Chapter 12: Recon

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They knew that their ragtag group of teenagers with minimal weapons and combat training were not in the least an impressive fighting force to combat the countless infected they may have to face on their road south. John did not like the idea of bringing in people. He simply didn’t trust others.

When a peaceful society suddenly gets thrown into a situation where they must fight for their lives, there would be simply no way of knowing how people, regular people who had regular jobs and lives, would react. The weak ones had already mostly died. John knew at least that. In this type of environment, or at least in the environment John and the group had to live in, the weak hearted would be very hard to come by.

At this point, John needed help. There was no way to go south by themselves so they were hoping to find a few more people to travel with. In the end, they were taking a page out of the book of the infected: travel in packs because there’s safety in numbers.

The group slept a restless night, often having to change shifts to look out for infected or “regulars”, as they were starting to call them. On more than one occasion, the next shift would wake up hours after the changing time to see the previous shift had fallen asleep and failed to wake them up. The teens had pulled a few all nighters in the past but that was usually for school projects or simply wasting time on the web. Having to stay awake looking into the abyss of night was hardly something to stay awake for any amount of time.

As the sun finally broke through the horizon, everyone awoke.

John and Sophia had decided to go out to the city to look for survivors while David held down the fort with the others. John’s mother was still shaken up about the whole ordeal and didn’t acclimate as fast as the younger generation but she was coming around, helping them here and there. Jacob was eager to avoid guns whenever he was given the chance, opting to cling to his mother and talk with Abby. The two had not come to fully accept the new paradigm of fighting to survive. Jacob wished simply to cling to what was familiar and safe, which he found in his mother.

John made no attempt to separate the two as he also wanted to maintain the boy’s purity, which was becoming harder to do as more tasks demanded the cruelty of action and occasional violence.

John and Sophia had set out on the Escalade, hoping driving a regular car would ease the tension in any survivors they picked up. If the radio was working, they would have played a song to attract the people and ease them into joining them. John smirked at this thought. It’s like we’re the ice cream truck for the apocalypse.

The two set out in the morning back towards the refugee camp. It was the most likely place where they would find survivors.

They drove relatively undisturbed and the few infected they met, they ignored. No reason to bother them if they aren’t bothering me. They drove right by, already in the distance before the infected even started pursuit.

They stopped the car a bit further away and walked the rest of the way. They crawled up a hill and looked down on the compound. Or rather, they looked down on the remains of the camp. The refugees and military were no match for the horde of infected, numbering perhaps in the hundreds at the time of the explosion. They had descended upon the camp like a swarm of locusts and by dawn, their numbers had swelled to the thousands, if not the tens of thousands.

John inhaled sharply at the sheer number of the infected, simply walking around the compound, sniffing here and there and sometimes wandering off into the forest adjacent to the compound.

“That’s a lot of stuff.” John said, noticing how the military’s equipment, vehicles, and supplies had been left almost untouched by the horde or any people that may have escaped.

“No hope of getting it now. Let’s go back.” Sophia said while getting up. John remained in a prone position, squinting to see if he could find Sam. He had shot Sam before they left and he had told the others about it, but during the chaos, he didn’t know if he actually had shot Sam in the head or not, properly killing him before he turned.

He still remembered the last real conversation they had. Sam had always had a softer heart than others. There was no way he’d have survived long in this kind of world. John gave a silent prayer for his deceased friend.

“John…” Sophia’s voice rang out.

John stood up and turned around. “Yeah, I’m comi-”

**Click**

John had turned around to see the muzzle of a gun pointed only a few feet away from him. A man in his forties, with a brown leather jacket and a pair of majestic dad jeans was holding Sophia by the neck with one firm grip while pointing a gun at her head.

John raised both his hands to his chest level.

“Whoa, calm down. We can talk ab-”

“Shut up. We need your supplies. Food. Do you have food?” The man asked. He seemed scared, almost as if he was the one with a gun to his head, not the other way around.

“Yeah. Whatever you want. We’ll give it to you, just lower your gun.” John said while taking one tentative step towards the man.

“Stay back!” He said, pointing the gun at him. John froze in his tracks. “I’ll shoot her in the head, I swear!” He moved the gun back to her head.

“Alright. Alright. No moving forward, I got it.” John moved back and glanced at Sophia. Their eyes met for a brief moment and he was her glance downward. He moved his eye to see her moving her hand slowly to her pocket. She took out one of the scalpels they had scavenged on their first day after the outbreak. Her eyes looked determined. She was going to make a move.

“Hand over everything you have, and I won’t hurt anyone.” The man said with a strained voice.

“Alright, look, calm down. I’ll give you everything you asked for.” He slowly tensed up as he said that, eyeing Sophia to wait for her signal. Once she made a move, it would be up to him to make a distraction and, most importantly, make sure he doesn’t die.

“Daddy, are you going to hurt those people?” A small voice rang out as Sophia was just about to swing the scalpel. She stopped when she heard the voice. From the side brushes, a small boy, around 7 or 8 was seen looking at the people.

“Daddy’s just getting something from these people. No one’s getting hurt unless they try some funny business.” He said. “Get back, Lucas.”

Sophia glanced at John again. He shook his head slightly, and she pocketed the knife. John looked down at his hand that he had dropped to his side during the conversation. He extended three fingers and counted down with them.

Three...two...one!

As the last finger was folded, John jumped and did a half roll, failing, and then scrambling to get ahold of the kid. He landed and positioned himself behind the boy and stayed there, poised to move as necessary. He knew the father wasn’t going to shoot him if there was a chance of his son getting caught in the friendly fire.

At the same time, Sophia lifted her right arm and balling her right hand into a fist. Her left hand came up and covered the right fist. Together, the two came down hard, using the combined force to slam her sharp elbow into rib. As the man doubled over, she pushed the man’s gun arm up and away as it fired a stray shot during the struggle.

The lone gunshot reverberated the valley area in silence as Sophia ran some distance away from the man, taking out her own gun to point it at him. John had also taken out his gun and kept it at his side, implying that the man’s son was being held captive by him.

“It seems the tables are turned.” John called out. The man recovered and looking at the situation that had indeed been reversed, he showed a resigned face that turned into panic as he saw his son in the hands of the people he had threatened moments ago at gunpoint.

“Please. I’m so sorry. I had no choice my son was starving and I- I just had no choice. Please don’t hurt my son.” He begged. He dropped the gun and put his hands up.

“Relax. We’re not going to hurt you.” Sophia moved in and kicked the gun away from the man.

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“We’re going to give you an offer, instead.” John said seriously.

“What?” the man asked confused.

“We were out here looking for survivors, picking them up if they seem alright. Although you tried to rob us at gun point…” He looked down at the little boy in front of him. He was standing ramrod straight, not daring to move a muscle.

“...but your motives were honest. You don’t seem like a bad guy. Why don’t you come with us?” He asked.

“How can I trust what you’re saying? Who are you guys, anyway?” The last thing the man was expecting in this encounter was to be let go, let alone offered to join them.

“We’re living, breathing regulars. It’s us versus them, now. We don’t have interest in killing regulars.” He said.

The man simply scoffed. “Yeah, well clearly you haven’t been in the city the past few days. There ain’t nothing regular about anything living or infected in there.” John frowned.

“You came from the city?”

“Yeah, why?”

“The city was blown up days ago.” John had seen it with his own eyes. A giant mushroom cloud filling half the cloud had erupted a ways over the city.

“Yeah, well it missed a few spots. A lot actually.” John’s frown turned upside down. If the bombs had not completely decimated the city, there was still a chance that his father, and many others, were still alive!

“That’s a different issue for another time. You seem to lack for food. We happened to have a lot going around back at our base. Do you have others?” John asked.

“Just me and my son.”

“Well, we’re heading south. One of our group has a father that works at the CDC and a mother that works at the NIH. One of the two are bound to have some answers, maybe even the cure. Our best chance of surviving is finding his parents. We have weapons and food. Even a younger boy around your son’s age. Would you like to join us?” John said.

The man did not reply for a while, simply looking at his son. John released the boy and the boy ran over to the arms of his father, who kept him close, ruffling his hair. He looked down at his son and back up at the two young adults.

“Have you killed people?” The man asked. John shook his head. They had not.

“Infected?” The man asked another. John nodded. They had killed many times.

“Will the boy be safe?” The man asked his final question. John hesitated. He could not know the answer to that question. He was not completely confident in protecting themselves. That’s why they had gone out and looked for others in the first place.

Simply, John replied. “That depends on you but it would be a hell of a lot easier than going it alone For either of us.” The man seemed satisfied by this answer and nodded.

“If you’d said yeah to that last one, I would have never agreed. I wouldn’t trust a man that could be that confident in a hell hole like this.”

“My name is John. This is Sophia.”

“Richard, but you can call me Rick.”

John lowered his weapon and walked up to the man. They shook hands.

And such, they had recruited Rick and Lucas.

The infected had been attracted by the gunshot and were making their way over, so the four made a hasty retreat and went back to the Escalade, where John and Richard sat up front while Sophia and Lucas sat in the back. This move was planned ahead to show that they were a team, with the two originally different groups sitting side by side, and also as a contingency plan, just in case the others tried to literally stab them behind their backs.

There were no incidents but despite that, Sophia’s hand never strayed too far from her pistol for the entire ride.

They arrived at the warehouse. David had figured out how the warehouse’s big doors worked and so he flipped the switch and it opened up slowly, allowing passage for the Escalade inside.

Once in the main area, John parked the car and they all went outside.

“Wow. Quite the operation you got going on here.” Rick exclaimed, marveling at the large amounts of food.

“Yeah. We found it a couple days ago. Meet the rest of the group.” John introduced the new additions to the group and they were well received. John’s mother fetched food and water for the two and Abby had already set up a bedding area for them near the others.

They had used the main area as a parking lot to keep their vehicles and also as their sleeping quarters, opting to huddle around in a circle near the door to sleep.

John left the two to mingle with the others and walked up to David.

“There’s a bunch of supplies down at the compound that’s basically untouched.” John said.

“You want to hit the compound? You’ll need a heck of a lot more people to handle that kind of operation.” David exclaimed.

“Yeah, I know. It’s just something to keep in mind for the future. Now that we’ve got Rick, we’ll go with him on a few missions, see if he checks out. I’m going to ask Abby, my mother, and Jacob to accommodate Lucas as best they can. If Lucas wants to stay, I’m pretty sure Rick will want to as well.”

John had little worries about keeping Rick and Lucas in check. In this new world, Rick had suddenly run dry of options in doing enjoyable things with his son and giving him treats. If Lucas found a friend, that would be all it would take to have Rick begging to stay there. Lucas was Rick’s world, and he would do anything to keep him alive and happy. John offered both of those things. What risk was there in bringing them in?

“More importantly…” John looked David up and down. David looked uncomfortable at the critical gaze. “What is it?”

“We need to get in shape.” John said matter of factly. David was stunned that he couldn’t answer for a second.

“We’re going through a legitimate apocalypse. World shattering disaster that might very well drive us to extinction and you’re thinking of working out?” David’s voice rose to almost a shout.

“Yeah, basically.” John had noticed when doing maneuvers avoiding the man’s bullet and trying to get to the kid. That little bit of acrobatics had extremely winded him and he nearly was shot for his slow reactions. Plus, the failed roll had been the most shameful moment possible for such a high stakes situation. He needed to get better at moving his body and building his stamina or else he’d fail worse when fighting the infected, perhaps forfeiting his life in the process.

As such, the two devised a plan to work in an exercise regimen to increase their cardio. Each morning, they would run around the interior of the warehouse, do push ups, and other exercises. John tried doing a pull up, but since he’d never done one before, he failed after being unable to complete one. Sophia saw this, came over, and easily completed a set of 20.

John had gone off to some other place, grumbling that her lighter weight versus muscle mass gave her an advantage or some other excuse of that nature.

John would end the day by going around the outer perimeter of the warehouse with his katana, slicing through heads of infected as he came across them. His radius increased with every lap. David had come along to do some target practice with throwing knives, but after failing to get how to hold the knife so that the blade would actually go into the head, he gave up and went back inside, dejected.

Although somewhat lacking in being a legitimate training plan, it was the best they could come up with in terms of training with the facilities they had. They understood that being in their top form gave them an edge in survival and they needed all the help they could get.

Although only one day had passed since they began, John was so tired he immediately went to bed after a meager dinner of baked beans. He thought that after watching so many movies of campers eating beans over a fire, he would come to appreciate the delicacies that are beans in a can, but he found them to be delightfully bland and not at all as glamorous as what the movies had portrayed it as.

Cursing false advertising, he went to sleep while wondering if he would ever be able to once again enjoy such things as watching a movie.