"Open up."

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Donny opened his mouth wide as Will shined a flashlight inside, checking for signs of anything unusual—like any bacteria growth.

"Stop moving your tongue." Will slapped him on the back when he grew restless and began to playfully lick the tongue depressor. "Alright, you're done. You're next, Grandpa."

Donny stood up and swapped places with Grandpa in the house's clinic.

"Since when did you become a doctor?" Donny asked while Will used a stethoscope to listen for any irregular sounds in his grandpa.

Will shook his head. "I picked up a few basic things from a field doctor I knew. Take a deep breath, Grandpa."

"What are you checking for anyways?"

"To see if you guys caught anything." Will said, checking his grandpa's temperature with a thermometer gun. "How are you feeling? Any aches, coughs, congestion?"

"I'm very healthy." Grandpa reassured.

"Like a virus?" Donny asked.

"Like a cold or covid." Will brought out a rapid antigen testing kits to check for covid. "The Talon virus doesn't play nice with other viruses. If it comes in contact with them during your adaption phase, it could make a real mess inside your body, which often ends up in fatalities."

After finding nothing out of the ordinary with his grandpa, Will turned to Broski.

"Your turn, buddy."

Broski let out a whining noise.

"Don't be such a little diva." Will turned to Donny. "Help me with him."

Once Broski was also cleared, Will covered himself up and went outside to check on the chicken coop as well as the Parasite farm. By the time Will returned to the house, Donny had finished making dinner—which was re-ovened pizza and wings he had somehow managed to find the time to order during the day.

"It'll be our last time eating take out before we have to switch to the stuff we stocked up on." Donny explained.

After finishing dinner and cleaning up, Will gave his room on the second floor to his grandpa while we went into the office across the hall. Although they had been up early and it had been a very long day, he still needed to keep his eyes on things while he still had the chance.

Will sat down at his station and kept track of the news coming out of the internet while he flipped through different frequencies, listening to radio traffic. There were some people calling for help, exchanging information or even just making small talk.

A few hours later, just when he was about to shut it down and get some sleep, one of the proximity sensors he had set up around the compound went off. He quickly turned on the monitors next to him and searched through the hidden surveillance cameras planted around the compound.

After a minute of searching, he spotted movement in a camera near the front of the compound.

Will let out a sigh of relief when he took a closer look. "It's just a raccoon."

The raccoon was sniffing around the fuel tanker Donny parked outside. Just as Will was deciding whether to go out and deal with it, the raccoon squirrelled away after not finding anything. Will couldn't tell if it had turned or not—animals were much harder to judge, but he took note to keep an eye out for it in the morning. Letting out a tired yawn, he shut everything down and went downstairs to get some shuteye.

----------------------------------------

"Remember to stay inside, there was a raccoon snooping around last night and I couldn't find it earlier." Will reminded his grandpa as Donny packed the last of their equipment in the armored jeep.

They woke up at first light in the morning, and after a perimeter check, had breakfast and then began preparing for their trip.

The two were completely covered and armored up from head to toe. They each were equipped with a glock 19, tactical knife, pepper spray, smoke grenade, riot shield, climbing pick and rope, and a halligan bar—a useful multi-purpose tool used by firefighters for forcible entry. From afar, the two could be mistaken as a pair of riot police officers.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"The two of you take care out there. I'll watch the house." Grandpa said.

"See ya, Grandpa Wong." Donny said, Grandpa nodded at him in return.

"You take care of Grandpa." Will said to Broski, giving him a head pat.

"Woof woof."

Will got into the driver seat while Donny went ahead to open and close the gate. The two were soon on the road.

"Where to first?" Donny asked.

"We'll get our shopping list done first before people scavenge everything."

They arrived at the first destination they long had their eye on short after, a gun store. The doors to the store were already wide open. The two parked a little away and approached slowly with their shields up.

When they carefully peeked inside, they found the place had already been ransacked. All the firearms had already been taken away and there were mostly only miscellaneous items and accessories leftover.

"Damn, yo...people work fast."

They had a choice of either the gun shop or fuel tanker for Donny to take and had decided that securing the 8000 gallon fuel tanker was a higher priority. In any case, they already had pistols.

"Probably the employees taking away most of it. We'll take those." Will pointed at a rack in the back with a couple crossbows on them. "We can always use a backup pair."

After packing away the crossbows, they drove down the empty streets, dodging abandoned vehicles. Corpses could be seen strewn about here and there, and sometimes they could see people peeking at them from behind their windows. Some of them even came out and called for help but Will continued driving on.

"Ignore them. There's too many people, we can't help them all or we'll never get anything done." Will said when he saw Donny's discomfort.

"Yeah...I guess." Donny glanced at the rearview mirror. "I just didn't realize it would feel this bad, seeing them up-close. Especially when I know some of them are going to die."

"That's just the way things are now. If you want to make a difference, get stronger. Otherwise, you'll just have to get used to it."

They found a supermarket not long after. Although it had already been raided—with goods scattered all over the floor, the supermarket was still half stocked. Will noticed a cashier counter with bills and loose change spread all over when they passed by.

They grabbed a shopping cart full of a wide selection of different dog foods, treats, and accessories for Broski.

When they made it all the way down the aisle, a trio of zeroes appeared from around the corner. While Donny was scrambling to get his gear in position—getting his riot shield caught on the shopping cart, Will acted quickly and pushed one of them away with his shield and dug the pick of his halligan bar into it's head. Kicking away the now dead for good corpse, he aimed his pick at the second zero while making sure to keep his shield between himself and the third one.

When he was about to hit the second zero, the third one slammed into him, causing his attack to not penetrate deep enough. Will had to spend extra effort to push the third zero away from his shield and slam his pick on the other zero a second time. Donny finally caught up with him and finished off the third one—taking four tries before he got the right amount of strength and the right angle.

"My bad, bro."

"You'll get used to it." Will breathed. "That's one of the objectives of this trip. It only gets worse from here."

"What were they doing in here..." Donny said as he walked around the corner to see a half devoured corpse with its guts spilled out. He immediately doubled over and puked his breakfast all over the floor.

Will patted him on the back. "You'll-"

"Get used to it...I know." He groaned with tears in his eyes, spitting out the bad taste in his mouth.

After making sure there were no more surprises, they moved the shopping cart out of the store, making sure to clean their gear with sanitizer they found on the way out—Donny had to clean some gunk from the inside of his face shield because he couldn't move it up in time.

On the way out, Donny added 3 hundred dollar bills to the cashier counter.

Outside, they ran into a middle age man and woman—who Will presumed were husband and wife, armed with a monkey wrench and baseball bat. Will frowned when he saw how they were dressed in regular clothes and waved at Will and Donny when they spotted them.

Donny waved back. "It's cleared."

"Thanks." "Thank you." They replied and quickly headed into the supermarket.

"That was weird..." Donny said, looking back at the couple. "If we didn't run into those roamers, it would have felt like we were just grocery shopping."

At their next destination, Will made sure to park a block away behind a store.

"Get the drone." He said as they exited the jeep.

Donny fished out a drone from the trunk and while Will played with the controller. It was soon flying in the air towards the police station a block away.

Will had asked Donny to get Mikey to find out the name of the arresting officer on the warrant. Once they had a name, it was simple to track down which station they worked out of.

As the drone approached the large building, they discovered that it had been barricaded. Will moved it in for a closer look. All the windows on the first floor had been covered with curtains and the glass doors were blocked with furniture stacked up behind them. The plaza in front of the entrance was covered in blood but there were no bodies.

Will moved the drone up to the second storey windows. A few of them were blocked by curtains but he found some that gave a full view of the rooms. They were empty offices that had their desks removed. Suddenly, Will saw movement in the corner of the screen.

"Did you just see that?" Donny asked.

"I saw."

Will turned the drone up to look at the third floor, there a man wearing body armor and a hoodie over top was peeking out the window with a rifle in his hands aiming at the drone.

The screen abruptly turned black.

Bang!

A gunshot echoed from the distance an instant later.

"We're going to need to stop by the electronic store now to get more drones." Will sighed.

"Of course, it can't be easy." Donny muttered.