Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (27 page)

It took me a few minutes but when I realized I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw the sun, I burst out of the car and tilted my face to the sky. I was trying to soak up as much of it as I could before it disappeared. It brought me back to all of those hot days in what now felt like a past life. It was funny thinking back to how many times I had wished for clouds or a rainy day back then to cool things down. Now I wanted more sun. I opened my eyes and saw the gloomy clouds in the distance. The sun would be gone soon, and we’d be back to overcast skies before we knew it. I had been tempted to wake the others so they could enjoy it too.

“Ros,” Penn said just above a whisper from inside the car. “Ros, come back in the car.”

“No way in hell! I need this! Vitamin D or something… right?” I said as I slowly spun in a circle. The huge smile on my face was starting to make my cheeks hurt.

“Ros, please listen,” Penn said in a hushed yet pleading tone. “Get back in the car.”

I stopped spinning and looked into his eyes. The look on his face sent chills down my spine. No matter how warm the sun was on my skin, my bones were ice cold. He looked terrified. But I didn’t know why.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I shook my head at him. Just then Dean woke and turned towards me, I saw the look of fear on his face through his window as well. My body froze. Something was wrong. Both Dean and Penn saw something I didn’t.

“Slowly go for your gun,” Penn urged.

Dean looked as though he was reaching to open his door but Penn told him to stop. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I started to get an eerie feeling that someone was standing behind me. Penn’s words finally registered but I couldn’t make my hand move for my gun. Not even after I heard the growl erupt out of the dog-beast that I now knew was right behind me. It felt like everything started to go in slow motion. This was probably when my life was supposed to be flashing in front of my eyes but instead what I saw was my short, diseased future. Right up until the minute I would take my final breath.

I shook my head side to side to communicate with Penn that I couldn’t get my gun. That I couldn’t move my arms or my legs. I wasn’t even completely sure if my head had moved. Now I had to rely on my bulging eyes to convey my messages of fear.

There was another growl. It sounded closer. Too close. And I was sure I could hear its paws crunching the gravel as it stalked me. I wanted to look. I wanted to see what was behind me, but then I heard them.

More growls. More crunching. Different tones and pitches, and one after another. There wasn’t just one dog, there were others. More than I could possibly shoot, even if I would be able to get my gun out and work it correctly under these circumstances. They must have been filtering in through the trees.

Dean rolled down his window and stopped it at about the halfway point. I could see he was holding his gun. But the look in his eyes told a different story. Had a tear fallen?

I blinked, or at least I think I did. Penn was holding a gun. Owen’s gun? The dogs were closer. I think I could even feel their hot breath against my back through my jacket.

“When I tell you to go, run as fast as you can and jump into the car,” Penn instructed. “Ros, I know you can do this. All you have to do is run.”

The growls sounded as if they were increasing. It felt like a I was being consumed by a debilitating cacophony of terror. And soon I would be devoured by a pack of dog-beasts. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t run to the car. They were so noisy I couldn’t hear myself think. I could see Penn and Dean moving so slowly it didn’t seem real. They were discussing something, but they blurred in and out of focus. Were they even real? Were they some kind of mirage? Had I died long ago in my Alaskan cabin? Or maybe when I was at HOME? This was my purgatory.

“GO!” Penn shouted and through the fog of my brain I heard him. My legs moved faster than they ever had in my whole life. It didn’t even feel like I was controlling them. Penn reached down and grabbed a big handful of gravel and whipped it at the dogs behind me. I hadn’t heard the bullet, but I heard a dog whimper and I saw Dean pulling the trigger. There were more whimpers, and I saw Penn’s hand recoil repeatedly.

I felt like I was flying once I got to the car and leapt towards Penn. He grabbed my jacket and was pulling me inside while I was still in mid-air. The noise of the guns filled my ears as if the volume of life had just been turned up as high as it would go. Owen hit the gas and spun a semi-circle. One of the dogs jumped towards the car and smacked into it with a loud thud.

Penn pushed me towards the far back seat and pulled the door shut. He turned towards me as if trying to make sure he had actually gotten all of me inside. I checked myself over to make sure I hadn’t been bitten by one of the dog-beasts without realizing. Thankfully, and surprisingly, I was fine.

Once the car was no longer spinning I whipped around to see the dogs chasing us down the road. There were lumps of unmoving dogs on the ground, maybe nine or ten, but there were at least twenty in an angry pack following us. Chasing us down as if their last supper was getting away, which I hoped it was.

“Holy shit!” Owen belted out. “What were you doing outside, Ros?” He seemed both angry and absolutely freaked out at the same time.

“The… sun… was… shining,” I said between frantic breaths. As if that would explain it all. Sienna turned around and looked at me sideways. I looked out the window pointing towards the sky, but there was no sunshine. The gray clouds were overhead without even the slightest little glimmer of light trying to push through. How could I have been so stupid?

Owen looked in the rear-view mirror either at me or the dogs that were finally starting to give up their chase. He turned down the road that would lead us back to the HOME camp, but I wasn’t sure if I would ever get out of this car again.

We were all staring at the road ahead like zombies when Dean hit the dashboard with his palms. Everyone jumped simultaneously at the unexpected noise. He climbed out of the passenger seat and maneuvered his way between Penn and Sienna. He practically launched himself towards the backseat and tackled me down against it. He wrapped his arms around me so tightly I could barely breathe. Tears started to stream down my face.

“Don’t
ever
do that to me again,” he whispered into my ear right before he pressed his lips to mine. He didn’t care about anyone else being in the car and at that moment neither did I. So many different feelings came out in that kiss. It was almost too much to handle. But it was comforting at the same time. And my heart pounded fiercely at the thought of someone feeling so strongly about me.

* * *

We parked our car in the same hiding spot as we had the day before. This time we walked in a huge semi-circle around the base to find a different angle. We wanted to see the camp better, and Penn was worried that if we went to the same spot as before people could come walking that way again.

It felt like we had walked forever. My calves were screaming before we even started, but we didn’t have a choice to delay things another day. I had to make my body work. It was hard to keep moving forward. I kept having flashbacks to the dogs and I kept feeling like they were behind me. I couldn’t help but jerk around every so often just to make sure they weren’t sneaking up on me again. But there wasn’t anything I could do to shake the feeling, and I worried they’d take us all out. I shivered as I forced myself to move.

I saw that my flinching was making both Owen and Dean nervous so I tried to keep it under control. Sienna had her game face on, she was tough, or at least she wanted everyone to think she was. She, like all of us, had been through a lot and truthfully she had toughened up a lot since everything started. I guess we all had. None of us were the same, or even close to the same as who we had been before all this happened. And hopefully that was for the best.

“Over there,” Penn said, pointing towards a grouping of trees with broken branches that sort of formed a little hut. I wasn’t sure we would be any closer than we had been the last time we were here. If we were still too far away, we might not be able to see him even if he was there. But I could tell Penn was too afraid to risk bringing us all any closer.

We slowly worked our way up to the tree line until we could peer out between the branches at the camp. I scanned the grounds, but no one was outside. It looked like a ghost town.

“Where is everyone?” Sienna asked, having the same thought. Before any of us got a chance to speculate, an air-horn let out a quick blast and everyone scattered from the large building we saw the day before. They all scurried in various directions off to do whatever they were supposed to be doing.

“Take this,” I said passing my gun to Penn. My hand shook so much I could barely hold it long enough to pass it to him. I didn’t even bother to look at Dean to see his disapproving look. If this was a set-up of some kind then so be it. But if it wasn’t, the gun would do far better in Penn’s skilled hands than it would in mine.

He took it, checked it over and shoved it in his waistband. I had to wonder if the other guns had been checked since the ordeal with the dogs. I hadn’t seen them check or reload the guns, but I had been distracted. Penn or Owen would have thought to do it. Or so I hoped.

We watched the HOME army folks mill about, going in one tent for a while then coming out of another. “What are they doing?” I asked Penn.

“Beats me. Working on something… it’s weird though,” he said shaking his head.

“What’s weird?” Owen asked as he surveyed the trees behind us, making sure no one was coming up to take us by surprise.

“It’s just like the people at HOME. They all wear that same blank expression. None of them smile. I guess there isn’t really anything to smile about, but it’s just weird. The army actually seems even worse than everyone at the HOME base. Don’t you think?” Penn said as his eyes darted from one face to another settling on mine.

I examined the random faces. He was right they seemed to be devoid of any emotions, just like everyone back at HOME. But it didn’t surprise me. I felt like marching up to one of them and stomping on his foot just to see if I could get a reaction.

“Brainwashed. Robotic. Programmed,” I said carefully watching Penn. I wasn’t sure if he knew it or not but at times he too had been very emotionless and robotic. He was breaking out of the shell HOME had created though. Ever since we left that crazy spy guy tied up in his house. Penn came back to life more and more each day.

Each face looked almost the same as the next and none of them were Ryan. We were risking everything just being here and for nothing. I threw my hands up in the air and opened my mouth to suggest we leave when I saw him.

Chapter twenty-four.

Ryan was walking around the perimeter of the camp with another guy. His new friend seemed a little older but not by a whole lot. They both wore the same red uniform and walked in unison. It was hard to believe it was him, but there was no doubt in my mind. He looked the same as he had before, but there was something that gave me the feeling he was somehow different. His eyes? How he moved? Or maybe it only seemed that way because he was walking around and living with the enemy.

I looked to the others to see if they had noticed him, but they hadn’t seemed to. I didn’t want to look away for too long, afraid he might vanish into thin air. He walked closer and closer in our direction and my pulse increased with each step.

My mouth opened, and I tried to form words, but nothing came out. Instead, a tear dropped down my cheek and hit my hand when it fell off my chin. I covered my mouth, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe normally.

“Ros?” Dean said putting his hand on my shoulder. “Everything OK?”

I shook my head and raised my finger up. I was shaking so much I didn’t think they’d be able to tell where I was even pointing. They all looked up, and I heard Sienna gasp.

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Owen said with a grin sliding across his face.

Dean didn’t say anything, but he squeezed my shoulder. I hadn’t needed him to say anything. Hell, I hadn’t known what to say either. Sienna silently clapped her hands together and tears traced lines down her dirty cheeks.

“Which one is he?” Penn asked realizing Ryan was one of the two guys walking around the perimeter of the camp. His whole demeanor changed, and I knew his training was kicking in. I couldn’t even make a guess as to what kind of plan he was coming up with.

“That one, on the right,” I choked out. I couldn’t believe how close he was to us. It wasn’t so close that we were in danger, but close enough that I could see he looked healthy, and nothing like the Ryan we had left behind at the infirmary. He was alive. He was in the HOME army, but he was alive. “We have to talk to him somehow,” I said, not having any idea how we could get his attention without also getting the attention of the guy he was with.

Penn stood up and Owen grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?” he said, his voice low and thick.

“I’m going to hope they aren’t looking for me yet. I’m going to get your friend so you can talk to him,” Penn said looking Owen straight in the eyes. He looked himself over as if to make sure the word traitor hadn’t been written somewhere on his clothing. I couldn’t believe what he was about to do for us. I was shocked. It was a huge risk, could we even let him do it? “I’m the only one that has any kind of shot at getting him over here.”