Daughter of the Fallen

Remember Part 2

The next day, after working on persuading my parents for about 20 minutes, I got ready to go on a run with Glenn, Tara, Noah, and Nicholas. I just really needed to get away from this place for a bit.

As the four of us walked to meet Nicholas, we saw a stranger with him. The stranger pointed at us.

"Glenn, Tara, Noah, Bree?" he asked, seeing if he got our names right.

We nodded and he smiled. "Nice to meet you. I'm Aiden."

"You're Deanna's son?" Glenn asked.

"That's right. I hear you got experience making supply runs."

"We do," I confirmed, moving my hand to rest on my gun that wasn't there.

"I saw your pantry," Glenn commented. "You guys seem to do pretty well."

"Yeah," Aiden explained. "Had some training before this. ROTC. Was near lieutenant when this crap blew in."

Noah nodded. "My dad did ROTC."

"He didn't make it?"

"Nah."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry a lot these days. Come on, I'll show you the ropes."

He walked past us and Tara turned to him. "We're doing a run today?"

Aiden stopped and faced us. "Just a dry run. Show you the terrain outside the walls, see how you do. Weigh each other's sack a little, you know?"

Glenn and I exchanged a glance and I knew we both we suspicious of this guy.

"No, I don't," Tara responded to Aiden. "But cool."

"What about weapons?" Glenn asked.

"Oh yeah. We pulled out some sweet biscuits for today." He gestured and Nicholas each gave us a hand gun.

I weighed it in my hands, trying to get used to it. It was really different from the gun I used before we got here.

Glenn came up next to me. "You ready?"

I looked over at him. "Yeah. I'm ready."

•••

Around a half an hour later, we had walked a good number of miles away from Alexandria.

"We've been increasing our radius mile by mile," Aiden told us as we walked. "Spreading in a semicircle around the town."

"We've made it 53 miles out so far," Nicholas added.

"We break into 2 groups when we step outside our vehicle. If crap hits, we fire a flare. One group gets the other."

"Good system," Noah complemented.

"It is," Aiden agreed. "Still, you're standing here because we lost 4 people last month."

"What happened?" Glenn asked.

"We were on a run, roamers came out, they didn't follow the system."

"They were good people," Nicholas added.

"They were. They were just scared. Look I can be really hard. And I know i'm a d-bag. Someone's gotta call the ball around here and that someone is me." He stopped walking and turned to face us. "If you're on this crew, you do exactly as I say."

I rolled my eyes and chose to ignore him. "Sorry you lost your people."

Aiden smiled. "Yeah. We got ours." We continued to walk.

"Managed to snag one of the deadheads that took them down," Nicholas said. He pointed to a high point in the tree. "Strung it up there."

"What?" Glenn asked in shock. "Why?"