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

I nodded. Of course that didn’t mean I or the others couldn’t catch whatever it was, but if Carter hadn’t caught it yet, maybe we wouldn’t either.

“Did any of the others in your camp get sick?” I asked narrowing my eyes at him.

“A few…,” he said, as her coughing slowed. He turned to her, and she forced a smile indicating that she was done. “I guess this is where we should part ways.”

Carter opened the door, swung his legs out and swiftly stood up outside of the car holding the door for Alice. Sienna looked at me and shook her head as if I should do something to stop them. It was painfully obvious she didn’t want them to leave, but it wasn’t up to me to beg them to stay. And I wasn’t even sure if I wanted them to.

I looked to Penn to see if I could tell what he was thinking, but he still had his head down. Dean and I locked eyes, but he shrugged his good shoulder, probably having the same feelings I had.

Sienna folded her hands together as if she was begging for my approval. But I didn’t know the right answer, and I couldn’t answer for everyone. It seemed as though Dean didn’t care one way or the other but without talking to Penn, I was pretty sure he didn’t want them with us.

“Stay with us!” Sienna blurted out. Penn didn’t raise his head but the groan he made sounded like he thought things just kept getting worse.

“Are you sure?” Carter said ducking down looking into the car towards Penn.

“No,” Penn said not caring or bothering to hide his grumpiness. He sounded like a crabby old man that wanted the neighborhood kids off of his lawn. “We don’t have any supplies, no car… you’ll do better out there on your own.”

“You have a gun,” Carter said aiming his eyes at Penn’s back. “We have nothing at all.”

“For all you know we are lying and we’re from HOME,” Penn said turning to look at Carter. He lowered his head slightly so his eyes looked dark.

Carter shook his head, “You said you weren’t.”

“Oh. OK, well then. It’s not like we could possibly lie about it,” Penn said rolling his eyes. I wondered if he realized that he sounded like a big jerk. He must have, because he let out a big sigh. If I had to guess, he was probably just sick of all the bad things that kept happening to us. “I apologize for my behavior… if you’d like, you can come with us.”

Sienna clapped her hands and rubbed Penn’s shoulder. She slid out of the car after Alice and smiled at them both.

I got out of the car and surveyed the area. The orange ground was dry and dusty, and the air was warm. I looked both Carter and Alice up and down carefully now that we were closer. Even though I wanted to check them for tattoos, I resisted the urge. I was somewhat surprised, since they were resistance, that they didn’t ask to check us over.

“So you’ll come with us?” Sienna asked after Alice stifled a cough. Carter and Alice looked at one another and then at the exact same time they nodded.

“Let’s go,” Penn said, already at least ten feet from us. He was leading us away from the interstate. I moved my feet in his direction and hoped it wouldn’t be a mistake leaving the road.

I
wasn’t completely
sure if we were even traveling in the direction we wanted to be heading, but Penn probably knew what he was doing. We had nothing. No water, and we were heading out into the Utah wilderness, but I knew he had his reasons for leading us this way. He didn’t want to run into any more trouble.

We took frequent breaks… not because we wanted to, because we had to. We were all tired, hungry and thirsty. Penn repeated randomly that we weren’t going to find water or food if we didn’t keep moving.

“Are we even going the right way?” Sienna said trying not to sound like she was whining. But she was definitely whining. I was pretty sure even our new travel companions could tell.

“Yes,” Penn shouted over his shoulder, barely glancing in her direction. He stayed a solid ten feet in front of us at all times. If I sped up to try to catch him, he just moved his feet faster. He was trying to scout out the area before the rest of us could get close. If there was danger lurking, he wanted to be the first to find it so he could take care of it.

Penn was probably looking for signs of HOME, the resistance, road pirates or other threats we weren’t even aware existed. I had to hope none of those things would be out here in the middle of nowhere. Those people probably stayed closer to the roads where they could find supplies, if they needed them much easier than they would out here.

“Ah-ha!” Penn said showing his first smile since… well, I don’t remember the last one. It was probably weeks ago, maybe months.

“What is it?” I said narrowing my eyes at him. He sounded excited which was definitely promising, but I was still worried. Nothing ever seemed to go our way… I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

“It’s water!” he said, kicking up some dust as he ran away towards the riverbank. I looked over my shoulder at Dean who was wearing a big, bright smile even though he was rubbing his wounded arm.

I picked up my pace and saw the beautiful river come into view. It was a fairly wide river with dark blue waters sparkling as it flowed gently.

The others surrounded Penn and me, and looked out at the river almost in disbelief. Penn was kneeling down on a rock, dipping his hand into the water as it rushed by. He lifted his hand up to eye level and turned it, letting the water run out, as if looking for something.

Alice ran up next to him and splashed her hands into the water. She formed a cup-shape and was about to suck down a mouthful of water when Penn swatted her hands down.

Carter took a step past me as if he was worried about what Penn might do. I stepped to the side blocking his way and looked up at him through squinted eyes.

“It’s not safe to drink,” I said, and Carter looked down at me as if I had been speaking another language.

“But what choice do we have?” Sienna said, shaking her head at me like I was the one stopping everyone from drinking the possibly bacteria ridden water.

It wasn’t my fault. I wanted to drink it just as much as everyone else did, but we had nothing to filter or boil the water with. Not a single thing we could use to make the water safe to drink. Sienna was right, what choice did we have? We’d have to drink the water to stay alive.

“We should follow the river for a while… maybe there will be a house. We could find something to boil the water in,” Penn said looking down at the river.

I looked around the area, and there wasn’t a single house in sight. But if we found something, it would be worth it to make sure the water was safe to drink rather than getting sick from it.

It hadn’t been that long since we’d last had water… maybe several hours since the road pirates took our stuff, but with all the walking we were very thirsty. I wasn’t knocking at death’s door, but flowing water looked very tempting.

“We might just have to risk it,” I said feeling the dryness in my mouth. It had suddenly become all I could think about.

“Give it a little longer… just a few more miles and then if we don’t find anything we’ll risk it. Deal?” Penn said looking at each one of us. He even looked to Carter and Alice for their nods of agreement.

“All right,” I answered last. It wasn’t like I wanted to get sick from the water, or anyone else to for that matter, but no one was going to wait forever.

We walked along the river for at least two more miles, or so I guessed, but there wasn’t anything in sight. No houses. No cabins. No random pots or bottles laying on the ground. Nothing.

“Penn,” I said, stopping after Alice broke out into one of her coughing fits. I imagined a dry mouth probably wasn’t helping with her cold. “I give up. Let’s drink.”

He lowered his head as if he knew better, and well I did too, but we were stranded. The water was moving so at least it wasn’t stagnant. There hadn’t been any animals around, at least that we’d seen, so hopefully it wouldn’t be contaminated with animal waste. It looked clean, but I knew that didn’t matter.

“I had to drink random water back when I was wandering around in Alaska,” Penn said looking at the water as he spoke. “I never got sick from it.”

And as if that was a green light, everyone moved up to the edge of the river and started scooping up water. I squatted down next to Dean and dipped my hand into the cool water. The small amount that actually made it into my mouth was almost instantly absorbed. I didn’t even need to swallow. I quickly took another drink, and another… and then another.

We’d probably spent five minutes scooping water into our mouths. I wondered how much each drink increased our chances of ingesting something that could make us sick. But sick was better than dead so I drank and tried not to think about the microscopic yuckies that might be floating in each scoop.

“Let’s keep moving,” Penn said, gesturing as he jogged to get ahead of us. “We’ll keep following the river.”

None of us spoke as we walked along the lonely river. I focused on the sounds of the flowing water because when I listened to the water I didn’t think. My mind couldn’t go to the places where the bad and negative thoughts existed. All I heard was the water.

The further we walked, the stronger the water seemed to move. Penn kept glancing back to make sure we were all with him, at least that’s what I guessed he was looking for.

There hadn’t been any kind of shelter that we’d been able to stop at, or even somewhere we could stay for the night. Once day turned to night, I didn’t know what we were going to do. It wasn’t like I’d want to just sleep out in the open on the rocky, dirty riverbank.

“We shouldn’t have left the road,” Sienna said not even bothering to try to disguise her whining. She crossed her arms in front of her body. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or just cold.

“You’d rather be in another resistance camp? Maybe with HOME? Or maybe dead?” Penn said looking out over the river.

I couldn’t be sure but it felt like we weren’t heading in the same direction any more. The sun, when it randomly popped through the cloudy sky was no longer where it should have been.

If I had to guess, I think the river was pushing us southward which was the wrong way… we needed to be going east. Which seemed to indicate that we would need to get on the other side of the river.

“Of course not,” she said matching his tone. I rolled my eyes and jogged to catch up with Penn. He was probably thinking the same thing about our directions when he didn’t speed ahead.

I opened my mouth, but he stopped me, “I know… but I’m not sure what to do about it just yet.”

“We can’t afford to go too far out of our way,” I said, but I knew he already knew that too.

He turned to look at me, but he didn’t say anything. Penn ran his hands through his hair and turned to face the river again. “I think we are going to have to cross it,” he said punctuating his sentence with a small grumble.

I glanced back at Dean who was squinting in our direction. He looked confused. Maybe he too had realized we were going the wrong way. Traveling on foot, in the wrong direction when we were already tired and without supplies was far from ideal.

“How do we do that?” I said knowing it was going to be difficult to get across the wide flowing river. The further along the river we walked the harder the water seemed to flow. If we had some rope we could have tied ourselves together, but we didn’t have any rope.

“I’m not sure,” he said as he stopped and turned to face everyone. “We are going to have to cross.”

Sienna groaned and Alice’s shoulders slumped down. She turned to her brother and shook her head as if pleading with him to come up with a better idea. But he put his hand on her shoulder and stared out at the river.

Dean stood next to me and took my hand. He bent down slightly and whispered, “I don’t know about this, it could be deep.”

“It’s pushing us too far off course.”

“Maybe we should come up with a new destination instead of trying to cross,” Dean said, and I saw the worry in his eyes.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. What destination should we come up with?” I asked dropping his hand so I could cross my arms. It was as if I was shielding myself. And I was being a little stubborn, and I knew it. After all, I had been the one to pick Michigan, it kind of felt like a finish line. I could still see the perfect house in my mind and I wanted to get to it. It was waiting for me.

There wasn’t anything out here for us. Even if we found a shelter, it would only be temporary until HOME or the resistance found us. They weren’t that far away. Not to mention there wasn’t any supplies out here and even if we found some the road pirates would probably just take it away again.

“OK, well… if you’re both sure about it,” Dean said but I could tell he wasn’t completely on board. I was pretty sure he was just giving in because it was what I wanted.

Penn was looking out over the river as if he was trying to find the best path across. He walked five steps in one direction, looked around and then he went back the other way.

I walked over and joined him on a rock. I could sense his confidence was low compared to usual. Navigating a way across a river must not have been something they taught in HOME’s super spy school.

“We’ll cross here… locking arms,” he said reaching out for my arm. I held it out and he twisted his arm slightly to link them. He gripped my forearm tightly and I grabbed his.

I copied the movement and locked my other arm with Dean’s in the same way. He grabbed Sienna’s arm, and she took Alice’s. Carter gripped Alice’s other arm and brought up the rear.

“Hold on as tight as you can,” Penn instructed, although that seemed obvious. He took a deep breath and stepped into the water. “Oh shit!”

“What is it?” I said yanking him back towards the rock.

He pursed his lips and shook his head, “No… nothing, it’s just cold.”

I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t. I was holding my breath as I was about to step into the brisk water.

The water came up to about mid-calf on my first step. Penn wasn’t exaggerating, it was cold, but it didn’t really hit me until I took my next step and the water was just above my knees.

“Ohhhh,” I hummed as my teeth started to chatter. I wasn’t thrilled with how quickly the water deepened. Looking out towards the river in front of us, I was sure that in three more steps the water would probably be waist deep.

Dean hadn’t made any noise when he stepped into the water, but Sienna didn’t bother to hide her little squeaky gasp. Alice either.

Fifteen steps or so later, I was about a third of the way across the river. The chilly water surrounded me and I felt as though if I couldn’t use my arms, I might drown. We were going to have to let go of one another so we could swim.

Dean and Penn were both taller than I was so they didn’t notice at the same time I did, but the bottom of the river was falling out from underneath me. Water splashed up against my face as I struggled to get my arms free.

When the water went into my mouth and nose, I started to panic. I coughed it out, but when I tried to tell them to let go, water filled my mouth.