Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (24 page)

“What do the squares mean?” I asked lifting my finger to touch the odd tattoo, but pulled it back quickly not wanting to touch something so closely linked to HOME.

“I don’t know.”

“The numbers?”

He shook his head. “All I know is that these are the tattoos they give all their spies. He’s seen us, and all he has to do when he wakes up is communicate with HOME. They’ll figure out it was us. And that I lied.”

The guy on the floor groaned and started rolling back and forth. His hand went up to touch the spot on his head where Penn had thumped him. Penn’s eyes widened, and he raised the gun but then lowered it again. I had never seen Penn so out of sorts. He always knew what to do, but seeing him now was unsettling.

“Ugh, who says I haven’t already contacted them,” the bad guy moaned and let out a half-chuckle half-cough noise.

“Look for some rope,” Penn said in a moment of clarity. He pointed his gun at the man and I knew without a doubt if the guy on the floor did anything Penn didn’t like, he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

Owen, Dean and Sienna ran off to look for some rope while I stayed with Penn. I hoped that if it came down to it, I could talk him out of doing anything crazy. At least until the others returned to physically stop him. I was worried that if I left him alone his paranoia would get the best of him and he’d shoot the guy the second we were gone just to make everything easier.

Penn looked at me quickly and then back down at the guy on the floor. “I think we have to kill him,” he said as if he was asking me for permission. Then with wide eyes and an authoritative voice he repeated himself, “I think we really have to kill him!”

I could see how conflicted he felt in his glassy, panicked eyes. But the bad guy on the floor, even after having heard his life was in danger, just kept a strange crooked smile plastered to his face. He actually looked pleased and content. He was completely and utterly insane. My guess was that he lost his mind at some point being a spy for HOME out in the wilderness where there wasn’t a single soul to spy on. He had lost his grip on reality. Or maybe he had already been crazy before even being released out into the wild by HOME.

“Knock, knock,” he said looking at me as the others came back into the room with a thin, twine-like piece of rope. It didn’t look very strong but Penn probably knew how to make it the strongest it could be. “Knock, knock?” the guy repeated, only this time he was looking at Sienna.

For a brief second Penn seemed far away, like he went back in time. It was like he wasn’t seeing the bad guy and Sienna, he was seeing the creep who had taken his sister. He was back in the past trying to defend his sister again.

“Put the gun down Penn,” I said cautiously. Owen and Dean were slowly closing in on him. I was deeply regretting letting him have the gun.

“No, stay back,” he said sounding disoriented. He shook his head as if he was trying to figure out what was going on. Despair and dread seemed to fill his eyes but washed away once he took a deep breath and allowed himself to come back to the present. Penn started tying the bad guy’s wrists together.

“Let’s just tie him up and lock him in here,” I said trying to get through to the rational part of Penn that I hoped was in there somewhere. “It’ll be days before he gets out.”

The bad guy laughed, “I’ll get out before you even pull out of the driveway,” he said and Penn pulled the rope even tighter. I hoped he didn’t have the same escaping skill-set Penn had.

“He’ll die of starvation,” Sienna said not sounding concerned, but more like she was trying to tell me he was going to die either way. I narrowed my eyes at her and she shrugged her shoulders. “What? It could happen.”

“Chicken and lobster, chicken and lobster,” the bad guy started singing. “I love chicken and lobster and choc-OHHH-late chips!”

I rolled my eyes. It was like he was living in his own little world. I was almost completely convinced this guy wouldn’t even remember what had happened five minutes after we left. He’d probably think he had tied himself up.

Penn started to lift him up but couldn’t do it on his own. Owen grabbed the crazy guy’s legs to help, and they tossed him on the bed. Penn checked the knots again to make sure moving him hadn’t loosened anything. “There, try to get out of that,” he said as if he were challenging him.

“Now can we go?” Owen said nodding towards the front door. “For all we know he has buddies on the way right now.”

“I do! Any minute now. I’m late… I’m late! No time to say hello goodbye, I’m late! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” he said doing an angry impersonation of the hare from Alice in Wonderland. Then he started laughing as if it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard.

Owen reached over to Penn and grabbed his arm, “Let’s go. We don’t want to stick around here any longer than we have to. Could make things worse.”

“It’s a mistake to keep him alive,” Penn said as Owen slipped the gun he was barely holding out of his hand and handed it to me. I knew Penn was more than capable of killing, but maybe he couldn’t do it if there wasn’t an immediate threat. Or maybe he could see this guy was absolutely nuts. For all we knew HOME had abandoned him.

“He’s crazy,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Penn said lowering his head as Owen guided him out of the room. Dean closed the door on the grinning crazy man and slipped the hook lock into place.

“Bye! Love you!” the crazy man hollered through the door.

“Sure about that?” I said glancing at Penn. “He’s so far gone.”

Penn just walked out of the house with his head down following behind Owen. He seemed like he was disappointed in himself and how he had handled the situation. It wasn’t up to his normal standard. “It’s probably an act,” he mumbled as he climbed into the car.

As we drove away, I felt a wave of guilt wash over me for leaving behind someone who was in need of help… tied up on the bed to die. Not to mention he was locked in that room. But it wasn’t like we could just drop him off at the nearest mental institution either. Maybe with his training he could get himself free. He could break the window or even unhook the lock as Penn had. He was a trained spy just like Penn. Who knew what skills he had. For all I knew he was already free and taking his clothes of in preparation for his running through the wilderness in naked celebration of his freedom.

I glanced back at Penn who was staring out the window with a blank expression. But I could tell he was bothered by something. It almost seemed as if he had lost something. Like he was leaving part of himself behind. Maybe it was the part of him he didn’t want any more— the part of him that HOME had created.

It felt really good to be back on the road. I think we were all ecstatic to get out of that house and away from the scary, crazy, wolf-mask-wearing lunatic.

Chapter twenty-one.

Time moved at a slow, agonizing pace as we drove down the mostly abandoned highway. I was sure that by the time we got to Seattle, Ryan would be gone. He would be off on his next mission and we’d never be able to find him. Once we got closer, it would all feel more real. But now it felt as though I was in some kind of dream, and that once we got there I’d wake up and realize none of this had ever happened. I’d be back in the cold, small cabin all alone.

Since we had gotten a little off schedule it would be a couple more days until we would reach Seattle. We still hadn’t discussed what our plan would be once we got there. Or even exactly how we’d go about finding him. Seattle was big. Or at least it had been before the storms, and we didn’t even know where Ryan was. Penn only said he had a general idea of where the camp was.

The further we drove south the less sunlight we saw. The air was thicker and damp, and the sky was a dark and dreary shade of gray. I felt like my mood had changed to match the weather. At least it wasn’t snowing or one hundred-plus degrees.

“We are going to need a plan,” I mumbled as I picked at a fingernail. Dean was driving and Owen’s head was tilted to the side. I wondered if Owen had fallen prey to highway hypnosis because the scenery hadn’t changed much in days. The only thing different was there had been far fewer houses. It was clear that once upon a time the storms had come through this area just as back in North Dakota. They had ravaged their destruction all over the land. At least in North America, but maybe the whole world. “We don’t even know where to go,” I said trying to mask my frustrations.

“I guess we’ll just go to Seattle,” Owen said with a yawn, “and figure it out from there.”

“He could be almost anywhere. Or long gone in the days that it has taken us to drive down here. Not to mention all the wasted time we spent at HOME. So much could have changed since then.” I swallowed a hard lump down and coughed, feeling as though I might choke.

“That time wasn’t wasted,” Sienna said softly. She cleared her throat, “If we hadn’t been there we wouldn’t even have this lead to go on.”

No one spoke. I didn’t know if everyone was thinking things over, or if no one had anything to say because they thought it wasn’t very likely that we would find him. Maybe they had already accepted defeat, and I just kept pushing and pushing, forcing them to continue fighting this losing battle.

“If he’s still at the camp I’m thinking of, we’ll find him,” Penn said in a less than confident voice. I raised my head up to see into his blue eyes that seemed to have lost a bit of their usual glow. Before I could have looked into his eyes forever and never be able to see the truth. There was something different now, but I wasn’t sure I could trust my gut just yet. Only time would tell. He had fooled me into believing him once before, he certainly could do it again if I let him. At least at this point, I fully believed he wasn’t going to kill us, or turn us in to HOME. They had shot down Slade for helping us, they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to Penn if they got the chance.

“Well then that’s where we’ll start,” Owen said without questioning Penn further. It’s not like we had any other leads to follow. Going with Penn to the camp in Seattle was really our only option. Other than giving up.

Penn put his hand on my shoulder, “I’ll help you find him. Just like I told you I would.”

“What about when you were informing HOME all about me? Was that helping me too?” I asked partially under my breath, but loud enough so I knew he’d hear me.

“Only because I thought I had to. I never really wanted to, but at the time I didn’t know you and I thought I was doing the right thing. At that point I hadn’t cared if I lived or died. I had lost everything.”

I tilted my head at him and squinted my eyes. “And you value your life now?” I asked.

“Yes… I do now. It’s just that I don’t feel as alone as I had before. When I lost everything… and everyone… I hadn’t cared about much. I know I have a lot to make up for but I will do everything in my power to regain your trust,” he said looking into my eyes. For a second I thought I saw that sparkle that had once been there. I wanted that little glint of light to mean he was telling the truth. “That goes for all of you.”

Dean was looking at me in the rear-view mirror. I figured he had been listening to the whole conversation. He was still suspicious of Penn even after he had saved him from the dog-beast. It would take more than that for Dean to ever trust Penn after what he had done. Dean didn’t like Penn, that was clear but I couldn’t tell how Penn felt about Dean, if he felt anything at all. At first I had thought he didn’t like him, but he had risked his life with that dog-beast to save Dean. It was something that they were able to ride together in the same car and we could all work together at finding Ryan.

“So you know where the camp is located?” I asked him looking into his eyes again.

“I think so… I mean, roughly.”

“What do we do once we get there?” Dean asked loudly.

Penn chuckled and twisted his fingers. “That’s what I haven’t figured out just yet. As long as HOME hasn’t contacted them about us… me… well then I might have an idea. If they have, then it’s going to be a lot more complicated.”

* * *

The next couple days passed by uneventfully. I sat up straight when we passed the still standing sign that indicated we were getting closer to Seattle. My heart started to race.

Penn started directing Owen which way he thought we should go. It was clear he wasn’t exactly sure where, and he didn’t want to be wrong and drive us right into the center of the camp. Everyone seemed anxious and extremely nervous, looking around as if they were waiting for something to go wrong any minute. The whole thing felt like an out-of-body experience, but all I could think about was that Ryan could be only a short distance away. We had come so far.

“Park over there,” Penn said pointing towards a big grouping of trees that surrounded a busted up billboard. It was hard to see at first because of the rain sprinkles on the windshield, but Owen turned the car where Penn indicated. “I think this is it. We should walk the rest of the way so we don’t draw any unwanted attention to ourselves.”

Owen pulled the car behind the sign and cut the engine. The windshield wipers squeaked to a stop in the middle of the window. When I stepped out of the car I sank down into the damp ground. It was like walking on piles of soaked overused sponges. It had rained every day for the last several days and today was not an exception. With how moist the ground was in this area I wondered if it had drizzled every day since the storms stopped.