The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash (13 page)

“I think this should help, but it’s gonna hurt.” I felt like an ass telling him the obvious, especially after what I’d just put him through.

“Just do it.”

I turned the jar over and watched as the honey dripped down and slowly submerged his hand like glue. He winced and the shaking seemed to lighten up a little. Maybe it was just weighed down. I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t going to let go. I wanted to do everything I could to help and hoped that just being there might make it a little easier for him. He wouldn't have to go through it alone.

After that, neither of us said anything for a while.

His arm would twitch every few seconds, but the shaking died down to an occasional jitter.

I focused on his breathing and the rest of my thoughts veered off automatically. I couldn’t help but think about Zach again. I noticed that after everything that had happened recently, thoughts of him never had a chance of making it past my head. I began to drift towards Sarah like I’d been growing accustomed to and it made me wonder about Amanda. She was so young but would have to face everything else in the new world like the rest of us.

Horror movies had always used to scare me when I had been her age. I’d end up having trouble falling asleep and had to find a way to deal with them, but by the time I had grown up, it didn’t matter. Most things didn’t really scare me anymore. I would always find something to be nervous about, but the kind of fear that I had felt before—how could that even compare to witnessing the death of your own mother? Even if Amanda had been too young to remember it, she'd be old enough to remember Camp Maxwell. Experiences were vital. They became ingrained for the rest of your life, for good or for worse. In all likelihood, she probably wouldn’t end up living a normal life. Horror movies would be the least of her problems.

Ellie and all the other girls would have to face it too, if they weren’t gone already. They had watched a stranger almost murder someone and all they could do was cry. That was the innocence they’d almost lost, that I'd almost taken away from them. Now it didn't even matter. They’d lose it anyway if Ryan got what he wanted. Growing up a sex slave would push them to their very limits. It would be impossible for that kind of trauma not to bleed over into the rest of their lives.

The cuts on my fingers began to burn, but I refused to give in and move them. It made me think back to the woman I had taken hostage in the school. She had felt so guilty and sad because of what she had done, but Kyle didn’t. He wouldn't. Even when Ryan had been halfway beaten to death at Camp Maxwell, he hadn't cared. He had known what he had been doing and he hadn't given a single fuck who paid the price.

And then there was me.

My family, Zach, Scott, Simon, Mike, Jeremy, and now Chris were paying the price because of me.

I said Chris' name, softly, almost without realizing it, and he looked up at me.

“What is it?”

I stared at the scruff on his face and thought about what he had gone through and what I had done. It already happened once before, so I knew I could do it again, but the next time would be different. It had to be. I’d make sure of it. Martha wanted me to save a life and I couldn’t think of any other way, so I let the words fall out evenly as I met his eyes. “Teach me how to kill.”

I sat back and looked at my handiwork, fiddling with the pieces of wallpaper that had managed to get stuck underneath my fingernails. I had etched a few words into the wall behind the couch in the apartment. I wasn’t sure why, but it had felt better to do it with my bare hands. It was personal and nobody would know to look for it. Eventually someone might find it after rearranging the room, but even then it’d be our little secret. After some time it would fade away just like everything else. Nobody would be around to see it. It would be lost, just like me.

I could hear Chris’s footsteps stop close behind, the floorboards gently groaning underneath his weight. I didn’t have to turn my head to know he was looking at it. I was sure he understood it was just an outlet, a therapy used to pass the time while we waited. Soldiers were artists, musicians, and writers too. He knew not to ask what it meant.

“You ready?”

No.

I took one last good breath and stared at the prose on the wall. It was a note for Ellie in case she was still alive and came back to an empty room, but really it was my own personal goodbye. Knowing that, it really should have been left back at the camp. There would be an empty tent there with a lifeless body inside. It belonged there.

I stood up and moved the couch back against the wall, only pausing to look at Chris’s bandaged hand. We had improvised with some towels from the bathroom, but numerous red blotches had continued to bleed through. Neither of us were physically functioning at our best, though it became apparent that we’d only get worse if we stayed put. It would be sloppy and over rushed, yet we had to leave. Postponing it would only make the escape more difficult for the both of us. After a day of continuous prepping with limited contact from the outside world, we were as ready as we were ever going to be.

Chris held out what was left of my cell phone. The battery was dead, but he had taken off the back cover and split it in half, sharpening each piece on the table until they each had a fine point prime for breaking skin. “Don’t miss.”

I grabbed a hold of my plastic shiv and admired the tenacity from which it was born, hours spent relentlessly mulling it into the correct shape closely followed by a crash course on how to murder someone with a sharp object. Even with Chris’s bum arm, I still had trouble keeping up and had fumbled through the motions. He had taught me to aim for one of three targets if I had the time: the carotid artery in the neck, the iliac artery just above the waist, and the femoral artery in the thigh. It would be better to make most of each swing, but I’d still hit flesh and inflict some kind of damage even if I missed my target. That was his thought process. It was how he worked.

For him, it was good, better, or best. There was no perfect situation or reaction to an event, only a series of actions that could be taken in a set amount of time that would lead to the most desired possible outcome. Thinking like that in the middle of the night and forcing my body to keep moving had been daunting, but I had tried to focus as much as I could. It was obvious I had a lot to learn from him. We had looked at the options available to us and decided on what would give us our best chance of survival. The first hurdle was getting out of the room, which he left up to me.

I was nervous, but I figured if
NASA
could fix a rocket ship with duct tape and a pair of socks in the seventies, then I should have been able to pick a lock with two halves of a toothbrush. I pulled out the two highly technologically advanced pieces of equipment from my back pocket and got to work on the door while Chris kept an eye out through the peephole. Ideally we would have switched places, but in an ideal world his dominant hand wouldn’t have been broken by a hammer.

He had taught me the basics and pressured me to practice the moves over and over again. Silence and patience were key. If anyone heard us, things could get interesting really quick.

Just a few minutes in however, he apparently thought it would be good enough to risk it. “There a problem?” He kept his face glued to the lens in front of us as I wiped a wet strand of hair from my face with the back of my hand.

“No.”

It was a “simple” matter of applying torsion to the lock cylinder with one hand while pushing each interior pin down until they locked into place with the other. Each half of the toothbrush was filed down to less than half its original width and one was carefully bent so that it could turn the lock. The problem was that we only had the one. If it broke, the next highest rated alternative would be to kick the door down or set our room on fire and hope someone came before we burned to death, though waiting for anyone to come on their own time was pretty far down on Chris' list, and for good reason.

We were also running out of daylight. Chris wanted to get out during the magic hour—the precious few minutes of the day when the sun was close to the horizon, throwing off blended colors and casting shadows so that the human eye had trouble making out distinct shapes from far away. Therefore, the less people could see and shoot at us accurately while we still had enough light to see where we were going, the higher our chance of making it out alive.

I let that thought teeter at the edge of my mind as I anxiously watched the last bit of sun dip underneath my hands. If I took any longer, I was going to start fumbling in the dark.

Chris was already on top of it. “We should try again tomorrow.”

“No.” I swore at the piece of metal as I finally felt the last pin settle and turned the lock.

Chris quickly cracked the door open and checked the hallway as I opened up my plastic baggie to look at the small white pills. He had actually managed to convince me to take them as a part of his backup plan.

The idea was that if we weren't out of town by the time the depressants started to kick in, then something would have gone terribly wrong. Hopefully, it would prompt someone to take me to Martha so that she could treat me before I died. That was assuming that she would even go along with their demands. There was always the chance that she would realize I’d taken the pills and she would just let me go. Regardless, I wouldn’t end up back in the apartment. The whole point was that if I woke up, it would be somewhere else and I could plan accordingly. The entire process would restart. At least, that was the theory.

Chris pulled his head back in from the hallway and nodded his head, the sign for the all clear.

I threw the pills in my mouth and forced the lump past my dry throat. I couldn’t help but think that if I got shot and bled to death, then at least it wouldn’t be as painful. The idea was barely comforting as we quickly went out into the hallway. We wouldn’t have time to check the other doors. It was my job to show Chris how to get out. He would handle the rest.

I glanced in both directions and had to fight to urge to cower away from the sudden darkness. Without the ambient lighting that I had neglected to notice before, each path seemed like a looming pit contrasted with specks of white from the lighter doors on either side. Both ways, I couldn't see the end. Something could have been waiting for me. I felt like we were about to be swallowed whole. I forced myself to tap Chris on the shoulder and pointed him in the correct direction.  We didn't have time to be afraid.

We started to make our way down the narrow corridor with sharp plastic in hand. I made sure to check behind us every ten steps or so to make sure no one got the jump on us like he had instructed me to do. The rhythmic counting also had the unforeseen side effect of giving me something else to focus on. I was exhausted from the lack of sleep and felt high strung, as if I could snap from the tension at a moment’s notice, but the gravity of the situation made my arms and legs feel lighter than air.

It didn’t take us long to reach the end of the first floor since nobody had bothered to guard the building. As soon as I saw the doors, it took everything in me to stop myself from bolting out into the open until I fell over. Chris had been adamant that we walk as soon as we got out. No matter how secluded we had felt over the past few days, we had still been locked up in the middle of a town. The longer we could go undetected, the better.

I stuffed my plastic shiv into my front pocket and held my breath until we stepped out into the open. The town was exactly as I had remembered—empty. It still caught me off guard.

Chris ushered me along.

I pressed my thumb against the plastic knife in my front pocket as we walked down the sidewalk. It used to keep my phone safe, but now I planned on jamming it into someone’s throat. I could still remember when I had gone to the mall with my mom to pick out our phone cases together. I never would have thought that I’d find myself wondering if the pink one with small cat faces would kill someone faster. It was the only thing I could think about to keep from going insane as a man walked by us, seemingly unalarmed.

Chris muttered underneath his breath as soon as he passed. “Third one on the left.” 

My eyes snapped onto the building a few hundred feet still in front of us. The sheriff's office was closer than we had planned. I couldn't remember if that was good or bad. Dead or alive, it was what Ellie had managed to scout out for us. And now we would be leaving without her. I could feel my stomach turn over itself and wondered if Chris could hear it.

“Just do it exactly like we practiced. Follow my lead and remember to make eye contact.”

I nodded, not sure if he wanted me to answer as we walked up the first few steps, and I held the door open for him. That was when someone shouted at us from behind.

“Jessica!”

I froze as my heart skipped a beat, my body barely functioning enough to turn to see Martinez run up to us as Chris caught the door and walked inside without me.

“What are you doing out here?” asked Martinez. “Where’s Ryan?”

Thoughts fumbled in my head and I struggled to find something, when suddenly, all the years of experience I had gained lying to my parents rushed back into existence as an instantaneously constructed bullshit excuse flew itself out of my mouth. “He wanted to show me the inside of a cell.”

Martinez raised his chin. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

Please don’t call my bluff.

He took a step forward and I readied myself to run. He pointed a finger at me. “Whatever. You tell that asshole to put his shit back where it belongs. I'm tired of cleaning up after him.” He paused and eyed me for a moment. “And tell me if he’s not giving you enough food. I’ll make sure you get his share.”

I let my eyes run over the scene in front of me, fully expecting Ryan to pop out of nowhere and catch us in the act. I figured it must have been a trap, but I kept going. “Yeah—sure.”

“Don’t get caught outside in the dark. I'm serious.” He frowned and turned away while I waved him off, my heart beating itself out of my chest.

“Let’s go.”

I jumped again as Chris grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into the station. I wouldn’t get any time to think about what had just happened as he dragged me down a hallway and up to a single man behind a counter. His hat edged the side of his head as he looked up at us, his face tired and worn.

“What can I do you for?” He looked at me, then back at Chris, heavy bags underneath his eyes. He didn’t recognize us.

I was glad Chris had wanted to take the lead. I didn't think I would have been able to keep my voice steady for long enough. “Ryan sent us to move some supplies to the school. Says he wants it more secure or somethin'. I dunno. We'll just—”

“Hold on a sec.” The man threw a clipboard up onto the desk. “Ain't nothin' movin' around here without it getting signed out first. Y'all should know that already.” It took me a moment to realize what he was saying through his lengthened drawl, but when I finally did, I realized it was nothing good. In fact, it was far from it.

He reached into his pocket and I saw a handgun holstered at his side. “Okay.” He clicked a pen to life. “Names?” He looked at the two of us in turn again and my body completely froze.

Chris pointed down at the clipboard, as calm as can be. “That's us—right there.”

What?

The man looked down only to find Chris lean over the counter and jam his plastic knife into his throat, pulling it up into the soft spot underneath his jaw. A small torrent of blood immediately began to flow down his neck with every pulse of his veins and onto Chris’s arms before hitting the desk. His scream was silenced as he drowned from the inside out.

I couldn't move. I just watched as Chris jumped the counter, keeping the pressure on the man’s throat, until he pushed him down onto the ground and out of site.

Chris sprang back up with his gun, a set of keys, and covered up to his elbows in blood. “Tess—knife.”

Shit.

My hands shook and fumbled over each other as I finally remembered to pull my own knife out before following him into the next room.

Chris quickly cleared the area with a pistol in his left hand, pointing it at a row of guns locked up behind a cage. “Right there.”

He tossed me the set of keys and I unlocked the holy grail of weaponry in front of us. My eyes automatically fell on Zach’s M4 assault rifle, the familiar blue ribbon still tied around the butt stock. I grabbed it as Chris reached for his own gun and started stuffing boxes of bullets into a duffle bag.