IN PERIL

After spending almost the whole night clearing out the herd, the people of Pierre are exhausted and some of them cannot even stand up without the help of someone else. Kyle looks around for Zachary who has seem to have disappeared, they got separated when a horde of runners came jumping at them, and several other mutated variants of the biters. He checked and called on everyone that is standing, asking them where Zach is but they also seems to have no idea where the boy is. He started to scream, asking where he is.

"Yeah shut it I'm behind you"

"Oh, sorry about that"

"You don't have to be so passionate about just looking for me"

"Sure, well what do we do?"

"We still go to Ophir, do we have people that can go?"

"Yeah, actually lookie"

They see people coming from Fort Pierre with more help, one of them seems to be looking over the field. His sight stuck on to Kyle and Zach and he waved at them, they met up with each other in the middle of it all.

"Eugene"

"Kyle, well I heard that you needed more men, too where this time?"

"Ophir, it'll be a 2-3 days ride"

"We have cars instead of horses"

"How do we have cars?"

"Electric ones, we started using the solar panels to run it"

"But we need trucks?"

"Yeah, but I call it cars"

"Okay"

They pulled up the trucks in front of them and they have fully modified it to use electricity instead of gasoline. It does not look like slimline at all, not the kind of vehicle that both men expected.

"You guys made this all by hand?"

"No, just the wheel parts to make it running, thank goodness for engineers"

"Uh uh"

"So where are we going?"

"Your too bright, we lost a lot of men, pipe the smile down"

"Aye"

Kyle then called on people who are mobile enough to fight and head to Ophir but only a measly 50 people came up to him. 'This is enough' Zach said, Kyle asked all of them to hop on and they quickly did, they left towards to Ophir quickly but the trucks are going on a bit of a slower pace. The whole ride almost took them 4 days until they see Ophir, Zachary hopped off and ran towards the village as soon as he can, Kyle chased after him.

"All of you get off! ZACH WAIT!"

Zach runs with his sore legs and just begging that all of them are safe, he ran and ran almost tripping on a few stones. On his way to the village he sees several corpses of dead people and people whom he have seen on before. He finally gets to the burned down wall of Ophir, he looks around and everything is destroyed, the other soldiers managed to chased after the 2.

"Search for survivors, look at the fallen ones as well, even the ones outside"

"YES SIR!"

As soon as Kyle turned around Zachary has already made his way to the ruined infirmary. He looks on every room with other soldiers, they checked and cleared all of it calling out statuses and how many are there.

"Dead, 3"

"Dead, 2"

"Dead, 2"

Zachary stands in front of Caiti's room he grabs on to it wishing to see her, even if she has just turned. The soldiers leaned on the walls beside the door and aimed, Zach opens it and someone fires a shot at him.

"FUCK!"

"ZACH!"

"BRUCE, BRUCE! CAITI!"

Caiti got up from his dad's arms and hugs Zachary, she starts to tear up. The soldiers helped Bruce up who seems to be heavily wounded. One of the soldiers asked for a stretcher and they got one quickly, his wounds has been patched up a bit but not enough to start healing.

"We knew you'd be back"

"Where's the others?"

"Locked up in the houses"

"There is not a lot of us in here anyway, so being a distraction was easy"

The soldiers with Kyle and Zachary started to lead the people outside and counting heads, Ophir only has a population of over 100 people when some of the others chose to leave to Pierre and Maple grove. They started getting on the trucks.

"The horses?"

"They killed them all"

"fuck, guess some of us have to stay?"

"Yes sir"

"Not really, look"

"Wow, how convenient"

A helicopter descends down on them and they start to fill it to the brim. Some has to sit on the floor of the helicopter, the sick and the elderly were first and they flew off but it did not decrease as much as they expected.

"I'm guessing we have to stay here"

"Yeah, damn"

"Shit"

They stared for as long as they need. Caiti took it as an opportunity to catch up with Zach. Caiti noticed how different has now with a small stubble beard on him.

"How is it there?"

"Safe, boring and bland, it is a safe place but the drills of the soldier is still scary for me"

"Really?"

"Yeah, you seem to be unaffected by what just happened, are you okay?"

"Yes, we were all prepared when something like this happens, the mountains does not allow us to go everywhere, jus the road. How is Bogdan?"

"Healing now, poor guy"

"Yeah, he was beaten by those men, apparently they are working with some guy"

"Did they give a name at least?"

"Schmidt?"

"Sc-, I'm sorry, Schmidt?"

"Yeah, did they mention anything else?"

"None, nothing, apparently they have a group from Alaska, just a group like ours they said"

"Must be a lie, KYLE!"

Zachary run and called towards Kyle who also seems to be in shock. Zachary steps in front of him and he seems to be terrified. Zach asked him what is up but he does not seem to reply until he slaps him back to his consciousness.

"Oh- a name Schmidt, Tobias mentioned that right?"

"Yeah, we need to get to Tobias quickly, if possible we need to warn him about Hearst"

"Why?"

"That'll be too late, Zach, Kyle, they have people on Toronto the pharmaceutical that Tobias is after, they are fully armed to the teeth, and the group from Alaska was part of the United States Army, they have much stronger weapons than us"

"How do you know that"

"The only people who knows are the ones who have been there, I know that Schmidt but he does not know me"

"Fuck, they said he was dead, fuck this world is getting much more confusing"

"FUCK"

"Tobias, good evening"

"You piece of shit, you should be dead"

"We should be dead, we outnumber you"

"Yeah so do we, I see you have taken over Toronto"

"Yes, we have a vaccine, and an army"

"I really hate you"

"Back at you"

Everything went by so fast that it feels like the 2 of them were beating each other just yesterday. The 2 faced off on who would be the one who gets to live.

"Are you even sure that Natalia's blood can go up against the virus?"

"Uh huh, we have g-"

"You have not seen what is out there, and this cure that you are working on or vaccine, I guarantee you. It will be your loss"

"How sure are you?"

"I bet my whole life that the virus now have evolved and much stronger than what it was 6 years ago"