Chapter Three:

Five Man Band (2012)

Arya, in the process of sharpening her knife with a whetstone, listened as Hot Pie and Lommy entered the bakery after a supply run into Barrowton. Weasel was sitting next to Arya, quietly watching her. Outside, it was heavily raining, and the two boys were soaked. They did not have much food and other materials they could use; Barrowton was starting to run low on supplies, and Arya was not sure if the group could stay there for much longer without starving.

Gendry, who'd been sitting on an empty crate, got up and approached the two who had just returned. "What did you get?" he asked them while crossing his arms.

"Pudding, mostly," Hot Pie answered, he and Lommy placing their bags of supplies on the ground. "Lommy found some car parts and some ammo."

Lommy grinned like an idiot and simultaneously nodded. "Yeah, yeah."

"Alright, this should keep us going for a while," Gendry commented, then raised his voice. "Everyone, everyone listen!"

Arya, Hot Pie, Lommy, and Weasel all looked at Gendry as he continued speaking. "Tomorrow, we're going on a big supply run, all of us. We need to leave Barrowton soon."

"Why leave?" Hot Pie asked.

Arya didn't answer. She understood why they needed to go: Barrowton's supplies left behind by its former citizens were running dry, and there were more wights around than before. It seemed like there were more of them around every year, and they had been in Barrowton for two years at that point. What also helped push the notion to leave was that Gendry had found a usable minivan and had replaced the sedan with it. Currently, the rusted thing was outside getting soaked in the rain.

"There are barely any supplies and food left in town," Gendry explained to Hot Pie. "We need to make one last supply run before we leave because there's nothing left for us here. Lommy," he said, catching Lommy's attention, "you come with me to the back room. We need to discuss how we're going to go about this."

Lommy nodded. "Alright. I've got some ideas already."

Gendry and Lommy disappeared into the back of the bakery, and Hot Pie waddled off to go somewhere else. When they were gone for forty seconds, Weasel cautiously looked around and then addressed Arya.

"Arya."

Arya paused from sharpening her knife and looked at the small girl sitting next to her. Weasel learned how to speak after a short while, and while she could talk, her actually talking to someone was exceptionally rare. Weasel was very quiet and hardly uttered a word to anyone in the group. She only spoke to Arya and Gendry, less with the latter than the former. Weasel only really seemed to trust Arya completely, and while she seemed to be warming up to Gendry, she was neutral when it came to Hot Pie, and she didn't like Lommy at all.

Concerning Lommy, he often made fun of Weasel, which always resulted in Arya shouting at him to leave her alone. One incident from the previous winter almost resulted in Arya physically attacking Lommy when he actually shoved Weasel, but she held back from punching him. On that particular day, everyone was cold and huddled around a fire with blankets wrapped around themselves, and Arya didn't want to make the situation worse by starting something with Lommy that would result in a fistfight.

Lommy was forced to learn to respect Arya, anyway. In the group, she was the second in command after Gendry, and when he wasn't around, everyone took orders from her. Arya wasn't entirely sure as to why Gendry picked her to lead after him when he arguably spent most of his time discussing supply run strategies with Lommy, but she didn't really care about Gendry's reasons as to why he chose her.

"What is it, Weasel?" Arya asked.

"Are we really leaving?"

Arya paused for a moment to think. "Most likely, yes."

"Where will we go?"

"Somewhere we can stay that's got a lot of food."

"Is everyone else coming along?"

"Yes."

Weasel looked upset. Arya decided to guess about what was bothering her. "Are you thinking of leaving Lommy here?"

Weasel hesitated, but answered anyway. "…Yes…"

"Could you explain?"

"He's mean," Weasel answered. "He always pushes me around or call me things like 'dirt-eater'. I don't like it."

"I don't either," Arya replied. "But that doesn't warrant leaving him behind to fend for himself."

Weasel still looked sad. "Alright."

She got quiet again, and Arya thought about what would happen if Weasel took her concerns to Gendry: he would have none of it. Though Arya was fond of him, she had to admit that Gendry could be incredibly stubborn at times and refuse to resolve tension in the group, leaving this up to her. She also knew that Gendry wouldn't rid himself of Lommy because of the latter's key role in the group as the main strategist and weapons-maker. A year after the group arrived at Barrowton, Lommy had made a new weapon for himself in the form of a two-edged spear. He was also the one to find a cleaver for Arya to use alongside her knife and the one to locate a sledgehammer for Gendry to replace his crowbar. Everyone used their new weapons to this day.

In the group, Hot Pie acted as the one who rationed the food and provided extra muscle when they needed it. Though fat, Hot Pie used his weight to his advantage and used it when swinging the metal pipe he used as a new weapon at wights. Five months earlier, the bat he'd been using for a long time splintered in half when he smashed it upside a wight's head.

Weasel was often the source of arguments ending between members of the group. When she was present, not many of them happened, and Arya knew that Weasel just wanted the group to live at peace with one another, even if she didn't say it much. One thing regarding Weasel that started that Arya tried to shut down whenever she saw it was that somewhere along the line, Weasel had picked up a bad habit of eating dirt, mud, and sometimes bugs. Lommy made fun of this, and Hot Pie was disgusted. Gendry did not seem to care either way.

Arya resumed sharpening her weapon as the rain continued to come down outside. Weasel got up and walked away, and Arya silently hoped that the rain would stop by the following day so that they could search for supplies without getting wet.

The next day, the group gathered together with their weapons in hand. Gendry cleared his throat before addressing everyone else. All of them had backpacks on to carry things they found. "Okay, here's how this is gonna go down," he started. "We're splitting off into three groups. Arya and I are going to look for car parts like spare tires and gas. Hot Pie is going to look for food on his own, and Lommy and Weasel are going to look for weapons and things to make weapons out of."

Hot Pie nodded, tightly gripping his pipe. "Alright."

Weasel frowned when she learned that she would be with Lommy for the day, and Arya didn't blame her. She was at least happy to be able to search for gas with Gendry. The group soon after split up, and Arya watched as Weasel and Lommy disappeared around a corner; Weasel took one last look at Arya before she got out of her line of sight. Hot Pie disappeared shortly afterward, and that left Arya and Gendry walking down the street themselves.

"Where are we headed?" Arya asked.

"That junkyard Lommy and I found yesterday," Gendry said. "It's a short walk away from the bakery we've been living in. We need things for the minivan, and Lommy and I saw lots of cars in there. We could probably siphon some more gas from them, too."

"I thought we had enough," Arya commented.

"Yeah, we have a lot of it, but not enough."

"How are we on food?"

"Eh…" Gendry said, trailing off to think for a short while. "Just enough for all of us. Hot Pie takes inventory of the food, too, not just rationing it to everyone else."

Upon hearing this comment, Arya thought about Hot Pie and realized that, even two years into the apocalypse, he was still fat. This made her think that perhaps Hot Pie was taking most of the food for himself. However, at the end of the day, everyone ate and got their share of the food from him, so she wasn't complaining, and neither was anyone else.

While walking, Arya noticed two things: the junkyard, and two wights in the road, aimlessly staggering around. The both of them looked rather rotted, and Arya wondered if they'd been around since the beginning. "Wights," she said.

Gendry brandished his sledgehammer. "You get one, I get the other."

Arya drew both of her knives, and the two of them proceeded to rush at the wights. Gendry reached his first, the sledgehammer crushing the wight's skull and killing it almost instantly. Arya knocked the wight she was targeting down with the sheer force of her impacting it. When it was down, she quickly drove her knife through its pale blue eye into its brain. It stopped moving immediately after.

"Now the junkyard," Arya said as she and Gendry walked away from the bodies of the wights they'd just killed. As they walked towards the entrance, Arya noticed that the entrance was locked, several chains wrapped around the doors.

"Not through the front," Gendry said before Arya asked about this. "Follow me."

Arya followed Gendry over to a large, person-sized hole in the tall chain link fence surrounding the junkyard. Arya snickered when she saw the opening. "Was that always there?"

"No," Gendry said as he began to climb inside. "Lommy used wire cutters on this when we found it. It's been a goldmine for gas; you wouldn't believe how much gas is left behind in these cars in here."

Arya followed him inside, and she followed him deeper into the junkyard. While walking, she looked around and saw old cars stacked atop each other amid masses of garbage. Arya thought it all smelled bad, but not as bad as the wights. She'd take living in garbage over being forced to live through the apocalypse any day.

As the two of them walked, Arya looked around and saw that many of the cars had their gas cap doors opened. Arya thought that this was because these specific cars had gas siphoned out of them by Gendry and Lommy during the previous day. If there were any wights in the junkyard, Arya figured that Gendry and Lommy had cleared them out by then; after Lommy found two pistols a short while earlier, he and Gendry had used them the most. Arya figured that most of the wights in the junkyard had been shot by the both of them by now. Ever since the discovery, Lommy had talked about searching for something larger, like an AK-47 or AR-15. However, the group had not found something of that sort in Barrowton. Since they were leaving in a short while, Arya knew they wouldn't have time to look for something that probably wasn't there. Currently, the pistols were in the possession of Lommy and Hot Pie.

Regarding Lommy, Arya remembered him being with Weasel as she herself walked with Gendry through the junkyard. It made her concerned and slightly angry that Lommy was possibly bullying her again while Arya was not around to get him to shut up and knock it off, and she had no idea why Gendry placed them together for the day. As they kept moving, Arya decided to bring up the issue.

"Gendry," she began.

"Yes?" Gendry did not look back at her as they kept walking through the junkyard.

"About Weasel," Arya explained. "Why did you put her with Lommy today? You know she doesn't get along with him."

"Because they can bring things in better together," Gendry answered as he began to look through a junked car for potential supplies.

Arya frowned. "You know fully well that Weasel is not on friendly terms with–"

Gendry, when he saw that there was nothing within the interior of the car, began to siphon gas out of it as he replied to Arya. "They'll be fine."

"Gendry!"

"They'll be fine!"

Of course. Gendry was being stubborn as a bull again. Gendry being stubborn happened so much that one might as well count the amount of times they blinked or sneezed. Arya kept frowning, and she wanted to slap Gendry upside the head. Instead, she decided to push her luck with him and decided to keep talking instead.

"Then why does she only talk to us?"

Gendry paused for a moment, but then resumed his activity. "Arya, drop it! Weasel will be FINE."

Arya was more angry than before. She knew that Gendry knew that pairing off Lommy with Weasel was a bad idea. She emitted an angry exhale that she was sure Gendry heard, and she hoped he did.

Gendry finished siphoning the gas out of the car and turned to face Arya. "Now let's just finish–"

Gendry was cut off when a wight burst from the side window of a nearby car and grabbed his arm, shattered glass flying everywhere. Gendry shouted in surprise and lurched forward, trying to pull himself away. Arya sprung into action and charged at the wight, driving the cleaver into its head several times before it became limp, the top half of the rotting body dangling out of the side of the car. Both Arya and Gendry observed the dead wight before the latter spoke. "Huh. Nice one, Arya."

After a while, Arya and Gendry had collected lots of gas out of cars, and Gendry was lugging around a spare tire to use for the minivan he'd pulled off of some other car. Arya was surprised that the tire was still in good shape despite being in a town dump for who knows how long. Currently, the two of them were making their way between two large stacks of cars, looking for the exit of the junkyard. Soon enough, Arya noticed said gate.

"There," Arya said, pointing towards the locked front gate. "We're getting close."

Arya and Gendry picked up the pace to head to the hole Lommy had made sooner. However, as they neared the exit, Arya looked upwards and noticed one of the cars was leaning over the side. It was stuck in between two other junked cars, and a wight was growling and snarling as it reached outward at the air.

Arya slowed her pace, and Gendry noticed and stopped altogether. "What is it?"

"I'm looking at the wight up there," Arya explained as she stopped walking, pointing towards the wight with her cleaver. She wondered how it managed to climb up there, and she then realized that it could have been a person who got bit, got scared, and climbed into the car to hide until the wight or wights left the surrounding area, only to turn a short while later.

"So what about it?" Gendry asked, sounding annoyed that they'd stopped. The car the wight was in was shaking, like it was coming lose.

"It just caught my eye. That's all–"

Arya was cut off when the shaking car promptly fell out from the pile, the wight coming with it. Several other cars came tumbling down as well, landing atop each other and scattering around. Arya and Gendry managed to back up before getting crushed, but the wight in the car wasn't so fortunate; its decomposing head and parts of its body were crushed like a stale watermelon.

Now before Arya and Gendry was a pile of five totaled cars.

"Great," Gendry sighed after a brief period of silence. "Now we'll have to find another way around to get to the…"

Gendry trailed off when the sounds of groaning and snarling came from behind the two of them. Arya and Gendry turned around and saw that several wights–all drawn by the noise of the cars falling–were approaching from where they just walked. Arya asked Gendry while looking at the wights, "How about we climb OVER the cars?"

They did just that; Arya and Gendry simultaneously turned around and made for the fallen cars. Arya got up on one car first, and Gendry came close behind her after lobbing the wheel atop the same car, which had landed upside-down. They moved through the cars, and it took a while; Arya began to feel that the wights would gain on them and catch up before they got beyond the obstacle of the fallen cars. However, they got through the mess together.

Arya and Gendry (the latter slightly slowed by the tire he was carrying) soon after made it to the hole in the fence Lommy had made. Arya exited the junkyard first, and she looked around the street to make sure that no wights were around the streets of Barrowton. Fortunately, none were. Gendry exited the junkyard then, entering the street after pushing his tire out through the hole.

They both ran back to the bakery then with what they'd gotten in their supply run. Arya knew (and she was sure Gendry knew) that the wights would follow them out of the junkyard and find the hole, moving out onto the street.

"When do you want to leave Barrowton?" Arya asked as she ran with Gendry at her side.

"We're loading the minivan and leaving as soon as we get back," he answered.

When the group got back together at dusk, Arya immediately looked around for Weasel. When she spotted her, the smaller girl ran over to Arya and tightly hugged her side.

"Are you okay?" Arya asked carefully, gently rubbing the back of Weasel's head.

Weasel, looking as uncomfortable as she did when she set out with Lommy in the morning, looked up at Arya and silently nodded. Arya began feeling angry again; she felt–no, knew–that Lommy had bullied her again. She also thought she saw dirt flecked around her mouth, making her think that Weasel was eating dirt again.

"Did you and Lommy get things?" Arya asked.

Weasel nodded. Arya did not ask her if Lommy bullied her again; that was a question best asked in private.

The group took inventory that night before piling into the minivan. The gas Arya and Gendry had collected would keep them on the road for a while, Hot Pie had surprisingly found enough food for everyone to last a few weeks (though it was mostly more pudding), and Lommy and Weasel had found ammunition and other blunt instruments for weaponry. Lommy explained that Weasel had to crawl into small spaces to collect some of the items, and he also explained that he was admittedly impressed with her for once. Much to Lommy's lament, they did not find any AK-47s or AR-15s.

It was dusk then, and Arya was thankful for the small amount of sunlight still present in the sky providing them enough light to fill the back of the minivan with their things. Arya and Hot Pie looked through the bakery they'd been living in for one final time to make sure they had everything they needed, and Arya remembered to grab a road atlas they'd found a while earlier. She knew it would be useful to them on the road.

After everything was placed into the back of the minivan, they all piled in. They had two extra seats, and Gendry and Arya were up front, Lommy and Hot Pie were in the middle, and Weasel was in one of the three seats in the back, sitting in the middle so that Arya could see her if she looked back. Arya was not a fan of letting Weasel out of her line of sight for a long period of time when Lommy was around, so she was pleased that she could actually see her. It was dark out by then.

"Alright," Gendry said as he turned the car on, "we're off."

Arya watched as Gendry began to drive through Barrowton after turning his headlights on. Gendry carefully and slowly drove out of the town, and he made it to a major route.

"Where are we going?" Hot Pie asked. "Like, what town?"

Gendry paused. "Somewhere far away from Barrowton. Maybe we'll find more people."

"I think the people besides us are all gone," Lommy said.

Hot Pie raised an eyebrow and looked at Lommy. "What do you mean?"

Lommy crossed his arms. "Hot Pie, have you even seen a live person besides us since all this started?"

"No," Hot Pie admitted, "but that doesn't mean everyone's dead."

"Yeah," Gendry agreed. Weasel said nothing.

"But do you have a specific area in mind?" Arya asked. "Where are we going to go?"

"You've got the road atlas, Arya," Gendry said.

Arya frowned. Gendry, are you serious?!

It was dark out then, and Arya opened the road atlas and looked around at the nearest settlements shown on the map: White Harbor, Moat Cailin, and Greywater Watch. "Okay," she said as she folded the road atlas back up, "the closest areas are White Harbor, Moat Cailin, and Greywater Watch. The last one is really far off, though."

They passed by a green sign to the right. Arya quickly observed the names on it and how far away they were in miles.

WHITE HARBOR - 60

MOAT CAILIN - 70

GREYWATER WATCH - 100

WINTERFELL - 265

Gendry must have seen the sign, too, evident by him then saying, "White Harbor. We'll go there."

Arya looked at him and raised an eyebrow. He had clearly just decided that on the spot because it was closest from Barrowton. Do you actually have a long term plan?