The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash (12 page)

I pressed my nails into the palm of my hands, fully expecting the worst to hit at any moment, but it never came. I looked down at my chest to see the lifeless heart rest against my skin. I tapped it, and still nothing.

Was it broken?

I barely paid Martha any attention as she rummaged through a backpack on the floor. “Do you remember when Amanda found you unconscious back at the camp?”

I didn’t want to, but it would have been impossible to forget.

“You were still moving and muttering something in your sleep, almost like you were having a bad dream. It’s pretty rare, but it's not unheard of for someone to develop hallucinations or paranoia when they’ve been put into a stressful situation.”

Her words stung and left a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn’t know what to say to that. It wouldn’t look good if I had to argue that I wasn’t crazy, to blame it on the necklace that I was wearing peacefully right in front of her, but before I could get anything out, she grabbed my wrist and put a small plastic bag in the palm of my hand.

I looked down to see six small white pills inside. “What's this supposed to—”

“They’re strong depressants. One at a time to take the edge off. Take 'em all and you'd be down after a few minutes. You wouldn’t feel a thing.”

I stared at her, taken back. The thought she proposed had actually never crossed my mind until then.

“Or,” she said, making me hold my breath, “It would have to be three per person. Depending on their size, they might not go out, but it’ll definitely slow them down. You’d have a fighting chance.”

Sound couldn’t find its way out of my mouth. That was the last thing I had expected to hear from her. A younger version would probably have been devious enough to kill everyone in a square mile with her bare hands alone.

“You’re too good for this, Jessica. In my line of work, I’ve had to see the good ones come and go over the years, but you shouldn’t have to deal with this.” She grabbed my hand and folded my fingers over the small baggie. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

I closed my mouth and nodded as my jaw began to work again. I was going to have a lot to think about. She had given me two different ways out and they both fit in my pocket.

“Amanda’s all I have left...” Her voice trailed off, but the thoughts came across loud and clear. “Just promise me you’ll take care of her if you ever get the chance.”

Roughly hashed out escape plans immediately flung themselves across my mind. There would be so many things to think about and even then the odds would always be stacked against me. Part of me wanted to refuse, to yell at her and tell her she was crazy to think that I could ever save someone else, much less myself, but I didn’t.

“I promise.”

She squeezed my hand one last time before Ryan came back. I couldn’t tell if either of them had said anything after that as I got up to meet him in the doorway, completely oblivious to the sounds around me.

I followed Ryan back through town with neither of us saying anything. I thought there might have been more people out that might have noticed I was new or maybe even recognized me back from the camp, but Ryan wouldn’t let me near any of them, much less have an opportunity to talk. He was my personal body guard and whatever he wanted was the law of the land. It was strange, yet I almost preferred being non-autonomous. I was too busy thinking about what Martha had said to even warn other people of what was really going on.

I told Chris what had happened as soon as I got back to the apartment and showed him the plastic bag in question. Ellie had already left to look into more places that he had wanted her to visit, so I watched him stare at the pills on a table as we sat on either side. I could just make out the faint sounds of construction from outside start up again when he looked back up at me.               “You're sure you wanna do this?”

“I’m not gonna kill myself.” It seemed like a harder question to answer before, but I made up my mind as soon as I saw him. If I had been alone for the past few weeks, it might have been a different story, but we were both alive. We had the chance to do something with that, so it made sense to me that we might as well try. I had also promised Sarah that I would keep going no matter what.

“Good.” Chris was a trained fighter. Surrender probably wasn’t even a part of his vocabulary. “Then we’re gonna need a plan.”

I started to get uncomfortable. The last plan I was a part of didn’t end so well. There was also the other part I conveniently forgot to tell him. We would have to go get Amanda.

He shook his head as soon as I told him. “No way. This is already gonna be risky enough as it is. We can’t spend more time that we don’t have looking for someone when we don’t even know where to start. We'll have to come back for her.”

I bit my lip. He made it sound worse when he put it like that. “Then we wait. We'll ask around. We'll spend an extra day or two or until we find her.”

“That’s assuming we get the time and the chance. What if they make you leave tomorrow morning? Even if Ryan took you somewhere again tomorrow, you would only see whatever he’d let you. You said it yourself that he wouldn’t let you out of his sight.”

He was right again. I should have known better than to argue with him. He must of had years of experience planning out missions days, weeks, or even months ahead of time. He probably had it boiled down to a science by now.

I wasn’t ready to give up on Amanda just yet, but we also had a bigger problem. We had drugs we could use to knock someone out, but we didn’t exactly have five star hotel quality room service. People came when they wanted to, sparingly, kept their distance, and for short periods of time. At that rate, our best chance would be to spike one of their drinks on New Year’s Eve.

Chris seemed past that part already. “We’re gonna need supplies: water, food, weapons. The sheriff's office is just a few blocks from here. It would be the easiest place to hold all of that in one area and there would be at least enough for the two of us. The less stops we have to make, the better.”

“Who exactly do you plan on shooting that we need to raid an entire armory?”

He looked at me like I had kicked a baby. “Who
don’t
you plan on shooting?”

I didn’t want to say that was typical. I just wished that it wasn’t the first thing he automatically thought of. I also didn’t mean to make a face. It was a bad habit and I needed him on my side, but I was sure he still noticed.

“Look,” he said. “It’s not this place I’m worried about, it’s everything after.”

And what about Amanda after?

“Then how come we get to go and the eleven year old girl doesn't? What do you think is gonna happen to her?”

“The world's a shit show, Tess. Life's unfair and we have to deal with it. She has to learn to deal with it. We can't risk looking for her when we barely even know if we can make it out ourselves.”

I kept my mouth shut and crossed my arms. He must have took it as a sign to keep talking.

“I don't know, okay? You tell me. Why the hell is life so unfair?” He held for a moment, his demeanor more curious now than anything else. “And since when do you care about what happens to anyone?”

“I DON'T.”

He stared at me in silence, surprised maybe.

I had mostly kept to myself the whole day we had spent together. I could have come across as self-centered, disinterested or annoyed. I wasn't sure. Now I wanted to keep going. I wanted to explain, but I didn't know how. The words had just come out like a reflex.

Amanda, Martha, Jeremy, Nick, Murphy, Chris, Ellie...

I could remember all their names when I had no damn good reason to. I
did
care
.
I cared about what happened to the people around me. It was just easier not to. If I pretended they didn't exist, I wouldn't have to worry about them. If I ran away with Chris and forgot I ever met anyone else, I wouldn't have to think about leaving them behind. I was already feeling guilty before I even did anything and I couldn't understand why I had trouble recognizing it. Since when the hell had it become the norm to not give a shit about anyone but yourself?

I was about to bring it up until we heard a knock come from the hall.

I crammed the pills back into my pocket and we both stared at the door. When nothing happened, I thought maybe Martha had gotten a hold of Amanda and she’d been able to find us. All our problems would have been solved.

I should have known better.

I stood up and watched with wide eyes as Chris slowly made his way towards the peephole when the door flew open abruptly and narrowly missed his face.

A line of men immediately burst into our room and tackled him to the ground.

I tried to move when one of them pushed me against the wall, put a taser to the side of my neck and set it off. My jaw clenched and I shut my eyes in automatic misery as pain crashed itself through every single instance of my body. I was lucky I didn’t bite my tongue off.

When I opened my eyes again, Chris’s head was flush with the floor, his face red with exertion. It had taken four other men to take him down and even then they had trouble keeping him there, but even his super powers weren’t enough for their combined weight. I only looked at the familiar taser in front of my face and willed it to death. I was starting to piece the reasons for the random violence together when the man from the school walked in and stopped in front of us.

“Imagine my surprise,” said Kyle, “When I woke up this fine morning to hear one of our prettiest little girls has been blabbering all across town about the
bad men at school
.”

Ellie.

Her little face flashed in front of my eyes until Kyle reached down for a button on the front of my chest and rolled it in between his fingers.

“It didn’t quite work out so well.”

The meaning slowly sank in and filled my limbs with dread. I couldn't move.

              He gave me a curt smile and let go. “So let me explain this to you in a way that you might understand...” He held up a taser in one hand and a hammer in the other. “One of these leaves a mark, the other one doesn’t.” He balanced them. “Well, more or less.” He smiled. “I mean, we can't have our women walking around with black eyes, now can we?”

My insides instantaneously dropped five feet. I knew where this was going and I just wanted to get it over with, but I really didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it.

“You really don’t leave me with another choice.” He kept his eyes on me, then turned to the men on top of Chris. “Get him up.”

“NO!” I tried to claw at him but was held back. I never stopped. Never. I screamed the entire time, crying and cursing him out with every single insult I could possibly imagine, but I never made it past the arms pressing my back against the wall. I watched, helpless, as they picked Chris up and forced him to put his hand on the table in front of me.

They tasered him, beat him, and it still took a fifth person to get him to obey, but they made it happen.

Kyle raised the hammer above his head and waited for me to look. He wanted me to see. It was all for me, after all. “We lost a good one today. Who knows what that means for us down the road, right?” He thought about it. “I think five for one is more than fair.”

The hammer came down on Chris’s hand and his legs buckled underneath the impact. He fought harder than I would have ever been able to, but his face still withered in agony. The hammer came down again, splintering more bones and forcing them to move throughout his hand. The hits were random. They weren’t meant for each finger. They just went wherever Kyle wanted.

The hammer punctured his hand a third time, then a fourth. By the time Chris made it to the last one, he was screaming. They threw him to the ground and he grabbed the base of his wrist as it shook uncontrollably. I couldn’t even guess what kind of pain he was in.

“Chris...” I dropped down next to him as Kyle and the others left without saying another word. They didn’t have to. They had gotten their message across. I struggled to pull out the tiny bag of pills as soon as the door closed, but Chris pushed them away.

“No.”

“What? Come on, you’re—”

“Stop.”

I tried to hold his arm steady in my hands, but he pushed me off.

“Save 'em.”

I couldn’t believe him.

He couldn’t stop shaking. He swore, clenched his teeth and looked up at the ceiling.

I didn’t know what else to do. “How can I help? Chris, tell me what to do.”

He stared at a former functioning part of himself for a few seconds before forcing himself to think. “Water. Get a bowl. Anything I can use as a wrap.”

I ran into the kitchen without hesitating and threw open the cupboards. I got the bowl and sat it down, then froze at the jar of honey in front of my eyes and stared at the amber. For some reason I thought back to what Zach had done for me. He said sugar was supposed to help fight off bacteria and even help with the pain. I wasn’t sure if it had worked for me, but I thought it had. If I could get Chris to at least feel like he was in less pain, I’d be more than willing to try it.

I walked back into the room and kneeled down in front of him, gently guiding his broken hand over the bowl in my lap. Zach had used sugar packets, but honey was sweet. If anything, it would probably work even better. I lifted the jar over his hand and started to tip it.