The guys entered the wagon with all their supplies, and Nolan and Adam tightly gripped the ropes now attached to the front. At last, they pulled away. The makeshift wagon slowly found a good motion, and in a few tiring moments, rolled off. Hopefully moving away from the festered life they so desperately wished to leave behind.
Finally, after so long, the once vibrant vacation house– meant for weeklong visits– was completely empty. Save for the rest of their old cars, rusted and rotten, furnishing they had left behind, some molded family photos, most of the CDs, and two graves, with crosses stuck deep into the ground. Carved into the crosses read: “Zack - 428 Days,” and “Emily & Lily - 179 Days.”
“I can’t believe we just left… I mean just like that,” Chris muttered, truly in a state of disbelief. “It feels surreal…”
“Who knows what we might find out here. Things might not be as bad as we think,” Jeremy offered supportingly.
“I doubt it,” Derrick rebutted coldly. “We would’ve heard something from somebody by now if that were true.” Chris and Jeremy deflated a little. Derrick noticed, feeling a hint of remorse. Not enough to make up for it, however.
“Derrick, come here,” Luke ordered. Derrick traversed from the back of the wagon to the front. “You got the compass, right?”
“Yeah, right here,” he answered, pulling it out of his pant pocket.
“Alright, good. So we want to head south of here for now, I figure that’s the best chance we’ve got to get on a straight path,” Luke explained. “So… which direction is that? Because we’ve basically been moving aimlessly up until now.”
“What!? This still counts as my pulling time you know!” Adam shouted back, bitter over his situation.
Derrick looked at the compass and played with it a bit. “Guys, turn a little to the right.”
Nolan and Adam shifted their position a little, adjusting their direction.
“A little more.”
They moved more.
“Little more.”
They continued shifting.
“Alright stop. That should be good,” he decided, putting the compass away. Adam just grimaced, reaping no joy out of his current ordeal whatsoever. Nolan remained silent, with an impatient grimace stuck on his face.
They continued to silently travel down a makeshift path for a good while, more than a half an hour, to be sure. It was gruesome. Whenever they got to a hill or roadblock, the others had to get out and help push the wagon, or move the logs, rocks, and vines out of the way, but otherwise, the entirety of their travel thus far was spent in overall, individual silences, everyone spending their own time looking outward at the landscape set out before them.
On the one hand, it was rather breathtaking, being untouched and free to grow without the discretion of most other living things; man especially. All the same though, the untended and dying areas they passed were also rather disheartening to look at. And there were many of them. It was just more of the same thing they sought to escape. What was worse, Luke could tell it was also getting increasingly boring for the others to look at, and fast.
“Jesus this is boring!” Jeremy eventually burst out, shattering the silence. Even his writing couldn’t keep him satiated.
“Yeah, then why don’t you do something about it?” Nolan scoffed from the front.
“I hear pulling wagons is a lot of fun,” Adam spat sarcastically, and still rather bitterly.
Jeremy went quiet for a minute, trying to think of something to do. He couldn’t. “Luke this is so boring!” he repeated, tossing his notebook to the ground. Nolan shot him another annoyed glance.
“Yeah Luke, why don’t you do something to make this a little more enjoyable?” Chris suggested, pining for anything to do. “I need to get my mind off these gross-ass seats.”
“I’ve got an idea, why don’t you two swap places with us and push this shitty makeshift wagon!” Adam yelled again, still persistently unhappy with them all.
“No, your time’s not done yet,” Luke said. Adam growled in discontent. “Okay, well… Why don’t we sing something?” Luke suggested. “That always put us in a better mood, right?”
“Like what, Drake?” Cody asked, somewhat hopeful.
“No, not like Drake. Never like Drake,” Luke shot down. “Here, my guitar should be packed here somewhere…” he muttered, moving about the wagon. Eventually, he found it, and pulled it back toward the front, adjusting some of the strings as best he could. He then carefully strummed the chords to a song, and gently sang along.
As he did, the some of the others hesitantly jumped in and sang with him. By the time they were only about half way through the song, all of them were singing, even if only to themselves. They rolled off, all having been put into a much better mood as they sang, and making Luke all the more comforted in his decision to lead them off on this journey.
After all, who knew how long that would last? They hardly ever had time to be happy anymore, not in the past few months anyway. Not like the first few were easy, but after about half a year… that’s when everything really headed downhill for their group; they were never the same, really. Luke understood it, arguably better than any of them, but still, he needed things to be different. He just wasn’t sure how to do it.
By the time night reared its head, the group had already ceased their travels, and all sat around a makeshift camp in a clearing somewhere in the woods, made only to last the night. There were a handful of pockets of land nearby without any trees, by maybe a 40 foot diameter each; Derrick spotted one to rest in, Luke agreed, and there they were.
The wagon was off to the side, and a blanket was tarped from the right side of it to the ground, making a small tent-like structure for at least two of them to sleep under. Derrick had just managed to start a fire, and the others all sat around on old stumps and stones, staring deeply into the warmth of the light it provided. Well, Jeremy stared into his notebook, but the others all stared at the fire. Luke knew he was still paying attention, at least somewhat.
“It was like a weird… bird, worm thing,” Chris finished explaining.
“That kills people?” Luke said.
“Close to it, but not totally,” Jeremy replied, still paying most of his attention to his notebook. “I heard a heartbeat, but it was like… super slow.”
“But again, the guy was bleeding out from something else anyway, so he was probably gonna die soon regardless,” Chris reiterated.
“So that’s two new things we didn’t know about, right? Two new uh, what do you call it… species?” Cody clarified.
The guys all nodded solemnly, and then pondered on that thought. It was a scary one, to be sure, especially when they sat out in the middle of the woods at night, but Luke was pretty sure they could handle it. He could, anyway, and that was enough to hold the others up, if he needed to.
“So I’ve got a question,” Adam asked. “Why don’t we just follow the roads? That’d be a lot easier to navigate with than this.”
“You’re asking this now? We’ve been traveling for like a day already!” Chris asked, baffled.
“Are you serious? There could be people out there!” Derrick argued, ignoring Chris’s comment altogether.
“Exactly, why should we run away from that?” Adam said.
“You know why,” Jeremy said, looking up. “You know what people are like now.” He spoke with a somberness in his tone. “You saw what was happening on the tv, same as us.”
“Yeah, things aren’t the same Adam, you know that just as well as we all do. The roads are too dangerous. This is fine,” Chris pressed, supporting Jeremy’s point.
“Exactly though. We all have the same amount of experience with people since the storm,” Adam countered. “We didn’t even try to go to supermarkets out of pure fear, but what if people rallied together? We’d need to find them if that were true, right?”
“That’s too risky a line to walk, Adam,” Luke shut down. “We need to play it safe; that doesn’t mean you�
�re not right, but until we can find out more– safely– we have to be careful.”
“I’d… I guess so…” Adam agreed, frowning. He sounded as though he had more of a fight to put up, but realized there was no point in it. That was a first, though honestly, Luke was glad to see it.
Nolan shifted around uncomfortably, and gazed up into the sky. Luke noticed, and glanced up as well. The stars were out; it almost looked like all of them were. The clouds were totally absent. Nolan looked back down, and grimaced.
He stood up swiftly, walking over to the tent, sniffling and wiping his nose all the while. The others watched him leave, and then looked back down at the fire. Save for Derrick, who was still glancing back and forth at him.
“God, you know I hate to say it, but Zack had a point,” Derrick brought up. “It’s getting really annoying having to deal with him every night.”
“No kidding. It’s not like we don’t know what it’s like too,” Jeremy agreed, staring back at Nolan as he laid down in the tent, and turned on his side. “I mean, we all know he just went to cry a little more than his usual nightly-routine the last couple days at the house. I mean hell that’s probably why he never did the dishes.”
The others all made sounds of irritated agreement, except for Luke, who just gazed over at Nolan and frowned, sighing to himself. He turned to the others, shaking his head in disagreement.
“Yeah, but still, we all deal with things differently. He’s just coping with it, all of it, and it’s taking him longer than the rest of us. There’s nothing wrong with that. You know damn well he has a lot to be sad about,” Luke scolded, though he tried to do so lightly. The others paused for a moment, taking in what he said.
Luke had known Nolan longer than any of the others, and even back home, he’d always been defensive of him. On occasion, when the old, unemotional Nolan would feel kind enough, he’d even stick up for Luke. The point being, it came as no surprise to the group that Luke was trying to support him. Still, it wasn’t well-founded enough to really touch them.
“Sure, but he doesn’t have to be such a bitch about it,” Derrick said, chuckling. The others all chuckled along with him. Luke just stared down into the fire, upset, but having nothing to say in return. It was aggravating, but what else could he do without causing further friction?
Eventually, when their recap of the past couple days’ events died down, the rest of the group all went off to sleep, now deep into the cold night around them. Chris, Derrick, Jeremy, and Luke slept in the wagon; Jeremy and Chris in the back, Derrick and Luke in the front. Cody and Nolan slept under the makeshift tent, and Adam slept over by the fire with a blanket and pillow. They only had a few, so Luke went without a pillow, and Jeremy gave up his blanket to soothe a whining Adam’s needs.
Luke had just begun to fall asleep after a good hour and a half of trying, when he felt something poking his arm. Immediately, he flashed open his eyes, and saw Nolan standing in front of him. He couldn’t make out exactly what he looked like because of the darkness, and the fact that he was at this point only half awake. It would have been nearly impossible to see the rosy, puffy exterior of Nolan’s eyes, and the redness of his running nose, but the noises he made were enough for Luke to know.
“Luke?” Nolan whispered, his voice quivering with every letter uttered.
“Huh…? What?” Luke asked back groggily, tiredly weaving his hand from his heavy eyes down against his chin.
“Do…Do you think we could talk for a minute?” Nolan asked, looking down and fiddling with his hands. It had been quite a while, since he’d asked anyone, let alone Luke, to talk about something. That struck Luke as unusual, to say the least.
“What? No, not right now Nolan. Today’s been a really long day, I wanna sleep. I… maybe tomorrow, buddy,” Luke said.
“Oh… Yeah okay, uh… sorry…” Nolan excused, disappointed, turning away.
Luke closed his eyes, and tried to fall back asleep, until he felt his arm being poked again. He clenched his eyes shut harder, and tensed his body more, hoping for Nolan to just go away. But when his arm was further tugged at, he lashed his eyes open, making a small, angered jump toward Nolan.
“What!?” Luke shouted in a whisper. “What do you want Nolan!? I don’t want to cry with you right now, okay!? I’m sorry, but I just want to sleep!”
Nolan, taken aback, recoiled. Partly in fear from Luke’s outburst, and partly because of the ferocity in his tone. Everyone was on edge, and everyone knew that. But even still, Nolan hadn’t expected it from Luke. Since his earliest memories of childhood, and more so as they got older, rarely did Luke ever yell at him, or vice versa. Plus, Luke was the one so intent on leaving, and Nolan knew better than anyone he yearned for everyone’s old days of behavior.
Nolan teared up a little, making an angered face, and tossed Luke’s pistol onto his lap, then turning and storming away angrily.
Luke gazed down at the gun in his lap, realizing then that it must have slipped out of his pants and onto the ground.
“Shit…” Luke muttered to himself, slamming the back of his head into the side of the wagon. He looked outward for Nolan, but couldn’t see him anywhere. He must’ve gone off behind the other side of the wagon.
Luke knew he had let his temper get the better of him, and he wasn’t proud. Just like everyone else, he had his limits, and granted they were much smaller now than back in the day, but still, Luke hated getting angry. He especially hated getting angry at his friends.
There was little he felt he could do about it now, though, so reluctantly, Luke closed his eyes and fell back asleep. At least he tried to; his mind played restless games with him now.
“What do I do, Em?” Luke asked quietly, looking out at the sky. The wind blew softly against his face, whistling lightly through the trees. Luke closed his eyes again. “Yeah, I know… god damn it…” He sighed, now crawling out of the wagon hesitantly. “Can’t have one god damn night’s rest…”
As Luke left, Derrick slid one eye open, watching as he exited the safety of the wagon, and wandered out into the unknown darkness beyond it. He confusedly wondered why Luke was even bothering with Nolan for only a moment, before himself slowly slipping back to sleep.
Luke moved over to the tent, but saw only Cody lying asleep, making Luke all the more nervous and remorseful that Nolan had walked off somewhere dangerous.
Not that he couldn’t handle himself; Luke knew that, before, in most situations Nolan could hold his own if he was backed up against a wall. It was just that nowadays, you might not be given the time to back into the wall. You might just get slammed into it instead.
Plus, Nolan wasn’t Nolan lately. He hadn't been for awhile, honestly. He had been more emotionally articulate than Luke had ever seen, and more than any of the others were honestly comfortable with. He was falling apart far too often, and Luke understood it, but still, he didn’t condone it.
Not too far from the camp, luckily, just as Luke’s mind was rapidly leading to worse and worse thoughts about what could be happening, he saw Nolan sitting on a hill.
He was sat in another clearing of trees in the woods, just gazing up at the sky; his knees curled up against his chest, and he held them tightly, arms crossed. Clearly, by the way his body was pulsing up and down so rapidly, silhouetted in the pale moonlight, Nolan was crying again. Seeing that always made Luke feel bad, but even worse now, when it was him that had so directly caused it.
Luke walked over to Nolan, and as he got close, Nolan looked back at him, then making a disgruntled face and gazing back up at the night, ignoring Luke’s presence. Luke didn’t mind though, he just sat down next to Nolan, his legs stretched outward before him, and his arms stretched out behind, he too looking up at the sky.
“The stars look really nice tonight, huh?” Luke noted, genuinely admiring the amount of stars out. Nolan still said nothing. “They’re beautiful,” he replied to himself.
Nothing.
“You know,” Luke continued, “A few
years back– really only about two or three now– I used to walk around the neighborhood at night and just, think,” he recalled.
Nolan glanced at Luke who was at this point just looking up, but still said nothing.
“And whenever I did, it’d always be about something bad; some problem I was having– big or small, real or not, bad or worse– but I’d always end up losing my train of thought looking up at the stars.”
Nolan looked back up at the transcendent view of sky himself.
“Sometimes there’d only be a few, sometimes there wouldn’t be any. And sometimes, on the good nights, there’d be tons of them. It seemed like hundreds, thousands; even though it was probably only like fifty at most. They just shone so much, and so bright, so beautifully. I’d just look up at them and start thinking: ‘There’s so much out there, so much going on at this very moment. And yet here I am, standing around wanting to cry my eyes out– sometimes actually doing it– over something that to me seemed huge.’ And even if it was, even to other people, up there, it didn’t matter; it was like a speck of a speck of a speck’s problem. And even though it wouldn’t solve anything, knowing that there was something out there that just, didn’t care, and didn’t even know to begin with? It made me feel a little better. Knowing that whatever was out there didn’t judge me, didn’t even know me. It was sort of comforting.”
Nolan looked back down at Luke as he paused, and then, smiling, Luke looked down at Nolan too.
“And after I returned from my escapade through space, and the great unknown,” he chuckled, Nolan chuckling a little with him, Luke then staring down at the ground, “I’d come back and know that there were also people that I could always go to that did care, and that did judge me, but still liked me for me. And I’d go to them for help, and to try to solve my problems, or at least have the comfort in knowing that someone was there, understanding and feeling for me. That someone was in my corner to back me up when I needed them to.” Luke gazed back at Nolan, now with a disappointed look struck upon his face. “And I wasn’t in your corner, Nolan. I haven’t been recently anyways. Everyone’s been really tense lately– me and you included– and I guess I was just, I don’t know, tired… and after all, I guess we kind of are still just kids…” Luke sighed. “But that’s no excuse. And I’m sorry Nolan. For snapping at you earlier, and for not being there for you before, even just to defend you when the guys get pissy. That was wrong of me, but I’m here now, if you want. So, if you’re not too mad at me… what do you wanna talk about?” he finished, trying to again warmly smile. To make Nolan know he really had meant it.
The Way Back (Book 1): The Way Back Page 4
