Chapter 16: Basic Training

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John woke up to the throbbing ache pulsating down his arms. The fatigue that built up while continually swinging the sword had caught up to him and was biting back in full force.

“Hey, you’re awake.” David said to John. John groaned as he struggled to sit.

“How long was I out?” He asked.

“You’ve been asleep for almost the entire day. Looks like you really wore yourself down out there.”

“Yeah. The situation sort of called for it.” John tried to move his arms in circles and stretched the tired muscles. It was like the burning pain you’d have after a workout except a lot worse.

“So what did I miss?”

“Nothing much. Sophia’s out front teaching them how to use the guns properly. But damn, she’s something else.” David sighed.

“What do you mean?” David just motioned for John to follow him.

As they made their way to the entrance, John noticed that almost all the people save for the children and women, were missing.

“Where is everybody?”

“Outside.” John heard the muffled gun shots coming from outside. When they walked out, John was surprised. There, the men and women were standing in two neat rows with their guns at the ready.

“Ready!” Sophia shouted as she stood at the back, pacing to and fro. The people all at once hoisted their guns.

“Aim!” Everyone lifted the guns up, aiming them down the sights. Sophia quickly walked over to one man who was standing slightly wrong. She fixed his stance and he nodded in thanks.

“Fire!” They all shot their bullets, most of them accurately hitting the set of bottles that were lined up 30 paces in front of them.

They continued this for another 40 minutes as they perfected different formations and scenarios. Sometimes they would suddenly be told to fire to their flanks, shooting at imaginary infected that had managed to circle around and attack from the sides. Other times they were told to take cover and shoot behind objects. And still other times they were told to shoot while running, shoot while crouching, crawling, and even after performing a roll.

They rarely shot to conserve ammunition. Sophia would walk up to them and lean in to see if their shots would hit or not. She had pretty good accuracy so based on the people’s angles, she could more or less predict where the shot would hit.

They trained like this until Sophia called for a break. The others nearly collapsed out of exhaustion and talked with each other animatedly. Getting to practice in such a fashion made them excited and made them feel closer as a team.

“This is really legit.” Is all John could muster after watching the training session. Sophia walked up to them and shrugged.

“They still need a lot of work but they’re getting there.”

“How long have they been at this?” John asked. She checked her watch.

“Since around 4 hours ago.” John’s mouth almost dropped open. They were a lot more persistent than he had thought.

“They’re doing this because of you, you know.” David said. John looked at him and back at the people. They had a look of determination in their eyes while wiping their sweat away.

“After what you did for them and fighting a horde of infected, they’d collectively got together and decided that they needed to be a lot more prepared.”

Sophia nodded along. “We made a staggered firing rotation so that we never run into the same mishap as last time with the reloading time. Once one person runs out of ammo, another steps in while he reloads.”

“Did you come up with that yourself?” John asked in amazement.

“Read it in book.” She said with a straight face.

“Ah…” John nodded.

“So when do you expect we’d be ready to head out?” David asked.

“We’ve got a bunch of stuff. Perhaps we can recruit a few more people, start training them into units, mixing the groups so they intermingle and not split up into factions. We’d also probably need a few trucks to transport this much stuff south.”

“Is that a good idea? Hauling an entire warehouse of stuff with us would hinder our progress.” Sophia asked frowning.

“We don’t have the manpower or the confidence to split up the group for people to stay behind and guard it either.” David reasoned. They were stumped. How were they going to get all these people and supplies across several states without losing precious time and jeopardizing their own safety by giving up mobility? Having trucks would be useful but it wouldn’t negate the unwieldiness of the entire situation. They decided that right now, stabilizing and solidifying their own position was the most pressing issue so they postponed that problem for later.

“We still need to a hospital, though.” John remembered. They had all been distracted by the sudden influx of recruits to actually think of going back out to look for the medicine they may need in the future. The hospitals in the outer city had already been picked clean by looters. Many of them were probably already dead but trying to track them all down would take too much time and effort.

“We need to go deeper into the city. Somewhere the looters wouldn’t have touched.” John said.

“Those are filled with infected. There’d be no way anyone would go near one of those places.” Sophia argued. She was right. During the early stages of the spread of the disease, the first patients were brought to the hospitals to quarantine the virus, but it had spread internally, turning most of the people inside. There were probably hundreds of infected to clear out in each building before they would have access to the medicine.

“Perhaps we can just go in there guns blazing. I’m sure it’s not too hard to clear a building out if we take it slow.” Sophia frowned. John was really driven, she could admit. But sometimes, he would try to complete his objective no matter the costs.

“You’d be putting a lot of lives in danger, John. I don’t like this idea. The others aren’t ready to handle that kind of mission yet.” Sophia was adamant. She didn’t want others to be hurt because of their goals and she definitely didn’t want John to needlessly throw himself in harm’s way.

Seeing she would not budge on this issue, John just resigned and nodded. They could attempt the hospital run another time.

As Sophia was satisfied, she got back to training the others. David, John, and she also ran alongside the group as they would run laps and do drills. As the second day together came to a close, everyone returned to the warehouse and had dinner before sitting around to talk before curfew.

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The aggressive man from earlier walked up to John. His name was Harry and he was one of the original people that John had recruited. Ever since he joined the first group, he had tried to act as the leader. However, James was always the more amiable and relatable person, winning much of the support of the group. Harry wanted to be in some control over others. He hadn’t realized this was simply his way of dealing with how out of control his life had become, and being in charge of others gave him back some control and sense of security. When he saw that the young boy invited them to the warehouse, he had sneered, thinking that it was a naive kid that wanted to make friends and help people.

He tried to overpower the teen with his age and experience in life, but never expected that the boy would instead turn the situation back onto him.

Enraged by the condescension in John’s tone, he tried to take out his gun to threaten him, but Sophia disarmed him before he could realize what was going on.

Harry later had the chance to redeem his hurt pride in the fight with John but again was humiliatingly defeated. He knew now that John was stronger and a better speaker than him but he still had a lingering desire to be in charge.

This all changed after that night. Watching the hordes of infected moving en masse towards them, Harry nearly peed himself in fright. John’s voice shook him from his stupor but even when he lifted his gun, his arms were weak and shaky, making him miss often.

When John went out in front of them to fight off the infected single handedly, Harry finally accepted the truth.

He’s stronger, faster, smarter, and more experienced than me. Harry was forced to accept the fact that between them, John was the more qualified to lead them. He was still extraordinarily young, but it didn’t change the facts that were presented before him. He was stubborn, but not stupid. After eating dinner with them in comfort, not having to watch his back in terror and wallow in his own shit and piss, he finally felt that everything would be alright with these people.

When he heard John woke up, Harry made his way to him. John was initially wary of the man, having completely even forgotten his name other than the fact that he was against John, was surprised at what he said.

“I’m sorry. I acted rashly the other day. Wasn’t thinking straight, I guess. Your performance the other day convinced me. I have no problems with letting you make the decisions. No hard feelings?” He asked, stretching out his hand.

John looked at it for a second before grabbing it.

“Yeah. No hard feelings.” Harry broke out into a smile. He grabbed John by the shoulder and they walked back to the group to eat.

“By the way.” Harry said. “What do you think of letting me be in charge of my own unit some day?”

John shrugged. “If you’re good enough.”

Harry’s grin widened and he laughed harder. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Harry thought.

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As the others sat down to eat, Abby walked over to Sophia, who had been entertaining Jacob’s questions on guns.

“Sophia.” Abby called out. Sophia looked up and saw Abby wanting to talk to her. She excused herself from Jacob.

“What’s up?” Sophia asked her. They hadn’t talked much, what with Abby busy helping John’s mother take care of the kids and inventory everything in the warehouse while Sophia was going out recruiting with John. That was, however, precisely the problem.

Abby had finally come to terms with the deaths of her parents and brother but as she did, she slowly began to realize how useless she had been in the group. She had barely contributed and it made her feel like dead weight. She didn’t want to drag down the group that had saved her so she desperately looked for something to do.

She didn’t care for killing people at first, but she soon realized that she was utterly talentless. She wasn’t as calculating and disciplined as David, athletic and trained as Sophia, or charismatic and driven as John. They each had a place in the group but she felt like the odd one out. I’m like the ugly duckling amongst a family of lions, she thought.

Racking her brain on what to do, she was awoken from her musing the other night by the sound of gunfire. She looked outside to see that the group were fighting hundreds of infected. Each one had a purpose, but when she saw they had to stop to reload, she gasped. When John walked up and started covering for them with his sword, she was mesmerized. He was the cornerstone in their group and was supporting them all single handedly. There was no way to describe it but as awe and gratitude.

She thanked him for his efforts that night and went to bed feeling even more useless. John was out there fighting infected single handedly but all she could do was hide on the sidelines. She decided that she needed to toughen up, so she approached Sophia the next day.

“Can I join your practice tomorrow?” She asked hesitantly. Sophia’s eyes widened. She didn’t expect the sweetly innocent girl would actually ask to join their shooting practice. But at the same time, she was happy.

“Of course. See you on the field tomorrow evening.” She said. Abby broke out into a grin and nodded excitedly.

“Okay!” She almost saluted before walking off. Sophia just chuckled and shook her head, returning to Jacob.

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After the bombs had fallen, the city was drowned in a sea of fire and an avalanche of collapsing buildings. On one of the hills of rubble stood a man with tousled dark brown hair. His long coat hung loosely around his body as he stood overlooking the bridge that used to connect a portion of the city with the other. The bombs had destabilized it, causing the support wires to snap and collapse half of the bridge. Behind the man, the groans of the infected permeated the silent atmosphere. Occasionally, a shot could be heard ringing out and another infected would fall. The hill of rubble he was standing on was too steep to allow any of the infected a chance to get to him.

Standing off to the side was another man, wiry in nature wearing a cowboy hat as he toted a large hunting rifle leisurely picking off the infected one at a time.

“Stop wasting ammo, Tim.” The man said to the wiry rifler.

“There ain’t no harm in picking off a few here and there. I’m bored out of my mind just waiting here”

“The others will be back in a few minutes. You’re going to attract too many for us to handle if you keep it up.” The man calmly replied.

“Fine.” Tim lifted his gun. As they finished talking, two men walked up to them. One was a tall, heavy built African American carrying nothing but a machete and a backpack too small for his size. His muscles rippled and showed through his tight polo shirt. He seemed to be in his early to mid forties. He walked next to another man who was also equally muscled. This Caucasian man, had a buzz-cut and a large scar running down the line of his jaw.

They both had a hard look to them that screamed they were either veterans or criminals.

“So? Did you find anything?” The man in the coat asked. The African man simply shook his head and responded in a French-Canadian accent that contrasted heavily with his stature.

“There is no way across that bridge. We must find another way around.”

The African man was named Jim and his partner Gary and he used to be in the military. They had originally been stationed at one of the outer city refugee camps but it had been breached by an infected man who managed to sneak in before he turned. The camp quickly fell into ruin and the two had headed out in a stolen jeep at the first chance they could get.

Tim was a bartender who had a knack for hunting, winning several competitions for big game. He had been saved by the man in the coat when he was holding off a particularly tenacious group of infected and decided to join their entourage. Jim and Gary used to be old friends with the man in the coat back when they were in high school so they quickly joined together when they met by chance on the road.

The man in the coat simply looked off in the direction of the suburbs that were located across that narrow channel. His jaws clenched and his dark brown eyes flashed with a light of indescribable worry and determination.

He whispered under his breath.

“I’m coming, bud.”