The Chosen (Contender #1) - SAMPLE OF NOW PUBLISHED BOOK!

Chapter 9

Place: Unknown 

Date: Unknown 

Year: Unknown 

"It's a prank," Cade said. "It has to be." "What do you mean?" Finch growled. Cade closed his eyes, trying to remember.

"The Ninth Legion supposedly went missing in the early second century, probably somewhere in modern-day Scotland," he said, thinking back to the long discussions he'd had with his father on the matter. "The theory goes that most of them were slaughtered in an ambush by the ancient Picts . . . who must be our tattooed friends in the ditch over there. It's one of the most famous historical mysteries ever."

"I've never heard of it," Scott said.

The others grunted in agreement.

"So you're saying this dead guy was a Roman soldier?" Eric asked.

"That's right," Cade replied. "Thousands of men, struck from the admittedly sketchy Roman record, but nobody could ever figure out why." 

"And then they ended up here? Like us?" Jim wondered aloud. 

He earned himself a glare from Finch, as if even talking to Cade was a sin.

"Or that's what they want us to think . . . whoever they are," Cade muttered. "But it couldn't be. For one thing, this was almost two thousand years ago. Jesus was crucified less than a century before these guys were around—even a perfectly mummified body would be in way worse shape than those corpses are."

"So, what? This all some sort of joke?" Finch asked.

"I can't think of any other reason they'd put this here." "Just to see how we'd react?" Finch said with a sneer.

"You're saying someone's gonna pop up with a TV camera and shout 'surprise, we kidnapped you and flew you to a desert, and pitted you against some monsters that tore a bunch of you to ribbons, then we put some obscure historical prank here after you almost died of heat stroke, isn't that hilarious?' That's what you're saying?"

Cade shook his head.

"Maybe they were reenactors? Like they do with the Civil War?" he ventured. It seemed thin, but it was the best explanation he had.

"I don't give a crap what that thing says," Gobbler said. "All I know is I'm starving and there's nothing to eat but two- year-old, or two-thousand-year-old, dead dudes. We need to move on."

Finch stood and picked up an amphora, and his two side- kicks did the same.

"I say we keep heading in the same direction," Finch said. "You can follow us if you want." 

He glanced at Eric as he spoke, ignoring Cade, Scott, and Yoshi. Then the trio left, lugging the water behind them.

Again, the others looked to Eric.

"He's right," Eric said grudgingly. "We should take as much water as we can carry—hopefully we'll come across more soon enough. I don't think whoever brought us here wants us to die of thirst in the middle of the desert. They have other plans."

"Sure," Scott said, picking up one of the containers. "They'd much rather watch us get eaten by a mutant. Makes for better entertainment."

✧✧✧

They saw the clouds before they saw the mountains. The white mantle stood out in the empty sky, hanging above a dark stain on the horizon. That stain soon became a jagged sierra of the same brown rock as before, but these seemed to stretch for miles and miles around.