Finding Home - A Post Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 2) (23 page)

His eyes had a new sparkle, and I felt as though mine did too. I couldn’t remove the smile from my face even if I wanted to. He smiled back at me, but I turned my face away. I didn’t know what had just happened exactly. And I didn’t want to deal with it or think about it right now. I’d have to figure out the Ryan and Dean situation at some point soon, but not right now.

“Good night,” I whispered.

“Night, Ros,” he said almost inaudibly as he slipped his arm around my waist and held me tight. He closed his eyes and so did I.

* * *

When I woke up, Dean was sitting on the bed and Owen was looking out the window. His hand was behind his back gripping his gun still tucked into his waistband.

“Hey,” I said rubbing my eyes. Sienna was lying on her stomach still asleep. Once I sat up, I saw Penn was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. “What time is it?” I asked even though I knew no one knew the actual time.

“Maybe around ten?” Penn guessed after glancing out the window.

I blinked. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept that late. For a long time now I’d been up with the sun, but then again in Alaska maybe that was at ten o’clock for all I knew.

Dean stood up and I suddenly couldn’t remember if that kiss between us had been real or if it had been a dream. I was almost positive it had been real, but at the same time it felt so far away.

“Let’s wake Sienna up and get back on the road,” Owen said without looking away from the window.

Sienna turned and stretched as if she had heard her name through her sleeping state. “Ugh, I’m awake,” she groaned and stretched her neck to the side. “How could anyone sleep with all this racket?”

The boys gathered around the dresser and moved it back to its original position. I looked around the room to make sure we weren’t forgetting anything. We hadn’t come in with anything except the guns and the flashlights. Penn had one of the flashlights wrapped around his wrist. I was fairly certain he considered it his weapon by the way he held it and he probably knew how to use it as such too. The other one was on the nightstand. I grabbed it and looped the string around my wrist.

Dean tried the doorknob, it turned but the door wouldn’t open. He shook it vigorously as if it was stuck.

“Not funny,” Owen said, narrowing his eyes.

“I’m not doing anything,” Dean said shaking it again. He freaked out and slammed his shoulder into the door. It rattled, and he grabbed his shoulder as he stepped away.

“Opens to the inside,” Penn said trying to hide a small smirk.

Owen tried the door. He twisted and turned, pushed and pulled but nothing. The door shook on its hinges but it didn’t budge. “We’re locked in,” he said as he automatically reached for his gun.

Dean grabbed his gun too, and I copied them although I kept mine down against my thigh. I was tempted to pass it to Penn because he would actually use it if something needed to be done. But I knew Dean and Owen wouldn’t approve so I refrained. Penn and I locked eyes, and I felt as though he had read my mind.

“What do we do?” Sienna whispered.

“Do you know anything about this?” Dean said turning on Penn.

Penn looked both annoyed and offended. “Of course I don’t.”

“I’ll bet,” Dean said with a snort.

Owen pounded on the door with his fist and then kicked the bottom of the door. He opened his mouth to speak but before he had a chance to get any words out there was a laugh from the other side of the door.

“This isn’t funny. Let us out,” Owen bellowed, punctuating his words with a fist against the door.

Whoever was on the other side laughed again. Then we could hear him walking and it sounded as if he was going away from the door. Penn stepped forward and put his ear against the door. He motioned for us to be quiet, even though none of us had done anything other than breathe.

“Tell him to open the door again,” Penn instructed.

“Open the door!” Owen shouted and Penn closed his eyes focusing on something, but what I didn’t know.

“Should we go out the window?” Sienna asked.

Penn looked at the window for a second and looked as though he was considering it. “I worry that there could be others out there and if so, how many? What if they messed with the car? We would be bigger targets out in the open. That might be exactly what he wants us to do.”

“Let’s just shoot the stupid door open,” Owen said pointing his gun at the doorknob.

Penn grimaced. He looked at the door and shook it as if he were trying to see something. The bottom of the door wiggled out further than it did at the top. He tried to look up and down the crack between the door and the frame.

“There,” he said pointing about ten inches down from the top of the door. We all looked at him waiting for him to explain. None of us were super ninja gun slinging spies like Penn was so we needed a bit more information. “I think it’s a simple hook type lock. See the door opens to the inside,” he said glancing at Dean with a small smirk, “and locks on our side. Whoever it is out there installed a lock on the other side of the door.”

“Why would someone do that?” Sienna asked crossing her arms loosely over herself as if she were cold. But I knew she was holding herself because she was frightened. I was too. None of us knew who was on the other side of the door, or how many of them there were.

“I don’t know but a person doesn’t usually get locked up for a good reason. At least not any that I can think of,” Penn said as he put his ear back against the door. “Look for something long and slim that I could slide between, maybe I can unhook it.”

Sienna and I started rifling through the nightstands for anything that might work and Dean went through the closet. I got down on the floor to see if there was anything under the bed maybe in boxes or storage, but there was nothing. As I stood up, something at the window caught my eye. I paused for only a second before I let out a scream that sounded far away. It hadn’t even sounded like my voice.

Chapter twenty.

I heard things dropping to the closet floor as I stumbled backwards into Penn. I couldn’t get any words to come out of my mouth. Standing in the window was what I presumed was a man wearing some kind of animal mask. A wolf-man mask. This time when Penn slipped my gun from my waistband I felt him do it. And I was glad he took it because I hadn’t even thought of it until I felt him remove it.

Dean took a huge step backwards when he saw the masked man standing in the window. The man just stood there staring in at us with that stupid mask on. Penn bounded across the room and closed the curtains.

“He was sizing us up,” Penn said, “at least I think that’s what he was doing. Now he knows how many of us there are.”

“Maybe he already knew, we should have made sure that curtain was closed last night,” Owen said making tight fists.

“He’s still there,” Sienna said wringing her shaking hands together.

“Yeah, I see that too,” Penn said stepping back away from the window.

I moved closer to Dean, practically hiding myself behind him. The shadow behind the curtain didn’t budge. “This is so creepy,” I said, rubbing my shaking hands against one another.

Owen turned and rattled the door as hard as he could and kicked wildly. But it didn’t make a difference.

“There could be more of them,” Penn warned.

Sienna crawled quickly across the bed back over by us. We all jumped when the man in the wolf mask tapped his knuckles on the window right before the shadow disappeared.

“What is wrong with this guy?” Dean said turning back to the closet. He started going through things even faster hoping to find something Penn could use to open the lock.

“Here, try this,” Sienna said handing him a thick bookmark.

Penn listened at the door and then slid the bookmark into the open space. It stopped when it hit the lock. Penn worked fast but carefully. I couldn’t tell if he was having any success by the neutral look on his face.

We heard a door open in the other room and Penn quickly removed the bookmark. “Damn it,” he mumbled, pressing his ear to the door, “no luck.” But we all already knew he hadn’t been able to unhook the lock since we were all still stuck inside the bedroom.

He looked at me shaking his head, clearly disappointed he hadn’t been able to unhook the lock. I shrugged my shoulders.

“What is he doing out there?” I asked even though I knew no one had the answer.

“I’m fairly certain it’s just him out there. I don’t think there are any others,” Penn said pressing his ear against the door. He closed his eyes so he could concentrate only on what he was hearing through the thin wood.

Dean glanced towards the window, “How can you be sure about that?”

“If there were more, I think they would have talked to one another by now, or I would have heard more movement.”

“Well then we have him outnumbered,” Owen said as if the solution was simple. He was suggesting a takeover.

Sienna groaned and started hopping in place. “I have to pee,” she said with a frown.

“OK, OK, OK!” Penn started working on the lock again. His face remained neutral until I heard the clink of the hook falling and hitting another little piece of metal. “Got it,” he grinned.

Owen turned the knob and pulled the door open. He raised his gun. Penn still had my gun and did the same thing. I already knew Penn had deadly accuracy, so if anything need to be done, he’d do it before Owen could even move his finger. Dean looked at me confused and I could tell he was unhappy that Penn had my gun, but he didn’t say anything. He gripped his gun tighter, but stayed behind Sienna and I protectively while Penn and Owen led the way into the living room.

Penn put his back against the wall opposite the front door and closest to the kitchen. He waited and watched while Owen opened the front door.

The man still carrying his wolf mask stepped out from the kitchen, “Aww! This is no fun!” He stomped his foot on the ground like a whiny child having a temper tantrum. Penn stepped out from around the corner and bashed him over the head with his gun. The bad guy took a step forward before his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground.

“Let’s go!” Dean said anxiously.

“One second,” Penn said grabbing the bad guy’s shirt and lifted it over his back. “Shit! I knew it,” he said through clenched teeth. He roughly shoved his shirt back down and stood up. He punched the air and ran his fingers through his hair hard pressing it down as if he was trying to slick it back.

Dean and Owen shared a look. “What is it?” Owen asked looking annoyed that we weren’t already sitting in the car driving away instead of addressing whatever was happening at this moment. He wanted to get out of here as badly as I did.

“I have to pee!” Sienna said with her legs crossed as she hopped back and forth from one foot to the other.

“Take her to the bathroom,” Penn ordered and Owen looked angry. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it instead. I knew he had been about to tell Penn not to give him orders, but Owen and Dean walked her over to the bathroom while they kept their eyes mostly on Penn.

Penn grabbed the bad guy by the feet and started dragging him into the bedroom. I didn’t offer to help him but I followed him into the room. If I hadn’t been afraid to be in the living room alone I would have stayed. But I also didn’t think it would have been a good idea to leave Penn alone with this weird guy. I didn’t know what he was planning to do with him.

“Argh!” Penn yelled through clenched teeth as he pressed the gun to the bad guy’s head.

“Whoa! Wait, uhhh…,” I said holding my palms up towards him. “What are you doing? It’s OK. We are all OK. Just put the gun down.”

Penn relaxed his arm slightly and let out a low growl. I shook my head. We couldn’t just go around shooting anyone who did something we didn’t like. In this case, no one was hurt, and this lunatic hadn’t really done anything to us other than locking us up while we slept. It was scary, and it sucked but he didn’t deserve to be shot in the head over it.

“He saw us,” Penn said crouching down next to the bad guy who was still out cold.

“So what?” I said shrugging my shoulders as the others came in to see what was going on.

Penn lifted the man’s shirt again to show us exactly what he had found. It was a strange symbol-like tattoo. He looked at us with his mouth agape as if we should see how this was bad. I shook my head not understanding why we weren’t five miles away by now. Far, far, far away from the crazy man with the wolf mask and the weird marking.

“It’s a tattoo,” he said as if that should explain everything. “It’s HOME. He’s a spy. He saw us… don’t you get it?”

Penn looked frustrated when we didn’t all gasp in horror at his revelation. He roughly pulled up his shirt and turned around. On his back just below the top of his shoulder blade was a matching tattoo. It was a square shape just like the one the man on the floor had. It seemed to be a random pattern of colored and uncolored boxes. Penn’s tattoo had many colored in squares and the guy on the floor had far fewer. Above and below the big square was a sequence of numbers, that to me, seemed totally random and meaningless but probably wasn’t.