Ravaged Land - A Post-Apocalyptic Novel by Kellee L. Greene Page A

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.
    Owen, Seth and Dean allowed themselves a bit of hope again, especially after I explained that I’ve been watching and for how long I’d been keeping my eye on it. Sienna had fallen