Discernment

Chapter 40

The stranger's offer was truly promising; they live in this large community taking place in a local college across the bank of water to the right of us. The girl who rode up on th horse told us that they have numerous buildings, around eight of them. Half of which are all filled with the classrooms fit to be like actual homes. They have a building filled with food and supplies such as toilet paper and other useful goods and that's set up in the cafeteria of the school but they added shelves and whatnot to make it seem as a pre-apocalyptic store. They even have a trading system with Angus, the Scottish black man and another community, that will appear if you follow the levy and find a port with a large government building, where they offer him protection and help on the farm and in return they get half of his crops where then it would be split in two for the two communities.

"What do you guys think? Sound like an offer you can take up?" Kylie, the girl on the horse, asks us with an eager smile. "I'm considering it. We are of course going to have to see around this place first before we make a final decision." I explained to her. "Well, if that's the case, we're going to have to call you guys a boat. It's a long drive to the nearest bridge. We'll take your vehicles to the community, and then if you guys decide you don't want to stay, you can take them from there and leave. We'll even fill up the gas tanks for ya'. Seem okay to you guys?" Kylie asks.

"I suppose so. But let me fill you in on something. If we do decide to leave, you better have not done anything to those vehicles other than fill it up on gas. If anything else is done to them, we're coming back to kill you. Do I make myself clear?" I warned the girl. Her joyish expression fades into a blank stare and she simply nods. "I..I'll call a boat then." Kylie replies, and reaches into her satchel, pulls out a horn, same kind of horn they used to warn when enemies were attacking in the Middle Ages. She puts it up to her mouth and does an interesting pattern with each toot. "A boat should be arriving any minute. Just stick around until it does." Kylie says after she climbs off of the horse.

I turn to Theodore standing alone off the side of us as Kylie was calling for her people to give us a ride down the levi. "Theodore.. Do you still have those glasses?" I mutter to him quietly. "Y-Yeah.. I picked them up to remind me of what a terrible plan it was.. To pretend I was blind." Theodore gloomily replies. "It.. It wasn't all bad because right now.. I need you to play that blind character again.. And when we get in this new community, I'm going to have you walk around and spy on everyone, learn as many weak points. and any secrets about this place as you can, in case we actually have take this place down. Then I'm going to set a place for us to meet back up." I order him.

"I.. I don't know if I can play that character again, Thomas? It's just so.. Wrong.." He claims. "Listen, Theodore, it may have been wrong then because you were using it for your own personal use, though right now you'd be helping us out by doing this for us.." I convince him. "Yeah, fine.. Whatever. Just tell me when and where we're meeting at." Theodore finally agrees and rushes his words out when the boat arrives to take us to the community.

The boat stops close to the edge and three men climb out, greeting us and getting into our vehicles. We glared at them and then turned our attentions to the man driving the boat. He was a small man, has dwarfism, but he looked tougher than hell. "Welcome! I'm Charles. Call me Lucky, Seven, or the combination of the two or just my name. Doesn't matter. I reply to it all. Anyways, it'll be a few minutes before we arrive, so just sit tight, and listen to me about who I am and what I do for this place if you'd like." He says and looks up to us as we each climbed into the boat.

I came on last after Quinton sets Washington in and helps Abira hop in and I did the same with Theodore to make him look the part, and then I set him down on one of the seats. I look to the cars driving away with Kylie riding her horse alongside them, then look over to Charles steering the boat around. "So, what I do around here is that I watch over the boats and keep track of them, take care of them, all that good stuff. We built a dock, you'll see it in a few, and we have over thirty boats between us and the port community. Everyday I wake up earlier than everyone else, the same time as the snipers switch shifts, and I count, clean, and ready the boats for those who go fishing to just hop in and leave whenever.. Speaking of which, I sure do hope you folks like fish. That's our main dish." Charles continued and turns a corner leading us to a large pond where we see numerous boats surrounding a large wooden deck.

If you moved your eyes to just above that, you'd see these outstanding walls that were filled with people watching for any danger, and numerous watch towers that would pop up if you followed the walls. I counted four towers total, that's all I could see from this angle at least. "Well, now you know what I do around here, Kylie's waiting for you at the gate, just meet her there. Nice meeting y'all. Hope to see some of you to come fishing in the mornings when you get settled in." Charles smiles while we turned our attention to the community standing before us and started walking toward Kylie. "Gates open!" Kylie calls out to demand the people manning the walls.

As soon as the gates open, Kylie walks inside. There were over a hundred people walking around, many of which were walking through a market that was set up off to the side. Kylie takes us this way first. Our detour through the market, the third merchant in calls out to me, "Hey! Like that bat, guy! Willing to trade it? You won't be sorry!" The man says with the typical merchant smirk. I shake my head no, turning him down. "That's the best merchant in this community. His name's Spencer. You need pretty much anything, he's got it. You just have to make a trade with him." Kylie describes.

While exiting the market portion of the grounds, I started noticed people sitting on the sides of buildings with makeshift tents and can fires. "Why aren't those people living in the houses you made?" I ask. "They were punished. Lost privileges to their homes. We have a serious punishment system around here." Kylie says with a gloomy sigh. "What's the worst punishment that's taken place, bitch?" Athena asks. Kylie looks at her as if she was offended, and shakes her head. "Public executions. It takes place all the time.. About one or two every other week. If you're lucky, you just get exiled or lose those privileges." Kylie says. "So.. Who's the leader around here? I want to meet them. Know more about this place." I ask, and look at the group behind me who's sticking close and staying silent most of the time. "Leader? Oh, no, you've got it wrong. We don't have a leader. We just... Mutually agree on things. Anyways, if you'd like, we can set you up a couple homes for you all to live in." Kylie offers us.

I look at the group, staring at their blank expressions, and I look back at the girl who led us to this place, and I nod. And with a soft tone, I let out the words that would settle our lives another day, or week, or a lifetime. "Set us up with the biggest home you've got. We're not splitting up. Not yet. Not ever."