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-The Next Morning-
John’s eyes start to open, slowly and with his body feeling relaxed from a good night’s sleep. A noise starts to ring in his ear and the more he regains consciousness, the more he realizes the intruding noise is what is making him up. He feels himself yawn and then his eyes open the rest of the way suddenly. Voices. He can hear them encroaching on the three of them. He nudges Julie next to him. He looks over and sees Tim by a window watching carefully outside. Tim has a rifle in his hands and his finger hovers carefully over the trigger. John looks up at him and Tim sees that John is up and moves his finger to his lips and makes a motion telling John to keep quiet. Julie springs awake suddenly and John cups his hand over her mouth before she can speak. Her eyes widen but she quickly catches onto what is happening. She can hear the voices too.
John moves his hand away from Julie’s mouth slowly and she whispers to him, “What are we going to do?”
John and Tim look to each other and both of them, with confused expressions, shrug.
“Is there a back way out of here?” John asks quietly. He feels his heart start to pound faster when the people from outside get even closer. They’re right outside of the barn, standing very close to it. They’re talking about some kind of revolutionaries in the area. John can barely make out what they’re saying but what he hears confirms his suspicions that these people are out looking for them.
“Come, follow me,” Tim says. He throws his head a few times in the direction he wants them to go and crouches lower to the ground to avoid the people outside the barn from being able to see him. “We can check over here.”
“There it is,” Julie remarks upon seeing a small wooden door in the back of the barn. It’s covered in straw and the latch appears to be too rusty to open. “Can we open it?”
“I don’t know.” Tim tries his luck and pulls on it but the latch is too stubborn to move. His heart pounds faster and faster. They can hear the people getting even closer, possibly even leaning up against the side of the barn. He becomes angry and in a show of force, he lifts his rifle to latch and contemplates shooting it. He shakes slightly but John grabs him before he can pull the trigger. They wrestle with the gun for a moment before Tim elbows John in the face and the rifle falls out of their hands and is flung across the room. It lands in a pile of hay to muffle any noise it makes.
“We can’t do that,” John says uneasily. A red line drips down from his nose and a serious expression is plastered on his face. “You can’t act so recklessly. I picked you because I thought you were a professional.”
“I’m doing whatever I can to get us out of here, John. I panicked. If those people come in here, we’re through. One wrong step and this entire operation goes belly up. There’s a lot of stress to be had right now and I don’t think you’re fully feeling it.”
“I’m acting as a leader should and keeping calm. I’m hoping that if I’m calm then both of you will be too. But I can’t have mistakes like that.” John pushes Tim out of the way and inspects the latch. He fiddles with it for a moment and pulls out a nail file. He plugs away at it but they suddenly hear the front door of the barn being lifted.
They all start to fear the worst and Julie starts to shake. “John, you’d better hurry up with that file,” she says nervously. “We have visitors.”
“Almost… there,” John mutters through gritted teeth. He’s almost sawed off the lock on the latch but the front door of the barn opens too quickly. Two husky, middle-aged men step through the door carrying shotguns and dressed in camouflage outfits. Julie and Tim clamor quietly when the door opens, a worry they didn’t feel would actually happen before John had opened the door. The men step in carefully and look in piles of hay.
“You sure you heard them in here, Bill?” one of the men asks.
“Positive,” the other responds. “Jus’ keep looking. They have to be in here. Boss said this is where they landed at.”
One of them comes close by John and walks past as John holds tightly to the side. He steps out quickly and grabs the shotgun of the man and lifts it in the air. The man gasps as a quick reaction but John punches him hard in the face before he can do anything else. He holds the shotgun at the man the other one called Bill and holds the man in his arms.
“Bill! He’s gonna shoot!” the man screams quickly to his friend.
Bill turns suddenly, a small yelp escaping his mouth. He aims the shotgun at John and John holds the gun steady, peering down the sight and Bill’s head is in the sight.
“Don’t shoot!” the man that John holds yells to him. “We’re with you.”
“What are you talking about?” John says quietly and with a hard suspicion audible in his voice. “Marley didn’t send anyone else out for us.”
“It wasn’t Marley. It was Jess. She sent us for you,” Bill pleads, feeling helpless and hoping that John doesn’t pull the trigger. “After your plane went down, we thought you was all goners. But we saw you jumped from the plane and landed in the area. This farm belongs to Chuck, the man that you’re holding, and Jess contacted us to help you out. She said you’d do something like this but we thought she was just kidding. But we listened to her warning and brought shotguns just in case.” Bill chuckles to lighten the mood but John’s stern expressions doesn’t break. “Just in case.”
Enjoying the story so far? Let us know in the comments. Love post apocalyptic fiction as much as we do? Let us know in the comments. Just have a comment to make? Let us know in the comments. As always, thanks again for reading and stick around for more updates to Revolution, as well as other stories that we update pretty much all the time. If you’re loving this story as much as we hope you are, click here for the original novel that inspired this anthology.
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