Know thyself, Know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories

- Sun Tzu -

After checking to make sure all the dead stayed that way. Murphy turned to Saunders “Saunders go check them for any injuries. Let me know if any of them are infected.” Glancing back to the scouts he keyed into his mic “ Scouts mark the bodies for the cleanup crew.”

Saunders went to go check on the civilians and introduced himself to them his thick accent showing itself. “Hello lads my name is Saunders. I’m the squad medic. I’d like to check each of you for injuries and get em cleaned up if possible.That way we can make sure nothing gets infected or anything like that.”

He started off with the young man who had nearly been taken down during the fight. He was breathing softly still laying in the middle of the others and had curled himself into a ball, cradling his right arm. He looked up as saunders approached. Pain was evident in his features and his eyes were half focused and glazed over. Seeing the signs of an injury, Saunders held out his empty hand and knelt next to him saying. “Hey bruv why don’t you let me see that injury you got there? Maybe i can see if i can’t fix what’s causing you all that pain eh.”

The young man uncurled and sat up, releasing the hold on his hand. The hand was covered in blood and had a jagged stump where his ring finger should have been. The finger was missing all the way down to the knuckle. The end of the bone was broken into a sharp point and there was a rotten tooth still stuck in the flesh below the wound. It had stopped bleeding and began to congeal into a viscous black and green goo.

Saunders gave a sharp intake of breath as he looked at the wound and pulled out his med kit that was on the small of his back along with the canteen that was attached to his vest. He made a saline solution and cleaned the wound wrapped it in gauze and removed the tooth, putting the tooth into a clear plastic bag. “Alright mate this will hold you over till we get you to the hospital. I’m going to go check on the rest of your mates. Just keep pressure on it and you’ll be alright.” Smiling at the young man he got up and checked the other civilians who only had some superficial scratches and a couple of bruises.

After he treated all of their wounds he walked back over to Murphy. “Ey boss it looks like the kid over there was bitten.” Sighing and running a hand through his hair Murphy forced himself not to glance at the kid. “You sure it’s a bite Saunders?” Saunders made sure his back was to the civilians and showed the bag with the tooth in it to him “Yeah pretty sure. I pulled this out of his hand when i was cleaning up the wound.”

Murphy sighed “This complicates things even more.” Then keyed into the command channel for his radio “Alpha leader to Command.” and waited for the response which came quickly, a monotone voice responding. “Go ahead for command Alpha leader” Keying back in “We have an issue. There’s a group of civilians out here who survived. 3 with minor injuries and 1 infected but not changed. Please advise” after a brief pause command gave their orders “Eliminate any infected. If the other survivors put up any resistance eliminate them as well. Detain them at your current location. We are sending specialists to take care of everything else. Don’t worry about cover up. Just make sure all downed infected are marked” the transmission ended and Murphy muttered a series of harsh expletives under his breath before acknowledging the command.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples then called the rest of the squad to a secluded area that was out of earshot from the civilians. “Alright fellas i just got word from command. We are to eliminate the infected civilian and any of the others who put up any resistance. Then detain them until specialists from command arrive for the cover up.”

The half smile that was on Connall’s face instantly turned into a scowl as he growled in response. His rough gravelly voice was filled with anger “They’re just fucking kids man. What do you mean eliminate them if they put up resistance. Of course they’re gonna put up a fucken resistance. They just went through probably the most traumatic event of their lives together. Their gonna fucking fight like rabid dogs and we’re gonna have to kill a bunch of fucking kids goddammit!” Before he stormed off from the group in a silent fury not wanting to talk anymore.

Watching his departing back Farrell’s soft voice sounded out. “He’s right you know. Those kids are going to be fighting like crazy if we just go over there and try to take away their friend.” He looked up to the sky and thought for a moment. “Maybe we could try talking to them and explain the situation. Kids their age probably know a bit about zombies from all the movies and tv shows out there.Why don’t we just tell them what’s going to happen and we might be able to do this quietly and without a fight. Hell commands sending in the specialists anyway so we’ve got nothing to lose except maybe making them react sooner which won’t be any different if we didn’t tell them.”

Murphy returned his gaze from Connall’s retreating back and looked to the civilians still huddled in their small group. “ Yeah that might be the best choice. Since you came up with the idea though you get to go talk to em. We’ll still be close by if anything goes south. I don’t wanna have to kill no kids anymore than y’all do. Saunders why don’t you go talk to Machagon and explain the plan to him we won’t start anything just yet.”