Running Away - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 4) (6 page)

After several minutes of twisting, a tendril of smoke came wafting out from the notch in the wood strip. Penn carefully placed the dried grass-like stuff on top of the small bit of smoking dust. He gently blew on the grasses until a flame magically appeared. Judging by the smile on his face, it looked as though he had even impressed himself.

Penn placed the sticks above the flame forming a teepee shape. Before we knew it, we had a warm, crackling fire.

“Where’s Carter?” Penn said as he looked around at each of us.

“Right here,” he said as he lowered himself down on one knee and carefully placed a big pile of leaves at his feet. “It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing at all.”

“What is it?” Sienna asked squinting at the green leaves.

“Wild spinach,” Alice answered, turning towards Sienna as if she couldn’t believe she didn’t know what it was. She shook her head and stretched out her palm.

I picked up a leaf and put it to my nose. It was something I’d had before… I recognized it as the same thing we had a few times back when we were in the resistance camp.

I popped the leaf into my mouth and chewed on it for far too long. It practically disintegrated in my mouth and I knew I’d need a lot more to fill up my empty stomach. But the pile of spinach he brought over wouldn’t be nearly enough to fill any of us.

“Was there any more out there?” I asked looking in the direction he’d walked away.

“I’m sure there is,” Carter said as he divided the leaves into perfectly equal piles.

“It’s too dark,” Penn said directing his gaze at me.

“Maybe we can try to find more in the morning,” Carter said handing me one of the piles. “I’ll show you where to find it.”

Penn stared at him for a long moment, “You know a lot about foraging?”

“Only what I learned back at the camp from my dad,” Carter said handing Penn a bunch of the leaves.

“What else did your dad teach you about?” Penn asked squinting at him, either because he was suspicious or because the fire was too bright. If Carter noticed, he didn’t make anything of it. Maybe he expected to be scrutinized and questioned. And maybe he didn’t have anything to hide.

Carter smiled and looked out towards the river. He popped a few of the leaves into his mouth and slowly chewed them before answering, “I know that if I had a long enough stick with a few carefully sharpened points at the end, I could probably catch us a fish.”

Everyone in the camp stopped sucking on their leaves to stare at him. I wondered if they were all tasting fish as they ate their leaves. They were already seeing the fish cooking in the fire. Whatever. They could have their stinky fish and I’d stick to the leaves. For now.

“We can look in the morning,” Penn said as he popped a leaf into his mouth. There was only a sliver of sunlight left. In only a blink it would be night. Our only light would be from the blazing fire Penn made.

W
e took
turns keeping watch throughout the night. At any given time though, there would often be more than one of us awake. It was difficult to sleep on the bumpy, rocky ground. Well, that and the fears about all the things that could go wrong.

From time to time Alice’s coughing would wake up anyone that was asleep and then it would take them forever to fall back asleep. She’d mumble an apology, but sleep just wasn’t easy no matter how badly we needed it.

When I saw the sun peeking up over the horizon I was glad night was over. And thankful that we hadn’t been kidnapped or killed. We could finally stop trying to sleep and get on with our day.

Penn stood up and looked around the area as if it had somehow changed. He stood up to kick dirt on the fire when Carter raised up his hand to stop him.

“Wait… let me try to fish. It won’t take long,” he said as he walked away from us backwards watching to see if anyone would stop him.

When no one did, he turned around and practically skipped over to a tree. I watched him as he examined the random branches around the trees and those still on the tree. He reached up and easily broke off one of the branches with a big crack.

Carter wore a big smile as he made his way back over to the camp studying his branch. The long stick had three smaller branches that stuck out like pitchfork prongs. He crouched down next to a rock and started carefully sanding away at the wood. He was trying to sharpen the smaller branches that forked off into deadly little spears.

“It’s safe to assume none of you have a knife, right?” Carter said not bothering to look up. There was a time we had knives, but those days were long gone. They’d been left behind, taken or lost.

The next time we found a place with supplies I made up my mind to look for a knife. That would be a tool that could come in handy in more ways than one. In fact, it was almost surprising Penn didn’t have one hidden somewhere on his person.

Carter spent a solid fifteen minutes trying to make perfectly sculpted points for his fishing spear. He poked at one of them with his fingertip and quickly pulled it back. His lips curled up slowly at the ends, satisfied with their sharpness.

“Here goes nothing,” he said walking over to the river and stepping on top of the rocks to get as close as he could without actually going in the water.

“See anything?” Alice shouted, but he waved at her in such a way that I knew he wanted to her be quiet. She rolled her eyes and hugged her knees. When she saw me watching her, she stared back at me awkwardly. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so I quickly looked away trying to pretend I hadn’t been looking at her. But we both knew I had been.

I got up and stood on a rock about five feet away from Carter. He held his spear just above the water and watched something moving below the surface. I wasn’t sure if his plan was going to work or not but he stabbed quickly at the water.

When he frowned I knew he had missed it, but he adjusted the spear and jabbed it downward again. This time he held the spear down for a minute before raising it up to reveal a small fish that was just a bit bigger than my palm.

“Ah ha!” he said looking at me with a huge grin. It almost looked as though he had surprised himself.

“Now just do that a few more times,” I said moving my fingers a few inches apart to show how small the fish was. It probably would have been impossible to even divide it up between everyone. One single bite per person. Of course, that was better than nothing, but it wouldn’t be enough to survive on.

“Here,” Carter said pulling the still wiggling fish off of his spear. He gripped it tightly and waved it in my direction. “Bring this to Penn.”

“Ugh, do I have to?” I said taking several careful steps towards him and reaching out for the fish. I grabbed it not realizing exactly how feisty it would be, since it was the first time I’d held a dying fish. It was so wet and squirmy I had to hold on with both hands.

I carried it over to Penn and he looked at me like I was handing him a goldfish. Then he glanced over at Carter who was thrusting the spear back into the water. Penn shrugged and threaded a stick through the middle of the fish and placed it inside the flames.

Carter looked over his shoulder with a big smile on his face. He waved at me and I knew he’d caught another. What I wanted to know was how I had received the role of fish collector. I sighed, “Ugh, why me?”

Penn laughed. Sienna got up to stretch and quickly combed her hair with her fingers. She raised her hand up at me, “Don’t worry… I’ll help him.”

“You got it,” I said almost one hundred percent positive she had no idea he was about to hand her a half-dead fish. Penn met my eyes, and he chuckled, but it quickly faded. I couldn’t even crack a smile because I could tell something was bothering Penn. “Want to talk about it?”

I moved over as close to him as I could, trying to block our conversation from Alice who seemed to be busy massaging her throat. Dean was off trying to find more of that wild spinach, but I wasn’t sure he knew what he was looking for. He’d pick things up and look at them before throwing it back down on the ground.

“Talk about what?” Penn said raising his shoulder up as if to block me from seeing his face. I didn’t need to see his face to know something was on his mind.

“You haven’t seemed like yourself for a while now and—”

“Ros, I don’t even know myself. How can I be myself when I don’t know who I am?”

I squinted at him and shook my head, “I’m not sure what you mean….”

“It’s like an ON switch has been flipped inside me since I left HOME. My brain is always on… like they made me this way. I’m always looking. I can barely sleep. I’m tired… no I’m fucking exhausted beyond comprehension. It doesn’t stop, Ros! What did they do to me? Whatever it was I can’t undo it!” he said with eyes so big I worried they might pop. His words had gotten so loud at the end that Alice glanced up towards us, but she wasn’t freaking out so I figured she hadn’t heard the part about HOME.

“You just need to relax. It’s not your job to take care of everything,” I said knowing how stupid my advice sounded as the words came out. But I didn’t know the right things to say. I didn’t know how to help him.

Penn laughed as if I’d said something funny. He shook his head as though I couldn’t possibly understand, or maybe it was because he didn’t know how to explain it. But in a way, I think I did understand. In a way I felt the same, although I’m not sure it was anywhere near the same extent that Penn felt it. It was like I was always trying to be aware. Always watching. Even when I was sleeping, it was with one eye open.

“I think if we can find a place to stay…,” Penn said with a small glimmer of hopefulness in his eyes. He was seeing my vision of what Michigan could be.

“I think so too,” I said with a nod. “We just need to get somewhere we can feel safe again. Well, a little safe anyway.”

“But is it even possible?” he asked turning and nodding at something behind me. Sienna was making her way over to us holding onto another two fish. She gripped one in each hand tightly, her face scrunched up in utter disgust at what she was doing.

When she got closer, one of the fish leapt out of her hand and she jumped away from it like she was afraid it was going to attack her. Then she quickly turned around to see if Carter was watching. His back was to the camp, but she forced herself to pick up the fish and hand it to Penn.

“Thanks,” Penn said grabbing them and spearing each with a stick. He placed them into the fire next to the first.

“No problem,” Sienna said wiping her hands on her pants and then looking frustrated. “Ugh.”

“That’s what I thought too,” I said with a small smirk.

Penn removed the first fish from the fire. It was charred, and the skin looked as though it was peeling away from the meat. He held out the bottom of the stick towards me as if he was passing me a popsicle.

“I’ll pass,” I said even though my stomach was incredibly angry with me. I was ravenously hungry, but I’d much rather eat the random leaf Dean would bring back, over forcing myself to gag on the fish meat.

“Suit yourself,” Penn said offering it to Sienna. “Be careful. Don’t eat the bones.”

“I don’t know how to…,” Sienna said looking at it as if she was trying to figure out what end to start at.

“Here, I’ll help you,” Penn said as he patted the ground next to him. I crossed my arms and wandered towards Dean to see if I could help with the gathering.

When I got closer, he abruptly spun around as if I had startled him. His hand was half way to the back of his waistband when he realized it was me.

“It’s just me,” I said with a smile.

“Lucky me,” he said bending down to kiss me on the lips. He pressed his lips against mine and my body started to relax, but just for a moment until I remembered I couldn’t.

“How’s your arm?” I said lightly touching his arm below where his healing wound was.

“Better. Barely even notice it,” he said with a smile so perfect I barely even remembered what I had asked him. I don’t think I’d ever get used to just how gorgeous he was. Even out here in the middle of nowhere after everything, he still looked the way he did.

“They’re having fish,” I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head.

Dean looked up and over towards the campfire. He almost dropped all the leaves he’d collected when he saw Penn helping Sienna with the fish. Dean started to walk towards the camp as if his stomach had complete control of his body.

“Hey! I want those,” I said narrowing my eyes at him. He stopped and took a small step backwards.

“Sure,” he said pushing them against my body. He smiled, but then quickly walked away from me to get back over to the camp to stake his claim on some of the small fish. I shook my head at him, although I couldn’t blame him. He was starving, just the same as the rest of us.

I knew I was stupid for not eating the fish, but if I’d just throw it up what was the point? This way at least they got to enjoy a little more of it. For now, I’d eat the leaves and hope we’d find some real food soon. We’d already walked for miles… chances were we’d find something.

I looked down at the leaves growing out of the ground and tried to match them up to the leaves Dean had given me. There seemed to be a decent amount growing around me. I’d find as much as I could, or at least that was what I thought before I heard the howl of the dog-beast in the distance. I tightly held onto the leaves Dean had gathered and jogged back to the group, not wanting to be alone if the dog-beast came our way.

* * *

A
fter everyone finished eating
their tiny fish, and I’d eaten every last leaf Dean had gathered, Penn kicked out the fire and we were on our way. We followed the river for a long while before it twisted back, practically in the direction we had just come from.

We’d have to choose to stay with the river for a water source or go in the right direction and leave the river behind. If we stayed with the water it would mean we’d have to travel for an unknown amount of time in the wrong direction, but if we left the water behind no one knew when we’d find a drink again.

Penn laid out the options, and we took a vote. We all agreed to leave the water source behind. We couldn’t risk traveling back and losing all the miles we’d put in when we were so tired. Not to mention we were all sick of walking. No one wanted to add extra miles and more time to our route.

We’d go east. Alice had refrained from voting. But it didn’t matter, it had been unanimous, and we all knew that whatever Carter’s vote was would count as two because it wasn’t like she would vote against him.

We all took a final drink of the unpurified water and headed east. I couldn’t even guess how many hours or miles we walked, but the whole day had come and gone by the time we saw the barely standing gas station on the outskirts of a small town come into view.