Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (29 page)

“He left us?” Sienna whispered. She looked as if she couldn’t believe he would do that after everything he had just done at the HOME army camp for us. Why, after all of that, would he abandon us now? Had I really been that wrong about him changing for the better? It looked like I had.

“Go figure,” Dean muttered as another bullet ripped through the trees. Droplets of water sprinkled down from where the gunman’s bullet had jostled a branch above us. “At least he’s a terrible shot.”

I could hear the four-wheeler zipping around the trees. He must have lost sight of us. If we only had to worry about the one in the trees with us our chances were far better.

“Let’s go,” Owen said taking the lead through the thick trees and out into the open field, putting a little more distance between us and the gunman still inside the patch of trees. Owen started to lead us towards another nearby patch just as the guy on the four-wheeler caught sight of us and zipped in front of us. We were forced to stop.

His face was devoid of emotion, but he let out a maniacal laugh as he whipped out his gun and put the four-wheeler in park. He hopped out of the vehicle and strutted his way closer to us. “I’m going to get a nice, big, juicy reward for this,” he said, and I could see the evil in his eyes.

His partner burst out of the trees huffing and puffing all the way over to stand at the side of his comrade. I could see the HOME poison in his eyes too. They were a pair of robots whose eyes were filled with a vile, disgusting blackness. Even though there was no one here in charge of these two, HOME still had absolute control over both of them. Whatever they were programmed to do, was exactly what they would try to do.

“Should we take them back to camp?” the one that had been chasing us in the woods asked his partner out loud.

“No,” the robot that had been driving the four-wheeler said as he raised his gun and pointed it at me. “Women and children first.”

“Whoa!” Owen said stepping in front of me as he held his hand up in the air. “We’ll go back with you. You don’t have to do this. We’ll cooperate.”

“Stay where you are,” the one that had been chasing us said as he copied the driver and raised his gun up. But the driver didn’t care, there wasn’t anything any of us could do or say to stop him. His finger pulled back, and the gun jerked in the driver’s hand. Owen’s body shifted, and he took a step backwards. He’d been hit in the right shoulder. An inch further to the right and the bullet would have missed him and hit me.

“Holy shit!” Dean said lifting his gun and trying to aim up at the driver. But the trained gunman from HOME had been faster. He put another bullet into Owen before Dean could even react.

Owen tipped backwards, and I tried to catch him, but he was too heavy and he hit the ground hard. I saw a dark red color rapidly soaking through his shirt.

Dean fired his gun, but he missed the driver. The one that had been chasing us looked around as if he was in a state of shock. Before either Dean or the driver could pull the trigger, Penn was standing on the hood of the four-wheeler aiming his gun at the driver’s head. He didn’t hesitate. It happened almost instantaneously. Penn put a bullet in the driver’s head and then one in the head of his comrade.

I dropped down to my knees next to Owen. The wetness of the ground quickly soaked into my pants. I tried to assess the extent of Owen’s injuries. His shoulder was bleeding and the one off-center of his abdomen looked bad. Really bad. The blood soaked through his clothes and started pooling around him on the ground. I tried to put pressure on the wound, but it just gushed out more blood.

“Put pressure on his shoulder,” I ordered loudly, speaking so fast my words blended into one another. My voice was shaking. My body was trembling. I tried to push down again but there was just so much blood. Penn hopped down off the hood and came to see if he could help somehow. But I could tell by the look on his face he knew things weren’t good.

“Go,” Owen forced out in a gagging whisper, “just go on.”

“We aren’t leaving you,” I said shaking my head. I didn’t even know the tears were flowing down my face until I saw them drop down, and splash into Owen’s blood. There were so many tears dropping down that I had thought it had started raining, but the droplets weren’t from the sky.

In the distance I could hear the hum of the engine from another four-wheeler. Or maybe it was more than one. I couldn’t even guess, but it sounded like however many there were, they were coming this way.

“They heard the gunshots,” Penn said lightly touching my arm. I felt Dean’s hand on my shoulder. I looked at Owen for instructions but his eyes were closed and his body was still. I didn’t want to accept it, but I knew it. He was gone. “We have to go.”

I felt Dean trying to gently ease me up and away from Owen. I could feel the urgency, but I swatted at his hand anyway. “We can’t leave him here like this!” I hissed.

“He’s gone,” Dean said as gently as he could, but I was completely aware of the fact he was dead. I just didn’t want to leave him here alone. I stood up and hit Dean in the chest with my fist. He grated his teeth together but that didn’t stop me from hitting him again. And when I lost it and my knees buckled underneath my weight he held me up. “He told us to go. He wouldn’t want us to stay here and get caught and killed. You know that. Let’s go.”

Penn bent down and took Owen’s gun and stuffed it in his waistband. I glared at him, but he refused to even look in my direction. Had he been there a few minutes earlier Owen would still be alive.

“We have to go… now!” Penn said, the desperation in his voice was painfully clear. He grabbed Sienna’s hand and pulled her along. She looked at Dean, but all he could do was nod, which was enough to get her to reluctantly move her feet.

“Come on,” Dean said as he swallowed hard. He looked pale, and I realized that I hadn’t been the only one to lose someone. We all had. Dean had known him far longer than I had. I should be the one comforting, and pulling him along. But here I was following him around while the tears streamed down my face. I saw Owen’s blood on my hands and clenched them into tight balls as if I wanted to hold on to any part of him that I possibly could.

Losing Seth all that time ago had been hard, I didn’t know how I’d be able to cope with losing Owen now too. I wouldn’t have a choice. I’d just have to do it knowing it would be what Owen would have wanted. Dean had been right about one thing. Owen wouldn’t have ever wanted me to give up. He wouldn’t have wanted us to stick around and suffer the same fate. He would have wanted us to continue fighting.

What made everything worse was that it had felt as though we had lost Ryan too. He was alive, but we’d probably never see him again, and if we did he’d claim to not remember us. Whether he did or not was another story. Losing them both was unbearable.

“This way,” Penn said leading us in another direction deeper into the trees. “Wait here,” he said as he turned back and disappeared for a few minutes. Just when I wanted to freak out about him leaving again, he came back. I wanted to confront him about having deserted us when we had needed him. If he had been there Owen would still be alive. “I tried to cover up our tracks somewhat. If someone tries tracking us, hopefully it’ll be enough to lose them.”

We continued to jog away. I think we were all too tired to run. I know I was both physically and emotionally exhausted. Surely Dean and Sienna were too. The only thing that kept me moving was that I could hear Owen’s voice in my head encouraging me to move as fast as I could.

* * *

It had been at least an hour, maybe even longer since we’d heard the hum of the four-wheeler’s engines. We had lost them, or they had given up. They had probably found the bodies lying near the abandoned vehicle.

“We should have probably taken the four-wheeler,” I mumbled as I kicked at a small stone. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but we had slowed down to a normal walking pace.

“Those tracks would have been harder to hide,” Penn said refusing to look at me. Something was bothering him. He hadn’t known Owen that well, so I couldn’t help but think it had to be something else. “Not to mention the noise it would make. It would give us away.”

Sienna stopped and braced herself against a tree. She leaned forward and rubbed her ankles. When she stood up she pressed her back into the tree, but her shoulders slumped forward and she took a deep breath. “I’m not sure how much further I can go,” she said stepping away from the tree and forcing herself to continue.

“Sorry,” Penn said glancing in her direction. “If we see a house, hopefully it’ll have a car we can take.”

“I know. It’s not your fault,” Sienna said, her voice hoarse.

I swallowed down the gross taste in my mouth, “Why did you leave us back there?”

Penn didn’t even hesitate. It was as if he had been waiting for someone to ask him. “I wanted to take them by surprise,” he said not even bothering to look at me.

“Maybe if you had been there,” I said trailing off. I would always wonder if he had been there if it would have all played out differently, and Owen would still be alive. Penn was skilled. Fast. He could have probably taken them both out with his bare hands.

“I thought if they saw me, they’d shoot me first. I wouldn’t be any help if I was dead.” He coughed hard and rubbed his elbow, “I thought I’d make it back before anything could go wrong.”

Perhaps he made the right call, if he would have been with us, maybe we would all be dead. Everyone at HOME knew he was a traitor or at least suspected it. Just like they had killed Slade on the spot, they probably would have done the same to Penn. Not to mention they were likely well aware of his skills and wouldn’t take any risks.

“Sorry,” I said my voice nearly a whisper. I wished I wouldn’t have made him feel worse. It wasn’t his fault that the HOME army guy pulled the trigger. It wasn’t his fault that Owen stepped in front of me, taking a bullet that had my name on it.

“I tried Ros, I really did. I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said finally looking at me.

It was just that I hated he hadn’t arrived a minute sooner. I nodded because I didn’t know what else to do. My whole body felt numb. What I thought was already an epic nightmare was somehow getting worse.

“I will forever blame myself for what happened. It’s like I just killed three people and one of them was a really good person. He let me tag along after everything I had done and now it’s because of me that he’s dead,” Penn said. His face was red as if he had been holding his breath while he spoke. “I should have done better.”

“It’s not your fault,” Dean said and I could tell the words tasted sour to him by the look on his face. If Dean didn’t blame him surely none of us could. And in all reality what he said had made sense. If he had been there with all us from the start they probably would have attempted to take him out first. Maybe Penn could have reacted in time, but maybe he wouldn’t have and we’d all be back there lying in pools of blood.

Penn seemed to deflate at Dean’s words. He turned to look him, both with matching red tinged eyes. “Thank you,” he said as he sucked in air. It looked as if he was trying not to let any sign of weakness leak out. “But I will carry it with me forever anyway.”

We walked in silence. Darkness fell quickly and consumed us. In the distance we’d hear the random howls of the dog-beasts, but I didn’t cower at their awful noises. Instead I moved forward, wishing on the rare star that poked out between the clouds that we’d find a shelter, and the dogs and HOME would stay away from us.

After what I guessed was probably at least six hours of walking we came upon a decrepit, waterlogged home. The front door wouldn’t close tightly but at least it was obviously empty. We checked it out as carefully as we would any house.

It had a second story, but when Penn tried to lead us upstairs the first step bowed under his weight and snapped in half. He tried the second but the same thing happened. It didn’t take much to convince us it was better to stay downstairs rather than risk breaking our necks falling through the weak stairs.

There was a small room at the back of the house that must have been used as an office. There was a computer that looked out of place in the new world. It was just sitting there on a desk that looked like it might give out if anyone touched it, or breathed on it.

We holed up in that little room. All of us lined up in a row with our backs against the wall. We were too scared, wet and cold to sleep. Any little noise and Penn would jerk for his gun thinking it was HOME, and that they had found us.

“Try to sleep, because I know I’m not going to,” Penn suggested, but Dean just shook his head.

“I don’t think I can,” I mumbled as quietly as I could. I was paranoid that any noise or movement would somehow alert HOME to our exact hiding spot.

“Just try,” he said as he lightly pushed Sienna’s head down on his shoulder. Even if she wanted to resist, she didn’t. Dean tucked me in his arm but I could tell my body wasn’t going to cooperate. I couldn’t relax even after I let my head rest on his shoulder. My eyes wouldn’t close. I was afraid of what I might dream about. Afraid that if I closed my eyes I’d see Owen lying there helplessly bleeding all over the ground again.

I didn’t know how far away from the HOME camp we had to be before I’d be able to sleep again, but I knew this wasn’t far enough. When the sun started to break over the horizon and light up the world, we headed back out.