Read Online The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash by J.S. Carter - Free Book Online

Without the clutter of smaller things to distract us, the stakes would be higher. There would be a chance that someone could end up dying because of me.
    I took a breath.
    What if we were both wrong?
     

               Paranormality
    I rubbed my eyes with the balls of my hands and reactively swore, quickly remembering that one of them was still bruised.
    “Nice sailor mouth, captain.” Nick dropped his MRE on the ground and took a seat next to me.
    I acknowledged that with a yawn and wiped my eyes carefully this time. As exhausted as I was, I still had a hard time falling asleep the night before. I was sure it had something to do with my impending freedom. Or lack thereof.
    “You’re one to talk,” said Jeremy. He had decided to find my tent early in the morning and bring me breakfast, but I still wasn’t sure if he had planned on bringing anyone else.
    “Well, fuck me.” Nick tore through his bag. “Fuck you.”
    “What’s the problem, sailor?”
    “They forgot to put a spoon in my goddam bag.”
    Jeremy licked his spoon clean and handed it to him. “You better not have syphilis.”
    “I’ll never tell.” Nick took it without a second thought and I looked down at my own bag.
    Jeremy noticed I had barely touched it. “You should eat. You’ll need the energy.”
    Why? For all the sex I’ll be dishing out?
    I stirred my mush. “You’re sure this is food?”
    “Well,” said Nick, “Food is a large category of things, but I’m not really sure if this belongs in there.” He shoveled another spoonful into his mouth. “What you’re looking at is your standard three thousand calorie expired military issue MRE, or Meal Ready to Eat.”
    “Is it any good?”
    He shrugged. “If it’s good enough for some poor bastard invading someone else’s country, then it’s good enough for you.”
    I figured there must have been some sort of convoluted point to his argument, so I took a bite. It wasn’t great, but I hadn’t noticed just how hungry I’d gotten until someone had shoved food in front of my face. It wasn’t until Scott found us that I actually started to wake for the first time that morning.
    He stopped at the foot of the entrance and held out two buckets in front of us, only to stare in silence while the swinging handles rattled against the plastic.
    Jeremy was the only one brave enough to ask, “What?”
    Two minutes later and halfway across the camp, the four us stood huddled together and we stared down into a ditch that would never have its contents described ever again.
    Nick turned to the single armed guard next to us and back again. “So let me see if I got this right...” He put a hand on the man's shoulder. “You literally expect us to clean up your shit for you?”
    He wiped Nick's grip off and replaced it with another bucket. “Yup.”
    “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