Chapter 13: Recruiting

By the next morning, Lucas and Jacob had become fast friends. Jacob was a few years older so he enjoyed being the older one for a change while Lucas just enjoyed the company of a new friend.

Rick had been passed out most of the morning and they let him sleep. He had been through a lot trying to protect his family.

When John woke up, he saw that Rick was not among them. Not completely having put his trust in the man, John walked around looking for him. He found Rick outside the warehouse, looking towards the city. It glowed with the raging fires that were still alive throughout the city, lighting it up like an ember against the dark blue dawn sky.

“What are you doing out here?” John asked casually.

“Remembering.” The both didn’t say a word for a while. “It’s only been a bit over a week since it all happened but it feels much longer than that. It’s like the life I led before was simply a dream.”

“What did you do..before?”

“I was an architect. Pretty damn good one, too. If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve built myself a bunker.” Rick chuckled. “Not like I had the money to, anyways.”

Rick turned his head to John. “What about you? What did you do.”

John shrugged. “Mostly little things. Fighter of the infected, Saviour of Children and Fathers, but most of the time I was student.”

“College?”

“High school.” John replied. Rick was surprised. John hadn’t shaved once in that time so he had developed a stubble and the events that occurred up to that point seemed to have aged him considerably.

“Must have had it tough, protecting your mother and brother like that for so long.”

John shrugged. “I had friends.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Rick nodded, looking back at the city. He patted his legs, dusting them off.

“Well, I’m going to head back in. Coming?”

“Yeah.” They headed back in together.

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John began doing his “exercises” before breakfast. As he was doing laps around the warehouse, Sophia was sitting on a crate, watching as he would go passed her.

“You realize this is stupid, right?” Sophia yelled after John as he went by the second time.

John slowed down and jogged in place.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Sophia hopped down from the crate she was sitting on, lightly landing on her feet. “...that this training won’t help you a lot out there. Yeah, sure. Building cardio is great, but that’s not going to do you much good other than for running away unless you know how to use it right.”

“Okay. You think you can do better? John taunted. He kept his tone playful but secretly he was a little annoyed at her pointing out his flaws. She walked up so close to him that their noses almost touched. She looked into his eyes.

John started to lose himself in her eyes when suddenly he felt a force pushing into the back of his leg, causing him to fall backward. Sophia’s hand grabbed his throat and pushed him down to the ground, slamming his back into the cold hard concrete. John had all his breath knocked out of him as he groaned in pain.

Sophia’s face appeared in front of his vision, looking down at him. Her brown hair cascading down to brush his face, the light from the morning sun basked her head in a garland of light.

“I know I can do better.” She said, smiling. She got up and walked back as she watched John struggle to stand.

“What was that for?” He asked, rubbing his bruised back.

“You want to improve yourself, but you need is experience. I’ll spar with you.” She said, loosening her muscles by doing various stretches. She jumped up and down, shaking her arms and cracking her neck.

John put his hands on his hips, leaning back and checking his back. He looked down in thought and then looked up at her.

Shaking his arms, he bent down into a ready stance. Seeing this, Sophia also took a stance.

And so began an almost hour long sparring session between the two. As Sophia knocked him down again for the umpteenth time, David walked up to them.

“Hey. It’s time to make the run.” He said.

“I’ll be there in 5 minutes.” Sophia said, standing up.

John just tiredly waved his hand in acknowledgement while still on the ground.

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After changing into their regular clothes, John, Sophia, and Rick got into the car, armed to the teeth with weapons. John brought along his katana.

As they drove out of the warehouse, they made their way towards the city. Rick had said some parts of the city had been untouched by the scope of the bombing so they decided to check those areas closest to them to see if they could pick up survivors, gather supplies, and ascertain the situation in the city.

Rick directed the others towards his workplace, an old apartment complex next to the west of the city that had not been hit by the explosion. As trees and grasslands made way for small suburban homes and office buildings, they started coming closer to the apartment building. As they were going down the street, they noticed a lack of people. John had expected there to be some regulars in the area but they seemed to have gone elsewhere in a hurry, some even leaving their doors hanging open as they sped off to some other place.

As they made their way through the area, they stopped and entered several of the houses. John and the others had decided that they had enough food to last them ages, so what they were looking for were things that would be hard to come by. In a few hours, they had combed through dozens of houses, taking toilet paper, towels, blankets, power tools, and even a few generators. They were running out of space when Sophia suggested they get another car. Indeed, there were cars that were almost untouched and accessible.

However, John was reluctant to choose just any car. Ever since he was young, John liked two things when they came to cars and most things in general. They had to be black, and they had to be uniform. So, John was keeping his eyes out for another car that would fit those criteria. Surprisingly, it was hard to find another black Escalade when he was actually looking for it.

Sighing out of John’s stubbornness, Sophia and Rick decided to keep searching houses. Soon they had packed their car with enough supplies that they were bursting at the seams. They made a quick return to the base and dropped off the supplies and returned out. There was still some light left in the day and they decided to hit a hospital. They had decided that medicine was next on their list so they made their way around the destroyed city to find an intact hospital or clinic.

They hadn’t found a hospital, however. The hospitals were located into the city or at the south end and they didn’t have enough time to go there. Instead, they found a local pharmacy and parked in the lot. As they stepped out, suddenly, another two cars drove into the lot, surrounding them.

Two groups of people numbering around 8 people stepped out of the cars and started walking towards them. The groups consisted of six men and two women, carrying baseball bats and some carrying pistols.

“Shit. What do we do?” Rick muttered nervously. He gripped the handle on his door tightly.

John was also stumped. If it was a few people, they could deal with them easily, but with so many of them there, it would be hard to negotiate their escape. Suddenly, he remembered.

“Oh! We can use that thing.” John asked Sophia to hand him his bag. As he was rummaging through it, Rick was getting more nervous. Sophia pulled out her assault rifle and got ready for a possible fight.

“Close your eyes.” John said as he took out an object. He rolled down the window a little, letting in the cold night air. He threw out a metal object.

“Cover your ears!” Suddenly, a flashbang erupted in the parking lot, letting out an extremely loud noise and a piercing light. The men outside were blinded and hearing impaired, stumbling around.

John, who had covered himself, was not as affected, but his ears were ringing. He got out of the car and pointed his gun at the people with pistols. As they were stumbling, many had dropped their weapons. However, others were trying to shoot blindly, aiming their weapons at what seemed to be the direction of the car. John and Sophia had both gotten out almost immediately and either shot the gun out of their hands, or in Sophia’s case, disarmed them manually. They kicked the guns and weapons out of the way and when the people came to their senses, they saw three people pointing assault rifles at them. Frightened, some even tried to run but were stopped by a bullet near their feet.

“Look. We didn’t mean no trouble. We just wanted to get whatever food and supplies you had on you and we would have let you go. I swear.” The man who spoke was a large man with a balding head. He wore round glasses and had a scruffy beard that was peppered with white hairs. As John looked at the people, he noticed that none of them matched with the image of roaming bandits that he would see in the movies.

“These are just regular people.” John remarked to Sophia in a low voice.

“People that just tried to rob us of everything we have.” Sophia replied. John had nothing in defense for them, other than that these people, very much like them, were doing what they had to do to survive.

John walked back up to the man.

“What’s your name?” He asked. The man looked up in confusion.

“It’s James. James Gallagher. Look, please let us go. Some of us have families.” He said.

“You should have robbed the houses. Anything else would have worked.” John replied.

“We’d already been through them. We needed food. The stores and the markets had already been picked dry in the outer parts of the city. If anybody had food, it would have been you. There was no other choice.”

“That’s a shit excuse.” John grunted.

“Yeah well, you try living out here for almost two weeks with a bunch of infected roaming around the inner city and the only places to get food were already raided by others before you. See if you would still be so closed minded as to not provide for those you care about no matter what shameful things you have to do.” James growled back. His face turned a bit red with anger and frustration. As John looked closer, many of them did seem as if they hadn’t eaten in days.

“Is there food in there?” John pointed towards the pharmacy that also acted as a mart.

“Picked clean.”

“What about medicine?”

“Gone.” John cursed under his breath. They’d been searching for nothing. Indeed, they hadn’t found much in the houses in terms of food. They’d primarily taken blankets, toilet paper, and other things the others probably had more than enough of.

John thought for a while. Would he be able to take these people in. He didn’t trust these people that much but they seemed to be regular people, people that had normal lives before the outbreak. If anything, they were desparate. Desparate is good, John thought. If they were desperate but not ruthless, they still had a chance at bringing them in. If he threw them a bone, they would definitely bite.

“Do you have families?” John asked.

“Some of us do. I lost my daughter in the outbreak. Jack and George have wives. Harry, Pete, and Dan are alone. Jess and Rachel are by themselves as well.” James made a roll call with a bunch of names. John wasn’t good with names. He forget their names even before James was finished with the introductions. I’ll learn them later,John thought.

“How many people have you robbed like this?”

“None. You’re the first group.” John kept quiet for a minute.

“We could take you somewhere safe.” John said. Everyone looked at him when he said that.

“We’ve got a shelter. It’s relatively safe and we have food, supplies. We could bring you all into the group, but that would require a level of trust that I don’t think we’ve established yet.” John knew that they could accommodate a lot more people in the warehouse and he wanted to recruit them. They hadn’t robbed before and they didn’t seem experienced at killing. Most likely, they had banded together some time after the outbreak and hid out in some hole until they ran out of food, forcing them to come out to scavenge. Seeing the city destroyed or picked clean, they had no other options but to try their hand at turning to violence against other regulars.

“If what you say is true, we’ll do anything.” James said slowly, unable to believe what he had said. There was no way that someone would offer to take an entire group in and supply them with food and shelter for nothing. It could more likely be a trap.

“If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine. We’ll find others.” John said, turning to leave.

“Wait! We never said that. We just can’t trust you either.”

John nodded. He took out something from his pocket.

He walked up to the kneeling man and showed it to him. It was a picture. He had found an old polaroid camera in one of the houses and had taken several pictures of the warehouse with it.

“This is…?” James asked.

“Pictures of the warehouse we have. It has enough food to feed a thousand people for months and a hundred for years.” John said.

“What do you say.” John asked, putting out his hand. “Do you want to join us?”

James looked towards his companions who were leaning over to see the pictures. Seeing so much food, their eyes grew wide in shock. They looked at each other and an understanding came to pass between them. James nodded at John and reached out his own hand and took John’s. They shook hands.

“We’re in.”

John nodded.

“Let’s go to your place and pick up your people. We’ll go to the base afterwards.” John said, hopping back into his driver’s seat.

“What are you waiting for?” John asked the stunned group of people who had suddenly been saved from their situation. Hearing John, they scrambled to their cars. James rode in the front seat with John in the Escalade and they moved forwards towards the new recruits’ base.