The Way Back (Book 2): The Way Back, Part II

by Giancioppo, Danny

  The snowstorm– or whatever it was they were calling it as by Derrick’s standards– died down by morning the next day. Luckily for everyone, it was a fairly peaceful night after the spat that they shared the night prior. Unfortunately however, the morning did not go as well. Specifically, the wake-up call.

  There were a number of shrieks and bangs that came from Luke’s– now the little girl’s– bedroom, that very abruptly awoke everyone else in the house. Luke, Adam, Jeremy, and Chris all came running up the stairs in a hurry, where Derrick, Nolan, and Cody were already standing at the door, Derrick slowly and hesitantly tried to unlock the secure rope he had tied from her door to a piece of the ceiling.

  “What’s going on!?” Adam asked, adrenaline pumping through his veins at the sudden start to his day.

  “Well– and I’m just spitballing here– she probably just woke up and doesn’t know where she is,” Nolan said, holding the door shut as Derrick finished off loosening the knot.

  “Yeah, very observant, asshole. I meant what are you guys doing?” Adam pressed.

  “We’re trying to unlock the damn door and keep the damn thing from killing us at the same damn time!” Derrick shouted.

  “You’re seriously afraid she’s gonna kill you?” Chris asked.

  “You’re calling her a thing?” Luke said.

  “She had a gun!” Derrick countered.

  “Not anymore! We took it off of her, remember?” Jeremy said.

  “Yeah but to be fair, we never searched her; she could have like a knife on her or something,” Cody said.

  “She doesn’t. I searched her when I put her into my bed last night,” Luke said. “And I sang a song to her later that night, she was totally calm!”

  “That was you!?” Cody said. “Dude, you really need to be more quiet going up and down the stairs. You’re really not as silent as you think you are.”

  “God you guys are so paranoid!” Jeremy scoffed. Nolan growled in annoyance.

  “Luke isn’t your knife in there?” he asked. The others all looked at Luke as he silently stared at Nolan, a growing look of realization hitting his face. His eyebrows raised high on his head.

  “I may have… left it in there…” Luke muttered. Jeremy, Chris and Adam all groaned and facepalmed respectively, while the others gave very I told you so expressions. “Well, still though, it’s not like she’d know where to find it! Right?” he defended.

  Derrick stepped away and Nolan raised his eyebrows at Luke, making space for him to approach the door.

  “You wanna see for yourself?” he offered. Luke gazed at the others, who all awaited his response. He mustered up the courage to scoff at Nolan’s request, and made his way to the door.

  “Hey kiddo, I’m gonna open the door now, okay?” Luke said through the door. The screaming and banging suddenly stopped, and Luke looked back at them arrogantly. “Pussies,” he taunted.

  He opened the door with a stupid level of confidence, at least that was the best way for Nolan to describe it, and almost instantaneously the girl lunged at him with a knife. Luckily, Luke was still quick on his feet when he was with it, so he swerved out of the way, and wrapped her in his arms tightly, keeping her from being able to swing or stab.

  “There it is,” Chris said. Surprisingly, none of them were very on edge by the girl’s actions, probably because almost all of them saw it coming; almost.

  She still tried to wriggle out of Luke’s grasp and stab at him, so he just gripped onto her tighter.

  “Please stop trying to stab me,” Luke asked as politely as he could. It was a solid effort, but she didn’t really listen to his demands.

  “So are we gonna just let this play out or…” Cody asked the others. It was an open question, but they all silently agreed not to let her kill Luke, and made their way in between, separating them, keeping her constricted, and disarming her relatively at the same time.

  “Ugh… thanks guys,” Luke said. “Thought I had it covered.”

  “Yeah, we know you did buddy,” Chris said.

  “Alright little girl, time to start talking, or we’re gonna kick you right back out into the snow where you came from,” Derrick threatened. She suddenly shifted from fierce to terrified in a matter of seconds, and the others glared back at Derrick angrily. She looked at Nolan for backup, remembering that he offered help, and he smiled at her.

  “N-No, we’re not going to do that,” he said, elbowing Derrick in the side a little.

  “Ow! Fine, yeah, whatever… just kidding,” Derrick apologized.

  “Why don’t we do this somewhere a little more comfortable, huh?” Cody offered. He held out his hand for her to grab, and she just stared at it, then him, like it was pathetic. “Okay…” Cody muttered, moving down the staircase.

  They all cautiously made their way to the living room, with the girl secured in Adam’s arms as he made his way down, making sure she didn’t escape and try to harm anyone else. Nolan would have done it himself, but Adam was technically bigger.

  She sat on the couch alone, with Jeremy in an adjacent chair, Nolan and Luke sat on the table, Derrick and Chris in an adjacent loveseat, and Adam leant on a windowsill. They all looked at her curiously for a while, but no one knew quite what to say. Finally, Nolan spoke up.

  “So, do you have a name?” he asked. She didn’t say anything, and instead just looked at him. “You already told me you can talk, so why don’t you? It’s better than staying quiet; that won’t help you at all, I know that much.”

  Still, she remained silent. The guys all looked at each other disappointedly and impatiently, aside from Nolan and Luke, who just glanced at each other in confusion.

  “How old are you?” Luke asked. She looked over to him.

  “Eight,” she said. Her voice was high, and somewhat broken, like maybe all that screaming had thrown her voice out. The others were taken aback, and didn’t quite know what to say.

  “Wait, so do you have any idea what the world was like before the uh… the monsters showed up?” Jeremy asked, shocked. She paused, as if looking back in her memory for something to use as a reference.

  “No,” she said. “People used to talk about it though.” The guys all made sounds and looks of disbelief. Nolan could hardly wrap his head around what he was hearing.

  “You must’ve only been a couple years old before this all started then…” Adam marvelled.

  “Why can’t you tell us your name?” Luke asked, getting back on task. She looked at him and grimaced a little, almost like she was embarrassed.

  “I don’t… know,” she admitted. Luke frowned, seeing how sad she was.

  “What your name is?” Chris asked, more crudely than expected. Nolan shot him an angry glance.

  “Why is that?” Luke asked. “Do you not have anyone to call you anything? No parents, or friends or… anything?”

  “I… No,” she answered. The mood went from sad to damn-near devastating, and Nolan could tell nobody knew what to say. From the sound of it, this girl had it pretty rough, and God only knew what that meant nowadays.

  “So have you been alone? This whole time? You must’ve had parents at some point, right?” Adam asked.

  “Dude, maybe that’s a little too personal to ask right now,” Cody said.

  “How? She can’t have just appeared out of nowhere, Cody. She had to have come from somewhere– someone,” Adam defended.

  “My parents died when I was still a baby, I…I don’t know how,” she explained. “We lived in a big camp with really mean people; run by a man named Abraham. They wouldn’t say anything nice to me, and made all the kids work, or go with them into some private place. It was scary so…so I ran… me and some big kids.”

  She grew very emotional, tearing up word after word. Nolan felt oddly protective over this kid. All he wanted to do was hug her at the moment, and let her know everything was alright. Fix things for her.

  He reached for her, but Luke held a hand out, stopping him. He wanted to let her finish.<
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  “We all ran but…but they got caught and told me to keep running, so… I did,” she continued. “I just ran and ran until I saw this place, and I climbed a tree and jumped over the wall. I don’t know where my friends are, but… I think the bad people got them, and bad kids would get punished real bad by the mean people when they acted bad. I think… I think that…”

  She couldn’t to finish her sentence, and cried. Nolan and Luke both reached out to console her now, but she leapt for Nolan, gripping onto him tightly, taking him by surprise. He got very red in the face, and looked at the others, unsure what to do. Slowly, he just sat back down on the couch, now with the girl in his arms, and everyone looked at one another in a shared feeling of pain and sorrow.

  “It’s…It’s okay. It’s okay,” Nolan cooed, hesitantly and slowly stroking her choppy hair.

  The others went silent again, and Adam looked to Luke to see what he made of all this. Luke just looked back with an uncertain yet angered grimace on his face, shaking his head a little. It was enough for Adam and everyone else to know what he was thinking.

  Luke said in that look that he was disgusted at what he heard, he was a bit on edge, and he was probably toying with the idea of finding these people and doing what the others could only assume would get him and many of said people killed. Hopefully those were just passing emotions, though.

  “Hey, you want us to give you a name?” Cody finally said, trying to make eye-contact with the girl. She slowly refocused her breathing, and looked up at him, nodding her head. Cody smiled as warmly as he could, and nodded back in response. “How about… Faith?” She sat there for a moment, pondering it, and then shook her head.

  “What about Sarah?” Jeremy offered.

  “Or Cassie?” Adam said.

  “Kristen?” Derrick asked.

  “We could also make it like, you know… cool. Like Thunderbolt or something,” Chris said.

  “She is not being called Thunderbolt or anything like that ever,” Adam interjected.

  “What about Snow?” Cody asked again. Her head seemed to poke up a bit at that.

  “What?” Adam asked, confused. Why would we call her that?”

  “You heard her come in through the snow, Nolan found her covered in snow, it’s snowing outside, why not? It’s a perfect fit! Plus, it sounds cool,” Cody defended.

  “I want that one!” she said, somewhat excitedly too. “I wanna be Snow!” Adam looked around for support, but saw the smiles on the others’ faces, and inevitably gave in.

  “Alright, Snow it is then,” Adam relented, though admittedly also smiling a bit, seeing how happy she was at her name.

  All of a sudden, the guys noticed something. Something foul. New, but foul all the same. Something that made each of them wretch in their own, disgusted way, at their own, perilous time.

  “Oh Christ, what smells like shit!?” Jeremy shouted, putting his shirt over his nose.

  Nolan stood, still holding Snow in his arms. He turned her backside toward Luke, and Luke reluctantly leaned in. Then, slowly, he reared back, with a new face of anguish to share with the others.

  “Yeah, Snow uh… Oh boy– she pooped,” he gagged.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Snow asked. “I had to go.”

  “You never used a bathroom before?” Chris asked, trying to remain kind in his tone. It was hard to do while also covering his face in his shirt.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Well… god damn it,” Derrick sighed. “This is going to take some work…”

  “How the hell do we potty train an eight year old?” Jeremy asked.

  “Snow, we’ve got an outhouse you can use, it’s like a bathroom. Just tell us when you need to go next time and we’ll take you,” Cody explained, holding the inside of his elbow up to his nose in defense.

  “Okay,” she said, not moving from Nolan’s grip. Nolan just sighed again and got up himself, holding her now at arm’s length.

  “Well… I’m gonna change myself,” he said, slightly disappointed. “And I guess she’s gonna take a pair of my shorts until we can clean her clothes.”

  “Which might take longer than usual, with the cold and everything,” Derrick pointed out, snickering a little. Nolan stopped, and stared at him.

  “Good point Der, your clothes are much more fitting for a little girl,” he said, smirking. He made his way back up the stairs with Snow.

  “What? What does that mean!?” Derrick asked, suddenly nervous. He turned to the others. “What does that mean!?” he repeated; the others all just laughed it off. After a moment, Nolan and Snow were gone, and it was just the six other men in the room. Jeremy decided to speak up.

  “Alright look, we need to talk about what she said to us,” he whispered, the others looking over at him in solemn agreeance.

  “She said it was a big camp, how big do you think we’re talking here?” Chris said. “I mean she’s just a kid, it could be a lot bigger to her than it really is.”

  “Maybe, but even so it has to be bigger than the house and it’s walls, which means they could have at least a dozen men,” Adam remarked.

  “Not to mention, based on what she said, they sound like savages,” Cody said. “I mean, taking kids into some ‘private area?’ That’s…That’s messed up.”

  “Plus the hard labor they put her and kids like her through?” Jeremy said in a huff, getting upset.

  “I know,” Luke said, looking out the window expectantly, as if he thought this new threat to come bounding into their home at any given moment. It was unlikely, but to be fair, they knew very little about the group to convince any of them that it wasn’t at least a possibility.

  “Well what do we do?” Derrick asked. “I mean look I hate to say it, but are we really going to go to war with some other group over a girl we just met?”

  “Dude, seriously?” Chris asked, disappointed in his friend. “I’m not saying we should keep her, but… give it a little thought, at least.

  “I mean come on Chris,” Derrick said. “There’s bound to be more of them, and there’s bound to be fallout from keeping her here. I can see that dumb damn look in Luke’s eyes that he wants to confront them; I’ve been seeing it for the past ten minutes. I mean Jesus, that girl might be a spy and they’re just waiting to come in and kill us for all we know!”

  “Dude, come on!” Adam protested. “That’s ridiculous. I mean… isn’t it?” He glanced around at the others, who for the most part shared uncertain looks on their faces.

  “Listen,” Derrick continued, “we cannot wage a war with these people. We can’t just go over there and start killing them; that’s not what we do. Now maybe she did get away, and if she did, then great, let’s keep her around, for a while at least. But if not… then guys we have to give her up.”

  The room fell quiet. Not necessarily because there was a shared agreement; far from it, in fact. It was simply that no one knew what to do in a situation like this, it was brand new territory.

  Not to mention, Derrick did make at least a few good points. If they were being tricked by Snow, then they were essentially signing their own death warrants, and even if they weren’t, could they really just let these people do what they were to these children, and do nothing about it themselves?

  But what could that lead to? Another Jack scenario, most would assume. Fighting, death, fire, and a real dark place they’d all go to, and that’s if they even won, which– with Luke as he was, and the weather being as cold as it was– they might not.

  Plus, Derrick was right, it wasn’t who they were. Other than Luke and Adam, none of the others had ever even killed anyone, and they both had only killed one person each: Jack and the Stranger on the bridge. Were any of them really willing to kill God only knew how many people, just for this one little girl?

  “If we let her go, how are we any better than these people?” Cody asked, his gaze not moving from the floor. “We’d just be putting her out there, into a world that she probably doesn’t eve
n fully grasp the dangers of. Or, we’re giving her up to the scum that she ran from in the first place. Maybe she is lying, but if she isn’t, and that’s all true…? I mean, can any of us really live with that?”

  “Can any of us seriously live with killing anyone, though?” Chris asked. Adam glanced at him, and he shrugged. “Anyone else? People that really might not deserve it?”

  Again, the group remained silent, trying to come to some sort of consensus. Luke still wouldn’t even look inside at the others. Adam decided to speak, stepping forward a bit and raising his head up.

  “Well, we could try to play dumb, see where that gets us,” he offered. “If they come here, we can say we don’t know what they’re talking about, maybe even move around or hide some of our supplies and act like they went missing. They go about their search, and we keep her hidden for like, a good few days, just to play it safe.”

  “What if we move?” Jeremy interjected, looking around at the others. All of them– aside from Luke– looked back with confused glances.

  “Move?” Derrick said. “Move where?”

  “Yeah man, I mean winter’s on the forefront at least if not already here. The van can’t track through all that,” Chris said. “And we are not going on foot. We’ll get frostbite before we even make it to New Hampshire.”

  “Yeah, also, we have like a fortress here!” Derrick added. “Took us like two full years to make? Still arguably not finished? Ring a bell, dude?”

  “Look excuse me for trying to get a kid out of a bad situation!” Jeremy shouted through gritted teeth. “She is scared out of her mind, and clearly knows more about these guys than us. Lying to us!? She passed the hell out right in front of Nolan after running for her life! We are not going to just sell her down the river here!”

  “Jer I get that, really I do,” Chris countered, “but how can we also take the risk of bringing a shitload of guys here, us maybe getting killed, and probably getting the house destroyed in the process? All this progress, right down the shitter? For her?”

  “Luke, what do you–” Cody said, looking over at his friend. He was still staring out the window from his seat, but only now did they all notice something off about it. About him.