Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (13 page)

I told Dean that Penn would be coming with us. He didn’t seem happy about it, but he didn’t say he couldn’t either. I was trusting them about Slade, so I guess maybe he was returning the favor about Penn, even if he hadn’t wanted to. It would take them time to get to know Penn, but once they did they’d like him. I was almost sure of it.

When darkness rolled around Dean, Owen, Sienna, Penn and I hid in the shadows near the administrative office. I wondered why they didn’t lock down the main building, but perhaps it was because they didn’t need to. Maybe they were always watching on the cameras and already knew we were outside somewhere. We stayed hidden in the shadows just in case they were watching. They wouldn’t know exactly where we were until we were back in our rooms. Or so I hoped.

We watched Slade stand there with the other guard. They didn’t speak to one another, just stared straight ahead with that bland expression everyone wore. Slade shifted back and forth on his feet a lot and even to me he looked nervous. I wondered why he was doing this for us. What would he get out of this? I tried not to think about it because I was glad he was.

Since it would just be Dean and I going inside, the plan was for Owen, Sienna and Penn to wait out in the shadows until we returned. We thought it would be too many people if we all went inside, and we wouldn’t be anywhere near as discreet as we needed to be. I also figured that the real reason Owen was staying behind was because they didn’t trust Penn alone with Sienna. Not that he would have ever done anything of course, but they didn’t know that.

Owen threw a small rock as hard as he could and hit the side of a distant building. It made a much smaller noise than we had anticipated but Slade had it covered. Luckily he had heard the signal and alerted his co-guard.

I couldn’t hear what he was saying to him, but they started walking away from the main entrance. “This is it,” Dean whispered. “Ready?”

I nodded, and quickly followed Dean through the shadows towards the office building. He led the way up the front stairs as his head darted side to side. I figured he was looking for cameras. I looked too but didn’t see any. Perhaps that’s why they posted guards here, but then again just because we didn’t see anything while we were running inside, didn’t mean they weren’t there.

If there were cameras we could at least hope that no one would be watching at this exact moment. Maybe by the time they saw the footage it wouldn’t matter. But if they had a control room located somewhere in this base, there could be someone sitting there watching cameras twenty-four hours a day. That was their job. Maybe there was more than one person, after all this was a big place. If they came after us in a few minutes, then we’d know the answer to that.

We walked down a dark hallway. My body felt stiff and I couldn’t believe how tense I was. My nerves were getting the better of me. I was afraid any minute someone would burst in and shoot us both in the head.

Neither of us knew where to go. There were offices in every direction and hallways leading every which way. My heart was going triple time. I felt overwhelmed by all the choices and limited time we had. I was tempted to suggest we abort our mission.

“Which way should we go?” I asked unable to hold back the panic from my voice. Thankfully Dean seemed relatively calm considering. He had a goal, and he was working toward achieving it.

“Look here,” he said and pointed at a sign that appeared to be some kind of directory. There was a map showing each floor, its layout, and where things were located. “Let’s try this first,” he said tapping on the words ‘Admissions Office.’

The admissions office was on the second floor. We located the stairs easily and ascended the stairs. We moved as fast as we could from door to door. “Here,” I said turning the knob aggressively, but it was locked.

“Shit… OK,” he said as he drove his shoulder into the door. The loud rattle of the door echoed down the empty hallway, but it didn’t budge.

“They are all going to be locked! We’re screwed!”

“Check that one,” he said nodding towards the door across the hallway while he continued to twist and jiggle the doorknob. I ran across and turned the knob. It opened. “What’s in there?”

“It’s an office,” I said with a shrug.

Dean got up and bolted inside. I watched him as he looked around the desk and opened drawers. I didn’t know what he was looking for but he grabbed a pen and a paper clip and ran back to the other door. He bent the paper clip and wiggled it around inside the lock. After several tries and what felt like hours he threw it down the hallway. The tiny
ping
noise seemed almost too loud as it hit the floor in the silent building.

Next he took the pen and removed the outside casing and set it down on the floor. He shoved the long, thin part that held the ink inside the little hole and moved it around carefully. I think we were both a little surprised when he twisted the knob back and forth and the door actually opened.

We went inside and closed the door behind us. We both moved around scanning anything we could, just hoping we would stumble upon a clue. Anything that could point us in the right direction. Dean started going through the desk, and I went through a file cabinet that was pushed up against the back wall.

“I think I found something,” I said slowly thumbing through some files. Dean was at my side in less than a second looking over my shoulder. I felt his quickened breaths against my skin. I could tell he didn’t think I was going fast enough, and I probably wasn’t. It was more important to do it right and not miss anything because we would never get an opportunity like this again.

“What are they?”

“Files…,” I said shaking my head back and forth, “each one with a different name on it.” I moved down to the next cabinet while Dean skimmed the ones I had already went through. The files in the next cabinet had the word infirmary printed on the label. My stomached turned as if I was suddenly too afraid to actually find out the answer. I was worried about what I would find. That it would confirm what I already suspected. That Ryan was dead.

I flipped through them carefully even though they were in alphabetical order by first name. There was one with the name Ryan on it and I froze. My body felt as though it was encased in ice. There were probably thousands of people named Ryan in the world but somehow I just knew this folder was his.

“Here,” I said unable to say anything more.

“What is it?”

I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. My finger wildly tapped on his name before I flipped the file open. I saw the typed words but I couldn’t make sense of them. Everything in that file became a jumbled mess of letters and numbers in front of my face. I blinked repeatedly before I could even make another attempt to make any sense of it. The first thing I saw was the word ‘deployed’ stamped on the inside of the front of the folder.

On the first sheet of paper, was an odd looking black and white photo of Ryan with the word ‘CLEANED’ stamped next to it. A photograph? HOME had everything. It was almost as if they had been prepared for the end of the world. Nothing was making any sense to me. With my nerves and the pressure, I just couldn’t concentrate. My eyes could barely focus on anything but the picture of Ryan that was staring back at me.

“What is going on?” I said mostly to myself.

“I don’t know.”

Dean grabbed the folder and made a copy using the copy machine that thankfully worked. Even though this place was powered by several giant windmills, it still seemed somehow wasteful to power a copy machine. But I guess I was glad they had.

“It looks like he’s in some kind of army or something,” Dean said as he folded the copied papers into a neat bundle and handed them to me. “OK, I think we should get out of here,” he said closing Ryan’s folder and stuffing it neatly back inside the file cabinet.

“They are going to know someone was in here,” I said looking at how obvious it would be. We had moved things around without taking as much care as we should have to keep things precisely as they had been.

“Yes, yes they will. But let’s at least make it so they don’t know what we were looking for.”

I nodded as Dean slowly opened the door to make sure the coast was clear. But it wasn’t. I gasped and stepped backwards when I saw someone standing on the other side of the door. My heart didn’t slow when I realized it was Slade. He was breathing heavily as if he had been running. “There you are,” he said bending down to catch his breath for a second. He tilted his head when he saw me, but he didn’t seem to recognize me. It was more like he just didn’t know Dean would be bringing someone he hadn’t met along with him.

“What’s wrong?” Dean asked looking around like there was a mosquito buzzing around his head.

“My shift is over. You guys need to get out of here fast, but there is one small problem. We can’t leave out of the front exit. The new guards are there. Follow me,” he said as he headed down the hallway in the opposite direction we came from. Dean and I followed at his heels. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a trap, but Dean didn’t seem to have the same concern. Perhaps it was just the fact that a person I didn’t trust at all was supposedly leading us to safety. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d do something that would totally screw me over. The only chance I had of him actually helping me was if he really had no idea who I was. I didn’t really have any other options anyway.

We went down a staircase at the back of the building that was poorly lit with red glowing light bulbs. Slade pushed open a thick door at the bottom that led us outside. After about ten seconds an alarm sounded and not just in the office building. A campus-wide alarm. I could tell by the look on Slade’s face that he was just as surprised as Dean and I were. We ran towards where the others were impatiently waiting. Penn was nervously running his hands through his hair, and Owen and Sienna were wide-eyed and ready to freak out.

“Shit!” Dean said pounding his fist against his thigh.

“What do we do?” I asked as I tried to look in every direction at once.

Spotlights started popping on making a big
whomp
noise as they illuminated huge, circular areas of the grounds. The lit areas moved closer and closer to us as a new set of lights flickered on. Another siren closer to us started blaring. It was such a sharp noise I felt like my ears were being stabbed with a blade and might actually start to bleed.

“Follow me,” Slade said gesturing wildly. If we could have moved any faster, we would have. We all ran in a group follow closely behind Slade.

The lights seemed to be closing in on us quickly. We kept running, doing our best to stay in the shadows, but every time a new light turned on it felt like it was only inches away from lighting us up.

Penn caught up to me and squinted at me through the darkness. He looked me up and down, his eyebrows pinched together. “What happened? Are you OK?” he asked each word between a quick breath.

“I’m… fine,” I said already out of breath, but my body was being powered by pure unadulterated adrenaline.

“This way,” Slade said trying to be only loud enough so we could hear him over the siren. “I know a way out of here.”

Those were the sweetest words I had ever heard. I only hoped they were the truth. There was nothing I wanted more than to be out of this place once and for all. And it wasn’t just because at that moment we were being hunted. Whatever was going on here wasn’t anything I wanted to be a part of. I didn’t like leaving without Ryan but we had the file and I was pretty sure he wasn’t here. He had been deployed.

In the distance I could hear the sharp
whoosh-whoosh
noise of the helicopter making its way towards us. But we couldn’t go faster, we were all already running at top speed. We followed Slade right up to the closed fence.

“What gives?” I said shaking my head. My thoughts immediately assuming that he had intentionally trapped us. But he bent down and lifted up a corner of the fence that had been cut apart. We all took turns one by one crouching and then scooting through the small opening.

All of us were on the other side of the fence, all except for Slade. Did he really want to stay at HOME? I didn’t know exactly what it would mean for me if he came with us. What would I tell the others about how I hadn’t stopped to help him that very first day? It wouldn’t be like we would sit around the fire laughing and joking about that time I had left Slade behind to die.

“Come with us,” Dean said urgently. “Please, hurry!”

“I can’t. I need to stay here,” Slade said looking back towards the approaching lights and noises.

“It’s better out here Slade, I promise,” Dean said trying his best to convince him. Dean must not have known what Slade had experienced before he arrived at HOME. Maybe his time at HOME was better than what he’d been through on the outside.

“If you need to come back, you’ll want me here. Someone on the inside.” I could hear the people from HOME getting closer. Someone was shouting orders. We had to go, or we were all going to get caught.

“Please come with,” Dean begged.

Slade held up his palm and glanced behind him.

“Are you sure?”

“Go!” Slade shouted and waved us away.