Dystopian world

The first scouting trip

  "The plans for today are quite simple really. You guys already know who's doing what, but since this is your first time doing this Nico" he focused his eyes on me to see if I was listening, "You should know that we each have different jobs and responsibilities which we must carry out properly."

"O..okay" I said, interested, "Go on."

  "Sam's job is scouting, that's why he was the one to find you. My job is lookout from the rooftop, James is responsible for gathering food, Alex patrols the building, and Carl and John are our tech experts. They set up that panel outside too. Since your new to this, you'll go on duty with each one of us until we find a job which suits you as well as us, okay?" he asked.

"Yeah" I replied. "Sure thing"

"Good" he nodded. "Who would you like to go on duty with first?"

  It wasn't a very tough decision. In a moment I had come down to two people who I liked and wanted to work with: Sam and Alex.

"I'll go with Sam today" I said decisively.

  "It's settled then, Sam, take Nico and get him ready for today's scouting trip" Michael ordered. "The rest of you, get ready as well!"

***

  "Scouting seems like the most interesting job to me" I told Sam as he searched for something inside his bag.

  "It is pretty interesting, but James's job is riskiest out of all of them. Honestly I'm surprised he's never encountered any machines in all the times he's gone scouring for food."

"Does he always manage to find food?"

  "Depends" Sam replied, bringing out two mean looking knives. "Sometimes he finds untouched stashes of them, other days..he's not so lucky. Though so far, we've never had a severe food problem so that's good."

"And what about drinks?" I inquired.

  "Well, we can't find water anymore sadly. But we do have some stores of another liquid in the floor below which does substitute it pretty well" he explained. "We call it 'The Elixir'"

"Creative name" I replied sarcastically.

  "Tell me about it. Unfortunately Michael named it and not me. If it had been me I would've called it something like 'The preserver' or 'Sustainide'."

"Now those" I said, "Are cool names."

"Finally! Somebody agrees!" Sam exclaimed happily.

"Yeah" I smiled. "Let's go now, before Michael tells us to get out."

"Agreed"

***

Sam slowly opened the huge front door of the building, and looked out.

  "Coast is clear" he said before looking back at me. "From now on, keep talking to a minimum, and if you really have to, speak in light whispers. I don't want any robots jumping us" Sam instructed.

"Me neither" I answered. "Let's go then, I'm ready."

  Sam nodded and set off at a light pace. I set off behind him, careful not to make any noise as I ran at a mild pace.

  He made his way to the old fountain, before turning east in the direction of the destroyed city. I just hoped nothing went wrong on the scouting trip.

As like last time, the walk was quite long. I took this chance to look around a little more.

  There was nothing much to look at that though. Just cracked ground, debris, and further on I could see the remains of buildings and houses as we approached the city.