Suffering: Male Reader x TWDG

Chapter 28: Lead The Way + (Character Competition)

You yank your machete out of the infected's head, its blood slowly drips from the blade. "Ghost keep up!" Bug yells to you. With a spurt of energy, you jog towards him, sheathing your blade as you go.

"Sorry Bug, I had to deal with an infected" you say when you reach him. He nods in acknowledgement and continues walking, you keep by his side so you don't end up getting lost. Hulk's voice squawks over the walkie talkie strapped to your belt, you grab it and hold it up. "Hey can you repeat that? Over" you ask into the microphone.

"I said that we had to deal with a small group of infected, around 20 of them, so it's unlikely the Richmond camp is around here, over". The Rangers are currently split up around the city of Richmond, looking for wherever the people here have set up operations.

"We've had a few infected but not many, over" you respond. Bug kicks a stone as you're walking and it hits an abandoned car. The others start talking on the radio but you put it back on your belt, if they want to talk to you and Bug, they can ask. You're bored of talking to them.

"Shit, Ghost, look at this" Bug exclaims with a bit of excitement. You walk over to where he's standing and frown.

"Umm, what exactly am I supposed to be looking at?" you ask.

He points to the abandoned car that he hit with a stone, it's a black station wagon with armour, something that was definitely added post-apocalypse; "Look how much cleaner this car is compared to the others" he says, "This one isn't even rusty".

"And that means it was used more recently" you say as you put together what he's implying.

Bug leans into the window of the car and looks inside but shakes his head, "Hmm, it doesn't look like it's been used for a while, it's kinda dusty".

You sigh, "Well it is a sign of life at least, maybe we're on the right track to find them after all".

Bug calls in this new development over his walkie talkie, you hear as a burst of chatter erupts on the other end with Anderson's voice booming over it, "Everyone calm down" Anderson says, "Bug and Ghost, wait by the car you found and we'll all make our way to you, there's no need to be so spread apart if we know the rough location they're in".

After about 10 minutes, the others arrive. After a couple days of searching the same city, they're all very eager to finally put an end to this search. Anderson examines the car Bug found and comes to the same conclusion, "Yeah this car was definitely used more recently than the others we've seen so far, but it still hasn't been used in quite a while".

That last bit fills you with dread, hopefully there is a lead and you haven't brought the others here for nothing.

Captain Anderson decides it's best if you don't split up any more as he's worried that Richmond may not be too friendly to strangers, especially since they're currently at war with the Delta. You all begin walking down a nearby road, spread out like usual to better defend against an ambush should one occur.

Walking through the streets of a city brings back memories of the beginning of the outbreak. You and your parents had to escape the city of Atlanta after arriving there to look for refuge at the camps that had been set up by the government. It was a bloodbath and you all watched as the military bombed the city into ruins. Luckily by that point, you had bumped into some of your father's friends from the Marines.

All of you left the city that night and managed to gather a few other people, making camp by a large lake as far away from the city as your vehicles could manage. All of that is gone now, everyone there dead.

"Ghost, focus up" Bear says, giving you a slap on the back. You shake it off and look ahead, there is a commotion and you realise that there is a group of people in front of you. Both the Rangers and this new group aren't taking any chances and both have their guns aimed at the other. You step forward, deciding that diplomacy might be more effective.  

"Umm, hey guys" you say, raising your hands slowly in the air, "We're looking for Richmond".

A skinny man steps forward, lowering his rifle slightly as he does, "Yeah, whadd'ya want?".

"Our group is at fighting with another who call themselves the Delta" Captain Anderson says, stepping forwards to stand next to you.

The skinny man spits a wad of gum onto the ground and looks around at the rest of his group, "Hmm, yeah we know those fuckers, we're at war with them".

You look around at them, starting to get a little irritated that they can't understand what Anderson was implying, "Well we were wondering if you wanted to create some sort of alliance together with us" you blurt out.

The man smirks and pops a new piece of gum into his mouth, chewing it noisily. "Oh yeah? And how do I know I can trust you?".

This time Cutter steps forward, "Because we outgun you and could've easily killed you by now". This statement is true, you look at them and realise that the only one with a rifle is the chewing gum guy, the rest of them have melee weapons and only a couple of them have handguns; however, they aren't brandishing them so chances are that they don't have the ammunition for a fight.

The chewing gum guy sees you eyeing their weapons and shrugs, "Is that true?" he asks as he raises an arm in the air, giving a thumbs down. Instantly a bullet cracks through the air, hitting the ground near your feet, "Next time it'll be aimed at your head" he says calmly. Your eyes dart around trying to identify the unknown gunman's position. "I think you'd find that we actually outgun you" he adds with another smirk "So don't try anything stupid".

A walkie talkie strapped to the chewing gum man's backpack crackles and a voice can be heard on the other end, "Hey Frank, we heard a gunshot, are you okay?" a slightly panicked voice asks on the other end.

The chewing gum guy rolls his eyes and grabs the walkie talkie, "Yes Gabe, we're fine. We ran into another group who claim to be fightin' the Delta and well, we're havin' a little chat".

"Oh" the voice on the other end of the walkie talkie squawks, "I'll tell Javi. He'll want to know about this".

Frank sighs as you all wait patiently.

"So I guess we're waiting for this Javi guy now" Cutter mutters to himself, just loud enough for everyone to hear.

It only takes a couple of minutes before a new voice is heard over the walkie talkie. Frank steps away and lowers the volume of the walkie, holding it up to his ear to hear it. After some hushed talking, Frank tells the others to lower their weapons and looks over to Captain Anderson, "Despite my opinion, Javier seems to want to meet y'all so you'll follow us back to Richmond and I guess we'll see what comes of it".

You all glance at each other and Goldilocks shrugs.

"Sounds good" Anderson says to Frank, "Lead the way".

A/N: I want to have some sort of competition for you all so here it goes:

I want you to create your own characters for this book and I will pick some to be used in the future. Just comment your character on this chapter and I will go through them.

-Your character needs to have:

-A name

-A gender (Male or Female)

-Brief description of appearance

-Age

-And some personality traits (Talkative, nervous, angry, etc)

You can create as many characters in the comments as you want.

Have fun!

(The competition will be open until I finish writing this book so you can have a go at creating a character even if you are late to this chapter).