Better off Undead

Chapter 36: Of Greetings and Goodbyes

When he woke up the next morning, Eli was surprised to find everyone already up and preparing to leave. In all honesty, after his final speech the night before, he had expected everyone to change their minds and let him go alone. Instead, they were the ones waiting on him.

They were all gathered around the last of the SUVs in the parking lot. Paul spread out a military map on the trunk of Eli's car and pointed out some locations to Eli.

"This right here," he said, indicating one small square that was supposed to be a building, "is the facility where they were keeping the captured vampire before the blackout. Now, I don't know the specific orders for the facility, so they may have had some kind of evacuation plan where they moved him to a more secure facility, but... I kind of doubt that they did. This place was already pretty secure. So in all likelihood, he'll still be there."

Eli rubbed his brow. "That's... that's on the other side of Arkansas."

"Sure is," Paul agreed. "What, you thought this was going to be easy?"

Eli shook his head. "No. No, I suppose I didn't."

"Actually, Arkansas is the easy part. Here," Paul tapped another part of the map, "is where the cave was that they found the creatures."

Eli blinked. "Virginia?"

"If you fail to find our patient zero, the captured vampire, then this is the only guaranteed fallback. Any creatures still here should all have the same infection in their blood."

Eli was shaking his head. "After what we saw in that video, you think I'm going to risk taking my team in there?"

Paul shrugged. "It depends.

"On what?"

"On how serious you are about stopping this."

Eli scowled at the snide remark but in the end he knew Paul was right, so he said nothing more.

Next, Lisa approached him while loading a clip into a pistol and checking the weapon. "They told me you don't know how to use one of these."

"I got the basic idea," Eli replied. "Point and shoot."

"Yeah. Apparently there was an armory on the base this whole time. Paul showed us where it was, so we want everyone in the party to take a firearm, just in case. I thought you'd do better with a shotgun. They're more of a spray and pray type weapon for an amateur like you, but then I thought you might be too much of a wuss for one. Besides, we don't have very many, and they're awfully bulky to have to carry. Especially since you got those." She motioned vaguely in the direction of his baseball bats with the barrel of the gun.

"So instead, you're getting this. It's a standard Sig Sauer handgun. Here, take it." She handed the gun to him and then proceeded to point to several pieces on it, one by one. "This is the clip release. It's important to keep this separate from the safety, which is here. You mix those up in a firefight, and you're as good as dead."

She walked him through a few more parts of the gun and then some tips on how to fire it, reiterating the importance of aiming for the head with zombies.

"Just, try not to need it," she ended. "Ammo is gonna be in very short supply, and the noise will probably draw more zombies to you than you'll be able to get rid of by using it."

"Got it," Eli said.

He stashed the weapon away and turned to face everyone. A few people had come to see them off, but mostly it was just the group that had agreed to go with him. The most notable appearance was that of Marshall, who was busy having a quiet, but clearly heated, conversation with Amber. Eli imagined that he was trying to convince her not to go.