Crashing Down - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 3) (14 page)

Dezzie had pushed the chair into the corner of the room so that if he fell asleep in the chair the walls would stop him from falling. Unless of course he fell forward in which case he’d fall right on his face. But I guess that must have been a risk he was willing to take.

Sienna was curled up in a ball practically in Penn’s lap. If it bothered Dean how close they were, he didn’t let it show. Maybe he was warming up to Penn. After all, he was another set of eyes watching out for his sister. Perhaps he was finally coming around to believe that Penn was truly on our side.

I knew without a doubt that Penn wouldn’t ever let anything happen to Sienna the same way he would do his best not to let anything happen to me. For all I knew he felt the same about Dean too.

I let out a long breath without realizing how obvious it would be in such a small space. My fingers massaged my throat, and I tried to cover it up with a cough, but it only made it all more obvious.

“Everything OK?” Dean asked as he wrapped his arms around me. I couldn’t help but glance towards Dominick. His eyes were open and glued to us. He didn’t even feel the need to hide the fact that he was watching our every move and listening to our conversations.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, and mostly everything was fine. Well nothing was fine, but I just needed a break from all of this. A nice vacation from all the end of the world stuff was really, really in order.

Dean turned my face towards his and looked into my eyes. When he was satisfied with what he saw he kissed me. And it wasn’t just a quick peck on the lips, it was a full on kiss right there in front of everyone. I peeked out between my eyelids and saw that Dominick was still watching us. He wore no readable expression, but I still pulled myself away from Dean and put my hand on his chest. It was almost as if Dean could read my mind about why I had cut the kiss short. Or maybe he had just seen where I was looking.

“Sorry,” I whispered. Dominick was an instant mood killer and I think he knew it. But Dean seemed to want to make sure Dominick knew that he and I were together.

“No problem,” he said shifting his eyes at Dominick and then back on mine. “You should get some rest.”

I closed my eyes and placed my head against his chest. He felt warm and as close to safe as I could get. Somehow I fell asleep.

I
had
no idea what time it was, but we were all awake in the small room. It had been difficult to sleep to say the least, but the door was still intact and I hadn’t been burnt to a crisp. I could only assume that meant we had made it through the night.

“Let’s go,” Dominick said as he popped up off of the cot.

“We should take whatever we can find. Isn’t that right Dominick?” Dezzie said, but then looked as though he was worried he might have offended Dominick. That was probably why he had turned it into a question at the last second. So it could look like it had been something he had learned from Dominick.

“That goes without saying… doesn’t it?” Dominick said raising his palms up as if he was trying to herd us out of the small room. He scrunched up his face as if he was annoyed with everyone.

“Where exactly are we going?” Penn asked keeping his eyes forward. I could tell he felt like he was walking on a tightrope when he was around Dominick because of his past with HOME. One slight move in the wrong direction and he’d lose his balance and come crashing down to the ground without a net.

We all filtered out into the main area of the gas station and started looking at the nearly empty shelves. Dominick ran his finger across the top of one of them drawing a thick line through the dust. He brushed his finger against his pants, “We have camps scattered all over the place. It’ll just be a few more hours to the next one.”

I scanned one of the shelves with Dean and Sienna at my sides. We should have probably spread out but I think we just wanted to be close to one another. I picked up a still sealed box of expired fruit cups. Either this was a popular stop for other travelers or Dominick and his men had cleaned out this place a long time ago.

“Anything we should know about the new camp?” I asked keeping my eyes focused on the shelf. Even if there was, he probably wouldn’t tell us.

Dominick started to hum a weird but somewhat familiar tune. It was odd how infrequently I heard any music. The last time had been back at HOME through the loudspeaker system.

“A good friend of mine is in charge there. Things will go smoothly,” Dominick said squeezing past us.

“She used to know Dominick very well, if you know what I mean,” Dezzie said with a wink. He stressed some of his words in such a way that I knew exactly what he meant.

Apparently Dominick and the leader at the next camp had been in some kind of relationship. I hoped that didn’t mean that things there were going to be awkward. After all, they were in separate camps now, which likely implied the relationship hadn’t ended well.

Dominick glared at him and Dezzie turned back towards the shelf. When he realized he was staring at an empty shelf he walked over to the door and looked out.

“She’s a good kid,” Dominick said with his annoying half-smirk. It was strange he’d called her a kid. I couldn’t even imagine the type of person we were about to meet. “Mira runs a tight ship. We’ll be in good hands.”

Dezzie opened his mouth presumably to make a snide comment, but changed his mind. I wanted to stop the small smile that was starting at the corners of my mouth but I couldn’t. Dezzie caught my expression and smiled at me.

It was the first time I think I realized that Dezzie was just a normal person. He was just like everyone else who’d been thrown into this world… just trying to survive. But somehow he got hooked up with Dominick. There was just a way about Dezzie that made me believe that he was more suited to this world than any of us were. I couldn’t imagine the type of person he had been before this. Maybe just out of high school, signed up to the military, a tough guy, but for all I knew he had been a college student working towards a law degree.

When he found Dominick he probably realized it was better to be with other people than out on his own. I couldn’t hold that against him. He had to do what had been right for him at the time.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dominick said throwing something that must have been unusable back on the shelf. It hit with a thud and then bounced onto the floor.

Everything that we could take, we took. I shoved a couple granola bars into my pocket when no one had been looking, just in case we could sneak away. We’d at least have a little something.

Dezzie stepped out, and looked around before he waved us all out. Dominick strutted out of the gas station and scanned the horizon as if he didn’t think Dezzie could do a good enough job. He nodded his approval.

I, of course, rolled my eyes at the back of his head. The way he acted as if he was doing all of the work was beyond frustrating. It was obvious to me that Dezzie had done a lot for the camp. He had done everything Dominick asked of him and usually without question. Dezzie never asked for credit nor did he seem to need or want it.

We all climbed back into the truck in the same order we had been in when we arrived. The boys in the back and Sienna and I in the front with Dominick. He started the truck and we were back on the road.

The sun had peeked out between the flat clouds. It almost felt too hot on my skin through the window but I welcomed it. I wondered how many days it would take for the sun to dry out the waterlogged land.

“What happened to the leader?” I said with a quick glance in Dominick’s direction. He scrunched up his face for a minute and then released it as if he had swallowed down a sour taste in his mouth. His thoughts had been elsewhere, probably on his brother.

“What leader?” he said shaking his head as if he didn’t understand the question. And maybe he hadn’t.

“I mean the leader of the last camp, before you took over,” I said as I picked at the dirt under one of my fingernails.

Dominick nodded slowly as if he was finally understanding the question. “He died,” he said lacking any emotion in his voice. He must not have known the old leader very well. At least that was my guess based on his reaction.

“Oh, that’s too bad… sorry,” I said switching to the next fingernail. I hadn’t had much emotion in my voice either, but I hadn’t known the person at all. And with how frequent people seemed to die it wasn’t all that surprising. “How did he die?”

“It was all very sad,” he said, but he didn’t sound sad. “He had been well liked. The poor guy just died one night in his sleep.”

“I see.” I looked back out at the horizon. The sunlight had been so bright I couldn’t focus and things looked blurry. It was like my eyes didn’t work right in the sunlight anymore because they had been used to the grays, blacks and blues. I blinked a few times. “Then after that they all elected you to take over?” I asked, acting like I wasn’t trying to get more information. I wanted to make it seem like I didn’t care in the least what he had to say. Of course, I was very interested in how Dominick had gotten his role as leader of the resistance. He seemed young, careless and ruthless, but maybe that was why he had been put in charge.

Dominick chuckled and turned to look out his side window, “Something like that.” He combed his fingers loosely through his hair. It was as if he was trying to put up a block with his arm so I couldn’t see him. I was sure it was his way of signaling that he wasn’t going to talk about it any longer.

And I wasn’t going to press it. If I kept things casual between us maybe I could get more from him later. And maybe none of the information he revealed would even matter once we got to the second camp. I couldn’t help but think that this Mira girl wasn’t just separated from Dominick because they had broken up. Then again, maybe my views on it were just tainted because I didn’t like Dominick or the way he had run his camp. That didn’t mean someone out there couldn’t like him. Or that she couldn’t run a good camp. She had probably seen a different side to Dominick he hadn’t shown any of us. It was possible… I thought.

As we made our way down the empty highway heading south, I noticed the terrain outside was turning more desert-like. It was still plenty wet, but the ground looked sandier and less muddy. The grouping of trees seemed to be spreading further and further apart.

I had really been sick of being in damp clothes all day so I was ready for things to dry out. Despite the disarray surrounding us, the hills and the mountains in the distance were simply breathtaking. I was actually a little surprised that I could still find beauty on this earth after everything I’d been through.

Dominick wasn’t driving nearly as fast as I thought he should. Maybe there had been a reason he wanted to to take it slow. Maybe the truck couldn’t handle much more. It was an older, beat-up truck… but I guess it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t in a big hurry to get acquainted with the new camp leader and her members.

I jumped when something hit the side of Dominick’s door. It had been only one loud ‘thunk’ noise and then nothing.

“Was that the tire?” I asked, but I knew it hadn’t been. We were driving smoothly down the road. The truck was fine.

“No,” Dominick said, the worry and confusion in his voice obvious. I started to scan the horizon when the truck was hit again, smack-dab in the center of the hood.

“Was that an arrow?” I asked pressing myself back against the seat as if I was trying to make myself smaller.

“I think it was,” Dominick said and started driving faster. He carefully watched the speedometer almost as much, if not more, than he watched the road.

Then another hit. And then another. Each one
pinging
and
thunking
against the truck. I looked back to see Dean, Penn and Dezzie all curling up into balls in the back of the truck.

“What’s going on?” Sienna said, as she copied me and tried to make herself smaller too. When another arrow hit her door we both screamed. They were shooting at us from both sides of the road.

“They aren’t safe back there,” I shouted glancing back right when an arrow hit the tailgate. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand. If one of those arrows hit them, they would be in really bad shape. And it seemed like a real possibility with the way the arrows were raining down from all directions.

“What are we going to do?” I said pounding on Dominick’s bicep with my fist. I knew he didn’t know any better than I did what we should do. We couldn’t stop the truck. That much I knew.

“This hasn’t ever happened before…,” he said his words disappearing into nothing. He told us they had gone this way before, so if this had happened before they would have been prepared. And he would have known what to do about it.

“No, really?” I asked my voice filled to the brim with sarcasm. I cleared my throat as if trying to erase the tone, “Who’s doing this? Could this be HOME?”

The arrows abruptly stopped falling down on us. I wasn’t looking at the road ahead when Dominick slammed on the brakes. My body jerked forward and then back against the seat.

“This isn’t HOME,” Dominick answered definitively. I looked out the front window and understood how he had been so sure about it.

Standing in the road were four men dressed in barely any clothing at all. They were all wearing things similar to one another. The men wore strips of cloth to cover their bottoms and nothing on top. Their faces were painted up with black and white stripes, dots and various shapes. Each man’s markings were unique. They also had several piercings, and some had their arms and torso’s covered in black tattoos.

Each one of the men held a bow, so it was obvious where the arrows had been coming from. But there had to be more of them, it wasn’t just the four men standing in the road blocking our way that had been responsible.

The arrows had been falling down on us for at least a quarter of a mile. There had to be a lot of men in their group. At least as many as the resistance, maybe even more. And all those men that had been scattered about where probably working on surrounding us now that the truck was stopped in the middle of the road.

“Oh come on,” I muttered when one of the men raised up his bow and aimed it directly at Dominick.