Crashing Down - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 3) (2 page)

The front door crashed open and a man pushed at Dean’s back roughly. A second man dragged Penn out after Dean and his captor were out of the way.

They were moving them towards the opposite end of the trailer. The men had put what looked like burlap sacks over their heads and had tied their hands behind their backs. I figured they must have taken them by surprise because Penn likely could have taken both of them out if he would have had the opportunity.

“What are we going to do?” Sienna whispered pulling on my sleeve. I didn’t see a car or anything parked nearby. Where had they come from? Where were they going to go?

“I think we’ll have to follow them,” I said watching them go further and further away from us. “Without getting caught.”

My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I thought it was going to launch itself from my body and fall into the dirt. I took a deep breath and was about to pull Sienna along with me when Penn made his move.

He dropped his body down into a low squat and spun his leg around knocking the guy who was leading him down to the ground. The guy that was holding Dean, yanked him away. He held him back as Penn stood and furiously tried to get his hands free.

The guy who had been knocked down got up and noticed Penn working to get himself free. He laughed, and kicked his foot forward into the back of Penn’s leg just behind his knee. Penn’s knee jerked forward causing him to lose balance and fall to the ground.

“Let’s go,” I whispered as I reached back to pull Sienna along with me. But my hand just grabbed air. I unwillingly turned my head away from Dean and Penn to see Sienna standing behind me with a bag over her head. Her arms were flailing around as if she was trying to reach out for me.

“Ro—” she said, but her voice was cut off abruptly by a guy pressing his hand down on the thick, tightly-woven bag where her mouth was. He pulled her further away from me. I reached out for her just as a bag was roughly placed over my head.

I
swung
my elbow back and hit him in the stomach. At least that’s where I thought I’d hit him based on the grunting noise he released when I made contact. He yanked me backwards roughly, and I tried to swing again but this time he had been expecting it.

“Knock it off,” he growled.

“Let. Me. Go!” I shouted hoping that Sienna would hear me, and maybe Dean and Penn would too. But I didn’t think I’d actually be able to persuade the guy to let me go by shouting at him.

“Shut up,” he said and pulled me along as my feet dragged across the ground.

It was hard to take steps without being able to see where I was going. I kept feeling like I was going to trip and fall at any second, even though the creep pulling me along was doing most of the work.

“Sienna?” I shouted again.

“Yes! I’m here,” she cried out, and I heard the faint grumbling complaints from a voice I didn’t recognize. I thought maybe it was whoever was leading her and he was telling her to be quiet.

We walked for what felt like a long time, but for all I knew it only felt that way because I hadn’t been able to see where I was going. Then we stopped. Before I could do or say anything I felt more hands on me. I was being lifted off of the ground.

“Put me down!” I said as I tried swinging my arms out around me. But someone grabbed my arm and pulled it behind my back. I tried to keep the other one free, but they got a hold on that one too. They tied my hands together behind my back and I felt absolutely helpless. “Errgh!” I yelled, trying to get out my frustrations.

Someone laughed as another person forced me to sit down on what felt like cold, hard metal. There was a small amount of give, and if I had to guess, I would have thought I was in the bed of a pickup truck. I wanted to ask for Dean and Penn but I was too afraid to use their names. But would it matter? I had already called out to Sienna using her name.

If HOME had captured us, would they recognize her name? More likely, they already knew it was us. I hadn’t heard any gunshots which likely meant Dean and Penn were still alive too. At least for now.

The engine started and the truck gently bounced before it even started moving. I fought the urge to call out to Penn and Dean. All I could really do was hope they were on the same truck. Or at the very least heading to the same destination. I was almost one hundred percent sure Sienna was sitting right next to me.

Since I had already used her name, I didn’t think there would be any harm in using it again. “Sienna?” I said keeping my voice as calm and quiet as I could.

“Yes! I’m here,” she said and moved her leg against mine. Confirmation. I moved mine back so she would know it was me too, but perhaps she had already known.

“Would you two just shut up?” a man’s voice from my other side said. But I didn’t want to be quiet. I wanted answers.

“Where are you taking us?” I said turning my head to the side even though I couldn’t see the person next to me. I tried to sound as nonchalant as I could, hoping he’d decide to just tell me. Maybe if I was casual and friendly, he’d be less aggressive. If I was lucky maybe he’d just make a simple mistake and reveal something that would help me figure things out. But he didn’t say anything, he just laughed.

If Dean and Penn were in this truck, why hadn’t they tried to communicate with us somehow? Do something to let us know they were here? I was glad to be with Sienna but I was worried that we had been separated from Dean and Penn. How would we ever find them again in this random area we weren’t even familiar with ourselves?

The truck continued to bounce down the road for a long time. We hadn’t been moving all that fast based on how the wind was blowing my hair and hitting my face. I had no way of knowing how much time had actually elapsed, but if I had to guess it had been a solid thirty minutes since we had been kidnapped from the trailer.

I opened my mouth to speak but snapped it shut when the truck started to slow down. The truck jerked as the driver shifted it into park before it had come to a complete stop.

“Let’s go,” the guy next to me said as he grabbed me by the elbow and practically dragged me across the bed of the truck.

“As if I have a choice,” I said moving my arm hoping he’d loosen his grip just so I wouldn’t have bruises from his fingers digging into me.

He laughed, “That’s right… you don’t.”

“Ease up a little would you? I’m obviously going with you,” I complained, but he didn’t bother to loosen his grip even a little. That same chuckle I’d heard earlier erupted from somewhere nearby. I wanted to smack Mr. Chuckles across the face. Somehow without even having seen or talked to him, I knew that to be true based only on his laugh. He seemed to think that pain and misery was amusing.

I was forced to take another step forward but when I did there was nothing underneath my foot. It felt as though I was falling. My stomach jumped into my chest as I waited for my body to hit the ground. But instead, someone on the ground was reaching up to help me down. Since I couldn’t see anything the whole thing felt scary.

The guy on the ground wrapped his arms around my middle and even though he was helping I fought against him. I didn’t want to make kidnapping me seem easy.

I fought against him even when my feet were on solid ground. My body swayed because I felt disoriented. The guy on the ground didn’t care that I felt dizzy, it only made him hold my arm tighter. Instead of asking him to stop, I clenched my teeth and pretended it didn’t hurt.

“This way,” someone said, and I felt like Sienna was near me. It was almost as if after all this time with her I could sense her. But I didn’t sense Dean or Penn, so for all I knew it was all in my head and she wasn’t actually there with me.

I heard the squeak of a door opening, and could tell by the change in lighting we were being taken inside a building. We walked for a short while before I heard another door and I was led down a flight of stairs. Then I was led down another long hallway before I was practically thrown inside what felt like an empty room. It was silent and cold. And I didn’t like it.

My breathing started to speed up as I became increasingly worried about what was going to happen. I imagined I was inside some kind of kill room. Was this how I was going to leave the world after all I’d be through? Murdered by a group of lunatics in some dank and dreary basement. A room that I couldn’t even see because my head was covered with a cloth bag of some sort? There was no way I was going to die like this. Not without a good fight anyway. I started swinging my shoulders as if I could somehow break free or at the very least take someone out with my lethal shoulders. But all I managed to do was wear myself out.

“Hey!” I yelled as something was pushed into me.

“It’s just me,” Sienna said as I reflexively tried to reach my hand out to her. But of course I couldn’t move them.

“OK… OK…,” I said trying to keep myself calm. I wasn’t dead yet. Maybe there was a way to get us out of this. I had to hope something would come to me before it was too late.

Someone put their hands on my shoulders and pushed me up against a wall. I knew they had done the same to Sienna when I felt her shoulder touch mine and heard the tiny grunt that exited as she smacked into the wall.

“Someone’s on my other side,” she said so quietly I wasn’t sure if I had heard her correctly. But I hoped that I had. Maybe Dean and Penn were with us. But if they were, why hadn’t they said anything? They hadn’t tried to communicate with us at all which seemed unusual. I had used Sienna’s name so they would have known we were there… they could have said something. But they hadn’t.

I was thinking of ways to get us out of this situation when someone yanked the bag off of my head. It startled me and I was looking around in all directions as if I half expected there to be a gun in my face.

After my breathing returned to normal, I looked around the room. It was lit up with candles and lanterns spread out randomly on the floor. The light was slightly too bright for my unadjusted eyes and I had to look away. Once things started to come into focus I knew I had been right about us being in a basement. It looked like something that would have been underneath a school or a church.

“Have a seat.” The voice came from behind the four men standing and facing us. Presumably, the men who had brought us here.

“No thanks,” I said looking down at the dirty floor. I was pretty sure the little brown sprinkles scattered all over the floor were some kind of animal droppings. Probably rats. And I was also fairly certain that there was quite possibly a dead animal in the corner of the room. It was hard to be sure in the flickering candlelight, but when I squinted it seemed to either be a dirty, crumpled-up shirt or a dead rat. I was putting my money, or lack thereof, on the rat.

“I insist,” he said his tone changing to something more fearsome. It was almost bizarre how quickly it had shifted. One of his men stepped towards me and I knew that if I didn’t sit he was going to make me sit.

“OK, well, if you insist,” I said glaring at the guy standing in front of me. He was a lot older than me. I was pretty sure he was old enough to have been my father. Even though I didn’t want to, I slid down onto the dirty floor making sure I didn’t look down first. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about what was under me. If I was going to sit in rat feces, I’d rather not know about it.

Now that my eyes were adjusted to the change in lighting, I turned to the side to see who was sitting with me and Sienna. I almost burst into tears when I saw Penn next to her and then Dean on the other side of him. They both had duct tape over their mouths and they both looked like they were going to kill these guys if they got the chance.

When the guy standing in front of me stepped off to the side, I got a good look at the guy sitting in the chair leading this circus. He couldn’t have been much older than I was, but somehow I knew he was in charge of this whole kidnapping.

He stared at us for a while. When he locked eyes with me, he tilted his head and flashed me a grin that was somehow both alluring and pure evil at the same time. It didn’t make me like him. In fact, I disliked him even more. Everything about him made me feel uneasy.

“Comfortable?” he said as his smirky-grin turned into a full smile. I ignored him knowing that how I felt towards him would show in my eyes, and I worried that could be dangerous to all of us.

He gestured to two of the men, the one that had been old enough to be my father and another that had been so plain I hadn’t really even noticed him. They both walked out of the room and closed the door behind them. I imagined they didn’t go far, in fact, I had a feeling they were standing just outside the door guarding it.

“Welcome,” the guy in charge said wearing his evil smirk once again. He seemed to wear it so much I wondered if it was just his normal face. The kind of face that made it seem as though you were up to something. Working on some kind of devious plan… but then again maybe he was.

He nodded towards the two remaining guys and one bent down and removed the tape roughly from Penn’s mouth and the other from Dean’s. Penn pressed his lips together and held in his anger. I knew him well enough to know what was going through his mind.

I wondered if he still had his gun. They had ripped mine out of my hand when they put the bag on my head. I could only assume that they had taken Penn’s too. It wouldn’t have mattered, even if he still had his gun, he couldn’t have used it with his hands tied behind his back.

And it wasn’t like Penn needed a gun to do damage to any of these men. He just needed an opportunity. But it didn’t seem as though they were going to give him one.

“Oooh…, did that hurt?” the guy in charge said contorting his face into a false wince. He was only going to piss Penn off more, and I wondered if maybe that was exactly what he was trying to do.

But Penn didn’t respond. He glared at him and held his body stiff. This guy was walking a fine line, and I was pretty sure none of us would even try to stop Penn from doing anything to him. The only reason I might was because we were surrounded by this guy’s underlings. If Penn tried something, it wouldn’t work. Even if he took care of everyone in this room, I didn’t think we’d get out of this building in one piece. Who knew how many people were out there? We didn’t even know where we were.

“So, I’m Dominick,” he said talking down to us like we were children sitting in his classroom. His dank, musty and mildew coated classroom of disgustingness. “And this is my good friend Dezzie and my other good friend Mack.”

Dezzie was probably in his early twenties if I had to guess. He had dark brown hair and dark eyes. His expression was neutral, but he looked strong… muscular. I couldn’t even place a guess as to what he was thinking or how he felt about any of this. It reminded me of how Penn had been when I first met him.

His other right hand man seemed a bit older too. It was harder to tell because his features made him appear young. His face was soft and rounded but he was tall and I could tell he was in fairly decent shape. His expression was far easier to read. Like Dominick, Mack was enjoying every minute of this.

“And what are your names?” Dominick said shifting forward in his seat a few inches. I hated how he was acting like he was talking to a group of kids. Even though I knew he was doing it intentionally.

The only thing I knew for sure was that these guys had nothing to do with HOME. I didn’t think for a second that there was any HOME group that would be hiding out underground. They wouldn’t be running around randomly putting burlap sacks over the heads of unsuspecting victims. It just didn’t seem like something HOME would do. They’d be more likely to try to lure you to their side first, and if you refused, they’d shoot you. These guys were part of something else completely.

When none of us answered, Dominick asked again, louder. “What are your names?”

Dominick nodded at the one he called Dezzie. He walked around behind Dominick and picked up a shotgun. He cocked it and looked at each one of us to show just how serious he was. Dominick raised his eyebrow at us knowing he had the upper hand.