The Way Back (Book 1): The Way Back

by Giancioppo, Danny

  Nolan glanced down at the ground, and then smiled, looking back up at Luke.

  Day 430

  “The Body”

  Later the next morning, Derrick woke up, and noticed that Luke still wasn’t back in the wagon. He made his own way out, and saw that Nolan was still gone as well.

  “Shit, what happened now?” he muttered, somewhat nervous, and a lot annoyed. He ran to the others and woke them all up. “Guys where are Luke and Nolan?” he asked.

  “What?” Jeremy grunted, rubbing his eyes, instinctively grabbing for his notebook. “How should we know?”

  “I don’t know, but they’re gone, guys! They’re gone!” Derrick shouted.

  “Shit… alright let’s look around. I’m sure they’re fine…” Adam decided, grabbing a bat and putting on his hat, walking away. He looked around the wagon and saw that they weren’t anywhere around. “God damn…” he muttered under his breath, moving off with Cody to search further.

  Cody was nervous, sure, but he was trying to remain confident that Luke and Nolan would be fine. After all, it was Luke, right? He was smart. He knew how to be careful. And Nolan was way too big of a baby to just run off into the woods and die, right? And if something did take them– one of them or both of them– he’d surely have had to notice, right? He’d have had to have.

  Jeremy and Chris paced nervously throughout the woods, with another bat and a medium-sized swiss army knife on hand. Jeremy’s notebook tucked into his pants.

  “Guys! Come on, cut the shit!” Jeremy yelled out.

  “Luke! Nolan! Where are you guys!?” Chris shouted. His pale complexion growing clammy at the very thought of the possibilities. The kinds of things that could have found them, taken them, infected them. Chris was prone to rampant and unreasonable thinking when he got nervous, Cody knew that well enough; he often could get the same.

  “God damn it, where the hell did they go?” Jeremy asked.

  “I don’t know, but… you don’t think…?” Chris thought nervously.

  “No, they’re fine… I’m sure they’re fine…” Jeremy trailed off, spotting a pair of feet lying on the ground. “Oh shit, look! Shit, shit, shit! Guys! Over here! They’re over here!” Jeremy yelled, sprinting over to them.

  “Are they dead?” Chris asked, catching up to Jeremy. He looked down, and saw both Nolan and Luke lying on the ground, unconscious.

  “I…I don’t know! Could be unconscious!” Jeremy answered, flustered. “I think they’re breathing… I’m not sure!”

  “Well we still don’t know exactly what all those things can do! We don’t even totally know what’s out here! That could still mean that they’re–!” Chris started to say, panicked.

  “I know what it could mean! Jesus!” Jeremy cut Chris off, looking them both over for any kind of marks or other injuries.

  The others all caught up, and looked down at Luke and Nolan worriedly. Cody’s nervous thoughts then catching up to him, much like Chris’s did.

  “Oh no…” Cody muttered quietly. He couldn’t help but let it slip out, but he had hoped none of the others had heard him. He felt he needed to remain at least moderately positive throughout, since everything and everyone else always took the negative way of doing things. Recently anyway.

  Adam stood still for a moment, trying desperately to find a firm grasp on the situation. He took his hat off, and knelt down on his knees, putting his head on Luke’s chest, and seemingly blankly staring off into space.

  “Adam, what uh… what are you doing?” Cody asked, confused.

  “I’m checking for a heart rate, now shut up!” Adam barked back. He kept his head there, and in that moment, Luke fluttered his eyes open. Hazily, he glanced down at Adam, and then did a double take, screaming and shoving him off.

  Cody shot his glance up as he did. Luke scared a cluster of birds into leaving the trees surrounding the circle, soaring off into the sky. Seeing them– really most old creatures– was a rare sight to behold. Especially so many at once. He only had but a second to marvel at it though. Jeremy took note of it too, once more jotting something down in his notebook.

  “Jesus Christ! The hell are you doing man…!? Don’t do that! Scared the shit out of me…!” Luke shouted.

  “You were scared shitless!? We thought you were dead! Or worse!” Jeremy yelled back. Luke squinted his eyes, and extended his hands out in confusion.

  “Why?” he asked, running a hand down his head all the while to feel for anything odd; he felt no such thing. “We look fine!”

  Nolan stirred awake himself, surely due to all the commotion. He sat up, looking around at everyone’s both puzzled and worried expressions.

  “What’s with all the noise…?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “We saw you guys laying there, not moving. We thought you were dead,” Derrick explained.

  “Or worse,” Jeremy reiterated. Derrick nodded. Nolan just stood up and stretched, yawning as he did.

  “Really? Kind of an overreaction, don’t you think?” He scoffed, then walking back to the campsite. Cody and the others stared at him as he walked away, and turned back to one another, glaring silently, and totally bewildered. Luke just grinned.

  “Well well well, how the tables have turned…” he commented, getting up to leave the scene as well. Adam however grabbed Luke by the neck of his shirt, and pulled him backward. “Hey!” Luke yelled in protest. “Don’t do that, man; this is one of the only good shirts I’ve got left.”

  “You need to talk. What were you two doing out here?” he asked. The others all looked to Luke as well, curious. Luke shrugged.

  “He was having a rough night, I decided to be a good friend; we talked for like, I don’t know, an hour and a half or so, and then just kinda fell asleep.”

  “Why would you do that? He’s so annoying about that stuff,” Derrick said, scoffing as he did.

  “Yeah, I mean he’s a man child for God’s sake,” Chris added.

  “A major bitch,” Jeremy said.

  “A real kick in the funbox,” Cody finished. Everyone looked at him skeptically. “Not like that! You know what I meant, god damn it…”

  “Guys, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” Luke pointed out. “Look at us! We never used to treat each other like this! A few jabs here and there? The effervescing feeling of an incoming shit-on-each-other-fest? Sure! But we were still nice to each other; we were friends! I haven’t been a saint myself, but we can’t let this world drag us down with it, literally or figuratively.” He stared at them all, and tried to gauge their expressions. They were listening, at least. “We need to be nicer to each other, or how else are we gonna live with together?”

  The others all looked around, pondering what Luke said, and suddenly becoming somewhat embarrassed by how they’d all been acting. Now seriously taking it into account for the first time in quite a long time. Nobody knew what to say. Cody certainly didn’t, anyhow. He was kind of ashamed, both for not doing anything about it, and not having noticed in the first place.

  Cody also supposed this was more of old Luke coming out. He had been “gone” as it were for quite a while now, but clearly something was different, for whatever reason. Maybe something to do with the girls. Well, with Emily at least. Cody didn’t really think that he personally was acting any different than ever before– not until now, really– but maybe Luke had a point. Maybe even he was being less friendly, if nothing else. Maybe he needed to change too.

  “Well you guys think on that while we keep moving. Staying in one spot for too long is dangerous, and we’ve been here far too long. We gotta head out,” Luke said, heading back to the campsite, the others soon following behind him.

  Much to Adam and Nolan’s relief, Luke and Derrick took over the pulling duties of the wagon, and the others all got to relax, side for further hills and obstacles which required them all to get out and push and clear. They travelled in silence for what seemed like hours, though this time due to a heavier uncertainty on how to interact with
one another without creating another unneeded argument. Luke noticed this awkwardness, and attempted to do address it.

  “Guys, I know I said be nice to each other, but is it really this hard to do? You really think silence is a better option than talking to each other?” he questioned. They all squirmed awkwardly. Cody sat up a little.

  “Hey, you guys see all that… wood?” He tried. “It’s really uh, really… brown.” Nobody reacted. “Oh come on Luke! What are we supposed to talk about!?” He protested, upset. Again, he was upset at himself immediately after for breaking the positivity, but he supposed in noticing it happened at all, that caused it to happen more often. Maybe he was just in a bad mood though. Maybe it was just harder than he thought it would be to change.

  “I don’t know, talk about what we used to talk about! We were never like this back in the day,” Luke replied.

  “Yeah, but back in the day we had things like technology, and other people to talk to, god damn it!” Derrick shouted. “Everyone here’s just boring! Nothing new has happened in what, months? That we don’t already know of.”

  “Well, I could go over my notebook; this one anyway,” Jeremy offered. “It goes back to like May, I think.”

  “Yeah, sounds really damn interesting, Jer,” Adam replied. “I’d love to hear about how much wood we chopped, dishes we dropped water on, and the three cars we saw in an exhilaratingly stale four month period.”

  “Just say no next time, dude,” Chris defended a now visibly frustrated Jeremy, who was flipping Adam off with as much ire as he could muster.

  “Alright, well…” Luke trailed off, thinking of something to talk about. “How about this? Hypothetical question: You get the ability to either fly, but you lose your legs, or move things with your mind, but you lose your arms. Which do you take?”

  “Well flying, obviously,” Derrick said, almost immediately.

  “What?” Nolan asked, shocked at Derrick’s decision.

  “Yeah!” Derrick continued. “You can float all the time, and move much faster if you’re flying than if you walked.”

  “Yeah, but you’d have to focus on floating the whole time! Otherwise you’d just fall onto the ground!” Nolan retorted.

  “Plus you’d always be looking up at people if you did,” Jeremy added, closing his notebook and putting it down. “That, or not pay attention to what anyone’s saying because you’re too focused on not falling.”

  “What!?” Derrick said, flabbergasted. His voice seemingly raising an octave, as it always did in the past, whenever he got excited. “It’d be like, muscle-memory or something! You wouldn’t need to focus on it! You would have to focus every time you use your mind powers. It’d suck!”

  “Bullshit!” Jeremy shouted.

  “Nah, Der’s right. And anyways, you couldn’t do things like arm wrestle, or shake hands, or high five,” Chris defended, backing up Derrick. “Actually, that doesn’t sound too bad…” he thought to himself. “Eh, still though, you couldn’t hug people or anything either.”

  “And you couldn’t jerk off,” Adam said. The conversation, as well as the wagon, suddenly came to an abrupt halt. Everyone looked toward Adam, and he quickly darted his gaze around at all of them. “Was…Was that out loud?” The others all just groaned and looked away, shaking their heads.

  “Right…” Cody moved on, smirking a bit. “Well, here’s the thing… the telekinesis would be awesome! You could like, control what people do and stuff!”

  “Ah! Mind control was never specified!” Derrick quickly interrupted.

  “Luke?” Cody asked.

  “Hmm… I’d have to say no on the mind control,” Luke decided.

  “Huh. Well still,” Cody continued, “you could like, throw things around with your mind! And if you work it out, like a muscle, you could grab bigger things! It’d be awesome! Who needs arms then?”

  The guys all continued to argue, but Luke couldn’t help but smile as he pulled along the wagon. He could almost feel that old feeling he used to get when they were all together, back when things were normal. That feeling of chemistry, and a joyful energy. It was something that he never really had with other people, and so far as he knew, neither did they. When the seven of them were together though, it was almost a palpable sense of fraternity, with back-and-forth conversation that almost seemed scripted, it was so entertaining.

  They probably hadn’t been this happy since before the girls… Cody assumed Luke hadn’t been at least. At least, not really.

  Cody knew Luke had never considered himself the best at mending wounds, or even the leader of the group for that matter, but he’d still always tried to keep things light for everyone back in the day. Keep them together. Right now, he was just doing his best to keep them on an upward slope again. And sure, this wasn’t much, but it was a start. And a good one, too. Cody thought so anyway. Luke just smiled on, lost in his thoughts and the white noise of his friends arguing, for the first time in a while, playfully.

  “Luke? Luke!” Nolan shouted, Luke quickly realizing that they were now trying to talk to him. He turned back with a smile and looked at them all.

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  “We’re at a split, three to three, we need your opinion,” Nolan said. “Haven’t you been listening?” Luke chuckled a little.

  “No, sorry I was…” he stopped himself. “Um, I think I’d have to go with no arms on this one.” Nolan, Jeremy, and Cody cheered, while Derrick, Chris, and Adam all shouted in disagreement.

  “You’re out of your mind, dude,” Adam said, shaking his head. “Idiot…”

  “Absolute lunacy…” Chris muttered.

  “See, this is why you’re my favorite, man!” Jeremy grinned happily. “Luke-my-boy!” Luke couldn’t help but smile even wider. Derrick glanced over at him and noticed, making him look down and crack half a smile himself. He then looked back outward to the direction they were pulling.

  “So,” he asked, “what else?” The others all looked back to Luke, who was gazing at Derrick with a small smirk. Cody could tell that Luke could tell that Derrick had picked up on it– at least, what Cody assumed “it” was– and he couldn’t have seemed happier to continue.

  “Alright, alright, settle down,” Luke said, looking back out himself. “Okay… you can have sonar vision, but you lose your eyes.”

  “Like, actually gone?” Cody clarified.

  “Like, out of your head, nothing but empty sockets gone,” Luke answered. The guys all gasped a little. “Or, you get super speed, but the top half of your body, head excluded, becomes permanently paralyzed.”

  “Oh, easy!” Jeremy exclaimed.

  They continued to carelessly debate as the wagon pulled onward. Their constant laughter and shouting-matches reaching far into the once empty forest they traveled through. Now, with every word, it seemed to fill and liven around the group, and each of them managed to feel just a bit more reconnected with the next word than the last.

  Before they knew it, the evening had rolled over the day, and the men had to find another small area to claim as their own for the night. Derrick was setting up the camp again, this time with the help of Jeremy and Chris, while Adam sat on his own gazing out, with Nolan sitting absentmindedly nearby. Luke decided to take a walk around the perimeter, and Cody insisted on joining him.

  They were a good several hundred yards out from the group, and were just beginning to make a path around. Luke had his gun at his side, and Cody fiddled with the medium-sized swiss army knife, though his hands worked almost totally apart from his focus.

  “So, been a while since it’s just been you and I, huh?” Cody recalled. Luke nodded, and made a sound of agreement. “I mean really, even before all this, when was the last time you and I went for a drive? Or just went out to get food?”

  “Long time, I guess,” Luke said, then feeling rather poorly about it. “I…I do wish we could’ve more, before…” he trailed off.

  “Yeah, me too,” Cody finished his thought. “But hey, t
hings were complicated, you know? After Jeremy and Nolan’s whole thing, we all needed our distance for a while.”

  “Maybe. I still think we all kinda handled that like idiots though,” Luke replied. Cody chuckled.

  “Oh definitely,” he agreed. “Can you imagine how stupid the girls all thought we must have been for actually picking sides?” he laughed, though Luke just let out a small smile. Cody drew back a bit then, realizing it was still too soon for Luke.

  He always knew how to read Luke pretty well, after all. Other than Nolan, Cody liked to think he knew Luke best. They just always sort of clicked.

  “You ever wonder that?” Cody questioned. Luke looked at him confusedly.

  “Wonder what?” Luke tried to clarify, Cody only then realizing he was thinking, rather than speaking.

  “Oh, like, do you ever wonder why it was that you and I just sort of clicked?” he said. “Like, what it was that just kinda drew us together? More than the others? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know you’re good friends with them all, in their own ways. It’s just that, what do you call it… you and I always just kinda…kinda…”

  “Clicked,” Luke repeated. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” They walked onward, as Luke tried his best to find reason. “I think it’s maybe because you and I had the same problems, you know? We both struggled with anxiety and A.D.D. We just knew how and why we worked like that.”

  “I guess so, yeah,” Cody replied.

  “We get each other, and we tend to think and feel the same way. Even with Nolan– especially before– he acts and thinks differently than I do,” Luke continued. “I’m not saying we’re carbon-copies, but I feel like you and I never really had to wonder why the other would do the things we’d do; most of the time, were the roles reversed, I feel like the other would do the same thing, you know? Albeit with some deviations.”