ODDS OF SURVIVAL - TAEKOOK

CHAPTERNINE

Jungkook felt like he should have known something like this was coming. Things had been going a little too smoothly in the weeks since they'd settled in at the plant nursery.

The fence was repaired to keep them safe from wandering zombies, they had comfortable places to sleep, and there were a few herb and vegetable plants in the green houses that hadn't yet died from lack of water.

Some of the tomato plants even had ripe tomatoes on them. Jungkook had never been a huge fan of tomatoes, but he had to admit that after weeks of nothing but canned and preserved foods, a fresh tomato tasted pretty fantastic.

Prospects for a reliable food source in the future were looking pretty good, and in the meantime they had enough food and water to last them quite a while between the supplies they brought with them and what they'd found in a few nearby farm houses.

When it came to non-perishable supplies, though, one could never really have too much extra food and water stored in case of emergencies.

There were also tools and other useful things to look out for, so they took the car out on scavenging runs pretty often, each time driving a few miles further in one direction or another.

There were signs of other survivors in most of the places they found. That wasn't unusual on its own. There were almost always broken locks or signs of previous scavenging.

Once he'd even heard a noise and looked up to see a temporary structure high up in a tree, a quick glimpse of a face peering out at him before it vanished. Taehyung flipped his shit over that. He babbled about how if that person or persons had a gun they could kill them right where they stood and demanded they leave immediately.

Despite Taehyung's protests, Jungkook left a small collection of canned food and small bottles of water in clear view of the tree house before allowing Taehyung to drag him away.

After all, that person hadn't threatened them. They were probably just scared and hungry. He had wanted to go back, check if his peace offering had been accepted or left behind in suspicion, but Taehyung had been too nervous to go back that way ever since.

He realized now that Taehyung was right and they'd been lucky. Having encountered at least one other survivor should have been reason for additional caution, but instead Jungkook had gotten too comfortable and sloppy.

He'd seen plenty of zombie movies and TV shows. He knew that when things got bad, living people were even more dangerous than undead monsters. But they'd come this far and hadn't had any negative encounters with other people yet.

Apparently he'd forgotten how dangerous people could be.

"Get on your knees! Don't move! DON'T MOVE!"

The feeling of a gun barrel pressed to his head was plenty of motivation to follow instructions, even though his first instinct was to fight. He knew how to disarm an attacker with a gun.

They went over that specifically in one of his martial arts classes. That was a defense against a single attacker, though, and while he hadn't gotten a good look, he already knew there were at least two of them. If he tried to disarm one, the other would probably just shoot him before he could get away.

On top of that, it felt so much different in reality with a real gun pointed at him than it had practicing with a plastic toy pointed in his face.

One little mistake here and he'd be dead, but there was some part of him that was still too surprised to be terrified into silence.

"Which is it? Do you want me to stay still or get on my knees?"

"Shut up!" There was a sharp pain as the butt of a handgun struck him in the back of the head and a booted foot gouged into the back of his right knee, driving him to the ground.