Crashing Down - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 3) (24 page)

She raised her hand up to one of them as if she was making sure he wouldn’t speak, and then she shouted at him some more. His face tightened and his hand stretched out and smacked her hand down. He grabbed her by the shirt and pulled her towards him at the same time he jerked his hand back. The boy stepped forward, but it was too late, the man had swung his arm forward and struck her violently across the face.

The force was so hard that when he let go of her shirt she took several side steps and fell to the ground. He grimaced and pulled back as if he was going to hit her again, but his face softened slightly and he looked away from her.

“Penn,” I said pulling on his arm, “we have to do something!” I worried that the men were going to kill them. They looked nervous and angry, and that seemed like a volatile combination.

The girl put her hands over her face and I knew she was hiding the fact that she was sobbing. Based on her reaction to everything I didn’t think it was the first time she’d been hit by that man. She didn’t seem at all shocked or surprised.

The boy that had been at her side stepped forward. He didn’t seem to have a weapon or anything but he wanted to show the man he wasn’t afraid. He was going to take whatever blow the man was going to deliver. Maybe he would even fight back.

“Are they part of the resistance?” Sienna asked, her voice near a whisper. It seemed as though she was afraid they could hear her talking, but we were so far from them they hadn’t even noticed our car driving towards them. Or us sitting here watching everything play out. They had been distracted with their dispute, or whatever it was that was going on.

“They could be… kind of looks like it,” Penn said looking behind to make sure the path was clear to back up and leave. “I don’t think they are HOME, that’s for sure.”

“Because they aren’t dressed like HOME?” Sienna asked, still keeping her voice quiet.

“No, not because of their clothing. HOME isn’t always running around in uniforms,” Penn said, blinking several times as if he was trying to erase a thought that had popped into his head. I was pretty sure I knew exactly what he was thinking about.

“Yeah… you didn’t have a special uniform on when you found Ros’s cabin in the middle of nowhere,” Dean said, trying to keep his voice neutral, but I recognized the tinge of lingering resentment.

Penn’s deceit had felt like a lifetime ago, but he had easily tricked me when he had still been working for HOME as a spy. He had been dressed in normal clothing and nothing at all made him stand out as being connected to HOME in any way. Well, other than the hidden tattoo.

“These guys could be spies?” I asked raising an eyebrow. There was something unpolished about them that made me think they were not. Not to mention that a group of people hanging out together fighting on the side of the road just didn’t seem very spy-like.

There was a time I hated Penn for what he had done to me… to us. But now I trusted him with my life. I hoped I wouldn’t come to regret that choice because, as far as I was concerned, he earned it.

Maybe I couldn’t ever trust him the same way I trusted Dean or Sienna, but I trusted him as much as humanly possible with everything that was going on. He had done so much for us and he had saved my life more than once. I had to think it wasn’t all some sort of larger plan and if it was, well, hats off to him.

I winced when the older man hit the boy our age. It was almost as if I could feel the blow myself. The boy stood there, his fists clenched, while he held his entire body absolutely still. The anger in his eyes was noticeable even from our distance. But still he didn’t fight back.

Just when I thought it might be over, the man that had just hit him pulled out his gun.

T
he man took
a step closer to the boy and directed the barrel of his gun inches from the boy’s nose. If it phased the boy at all, I couldn’t tell. He kept his body steady while the girl on the ground leaned forward on her knees looking as though she was crying and begging for the man to stop.

Two of the group members looked on uneasily. One of them rubbed their nose as if it was a sign to the other one to retreat. They started backing away as though they didn’t want to see what would happen if the man shot the boy. I didn’t blame them.

The old man shook the gun in the boy’s face as he yelled something, lowered his head and then let the gun fall gently to his thigh. The man looked up at the boy and shook his head. It looked as though the man had started sobbing. He almost looked as though he was in pain.

“This is crazy,” Penn said, his eyes darting from man to man. I could feel his anxiety radiating out of his body, but for some reason he stayed. Even though his desire to leave was strong, he stayed… waiting and watching.

After a few minutes the older man pointed the gun at the guys behind him. The ones that I had thought were on his side. Almost all at the same time the men turned away and started running. They all disappeared from view through a patch of spruce trees.

Then the older man’s mouth started to move as he spoke to the boy and girl. The boy took her arm and pulled her up off of the ground. He wrapped his arm around her and they started to hastily walk away from the man… in our direction.

“Oh shit,” Penn said as he looked in the rear-view mirror again, making sure the coast was still clear. The car was still in reverse, but Penn kept his foot on the brake.

The two walked towards us and I couldn’t tell exactly, but it looked as though the boy spotted us. He squinted in our direction. Seeing a car on the side of the road wasn’t an unusual sight, so he must have seen people sitting inside.

It seemed as though he wasn’t at all worried about us. For all he knew we could have been HOME, but he seemed to care more about getting away from the man than anything else.

They were a good twenty feet away from the older man when he turned his head in their direction and raised the gun. His expression was no longer one of pain and sadness, those emotions had been replaced by anger and maybe even hate.

“Oh, no!” Sienna said pointing a finger straight in the man’s direction. “He’s going to kill them!”

The boy glanced back to judge their distance and must have spotted the gun pointing at them. He ducked and pulled the girl’s head down just as the man let out a pop from the gun. They kept moving closer and closer to us.

I grabbed my seat with both hands, “We have to—”

My sentence was cut short when Penn hit the steering wheel with his fist, pulled out his gun and shifted the car from reverse into drive. He drove wildly towards the boy and girl hoping it would throw the older man off his guard. Surely he wouldn’t be expecting a car to just pull off of the side of the road and speed towards the boy and girl.

It must have worked because he closed one eye and stared at us as if he was trying to figure out who we were. Or maybe he was just trying to make sense of what was happening, but after a long pause he changed where his gun was aimed.

Penn was quicker than the man. His gun was already out the window and perfectly aimed. The loud pop echoed inside the car causing my ears to ring.

Penn shot again before the man had even been able to pull his trigger. This shot must have landed scarily close because the man took off into the spruce trees in the same direction his pals had left.

“You missed,” I said, teasing him about his shot. Of course it had to be difficult to drive and shoot.

“No I didn’t,” Penn said raising an eyebrow. It seemed he was implying that he had only intended to scare the guy, not hit him. And considering the look on his face, maybe it was the truth.

He pulled the car up next to the boy and girl, gesturing for them to get in. Sienna opened her door and they squeezed in next to her.

I glanced at Dean, who was holding his sore arm upwards. It looked as though he was in a quite uncomfortable position trying to make sure everyone would fit and avoiding any unwanted pressure against his bad arm. As soon as we could afford to make a stop, I’d offer to switch places with him and he could sit in the front.

The two of them were silent except for their heavy breathing, as Penn zoomed past the area the man had escaped through the trees. As we left, the girl turned around. I thought she was going to be upset about what she had to leave behind, but instead I watched as she raised up her middle finger towards the spruce trees.

Once their breathing returned to normal and we were far enough away from the whole ordeal, I turned back to have a closer look at them. They were clinging to one another as if maybe they were afraid of us. As if they were only just now worried about what new situation they had gotten themselves into.

The girl covered her mouth and let out a soft muffled cough. Her face was dirty, but she was still incredibly adorable. Even though she had a cute, round, youthful-looking face, I didn’t think she could be much younger than I was. Her hair was snarled up in the back as if she hadn’t combed it with anything but her fingers since HOME launched their weather weapon.

The boy she was with looked a few years older. He had dark blonde hair, maybe a shade or two darker than it would have normally been, because it looked as though it hadn’t been washed in some time. But what really stood out about him was his cold, steel blue eyes. He looked strong, and it was almost as if I could reach out and touch the shell that he had built up around himself. I knew without a doubt, the only one he let inside that shell was the girl he was with.

They didn’t even bother to try to hide their fear from us. It was as if they were already expecting the worst. I wondered why they had even gotten into the car, but I guess when they heard the gunshots they picked the path that seemed the safest at the time. I would have probably done the same and not even noticed if I was getting in a car full of HOME members on their way to the nearest HOME base.

“Are you OK? What’s your name? Who was that man?” I asked, bombarding them with questions as fast as I could think of them. I looked at the girl first but she refused to hold my gaze more than a second. I turned to the boy and cocked my head to the side, “He was going to shoot you both, you know that right?”

“Yeah, I saw that,” the boy responded. He looked at each one of us carefully as he held onto his sister protectively. He was sizing us up.

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” I said with a half-smile. “Well, unless you do something to us first. Who are you?”

“I’m Carter and this is my sister Alice,” he said, and Alice finally looked at me, able to hold my gaze. She stared until she was forced to look away to cough.

I nodded and waited for her to finish coughing. She seemed as though maybe she was sick with a cold or something… too bad we didn’t have any cough drops in the trunk.

I wasn’t sure but maybe we had something from the last house that could help. I made a mental note to check our supplies at the next stop. Maybe even some headache pills would help her if her symptoms were minor enough.

It wasn’t like I was about to tell them about the supplies in the back, at least not yet. I didn’t know them, which meant I didn’t trust them. Telling them about our stash could potentially cause problems since everyone was desperate for supplies.

Sienna wore a friendly smile even though they seemed wary of her too. She was trying to do her best to make them both feel more comfortable. Especially Carter.

When her eyes settled on him it was almost as if I could hear her mental swoon. The sparkle in her eyes revealed that she thought he was hot.

She looked at me as if she could sense me digging around in her brain. I raised my eyebrow at her and she shook her head as if she was denying my unspoken comments, teasings and questions.

“I’m Ros,” I said introducing myself, and then I pointed at the others, “Penn, Dean and that’s Sienna.”

Everyone politely said hi to one another, except for Penn who just grunted and kept his eyes on the road. Without asking I knew he was suspicious of them and probably on some level regretted saving them.

“Who was the man you were trying to get away from?” Sienna asked blinking several times at Carter. He squinted at her. It looked as though he thought she might have something wrong with her eye, but then he smiled at her once she stopped the fluttering.

His smile quickly faded though, once he started to speak, “That was our dad.”

“Asshole,” Alice mumbled as she crossed her arms vigorously and pressed them hard against her chest. “Wish he’d been shot.”

“So why would your dad want to kill you?” I asked not bothering to beat around the bush. If there was any reason they shouldn’t be in our car with us, I had the right to know. It was for our safety, although, to be totally honest, the only negative vibe I got from these two was that they were frightened. Alice seemed more scared than Carter, but both were caught up in something they weren’t exactly sure how to handle. But what they didn’t know was that we were the good guys.

“Alice didn’t want to be there any more, so I told him that we were leaving,” Carter said, looking towards Alice as if he was waiting for her approval. “He said we could leave, but he followed us out to the road. No one really gets to leave.”

“Leave?” I asked wanting to know where they were and what place wasn’t going to allow them to leave. I could have made two guesses, and one of them would probably have been right.

“I guess he probably thought we wouldn’t actually do it. But we did. We were both done with that place.”

“Leave where?” Penn asked, his voice clear. He didn’t take his eyes off of the road, but I saw him take a sharp inward breath as if he was preparing himself to hear something that might force him to take action.

“His camp… the resistance. Are you in the resistance?” Carter said narrowing his eyes at me.

“No,” I said quickly making sure there was no doubt about it. I didn’t want him to think even for a second that any of us were part of the resistance. We were fully aware of the resistance and what those groups were capable of doing.

Alice started sobbing, “Oh God, Carter! It’s worse! They’re HOME! Dad was right! The only people left are HOME!”

“We aren’t HOME,” Penn said gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. Alice instantly stopped crying with a sharp, short breath that almost sounded like a hiccup.

“Then who are you?” Carter said holding on to his sister even tighter. It almost looked as though he was ready and willing to jump out of the car pulling Alice out with him. “We don’t want any kind of trouble. Just let us out and we’ll be on our way. Thank you for everything you’ve done for us, but we’ll be fine from here on out.”

I watched under the headrest as he carefully moved his hand over to the door handle. If Penn stopped the car or slowed it enough, I was almost positive they’d make a run for it. What they didn’t know was that we’d let them.

“We are just trying to find a safe place to go,” Sienna said flashing her sweet smile at them. She didn’t want them to go. It was like she saw them as lost kitties and was wondering if we could keep them.

The problem was they were resistance. They couldn’t be trusted. Even though they were trying to escape a resistance camp, which was definitely a point in their favor, it mostly sounded as though they were escaping their dad more than they were trying to escape the camp or its teachings.

“I don’t understand,” Carter said shaking his head. “If you aren’t HOME and not part of the resistance, what group are you with?”

“We are just our own group, I guess. We are definitely not part of HOME or the resistance,” I answered as I turned around in my seat to face the road. “It’s just us.”

Penn adjusted the rear-view mirror and I could tell he was doing it just so he could keep an eye on the two of them. He breathed heavily, “OK where can we drop you off?”