The Ruined Ones

Chapter Seven

Sitting under the eaves of a shop that hadn't quite been burnt out, Shaun and Lewis were having a much needed rest. They had been traveling for a week since Katrina and the baby had been taken. Sleep had barely been on the cards, even when they did decide to stop moving.

The first two days they walked non-stop—only with the exception of the first thirty minutes after they left the house, when they ran, before finally slowing to a jog. When the effeteness all but crippled them, eventually they resigned themselves to walking.

Once Damien took his last breath, Shaun got up, in shock for only a moment.

The men that took their family had also taken almost all their supplies, though they missed one bag. The pack didn't have anything of much use in it, just some toilet paper, two tins of food, the first aid kit and the sewing kit.

Shaun didn't know what was in it until later. At that point in time, he simply swooped it up and ran out of the house. Lewis followed.

At the end of the driveway, Shaun stopped, catching his breath as he studied the tire tracks in the dirt that led onto the road. There were tracks turning left and tracks turning right. The only thing that may have been a sign of the direction the focus had gone was that the dirt dragged onto the road a little bit from the tracks heading left seemed a little fresher than the rest.

It was their only lead, so they took it. They ran again. However, hope that they would catch up to his wife's captives was barely present in Shaun's heart—they were in a car after all; he and his brother were on foot. Yet if they just kept moving, maybe they could gain some ground on them. The Venators would have to stop too, probably staying in the one place longer than Shaun and Lewis were, and if they stopped less than the kidnappers, surely they could close the gap.

Neither of them said it aloud—yet—though there wasn't much hope of finding Katrina and the baby. Finally, Lewis said what they both had been thinking for a while now.

"We haven't seen any sign of them since that campfire and those empty cans, brother, and that was days ago," Lewis said, breaking a long silence. "And, as much as I hate to admit it, that might not have even been from them."

"You know, it's just our luck that the one shop we come across that hasn't been completely burnt out is a sewing shop," Shaun said, as if Lewis hadn't even spoken. "Katrina would have made some use of it—not much good to us though."

"Don't do that, bro," Lewis said, frowning.

"Do what?"

"Don't just change the subject. Don't act like you didn't hear what I said and pretend like you don't know it deep down inside you."

"I don't know it. You don't know it."

"Well, it's becoming less and less likely that we'll find them. I'm not trying to be a prick and I'm not giving up. I love her, and Bub—"

"It's Abby," Shaun interrupted sternly. "Our daughter's name is Abby."

"Okay, Abby. I get it, all right. We need to do everything we can to find them, and we will, but we have to admit to ourselves that—"

"Don't you dare say it, Lou."

"We have to prepare ourselves for the fact that we may not find them," Lewis continued, despite the heartbreaking look on his brother's wearied face. "It's a big bloody country and those guys could have gone anywhere. We're just following the road, heading to a city. We don't know if it's the one."

"Well then we try all of them until we find the right one. You remember what Mary told us," Shaun said, referring to a woman they met at some point during their first seven months on the run. "She said she'd heard the Alphalytes were filtering everyone into three major cities in this part of the country and renamed them—um, Novus, Lux and...I don't' remember the other one.