Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (25 page)

“I think it’s over this way,” Penn said leading us through the soggy field. We all followed close behind him. It didn’t take long for my feet to feel as though they weighed a hundred pounds.

There were so many scattered wooden boards sprinkled randomly across the ground that I was almost positive tornadoes must have come through this area. Some of the trees still stood, but many were bent, broken and partially uprooted. Everything that hadn’t grown new leaves was dead or rotting. There was too much water and not enough sunlight which made it hard for the trees. Everything was struggling, not just people.

The sky was hidden from view by an endless blanket of gray clouds. We were surrounded by heavy air that was filled with a musty scent that mingled with the woodsy aroma of the evergreens. Why anyone would want to stay in this area was beyond me. Although we hadn’t seen any people in over forty-eight hours, maybe no one lived in this miserable area. Except for the HOME army. What were they even doing here in this drenched, desolate area?

“Get down!” Penn whispered in a panic-stricken voice.

We all crouched low to the ground as if we were hiding, albeit a really terrible effort at hiding. Penn motioned towards a partial wall that was still standing and we all followed him staying low to the ground. We looked like little baby ducklings following their mother.

“What’s going on?” I asked when we were all grouped together.

“That’s the camp… over there.” He said putting his head down as he tried to catch his breath. I was fairly certain he wasn’t out of breath from walking. He was out of breath because he was thinking about what HOME would do to him if they knew he betrayed them, and got their hands on him. If they caught him, they would kill him. I was sure of it. Penn was sure of it. It was crazy he was taking such a risk coming this close for us. He didn’t have to. He could have run away at any point and left us to figure it out on our own. But here he was. Standing with us, leading us, and risking his life.

I put my hand on his shoulder hoping it might help somehow. He nodded and breathed as if my little gesture had given him permission to take in oxygen again.

“What do we do now?” Owen said with his hand hovering at the back of his waistband.

“I’m not sure… give me a second,” Penn said as he looked through an opening between the slats of the puffed up waterlogged wood we were crouched behind. I straightened my spine slightly so I could look out to see the camp.

We were still far enough away that I couldn’t really make out the faces of anyone. I did think that if I saw Ryan, even at this distance, I’d know it. There were people walking around in small groups wearing red uniforms. They were all carrying guns. No one at the base seemed to be acting abnormally, so I felt pretty confident no one had spotted us snooping around the outskirts of their camp.

“Do you see him?” Penn asked. Owen, Dean and Sienna tried to take a careful look too.

“No… I don’t think so. No….” I closed my eyes and opened them again hoping he’d appear. But he hadn’t.

The area was filled with tents that surrounded a larger, newly constructed building in the center. There were ladders and scaffolding still in place, but for the most part the building looked finished. To the far right of the camp there was what appeared to be a pit that was filled with something. I blinked and squinted my eyes to see if I could make out what it was.

I let out a tiny gasp before I was able to slap my hand down over my mouth. Then I gagged.

“What is it?” Dean asked looking around Penn to see me better. Sienna looked concerned and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Over there… to the right,” I said gesturing with my head and swallowing hard. It was a pile of those dog-beasts. They were all brutally slaughtered and stacked in an unruly, gory heap. Just one on top of the other, all with a ghastly frozen expression on their faces. There had to be at least thirty dogs on the pile, maybe more.

Sienna looked away when she noticed the heap of dead dogs. The boys on the other hand seemed far less bothered by it. And none of us were really surprised.

I tried to swallow down the gross taste in my mouth while I kept my eyes on the camp. Every so often my eyes would drift back to that pile and I’d have to look at my feet. The pile of dogs was like a car crash— you just had to look even though you knew you might regret doing so.

“At least they are doing one good thing,” Owen muttered.

“The dogs?” Penn whispered raising an eyebrow. “Yeah, I hate those things.”

“Yeah, I do too,” he replied with a nod. “What are they going to do with all of them?”

Penn looked back at the camp and shook his head, “Not sure… burn them maybe?”

And as if they were answering our question, they dragged a dog-beast over to a pole near the pile of dead dogs. It looked like a clothesline pole but with a row of big hooks at the top. Two of the army men hoisted up the dog, and a third one stepped out from seemingly nowhere and slit the dog’s throat. Blood poured out into a trough below. Then the army men walked away as if nothing had happened while the dog-beast gushed blood into the trough.

“Eww!” Sienna said, her voice muffled by her hand.

“Why would they do that?” I wondered out loud holding the back of my hand in front of my nose as if I could smell what had just happened.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Penn said in a hushed voice as he shifted his weight. He spun around as if he had heard something. I watched him scan the area behind us. When he seemed satisfied that nothing was there he looked up towards the sky and sucked in air as if he was drowning.

He seemed as though he was past the point of being distressed. And maybe I should have been too, but all I could really think about was finally finding Ryan. I squinted as I looked over the army men walking around the camp.

“You see him?” Penn asked again.

I shook my head. No matter how much I wanted him to appear, he didn’t. Maybe if we had been closer. Or a different angle. Or maybe he wasn’t even here. “Is there another camp?”

“Not sure… I don’t think so. At least not around here,” Penn said looking as if he was sorting through his mind for all the information HOME had ever given him. Information they either gave him intentionally or maybe something they slipped up on and gave him accidentally. Maybe he thought he could have missed something that would help us.

Even with all the skills he seemed to possess, hiding his fear of dying at the hands of HOME wasn’t one of them. I thought he was the type that could just walk into the camp and start fighting them all. Disarming one to shoot another, or flipping one around to use him as a shield. Fighting and moving like a machine. But I guess he didn’t have the same confidence in his abilities that my imagination did. If he had once been that way, he wasn’t any more.

“I think we should go. Maybe find a place to stay for the night, and check back tomorrow,” Penn said running his hands through his hair while he tried to look in every direction at once.

“Are we just going to come back and check every day?” I said unable to hide my frown. I knew that it would only be temporary. We couldn’t keep coming back every day indefinitely. It would only last until we agreed to give up, or we were caught.

Penn shook his head and looked back through the crack. “I don’t think it’ll take that long to check if he’s here. But I need more time and it’ll be dark soon.”

“And if he’s not here?” Sienna asked.

“Then we are back to where we started,” I said peering out towards the camp. “And with no way to find out where he could be. If he’s not here, he could be anywhere.”

“Or dead,” Penn said, and we all turned to glare at him at nearly the same time. He pretended not to notice. It was a good possibility that he was right, but none of us wanted to think about it. Not yet. Right now we had this tiny bit of hope to cling to. I had suspected he’d been killed since we first left him at that stupid infirmary. I probably shouldn’t have allowed myself to be hopeful, but it was too late. The file at HOME had made me a little optimistic, but it was still possible, even if unlikely, that the file could have been planted for me to find.

Owen nudged Dean, and nodded at him. I knew that meant they were ready to leave, but I didn’t know how long they’d be willing to return, day after day. At some point we, rather I, would just have to accept it was over and let it go.

“Let’s go,” Owen said in his authoritative tone.

Penn put his hand on my arm and I nodded. He would have probably waited the rest of the day and all of the night if I would have asked him to. At least I thought he would have. I think he still felt as though he owed me something. But I didn’t care. I didn’t think he owed me anything, I just wished he would have been honest with me from the start. But even as far as that’s concerned I didn’t know if I could blame him. HOME had probably brainwashed him, and he thought he was doing the right thing. He seemed to regret it and if that was his true self, well then maybe we could get past it all… in time.

As the others started walking away towards a line of broken up dead trees further behind us, I found that I couldn’t move my feet. I just kept looking out the crack in the partial wooden wall. Afraid that the second I looked away he’d walk out, and I’d miss him.

“Where are you Ryan?” I whispered when I thought no one was around.

“I know it sucks, but we have to go,” Dean said gently guiding me away from our little hiding spot. I cranked my neck back towards the camp trying to get one last glimpse. All I needed was a sign that Ryan was there.

But there wasn’t anything. No sign. No giant neon arrow in the sky pointing downward next to the bright flashing letters that spelled out Ryan’s name.

We made our way back towards the car in silence. I think everyone was a little disappointed that we hadn’t seen him. It was depressing but at least we hadn’t been caught or killed.

Then a gunshot rang out.

Chapter twenty-two.

Dean pushed me down against the ground and laid down on top of me. The wetness quickly started to soak into my clothing. I raised my head and saw Sienna, Owen and Penn down on the ground several yards away.

Then there was another shot. My body shook as it rang out. Dean pressed himself down on top of me so hard I thought I might sink right into the dirt. It felt as though he was trying to make us disappear into the ground.

When I got enough courage, I lifted my head to look around to see if I could tell what was going on or where the shots were coming from. But I didn’t see anything or anyone around. I half expected a group of HOME army men running up and surrounding us, but they didn’t come.

“What’s going on?” I said so quietly I wasn’t sure if Dean had even heard me.

Then there was a third shot, but this time before my body could even react, I heard the dog screech, and then whimper. I felt a little relieved they were hunting dogs instead of us, but not much. Because if they stumbled upon us, they’d hunt us too.

“Holy crap, they are close,” Dean said putting his hand on top of my head as if it was another layer of protection. The others seemed to be just as concerned about their distance based on their panicked expressions. I didn’t know if it would be better to lay still or run towards the car.

I heard two distinct voices. They were close enough I could hear them conversing, but not close enough that I could make out what they were talking about. Out of the corner of my eye I saw them walking through the area we had just been hiding in to look out over their camp. If we hadn’t moved when we did, they would have been shooting at us instead of a random dog-beast. They turned towards the camp dragging three dead dog-beasts tied together behind them.

There seemed to be a lot more dogs in this area than there were back in Alaska. At least there were three fewer to sneak up on us while we were lying vulnerable on the ground. We were also lucky the two guys from HOME were walking back to the camp instead of looking for more dogs behind the tree line.

We stayed there for a long while until Penn gestured for us to move. Everyone jumped up to follow him since we were all desperate to get out of there as fast as we possibly could. It was good we had our guns with us, but if we had to shoot at anyone or anything to save ourselves, it would alert the whole HOME base. It wouldn’t take long for them to realize that someone other than their own people were out here. They’d come running, and then it would be all over for us. Unless they would just think it was their own people shooting at dogs. But I didn’t want to find out what would happen.

The soggy ground tried to suck us down with each step as we made our way back to the car. I didn’t even know how it was possible I was still moving my legs. They felt as though they were made of some kind of heavy metal all the way up to my hips.

When the broken billboard that the car was hiding behind came into view I felt like cheering. Even if it would have been a good idea to let out my excitement, which it wasn’t, I didn’t even have the energy to do it. I had to save every last drop to power my legs that were threatening to quit.

Once we were all inside the car I let out a big sigh and started aggressively massaging my legs. I took in a solid breath as if the air in the car was somehow refreshing. But there hadn’t been anything I could have done to stop the groan that came out as I exhaled. The frustration of coming back to the car without having found Ryan set in.