The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash

by J. S. Carter

  It was morning again by the time I eyed him from across the room, our conversation reaching another natural lull, and however much it had bugged me before, it was apparent now that I wasn't alone anymore. He was surprisingly the type of person that I could invariably fall into a long discussion with while spending almost twenty-four hours locked inside of the same room together. Yet after waking up to see that nothing had changed around me, I realized that it wouldn't matter. We could have unraveled the meaning of life itself and I would always inevitably end up being the new whore in town at the end of the day. Just like before, I didn't have the luxury of picking my own identity.

  Chris peered back at me in silence and I couldn’t help but stare at the numerous tattoos that lined his arms. After learning that he had been active duty in the military, the sleeves of ink seemed different. Maybe they told a story about his past, of some event so visceral as to prompt him to leave a physical mark on his body to mirror the one in his memories, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to know. For all I knew, he could have been looking at me and thinking the exact same thing based on what he saw, and I sure as hell didn't want to answer any of those questions.

  I had neglected to talk about my past on purpose. I was sure he must have noticed that I had been dodging the topic since we met. He had only arrived a few weeks before I had, too late to make a difference and too early to be made an example of, but I didn't have the benefit of his military background. If I had, then maybe I never would have stepped foot in Arrino. Maybe I never would have run away. Maybe I never would have been such a coward.

  I finally thought about saying something when a soft, metallic tapping sound started up again on his side of the room. I got up to my feet with a wince, trying to ignore the forgotten pain and eager for the change of pace. “She's back.”

  “Check the door.”

  Right.

  Chris never rushed. He was always level headed, most likely a strict pragma instilled into his soul from countless days of training and fighting alongside other soldiers just as similar to him.

  He waited as I checked the only door to our room. The doorknob must have been reversed, which meant that we had been locked in from the outside, but whoever was responsible for that had not bothered with the peephole. I stuck my eye to the glass and stared for a moment, only to see the same pattern of ugly wallpaper attached to an empty hallway. I gave him a thumbs up.

  I turned to watch Chris effortlessly slide the couch away from the wall, a physical task better suited to him than a tornado lifting a semi off the ground. After that, I unscrewed a small metal plate at the bottom of the wall with my nails that had been haphazardly shut for quick access. Then I got onto my knees and grabbed Ellie's hands, pulling her out by the wrists from a small air-duct that connected our room to hers next door. She was the only one small enough to use it, but even that was pushing it.

  She wiped a hand over her face and coughed. A small cloud of dust followed the puff of air and clung to the frayed ends of her hair. I couldn't help but feel for the dirty, cute little girl standing in front of me as she continued to brush herself off, though Chris was keen on keeping us in motion.

  “What took so long?”

  She took a moment to look between the two of us and I tried to reassure her with a short, courteous smile, only to fall back on to Chris. “If you want, you can go next time.” She gave us space and I shot him my best way to go look.

  I walked into the kitchen and grabbed what was left of our pie. It was the last homemade remains of the town's productivity. I had made a mental note to save a few pieces for Ellie when she had crawled into our room the first time. Apparently Ryan had saw it fitting to lock her away and starve her for asking too many questions following my little scene in front of the rest of the girls. The apartments must have been where he hid people from the rest of the town. I couldn't believe how inhumane it had seemed at first, but I knew better now that it could have been a lot worse. For starters, she was still alive.

  I walked back into the living room to see her steal a glance at Chris. With her height, she barely came up to his chest and I didn't fare much better. I was sure that she thought together we had made an unlikely pair, though it had been quick to get over. With her in the room, we seemed like one small, coherently dysfunctional family. Making friends was easier when everyone was being held captive against their will.

  “Here...” I offered her what was left of our food and watched her hesitate, her eyes gleaming at the sight of something edible. I recognized the look, but for Ellie to try and hide it so well, she must have been used to the hunger, to the constant lack of energy for some time now. I was glad to see her finally give in.

  “Thanks.” She took a seat with her mouth already full, looking more like a little kid than I thought she knew.

  Chris managed to give her a few solid seconds before prying. “So what'd you see?”

  She continued to scarf everything down and answered between mouthfuls of air while both of us waited. “I did exactly what you said. There's nobody guarding the building, but everything's locked. I can't get to you guys from outside.”

  “Okay... what about the police station?”

  “You mean the Sheriff's office,” she corrected him. “No idea. I couldn't really get close. There were too many people and they were carrying stuff...” She thought about it for a second. “Maybe bricks? I think they're building something inside.”

  “Like what?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” She simply shrugged and a scowl flashed over Chris' face before disappearing in an instant. He must have been used to working with all sorts of people in incredible situations, but I had to guess that none of them had been starved fourteen year old girls. We were already asking a lot by letting her crawl outside the building and find out what was going on. The truth was that it had been her idea in the first place. She had taken the initiative to risk everything by herself. For her age and what she had probably already gone through, we couldn't ask for any more.

  He crossed his arms and let it go, his new respect funneling patience for the girl in front of him. “Listen, you did a good job, but you really need to be careful out there.”

  She rolled her eyes with words muffled by half-eaten pie. “No shit.”

  I left the lively conversation and walked over to our only set of windows to press my cheek against the glass for a better a look. They had unsurprisingly been barred shut from the outside, but at just the right angle I could see distant shadows moving back and forth from the side of our building. It had been the same view at night, with the harsh glow of portable work lights powered by the distant hum of gas generators. Something was keeping the town busy enough day and night to use what was left of their gas. If what Ellie was saying was true, then it wouldn't be such a stretch to assume that someone was in a rush to finish some sort of construction. But of what? And why?

  I watched as my breath smeared itself across the pane in front of me. Something like that was predictable, but not what was going on around me. I had an uneasy feeling ever since I woke up in Camp Maxwell that I attributed to the world imploding on itself and what I would have to look forward to, but now I couldn't shake the feeling that I was wrong. Like the sources of the shadows at the end of block outside, there had to be something that was just out of my sight.

  “What else did you see?” I turned back to look at Ellie, her face square as she thought about it. “You grew up here, right? You know this place better than anyone else.” I struggled to come up with another thought that she could build on. I should have known that I had reached too far. “What about your family?”

  She began to slow down, almost as if an invisible screen had been placed in front of her face. She tried to say something but quickly changed her mind.

  Shit.

  She kept her eyes on the floor as Chris shot me a quick glance. He didn't say anything, and he was better at it than me for not rubbing it in my face. He was already coming to my rescue. “What ab
out the school? Tess mentioned it while you were gone.” That was putting it nicely. I had practically blown up in his face over the idea of it.

  She kept glancing up at us nervously and she became the apprehensive little girl again that I had met back in the classroom. Yet just like before, she was still determined to see it through. “I mean, I didn't really have a choice, but I think a lot of the parents sent their kids there because they thought it would be safer than letting us run around like we used to, you know?”

  “Is it?”

  She frowned. “Look, I know what it looks like, but they didn't even do anything. Seriously.”

  Not yet.

  Ryan had made it clear what he had in store for me and so had the man in the theater, and I was sure that it would extend to the rest of the girls in due time. They must have been trying to keep it a secret for as long as possible. The townspeople might have been growing desperate, but they could never be persuaded to use their own women and children as bargaining chips to get what they needed. They would have to be forced. It would cause an uproar. In the meantime, anyone as young as Ellie could still be taught in secret that what they were doing would be for the benefit of everyone else. They might be gullible enough to think that by selling themselves they would be helping their families back home.

  A worst case scenario would mean that the public found out, but at that point it wouldn't matter. Ryan and the others would already be a step ahead of the rest. It was a cold, calculated decision and the exploitation of others for self-benefit at its best. The kids must have been sent to the school so they could be under armed guard. They were supposed to be safe, but Ryan and the others had a different plan in mind. I checked to see Chris's worried face and saw that he must have been thinking the same thing.

  Ellie fought to get our attention back. “I wasn't even planning on staying, but someone got hurt outside of town. They wouldn't tell us what happened and that's when they started acting weird.”

  Was that what I had felt? I took the lead. “Weird how?”

  “They separated us. They kept asking if we knew any Seds or what we knew about Paranormals. They kept trying to teach us that Seds were behind everything bad that happened.”

  I crossed my arms. It was exactly what I had felt from Ellie before. I let the question out carefully. “And you don't believe them?”

  She shrugged, unsure. “I knew someone. She was... different, but...” She shook her head. “I think it's B.S. They're just trying to find someone to blame.”

  I met Chris' gaze and had to keep myself from smiling. So Ellie was smarter than the vast majority of the world combined, though she wasn't the only one not to fall for Knox's blame game. I was glad that she had seen it so easily.

  She pushed her empty pie tin away from her, now a look of disgust on her face more than anything else. “They started making us wear jewelry, necklaces, rings, crap like that.” She starting pressing her nails into the tips of her fingers and her eyes grew distant, bouncing between unseen memories. It made me notice a silver ring on her thumb that was almost too big and I wondered who it had belonged to. “I thought they were starting to dress us up for...whatever... and that's when they wouldn't let anyone leave.”

  Shit...

  I could barely hear Chris start to encourage her for being brave. My head was stuck in the past. Ryan had practically accused of me being a Sed and had me touch a necklace back at the camp. What if he had been doing the same thing in Arrino? Was it possible to root out Paranormals that way? If he had seen my fit, he probably would have taken it as a sign. If any of the other girls had reacted the same way in front of him, what would he have done?

  My question was cut short as the sound of someone outside our door immediately brought us all to our feet. Ellie motioned for the air-duct, but Chris quickly turned her around and guided her towards the kitchen. He caught my attention with a hiss and nodded towards the couch. I pushed the piece of furniture back along the wall and bounced back to attention just as the door swung open with Ryan in the center. He looked at us for a moment in brief uncertainty.

  He still had a gun strapped to his hip, but was otherwise alone. He stepped inside and went back to his regular dick self when he prodded the couch I had just moved and Chris had been using as a makeshift bed. “You kids having fun yet?”

  I let it slide. It took everything I had not to look behind me and make sure Ellie wasn't standing out in the open, so I tried to focus on what I would normally think to say if she wasn't hiding just a few feet from us. I had enjoyed talking with Chris. It also didn’t hurt that he could have killed a bear in the middle of the night if one had happened to find me. I’d fallen asleep feeling safer than I would have otherwise. I felt like I could trust him. I didn’t think even Ryan could ruin that buzz. I looked him square in the eye. Nothing was better than his absence.

  “Always.”

  He squinted at that and continued to hobble across the floor towards Chris's folded arms in front of the kitchen.

  I looked down to see the metal grating from the wall just peek out from underneath the couch. I carefully pushed it out of sight with my toes. “How’s the leg?”

  He stopped abruptly, catching on pretty quick. I thought I might have even seen him smile. “Ah, you know what they say. Stab a guy in the leg one day, he watches you get raped the next, but I’m sure you know how that goes...”

  Chris cleared his throat. If he had been a part of the mean green war machine upholding standards and fighting for everything that I enjoyed in life, then Ryan would have been the personal embodiment of everything that he’d been trying to destroy, but he couldn’t do anything so long as he had that gun. We outnumbered Ryan three to one and we'd have the element of surprise, but the odds of it ending poorly were still too high for me.

  I let it go before anyone decided to try. “What do you want?”

  Ryan kept glaring at Chris before finally coming back down to me. “We’re going for a walk.”

  “And what if I say no?”

  He found that amusing. “You’re assuming you have a choice.”

  It made me feel like an idiot. Food, water, and shelter felt good, but I never should have gotten comfortable as long as he was still alive.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ryan. “We’ll be back.” He held the door open for me and took the chance to ridicule Chris. “Try not to invade another country while we’re gone, soldier boy.”

  I left before he said anything else and watched from outside as he locked Chris inside our room. There were five other doors in the hallway that I was sure lead to the same thing and it made me sick to think that we weren’t the only ones being held prisoner. Ryan didn’t give me much time. We were already on the move.

  I couldn't help but notice the lack of security this time around. “What, no blindfold?”

  He looked over his shoulder and seemed annoyed. It made me feel a little better. “Kyle thinks you won’t try anything stupid after your last stunt.”

  It took me a second to figure out who he was talking about. The only Kyle I knew had used to work at the mall and sell video games and hit on all the girls that had happened to walk into his store, but I assumed he must have been referring to the man at the school with the taser. I liked the first one better.

  “So, you’re pretty much his bitch, right?” Comparatively speaking, anything I could do to piss Ryan off would be a small drop in the bucket, but I wanted to see him crack. Maybe if he knew how much of a dick he was, he’d kill himself and I’d be able to run away.

  “I would’ve left you in the truck.” He held open another door and gave me his familiar sadistic grin, then gestured for me to move. It made me think it would probably be better to come up with a different plan.

  After what I had learned from Ellie and Chris, it didn’t take me long to decide that Arrino was a strange place. It was big enough for a two story apartment building, yet further out in the middle of the sticks that I half expected a piece of tumbleweed to roll down the
street next to us. It probably didn’t help that it was still early in the morning and hardly anyone else was outside. There weren’t any cars on the road thanks to the lack of gas and some of the buildings had obviously gone without care. It felt lonely, but the thought of being alone with Ryan forever gave me hope to think just the opposite.

  We came up to a two-story house after a few minutes and he knocked on the door. I would have been upset that he didn’t gave me the same courtesy, but after a few seconds he went ahead and walked inside. It was a little cluttered, but otherwise better than where I had been staying.

  “Martha?”

  I was surprised to hear Ryan say her name, but she didn’t make an appearance.

  He prodded me forward and closed the door behind us before going further on inside. “Stay here.”

  I held my tongue and soon caught myself staring at a speck of dust that floated down in front of my face. I thought about making a run for it until it led me to notice a picture frame on the mantle just a few feet away. I picked it up and ran my finger over the smooth glass, leaving a grainy wake like a towel dragged across a beach.

  A younger girl, probably just a few years older than me, stared back through the cloudy texture with a smile on her face. She looked remarkably familiar, but I couldn’t place where I might have seen her before. I wondered if she had gotten out of town. Hopefully she had done better than I had, wherever she had gone. And if she wasn’t alive anymore, then at least she wouldn’t have to worry about it.

  “Jessica...”

  I put the frame down as Martha peeped in from around the corner.

  “It’s good to see you.” She gave me a hug and cupped the side of my face with the palm of a hand.

  I was a little embarrassed, but the truth was that we had gone through a lot together in a short amount of time. It was too bad none of it was any good.

  She peered over my shoulder, her face already much colder. “Why are you here?”