Running Away - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 4) (11 page)

“If it’s all the same,” Penn said tilting his head towards his gun.

“It’s not,” the man said as the gate behind us closed. The loud clanging noise startled me and I took a step away. Wires sprouted up out of the dirt and tripped me. I tried to get my balance, but I was too twisted up in whatever it was around my feet and ankles, and I fell to the ground.

Penn came towards me to help me, but he got caught up in the wires too. He hit the ground hard but kept his gun at the ready the whole time he fell.

“The rest of you need to GET DOWN!” the voice shouted, and two men came around the corner. One of the two men was carrying a large gun. I didn’t know what kind of gun it was, but I knew it could probably take all of us out if the man holding it wanted to. The one that had been doing all the talking pointed his gun at Penn, “Now drop your guns.”

I placed mine on the ground about an inch away from me. Penn did the same. I couldn’t see Dean but I’m sure he put his down as well.

“Kick it here,” the guy with the gun pointed at Penn said but he was talking to Dean. I heard Dean sigh and then kick it towards the man.

The second guy walked over with his gun pointed at me and quickly picked up my gun and tucked it into his pants. Then he picked up Penn’s gun and held on to it as he walked back towards the one that was doing all the talking.

“Now, is that all of your weapons?” the man asked. He must have been able to tell by the looks on our faces that we’d given them everything, “Good. Now no funny business, ya hear?”

Penn stared at the man that was holding the gun that was pointed at him. I knew Penn didn’t need a gun. If given an opportunity, he could easily take out the two armed men, but how many others were here? Were there other guns we couldn’t see pointed at us too?

Dean looked at me, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was blaming himself. He had made the wrong choice about this place. And we had walked right into their trap. They’d probably heard or seen us coming down the road… they’d been prepared.

“Welcome to the U. S. Military base! I’m Cy and this is Sargent Bobby Lee. Now, get the fuck up off of the ground and stand at attention,” Cy said as he tapped his gun to remind us who was in charge. Bobby Lee walked over and cut the wires around our feet so we could stand. “And like I said, don’t even think about trying anything stupid. See those towers? Snipers.”

I looked at Penn and saw him squinting at the nearest tower. He shook his head ever so slightly from side-to-side which made me think he hadn’t seen anyone up in the towers.

“Eyes front and center!” Cy shouted only inches from my face.

I leaned back, “Sorry.” I tried not to react to the smell of his dreadful breath. It smelled as though he’d been eating raw roadkill. I laced my fingers together behind my back and straightened my back.

“Shut up! Walk,” Cy said, pointing with his gun. Carter and Sienna were to my left, and Carter didn’t hesitate to lead the way. He marched, waiting for someone to tell him to stop.

Cy was at the back of the line and his friend, Sargent Bobby Lee was walking off to the side of our line. He kept his gun up in case he needed to use it, his eyes shifting from one of us to the next. It didn’t seem at all like this was the first time they had done this.

“Halt!” Cy shouted and Carter stopped so abruptly he almost fell.

Bobby Lee stepped forward and opened the door to the small shed we were facing. He stepped back and gestured with the barrel of his gun for us to step inside.

“Aw come on!” I said throwing my hands into the air. I could feel Penn’s eyes staring at the back of my head.

Bobby Lee looked at me and then shifted his eyes back to Cy. I looked over my shoulder, worried about what Cy would do about me talking without having been talked to first. But I was lucky. He didn’t do anything. He just smirked and nodded at the shed.

“Inside… now,” Bobby Lee ordered, tapping me on the shoulder with his gun when I didn’t move. I moved my feet and followed Sienna inside the shed. Once we were all inside they didn’t say anything, they just closed the door and locked us inside.

T
he shed had been completely cleared
out. There wasn’t a single sign left to indicate what the storage shed had been used for before its current purpose of storing people. Penn pushed on the wall, it had a small amount of give, but overall it was sturdy. We wouldn’t be able to kick through it or knock it down.

Carter, Sienna, and Alice sat down on the floor while Penn moved around the room feeling every inch of the walls from top to bottom. He was probably trying to look for some kind of weak spot, but I didn’t think he was finding anything. I paced back and forth in the small space, while Dean banged his head lightly against the wall.

“What’s the plan?” Sienna said, and I could tell she was trying to play it cool around Carter. If he hadn’t been here, I was pretty sure she would have been far more upset about our current situation.

“I don’t have one,” Penn said, slamming his fist into the side wall.

“It’s hard to accept at first, but they do feed us,” a soft voice said. It sounded as though it was coming from the other side of the wall Penn had just hit. “Well, sometimes they feed us. I mean, it’s not like three square meals a day, but enough to keep us alive. Square meals… what does that saying mean? Meals aren’t really square, except sandwiches, they are kind of square.”

Penn looked at me and then at the wall, “What is this place? Are we in some kind of holding cell?”

“You know, I’ve wondered the same thing,” the soft male voice on the other side of the wall said. “But I’ve been in here for a while now.”

“Are you alone?” Penn asked pressing his ear to the wall.

“Well I am right now,” the man said with a panicked chuckle. “But I came here looking for help. And as you may have already figured out, there isn’t any help here.”

Penn gestured for me to stand next to him and then pointed towards my ear, and then soundlessly tapped the wall. He wanted me to listen too. But I couldn’t hear anything. I assumed the person talking to us on the other side was sitting still, and it did seem as though they were probably alone.

“How many did you come here with? Where are they now?” Penn asked staring into my eyes as he waited for the answer. I looked back, as if his eyes would provide me some kind of magical insight into what was going on.

“Just my sister and her boyfriend, but they are gone now. They took them. One at a time and now it’s just me. You should have heard my sister wail when they pulled her boyfriend away. It was traumatic.”

I frowned at Penn. Would that be what happened to us? They’d tear us away from one another.

“How long ago did they take them?” Penn asked, his words melted into one another as if he couldn’t ask the questions fast enough.

“My sister maybe three weeks ago, and her boyfriend was about two weeks before that? I’m not sure… I’m having a hard time keeping track of time in here. And now I’ve been alone for so long. Each day has started to bleed into the next,” he said with a thick sniff. “Sorry I know I’m not much help. Sucks you’re in here too, but I am glad I have neighbors.”

“Right,” Penn said pulling his ear away from the wall. He turned away and whispered, “I think he’s alone and I think he’s telling the truth.”

I nodding in agreement. Why would the men take them one by one and weeks apart? I didn’t know what was going on in this place but I didn’t have a good feeling about it. Maybe they just didn’t trust us in groups, but then why did they wait so long between?

“Where are you guys from?” our neighbor asked. Penn’s eyes were wide. “How many of you are there in there? It sounded like a lot!”

I knew he didn’t want to answer the guy, but I didn’t know if it would really matter either. There was always a chance we were wrong, and the guy wasn’t telling the truth. He could have been planted in there to gather information about us.

What if our neighbor was a spy? Penn had to be careful what he said to the man. In fact, maybe it would have been better not to have talked to him at all.

We hadn’t learned anything from him about the camp. Maybe it was because he didn’t know anything about this place, or maybe he was intentionally keeping things from us. All I knew was that we couldn’t trust him.

“Just a few of us in here,” Penn answered rubbing his hands together. I could tell our neighbor was making him nervous, and I’m sure the situation we were stuck in didn’t help matters.

“OK… well hello to your friends,” he said with a small nervous chuckle.

Penn held up his hand and shook his head. He didn’t want any of us to answer. They already knew how many of us were in the shed, but I think Penn was afraid that our neighbor would only try to engage more if we all started talking.

Our neighbor asked a few more brief questions and Penn answered them with as few words as possible. He must have picked up on the fact that Penn didn’t want to talk, because he stopped asking him questions. For all we knew, the guy was just lonely and looking for someone to talk to. Just a way to pass the time.

I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to his friends once they had been taken. If what he said was true, would they start taking us out of the shed one by one? If I was left in here alone after the men out there took everyone from me, I wouldn’t be trying to strike up conversations, I’d be sitting in here crying and freaking out.

“We have to get out of here,” I whispered and shook the door. I didn’t know what they had used to lock us inside, but it seemed secure.

“It’s no use,” our neighbor said loudly so we could hear him over the rattling door. “We tried everything too.”

I looked at Dean and then at Penn but he just shook his head. It wasn’t like I was going to say anything anyway.

Dean kept his head down most of the time. I let my body slide down the wall until I was sitting on the ground, my shoulder lightly resting against Dean’s. He held his body stiff. It was like he hadn’t even noticed that I was next to him.

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t blame him for any of this, but he wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. He knew it was his idea to come. He had practically demanded it, but he had only been doing what he thought was best. The last person he probably wanted to hear any of that from was me since I had voiced my opinion against the whole idea.

This wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t like any of us knew what would happen if we came. Of course I wished it would have been the safe haven it claimed to be, but it didn’t seem to be. Maybe something worse would have happened to us if we had kept going on the road today. There was no point in wondering about the what-ifs… we needed to deal with the what-nows and get ourselves out of here.

I opened my mouth to tell him we’d get out of here, but I closed it when I heard the loud clanging noise against the shed walls. They were outside, pounding and being rough with something. When our shed door didn’t open, I knew they were at our neighbor’s door.

“Oww! God! So unnecessary!” our neighbor squawked. He tried to hide it but his voice was filled with fear. “I’m going with you. It’s not like you have to be so rough!”

It sounded like the men were pulling him along with them. Our neighbor said he was going willingly, but it didn’t sound that way. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were being extra rough for our benefit.

“What are you going to do to me?” he said, his voice trailing off as he was moved further and further away. Then I didn’t hear the sound of movement anymore. There was nothing. Just complete silence.

“Jesus Christ,” Penn said softly into the silence. The words almost seemed to hang in the air. If someone walked by later, they’d still hear them. “We need to get out of this place.”

Penn stood up looking more panicked than I’d ever seen him. He started shaking and kicking the door. He faced the door, balled up his fists and growled at the door before giving it one final kick as hard as he could. But the door just rattled back and forth.

I glanced around and everyone was staring at him. Even Dean looked up. Carter and Alice almost looked scared by the outburst.

I walked over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He aggressively shrugged me off and Dean took notice. I held my palm up signaling that I was fine and that I could handle Penn.

He shook his head and turned to look at me. His eyes were filled with anguish and I knew he was sorry for how he’d reacted to my touch. Penn didn’t actually say the words, but I could tell he felt bad.

“We’ll come up with a plan. Just stop for a moment and think,” I said taking a small careful step towards him.

“I can’t any more!” Penn shouted as he put his arm up against the wall and drove his head into the back of his arm. “I’m just so sick of all this. I’m so tired.”

Penn had been our caretaker since the minute he wanted to step up and prove that he was on our side. He’d been working overtime at keep us all safe. I didn’t blame him for being exhausted, but I didn’t know what to say to fix things either.

It was like HOME had control over his brain. He had been conditioned to be a super fighter but now, after all this time of having his switch flipped in the on position, he needed it off for a while. It was draining the life out of him. I hated watching as he searched around inside of himself for the off switch.

What if after everything HOME had done to him there wasn’t an off switch? Maybe that’s what he was worried about. I wanted to tell him that once we got somewhere he could feel safe, he’d be better, but I didn’t know if that was true. Maybe we wouldn’t ever find anywhere safe enough or maybe he wouldn’t be able to turn himself off.

“OK,” Penn said taking deep breaths. He bent over like he was playing short-stop for a baseball team as he reeled himself back in. “I’m going to sit down now.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I said with as gentle of a smile as I could manage. He didn’t look at me to notice it anyway.

I started to pace back and forth in front of the door. Every so often I would think I heard something moving around outside, but when I put my ear to the wall, I couldn’t hear anything.

The hours passed by, but since I couldn’t see outside I had no idea what time of day it was. Carter had his arm around Sienna and she was resting her head on his shoulder. I couldn’t tell but it seemed as though they were both asleep. Or as close to it as anyone could get.

Dean grabbed his wrist hard and rubbed it, keeping his eyes focused on the twisting movements. Alice was curled up on the ground with her back to me. Her body slowly moved up and down as if she was asleep. With how sick she was, she needed as much rest as she could get.

Penn’s head would tilt to the side every so often as he started to drift off, but something would startle him awake. He’d look around quickly, remember where he was and then rest his head back against the wall until the same thing happened again.

I didn’t feel tired, although I’m sure I was. My veins were surging with the desire to escape and the adrenaline pumping through my body gave no indication of letting up. I kept moving around the room trying to burn off some of the energy.

Even when everyone was asleep, I was still up walking around the box we were trapped inside. It reminded me of when we were stuck in the underground shelter and I just wanted to move my body. It felt more like a need. I had done various exercises… like the jumping jacks I’d done with Ryan.

The feeling was the same. I had to move. And I was about to start doing jumping jacks when I heard the
clink-clank
noises outside of our shed.