Running Away - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 4) (9 page)

“If I hadn’t fallen asleep… your arm. This is all my fault,” Penn said with his shoulders slumped forward. He blamed himself. None of this was his fault. He needed a break more than any of us. If he didn’t get one soon, I wasn’t sure if he’d be OK. Penn needed to be able to slow down and catch his breath. More than ever I wanted us to hurry up and get to our destination.

I could feel the adrenaline surge through my body. I didn’t know if it was from everything that just happened or my desire to get us to Michigan. Whatever the reason, it dulled the pain, and I was more determined than ever to get us to our new place. It would be there waiting for us.

It would have plenty of water from a nearby lake. We’d be able to grow food and catch fish. Best of all, it would be safe. We wouldn’t have to worry and everything would finally be OK. All we had to do was get there.

“It’s not your fault,” I said smiling as I squeezed his hand. He forced a brief smile, and I knew he would blame himself no matter what I said. “Let’s go to town and find a car. There has to be one somewhere.”

“What if we run into that guy Dean saw out the window? The one that started the fire?” Sienna asked as if she was worried we might be walking right into a trap.

“I’m not worried,” Penn said patting his gun in his waistband to indicate what he’d do if he ran into a guy with a gas can.

He touched his hand against his forehead and took a deep breath. It was like he pressed a button somewhere inside himself that would make him go, even when he was too tired to move. He pushed his shoulders back and raised his head. “Let’s move.”

W
e picked
the first house we saw that we hadn’t already been inside. Penn slowly led the way through the house. I was worried that someone was hiding around every corner we turned. It was like I could already see them dousing us in gasoline and lighting the match that would finish what they had started.

It wasn’t just me though, everyone seemed a touch more on edge because of the person Dean and I saw leaving the scene of the fire. If we ran into one person, Penn would easily manage it, but what if we ran into a whole group of fire-starting lunatics?

Once the house was cleared, we broke off looking for food and water, but no one found anything. I was kicking myself for not grabbing the box of chocolate bars as we left the last house. Although, with the heat from the fire, they surely would have melted.

I lightly ran my fingers across the cloth bandage Penn had wrapped around my arm. The sting reminded me of the whole ordeal.

“You OK?” Dean asked looking at my arm as though he was worried something was wrong.

“Yeah… it hurts but I’ll live.”

“Not the burn, you. Are you OK?” Dean said putting his arm around my shoulder.

I shook my head side-to-side. After everything we’d been through I wasn’t going to let a burn stop me, but I did feel emotionally and physically drained. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t cry. It wouldn’t be a cry of sadness or weakness, but a cry of frustration and exhaustion. I turned away from him, “Yeah. Yeah… I’m fine.”

Penn found himself a new shirt and a closet full of hoodies. He offered them to anyone who might want one and everyone took one. Whoever had lived here before seemed to have collected them. There was one in every color and some colors had multiples. It was only too bad he hadn’t collected bottled water and snack bars.

The house had pretty much been emptied, but there was one thing that hadn’t been taken. Sitting in the garage was a car covered in a thin layer of dust. Even though most of my thoughts were on the pain I was in, I couldn’t help but smile at the car. To me, the car meant life. Well, if we could find the keys and gas for it then we’d live another day.

“Look everywhere and anywhere for the keys,” Penn said as his eyes settled on my arm. He grabbed my good hand and pulled me back inside the house. “Let’s see if we can find a better bandage.”

Everyone went off in different directions to do different tasks. Dean, Sienna and Alice went in search of the keys. First, they looked in the garage, but then I could hear them inside the house. I was sitting on the lid of the toilet while Penn dug around in the bathroom cabinets.

He pulled out some extremely expired antibiotic cream, medical tape that had little threads running through it lengthwise, and a towel from the drawer that looked clean. He unscrewed the cap from the cream and set the tube down on the counter.

Penn put his fingertips inside the cloth wrapped around my arm and carefully removed it. I tried not to look, but at the same time it was like a car accident. I couldn’t help but want to see the damage that had been done to my arm.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it would be. I imagined it was going to be bloody with chunks of skin peeling away and blisters the size of grapes, but it wasn’t that bad.

There was a large part of the side of my arm from elbow to wrist that was bright red. There wasn’t any blood, blisters or peeling, but it was far worse than any sunburn I’d ever seen.

“Oh,” I said looking at the redness.

“Hmm?”

“It’s not as bad as I thought it’d be,” I said as I wiggled my fingers and winced. When I moved, it felt like the skin was being pulled tighter which caused me extra pain.

Penn smiled briefly but turned serious again when he was about to squeeze some of the cream onto his fingertips. He stopped and started looking around.

“What is it?”

“My hands. They are too dirty. I don’t want to…,” Penn said pulling out a washcloth from the drawer. “This will do.”

He squeezed out a dollop of the cream onto the corner of the washcloth and gently dabbed it on my burn. At first it stung but then the cooling effect kicked in and it actually started to soothe the burn.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be either,” he said as he made sure he got cream on all of the red areas. “A bad first-degree burn I think.”

“It may not look bad, but it hurts. It hurts like hell,” I said as he draped the bigger clean towel on top of the cream and started taping it down on my arm. He used a lot of tape but I knew it was because he didn’t want it to fall off.

“You’ll probably want to hold it still as much as you can. Honestly though, I have no idea how to treat or care for a burn,” Penn said standing back and looking at his bandaging job. He raised an eyebrow and lowered his head.

“It’s not the best bandage I’ve seen, but it’ll do. And for what it’s worth it does feel better,” I said smiling up at him. “Take that cream with.”

Penn nodded and shoved it inside his pocket. He reached out his hand to me and helped me up. “Let’s see if they found the keys.”

I followed him out to the living room where Dean was packing. Sienna was sitting on the sofa resting her chin on her palm while Alice sat rocking back and forth in a chair coughing softly.

“No keys I take it?” I said, already pretty sure I knew the answer.

Alice shook her head, but grinned when the rumble of the car engine filled the air. Carter must have found the keys and started the car. I had worried that maybe the car wouldn’t start considering how long it had sat there unused, but it was running. It was loud, but the important part was that it worked.

We all dashed out to the garage. Carter was standing there leaning against the car with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He was grinning from ear to ear.

“You found the keys!” I said walking over towards him and patting him on the arm. I was already imagining us sitting inside and heading towards our new home in Michigan.

“Nope,” Carter said with a smirk.

“Then how?” I said looking inside the windows and coming up with our seating chart for the most comfortable ride. Now that there were two more of us, it would be a bit tighter of a fit than we were used to. And I’d need somewhere to put my burned arm so it didn’t get squished. If only we would have found another SUV, or van.

Penn started digging around the garage. He threw things around until he pulled up a scummy, tangled up, green hose with a yellow stripe running down lengthwise. After he cut it down with a rusty handsaw, he threw it in the back of the car.

“I know a little trick or two,” Carter said opening the driver side door and offering it to Penn.

He nodded and climbed inside as he waved for everyone to get in. I was pretty sure he was in a hurry to get out of this little town. Or maybe it was the loudness of the car that made him nervous. It was possible that it could draw unwanted attention.

If the road pirates were nearby they’d come running, although this time we had nothing for them to steal. Although they would likely take the hose and the gas from the car.

“You hot-wired it? How do you know how to do that?” Penn asked as Carter lowered himself into the seat behind Penn. Alice, Sienna, and I walked around to the other side and Sienna slipped in first. She scooted all the way over so that she was right up against Carter and he smiled as he stretched his arm up around the back of the seat behind her.

Alice turned to look at me and rolled her eyes. I didn’t know if she didn’t like Sienna or if she just didn’t like the idea of some girl hanging all over her brother. That was probably a feeling Sienna could relate to, not that I really ever hung all over Dean.

“I did,” Carter said as if he was proud of his wiring skills. “I may have gotten into some trouble back in the day. Learned a few things.”

“Well, lucky for us you were a troublemaker, I guess,” Dean said shooting a quick glance at his sister. He sat down in the passenger seat and clicked his seatbelt into place. He hit the door a couple of times with the side of his fist anxious to get out of here.

Once we were all inside, Penn shifted the car in reverse and drove us out of the garage. In minutes we were back out on the road looking for the highway. And hopefully somewhere we could stop for food and water.

“We should have probably looked through the house better,” I said once we were at least a few miles away. It had been pretty cleaned out but there probably would have been something we could have taken.

My fingers rubbed against the soft pile of the towel taped to my arm. Before we left the house it hadn’t really crossed my mind to dig around for things that might be of use. I had been far too anxious to get inside the car and out of that town. I wanted to get to our destination and maybe the others’ thoughts had been the same.

“We’ll stop the first chance we get,” Penn said, but he probably thought we’d made a mistake too. Maybe we could have found matches, or a pot to boil water in… little things we could have put to some kind of use. But there would be more houses, shops and gas stations.

Once we found our way to the interstate, we realized how off course we’d gotten by not following the roads. It took a few hours for us to get back on track. We stopped at every gas station or market we came across along the way, but everything had been cleaned out. Even though we hadn’t come across other people or cars traveling down the road, the area must have been busy at one point or another since there wasn’t anything left.

We weren’t desperate yet, but I knew how badly we needed water. And the others knew it too. Thankfully we covered far more area in a car than we could on foot.

“We always stop at gas stations and grocery stores,” Alice said tapping her chin. It looked as though she had an idea, but that she wasn’t sure about it. “Why don’t we try looking somewhere else. Maybe something no one else has thought of yet.”

I looked at her and raised my eyebrow, “Like where?”

“How about a hotel? Or maybe an office building… a restaurant?” Alice said looking out of the window at our passing surroundings.

There weren’t any hotels, offices or restaurants in this area. The only thing around us was rocky, hilly terrain and distant mountains.

“Gas stations are always easy to find along the highways,” Penn said as if he was trying to explain why we usually stuck to gas stations. They were quick and easy stops, but now we were running out of options. For miles and miles, anything that was accessed easily off of the main roads had been emptied out a long time ago. Or so it seemed. It was time to try other places, even if there were more risks involved. “OK. Next town, we’ll check something different.”

Alice nodded and smiled. But her pleased expression of feeling helpful quickly vanished when she coughed into her hand. She saw me looking at her and quickly turned her head away from me.

I wasn’t exactly sure how long we had been driving, but it felt like a long time. With how frequently Penn looked down at the dash, I knew we needed to find gas, and soon.

We had the hose for siphoning, but first we needed to find cars that still had gas. If we didn’t find something we’d be without a car once again, and I was sure none of us wanted that. We covered so many more miles in the car than we could on foot.

I could feel the shift in everyone’s mood when the distant buildings came into view. After countless miles we were finally approaching a city.

P
enn slowed
the car as we passed the green sign that hung on a lone post marking the exit to the city. The bullet holes in the sign made me nervous. I didn’t mention it, but Penn had probably noticed them too.

He turned down the exit and drove slowly towards the city. Most of the buildings we passed looked like they were falling apart. The storms had probably weakened them, but time was making them worse. Some of the buildings looked as though strips of wood had been carefully removed… repurposed for some reason or another.

“There,” Alice said pointing at a building that had clearly been a motel at one time. The sign was covered in dirt, but I could still make out the name of the chain. As we drove closer, I worried the building might fall on top of us if we went inside. I couldn’t tell for sure but the building looked as though it was tilting ever so slightly to the side.

Some of the windows were coated with a brown, dusty layer of dried muck and others were cracked or broken. There were brown and green vines trying to climb the walls. It looked like the earth was going to swallow it whole.

Penn pulled into the parking lot and slowly drove around the building. When no one came out, or started shooting at us through the broken windows, he pulled into one of the many empty parking spots.

Penn looked down at the wires, “How do I turn off the car? Should I turn off the car?”

“Yeah… just disconnect those wires. Let me show you,” Carter said and got out of the car. He showed Penn how to start and stop the car by touching or disconnecting the wires.

Dean watched and nodded as Penn tried to start and stop the car without Carter’s help. They smiled as though they’d just learned a magician’s secrets.

Penn took out his gun from behind his back and checked it over. It reminded me we needed to find ammunition, and soon.

“Let’s go,” he said, and Carter stepped to the side so Penn could open his car door. We all got out and followed him up to the hotel door. It was the kind of door a keycard was typically needed to access, but Penn easily pulled the door open. The system had probably been disabled long ago.

He entered the hallway slowly shifting his gun from doorway to doorway. Dean took out his gun but kept it down by his thigh. I didn’t bother to take mine out. I didn’t have the speed or accuracy that would be needed if someone stepped out. Thinking about the gun only reminded me of what happened when I last used it. I was worried that if I touched it, visions of killing Ryan would flood back.

“Eww,” Sienna said as she tip-toed around behind me.

“Tell me about it,” I mumbled as I looked around at the black splotches on the walls.

There were all sorts of things scattered on the floor… broken picture frames, mud, pamphlets, possibly dead mice, and other random things I couldn’t identify. In the corner of the entrance way there was a plant in a giant pot. Its leaves and vines twisted around the ground and up the walls. I had no idea what kind of plant it was, but for some reason it was thriving.

I looked up towards the ceiling and spotted an area above the plant that looked as though water had leaked through. Perhaps any time it rained, the plant got a drink. Then all it would need was some sunlight to come in through what remained of the glass door. The plant was a fighter… or maybe it was just lucky.

As I looked around I couldn’t decide if the hotel had been ransacked or if it had just been messed up from the storms that had likely passed through forever ago. The ceiling was spotted with mold and mildew, and dirt coated the floors. If there had been people rummaging around inside, I would have thought there would be less dirt and maybe even footprints.

Once we got closer to where the front lobby was, Penn started pushing at doors to see if they’d swing open. He found the office, a maintenance closet and a room that stored all the still perfectly folded bed linens and towels.

“We should take some of those,” Penn said, and I reached inside the closet and grabbed a stack of the towels. I winced at the stinging twinges of my burned skin feeling as though it was being stretched out.

Once we were in the lobby, I was sure people had come inside the hotel at some point. Most of the chairs were missing, leaving markings on the floor where they had once been, and there were footprints all around the area.

We continued onward to what had been a small cafe area. There were some cabinets under the counters and I opened them to see if anything was still inside. Most everything had been taken except for some sugar and sugar substitute packets, and a big stack of Styrofoam cups still wrapped in protective plastic.

I pulled them out and handed the stack to Sienna. We could definitely put the cups to use.

“Take that too,” Penn said nodding towards a large plastic pitcher that probably had been used to make fancy blended coffee drinks or cold fruit smoothies. What I wouldn’t give for a cold smoothie.

Sienna grabbed the pitcher and looked inside. She quickly pulled her head away and scrunched up her nose. The pitcher probably hadn’t been cleaned out in quite some time. It might be so bad that we couldn’t even use it, but she took it anyway.

“Follow,” Penn said, and led us back down the hallway to the other end of the hotel. We walked maybe ten feet before Penn turned into a small square room.

He tucked his gun into the back of his pants and placed his hands against the sides of the vending machine. He started shaking the machine vigorously.

At first I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but when I stepped to the side, I could see the machine was filled with snacks. Once he stopped shaking it, he started to pound his fist against the glass or plastic or whatever it was that was keeping us from the glorious snacks. Dean grabbed his hand and stopped him before he injured himself.

“Let’s think before you break your hand,” Dean said trying to look into Penn’s eyes. It was like he was possessed by the need for food and it wasn’t his brain that was making choices, it was his stomach. “There has to be something we can use instead of your fists.”

“I have an idea… hold on,” Carter said waving his hand at us as he walked away from us backwards. He jogged down the hallway, and I watched as he opened the maintenance closet. He stepped inside for less than a minute and popped back out carrying a hammer. As he drew closer, he raised it up and pointed at it, “Ta-da!”

He motioned for everyone to step aside and once we were all clear he swung the hammer hard towards the front of the vending machine. It cracked, and he sent the hammer flying towards it again, aiming for the exact same spot he’d hit the first time.

The hammer went through and made a small hole. Carter used the back of the hammer to knock away the loose shards before stepping aside to allow Penn to access the array of snacks.

Penn grabbed a bag of chips and tore it open. He put them into his mouth three or four at a time as he stepped back to let everyone else have a turn.

Everyone grabbed something different and when we finished our first package, we all started on another and then another. I was nowhere near full or satisfied, but it was about a thousand times better than the feeling of my stomach gnawing on itself.

“We should take the rest of this with us. Even rationed, this probably won’t last long,” I said, causing the smiles to fade from everyone’s faces as they remembered our bleak situation.

“She’s right,” Penn said looking around the area. “We’re going to need a bag or something.”

“Maybe there are trash bags in the closet,” Carter said making his way back towards it. “That could work.”

“Check behind the counter, they might have medicine back there,” I said when Alice coughed behind me. Even if there wasn’t any cold medicine, they’d probably have pain relievers and other over-the-counter medicines that could come in handy.

“You know what?” Penn said looking around the corner. “I bet they have a vending machine on the second floor too.”

We finished clearing out the hotel of everything we could find. Sienna carried the hammer and Carter carried the garbage bag filled with all of our collected supplies… the towels, the random sugar packets, the plastic pitcher, the Styrofoam cups and the medicines Carter had found. And most importantly, the snacks.

After we had finished going over the second floor, I noticed through a window that the sunlight was starting to fade. It seemed as though the days were going quicker and quicker which I assumed meant summer would soon come to an end.

As long as we made it to Michigan, found a place and made it safe before winter came I figured we’d be in good shape. But if we didn’t make it somewhere before the snow started to fall, I wasn’t sure we’d survive wandering around in the wilderness.

Then again, I was only speculating that it would be fall soon. We could have months before the weather would turn cooler. Ever since the very first storms hit and took away everything we had ever known, the climate seemed to have been affected. I didn’t even know what season it really was, the best any of us could do was guess.

I’d went through winter in Alaska and then we traveled around in what felt like spring. Now the weather was warmer and it only made sense that it was summer and fall would come next.

“It’ll be night soon,” Penn said looking around at each one of us. “We can stay here the night or drive through hoping to find gas somewhere.”

“Stay here,” Dean said with a shrug.

“Drive through the night,” I answered at nearly the same time. I looked at him, “We need to find water.”

“We need sleep too,” Dean countered.

“We can sleep in the car… take turns. We’ll make progress if we drive through the night,” I said as if trying to convince him. Dean rubbed his chin and then nodded.

“Anyone else have a vote?” Penn asked looking around, but no one said anything. It didn’t seem to matter too much.

“All right. Let’s go then,” Dean said, and Penn led us back out towards the car. I didn’t say anything, but I was worried the car wouldn’t be out there when we got back downstairs. We left the hotel in the same way we’d entered and I smiled when I saw the car still there waiting for us.

If we would have stayed the night at the hotel who knows if it would have still been there in the morning? Or maybe someone would have come and set the whole hotel on fire while we were inside.

Carter stuffed the garbage bag of supplies into the trunk and we all climbed back into the car. Penn tried to get it started again, and on the third try the engine roared.

“I can drive,” Dean offered. Penn had done all the driving since we’d found the car and he probably could have used a break.

“I’m fine,” Penn said putting the car into reverse. He barely glanced behind him as he drove the car backwards. He jerked it into drive and hit the gas, “We’ll switch soon.”

And with that we were back on the road. Instead of driving back towards the highway he turned towards town.

“It’s going to be dark. We should get out of the city… go back to the highway,” I said leaning forward to make sure he heard me.

“I need bullets,” he said, and I realized why he wanted to drive. Dean wouldn’t have agreed to this. He would have turned back towards the highway.

“What if we can’t find a place… or what if there isn’t any? We don’t know our way around! Please Penn! You can have my gun,” I said taking it out of my waistband and thrusting it towards him.

He raised his shoulder blocking me from passing it to him. Penn groaned and slammed his palms against the steering wheel before he made a quick U-turn. I sat back and let the wave of relief wash over me.

Penn knew better. It seemed like he wasn’t thinking clearly. For him to want to drive us into the unknown darkness just didn’t make any sense. He must have been really desperate for ammo because he would have known the potential risks involved in his plan. They weren’t worth it. It just didn’t seem like him and then it hit me.

“How long have you been out of bullets?” I asked crossing my arms in front of me. It was probably something I should have confronted him on in private, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted him to know he wasn’t fooling me.

“A while,” he said, and I tried to remember the last time he had used his gun. When we had been standing there, my gun aimed at Ryan… I had heard the clicks of his empty gun.

“Just take mine. We’ll all be safe if you have the loaded one.”

“We’ll figure it out later,” he said, and I could tell that he wasn’t thrilled that I had outed him about his empty gun. Maybe if everyone believed it was loaded, he believed it too. Surely we could just divide up the bullets we had left, but maybe that’s what he planned to do later.

What if we ran into HOME? Or the dog-beasts? Without bullets we were in trouble and while I didn’t know much about guns, I was pretty sure we couldn’t have much ammo left in any of them.

If we wanted any chance to survive all of this and make it to Michigan, not only would we need water and food, but Penn would need ammunition. Well, we all would. And we’d need a lot more than whatever it was we had left.

We drove for ten minutes before I couldn’t stand the tension in the air any longer. I could feel Penn’s stress permeating the air, and I needed a distraction.

“Hey Dean?” I said in a soft voice.

“Yeah?”

“Would you be so kind as to turn on the radio?” I batted my eyes even though I knew he couldn’t see them in the dark car.

“The radio? What for?” he asked, and I didn’t know if that mean he hadn’t felt the same tension I did or if it just hadn’t bothered him.

“I don’t know… maybe the whole world hadn’t been destroyed. Maybe we can pick up a radio station, listen to some music,” I said not believing a single word I’d said.

“Right,” Dean said, but he turned on the radio anyway. He clicked the search button, but it just zoomed through the stations, zipping through the numbers until it stopped for a brief second and then continued. It was mostly static, but it was strange that it had stopped. Had there been voices?