While Rick and the others are occupied with their own things in a corner somewhere in Georgia.
Andrea and her group of five people were making their way up north and had just left the vicinity of the City of Atlanta.
"Are we heading someplace else or are we heading to the safe house first?" T-Dawg, who is on the passenger side questioned, and sitting behind the two are three of the college kids who had helplessly lured the walker hordes to the farm.
"Let's expand our route by another five miles and see if we can discover anything. Then we'll stop by at the safe house on the way back." Andrea responded as she took a left turn that veered off the highway and towards a country road.
T-Dawg checked the road they turned to on the map. "This road leads to a small town called Roswell. You familiar with this one?"
"Nope. Aren't we out here to look for supplies while checking out the areas around us?" Andrea responded and continued. "Just make sure to properly record everything on the map so that later, the others wouldn't need to come here anymore and waste their time."
"Alright, I hear you." T-Dawg nodded in response.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Their vehicle was cruising over thirty miles along the road when the sound of intermittent gunshots started echoing on the road ahead of them.
Andrea and T-Dawg shared a knowing glance before nodding at each other.
T-Dawg slightly turned his body around and looked at the college kids behind them. "Alright fellas. Lock and load, and don't forget to keep the safety on until we've exited the car."
"Are we heading over to check what's going on ahead?" Nolan, that college kid sporting that familiar varsity jacket during that night at the farm asked while cautiously checking the Glock in his hands.
He wasn't the only one with a weapon, the two women sitting with him at the back were also provided with their own firearms after a week of training. Since bullets are currently scarce, they've had so far only five bullets worth of training and never once fired the gun since then. Due to that reason, most of their training was centered on disassembling and assembling the firearms on their hands.
While inspecting the hunting rifle, T-Dawg responded. "Obviously, since we have to find out what kind of people are living or moving around us. Come on, kid. This is your second time asking this kind of question."
Nolan smiled after counting his bullets. "Well, I was just asking. I've never mentioned this before, but before meeting your group, we never really had any good interaction with other groups of survivors. They always tried to kill us and we had to constantly escape from that kind of situation."
"Well, let's hope that whoever those people are won't try to immediately kill us the moment they see us." Andrea remarked as the car entered an intersection and alighted at a nearby gas station.
"We'll move on foot from here on." Andrea chaotically parked the car to make it look like an abandoned car. Something they learned the hard way after they got a couple of cars stolen from them.
T-Dawg, Nolan and the others hurriedly alighted from the vehicle and crouched down for cover before they hastily regrouped in front of the vehicle and formed into a circle.
Andrea looked at them and started relaying instructions. "Alright. T-Dawg, you take point. Nolan, will take the rear, and the rest of us will stay in the middle."
T-Dawg nodded in response, Nolan also had no objections with the arrangement.
Armed with an M4, Andrea followed closely behind T-Dawg. The group stealthy moved with their backs slightly bent forward as they made their way towards where the gunshots were coming from.
"Are they being attacked by a herd? Those gunshots do not sound like they were going against another group of survivors." The young woman with chestnut colored hair finally noticed the pattern of the gunshots resounding in the distance.
"Possibly a herd." Her blonde-haired friend who is just moving behind her remarked. Though the word, herd, clearly wasn't bringing up any pleasant memories with it and got a shiver.
Through the small winding trail at the back of the gas station, the group surprisingly arrived at a slightly elevated location where they could spot the town hall down in the distance. The sloped hill they were on was as high as the first floor of a house, making it possible to have that kind of view from their location.
"A herd, I knew it."
"Damn. So are we still going over?" T-Dawg cursed when he saw the town hall was being surrounded by the undead.
Andrea squinted her eyes and started taking a rough count of the undead surrounding the building. "It's a small herd. Let's go over and try to help them."
T-Dawg turned towards her and asked. "CQC?"
Andrea responded with a simple. "Yeah."
Andrea and T-Dawg immediately slung their rifles on their backs and pulled out their choice of melee weapons.
On the other hand, Nolan was closely watching them and immediately understood the implications of what a CQC was.
"We..we're doing close quarters with those things?" Nolan sounded confused while pointing toward the herd in the distance.
Andrea unsheathed a familiar sword, it was Michael's Kampilan, and turned to look at Nolan and the others who were also looking at them with dumbfounded expressions.
"Yeah, why not. It's only a small herd. We just need to make sure to kite them well so we don't get surrounded."
"Kite them? What the heck are you talking about?" Hearing such a familiar phrase, Nolan was even more astounded. As someone who grew up playing games, that word couldn't even be more familiar to him.
"You guys are mad. This is not a game, this is real life!" Nolan was irate as he couldn't believe that there are actually people doing this shit in real life.
"Enough. We're nimbler, faster and smarter than those monsters. Though smaller than this one, this isn't our first time facing a herd and kiting them. Now's the time to show the results of our training this past week." Andrea didn't want to hear anymore from him and immediately shut him down. It's not that she didn't want to hear the opinions from any of her crew, but she already made a calculated risk that they're going to take for the people trapped inside the town hall.
"If shit hits the fan, we immediately bounce." T-Dawg backed her up.
"But-"
"We're not doing this because we want to look good or be heroes in your eyes. We're doing this for survival. We're not only here to look for resources and create a new map, but to also look for people to integrate into our community. Always remember, people are resources. People are the best resources we can find." Andrea didn't let him finish and immediately cut him off. To finally ease his worries or their confusion, she gave them a short rundown on why they're taking this kind of risk for total strangers.
Michael had always reminded them that the most important resources to look for are not only food or medicines, but actually people. Resources like the ones mentioned are easier to find, but humans would take years to produce significant contributions if they began at the starting line, infancy.
"Come on, no more talking. I don't think those people will be able to hold on any longer." While watching the survivors start to struggle defending the town hall from the walkers through the binoculars in his hand. T-Dawg immediately interrupted them when he saw that the walkers had broken through one of the windows and had slowly swarmed in through that hole.
The only good news was that those windows were waist high and caused the walkers to fall down on their heads as they forced their way inside, giving ample time and space for the people inside to escape to the upper floor.
"Let's go!"
Andrea and T-Dawg took off, leaving Nolan and his friends behind. Nolan and his friends looked at each other.
"Let's go. They're not that scary as long as no one gets injured like before." The chestnut-haired woman said as she quickly followed after them with her friend.
"Dammit! Elise, Leona, wait up!"
Watching them running off like that, Nolan looked around him before letting out a curse as he immediately ran after them.
'Dang it, what can even a week of exercise do?! These people are truly mad!'
Meanwhile, inside the town hall.
"Get to the second floor, hurry!"
When the walkers had broken through one of the windows and started pouring in, the survivors inside immediately evacuated towards the next floor.
A man with a rugged face, with a beard and mustache turned to look behind him and instructed one of his companions. "Tom, secure the path to the rooftop and look for a way out!"
The man called Tom, bald with a beard like a viking. "Alright, hang in there!"
Tom immediately took off and started looking for the stair leading to the rooftop. While his remaining companions guarded the mouth of the stair as they plan to hold off the horde there before making their exit, if there is one.
"These biters just had to be here when we were just about to leave this place! How freaking unlucky!" A middle aged woman let out a curse as she took down a walker that climbed up the stairs with a blow poke.
Their supposed leader placed his hand on her shoulder and quickly pulled her behind him. "Get back and position yourself by the guardrail. The men will take turns holding this position until Tom finds us an escape route."
"Gotcha!"
Tom, on the other hand, finally found the stairs leading to the rooftop and arrived there. He quickly ran towards the edge and started running along it, looking for a spot where they could safely land for escape.
Unfortunately, lady luck wasn't shining on them this time as every corner of the building was surrounded by the undead.
"Oh, come on!"
Tom yelled in frustration, and just as he was about to start losing hope about their survival. He suddenly spotted something in the distance.
"Survivors...?"
He squinted his eyes as he wasn't sure if they were people or the undead, but when he saw that some of them suddenly started running towards their direction. His eyes quickly lit up with hope!
"People..it's survivors! Hey!!! Over here! Help!"