Running Away - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 4) (16 page)

I
followed
them down to the basement. The stairs were old, knotted pieces of wood that felt as though they might not hold me.

The basement was filled with shelves and shelves of supplies. There wasn’t much variety but there was a lot of things that must have been purchased in bulk. Either her dad knew this was going to happen, or he was prepping for any disaster.

“Can we take it?” I asked running my fingers across every can of soup as if I wanted to make sure they were real.

“Well, no, you can’t take it,” Lucy said with a giggle. “But you guys can all have some while you are here.”

Was she going to kick us out? It wasn’t like she’d want to stay here alone with the flock of dog-beasts roaming around outside her back door. Would she?

I assumed we’d get to stay here as long as we’d need to. It wasn’t like we had to get anywhere by a certain time. This placed seemed as nice of a place as any other, well, except for the dog-beasts outside.

We hadn’t seen any resistance since we picked up Alice and Carter, nor had we seen anyone from HOME. If either of them were in this area, Lucy probably wouldn’t have known, unless maybe she’d have overheard her parents talking about them. But if HOME was in the area, Lucy and her family wouldn’t have still been here.

Penn scooped a bunch of cans off of the shelf and glanced at Lucy. She didn’t stop him and instead she flashed him a sweet smile. He looked away and dashed up the stairs.

“Was that all just for him?” I said under my breath. Dean smiled as he looked down at me and pulled me around to the other side of one of the shelves.

When we were blocked from view, he tilted my head up towards his and kissed me hard. I wrapped my hands around his neck and leaned into him. If only we could stay down here away from the world forever.

“Come on,” Dean said as he grabbed my hand and pulled me around. It was like we were shopping in a grocery store. He paused when he spotted the stacked cases of water bottles.

Dean dropped my hand and started to lift up one of the cases. Lucy clicked her tongue, and he turned to look at her.

“We drink the boiled water upstairs first. That’s the emergency water. Let’s go up!” She stared at us, taking each step slowly until we started to follow her up.

“Oh… um… all right then,” Dean said looking at the water several times as if he couldn’t stand the idea of leaving it behind.

“Go,” I said pushing on his back lightly with my fingertips.

After we ate and drank until our stomachs puffed out, Penn asked about first aid supplies. Lucy showed him where they were and they brought everything out onto the kitchen table. Penn tended to my burn while the others relaxed in the living room.

I could hear the dog-beasts scratching around and growling at one another outside. The curtain was still closed so I couldn’t see how many of them there were out there, but I was pretty sure it was a lot. The bodies of Lucy’s parents and the dog-beasts had probably been completely devoured.

Penn used a piece of gauze to apply some of the antibiotic cream. I winced when the cool cream touched my hot skin. “How does it look?”

“Better,” he said as he laid out several squares of gauze over the burn and carefully taped them down with the medical tape. “I’m not even sure you need this. I’ve had sunburns that have looked worse.”

I wasn’t sure if he was telling me the truth or if he was trying to make it seem better than it actually was so that I wouldn’t worry about it. Either way I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to see it. If I saw it, I’d only feel it more, this way it was easier to pretend it never happened.

“Did you find out anything useful from her?” Penn asked shifting his eyes towards the living room. I figured he was trying to gauge if Lucy was in earshot before asking anything too specific.

“No, not really, anyway,” I said glancing over my shoulder. She was busy looking around the room as if she was discovering new things she’d never seen before. “She was kept up there for a long time it seems.”

“That doesn’t surprise me one bit,” he said with a chuckle. He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward as if he was waiting to hear more.

“And I think her dad killed her mom—”

“What?”

“I don’t think it was the dogs,” I said crossing my arms in front of my chest. Penn looked at me with wide eyes as I told him everything Lucy had told me about that day. He nodded along and seemed to agree with my assessment of what had happened.

“Guess he got what was coming to him,” he said looking towards the window. He stood up and slowly pulled the curtain to the side and peered out. “Does she suspect her dad did it?”

“I don’t think so.”

After a few minutes, a dog popped up and slapped the window with its paw. We both jumped and the dog-beast started barking at us. Penn dropped the curtain and took several steps away from the window.

“What are we going to do about all of them?” I rubbed my new bandage lightly. My mind took over, and I could feel what it would have been like to have the dog-beast poison running through my veins. We had to do something about the dogs.

“I have no idea.”

“Did you see how many were still out there?”

“A lot,” he said walking towards the door to make sure it was locked. It wasn’t like the dog-beasts could figure out how to get inside, but he looked as though he was worried they might. “I think I have an idea.”

I was fascinated by the growing grin on his face. Whatever he was imagining made him smile. I only hoped it would work.

I turned around and grabbed my heart when I saw Lucy was standing only about six inches away from me. How long had she been standing there?

“Lucy! Don’t do that!” I said failing to keep the scolding tone out of my voice.

“Do what?”

“Sneak up on people. You scared the crap out of me!”

“Sorry! Why do you hate them so much?” she said. Her eyes were empty as if she knew they were bad but couldn’t fully accept what we had told her about them. She didn’t want to believe they were bad. Maybe she couldn’t believe that anything, or anyone, was bad. She definitely wouldn’t last very long outside of these walls.

“They are just very dangerous. If they bite you… well their poison will kill you,” I said, leaving out all the parts about what happens before you die. I also left out the parts about HOME and their cure.

“Oh. Well… OK. Then I don’t like them either,” she said and turned on her heel. She left and returned to the living room. I watched as she poked at knick-knacks on the shelf.

Penn stood up and ran his fingers through his short hair, “Lucy? Come back in here for a second.

“Yes?” she said stepping into the room like a frightened little girl. It looked as though she thought she was going to get yelled at for touching the knick-knacks.

“Did your dad feed the dogs?”

“I don’t think so, but sometimes they’d eat one another,” she said with a frown. “He’d come in the house and I could hear him downstairs complaining about how many we’d lost.”

“And how many did you lose?”

“I’m not sure.” She frowned and shook her head.

“Hmm, OK,” Penn said nodding. Lucy stood there looking back and forth between us as if waiting to be dismissed. Penn tapped his fingertips on the table when she didn’t move, “Thanks… that’s all.”

Lucy turned her body stiffly and walked out of the kitchen. Penn stood up and starting pacing.

“This could actually work,” he said rubbing his palms together, looking like a mad scientist.

I stood up and stepped in front of him to stop his pacing. He had a fiery determination in his eyes that was contagious. “OK, so what’s your idea?”

* * *

D
ean
, Penn and I stood at the upstairs bedroom window looking down over the backyard. I wasn’t sure if there were fewer of the dog-beast or not. It didn’t really matter how many there were, what mattered was that there was still far too many of them. While they were out there we were stuck inside this house, whether Lucy wanted us here or not.

“This isn’t going to work,” Dean said crossing his arms in front of his chest. His pessimism was distracting and annoying Penn. We needed this to work, but unfortunately, Dean was probably right. And worst of all, there was a chance it would leave us with zero bullets either way.

Penn didn’t want to use the gun Carter had taken from the military base, but he wanted the other three guns. I wasn’t sure how many bullets were left in my gun, or in Dean’s, but the one I now carried, that had originally been Penn’s, only had one bullet left. Or at least that was what Penn had told me earlier.

If the plan didn’t work, we’d just be out of bullets and all the dogs would still be there. But what choice did we have? As long as we were inside the house and the dogs knew it, they weren’t leaving. I set down my gun on the nightstand near Penn and Dean did the same.

“Maybe it won’t,” Penn said as he unlocked the window and slid it upwards. He looked out as if he expected one of the dogs to jump up and into the window. When that didn’t happen, he got down on a knee and started aiming up his first shot. “But let’s hope that it does.”

Penn rested his arm against the windowsill and held his breath. I jumped at the pop of the gun even though I knew it was coming. It sharply echoed throughout the room making my ears ring. I watched as the dog in the center of the pack took a few wobbly steps before going down on its side.

I couldn’t tell if the dog was dead, but it was definitely wounded. The other dogs around it growled as if they thought they were being attacked. But when they couldn’t find a threat, they turned to paw at the dog on the ground.

“Now to make them mad.” Penn expertly aimed up a second shot. The bullet ripped across one of the dog’s fur leaving behind a flap of torn flesh. The dog-beast turned on the dog behind him as if it had attacked him. It stretched out its paw clawing at the other dog’s eyes. Then it launched itself towards the second dog’s neck, aggressively digging its sharp teeth in and clamping down.

The other dog-beasts in the yard started to close in to see what was going on, or maybe they were just hungry and wanted their share.

Penn waited several minutes until most of the dogs had grouped together in the middle of the yard. He lined up another carefully calculated shot and seconds later another attack between the dogs broke out.

The plan was working. The dogs turned on one another. Several backed away looking as though they weren’t going to get involved, but most of them were attacking.

Penn held off from firing out another round. There was no point in using a bullet if he didn’t need to. I wasn’t even sure if the gun he was holding had any left. If he needed more he’d have to switch over to Dean’s gun.

The savage attacks were too much to watch. Pools and splatters of dog-beast blood covered the ground. I stopped watching and went downstairs to check on Sienna and Alice.

Carter was sitting on the floor, the gun laying next to him and Sienna’s head in his lap. He looked down at her as he stroked her hair behind her ear.

Alice had her back to them while she rested on the sofa. Her body slowly moved up and down, which I hoped meant she was actually getting some sleep.

“How are they doing?” I whispered as I looked down at Carter with my arms crossed.

He shrugged, “Still sick. It’ll probably take a while for Sienna to fight it off since she only just caught it. But I hope her immune system is stronger than Alice’s.”

Carter stared at his sister’s sleeping body. It looked as though he wished he could do something to make her feel better. He let out a sigh and pushed his face into his palm. It was hard for him seeing his sister, and now Sienna, going through this.

“I think the cold medicine helps some… at the very least it helps them get sleep,” Carter said as he brushed a stray strand of hair away from Sienna’s mouth.

At least when they were sleeping they weren’t coughing. I hoped he was right about Sienna’s immune system, but with how little food and water we’d had over the last few days, weeks… months, I imagined Sienna was going to have the same struggles Alice did. She’d been in a camp where they’d been fed, or at least I assumed they had been, which was probably better than what we’d had.

I walked towards the kitchen to get myself a drink of water, when I heard noises at the front door. It sounded as though the door handle had been jiggled, but when I looked it wasn’t moving. I glanced at Carter and he was gently moving Sienna off of his lap and reaching for the gun. He had heard it too.

Our eyes met. I wanted to go back across the room to get closer to him, but I felt frozen in place. I reached behind me for my gun, but it wasn’t there. Penn had my gun upstairs.

Whoever was out there started talking. They seemed to be laughing. Why weren’t the dogs attacking them? Hadn’t they seen them? Maybe the dogs were just too busy fighting one another to even notice.

The door handle jiggled again, and I moved into the kitchen trying to hide behind the wall. I didn’t have any way to alert Dean and Penn without the person outside hearing me. All I could do was hope that Carter was ready.