knew what was really going on.

  Ellie eyed the bloody blades in my hand and brought her hands up carefully. “I can get us out of here.” She pointed out towards the hall. “They'll see us if we try to go out the front, but I know where to go. If it's just the two us, we can slip by and—”

  “No.”

  That one had at least caught her off guard.

  I stared across from her and then at the rest of the girls. “We're all going.”

  It didn't take long for me to convince her.

  She led us down the hall, a few feet ahead of the pack, while I pushed the woman in front of me with the points of the scissors up against her back. Rachel and the five other girls still learning to cope with puberty followed close behind.

  The woman continued to sob and tried to gain some sense of composure as I held her hostage. Anyone would have been able to hear her mumblings from a mile away.

  I increased the pressure on her back, careful not to break skin, and she cut it short with another tremble. “I’m not gonna hurt you...” The words had barely left my mouth before I remembered I was practically stabbing her in the back, but I couldn’t think of the right words to say. I had to convince myself the trauma would be for her own good.

  I forgot about it as soon as Ellie stopped us in front of a set of double doors with her hand hovering just above the handles, seemingly unsure.

  I glanced around the empty halls to make sure we were still alone, but we couldn't just sit in the open. “What's wrong?”

  She made up her mind. “It's a shortcut.”

  I followed her into the school's theater. Small seats lined the rows on either side of us with our next exit just ahead. We were halfway there by the time I glanced at the stage. It was still set up from its last production, plus the addition of two fully fledged adult men who turned to look at us.

  I immediately swung back to Ellie, but she had already stopped, frozen in place with her eyes behind what I still assumed to be the line of girls following me to their freedom. She started to reach out and I only realized what was going on when a sharp pain burned itself into the back of my neck.

  I dropped down and screamed. I let go of the scissors and somebody kicked them away. The pain came back at my side as I crumpled up into a ball, breathless from the torture. It was a few s
econds before I was able to look up at the man standing above me. He held something in his hand. It must have been the source of my agony.

  “Jessica, is it?” he asked, his voice booming through the empty space. “We were just talking about you.” He had a little extra weight on him and carried himself like he owned the place. I already decided I preferred Ryan more. He lifted the small black box in his hands. “You know what the best part about a taser is? It doesn’t leave a mark—well, not a big one—and we got batteries galore. I mean, we could do this all day long.” He pointed it at me. “That’s twenty-first century thinking for you right there.”

  I craned my neck to see Ellie and the others already grouped together, and the woman from the classroom with an armed man ushering them back.

  “Get 'em outta here.” He paused for a moment, the next part only loud enough for me to hear. “They don't need to see this.”

  I watched the group leave from where we had come from and the doors closed with a bang. I was alone again. I didn’t want to get up. My time deciding my own fate was over. I had been left with whoever I had to thank for my new headache.

  He decided to keep talking. He must have preferred the symbolism of his own words falling down on me. “Tell me, Jessica... Do you know how prostitution works?”

  I had to think about it for a moment. Did I really know how sex worked? Sex for money? I was a twenty-one year old white girl from the city who had to survive living with my parents and little sister, mood swings, high school suicides, my first shitty job in a long line of proposed shitty jobs, the looming, spiraling debt of college tuition, insensitive assholes that broke hearts, rising gas prices, car insurance, terrorism, and the incredible process of reprogramming ten different cell phones because I had kept losing them. I still had it better off than the vast majority of the world combined, especially for a woman, but I thought I knew how prostitution might have worked. I kept my side on the cold tiles, stubborn, and promptly told the piece of shit standing above me to go fuck himself. The colorful French bounced across the walls, joined by his laughter.

  The man smiled. “Why, when I have you now?”

  I had to bite my tongue. He was right.

  Asshole.

  He lifted his arms up to gesture at the theater, and then something more. “Let me be the first to introduce you to Arrino, Kansas. We’re short on food and almost out of water, but we have some pretty women. Would you rather I go out and kill people to get what we need or have them work together so that everybody wins?”

  I didn’t even bother thinking up an answer. Forcing fourteen year olds into having sex, no matter how he justified it, would never make any sense.

  “Just play by the rules and we’ll all get through this.” He stomped a heel on the floor, amused. “I mean, come on. Anyone your age should be begging to get laid.”

  I wished I had my metal spike. I had at least managed to do some damage with that thing. The thought seemed fitting as Ryan and two others walked up from the stage to meet the man in front of me with a few mutters. Some part of me kept expecting Ryan to look at me lying on the floor and feel sorry for me, but it never happened. They stopped, agreed on something and started moving.

  The man with the taser leaned in close as the others brought me up to my feet. He held the agony inducer just short of my chest, and I was glad he stopped it there. “This thing works, Jessica, and it’s gonna work for a long time.”

  I fruitlessly struggled as they quickly tied my hands behind my back again and put tape over my mouth. The message definitely came across.

  “Don’t forget that.”

  The last thing I saw was his satisfied smug of a smile before they put something over my head and grabbed my arms, taking me wherever they wanted.

  We left the school and started walking on open grass. I could feel the dry blades bend underneath my feet. For the first time in my life, I started to feel legitimately claustrophobic and had to concentrate to keep from panicking. Short, hot bursts of air shot out through my nose that felt insufficient while I was forced to move with the bodies that pressed up against my sides. The stiffness of the bag over my head rubbed against my face and was starting to get wet from my own moisture. I couldn't fight back or see anything. I couldn’t have screamed even if I had wanted to. I could only count the passing steps as my mind helplessly tagged along for the tantalizing ride.

  A few minutes later my feet hit solid ground and we kept walking in silence. I heard a door open and somebody led me inside. The air was immediately cooler, wherever we were, and our footsteps held their sound. We took a few turns, opened another a door, but this time they pushed me through first.

  They untied my hands and took the bag off of my head before closing the door behind me. I immediately turned around and tried opening it, only to feel a doorknob that wouldn't turn. I painstakingly pulled the tape off of my mouth and silently cursed at whoever had put it on without bothering to push my hair to the side.

  I looked around. They must have shoved me into an apartment building. Everything looked like it belonged in a house but cramped together to take up less space. I quickly scoured the room to look for anything that I might be able to use. I checked the tables, opened up all the shelves, looked underneath the couch, and finally threw a fit in the kitchen due to the lack of utensils. They even took out all the spoons. They must have cleaned the place out ahead of time.

  Demoralized, I gave up and walked into the bathroom, completely unready to face something that I hadn’t been expecting. As soon as I turned the corner, my reflection had bounced back at me from the wall. It had been so long since I had seen myself that it felt surreal.

  I lifted a shaky finger and watched it connect with the one in front of me. I was unbelievably tan from the hours spent on the road and I had lost a good bit of weight, though it was probably too much. Over time I had found something that I just couldn’t quite get from scrubbing my face with chemicals.

  Wherever there wasn’t any dirt, my skin had a natural shine along with my hair, probably from oil that I had never gotten the chance to wash off, and I had a small discoloration around a scar next to my left eye. It gave it a little depth and made my eyes look fierce. Even my cheeks were more pronounced. Where I had come from, I might have been called beautiful for it, but now I couldn't have felt uglier. If I could have given away my physical body to get out of that building, I would have done it in a heartbeat. It made me realize that the faded red spots on my face were actually dried spatters of blood that didn't even belong to me.

  I tried rubbing them away until I saw something stir in the room behind me. I sprung around and looked at the source, a scruffy man sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. I hadn’t noticed him the whole time I was there. It suddenly struck me that I could have been put in that room for him. He looked tired, but nonetheless in incredibly good shape and could probably reach into my stomach and tear out my intestines with a single hand.

  My nerves got the best of me. “Who the hell are you?”

  He didn’t bother answering. He lifted a beefy arm up and pulled on a string, the blinds behind him quickly jumping out of the way as sunlight shot through the window and flooded the room and enveloped me.

  I had to hold my hand up.

  His entire body did a better job as he slowly got up to his feet and put me in his shadow, standing at least a good foot above me. He stepped closer and looked down. It was a common thing for me lately, but it still hadn’t lost its effect. He sized me up and I held my breath as I waited to see what he would do. Finally, he let it loose.

  “There’s pie in the fridge.” He stepped around me and I let the sun bleach my eyes, frozen in place.

  I had to admit I wasn’t expecting that.

  Murder-suicide

  It turned out that Chris had thought I had been looking for food. As soon as we had cleared that awkward experience, we introduced ourselves. Meeting new people had been hit or miss for me for the past few days, but I was grati
fied to see someone who didn’t want to immediately take advantage of me. That and he had offered me pie. I would have told anyone that the quickest way to win me over would have been food or coffee. He had gotten one out of the two, but I supposed there was always room for improvement.

  I thought that over and listened to him talk about the town all day and night as I shoveled food into my mouth. I had to use my hands, but things could have been worse. He could have told me that there wasn’t any more coffee left in the world. I let the crumbs fall down over my chin as he paced around the room, his giant chest literally leading the way for the rest of him. He could have easily killed me. I was glad that he was ‘one of the good guys,’ as Jeremy would have put it.

  According to Chris, the town of Arrino already had a fairly long history of self-sufficiency, which was one of the reasons why it had rebounded so quickly once the world had gone to hell. Remote proximity from any major cities and roadways had also helped. The few hundred men and woman who had called it home beforehand had already grown accustomed to living on their own, which meant that the relative panic had been cut short. He described it as a group effort that could have only been accomplished if the vast majority of the population lived by the same morals, mainly one of respect, though now that was basically unheard of.

  A quick surge in population followed by a dry spell and uneven management was pitting everything into despair. The thought of the drought continuing any longer meant no farming, no hunting, and no more self-reliance. The inhabitants would soon be forced to make a decision. Scavenging would only go so far and they knew it. They were scared. They fooled themselves into thinking that outsiders like Ryan could take charge and solve all their problems while others were either forced to obey, cast out, or simply locked up. Some ended up like Chris, lost in a hidden limbo because they had become too vocal in their opposition against the new regime but kept alive because of their useful skill sets.