The Way Back (Book 1): The Way Back

by Giancioppo, Danny

  “Neither of you can win this, dude, he’s a soldier!” Jeremy warned.

  “Luke, please, we can think of something else, you don’t have to risk this!” Chris pleaded, petrified.

  “Luke?” Nolan asked, “Please tell me you’ve got something up your sleeve.”

  “Well, no, I don’t…” Luke admitted, looking at the others with a forced smile. “But look, it’ll be alright, alright? As soon as it goes down, just… get ready to run,” Luke commanded. “Come here guys,” he said, all of them coming together in a group hug. Luke wrapped his arms mostly around Adam, and the others circled around them. He extended an arm out to some of the others. They stayed like that for a minute or two, and then, not surprisingly to Chris, Adam punched Luke in the stomach, and threw him to the ground.

  “Dude, what the hell!?” Jeremy shouted, shoving Adam on the shoulder. Nolan and Cody ran over to aid Luke, and Chris just eyed him carefully. He seemed okay, but Chris was far more nervous concerning what was coming next.

  “Luke’s done enough. I’m not letting him get killed because he’s too cocky to see a challenge he can’t overcome. I’ve got this,” Adam explained,

  “Adam, don’t,” Chris said. “You cannot do this.” Adam glanced over at him.

  “Thanks, Chris,” he replied disappointedly, then shoving past the others, and heading back toward the Stranger. “Alright, change in roster. It’s you and I now.”

  The Stranger just nodded his head, and moved in a bit closer to Adam.

  “Fine with me. I’m not overly concerned over a shootout with a child, no matter which child it is,” he scoffed. Adam just faked a smile.

  The song was just repeating, over and over again. For some reason, Chris couldn’t help but notice. It was becoming increasingly unsettling to him, despite the soothing and upbeat voice of Dean Martin crooning down the road. He couldn’t stand to listen to it without feeling his whole body tense up.

  “That was cute, all the hugging,” the Stranger commented. “And punching.” Adam just continued his very false grin, and turned around, going back-to-back with the Stranger.

  “Alright, count it off,” Adam said, taking in a deep breath.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” the Stranger accepted, grinning wildly. He took a step forward. “One.” He paused, and then took another step. “Two.” He paused again, and took a confident step further. “Thre–!” he stopped, unable to finish his sentence.

  As he had figured out far too late, Adam was right behind him, a knife in his throat. Adam tugged at it, turned it, and then slowly pulled it out.

  The Stranger fell to his knees, in complete shock and awe at what was happening before him, and fell on his back, gazing up at Adam in horror. He dropped his rifle from his hands, and Adam kicked it off to the side of the road. Chris and the others all stared at him in shock and awe. Even Luke looked fairly surprised as he stood back up.

  Adam just glared down at the Stranger, almost no expression shown on his face. He looked at some of the blood now staining his hands. It made Chris queasy just seeing it all pour out of the guy, let alone having to see it stuck on his friend’s hands. Adam knelt down, and twirled the knife around in his hand, staring at it.

  “I think you took us all by surprise with the whole gun-spotting thing, but I happened to notice you failed to see the knives any of us– especially myself– were holding; less protruding from our sides, I guess. Still, I gotta say, I expected more from a crazy war vet,” Adam said, the Stranger still looking in disbelief, unable to make any sounds other than the pained gurgling of his own blood.

  Adam stood, and glanced at the others briefly. They were utterly blown away; Luke shook his head, but stared at Adam proudly. Adam smirked, and then looked back down at the Stranger, the expression quickly fading away, and morphing to a much darker one.

  “You shot at my friends,” Adam grimaced. “I’ve been threatened, pushed, punched– hell I’ve even had a gun or two pointed at me. It’s not the same. You get it.” He gazed down at him, directly into his eyes. The confusion and fear was written plain on his face. “Oh don’t look so surprised; don’t you know the law of the land? You do not threaten my people.”

  Adam raised his foot, and for that brief moment, Chris could see the fear in the Stranger’s eyes; but most horrifyingly, he also saw the hungry satisfaction. The once insatiable lust finally answered. They were right, he wanted to die.

  Suffice to say, Chris would never listen to that song the same way again, and if he was lucky, he would never have to.

  Day 501

  “The Town”

  It was raining, and it was cold. It was so damn cold. And the worst part was, it was only going to get colder. Hell, it wasn’t even Winter yet! And they only had so many coats anyways; really, whose idea was it to just keep walking? They could’ve found bikes, more gas, scooters, something. But no, instead they just walked, and somehow, in like a month, they’d only made it about two states across. And now it was starting to rain. Derrick just didn’t get it. He was trying his best to stay positive, but it was not easy.

  Not to mention, they had been running lower on food supplies for a strenuous few days now, and everyone was getting really hungry. Their water was getting lower everyday, and they hadn’t found anything sustainable in days. Without question, this was their longest drought since they left the house, and Derrick hated it.

  Usually they’d have been able to forage, or maybe even hunt smaller animals when times got really tough, but with the oncoming cold weather, and the inevitable and continuous level of noise coming from them, their luck was running thin. Derrick couldn’t stand it, and he imagined the others couldn’t either.

  “Hey guys, hold up,” Luke said, holding up his hand and crouching down. The group followed suit.

  “What? What is it?” Chris asked, peering around cautiously.

  They were in the woods, having strayed a ways from the roads as to provide themselves better cover; after their last few interactions, they didn’t want to take anymore chances, not yet anyway. All the same, the road always stayed relatively in their sight; Derrick himself always made sure of that. A simple pile or so of abandoned cars here and there left a good reminder for how far on or off track they were.

  Luke pointed in front of them, and the others all struggled to look. Derrick couldn’t make out exactly what he was seeing, there was too much brush in the way, but he did notice something; a variance of colors, but what it was he wasn’t certain. Adam noticed, following Derrick’s silent discovery.

  “Oh shit…” he muttered, beginning to blindly move toward it. Whatever it was.

  “No, Adam!” Luke whisper-shouted, trying to grab for him, but by then it was too late. He was making his way forward, in a classic impulsive Adam move.

  “Luke, what is it?” Jeremy asked, as they now hastily followed behind Adam.

  “It looks like–” Luke said.

  “It looks like a town!” Cody exclaimed, raising his voice a bit as he did. The others took notice as well, surprised. Not in seeing a town, they’d seen plenty of those on their travel so far, it was more… the condition of it.

  It was almost pristinely untouched, aside for a few broken windows and cracked-up streets. Derrick hadn’t even imagined anything to this scale was in this good of a condition anymore, let alone some small town out in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana.

  “Wait, why are we so quiet then?” Nolan questioned, though still in a whisper. “If it’s untouched, don’t you think that means there’s nobody here? Couldn’t it just mean they were all–?”

  “Yeah, it could,” Luke interjected, cutting Nolan off, “but it could mean a lot of things, so we need to be ready for anything, and not run out like an idiot!” he finished in another whisper-shout toward Adam, who at this point was already standing tall, and obliviously making his way out into the open. He stood still for a moment or two, and then turned around to the others.

  “Guys, we’re good, come out!” he yelled, mak
ing Derrick and the others jump at the change in volume.

  “Dude! Are you crazy!?” Jeremy shouted back, though also no longer in a whisper. “What if something’s around here!? You looked around for like, all of five seconds!”

  Adam paused again, and did another quick check around him. “Nope, we’re good,” he said very matter of factly, then turning back around, and continuing to ignorantly venture into the town.

  “Asshole…” Jeremy muttered, getting up and following him.

  “Amen,” Chris said, following suit.

  “Same,” Derrick agreed, also following their lead. Luke, Cody, and Nolan just collectively sighed, slowly joining the others afterward.

  “Like, you’d almost think he just forgets what kind of world we’re literally living in?” Nolan said, somewhat baffled, and certainly annoyed by his friend’s reckless antics.

  “Some people can’t be helped,” Cody said, watching as Adam carelessly waltzed down the middle of the road.

  After a brief walkabout, Derrick and the guys found that the town was actually pretty constricted in space, with only one main road lined with small buildings, and a few smaller roads branching off here and there from it. From those roads lead to homes and stores, things like that.

  They were able to scope out nearly all of it in about an hour, which was a fairly good time for them. One of the most significant things Derrick noticed, however, was that the main road, as well as the path around it, was completely gone after the stretch of town. It was just a gigantic, almost mile-wide hole. Like a bomb went off, Derrick imagined. They didn’t look into it, for fear of multiple kinds of threats, but that’s just what Derrick was going to assume.

  Adam, Luke, and Nolan were looking through a small clothes store for anything that the guys could hang onto. They were all relatively the same height, Derrick and Luke the two tallest by a bit, and minus Adam, and perhaps Nolan, they were all the same general body shape; fairly skinny, but still in good shape from all the work they’d been doing back at the house, as well as the walking they’d been doing recently. So grabbing general items wasn’t a very difficult task. At least it wouldn’t be, if they could ever agree on anything.

  “What about this?” Nolan suggested, holding up a denim jacket. “It’s a jacket, we need more jackets.”

  “Nah, I don’t like denim,” Adam rejected, searching through another pile of clothes.

  “Well then you don’t have to wear it,” Nolan said, then turning to Luke. “Luke?”

  “Sure, take it; looks good to me,” he responded after giving it a quick overview. “What about this? It’s leather.” Luke held up a brown leather jacket. The color was faded, and the inside a bit tattered, but generally speaking it was in good condition. It was also a bit larger, so if was going to fit anyone, it was probably going to be Adam. “Adam, you want it?”

  “Sure, I can make it look good,” he said, looking up and smirking. Luke and Nolan just glanced at each other knowingly. “So,” Adam continued, “I’ve uh… got an idea…”

  “Yeah, what?” Luke asked, still searching through clothes, picking out a few items here and there, not really paying much mind to Adam.

  “Well, this is a relatively small town. It looks nice. It’s isolated. What if we just… you know… stay?” Adam finished, looking at them seriously. Luke stopped, and gazed at him, now giving Adam his full attention.

  “I… What?” Nolan said, thrown off. “Why would we do that?”

  “Well who knows what’s out there?” Adam argued, pointing out the door. “We’ve only made it almost halfway, and we’ve already had too many close calls than I think is fair. We don’t even know if anything is back there for us. Why not stay here?”

  “Adam, that’s a big ask you’re making here,” Luke said, he now completely ceasing his task. “I don’t know if everyone would be willing to just stop like that.”

  “Would you?” Adam questioned, looking at him earnestly. Luke was quiet, thinking, and Nolan jumped in.

  “I wouldn’t be,” he said. “We’ve gotta go back; you said it yourself, who knows what’s out there? Maybe everything is fine!” Nolan insisted rather defensively, though he noticed, and tried to bring it down. “Maybe…Maybe not everything will be there, but still, we have to try, right?” he asked. “Isn’t that the whole point of this? To go back?”

  “The point is to get back to who we–” Luke tried to explain.

  “The whole point was to find somewhere better to live, somewhere safe and healthy for us,” Adam interrupted. “We said home because that’s all we knew, but this could be it!” The other two remained silent, and he deflated a little, not wanting to cause an argument at the moment. “Look, just… think about it. This could work, I know it. If not here, then maybe somewhere else. If we can just find the right place to call home, we can make it back, I know it,” he finished. They all looked into one another’s eyes, and Luke gave Adam a small smile, glad that he was willing to compromise and let it go for the time being.

  Derrick had decided to try and go into one of the convenience stores and see what tools he could get, and Jeremy and Chris went with him, the others going off on their own searches for supplies in other buildings and stores.

  “Got a working flashlight, and some batteries,” Jeremy said, holding only two batteries in his hand. Enough to refill it at least once, Derrick imagined.

  “Nice,” he replied, trying to be supportive. Jeremy grinned a little in approval. “Chris, you find anything? Like, hammers, a saw, something?”

  “Uh, no, not really,” Chris reported. “But I did find a few Nutri-Grain bars and some chips, so that’s something. The chips are too old for me, so that’s all you guys, but all in all it’s enough for like a day or two worth of food, if we split it right.”

  “Alright, cool,” Derrick said, looking around himself for something else to salvage.

  Just like the other buildings they had quickly perused, all he could really find were bibles, and like, a lot of them. The people here seemed like they must’ve been really religious, and clearly most passers by were not, considering they didn’t take any.

  “So Der,” Chris said after a moment. “Jeremy and I were talking about this a lot over the past… however long it’s been…”

  “501 days,” Jeremy said, tapping the notebook in his pants as proof.

  “Yeah,” Chris waved off. “How do you think it started? All this? I mean, what’s out there that we don’t know about, do you think?”

  Derrick paused his scavenging. He never really considered thinking about that. He knew it sounded foolish, but he was so determined on just surviving for so long that after a while he never really bothered to understand why.

  “Well,” he offered, some hesitation in his voice, “we were up at the house, right? We tried calling our parents after that massive storm, and the cable was out. Then there were the broadcasts, and all we saw was some shots on the Goliaths, people turning on each other, and random theories on those Ships and stuff. Then the power was gone, and then there was… well I don’t really know what there was, but there was a lot of us hiding in the basement; like a damn week’s worth of hiding before anyone even spoke a word. Then, we come up, and everything’s gone to literal shit. So… I don’t know, but I mean, we’ve kinda seen what’s happened, you know? Everyone’s just… gone.”

  “Yeah but, how many, you know?” Jeremy added curiously, walking a bit closer. “Is it just the U.S.? Just the eastern half? The world? The universe? How much? How many people are gone? And where the hell did they go?”

  “Well, you know where they all went,” Chris corrected. “They’re dead.”

  “Are they though?” Jeremy said. “We hardly ever see any bodies, right? What if they’re just like, I don’t know, taken? Or what if– what if they all went somewhere? Some hidden humanity bunker we were never told about?” Derrick and Chris paused, contemplating it.

  “Dude that doesn’t make any sense,” Chris finally decided. “We h
ave no evidence of that.”

  “Well newsflash dude, we don’t have evidence of anything!” Jeremy said, a bit bitterly. “Like Derry said, we sat in the god damn basement of a house in the middle of god damn nowhere for a god damn week, when we could’ve found out.”

  “Yeah, or died,” Derrick said.

  “Maybe, but we don’t know that,” Jeremy insisted. “Look, I’m not saying we made the wrong move, I’m just saying, if we did something different back then, maybe we’d know more. Maybe.”

  “Well, let me say this,” Chris said, “I’ll agree with you that maybe things could’ve been done differently at the beginning, hell even the early-middle. I mean, I know we don’t talk about it much, but maybe then, you know, the girls–”

  “Easy man,” Jeremy interrupted, halting Chris temporarily.

  “I know, I know; you know I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just saying, you know? Maybe things could’ve been… handled better.”

  All of them slipped out of their conversation, lost in their memories. There was good reason nobody brought them up much, but Luke and Nolan were busy looking for supplies in another building anyway. Still though, Derrick found it hard to think about himself, as did Chris and Jeremy, clearly.

  “Holy shit!” they heard burst from outside. They looked at each other, panicked, and bolted out of the building, dropping their newfound supplies at their feet.

  “What!? What is it!?” Derrick shouted, running down the road. The voice was too far away to tell who it was, but he knew it was one of the other guys, somewhere. They made their way down the main road and saw everyone else converging on Cody, who was keeled over, throwing up onto the ground, tears running down his eyes.

  “What the shit is going on!?” Jeremy shouted once they had joined the group, everyone looking both around and at Cody worriedly.

  “Cody, what’s wrong?” Luke asked, putting his hand on his friend’s back as support. Cody wiped his mouth and pointed outward, catching his breath, and sniffling a lot. Derrick and the others gazed out, and looked toward the hole where the street used to be.