Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (14 page)

Dean let out a frustrated roar. I could tell he was conflicted, but it was too big of a risk to his sister, friends and himself to wait any longer. Slade turned and started speed walking directly towards all the commotion with one of his arms up in the air. The big spot light from the helicopter lit him up so brightly he appeared to glow. Someone yelled something. They didn’t even bother to ask him any questions before the pops of gunshots filled the air.

Chapter twelve.

I watched as Slade’s body shook and jolted with each bullet that hit him. He took a few weak steps forward dragging his feet behind him before he stumbled and fell to the ground into a lifeless pile. I was about to scream, but a hand clamped down over my mouth before any sound could escape.

“Shh,” Owen whispered as he shook his head at me with wide pleading eyes. He turned back to watch the action unfolding before us, but he kept his hand on my mouth. His other arm was wrapped around my waist as if he was holding me in my spot. It was like he was afraid I might just run out there and try to save Slade. Or scream at them for what they had done. I wouldn’t of course, but that was exactly what I felt like doing.

I couldn’t figure out why they had shot him. He was walking back to the HOME base and didn’t appear to be suspicious. At least not to me. This was someone they trusted to guard their doors, their buildings… but they hadn’t hesitated to shoot him on sight. If he had done something wrong, he wouldn’t walk calmly back towards them. Well, I guess technically he had done something wrong, but it wasn’t like they knew that and it definitely wasn’t something worth killing him over. Or maybe they had known what he had done.

Two men stepped forward and grabbed Slade’s limp arms and carelessly dragged him away. Was he dead? He had to be dead. Slade’s head flopped forward and his feet bounced against the bumpy terrain. I was, at that moment, one-hundred percent sure he was dead.

I heard footsteps drawing near at the same moment Owen’s head turned towards the noises. They were looking for us. He let go of my waist and pointed with two fingers in the direction he wanted us to go. With how quickly he moved his hand, it was clear he wanted us to move fast. Owen slowly removed his hand from my mouth and guided me forward.

The helicopter above started sweeping the area with its spotlight. Since they had killed Slade they must have known he had betrayed them. I wondered if that would also mean they knew who they were looking for. Perhaps they had spotted us on a camera, or already knew we were missing from our rooms. They couldn’t have known yet could they? But it didn’t matter if they knew who they were looking for since they would, sooner rather than later, if we couldn’t get away. The spotlight from the helicopter only got closer and closer.

We kept running as fast as our feet would go in the nearly complete darkness. The only real light we had was from the moon, or when the helicopter happened to randomly shine the light on what was in front of us, just missing us.

I heard a snap of a branch followed by a thud. “Oww, ugh!” Sienna moaned.

I turned around to help but Penn was already picking her up off of the ground as if she was as light as a feather.

“Are you OK?” he asked as he carried her over his shoulder.

“I think so,” she said, and he lowered her back to the ground. There would be no way he’d be able to keep up if he had to carry her the whole way. Because she wasn’t really as light as a feather.

Right as the light from the helicopter was about to sweep over us, the engine got louder for a minute, then it turned back towards HOME. I almost passed out on the ground both from exhaustion and relief. But of course I couldn’t really afford to take a break. I had no way of knowing if people were still trying to track us down on foot. I had no idea how we had even managed to evade the helicopter as long as we did. We had gotten lucky. But I didn’t know if the helicopter would come back, or maybe they’d have vehicles driving out this way searching for us. We couldn’t afford to stop moving.

“I need to catch my breath,” Sienna said gasping for air.

“Can’t,” Owen said looking as though he wasn’t even out of breath. “We can slow down but we have to keep moving.”

“Where do we go? What do we do?” Sienna asked between breaths.

I sucked in some of the cool night air and tried to release it out through my nose slowly. When my breathing was almost back to normal I looked around to make sure everyone was still along. “I have a place we can go,” I said briefly glancing at Penn.

“What kind of place?” Dean asked.

“Is it safe?” Owen asked almost at the same time.

“It’s a little cabin, deep in the woods, south from here I think. It should be safe. I mean I had been hiding out there ever since Slade sent me away.”

“What do you mean Slade sent you away?” Sienna asked raising her eyebrow.

I explained what had happened with Slade at HOME and decided to leave out all the parts about him having been across the street from us when the tornadoes and hail were destroying everything. After he had just sacrificed himself for us, I didn’t think now was the best time for the whole story. I should still be angry with him for separating me from my friends, but he did just die so that we could get away. If he had known it was me though, this probably would have all played out differently.

“Anyway,” Penn said quickly changing the subject. He could tell talking about Slade was making me fidgety. “The cabin is small but we have supplies there. We can go there, get our bearings and come up with a plan.”

Dean narrowed his eyes at him and turned to me almost as if he was refusing to listen to Penn.

“If you don’t already know, this is Penn. He’s been with me for a long time now. He’s helped me and he’s been nothing but good to me,” I said smiling at him.

Penn flashed me a half-smile in return, “Truth is, she saved my life.”

“Which way? Let’s pick up the pace,” Owen said interrupting, it wasn’t that he didn’t care to hear the story he just didn’t want to be out in the open any longer. And he was right, we needed to move before they found us. If they didn’t already know who they were looking for, they would soon.

We wandered around aimlessly through the night going generally south of where we had been. I’m sure we were all tired and hungry but both Penn and I had been disoriented after running from HOME. We must have gotten off course. When the sun started to rise in the distance it helped light the way and we quickly realized where we were. Penn led the way, and I followed with Dean at my side. He brushed his shoulder against mine and I fought the urge to take his hand.

Even though he looked somewhat different with his shaggy hair and thinner body, he was still extremely gorgeous. But I shouldn’t have even been thinking about that. I needed to focus on what was important… getting safe. And finding Ryan.

When we finally approached the cabin Dean, Sienna and Owen thought it was amusing to see the SUV parked off to the side. Maybe they were just happy to see something familiar. I walked up to the front door of the cabin and checked to make sure my little intruder detector was still in place. It was still there, intact, so I knew no one had entered. Or if they had, they’d replaced it, but that seemed unlikely.

I retrieved the house key from where I had hidden it in the SUV. They all watched me and I held up the keys as if to explain.

“Come on in,” I said with a smile as I unlocked the door. It didn’t even feel real to have them here. I worried that any minute I’d wake up in the bed upstairs alone and it would have all been a dream.

“This is where you’ve been staying?” Dean asked as he looked around.

“Yep,” I said feeling oddly proud of myself. It was nice to share this little part of the life I had while I had been away from them. “I’d show you around, but you’ve pretty much seen the whole place. Kitchen’s back there and there’s just one bedroom upstairs.”

Dean raised his eyebrow at me and glanced at Penn. I shook my head and looked at the sofa. He didn’t need to know about the sleeping arrangements at HOME. Here, Penn had stayed on the sofa.

The little cabin felt crowded with everyone inside, but it was a good crowded. It felt right having everyone here. This is how it should have been all along. The only thing that was wrong about it, was that Ryan was missing.

“I’m impressed,” Owen said opening the kitchen cabinets.

“Me too,” Dean said wrapping his arm around my shoulders for a quick half-hug. Sienna smiled brightly but shot a quick secret glance at Penn. She blushed when he looked back at her for a millisecond.

“But we are still too close to HOME,” Owen said as he checked the few windows and the front door again, making sure it was all locked. “They’ll come searching once they find out exactly who they are looking for.”

“They may already know,” I said stepping towards the fireplace.

Since having found the file on Ryan I allowed myself to think that maybe he was still alive. I didn’t want to get too far from HOME. I mean, I did, of course I did, but I couldn’t leave until we got Ryan back. If he was still in the area, we needed to stay close.

Even though I felt nervous about the whole situation, I still couldn’t remove the big smile that was glued to my face as I watched everyone looking around my little cabin. “Please eat, or rest or whatever. We can start a fire. It gets pretty cold in here without one.”

Dean put his lips near my ear and whispered, “We should have a look at those copies. Just us.” But I knew what he was really saying was that he didn’t want Penn included. I was far too anxious to look over the papers to care who saw them, but I was too tired to argue about it.

“Make yourselves comfortable, I have something I want to show Dean. We’ll be back.” Owen nodded as if he somehow understood. Dean followed as I led the way upstairs.

“Smooth,” he teased.

“I actually do have something I want to show you,” I said opening the door to the bedroom. The room was chilly, but it was exactly how I had left it. Next to the window was his bow. “Ta-da!” I said waving my hands around as if I was showcasing the bow.

“Awesome! You used it?” he asked looking it over and I worried that maybe I had broken something or scratched it.

“If you can call it that. I tried to teach myself to shoot. Did I break it?”

“No, I was just curious. It’s perfect. I should teach you how to use it the right way sometime,” he said clutching it as if it had been something important to him. But it was probably just a reminder of everything we had all gone through together.

I released my breath as I took the papers out of my pocket and tossed them on the bed. I sat down next to them and unfolded them. The pages were in the same order they had been inside the file. It was a good thing that Dean had put the original file back. This way they wouldn’t be overly suspicious of Ryan if he really was still alive… not any more than they already were anyway. If they suspected him of something who knew what they might do to him? I tried not to think about that.

Dean sat down next to me. After I finished looking over each piece carefully I passed it over to him to analyze. Now that I could concentrate as I looked them over, it seemed as though Ryan had been deployed to another location after he had left the infirmary. For some reason they kept him away from the main base, but maybe it had just been to keep him away from Dean, Owen and Sienna. But why? I assumed it had been documented somewhere that we had all arrived together. Why they would have wanted to keep us apart I didn’t know.

Listed on another sheet of paper were the names of his commanding officers and other recruits that were off on whatever mission he was on. It didn’t say what they were doing. All I knew was that he was out there, and he wasn’t alone. He could be far away from HOME or he could already be back there from whatever it was they had him doing. Or maybe he was somewhere in between. I had no idea and no way of knowing. But what I did know was that it seemed as though he was alive. He had survived a dog-beast bite with the help of HOME.

“Sounds like he might be in Seattle, or is heading there… or is there,” I said as I skimmed over one of the papers.

“Tell me about this Penn guy,” Dean said after he set down the piece of paper he had been looking over.

“There really isn’t a whole lot to tell,” I said as I handed him the last sheet of paper we had copied.

He took it but set it down on the bed as he waited for me to give him details. “Knowing you, something must have happened for you to even let him in the house. So tell me, what happened that made you open the door for him.”

“I was looking out that window when I saw him wandering around by the stream out back. Then he looked at the house and came around to the front. He knocked, and then collapsed against the front door. He was weak and dying so I helped him.” I looked at my hands and then my dirty fingernails. I didn’t even want to see the look on his face.

“Hmm,” Dean said as he picked up the paper. I watched as his eyes scanned the paper, then he put it back down with the rest of the file. He lightly tapped the papers on the bed to straighten them.

“If you would have seen him… he was starving to death… just skin and bones. He was far too weak—”