Crashing Down - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel (The Ravaged Land Series Book 3) Read Free Page B

there was a way to get us out of this. I had to hope something would come to me before it was too late.
    Someone put their hands on my shoulders and pushed me up against a wall. I knew they had done the same to Sienna when I felt her shoulder touch mine and heard the tiny grunt that exited as she smacked into the wall.
    “Someone’s on my other side,” she said so quietly I wasn’t sure if I had heard her correctly. But I hoped that I had. Maybe Dean and Penn were with us. But if they were, why hadn’t they said anything? They hadn’t tried to communicate with us at all which seemed unusual. I had used Sienna’s name so they would have known we were there… they could have said something. But they hadn’t.
    I was thinking of ways to get us out of this situation when someone yanked the bag off of my head. It startled me and I was looking around in all directions as if I half expected there to be a gun in my face.
    After my breathing returned to normal, I looked around the room. It was lit up with candles and lanterns spread out randomly on the floor. The light was slightly too bright for my unadjusted eyes and I had to look away. Once things started to come into focus I knew I had been right about us being in a basement. It looked like something that would have been underneath a school or a church.
    “Have a seat.” The voice came from behind the four men standing and facing us. Presumably, the men who had brought us here.
    “No thanks,” I said looking down at the dirty floor. I was pretty sure the little brown sprinkles scattered all over the floor were some kind of animal droppings. Probably rats. And I was also fairly certain that there was quite possibly a dead animal in the corner of the room. It was hard to be sure in the flickering candlelight, but when I squinted it seemed to either be a dirty, crumpled-up shirt or a dead rat. I was putting my money, or lack thereof, on the rat.
    “I insist,” he said his tone changing to something more fearsome. It was almost bizarre how quickly it had shifted. One of his men stepped towards me and I knew that if I didn’t sit he was going to make me sit.
    “OK, well, if you insist,” I said glaring at the guy standing in front of me. He was a lot older than me. I was pretty sure he was old enough to have been my father. Even though I didn’t want to, I slid down onto the dirty floor making sure I didn’t look down first. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about what was under me. If I was going to sit in rat feces, I’d rather not know about it.
    Now that my eyes were adjusted to the change in lighting, I turned to the side to see who was sitting with me and Sienna. I almost burst into tears when I saw Penn next to her and then Dean on the other side of him. They both had duct tape over their mouths and they both looked like they were going to kill these guys if they got the chance.
    When the guy standing in front of me stepped off to the side, I got a good look at the guy sitting in the chair leading this circus. He couldn’t have been much older than I was, but somehow I knew he was in charge of this whole kidnapping.
    He stared at us for a while. When he locked eyes with me, he tilted his head and flashed me a grin that was somehow both alluring and pure evil at the same time. It didn’t make me like him. In fact, I disliked him even more. Everything about him made me feel uneasy.
    “Comfortable?” he said as his smirky-grin turned into a full smile. I ignored him knowing that how I felt towards him would show in my eyes, and I worried that could be dangerous to all of us.
    He gestured to two of the men, the one that had been old enough to be my father and another that had been so plain I hadn’t really even noticed him. They both walked out of the room and closed the door behind them. I imagined they didn’t go far, in fact, I had a feeling they were standing just outside the door guarding it.
    “Welcome,” the guy in charge said wearing his evil