Crashing Down - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 3) (4 page)

O
ne by one
they helped us to our feet. It almost felt as though they were intentionally saving Sienna and I for last.

Dezzie and Mack spun Dean around so his back was to Dominick. Mack cut the piece of rope holding his hands together with a sharp blade. When Dean’s hands dropped to his sides Dezzie raised his shirt up. Both Mack and Dezzie watched Dominick as they waited for his official word on whether or not Dean had any markings from HOME.

Dominick nodded his approval and Dezzie dropped his shirt. He gripped Dean by the shoulders and walked him back to the wall. Dezzie pressed Dean into the wall as if he half expected him to stick to it. Dean just let him move him around into whatever position he wanted. It wasn’t like he had anything to hide.

Maybe Dean was just going through the motions while he waited for Penn to make his move. Or maybe he was just doing what needed to be done and avoiding confrontation so it would be over sooner rather than later. I couldn’t tell what was on his mind since after what happened to Owen. Dean had become pretty unreadable since his death.

I hoped that Dean would be able to get himself out of whatever he was trapped inside within himself. It had been painful for him to lose Owen the way we had. And it wasn’t like Dean didn’t have every right to mourn his friend, of course he did, but we needed him. I needed him.

They took Penn next, and since they already knew what they’d find, no one seemed even the least bit surprised when they lifted his shirt and saw the tattoo.

I stared at his rope lying there on the ground hoping they’d leave him free just like they had Dean. If they did, maybe this was when Penn could put his plan into motion. If he even had one.

“Tie him back up,” Dominick ordered as he dismissed Penn from his personal space. He was smarter than he looked. Dominick knew enough about HOME to realize Penn probably had some kind of training or specialty and wasn’t about to take any chances leaving him untied.

Mack reused the cut rope and made the knot extra tight. Then Dezzie pushed him into the wall before turning to Sienna.

I worried that she might freak out. Put up a fight. But she didn’t. She turned around before they could even put their hands on her. I wanted to reach out to her and let he know that it was going to be OK, but it didn’t even seem as though she needed any support.

They untied her wrists and lifted her shirt up. Both Dezzie and Mack looked uncomfortable. They waited for Dominick to instruct them to put her against the wall with Dean and Penn.

“Maybe her mark is on her legs,” Dominick said, his face serious. He glanced at me as if he was more interested in my reaction than Sienna’s.

A soft gulp-like noise escaped from between Sienna’s lips but she dipped her head, clenched her teeth and swallowed it back down. She hid the fact that they were bothering her. Sienna wasn’t going to give Dominick the reaction he wanted. I was almost surprised she hadn’t just yanked her pants down herself. She wasn’t going to let them get to her.

“I’m kidding,” Dominick said and gestured to his men to put her back against the wall. “Oh! Last but not least, it’s your turn,” he said stretching his arms up towards the ceiling and then tucking his hands behind his neck. It was as if he was trying to show me just how comfortable he was with all of this. He had probably somehow convinced himself that this was for his own safety.

I sucked in a deep breath, and right when Mack put his hand on me I instinctively jerked my arm back and elbowed him in the chest. Dezzie quickly reacted and grabbed my other arm so I couldn’t do it again. Dominick chuckled at my lame attack. Or maybe he was just enjoying seeing me struggle and was pleased at how much this whole thing bothered me.

They spun me around and raised my shirt. I looked up at the ceiling and held my breath while Dominick took his time.

“Mmm,” Dominick hummed.

“Dom,” Dezzie whispered after more time had elapsed than it had with the others. A second later I felt my shirt drop. He was pushing me up against the wall next to Sienna.

Dominick sat in his metal folding chair as if it were his throne. Only he gripped his knees instead of armrests made of gold. Dezzie and Mack moved to stand behind him as if they were his protectors, his knights, awaiting their next quest. I hated how he looked out at us as if he was the King and we were some lowly peasants.

“Here’s what I propose,” Dominick said as he looked at each one of us down the row. “I propose you join up with the resistance. I really think you’ll like it here. We provide food and shelter, and we protect one another like family. You’ll be safe here.”

An invitation to join with his gang hadn’t been at all what I was expecting. Would he really let Penn, an ex-HOME member join the resistance? Perhaps only if he endured torture to prove his commitment to their cause.

“And what do you want from us in return?” I asked even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay here. To be totally honest I wasn’t sure if we even really had a choice in the matter. The idea of a place to sleep and not having to search out food and water for a while was really the only thing that had pushed me to ask what the price for staying was.

“All I ask for is your loyalty to me and my people,” Dominick said with a straight face. “Because when HOME comes, and they will, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

The resistance was building their own army, and they wanted us to be a part of it. But I didn’t think I wanted to be part of their group. I wondered what Dean, Penn and Sienna would think about the offer.

Maybe we could simply stay awhile, pretend we were on board, and then sneak off at some future date. Maybe staying here with others could actually work in our favor. We could take some time to regain our strength and properly mourn Owen. And then, when we were ready… leave.

“How many are in your group?” Penn asked. I didn’t know if he was considering joining or if he was trying to determine our chances of getting away?

“I suspect we have far, far fewer than HOME, but our numbers are growing all the time,” Dominick answered Penn without bringing out his attitude. He actually sounded like a normal person having a normal conversation.

“I thought you said you didn’t run into people too often in these parts?” I said raising my eyebrow.

“We don’t but when we do it’s not hard to convert them,” Dominick said and shifted in his seat. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “How much do you guys actually know about HOME?”

“Enough to know I don’t like them,” I said kicking my foot against the ground. “The further away the better.”

“You are aware that HOME is responsible for all of this right?” Dominick said leaning forward.

“All of what?” I said looking around the basement.

“Not this,” Dominick said waving his hand at the room. “They are responsible for the end of the world.”

“How do you know that?” Sienna asked sounding skeptical. It sounded as if she had already decided she wasn’t going to believe whatever he had to say.

Dominick grinned as if he was thrilled to be the one to reveal what he knew about HOME to us. But could we even believe what he had to say about them? How could he know more about HOME than we did? We had lived at the base and I didn’t know anything more about them than I did before I stayed there.

“HOME was a top secret division of the U.S. government. They had been working on a project, an usual project,” Dominick said speaking slowly and dramatically.

I looked at Penn and then back to Dominick, “What kind of unusual project?”

“They were tasked with creating weapons… something that wouldn’t even appear to be a weapon at all. One of the things they worked on was controlling the weather—”

“That’s nonsense,” Dean interrupted, “you can’t control the weather.”

“
You
can’t, and
I
can’t, but HOME found a way. They tested it on a small scale in Alaska, but their tests increased in size daily. They pushed and pushed, making things bigger, more ferocious and more lethal. I heard that they just kept increasing the scale of their testing until one day….” Dominick paused and put his hands into the air spreading his fingers apart as if his hands were exploding.

“This is ridiculous,” Dean said shaking his head.

Dominick ignored him. He hadn’t even bothered to look in his direction. “Then one day they went too far and caused the big storms that took everything away,” Dominick said settling his eyes on mine.

“How can you be sure about this?” I asked tilting my head to the side. I was ready to side with Dean. It sounded crazy. Impossible. And was there any way they could possibly know? This part of the story definitely hadn’t been included in the orientation binders that had been presented when I arrived at HOME.

“It’s a fact. One of the ex-members in this camp used to work at HOME. Unlike Dezzie here, he was two tiers in rank below the team that created the weapons. In fact, and obviously you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but he was there the day they launched the weapon that started the big storms.”

I shook my head. Were we stuck in a room with a bunch of lunatics? Dezzie and Mack both wore completely serious expressions. They clearly agreed with everything Dominick was telling us.

“How do you know the guy isn’t lying to all of you?” I said glancing at Penn briefly when I thought about how he had easily fooled me. Those from HOME were extremely skilled. They could make you believe anything.

“He knew far too many details. He’s described things… things only someone at HOME could know,” Dominick said looking at us as if we should just take him at his word.

“But who could verify what he was saying was true?” I wondered out loud because Dominick hadn’t been to HOME as far as I knew, so how could he believe the man? He could have just made up a story so Dominick would take him in and keep him safe.

“We’ve… umm… ran into other HOME members over time. When we could, we’ve gathered intel,” Dominick said as his expression changed to something darker.

I assumed that meant he had probably tortured men, and maybe women too, that had been from HOME for information. Perhaps they’d captured spies the same way they had kidnapped us. Only so far we haven’t been tortured.

Dominick blinked several times and continued, “When he learned what HOME was doing he demanded they stop or that he’d have to report them. He had found out that they were taking things too far… he said he was concerned about their motives. Like it didn’t seem like they were working for who they were supposed to be working for anymore.

“So, he wasn’t really surprised when HOME didn’t back down. They turned on him and on the others that didn’t want to look the other way. They started killing them off one by one. At first they tried to make it look like accidents but it was too many accidents. Our guy said in the end, only two of them had been able to escape. Just him and one other guy, but everyone else had been murdered by HOME. Now the HOME escapee lives here with us. He keeps to himself for the most part. But it’s because he truly believes that HOME is still out there looking for him. And I believe it too.”

There was no doubt in my mind that Dominick believed everything he was saying. And he also believed everything the man had told him. Dominick didn’t really seem like the type of person that would believe anything he heard on faith, so somehow he must have done what he could to verify what the man had told him. Or maybe I was just really gullible. Then again, it all seemed plausible. Everything he had said sounded to me like something HOME was easily capable of doing.

“But why would HOME want to destroy the Earth? They live here too,” Penn said shaking his head. He seemed to be straddling the same line I was… on one side you could almost believe what he was saying but on the other there was no way it could be true. It almost seemed like it could have been a story passed along to keep people from going to HOME. To convince more people that they were in fact, the enemy.

“That’s one thing we don’t know. The why,” Dominick said while Dezzie nodded slowly. “But I have my guesses.”

“And?” Penn said trying to prompt them for more. It seemed as though he wasn’t about to nod and jump on board with the resistance based on only that information. Penn, and the rest of us would need more, but I wasn’t sure we were going to get any hard facts. Anyone who could give us those answers were probably safe and secure at HOME or dead.

Dezzie stepped forward and crossed his arms. He seemed as though maybe he had been in the military the way he stood rigidly in front of us. “I believe no one knew exactly what was going to happen once they released that last weapon. Something they hadn’t predicted or considered played a part and everything was worse, much worse, than they had anticipated. All we had been told that day was to stay inside until we got the all clear. I’m lucky to be alive. And since HOME didn’t conduct the test near their base, everyone that had been there was fine.”

“Hmmm…” I said, not sure what to think about any of it.

“And our guy who was there says some of the men and women at the higher levels had different ideas. He claimed to have heard them talking about wiping the earth clean. That something needed to be done. Get rid of cars, factories… eliminate pollution. According to him, they believed they were doing the right thing. That they were saving the Earth,” Dominick said studying each one of us carefully as if he was trying to gauge our reaction. “We’ll never know exactly what happened up there at HOME. All we can do is speculate, but what we do know is they caused it. And they likely can still control the weather.”

“So some of the people still at HOME have been there since the beginning?” I asked squinting my eyes at Dominick as if he was so bright it hurt my eyes to look at him. I was running everything they had said through my mind over and over trying to decide if any of it made sense. Maybe there were bits of fallacy mixed in with bits of truth but it did seem like it was possible.

“Probably most of them in higher positions have been there since the government created the weapons program,” Dezzie said nodding confidently. “Once they wiped out most of civilization, I guess they decided they’d take over. And that’s what it seems they continue to do. Grow their numbers, stake their claim on the land. Maybe at first they just wanted to clean up Earth, but now it’s become something else.”