The Red Sky Series Box Set Books 1-4: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series Page 27

  “I never wanted to abandon him,” I said staring at my fingers. Abandoning him was exactly what I'd done. He pushed and pushed with all his screw-ups, but I was the one that gave up. Dammit.

  I'd messed up our relationship just as much as he had. I blamed him for everything. Part of me still did, but I couldn't do it again. Especially considering it was likely, he was the only family I had left.

  “He might have been an asshole, but I'm not leaving him. I’m not going to be an asshole too,” I said twisting my neck to look up at Jamie. Random items inside the building crunched as someone made their way through the gas station.

  Danny stepped out and spotted us instantly. “Bronx wants you guys to come back inside.”

  “Now I can’t even get some air?” I asked taking out how I was feeling on Danny.

  “That’s what he’s worried about,” Danny said.

  I shook my head and narrowed my eyes at him.

  “He’s worried that the air isn’t all that fresh,” Danny said shoving his hands in his pockets. “Come on. Come inside.”

  I exhaled slowly. “Tell him I’ll come in when I’m ready.”

  “Actually, I can’t do that. He said I couldn’t go back in without you.”

  “Of course he did,” I said lowering my head.

  I groaned and pushed my hands down on the ground. The tiny pebbles pressed against my palms.

  My head tipped back as I stood, letting the sunlight soak into my skin. I turned to Danny and jerked my chin toward the door.

  “The air is fine,” I said.

  “You should come inside and tell him that,” Danny said with a smile. He turned, and Jamie shook his head as he followed Danny to the door.

  I was tempted to make a run for it, just temporarily, so I could have time to myself. I couldn’t think clearly with everyone around, and that was exactly what I needed to do. Think.

  “Stop!” someone said.

  Danny and Jamie both stopped in their tracks. They looked at me with a confused look on their face.

  The voice hadn’t sounded like Bronx, and it definitely hadn’t been Blair. I spun on my heel and swallowed hard.

  Standing there looking at us was five heavily armed men. The one in front had his gun aimed at me, and the other four had their weapons aimed at Jamie and Danny.

  “What are you doing here?” the one in front asked. He had a black bandana wrapped around his head holding his long black scraggly hair in place.

  “We were hiding out from the cloud,” I said narrowing my eyes. “How about you?”

  “Following the cloud,” he said. The man in the bandana glanced toward the gas station. “You three alone?”

  “Yes,” I answered quickly. Possibly too quickly.

  The man looked me up and down. I started to cross my arms in front of my chest, but he tightened the grip on his gun.

  “No sudden movements,” he grinned. “Makes me twitchy.” The guy didn’t take his eyes off of mine. “Anything left in there?”

  I shook my head. “It was looted before we got here.”

  “So where are you headed?” the man asked.

  “Nowhere in particular,” Jamie said. “Just trying to survive this shit like everyone else.”

  I turned slightly and looked at Jamie out of the corner of my eye. The man’s eyes quickly darted over to Monica’s body and then back at us.

  “What’s that all about?” he asked.

  “No idea,” I lied.

  “We have a safe place, not too far off, what do you say about joining us?” the man with the bandana asked.

  I flashed him a smile. “We’re good. Thanks.”

  “What if I wasn’t so much asking?” The man with the bandana grinned. He smirked at me. “I’m straight up telling you how it’s going to be.”

  My body tensed and it made the man’s lips tighten. He liked the fact that he was getting under my skin.

  The man jerked his head to the area behind the cloud. “If you don’t want them to join you, they can stay behind, but you’re definitely coming with us.”

  “No, we’re all together. You take one, you get us all,” Jamie answered taking a small step closer to me.

  The smile grew bigger on the man’s face. “Well, then it’s my lucky day. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 20

  We were walking in the same direction we needed to go which was a good thing, at least I hoped it was, but it was the only good thing. I had no idea how we were going to get away from the armed men, and I hoped we were doing the right thing by leaving the others behind.

  I could have mentioned Blair, Bronx, and Nick but I was too worried about what they would have done to them. It’s bad enough I don’t know what they’ll do to us. Maybe they would have left Nick behind… alone. Maybe they would have killed them.

  We were lucky that they didn’t insist on checking inside. Both Danny and Jamie walked close to me. Neither of them said a word, but I knew they were both wondering how we were going to get away.

  I almost laughed but somehow managed to hold it in. Jamie seemed to notice when I covered my mouth to disguise the strange hiccup-like noise that escaped from between my lips.

  “What was that?” Jamie asked leaning toward me.

  “Guess I’m leaving him behind anyway,” I said glancing over my shoulder to make sure the guys leading us away hadn’t heard. I wanted to look back at the gas station to see if I could see Bronx or Blair watching us being led away, but I didn’t dare.

  I slowed my pace to catch up with the man with the bandana. He looked at me, his eyebrows squeezed together tightly.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Told you we have a place,” the man said.

  I nodded. “What kind of place?”

  “The kind where you’ll be safe.” The man looked me up and down. “You sure like to ask a lot of questions, don’t you? The others that join us are a lot more thankful.”

  “The others?”

  “Another question.” He grinned as he looked down at his feet. The man turned back to me and sighed.

  I shrugged. “Is it so wrong to know where I’m being taken against my will?”

  “Against your will? Aw, come on. I didn’t think you were one of those.”

  “One of those?”

  “Can you even talk without asking a question?”

  I raised my brows and shrugged again. It didn’t seem as though I was going to get anywhere with him.

  “One of those who doesn’t want to be helped. I’m taking you to a safe place with other people looking to restart. You don’t even realize how lucky you are.”

  “We were doing fine.”

  “It didn’t look like it to me. You have no supplies and no weapons. There are shitty people out there.”

  I swallowed hard. Apparently, he didn’t realize that he and his men were shitty people. Taking us even though we didn’t want to go.

  “Maybe we don’t want to be saved.”

  The man laughed. “Then I’m doing you a bigger favor than I already thought I was. I’ll save you from yourself, or you’ll end up like that girl on the ground back there.”

  “What if we just walk away?”

  “You really can’t do it, can you?”

  I shook my head.

  “We aren’t going to let you walk away. It’s our duty to bring peace back from this chaos.” He looked me up and down again, I hated the coldness in his eyes. No matter what I’d say, I was pretty sure he’d only hear what he wanted to hear. “We are not bad people.” He stuck out his hand, and I looked at it awkwardly. “I’m Tom. I was a farmer before the shit hit the fan.”

  “Gwen,” I said pretending not to notice his hand.

  He let his hand fall back to his side. “You’ll see, Gwen. You’ll be thanking me in a couple hours.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Whoa, you can do it.” Tom chuckled at himself. “See anything is possible. Now, how
about you get back up there and walk with your friends. I’m done answering questions.”

  The group of men acted as if they were doing what they believed was right, but my stomach was uneasy, and it wasn’t just because they were leading us further away from Nick and the others.

  We walked most of the day. I tried to move my feet slower, but Tom would just keep hounding us to move faster.

  I tried to take a mental picture of everything we walked past. When we were able to get free, we’d have to find our way back to the gas station, and this wasn’t an area I was familiar with. If I had to guess, neither were Danny and Jamie, even though I hoped that they were.

  It was around dinner time that we stopped walking. The men walked around in a circle on the soggy ground.

  “This will do,” Tom said turning to us. “We’ll camp here for the night.”

  “On the wet ground?” I asked.

  “Do you have a better idea?” one of Tom’s men asked.

  I shrugged. “Inside a building.”

  “I don’t see any buildings, do you?” the man asked. He looked down at me as if I were a foolish child.

  “Not here, but I’m sure we could find something before we lose daylight.”

  “We know this area pretty well,” another man said, plopping down on the ground. He opened the pack he’d been carrying and started chewing on some beef jerky. The man looked up at Tom. “Are we sharing with our guests?”

  “We always do,” Tom said flashing me a smile.

  Another man reached into his pack and pulled out a faded blue tarp that was muddy on one side. One of the others was stacking sticks near the tarp.

  My eyes met Jamie’s as he leaned back against one of the nearby trees. Most of the leaves were missing, and the bark was black. It looked like the tree was fighting for its life.

  I could see the desire to leave was strong in his eyes. Danny, on the other hand, didn’t reveal anything which was perhaps something he’d picked up from childhood. It was probably a skill he’d mastered to survive living with his asshole of a father.

  Two of the men continued to walk the circle. Both of them holding their guns tightly just in front of their chest.

  They shared some of their food with us, but my stomach still rumbled after I’d finished eating. Staying inside the gas station with a variety of foods had been a luxury.

  “There’s more at our home,” Tom said seemingly noticing the disappointment on my face. “We typically ration what we take along… you know,” he said with a shrug, “just in case. Hadn’t planned on finding so many today.”

  I tried to figure out which way we’d need to go to get back to the gas station and which way would take us to my grandma’s house. Having veered so much from Nick’s original shortcut we’d been on was throwing my sense of direction off.

  The second Tom’s men fell asleep, we’d make our run for it, but I wasn’t sure if the best way to go was back toward the gas station. I didn’t want to get lost. But more importantly, if they came after us, I didn’t want to lead them right back to my brother and the others.

  I scanned our surroundings as darkness slowly fell around us. There were several times I thought I saw movement in the distance, but when I blinked whatever had been there, was gone. Maybe nothing had been there in the first place.

  Tom barely took his eyes off of us. He tried not to make it obvious, but it was… it was painfully obvious.

  All I could think about was how the hell we were going to get out of here. Once we were free, then I’d worry about which way we’d need to go.

  But getting free was the problem. If we made them think we were happy with what they were doing for us, maybe then they’d let their guard down.

  “If you have such a nice place, what are you doing out here?” I asked picking at a ragged fingernail.

  “Is it question time again?” Tom asked.

  “It’s contagious, huh?” Now I’ve got you asking them.” I flashed him a smile.

  He grinned back. “Kill me now.”

  “In all seriousness, why bother coming out here?” I asked.

  “Truth is we need the help. We’re building. We’re growing.” Tom leaned forward, looking at me as if I should be interested in what he was saying. “The more we get, the quicker we’ll get everything back to what it was.”

  “Don’t you think help is on the way?” Danny asked through narrowed eyes.

  Tom chuckled. “Do you?”

  “My dad said they weren’t coming. I couldn’t help but hope that they were,” Danny said.

  “I’m not going to be the one to burst your bubble kid,” Tom said punctuating his sentence with a quick snort. “But we’re going to make things better. We’ll get this shit going again.”

  “Do you know what happened?” Jamie asked exhaling slowly.

  Tom narrowed his eyes. “That cloud? No idea what that was, but we lost three men to it.”

  I glanced over at Jamie. I was sure he could feel me looking at him, but he didn’t turn to meet my gaze.

  “Some kind of chemical,” the guy sitting next to Tom said. “It was like a poison eating them from the inside out.”

  I didn’t mean the cloud,” Jamie asked. “I mean the first wave… the red sky.”

  “No idea. I think there was an EMP but the sky, that was a different poison. Wiped out everyone I knew,” Tom said.

  The guy next to Tom leaned forward. “Heard it was some kind of attack on the United States, but no idea if that was true.”

  “There could be areas out there they missed. Other people out there… places to go,” I said.

  “Could be,” Tom said with a shrug. “But they could be the next target.”

  “Or maybe we’ve been quarantined, and they’ll never let us out of here,” Tom’s buddy said.

  “Canada?” Danny asked, and all three men looked at him.

  Danny shrugged and looked away.

  “That’s a good idea, Danny,” I said pressing my lips into a tight smile.

  Tom chuckled. “They’ll never let us in, and we have no idea if things are even good up there.” Tom pulled out a cigarette and narrowed his eyes at me while he lit it. “Trust me, what we have going on is the best you’re going to find.”

  “Can’t we decide that for ourselves?” I asked. His eyes met mine for a second and the heat that radiated out of them was so much that I had to look away.

  Tom stood up. “You act like I’ve taken you prisoner.”

  “So, we can leave?” I replied standing, but only came up to his shoulders. My height wasn’t anywhere near as intimidating as his was.

  I could tell Jamie and Danny were standing just behind me. The air around us had changed drastically. It was thick and dense like the humid fog on a hot summer day.

  There was a gunshot in the distance. Tom’s men on the perimeter ducked down and the other two at Tom’s side ran over to join them.

  Tom, however, sat down, crossed his leg, and kept his eyes and his gun on us. “No, you’re not free to go. I need your help. If I have to recruit you against your will, I will. You’ll change your mind soon enough.”

  Chapter 21

  After an hour or so the men had given up on the random gunshot. I’d given up hope that it was Bronx coming to save us. I didn’t really want him coming for us because Tom’s men wouldn’t have hesitated to wipe him out of existence.

  The night passed by slowly. Jamie and I took turns sleeping, but I didn’t think I fell asleep for more than a few minutes here and there. I didn’t trust Tom or his men.

  There was always three of them awake at any given time. I guessed since they were down men since the cloud came through, it changed their rotation. Maybe that would mean the be more tired during the day. Only problem was I would be too.

  When the sunlight peeked over the horizon, Tom called for us to all wake up. If we could see, we could walk, which I agreed with, but I didn’t want to be walking anywhere with him or his men.

  The day passed
by rather quickly. They fed us, and every time I slowed my pace, Tom was right behind me telling me to pick up my feet. It was like the further we got from the gas station, the meaner he became.

  He kept telling us it wouldn’t be much further, but we kept moving, and I didn’t see anything in front of us for miles.

  The ground was still quite damp, but it was a vast improvement from the standing water we’d started with. Every day the sun was out more and more evaporated away.

  I could tell Tom was looking for a place to stop for the night which meant we weren’t at his secret camp yet. I was starting to wonder if there really was a place he was working to rebuild.

  “Do you think Nick’s doing any better?” I asked Jamie as I twisted my fingers together.

  “It hasn’t been that long,” he responded, his eyes jerking around as he took in our surroundings.

  “I know, I just—”

  “There’s something out there,” Jamie said, his voice low. “Or someone.”

  I squinted, but I couldn’t see whatever it was that Jamie was seeing. “Is it them?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jamie shook his head. “In fact, I hope it’s not because these guys will take them out no problem.”

  Just as I turned to look at Nick, something zipped through the trees. A soft thud made me turn on my heel to see what had made the noise.

  “Get down,” Tom whispered as he waved his palms at the ground.

  Again, something whizzed through the air landing softly somewhere behind us. My fingertips dug into the moist soil as I looked over at Jamie.

  “Are those bullets?” I asked.

  “Sniper?”

  My eyes scanned through the trees, but the shadows hid whoever was out there.

  “I know that’s you Tom!” someone shouted. Another bullet zipped by hitting a nearby tree.

  “Jesus,” one of Tom’s men said.

  “Shoot back,” Tom growled.

  The man snorted. “I don’t see anyone to shoot, do you?”

  “If I can’t see them they can’t see us,” Tom said.