Ravaged Land - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (6 page)

I jumped when Ryan threw the book he was holding against the wall. It made a sharp snap against the wall and a soft thud when it hit the floor. He flicked the remote at Seth and stomped out of the room.

“It’s OK, it doesn’t mean anything,” Dean said trying to diffuse the situation and keep everyone’s hopes up even though his expression told a different story. He was doing it for Sienna’s sanity which was probably already hanging by only a few threads. “Tomorrow will be better again, I just know it. Don’t you think so?” he said looking around waiting for backup. His eyes locked with mine, and he knew that out of the others here I had the best connection with her. He hooked me with his eyes and tried to reel me in, “Right Ros? Don’t you agree? Better tomorrow… right? You watch the cameras all the time, you must think it’s different, changing, getting better?”

I looked at Sienna, we hadn’t lost her yet, she was still present, still taking it all in but I didn’t know for how long, “Yeah! Of course,” I said with a toothy, hopefully believable, smile.

“Yeah, it’ll be fine, you’ll see.” Dean gave a big-eyed look at Seth and then at the remote trying to telepathically convey a message to him, “Let’s get back to that movie!” Dean reminded me of a dad type sometimes. He was always there for Sienna, caring and comforting her and keeping us all in line around her. He didn’t want us to argue around her, he wanted everything to be smooth and even though it was all for her, we needed it too.

I slipped back into the kitchen when they turned the camera off. After I put the last pot away I went back to my room to find Ryan sitting on my, well I guess technically his, bed. He had his back towards the door.

“Oh sorry I was just, I mean… I didn’t feel like watching the movie, I’ll go,” I said feeling awkward even though this had been my room for the last several weeks. It really should have been his room from the start, I had taken it from him, and he deserved to have as much time as he needed. If it weren’t for Sienna I’d have taken the couch without hesitation.

“No, no stay.”

“Really it’s OK, I don’t mind at all. I’ll just go umm… check the pantry.”

He let a small chuckle escape, “Check the pantry for what?”

“I really don’t know. I can’t even make something up quick enough that would even remotely sound good,” I said with a smile. “I just was trying to give you space.”

Ryan turned to me, his face ragged and his hair wild. Had he been crying? I couldn’t be sure, but I could tell he was out of sorts, more so than usual. There was no other way to explain it. At this point I had spent enough time with him, and the others for that matter, to be able to read them to some extent. “I do want space, but not this space. I want the space up there. I’m getting claustrophobic. I feel like I can’t breathe most of the time. Ros, I need to breathe!” His eyes were sad and his voice panicked. I wanted to run to him and hug him but I didn’t think he’d like that at all. If a person is feeling claustrophobic, being wrapped up tightly in someone’s arms was probably not the best solution.

“I’m sorry. I know how you feel. I was just coming in here to do jumping jacks or run in place or some crunches or something.” And it was true, I still wanted to be moving even after having seen the snow starting up again. “Sometimes I just do exercises to feel like I’m moving somewhere.” I started to do jumping jacks even though I was completely aware of what an absolute nut-job I looked like, “join me!”

He looked at me sideways. His lip curled in amusement and then the parts of his face returned to their normal position, “You sure are… unique.”

“I will… take that… as a… compliment. Seriously… jump!” I said between breaths as I hopped and clapped my hands above my head. I smiled at him with big crazy eyes. When he didn’t move I grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet, “I bet I can do more than you can. I’ve been practicing, though I must warn you, I knew this day would come!”

“Yeah?” Now he had on a real smile and it was gorgeous. He was a different person with that killer smile. I had to swallow my heart back down when it threatened to do jumping jacks out of my throat. I shook away the sudden desire I had to touch him. His perfect arms or maybe his solid chest, or better yet run my fingers through his disheveled hair. He started doing jumping jacks, but he noticed that I had disappeared, “Uh hello? Ready? Let’s do this!”

“Right!” I said popping out of my daydream. What had just happened? That wasn’t like me to drift off into those types of thoughts, especially right in front of the person I was having them about. Damn that smile of his, I made a mental note to keep myself in check. Not cool Ros, I told myself, not cool.

We matched each other jump for jump up to 120 when a giggle fit erupted. No idea what even started it, I think it was the serious looks on our faces, but I smiled and he smiled back and before I knew it we were laughing. I dropped to the floor, sweaty and out of breath. He flopped down next to me stretching out on his back, his chest rising and falling quickly with each breath. “Oddly I feel a little better,” he admitted.

“I’m glad,” I said between heavy breaths, “and now I feel tired!”

He smiled again, and I looked away before getting lured in by that smile again. Ryan was such a serious person nearly all of the time, so much so that getting to see this smile was doing a real number on me. I liked when he smiled. I liked him happy.

He rolled on his side and propped himself up on his arm looking at me, studying me. I suddenly was very aware of how sweaty I was and my heavy breathing which I tried to get under control. I wasn’t out of shape, I just couldn’t seem to catch my breath, I wasn’t sure if it was the giggling, the exercise, or him.

“Thanks Ros,” he said before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. I smiled at him but moved my eyes to the ceiling and away from that gorgeous smile on his face. “No, really I mean it,” he said, his face slowly changing back into serious Ryan.

“No problem,” I said wanting happy Ryan to stay longer and for serious Ryan to get smooshed down deep inside him for a little longer. It’s not that I dislike serious Ryan, I just really like happy Ryan.

He pushed himself up and reached his hand down to help me up to my feet. I took it and he pulled me up swiftly. I was standing only inches away from him and extremely aware of it, if he noticed the closeness, he made no indication of it. “See you tonight?” he said with a smirk.

“Huh?”

“You know, the usual… cameras… radios….”

“Oh, right. Yeah I think so, unless I’m too tired from all the jumping jacks,” I said with a strange bounce that allowed me to get back into my comfort zone. Too close and my brain started to malfunction. I don’t know what was going on here, but I couldn’t let what I thought was happening, well, happen. There were too many other things going on and so many more important things to worry about. No other drama was needed beyond what we already had. And besides, I was probably way off base, just because I was feeling these weird feelings didn’t mean he was too.

“Thanks again,” he said nudging my arm with his fist, and then disappeared from the room. I jumped up and down three times trying to shake the unusual feeling off my skin. It didn’t work. I would simply have to stop thinking about happy Ryan. It shouldn’t be that hard, after all, happy Ryan has thus far only existed maybe a handful of times. For all I knew he had a girlfriend anyway! Any girl who saw that smile would have melted right into his arms. He could probably have any girl he wanted, he was absolutely gorgeous when he was happy. And even if he wasn’t with someone, he sure wouldn’t be interested in the smelly, sweaty, awkward girl with snarled hair he’d been trapped with in this small, crowded, underground space for the last several weeks. Without a doubt, the thought of me and him never crossed his mind.

I couldn’t stop thinking about him no matter how hard I tried to push the thoughts of him out of my head, they just kept creeping back in, stronger and stronger. I had to stop the thoughts. There was no point. It must have been from being trapped down here, a lack of fresh oxygen that was making me go crazy. I grabbed a change of clothes and went and took a quick shower. We were all taking faster showers, in fact, we rarely took them daily since we were worried we were going to run out of water and we wanted to conserve as much as possible. I suspected Ryan knew how to check water levels, but if any of us asked about it he would tell us not to worry about it, that it was fine and we had plenty. It was basically the same when it came to electricity and the generator. To him, it was his problem and not ours, at least that’s how he seemed to feel about it, unwilling to burden us with such things.

I sat on the bed and brushed my damp, towel-dried hair. The gray yoga pants from his sister’s closet, and the over-sized T-shirt I had found in Ryan’s dad’s closet was probably not the most flattering option. But I liked it because the big, soft, comfy shirt reminded me of being snuggled up in my bed at home. Since most of the time I had to squeeze myself into his sister’s pants, the bulkiness and length of the shirt helped to disguise how tightly they fit.

Sienna slipped into the room with a silly grin. “Hey, what was so funny in here?” she asked with big, curious eyes.

I was glad to see her spirits were still up, “Oh, ah, nothing,” I said, the corners of my mouth turning up against my will.

“Spill it!” Sienna said flopping on her bed like a nosy tween.

“There is NOTHING to spill,” I said standing up doing my best to be nonchalant. I set the hairbrush we shared down on my nightstand. I picked out a few loose strands of my hair that had been left behind in the bristles and dropped them into the trash can, attempting to look busy.

“We heard Ryan laughing,” she said looking at me sideways.

“Yeah?”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened! Maybe I’m just funny?”

“Suuure Ros, you’re a barrel of laughs, that’s what we are always saying, just how funny you are. Well, that and how much I enjoy being the Queen of England.”

I rolled my eyes at her and left the room. Each step I made was careful and calculated, paying close attention to my body language, so as not to give off any clues about what was really going through my head. I didn’t know where I was going but I wanted to put distance between myself and Miss Twenty Questions.

No one was in the kitchen and no one was in the living room. That means the boys had gathered in their room, with Ryan. Odd. This was new. I wondered what they were talking about and I even considered eavesdropping, if only for a second, but I talked myself out of it. I grabbed a book, laid down on the couch and pretended I wasn’t waiting for Ryan. I’d ask him about the secret boys only meeting, hopefully he’d tell me, but he never came even though he mentioned seeing me tonight for our usual nightly get-together. When I woke up in the morning with a sore neck from sleeping on the couch, my book was on the end-table and I had a blanket draped over me. Instead of going to my bed, I rolled over and feel into a deep sleep.

Chapter five.

The next morning it was snowing again. It wasn’t nearly as heavy as it had been, but it wasn’t as light as it had been yesterday either. The mood changed significantly and everyone picked up where they had left off being depressed and ready to give up. I could feel the claustrophobia burrowing deeper into my body. There was also a certain horrible sense of loneliness that was slithering around waiting to constrict the life out of any hope that remained.

The generator had started chugging randomly for a few minutes here and there but Ryan insisted it was fine and that there was lots of juice left. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or if maybe he was making a guess or saying what he thought we wanted to hear. The lights would dim in the whole shelter, but then they’d burst back on like nothing happened. A similar thing used to happen in my house when my mom would do the laundry, like the washer would suck up all the power but then decide to share it again with the other plugged in appliances.

We still had a fair amount of food left, but it was noticeably diminishing. That was just another thing Ryan didn’t want us to worry about. We had plain rice and noodles to last years, but the water wasn’t in endless supply.

The days went by slowly, each day slower than the last. It was a solid week that had passed since the episode of hope, but this morning I decided to turn on the cameras anyway. I had asked Ryan to show me how when he had given up several days ago. He no longer saw the point in checking daily, he, like everyone else, was slowly sinking inside themselves, ready to implode. So I started checking them when everyone was still sleeping either at night or in the morning. But it was that day, that morning, the snow stopped. There was nothing in the clear, cloudless sky. Not even a single flake lazily drifting by. The sun was starting to rise in the distance and I could see that the snow still covered the ground. We were still under ice, but what I saw looked promising. I kept it to myself, quickly shut off the TV and with a hop, I went to get dressed for the day.

I passed Owen in the hallway after my shower and he mumbled, “What are you getting dressed up for?” Maybe I should have showed them that day, I thought about it, but I didn’t. I waited three more days, painfully keeping it to myself. It was three consecutive days of no snow, nothing at all — in fact I actually saw snow melting — before I decided to show them what was happening.