Ravaged Land - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (13 page)

“We know,” I said saturating the words with rudeness.

“Look,” Ryan said, he was going to try to explain something until he realized everyone was waiting on him for the go-ahead, “Can we talk about this later?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said and practically shoved the three of them out of the door and made a grand gesture to show I’d locked the door behind them. After I locked the door I made a mental note to search for a spare key so they would be able to get back in easily. That way they wouldn’t have to wait for someone to open the door for them.

Sienna watched me stomp away to my bedroom, she called out after me asking if I was OK. I took a breath and shouted back, “I’m fine, just tired I guess.”

After some time to myself, I came back into the room to find her organizing the pile of goods that had been dumped out of the backpacks. “I sort of felt like I was being excluded this morning. I should be a part of the group, everyone probably just thought I was being lazy,” I said as if I need to justify why I had left the room.

“Sorry Ros that wasn’t our intention. Ryan thought you were tired, and he said we should just let you rest,” Sienna explained.

“Well, that’s not his call,” I said stiffening my spine.

Seth was watching them walk off through a crack in the window curtains making sure everything went smoothly for as long as he could see them. Instead of taking the roads, they walked through the dead and dry crusty fields towards town. Once they were out of view he came and sat at the kitchen table and helped us sort as best as he could. He was still exhausted and miserable. I didn’t think he’d be better until he got a fan or some way to cool down. Although he was helping which certainly was a step in the right direction but he needed to cool down his body.

Today seemed like it was going to be even hotter than it had been yesterday. If it kept getting hotter every day, eventually we’d all get run down and none of us would get anything done. Maybe Ryan would be able to find gas for the generator, and it would work. Then we could get some fans running to help cool things down.

After we finished organizing the stuff from the packs we decided to clear out the cabinets, pantry and fridge of everything that was expired. We were going to make room for the new items they’d be bringing back that we could use. We’d found some garbage bags under the sink and threw out everything that was unusable for the cabinets and pantry. The dreadful rotting smell was overwhelming when I opened the fridge, and I started tossing everything into a bag. When we were finished we had two full bags of trash.

“That smell is only going to get worse in the house,” Seth said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said scrunching up my nose and refusing to admit to not having thought this through. “Should I bring them out to the storage shed?”

“Maybe,” Seth said. “I wish we could wait until the others got back.”

I thought about setting them in the garage, but that door was boarded up too, I’d have to go outside and open the garage door to get inside. “Well, I’ll just drop them outside the back door, we can figure it out later,” I said hauling them to the back door. I looked outside to be sure it was safe and then I opened the door, gently tossing each bag against the bricks of the house. I closed the door and locked it quickly. Then I made sure the curtains on the door weren’t swaying, paranoid that even the smallest thing could be a giveaway that someone was inside. We also had to keep them closed tight, leaving only the smallest peek hole, so we could see when the others returned.

* * *

I’m not sure how many hours had passed before Dean returned because I had fallen asleep in the chair watching over Seth. I was changing the cloth on his head, every ten minutes or so, whenever he’d start moaning and groaning in misery. Sienna was sitting at the table writing in a notebook she’d found. Eventually he fell asleep and then I must have dozed off as well.

There was a light knock on the door which startled me. It also made me think we should come up with a secret knock. That way we’d at least know when it was one of us, or maybe it would be easier to try and find a set of keys like I had planned. Sienna peeked out just enough to see, “Dean’s back!” She popped up to let him in.

“Wait!” I said right as her hand touched the door lock.

“What?”

“Just make sure he’s alone,” I said sounding paranoid.

“OK!” she said looking around, “He’s alone as far as I can tell.”

She opened the lock and Dean slipped inside. He closed the door, locked it and checked to make sure it was secured. He had a backpack stuffed tight, a bag filled with arrows and two bows. How he’d made it back in this heat carrying all of it was impressive. He peeled off his shirt which was stuck to him like an orange peel. He yanked two half gallons of water out of his pack pushed one of them against me and ordered me to follow him. I think it was mostly out of curiosity that I did follow without asking any questions.

Sienna just shrugged and went back to whatever it was she was writing as I followed Dean into the bathroom. He shut the door behind us. “OK, I need you to pour this over me,” he said as if this wasn’t the most awkward thing ever. “Take your socks off,” he demanded. It was weird to have Dean being so bossy when he was usually more of a sit back, take it easy, kind of guy. While I took them off, he laid a towel on the side of the shower, “Stand up here and hold on to the towel bar with your free hand.”

There I was standing on the side of the shower holding onto a half gallon of water while Dean finished undressing. I looked away the second I saw everything was coming off. I realized why he wasn’t able to ask Sienna for help and Seth would have been incapable, but couldn’t he have just done this himself?

He was in the shower, “OK ready!” All the things I shouldn’t see weren’t really visible from my angle. Not that I was looking, but I had to at least watch where I was pouring. It would just be wasteful if I wasn’t actually pouring the water on him. I poured slowly to make sure the water would last. Only about a quarter of the first jug remained when he asked me how much was left, “I’m going to try to wash my hair.” He took the shampoo bottle off of the bottom ledge of the tub and quickly lathered up his dark sepia hair, “OK ready again.” I started pouring again trying to make sure I got all the soap out while he tried to squish it out with his fingers at the same time.

“Hold on,” I said as I grabbed the other jug, “OK, ready?”

“Yeah,” he said waiting with his hands in his hair.

It was important to get all the shampoo out of his hair. After I finished what was left of the first jug I started to pour from the second one being extra careful. I wanted to make sure to rinse every inch of his hair completely.

“That’s it,” I said when the jug was empty.

“Great, thanks Ros.”

I carefully climbed down keeping my head down. I had safely made it past him without seeing anything.

“Could you hand me a towel?” he asked as if he had waited to the precise moment that would be the most contrived. I could feel his eyes on me. I couldn’t give him the one I had been standing on there had been too much splashing. Without turning I took another clean one out of the drawer and handed it to him over my shoulder. “Thanks,” he said, I could sense the smile on his face based on his tone, this whole escapade was amusing him but I wasn’t sure why. Dean must have had an odd sense of humor.

I slipped out of the bathroom to come face to face with Ryan, “You’re back!” I said sounding more surprised than I would have liked, especially since Dean came out seconds after me with just a towel wrapped around his waist. Droplets of water fell off the wet peaks of his clean hair.

“Excuse me,” he said squeezing between us. He bounced up the stairs leaving me there by myself to explain. This looked bad. Very bad. Ryan didn’t wait for an explanation, not that it mattered in the least since all words were currently being held hostage by my voice box. Ryan shut the door to his room. I stared at it for about thirty seconds before heading to the kitchen table to see what they brought back.

On the table they had all the food, water and other supplies such as candles, batteries and flashlights, towels, T-shirts and more that Sienna and I would have to sort through later. I stopped in my tracks when I saw the guns lined up on the kitchen counter. A lump in my throat started to form, getting larger and larger threatening to choke me.

“Do we have to keep those here?” I asked pointing a droopy finger. My voice vibrated due to my nerves. Before all this happened, I don’t think I had ever even seen a gun other than on TV.

“Uh, yeah,” Owen said looking at me like I was crazy or that maybe I had completely forgotten what the world was like now, and maybe for a minute, I had. It wasn’t like all the guns were just going to start firing on their own, but it didn’t matter I just didn’t like them. Guns were dangerous but if it was a matter of life or death, well, I’d have to be more open to them. I knew relatively nothing about them, I saw big ones and small ones and various packs of bullets. “Ros, I’ll show you how to shoot. You’ll feel better then,” Owen said.

“I thought you hunted deer?”

“Yeah but I had to learn to shoot to hunt those deer,” Owen beamed, “now aiming and actually hitting your target, well that’s another thing.”

“But with a rifle.”

“How much different can it be?” he said shrugging.

I crossed my arms, not wanting any part with the guns but knowing I’d have to be able to protect myself or if it came to it, one of the others. The bow would be too complicated and I’d be too slow. My knife wouldn’t be helpful except only at a very close range, and the baseball bat wouldn’t be any better. I’d have to try and come to terms with the fact that life now included having guns around.

Dean came trotting back down the stairs and examined the gun collection. He completely ignored me and the fact that I’d just seen him, sort of seen him, completely naked. We were just not going to talk about it, and I guess there wasn’t really anything to talk about anyway. It’s not like anything happened. Dean hadn’t been the least bit shy about his body, not even an ounce. If anything, he seemed almost eager to show it off and to be honest from what I did see, he didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about.

Ryan came out of his room wearing a new set of clothing, his hair still damp from sweat. He’d grabbed a gun, looked it over and stuffed it in the back of his waistband, slid on his sunglasses and stepped outside. Owen grabbed a gun, mimicked Ryan and put on his own new pair of sunglasses which were far too small for his face, “We got gas, going to help Ryan with the generator,” he said as he disappeared. At least he had told us where he was going.

* * *

After an hour or so, I heard the generator start up, and it continued to run. Sienna and I had finished organizing the take from today’s run. Dean was in the living room chair tinkering with his bow, and Seth was watching him while he lay down with a wet cloth on his head and neck. I was dripping with sweat from all the activity of the day, my clothes were wet and my hair stuck to my face and neck. I had considered asking Sienna for help with a shower, but there wasn’t any spare water jugs for me. Dean had brought his own special jugs of water back just for his shower.

The day was winding down when Owen and Ryan came back inside looking proud of themselves, “It works!” Owen cheered. “Let’s see what else we can get to work.”

They walked around trying lights and Ryan stopped to listen to the fridge which kicked in when the door was opened. “What happened to everything that was in here?” he demanded.

“I cleaned it out earlier. All the junk is outside stuffed into a couple of garbage bags,” I said nodding towards the back door but not looking at him.

“Ros, what were you thinking?”

“Excuse me?”

“That couldn’t be any more obvious of a sign that someone is here… trash! Think about it,” Ryan said sounding like an absolute jerk.

“You didn’t notice it when you were out there!”

“I wasn’t paying attention! I was trying to get the generator to work,” he said angrily. “For someone who was paying attention… well surely they’d notice trash bags appearing suddenly.”

“I figured we could just hide it in the shed or garage,” I shrugged.

“That’s going to stink in this heat. Obviously we can’t put it in the garage.” Ryan sighed and tapped his foot as if he was dealing with someone who wasn’t very smart. “I guess we’ll have to put it in the shed for now and bury it or something,” he said sounding exasperated. The way he was talking to me was rude and embarrassing and happening in front of everyone.

“Come on man, she was just trying to help,” Dean jumped in trying to defend me. Obviously it was the last person Ryan wanted to hear talk right now. Ryan took a step towards him and glared, more than ready to pick a fight. Dean eagerly stood up and stepped into Ryan’s personal space ready to accept the challenge. The shift in the air had to have been noticed by everyone.

Owen’s radar instantly picked up on it and he stood between them like a brick wall, turning to face Ryan, “Hey man, you should hide that in the shed now before it gets too dark out.” The sound of Owen’s voice breaking the invisible force between them was enough to get Ryan to storm out of the dining room, slamming the door behind him. My body shuttered with the door.