The Way Back (Book 1): The Way Back

by Giancioppo, Danny

  “Nice smile? What are you my mom?” Nolan laughed.

  “Can I get a compliment?” Derrick joked. Cody and Nolan chuckled, and shook their heads.

  “Sorry man, you’re not playing,” Cody said. “You’re lucky to get a hello.”

  Derrick just laughed, and focused back on the road. Or he would have, if he didn’t soon realize he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “You guys need a bathroom break or anything?” Derrick asked, shifting rather uncomfortably now in his seat. Cody shook his head, and Nolan just let out a “Nah.” Neither of them paid him any mind. They just kept complimenting each other.

  “You can stop, if you need to,” Cody said.

  Derrick thought for a moment, looking over at Luke, and then glancing through the mirror at the others. They were all essentially “taking turns” falling asleep. He imagined that if they really needed to pee as bad as he did, they wouldn’t be so soundly resting, so he really was alone on this one.

  Still, they were asleep. They all wanted to get home as soon as they could, sure, but it wasn’t like Derrick was going to have to pull into a gas station or anything. One plus side to the world turning, he could pee wherever he wanted.

  “Alright, screw it, I need to take a piss,” he muttered, pulling the van over to the side of the road.

  He grabbed the keys, and rather than put them in his pocket, he chose to toss them to Cody. After all, better they be held with all the guys than him alone, more or less defenseless.

  As Derrick relieved himself, he glanced out at the road ahead of them. There was a town up ahead that they’d likely have to pass through. Like all the others, it looked pretty terrible. Not a massive confidence boost for Derrick’s hopes of finding their home to be safe and sound, but he tried not to think on that.

  As he passively watched the still-sitting home of who knew how many people way back when, Derrick just barely caught the slight movement from one of the buildings. A three-floor, grey, mostly tarnished little place; probably used to be some kind of office or something, for one or maybe a few small companies.

  Now though, Derrick swore he could see someone inside it. Or at least, he did. It made him jump a little in fear, and he quickly wrapped up his bathroom break, zipping up his pants, and scanning a small zone around them. They were alone, but at least down the road, there was definitely someone watching them. Derrick knew what he saw.

  He got back in the van, and Cody handed him the keys. Again, he and Nolan were heavily invested in their card game. Whenever there was down time, and whenever the others weren’t up to much else themselves, the Cody and Nolan always liked to play stupid little games like that. They just placed the cards on their legs, and kept the deck in between them.

  “You would’ve been a pretty good dad, I think,” Nolan said. Cody smiled.

  “Now that’s a good one,” he said. “Still could be, one day. You never know.”

  “Guys,” Derrick said. The guys looked up at him. They could hear that slight change in his tone of voice. The trepidation, the nervousness. He was afraid. “I think there might be people up there, in that town just ahead.”

  “Why, you saw someone?” Nolan asked, looking out his window to check the area.

  “I… maybe? Yes, yeah I think so,” Derrick said, nodding. He looked in the rear-view, and locked eyes with Cody.

  “Just keep driving,” he said. “If you need to, punch it. We’ll be alright, don’t worry. I’m sure even there are people there, they won’t hurt us.”

  “How do you know?” Derrick asked, trying not to sound aggressive. “They don’t have a great track record so far.”

  “Well, kinda like Cyrus was saying,” Cody explained. “All we’ve got left is each other, right? Maybe we just need to put on a, what is it… a friendly face; trust they’ll do the same.”

  Derrick glanced now at Nolan through the mirror, and Nolan just shrugged.

  “Maybe,” he agreed. “But seriously though Der, anything goes wrong, punch it.”

  Derrick just nodded, and moved the turned the key back into the ignition. They drove forward, and crept closer and closer to the quickly approaching community. As they did, much to Derrick’s claim, heads started poking out of windows and door frames, all watching curiously as the seven men rode through their home.

  “Jesus…” Cody muttered, seeing the state of them. There were at least 20, if not more, and they were all filthy, wearing ragged clothes and messy hair.

  “It’s like they’d never seen a van before…” Nolan admired. Derrick nodded.

  The three continued to stare out at their onlookers, just as they look in at them. Nobody made an advance toward the van– they hardly strayed from the buildings they hid within– they simply looked.

  At one point, as they were about halfway through, Derrick saw a man, holding his daughter by his side. They both looked awful; it made him almost want to cry. Nonetheless, the daughter stared right at Derrick, and with one free hand– the other tightly gripping her father’s– she waved at him.

  It felt like someone had just shot Derrick in the chest. That was the last thing he’d expected to happen, and yet there she was, this poor little thing, greeting a stranger as they rolled by in what may as well have been a golden chariot. He just couldn’t believe it.

  Slowly, almost shakily, Derrick raised a hand from the steering wheel, and waved back to her. She didn’t smile, neither did he. The father didn’t even budge. They just waved at one another, and then, like that, they had moved past her.

  Derrick stared back out at the road, totally ignoring the other human beings he drove past, and tried his best to hold the tears back as they welled in his eyes. He didn’t even want to look back at Nolan and Cody, who themselves simply continued to watch their watchers with fascination.

  After they were through the town, they didn’t say a word. It took Nolan and Cody a while to even pick their game back up. They all just sat there, in awe, as they continued to speed down the Montana roads, watching as the sun set down the western path they followed, having just had one of the most simple, yet intricate interactions with human beings they’d had in quite some time. Derrick thought so, at least.

  By the time they had reached the western half of Montana, it was something like mid-sunset. Derrick had gotten so tired of driving that he had to stop, so Jeremy took over. Luke also wanted to sit in the back, because he was “tired of the front,” which sounded a little weird to Jeremy, but it was Luke, so he didn’t think much of it. The guy always had a weird side growing up.

  Now, with Jeremy driving, Adam was the only other one awake, sitting in the back with Luke. The others grew more and more excited and anxious by the minute, so Chris insisted they try to keep sleeping to contain themselves and calm down a little. They had woken up over and over again; there was no change in anxious excitement. Better that they get it all out in a van like this though, Jeremy considered, rather than that sedan they were all cooped up in. Then again though, why did they have to be in a van now?

  Jeremy had always hated driving bigger vehicles; he liked smaller, more compact, fast cars. It was one of the most crushing things to him when the world had collapsed. They used his car first to drain the battery and power the generators. He remembered having a long, tireless argument with all of them about it, with only Lily being able to eventually convince him to let it go. It was a sad day, indeed.

  “Hey, you awake man?” Jeremy asked Adam from the front, looking into the rear-view mirror. Adam had his eyes closed, but he knew he wasn’t sleeping. He never slept

  “Yep,” Adam said, not opening his eyes. He didn’t say it in a cruel way though, just bluntly, so Jeremy didn’t think much of it.

  “Talk to me. I’m bored as shit over here,” Jeremy requested. Without his notebook handy, he really tended to grow impatient quite quickly. Adam moved around a little, and rather reluctantly rolled open his eyes.

  “Alright,” he said slowly, “what do you want to talk about?” J
eremy paused. He hadn’t prepared this far in advance. He honestly didn’t think that Adam would’ve answered him. It was just as common for him to grunt, maybe not say anything at all, and just ignore everyone around him entirely.

  “I don’t know…” Jeremy slowly said, Adam scoffed a little.

  “Why ask then?” Adam asked, perplexed.

  “Because I’m bored,” Jeremy insisted.

  Neither of them spoke for a while longer, having no idea what to say. It made Jeremy think. He had known Adam since 6th grade, and they had always been good friends, but he felt like he hardly even knew him. Like, really knew him. The way he and Chris knew each other, or Luke and Nolan. Or Cody and… all of them, really.

  “Do you know anything about me?” Jeremy asked, thinking out loud. He realized he had opened his mouth all too late, and immediately regretted doing so.

  “What?” Adam asked, confused. “Do I know you?” No going back now, Jeremy decided.

  “Yeah, well like… you know! Like do you know me? Name something personal about me that you know, something that not many people know,” Jeremy persisted, rather uncomfortable.

  “Um, okay… You hate horror movies,” Adam said meekly. Jeremy sighed.

  “No! That doesn’t count, everyone knows that! I mean something real. Something important.” Jeremy tried to sound as earnest as possible, and it seemed like it was working, because Adam leant his head up against the window and gazed out, quiet. It was either that, or he stopped listening entirely.

  “Okay, how about this?” He spoke up at last. Thank God for the latter. “I know that you are a much more emotional person than you let on, and you act like you’re never really all that nervous, but you almost always are.”

  Jeremy hadn’t expected that, honestly. That was a lot heavier than he was prepared for.

  “I know that when it all started, and that gigantic storm was going on, we all hid in the basement, and even though you were shaking and freaking out, you were doing your best to keep everyone else calm, including me, because no one else could, and because that’s just who you are…” Adam continued, and Jeremy sat, listening intently. “And when Lily and Emily died, you cried for days. I know that you would go out to their grave, dangers be damned, and you’d just sit there crying, and thinking. And when Nolan was falling apart, you were the one there to keep him up– other than maybe Luke– because you knew just how it felt; because Lily was like your sister, and you loved her. And I know that you don’t like to bring it up, because you feel like you don’t deserve to, but I also know that you’re wrong. I know that you were probably the reason we all found each other again at Cyrus’s, because when the times get tough, you get tougher.” He paused. Jeremy didn’t say a word. “I know that much,” he finished.

  Jeremy smiled, and tried to find something to reciprocate, but he just couldn’t. So he smiled, and he looked back into the rear-view mirror, and saw Adam smiling too, still looking out the window. And that was good enough.

  All of a sudden, Jeremy heard an annoying, repeating beep, and he glanced down to see that the gas was running low. He sighed a little, upset that they had to use even more of their supply, plentiful as it was, and so he pulled over to the side of the road.

  “Gas?” Adam questioned curiously.

  “Yep,” Jeremy said, unbuckling and getting out of the car.

  He walked around past the front of the car, and over to the right side, where the gas nozzle was. He quickly uncapped it, and moved over to the back doors, where he popped them open, and Adam handed him a tank of gas. Adam then proceeded to get out of the van as well.

  “Need to move my legs, god damn,” he muttered, stretching as he walked around a little.

  Jeremy just made a small sound of acknowledgement, and stepped back to the gas nozzle, where he proceeded to fill up the tank. It was actually quite nice out, the sunset making for a really pretty sky, dipping the clouds in a pinkish-orange hue. There were vastly open fields on either side of them, and though he could only see the right side field, it was quite a sight to behold. So still and serene; it was like a painting or something.

  Then, suddenly, the picture perfect moment was shattered, as Jeremy heard Adam speak.

  “Holy. Shit,” he said, baffled. Jeremy couldn’t see him, but he perked his head up, a little nervous.

  “What?” he asked. “Everything alright?”

  “Jer, come here…” Adam replied spacely, sounding as though he was walking further away from the van.

  “Wait, Adam, wait!” Jeremy insisted, putting the gas down and trying to get around to the other side of the van as fast as possible. “What is going… on…” He was hardly able to get out his last thought, as he soon saw what it was that Adam was marvelling at.

  There, out in the left-side fields along the winding Montana road, laid a haphazard graveyard of tanks, jeeps, a crashed jet or two, and Ships. The Ships. Massive, black, broken-down Ships.

  They were… They were hard to describe. They hadn’t even begun to see what these were like; the tv’s were hardly able to get any shots of them, and those that did didn’t stick around for very long. Now, seeing it up close, even from hundreds of feet away, Jeremy understood. The terror that people were talking about. The words they could hardly find to explain what they were seeing.

  It was at least the size of a frigate, if not larger. He’d argue it could be the size of an entire neighborhood, if not a couple of them. There appeared to be slits and broke-open holes all over it; some man-made, and some designed.

  “Holy shit…” Jeremy gasped out, he too now gawking at the sight before them. “How did we miss this?”

  “I…I don’t know…” Adam answered honestly, thrown off as much as Jeremy. “There must’ve been some…some kind of huge battle that we just… never knew about… Good lord…”

  “Imagine how many more of these there may have been, all around the country,” Jeremy said, admittedly in a spiraling sort of terror.

  “All around the world…” Adam added. They were silent, indulging the thought with a painful legitimacy. Jeremy could feel his heart pounding in his chest. It was so odd, considering these things weren’t even operational. At least, they didn’t appear to be. Maybe that was it. The uncertainty.

  “Look how big they are,” Jeremy said, still astounded. “And they’ve got those huge circles there, on the bottoms? Those could’ve–”

  “Those made the graves, easily,” Adam finished Jeremy’s thought. Jeremy nodded, not even looking at Adam.

  Maybe these were why there were no bodies around. They were definitely big enough to hold at least a community of people, if not more. After all, if these things did make the graves, then they wouldn’t have to hold them for very long… It was horrifying, just looking at it. Jeremy could hardly begin to fathom how terrible it must’ve been, during the first few months.

  “You think we should wake the others?” Adam considered. “They might want to see this,” Jeremy paused, giving it thought.

  All the horrors they had seen, the past five hundred some-odd days, let alone their trek home; things that would– that should– be enough to scare anyone else to death twice over, and yet they persisted through it all. And Jeremy had it all jotted down in history thanks to his notes. Now though, at the sight of the travesty laid out before them, Jeremy could feel his mind plagued with a seemingly innumerable amount of nightmarish scenarios that went down, not only here, but all over the world, to so many innocent people. It almost felt that the thoughts came not from his own mind, but as an illness, a disease these things infected him with, even after death. All from those Ships. No one deserved to even think of such things. So, finally turning away from the sight before him, Jeremy gazed at Adam, and came back to the world.

  “Nah,” he finally said, regaining his composure. “Let them sleep. This would probably just make them freak out; get all anxious about home and stuff.”

  “And you?” Adam asked, he too turning away, now facing Jeremy. “T
his doesn’t freak you out?” Jeremy looked down at the ground. He noticed how much his leg was shaking; he didn’t even realize it until now, it must have just been subconscious. He smiled a little, and then looked back up at Adam, taking a deep breath.

  “You know it does,” Jeremy answered honestly. “But someone here’s gotta be the strong one, right?”

  Adam scoffed, it then turning into a chuckle. Then he paused, glancing back out at the Ships.

  “You think we should go out there? See what we can see?” he asked, his gaze now hypnotically stuck back out on the vast landscape before them. “Maybe we could find some answers out there…” Jeremy furrowed his eyebrows, and thought for a moment.

  “Nah. We got places to be,” he said, looking away from the wreckage and beginning to walk back to the van. Adam turned away as well. “Come on, I wanna hear more about how much you respect me.”

  “Hey, I never said anything about respect,” Adam said, laughing, and following Jeremy back.

  Soon Jeremy had finished refilling the tank, put the gas can back in the van with Adam, and returned into the driver’s seat, driving off and away from a past not recognized as the sun slowly set, and the stars swiftly rose.

  Day 504

  “Foxtale”

  It took them about a day more before they even got into California. And as luck would have it, even though Foxtale was in Northern California, they had to reroute south, just so they could travel north again.

  It kind of sucked. Well, it definitely sucked, but Luke was trying to be optimistic. And that wasn’t easy, especially considering the fact that it was raining a lot in Southern California, and, as they got further up north, that rain turned into snow, and that snow turned into a mini-snowstorm. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it meant something. Were there wood around, he surely would have been knocking it.

  In time though, they were at long last just a few miles out from their home, and everyone’s nervous kind of excitement was at an all time high. They could hardly sit still.