Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (16 page)

I turned to leave the room and glanced back to make sure they hadn’t started circling one another ready to tear open the other’s throat. Dean motioned for me to go and Penn flashed me an overly innocent full-lipped smile. I grunted and closed the door behind me.

When I reached the first floor I found Owen sacked out on the chair with his leg hanging over the side. Sienna was sprawled out on the sofa. I folded up a blanket to make myself a little bed near the fireplace, but before I could lie down, I double checked to make sure the door was locked. I walked around checking all of the windows. When I got to the last window in the kitchen I pulled back the curtain and shivered as if I half expected to see someone staring back at me. My imagination and lack of sleep was getting the better of me. I closed the curtain quickly and tried to slow my racing heart. No one had been there but my body reacted as if someone had been.

I was beyond exhausted. We’d been up for more than twenty-four hours. My eyes and mind were playing tricks on me. I walked back over to my folded up blanket and tucked myself inside. Before I knew it I was sleeping on the hard floor with ease.

My dreams were a mish-mash of almost kissing Dean, Ryan’s face, people looking in through the windows and an endless barrage of tornadoes. Every time the tornadoes entered my dreams, I felt like I was in a half-sleep semi-aware state. I could tell my body was fighting to wake up, but I was just so tired my mind wouldn’t let me. But soon the dreams would shift back to Dean and my body would calm until the cycle started again.

* * *

When I woke up, Dean was sleeping on the sofa. I heard the clink-clanking noises of someone preparing something in the kitchen. I looked around the corner and saw Sienna moving around. The pot had been removed from the fireplace so I figured she was working on making herself a warm meal.

Penn wasn’t around and neither was Owen. I didn’t want to wake Dean to ask, so I climbed the stairs as softly as I could, trying not to let the old wooden steps creak underneath me. The door had been left open so when I was almost to the top I could see inside the bedroom. I saw that Penn had fallen asleep on the bed and Owen was pacing the room trying to look out both windows at the same time.

“Hi,” I whispered, “I was checking to see where everyone was.” I turned to go back downstairs not wanting to wake Penn up. We all had a lot of rest to catch up on.

“You know he’s done nothing but worry about you,” Owen said not bothering to turn to look at me.

“Sorry?”

“He’s been sick over it. Forgive me, I love Ryan, but Dean… he… I don’t know what to say about it. I probably should just mind my own business. You’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t want to hurt either of them,” I said looking at my hands that were still dirty from our travels last night.

“I know you don’t. There were nights… we were sure you and Ryan were both dead. Dean really struggled with that, well, we all did, but for him it was different, especially when it came to you. Our time on this earth is really, um, limited you know? Now more than ever before,” Owen said, and I was pretty sure I knew what he was trying to say. And part of me felt he was right.

“Yeah,” I said crossing my arms in front of me as if I was trying to hide something.

“Just think about it,” Owen said only glancing at me for a second. He didn’t want to keep his eyes away from the windows any longer than that.

“I will,” I said not bothering to tell him I already had been. It felt like my stomach was filled with a thousand bubbles because I shouldn’t have been thinking about anything other than finding Ryan, outrunning HOME, and surviving.

I nodded and walked back down the stairs letting his words sink in. I wondered if what Owen said meant that he didn’t think we’d find Ryan, or if it was just based on what he had seen Dean go through. He must have looked over the files while he was up there. Or maybe Dean had already talked to him about what we had found while I was sleeping. Even if he knew Ryan was likely alive he still practically outed Dean’s feelings for me. Little did he know I already knew how Dean felt. I hadn’t known exactly to what extent until just recently, but now that I did, it hadn’t really changed things as far as Ryan was concerned. I still felt the way I did about Ryan, only now something more had grown between Dean and I. I knew I couldn’t have them both. Eventually I’d have to make a choice. But, I’d worry about that when we confirmed that Ryan was actually still alive.

Maybe I was a horrible person for not deciding. And maybe I was stupid not picking one over the other because we could all die at any minute. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know what would happen when, or if, I saw Ryan again. It was all just so confusing. I hadn’t seen my friends in so long, and then finding out that Ryan may actually be alive, well, it was all extremely overwhelming.

It was still raining and storming, but it waxed and waned as the day went on. It seemed like it was coming to an end, and then we would have no choice but to leave. Whatever our exact plan was I didn’t know. Maybe we’d head south towards Seattle to see if we could find Ryan with his troop from HOME. We’d have to discuss our next move soon, but I was pretty sure we’d all agree that we would at least try to find him. If we didn’t have any leads, it would be different, but we had something to at least check out.

Even though being in this little cabin was nerve-wracking, we were lucky to have the warmth, water and food. But it was impossible to feel safe here, it was just too close to HOME. For all we knew they were closing in on us at this very moment, or maybe they already had us surrounded and were just waiting for the right time to attack.

After Dean and Penn woke up we decided to get together and try to figure out our plan. Dean stood in front of everyone and shared the information we had learned from inside the folder. He asked if anyone objected to going out to search for Ryan. Penn didn’t vote one way or the other because he said it wasn’t up to him.

“I’d still like to tag along with you guys no matter what you decide. I don’t have anywhere else to go. That is, if it’s OK with all of you?” he said looking at everyone but Dean.

“Of course you can,” I said with a smile. I could almost hear the internal groan vibrating through Dean’s body.

Everyone agreed that we needed to do what we could to find Ryan. I didn’t know what I’d do if we actually found him, but I knew we had to try. It was the right thing to do.

“It’s settled then. We leave tomorrow morning,” Owen said as he took over leading our mission. It was as if Dean was there to fill us in with the facts and then Owen took over as commanding officer once a plan was in place. “We’ll spend the rest of the day packing up the SUV with anything we might need. What do we have for weapons?”

I counted on my fingers as I spoke, “Dean’s bow, my gun, plus two more and some knives.” I didn’t look at Penn in case he’d question why I hadn’t told him about the extra guns.

“We are short two guns, one when Dean can use the bow but that’s really only good for distance stuff. The bow will be nearly useless in the SUV.” Owen folded his hands behind his back and stared at the wall behind us. I could tell he was thinking. “Ros keeps a gun and Dean and I take the other two. Sorry,” he said glancing at Penn. But he shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t care. Which he probably didn’t because if he needed a gun, he’d just take mine again, but they didn’t know about that. They also didn’t know he was some kind of competition winning gun savant either.

I retrieved the three guns out from where I had been hiding them and set them out in front of everyone. Dean grabbed one and passed the other to Owen. Sienna puffed out air and put her hands on her hips, but she didn’t verbally complain. I tucked mine into my waistband and felt a little better about having it back. It had been a mistake not to pass them out sooner, but I had been too tired to even think about it until now. The bow had been upstairs, so we hadn’t been completely defenseless. Plus, if we would have seen anyone coming, I could have hopefully retrieved them all in time.

I think Penn was accepting of the fact that he didn’t have a gun. He knew it would take time to build trust with everyone and he was OK with that. It wasn’t like anyone in this room was about to just hand over a gun to someone they didn’t really know. I was surprised when Owen handed him a knife. It wouldn’t surprise me if Penn had some kind of special training in the use of knives. Something told me the idea wasn’t too far-fetched.

We all made a list together of anything we could think of that we would need to pack in the SUV. After we finished the list, about an hour later, Owen and Dean took to stocking up the SUV together. I kept watch upstairs while Sienna and Penn gathered supplies and piled them at the door. Penn knew where everything was kept so it went a lot quicker than everyone thought it would.

I, however, was having trouble keeping my eyes open when Dean came upstairs. “We’re done packing. SUV’s loaded and locked up. We’ll be ready to go after everyone’s rested.”

“Good.” I flopped on the bed. I was so tired I couldn’t even get myself downstairs to eat anything although I knew I should have. Filling my stomach should have been right up there at the top of my to-do list.

“I’ll watch… you sleep.”

I sort of heard his words but I think I was already sleeping.

Chapter fourteen.

In the morning we drove down the wet, bumpy road heading away from my cabin and HOME, and hopefully towards Ryan. We were lucky the SUV started after it had sat unused for as long as it did. I pulled out my atlas and maps from the back pocket of the passenger seat. It felt like I was pulled back in time to when I last held them in my hands. I could feel Penn’s eyes on me, but he didn’t say anything.

I looked over the maps to see if I could determine the best route to take. It appeared as though the quickest way south was to take the same highway we had driven on to get here. The memories of all the stops we had taken along the way to get to Alaska flooded my mind. I let out a small sigh thinking back to how quickly Ryan’s condition had deteriorated and how helpless I had felt. And now he was out there, having potentially been cured? If only we had known for Seth.

“Another long drive ahead of us,” I said trying to cover up what my sigh had really been about.

“The further away from that stupid cult place, the better,” Owen said.

“Why do you call it a cult?” Penn asked carefully.

“Everyone just acted very strange. At least in my opinion.” Owen twisted back to look at him for a split second.

“Like robots,” Sienna added as if it had been something they talked about before.

“You guys did too,” I said because it was true they had seemed to fit right in with everyone else.

“Would you want to be the person different from everyone else? None of us did,” Dean said looking out the window at the scenery. “We didn’t take many risks, that is, before you showed up. We were always very careful. After they had taken Ryan, and then you, we knew something was wrong. When I asked where you were, they told me you changed your mind.”

I put my head down remembering how I had tried to get Dean’s attention. To get them to come back outside, and how I had felt when we had been pulled apart.

“It didn’t make sense because I heard you shouting for me before they pulled me back in,” Dean said shaking his head. “I couldn’t do anything. I tried.”

“All they would tell us is that you decided not to stay, but we knew you wouldn’t just leave us. We didn’t know what happened or if you were even alive,” Owen said as he tapped his thigh twice. “Like I said, cult!”

If you asked me, it was much worse than a cult. The people inside, if they fell in line, it was because they thought they were being taken care of. They thought being there was the best place for them. But they hadn’t realized what or who they had joined up with. HOME gave the illusion of freedom but there was no real freedom there. I wondered what they did with people who wanted to leave. Something told me they didn’t just let people walk away. I had been very lucky.

We had only been driving for maybe ten or fifteen minutes at most when the SUV made a slight jerk to the side. I looked at Owen to see if it was something he had done intentionally, but he looked just as surprised as the rest of us. Then the SUV made a clunking noise.

“What was that?” Sienna asked from the behind me. She was lying down with her arm resting over her eyes.

“Not sure,” Owen said looking out the windows and in the mirrors. He was probably trying to see if it was something in the road that had caused it or maybe even the road itself.

The car jerked again, harder this time and Owen turned the wheel to counter-steer. The SUV fishtailed slightly before the front end on the passenger side dropped down and scraped along the cement.

Owen tried steering, but it was useless. He had lost complete control of the SUV. We hit the gravel on the side of the road and the SUV started rolling onto its side when we hit the curve of the ditch. I shouted random noises as I watched the earth spin around in front of my eyes. All I could hear was the sound of windows breaking and metal crunching all around me. And yelling and screaming.