Aleck and Gwen ~ Thrift Haven"Aleck!" He woke to the sound of urgent calls. He wasn't a morning person, it took him a moment to get fully alert but his body had already reacted getting up and in a fight ready position.
"What's going on?" he asked Gwen as he regained focus and noted there was no immediate danger.
"Raiders!" She cried out pointing towards the steps leading up. How had they found them? What was more how had they gotten into the store?
Aleck ran into their room and looked at the screens on the wall, they were powered by car batteries, he had found a way to convert all the wattage in the battery into usable energy using a converter box. There were thousands of batteries lying around uselessly, he repurposed them. The cameras were always in a dark standby mode, clicking on the mouse that controlled the computer which was the "server" for the cameras brought them out of this power saving mode. Three cameras revealed four raiders on the bottom floor and three more outside. They were well armed and they were trying to break into the door that led upstairs. They knew they were up here, the two who weren't moving things out of the way that blocked the door were pointing their guns at the door. The three outside were pointing their guns at the windows.
These raiders might have been part of the group that had at one point suffered a loss at Aleck's had, he tangoed with many of them in the early days when looters and raiders were common. He had killed his fair share of men who wanted to take his sister or their food and supplies.
They were already kicking at the door breaking it apart. There were things on the other side of the door to slow them down further but that only bought them a minute or two.
"Grab everything you can," Aleck told Gwen who had been standing behind him. She headed off to fill duffel bags with canned food and clothes. All their water was always inside bags for quick mobility because water remains the single most important resource in the world.
Aleck went to the closet in the room and grabbed the two duffel bags on the ground, it had amazed Aleck what people considered important. When fecal matter hit the fan people rushed to steal and take guns from anyone and everywhere but failed to take into consideration the importance of other things such as explosives. He had found a Humvee completely looted of guns and bullets but cases of frag, flash, incendiary, and concussion grenades were left behind. Originally he had the entire closet full of all kinds of explosives but as time went by he had been forced to use more and more to fight survivor groups and hordes of undead. Now all he had were two duffel bags worth.
He went to the kitchen and grabbed the water bag and let Gwen carry the bag full of clothes and food.
"Stay behind me ok?" Aleck told her.
"Ok," she nodded. She wasn't scared, Aleck always made her feel safe even now that their lives were threatened she felt no fear. It came with having absolute faith in a person to protect you at all costs.
"Well here goes nothing," He said and went to the "living room" and opened a metal case. There was a single walkie talkie inside. He turned it on and adjusted it to the right frequency and clicked the send button. Instantly two bombs went off blowing two separate cars outside sky high. One of the men outside was killed by the concussive force of the explosion another was fatally wounded by the shrapnel, the third was rendered unconscious. Flipping the frequency again two more bombs went off blowing the wall in the room and the wall in the kitchen. The Thrift store was connected to another three buildings the removal of the walls gave them a new escape. Flipping for the third time through the frequencies he set the switch to the universal frequency for all the bombs placed throughout the building. He pressed the button once they were already heading for the stairs of the neighboring building.
There were enough explosives to not only level the thrift store collapsing it on top of the remaining four raiders but there were also explosives outside the building under cars and other buildings. The explosives under cars and out in the streets were designed to repel an excessively large horde and the bombs in other buildings were designed to draw attention and keep the undead from going the right way.
Outside waiting for them was a four wheel
ATV painted military green with a trailer attached to the back, they dropped the bags into the back.
Aleck gave Gwen the keys and told her to drive yelling out directions as they went, as for him, he stood in the back with the rifle loaded and scanning the area for other raiders. The Haven was up in flames, the smoke, fire, explosions and demolition could all be seen and heard as they headed down the road. If only Gwen hadn't been with him he would have risked fighting to keep the Haven, but he didn't want her to get hurt in any form or fashion. He would rather have wasted the Haven in exchange for her absolute safety.
They stopped several blocks away far out of sight of the fallen Haven, Aleck wanted to organize everything before they got any further.
"There," He pointed to an open field. It was dangerous to stop anywhere with limited visual range, one could find themselves walking straight into a trap or be assaulted by unseen undead. Stopping in the open field did reveal them to any that may be watching them but it also gave them the advantage of seeing anyone approach them.
"What's wrong?" Gwen asked as she guided the ATV off road and into the grass stopping in the middle of the park's field.
"I need to switch out some things," He replied getting off. He unslung the rifle and took off his coat. "Wont take that long. Keep an eye out."
"Ok," Gwen replied immediately beginning to scan the area. "You missed dinner night you know and I can smell alcohol on you."
"I found some survivors," he told her. After removing his coat he began unloading it and stuffing everything in the appropriate bag. He also took out some things from the bag and stuffed them into the coat. "There was a young girl, her name was Emma. She had gotten hurt and I wanted to help her so I patched her up."
"Really?" Gwen asked a little bit surprised. She believed her brother to be an angel, to be the greatest man in the world, reliable and strong, but deep down she also understood he was anti-social, emotionally different, and even potentially psychologically insane. Deep, deep down she felt it, there was something wrong with him helping someone who wasn't her. Down in that level she understood it clearly, but on the surface, in the more aware part of herself, only a small bell of surprise went off, it was small insignificant but noticeable enough that she reacted to it, but did not understand it completely. She only knew that it was a surprise, the reason escaped her.
"Yes," he nodded, thinking nothing of her surprise. "I wanted to bring her to the haven but we met a larger group. There was a conflict with some potential raiders, though we were shot at by only a single individual. the group broke up. I couldn't keep them together."
Not that I even tried, he thought to himself.
"I offered the girl a chance to come with me," he continued. "But she preferred to remain with the group of strangers. This group had a pregnant woman and a man on a bike who seemed rather worried about protecting that woman since he bolted with her on his bike as soon as the bullets went off. I don't know how she believed they would even find these two again but her reason for staying with them was because she wanted to help the pregnant woman, not that it did any good for the woman or for the girl."
"Why did you tell them about the Haven?" Gwen pointed out. "They all would have been safe there."
"I wanted to," Aleck lied with a straight face. He was now checking the rounds and properly dispersing them into different pockets organizing them in a way that would maximize their retrieval and fast reload. "But this group seemed adamant in finding the pregnant girl. I didn't want to waver their resolve to go find their friends. I was on my way back however, when the raiders found them. You remember the southern raiders?"
"Yes," Gwen nodded. "The ones who came to the haven, they were raiders from that camp too weren't they?"
"Yes," he nodded. He had seen the guns in their hands, mostly police issue. "Well another group found them. I only heard the gunshots and screaming. I was simply too far away to make a difference, I only got there to watch them take them away."
"Wow," Gwen shook her head. It saddened her to think that people could be so monstrous to each other, she had never seen someone get shot, raped, or killed, unless you included undead people she once knew, but she had never seen a live person get hurt or killed. She didn't want others to suffer, it wasn't right for people to hurt each other, specially not in a world like this where helping one another could only bolster their ability to survive. "What about the girl?"
"She got taken too," he informed her. "She was a little one, maybe a couple of years younger than you, pretty small but she had the strength to survive. Killed a raider too. But she got taken nonetheless. I wanted to find her and rescue her, but I could not."
He decided that he would never elaborate the rest of that story to her or anyone else, it hurt too much to think that he knew exactly where she was and he had just abandoned her.
"So..." Gwen noted the slight down in Aleck's mood, his emotions were always light things that could only be noticed by someone who had spent most of their lives with them. A normal person would have noticed nothing, nothing at all, but Gwen felt it more than saw it, how it made him feel down thinking about the survivors. She decided to switch the topic, no point in staying on the same subject if it would only produce negativity. "Where to now?"
"I...am going to pay the raiders a visit," Aleck responded. "They need to know that they don't own the right to do as they please."
Donning on the coat he shouldered the rifle and got back on the ATV resuming his former position.
"Let's move out," he told her and started pointing the way southeast to the raider complex.
