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

by Giancioppo, Danny

  “Damn right it is,” Adam agreed. The others nodded, and Nolan did admittedly feel a bit more comfortable with this new idea of them coming. Still though, it seemed wrong. Things could still go wrong.

  “But what if they come to the house, and we’re not around? They have a checkpoint nearby, right?” Nolan asked. “If they get word that we’re all gone, and they come here, that could be it— the whole house, years of work, down the drain.”

  “Well, even if they don’t, we’ve got a couple of Goliaths on the way to remodel the place soon anyway, so I think we’ve all sort of accepted that things might be ending here,” Cody countered, the others nodding somberly.

  “Seriously?” Nolan asked. Honestly, he hadn’t even really thought about the Goliaths– that was a problem to him that was so far away, it wasn’t worth thinking about– but it was true he supposed, there was no way they could fight them, so even if they got Luke back, they’d just be waiting at the house for its destruction.

  “Look, maybe the Goliaths die along the way, who even knows if they’re good in snow?” Chris thought aloud.

  “That’s a good point actually,” Derrick said. “Maybe they won’t even be able to make their way through it.”

  “Well, that’s all for the future; we’re getting off task here,” Adam corralled. “Look Nolan, we went through this already– we’re coming, because we’re all here for all of us. Luke is our brother too, and like you said to me once: You don’t kill your brothers. We leave him there, we’re killing him. So we’re getting him back, and we’re doing it together.”

  Nolan looked at Adam for a moment, and eventually just nodded in affirmation.

  “So, when are we doing this, then?” Nolan asked. “When are we going to go?”

  “Well when were you gonna go?” Chris asked.

  “I was planning on leaving tonight– we’ve already wasted time the past few days waiting on him, in my opinion– but now that we’re all apparently going we probably need to plan it out a little better,” Nolan explained.

  “He’s right,” Adam agreed, making his way inside. “We need to figure out a plan of attack, and try to be in and out of there as fast as we can.”

  “Not to mention, we need to plan on the ‘ifs’ and ‘whens’ of the Goliaths’ incoming attack as well,” Cody said. “Maybe we can try to have the two of them come together.”

  “That would just be chaos!” Chris argued.

  “But maybe that’s what we need,” Jeremy defended. “If even one of those things attacked their base, no matter their numbers, they’d be all focused on either killing it or running from it. And two? That’s a whole other ballgame. Cody’s got a point.”

  “Alright, alright god damn it let’s go inside,” Adam protested. “It’s too damn cold out here for this.” He made his way toward the door, and the others all followed. Derrick made his way in last, admiring one last time the view of his man-made plow.

  Cody cleared off the kitchen table, pulled an Expo marker out of somewhere, and drew some kind of table… on the table.

  “Hey! What the hell are you doing!?” Derrick asked, shocked at Cody’s actions.

  “I’m making a table,” Cody said.

  “Funny,” Adam remarked.

  “No, I’m serious,” Cody insisted. “Like, an informational table. One column’s for this group, which I’ve aptly named: Christian Cult. And the other column is for the Goliaths.”

  Everyone gathered around to get a better view of the table’s table, and Derrick still seemed to be unhappy about the misuse of the real table.

  “Alright, so let’s think, what goes in the Cult column?” Adam said.

  “Dangers…” Chris said. “Numbers, guns, ruthless occupants.”

  “Dumbass occupants, which makes them all the more dangerous,” Jeremy added, painfully gripping onto his stump with his good arm.

  “Advantages?” Cody asked, making another section in the column.

  “Less of us makes it easier to sneak around,” Adam said.

  “I can be used as a kind of bait,” Jeremy said. Everyone looked at him nervously, and he stood his ground. “I’m not saying I’m going to ask them to shoot me, but they’ll probably know about me if they’ve still got Luke; I can get us in if I talk my way around not dying.”

  “Are you sure?” Derrick asked. “Dude that’s really risky.”

  “I’m sure,” Jeremy said. “We need to get in there, and being loud isn’t the right way, not at first.”

  “Okay… Snow, are there like, lots of trees around the walls? Tall ones?” Cody asked, turning to the girl, who sat on one of the chairs and watched curiously.

  She nodded her head, and pointed outside.

  “They’re real high, like those ones out there,” she explained. “I can climb them to see better!”

  “No, that’s way too dangerous,” Nolan said.

  “Yeah, and you wouldn’t be any help anyway, we need someone who can shoot up there,” Derrick said somewhat scornfully. Cody and Adam glared at him, and he recoiled a bit, noticing his behavior. “You know what I mean, kid. We need to have the best people doing the hard jobs.”

  “So that’s where I’ll go,” Chris said. “I can bring a rifle with me, and I can watch from the top of a tree.”

  “Be careful if you do,” Adam cautioned “You slip, or get caught, you’re a goner.”

  “I know what to do!” Chris jabbed, Adam smirking a little as he did.

  “So, gameplan…” Cody continued. “Jeremy walks in, Nolan and Adam go with him. I sit in the van with Der, watching Snow. And C goes up a tree and keeps tabs on everyone. Sound good?”

  “How are we gonna communicate?” Nolan asked. “We don’t have any phones, or walkie-talkies, or anything.”

  “They do!” Snow stated excitedly. “I think they got them at the checkpoints so they can all talk!”

  “Okay, so we just have to steal from a checkpoint of twenty some-odd people and take six walkie-talkies? Presumably, hopefully, without being noticed,” Chris thought aloud. “How do we do that?”

  Everyone looked over to Snow, who excitedly rocked in her seat. Then Nolan got up abruptly, seeing the idea coming to everyone’s minds.

  “No. No, absolutely not,” he said, waving his arms around to suggest this was not happening.

  “Why not? She can get around the quickest and quietest!” Derrick argued.

  “Quietest maybe, but in two feet of snow, she isn’t the quickest!” Nolan countered. “Not to mention, if she gets caught, then they have her!”

  “So then we go in and save her if we really have to,” Chris said.

  “We’re not an army! We’re not even a task force!” Nolan continued to argue. “We’re six young men, one of which has one arm– no offense, Jer.”

  “No, I get your point,” Jeremy said. “We can’t take on that many people; I’ve already seen first-hand how many are there, and what they’re equipped with. And my arm has only just started healing up; I can only do so much as it is right now.”

  “Well one of us sneaking in is just as dangerous,” Adam added.

  “They haven’t seen all our faces,” Cody said. “They don’t know all of us.”

  “No, but that’s all the more reason for them to shoot on sight at a new face. I don’t think they’ll just assume there’s a ton of random people there they don’t all know” Jeremy replied.

  “Look, Nolan, I know it’s not ideal, and I know you care about the girl–” Chris said.

  “Snow, dude, her name is Snow,” Nolan insisted. He noticed neither he nor Derrick ever really called her by name. They just called her “her,” or “kid,” or something like that.

  “Okay, well I know you care about Snow,” Chris restarted, “but she’s our best chance, and she can handle her own.”

  “Yeah, I can sneak around without anyone noticing!” Snow supported.

  “You couldn’t even get into here without me hearing and noticing you,” Nolan said. “And that wa
s after Adam already heard you fall past the wall.”

  “But I still made it in!” Snow said. Cody and Adam grinned a bit at the comment; she had a good point.

  “Nolan,” Adam spoke up, “it’s our best shot. You need to have some faith in her, here. Let her do something to help so we can get Luke back.”

  Nolan hesitantly stood still, staring down Adam. He wanted to make him bow out of the idea, so they wouldn’t have to go through with it, sound as it was. But he wouldn’t, and Nolan knew he wouldn’t; he was right, this was their best shot at getting the walkie-talkies, and they needed them if they wanted to get this plan to work.

  Still, the thought of letting Snow go made Nolan severely uncomfortable. He had really grown attached to her the past couple days, and the idea that they were just letting her walk around the very people that she ran from made him incredibly paranoid.

  “I…I don’t…” Nolan said, becoming very quickly overstressed. His breathing pattern became heavier, and he glanced around the room rather rapidly. The others quickly caught on, including Snow.

  Adam directed him to a chair and made him sit down, and Snow crawled over the table to him, sitting in his lap.

  “Please? I’ll be good, I promise,” Snow pleaded quietly. “I’ll get in and out, and no one will see me! I’ll be real good!”

  Nolan looked down at her, and stroked her hair down her head. He forced a small smile, and tried to recenter himself.

  “I… okay, fine,” he finally agreed, everyone else breathing a sigh of relief. “But if you even think you’re about to get caught, you run; it doesn’t matter what you have. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she replied. Cody picked the marker back up off the table and uncapped it.

  “Alright, so, that’s a plan. Now, the Goliaths,” he said, the others looking around at each other a bit more worriedly.

  “W-Well…” Derrick theorized. “We were able to outrun one before, and now we’ve got the weather on our side.”

  “We think. That was just a theory, last time I checked,” Adam reminded Derrick.

  “Sure, but it makes sense, right?” Derrick asked.

  “For a lot of snow, sure, but not two feet,” Chris objected. “Two feet would be like, nothing to them.”

  “That’s like two inches to us,” Jeremy said.

  “Probably less,” Cody chimed in.

  “Alright!” Derrick cut off the criticism. “But what if they hit heavier snow? What if they have to trek through a mountain or something? The snow’s bound to be heavier there, and by a lot at that. And if they can’t move through it, that’s a problem solved.”

  “Alright, so we can put that in the advantages portion of the column…” Cody decided. “With a huge ass question mark…”

  “Dangers: Luke lures them,” Adam said.

  “They’re god damned Goliaths,” Jeremy pointed out.

  “We have no weapons strong enough to kill them,” Nolan said.

  “We don’t even know that if we did, it could” Chris said. “We still have never seen a dead Goliath. I don’t know that we were able to take any of them out.”

  “Cyrus said he did, remember?” Adam countered. “He said he and his people saw a dead one somewhere in Chicago or something.”

  “When did he say that?” Jeremy asked.

  “When we came back to his place, and had like a four hour conversation about like, everything? You don’t remember that?” Adam questioned.

  “Oh, no I fell asleep like immediately; I was knocked,” Jeremy remembered. Adam just sighed.

  “Point is, they can die, we just can’t kill them,” Derrick said. Cody then put that down.

  “Okay, so, gameplan?” Cody asked. “Do we really have one?”

  “Either we try to wait and have them take out that base, try to sift through the chaos– though that would ruin our current plan for the Cult– or we just try to outrun them, maybe go out to the water,” Adam suggested.

  “We’ve never been out there either, though,” Chris cautioned. “Who knows what’s out in the waters.”

  “Maybe, I’m just saying we could do that to escape the Goliaths at least,” Adam said.

  “Alright, if not water though, how about we say we go for Cyrus’s? Try to keep Luke from going ‘ghost’ or whatever the hell we want to call it,” Derrick said.

  “What if we go to an airport?” Nolan thought aloud. “Get in a plane and just fly somewhere?”

  Everyone looked over at him curiously. Honestly, that wasn’t a terrible idea. While it wouldn’t be easy to find a working airplane, and one with fuel at that, it would certainly be a safe move if they could get high enough in the air. To their knowledge, the Ships weren’t really active anymore as it were, so they wouldn’t have to worry about that.

  There was, however, a more glaring problem with this concept, one that somehow initially went right over all of their heads:

  “None of us can fly a plane,” Jeremy said, realizing this massive roadblock to Nolan’s plan. “So how’s that gonna work?”

  “I…I don’t know,” Nolan answered, disheartened at the realization that no one in this family was a pilot.

  “Okay… so let’s just leave a TBD for now,” Cody said, marking it on the table.

  “So, really, we’ve done nothing,” Derrick criticized. “All we did was say things we know.”

  “Well, at least now we’ve got all our thoughts collected,” Cody replied. “Plus, we didn’t really have a plan for the Cult, now we do.”

  “So when do we execute it?” Nolan asked, itching to go save Luke. “When do we go?”

  “First thing’s first, we need those walkie-talkies,” Jeremy said, getting up. “I remember how to get there, so me, Chris, Derry, and Snow will all go there tonight, hopefully when most of them are sleeping. Snow creeps in, grabs the stuff, and comes out; then we head back here and schedule the rest. Sound good?”

  Everyone nodded in agreement, though Nolan still seemed rather reluctant about allowing Snow to go. Nonetheless, he nodded as well, and everyone decided to either get back to work, or to prepare for their journey later that day. All the while, Nolan sat at the table, looking over the table’s table, trying to think of how he was going to get Luke.

  He knew he had to, and he knew they all wanted to. He knew they had a damn better plan than he would’ve come up with on his own, but still, he had to plan for if things went wrong. No matter what, he was getting Luke, with or without the others, no matter how much things turned to shit.

  He admittedly was just so wrapped up in worrying for his brother, that he seemed to get lost in all the “what if’s,” and he wasn’t thinking totally logically. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing any more of the people he cared about, and things only seemed to be getting worse as the past few days progressed. If something else– anything else– happened to his family, Nolan wasn’t sure he would be able to handle it, so he knew he had to get Luke back. He just had to.

  Luke regretfully stepped inside Abraham’s room again, after a long and mentally strenuous day and a half of chatting it up with all the members of this small, insane town. Some of the people were admittedly nice people, but his earlier suspicions were all but confirmed in that they were terribly ill-informed about what went on outside of their walls concerning their own people. The kids, the deaths, anything. It was incredibly discomforting to Luke.

  As Luke walked in, he saw Jonah was there again as well, standing rather skittishly next to a very excited Abraham. Luke could tell something was about to go down, and chances were, it wasn’t going to go in his favor.

  “Luke, I’m glad you’re here,” Abraham said.

  “Yeah, well, you had your people come get me,” Luke replied.

  “Right, well regardless something amazing has come up. Something I hadn’t fully realized until after our talk yesterday,” Abraham explained, staring at Luke. “Your group: there’s seven of you. Seven!”

  “Wait, what? That’s it? He never said there
were–” Jonah questioned.

  “Yes, I know, but there are,” Abraham persisted. “Seven is a highly significant number in catholicism, Luke! A divine mandate! The world, built by the Father in seven days. Joshua, in six: three and four, is ordered to march around Jericho for seven days. Exodus, when–”

  “Abraham, enough!” Luke yelled, taking a couple steps toward him. Abraham stopped, and Jonah eyed his brother cautiously. “I told you already, you are not touching, speaking, or spying on them in any way. It’s me, or it’s nothing. I don’t want to go over this again”

  “Luke, don’t–” Jonah tried again to speak up.

  “Jonah, please,” Abraham raised his hand, silencing his younger brother. “Luke, I understand that we made a deal. However, I also understand– as you really must– that I have a mission, and you are the largest step forward for us in a very long time. And if you and your friends can get us one step closer to fulfilling our own divine mandate, and getting to rise above to the heavens with the rest? I’m sorry, but I can’t say for certain that our deal can withhold.”

  Luke didn’t know what to say. He was hurt, for one thing; he knew well enough to see through Abraham’s “Nice Guy” persona, but still, he expected– perhaps at the very least just hoped– that he would be a man of his word, especially seeing as how strong it was amongst his people.

  Clearly though, he was so wrapped up in his own story that he actually believed in it, probably more than anyone else. He honestly thought that he could “save” these people from the world they lived in, and he was willing to go to all and any extremes to make it happen. But Luke was damned is he was going to let him or his people go anywhere near his own.

  “You’re insane,” Luke said. It probably wasn’t any good. It definitely wasn’t, but it was all he could get out in the moment. Abraham stared at him with a growing glimmer of anger in his eye. Then he made his way toward the door.

  “Come with me,” he ordered curtly. Jonah to followed, and Luke stood his ground.

  “Where?” Luke asked.

  “You’ll see,” Abraham simply said, then making his way out the door.

  “Come on Luke, it’ll be easier if you just do what he wants,” Jonah insisted sheepishly. Luke looked at him, and grew a bit nervous himself. “Come on,” Jonah repeated