Running Away - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 4) (3 page)

“
P
enn
!” Sienna said using a motherly tone. I curled my lips into a smile when I heard her click her tongue at him. If she would have had room in the backseat, she probably would have had her hands on her hips.

“No, don’t worry about. It’s alright,” Carter said, his voice calm. I was tempted to turn around to see his expression, but it seemed as though he wasn’t affected in the least by Penn’s directness. “As far away as you are willing to take us.”

Penn nodded and readjusted his mirror, as if that somehow made him feel better. It was as if he just wanted to know he could ditch them whenever he chose to. I wondered if it was because he didn’t want to watch out for two people he didn’t know or if he had other reasons.

“Where are you all going?” Alice said in a small but feisty voice. I could tell she could be a firecracker if she wanted to be. She was tough, but it didn’t seem as though her shell was nearly at thick as Carter’s was.

The only thing that really made me nervous about little Alice was her big cough. Every time that thick cough rumbled out of her chest I couldn’t help but feel nervous. The last thing I wanted for any of us was to catch a cold on top of struggling to survive the already tumultuous conditions. Feeling under the weather wouldn’t help someone be at the top of their game and completely aware of their surroundings, something that was practically essential.

“We’re going to Michigan,” Sienna said, her face morphing into an expression of worry. She looked back and forth between Penn and I as if maybe she thought she shouldn’t have told them where we were going. I glanced at Penn but he didn’t look away from the road. If it bothered him, he didn’t let it show. “If you have nowhere to go—”

“Say,” Penn said, barging into the conversation, “maybe you guys would like to go somewhere in Colorado. I’m sure you can probably keep your distance from your dad in the mountains.”

I narrowed my eyes at Penn. The tone he was using was one I had heard before. It was similar to the one I had used when I tried to send him away when he stumbled upon my cabin in Alaska, starving to death. Now here he was, part of our group with no qualms about sending away people in need of a friend. And they probably weren’t HOME spies like Penn had been. Apparently he didn’t remember what it’s like to receive help when you need it most.

“Sure, wherever you want to let us out,” Carter said.

Alice coughed again, and I started to grow even more concerned. Not for her but for those of us around her.

I didn’t know her in the least, but from what I did know it didn’t seem like she was about to pull a knife and kill me. If she had a knife, she probably would have pulled it on her father. They both seemed like fairly OK people from what little I knew about them. These were the type of people we needed to stick together with. Of course, they could be pulling an elaborate scheme and would take our stuff the second we let our guard down, but somehow I found that very unlikely.

“Why did you want to get away from your dad?” I asked trying to direct the question mainly towards Alice. I didn’t look at her, thinking that if I was casual about it, I might get the most honest response.

“He’s an asshole,” she responded instantly.

“He is not a good man,” Carter said, as if he was trying to erase her cuss word from the air.

Penn tilted the mirror again, and I was pretty sure he and Carter had connected eyes for a second. “Was that his camp?” Penn asked.

“Indeed,” Carter responded.

I could only imagine what it would have been like for them at the camp. Could their dad have been worse than Dominick? I doubted it, but surely anything was possible.

“I’m done with him and that stupid camp,” Alice said making a noise that sounded like she had slapped her knee. “I wish I could go with you guys… to Michigan. I’ve never been there.”

“There isn’t anything in Michigan,” Dean said and it sounded as though he was taking Penn’s side in the whole wanting to leave them behind thing. I was apprehensive, but I still thought they seemed normal enough and if they were truly good, normal people, we’d want them on our side.

They didn’t seem to pose any real threat. More than anything else, they seemed as though they were just running away. Trying to get as far away from the crazy and all the danger… just the same as we were.

Alice coughed again. This time it was even more harsh than the others. It probably wouldn’t be that difficult to find her cough drops or cold medicine. How many people out there were searching for those items? If we didn’t have anything in the back, surely there was some still out there.

Penn glanced at me as if he was reading my mind. I could even have sworn I saw him shake his head at me. Only I didn’t know if he was shaking his head because I was OK with them coming with us, or because I wanted to find her cold medicine.

“Then why are you going there?” Alice asked her voice hoarse and sharp like a razor blade.

“Because we are all done with this shi… what the hell?” I said looking out my window.

Dust was flying up into the air making a small brown cloud. At the front of the billowing dirt was a small fleet of dirt bikes and ATVs speeding towards us.

“Who are they?” Sienna asked looking out the side window.

“On this side too,” Dean said tapping his finger against the window pane.

Penn glanced in the rear-view mirror, “And behind us too.”

They were gaining on us at such a quick pace we’d unfortunately find out soon enough who they were. Penn sped up, but when another group appeared in front of us, he had no choice but to stop the car.

“Resistance?” Alice said and I could hear the fear in her voice. “Are these people with dad?”

“I don’t know,” Carter said in a hushed voice.

There was a line of cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes and ATVs blocking our path. Each one had a pathetic looking skull and crossbones painted on the side. A couple of the motorcycles even had flags sticking up in the air behind their seats, barely able to wave in the weak, nearly nonexistent breeze.

Penn looked as though he was going to start swearing but he punched the steering wheel instead. He probably blamed himself, think he should have been paying better attention. Maybe he even blamed Alice and Carter because he had been more concerned about what was going on in the backseat than our surroundings, but it wasn’t his fault. I hadn’t seen them descend upon us either.

One of the guys in their gang started pointing at Penn and laughing. Apparently he thought the angry reaction Penn was having was simply hilarious.

The men and women in the gang didn’t look like they were from HOME. They looked rough and dirty, like they’d been out here struggling to survive, like the rest of us, for far too long. Although there were probably people from HOME that were out here struggling too, like Penn had been, but they probably weren’t traveling the roads in a large group.

I tried to estimate how many of them were surrounding us, but it was hard to tell. Some of the men and women kept walking around, never taking their eyes off of our car. We were also constantly being circled by a few of the dirt bikes. My best guess was that there were maybe twenty-five or so.

They looked like a bunch of rejected prospects for a biker gang. The men and women all wore bandanas and some of the men had on leather chaps. The whole group was a spatter of brown dirt and black leather.

If they were armed, which they probably were, they kept their weapons concealed. And of course, so did we.

“Who’s in charge,” a man with an eyepatch said taking a half-step forward. He turned his head to the side but kept his good eye on us as he launched a big wad of spit towards the ground.

“Guess we should have appointed a leader… now what are we going to tell them?” I muttered, sliding myself down into my seat.

“I’ll do it,” Penn said, putting his hand on the door handle. Protesting wouldn’t have done any good. He would have insisted he do it, probably mentioning the training he had that none of the rest of us did. Well, at least I assumed Carter and Alice didn’t have any of the same skill-sets, but then again… maybe they did. If they were trained super-spies it would really help to know about it.

“Stay in your car,” Patchy said, putting his hand behind him as he approached the car slowly with his other hand palm out towards us. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

The way he spoke reminded me of how a police officer might handle a situation as he approached a questionable person. The way he moved and nodded towards one of his comrades was almost enough to confirm my thoughts. And if he had been police in a former life, he probably had fairly decent accuracy with that firearm he was no doubt hiding behind his back.

“Roll down your window… slowly,” Patchy said looking into the window carefully as he sized us up. He shifted his eye back towards Penn, “No funny business now, you hear?”

“Right. No funny business,” Penn said, but I knew that was only true if his group of pirates didn’t do anything to piss Penn off. Although, we were drastically out-numbered. Penn also wouldn’t do anything stupid.

He leaned down and looked inside the window, the same way a cop might. Patchy was extremely apprehensive. I wondered how many times he had done this same exact thing to other travelers. How many times had a traveler pulled a gun on him? Maybe that was how he had lost an eye. Or a knife to the eye? I didn’t want to know.

“If you do as I say, this will go smoothly,” Patchy said with his eye staring wide at Penn, and then he shifted it in my direction. I watched, waiting for him to blink, but he didn’t.

“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that,” I mumbled.

“What’s that little lady?” Patchy asked even though I was pretty sure he had heard me.

“Nothing, sir,” I said in a way that one might respond to a police officer in the old days. I just wanted him to know I had him figured out. But if he got the message from my tone, he ignored it.

“Alright then, what you got in the back there?” he said speaking a bit slower. I noticed when he dragged out his words he had a bit of a Southern accent.

Penn turned his head and I could tell he didn’t like where this was going. “
Our
stuff is back there.”

“I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to confiscate that stuff,” Patchy said with a smirk.

“Of course you are,” Penn said, as he looked over towards the surrounding men and women carefully. He was probably trying to figure out if there was any way for us to get out of here with our stuff… and our lives.

Patchy nodded to his men and four of them gathered at the back of our car. I pressed my hands against my face and slid them back into my hair. It was almost as if I was trying to wipe away my disbelief. We had been good on supplies, maybe we would have even had enough to make it all the way to Michigan, but now we would soon have nothing.

“Open the hatch,” Patchy said knocking on the side of the car.

“Come… on!” Dean shouted hitting the back of Penn’s seat with his palms. Patchy instantly reacted and raised his gun up cop-style. He pointed it at Dean as if he thought he was going to do something foolish.

Dean’s hands flew up to show Patchy he was unarmed. Everyone in the area became very still as they watched Patchy. It was as if we were all posing for some kind of old-time hold-up photo.

Everyone was on edge. Some of the pirate-looking guys stared as they waited to see what Patchy was going to do. I wondered, in these situations, how often Patchy shot first and asked questions later. He probably didn’t even bother to ask questions at all.

I briefly considered pulling my gun in case he was going to do something to Dean. They wouldn’t at all be prepared for me to pull out a gun and start firing at Patchy. But, thankfully Patchy lowered his gun, so I didn’t have to worry about turning into Calamity Jane.

“Open it,” he said refusing to take his eye off of Dean.

Penn reached down to the keys hanging from the ignition and clicked the button that would pop the hatch open. He pressed his fingertips into his forehead and let out a big sigh.

“Yeah, sorry man. Times are bad for all of us you know,” Patchy said, as if he felt guilty about taking our things. But if he did, that didn’t stop him and his men from emptying the back of our car.

The guys walked past the car carrying all of our things. Not a single one of them looked at us. Patchy leaned over and looked into the car as he gestured at one of his people. A slender man carrying a hose and a gas can walked towards the car.

“Just one more thing… then you can be on your way,” Patchy said through the opened driver-side window. I looked at him, ready to swear at him, but when he wasn’t wearing the sinister smile I expected, it threw me off guard.

Patchy walked away from the car before the slender man finished. The gang of road pirates stood there watching and waiting for the man to finish filling up their gas can.

The whole ordeal went by pretty fast. It seemed as though these road pirates had done this hundreds of times. We weren’t their first victims.

The man walked away carrying the gas can and Patchy saluted goodbye to us as his group of pirates boarded their vehicles.

“Good luck,” he shouted before he got onto his motorcycle. He started it up and the gang drove away leaving us stranded there on the interstate with nothing but the clothing on our backs.

Penn put his forehead down against the top of the steering wheel. There were a small handful of abandoned cars scattered around the highway, but I would have bet the clothes I was wearing that the road pirates had drained them a long time ago. We were going to have to set out on foot. At least we still had our guns.

Alice’s cough broke the silence inside the car. I turned to look at her while her brother held her shoulders. The look on his face was a combination of concern and worry.

“How long has she been sick?” I asked looking at Carter.

“A couple weeks I think… it’s a very stubborn cough,” Carter said holding my gaze. “Don’t worry, I don’t think she’s contagious. I’m still fine and I’ve been with her every day since she came down with it.”