Midnight Malfunction

Chapter 3

Ryan woke up in the morning in what seemed to be a non-ruined apartment. At first, he didn't understand what was going on, he was laying on a mattress with a blanket covering him. He felt cozy as if he was at home. His bag was placed right next to him, so he picked it up, stood up, and put it on.

'What is this place?' Ryan asked himself quietly, 'Who brought me here?'

He scouted the little room he was in. It was a fully-furnished room that seemed to belong to a little girl, the walls were painted pink, there were curtains with unicorns covering a window that looked out to the destroyed buildings. There was a desk with many notebooks with scribbles drawn inside. Ryan walked up to the desk, cautiously, still not being sure he was safe. The notebook was full of really nice drawings of birds, waterfalls, the city and two people, the same man and his daughter that Ryan saw in the backpack last night.

There were also posters of different movies on the wall, and what looked to be a school project. The name that was signed was Sarah. Just Sarah. And a smiley face next to it.

Ryan sighed, 'I never got to see that one,' he thought when he saw a poster of a kids movie he always wanted to go to when he was little.

The overall mood of this kids bedroom made Ryan think about the good things in life.

Just when the boy was about to try and open the window, the door creaked open. Ryan automatically turned around, unaware of what was coming for him. However, Ryan recognised the face that came inside the room.

'Don't worry boy, I won't harm ya, I just wanna see if you're ok, yeah?' The man spoke.

'Who are you, where are we, and why am I here?' Ryan started questioning whilst backing away from the man.

'First of all, the name's John, John Batter. I see you've gotten the note I left back at the factory building. This is headquarters, where me and the crew set up camp,' John explained, 'Come, lemme introduce you, by the way, what was your name?'

'Ryan,' the boy answered.

John led Ryan to the other room, where there were three men sitting on the floor and enjoying some breakfast. They were laughing, making jokes, but Ryan could notice the anxiety and the sadness in their eyes. He knew they only wanted to make things seem easier for themselves. He also noticed the clothes they were wearing were in a worse condition than his own, they were all ripped and torn, even though it was late winter and was really cold. How could they even handle it?

'Guys, this is the boy, Ryan,' John explained, 'Ryan, meet Jim, the one sitting on the left, Carl, eating that rabbit meat, and Sam, the other guy,'

The men were really good and welcoming towards Ryan, but he still didn't know if he could trust them. They offered him a sandwich with raw meat of some sort that Ryan didn't recognise, probably rabbit.

He took a bite and automatically spat it out, 'Urghhh, what is this stuff, is this what you eat all the time, it's disgusting!'

'You're gonna get used to the monkey meat some day boy, if it's the only thing you can live on,' Jim responded.

'Jesus, Jim, why would you give that to the boy, don't you know better?' Sam took the sandwich from Ryan's hands and gave him another one, ' Don't worry, this one is with cooked rabbit,'

Ryan finished up breakfast without uttering another word, while the others were chatting, planning some kind of trip to the forest.

'Remember last week when i went to scout out to the east and went into the forest, I'm telling you, it was like a gold mine!' Carl pointed out.

'We should go and check it out, plus, we can introduce our new member to our methods of survival,' John replied, 'I notice you don't have a weapon, nor a flashlight, and you ain't goin' anywhere without being prepared, so take these,' he threw him a short flashlight and a metal bat.

********************************

The group set off for the forest later in the evening, after a long talk and preparing. It was at most 4.00 p.m and it was already late, the group had mostly two hours to scout, which, Ryan thought, should have been enough time.

'So how are we gonna do this?' Ryan asked.

'Well, we exited HQ later than we should have, which makes our job harder, because we don't really wanna be outside at night,' Sam said.

'Eh, who cares, we've been outside before,' Jim pointed out, 'and it will be a good first lesson for our newbie here,'

The group walked for around twenty minutes before reaching the forest, 'Now we gotta find where we're gonna set up camp for the night and scout close to the area,' John said

'Sounds simple enough,' Ryan commented

'Yeah, and if we're lucky, it will be,' Carl nodded

They walked around the forest for another fifteen minutes before finding a nice clear spot next to a small river.

'This should provide us fresh water,' John said, 'and we have enough space to place everything we need,'

They actually didn't need a lot, they only placed one tent that they were going to use for keeping the valuables inside, they placed a blanket down and put their tools and food there, and five sleeping bags. Around an hour and a half had past and it was already too dark for the comfort of the people.

I'm gonna stop writing here, I don't want this chapter to continue on for too long, especially if nobody will read it. Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed the story for now, I will try and post a couple parts this upcoming weekend and hopefully, they will be horror, like i intend this story to be. Anyhow, I hope you have a wonderful time, bye! :)

P.S. Yes, I know that this is something like a crossover of The Last Of Us and Planet Of The Apes, but that's exactly where I got my inspiration from, I hope that doesn't as copyright!