Compliant Survivors

Grant just stood in the same spot for what felt like an eternity. After he stood there without saying anything, Jerrod started to realize that maybe he had touched a sensitive spot.

"Ah, am I wrong? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed anything. Please forget I said anything!"

Grant couldn't be mad at Jerrod for assuming that Ally and him were together. But he never thought that someone would even consider that an option. For one, they were at least ten years apart age wise. Secondly, her oldest kid wasn't even that much younger than he was!

When Ally reached the end of the corridor and realized that both Grant and Jerrod were no where near her, she turned around and asked what they were doing which snapped Grant out of his useless thoughts.

Grant just glanced at Jerrod before he said, "Lets go. Don't worry about your misunderstanding. Don't even think about saying anything like that to Ally though. She just lost her husband and doesn't need to deal with rumors like that."

Jerrod just nodded his head up and down before following Grant.

Once they caught up with Ally, the group of three walked out into the courtyard and through the temporary shelters. The whole time they were walking, people would stop and greet both Jerrod and Ally. It was clear that they had made an impact on the people of the settlement or at least spent time to get to know quite a bit of them. They continued to walk until they reached a tent that was set up with a table out in front of it.

Under the tent, Grant saw a bunch of people working furiously at a couple tables. They were all chopping different vegetables and throwing all the ingredients into a huge pot. There were already a couple pots of food cooking over open flames just outside the tent as well.

When the three of them walked under the tent, everyone periodically greeted them. Some of them seemed to be very close with Ally because she stopped and talked to them for quite awhile.

Eventually, Jerrod stopped and turned towards Grant before asking, "Alright, do you need anyone to go with you to pick up the food or will you be able to get it yourself?"

Grant just shook his head before pulling his rucksack off his shoulder and placing it on the ground. Then he reached into the rucksack and started to pull out handful after handful of food while placing them on the empty table next to him.

Grant had managed to stock a massive amount of food while he was travelling towards the dungeon. When he had found the rucksack from the Random Rolls, he knew that it would be the ideal way to store enough food to last him an entire year at least, so he went to the closest grocery store to the park and cleared the place out before he went to meet Skit at the dungeon.

Jerrod, Ally, and all the other people present at first didn't think much of what Grant was doing, but when he got to the 10th or so handful of food, they realized how odd the situation was, and when he reached the 20th or so handful, they were all standing there in a daze trying to figure out where all the food had been stored.

Grant had a massive assortment of food sitting on the table now. Top Ramen, cereal, chips, soda, etc. It looked like someone had gone to the grocery store, taken the cart of a large family in the checkout line, and dumped all of it into a bag.

He even had raw meats, milk, eggs, and other raw foods with him.

He had realized midway through his stay in the dungeon that the raw meats he had brought with him weren't deteriorating at all and the bag seemed to preserve them at the state in which they were at when he placed them inside.

When he had finally filled up the table with food, he stopped reaching into his bag.

By this point, everyone in the area was looking at Grant like he was some sort of monster. None of them could understand how on Earth he had managed to store all that food in a seemingly normal backpack.

Grant knew people were going to have questions, but he didn't plan on telling anyone about the backpack and what it actually was. Besides, if they tried to take it from him, that would be the last thing they would ever try to do in their life.

Seeing that nobody seemed like they were going to do anything, Grant turned to Jerrod and lightly smacked his shoulder to snap him out of his daze.

"Ah, I'm sorry.

What the heck is up with that backpack though?! Is there another space inside there or something?!"

Instead of answering Jerrod's question, Grant just stared at him with a stern gaze. Jerrod seemed to understand from the look that he had no intentions of answering any questions about it so he immediately played it off as a joke before turning around and yelling at everyone to snap out of it and to get back to work.

With Jerrod's encouragement, everyone stopped standing around and got back to work. A few people who didn't have as much to do, walked over to the table that Grant had placed the food on, and started to sort through it all.

Since Grant didn't want to get in their way, he just stepped aside and watched everything unfold.

While he was standing to the side, Ally walked over and gave him a pat on the back.

"Thank you Grant for donating. I know how hard you have worked for all of your supplies and you are apprehensive about helping these people, but I promise that your donation will be put to good use. I will make sure of it."

Grant just smiled and nodded hearing what she said. Part of him was still a little embarrassed because of what Jerrod had said but he tried to hide it the best he could.

After a couple hours, the table in front of the tent was filled from end to end with food. Some of it was the preserved food, raw meats, and drinks that Grant had donated while the rest of it were the large pots of food that the settlement had been preparing when they got there.

Once the food was placed on the table, a couple of men with guns walked out in front of the table and started ringing a bell that they had hanging next to the tent.

As the bell rang over and over people started to gather in the direction of the tent.

While the people were gathering, the men with guns were constantly yelling instructions over and over.

"Line up properly! There is enough food to go around! Everyone knows the rules, don't cause a scene, don't cut the line, and only one serving per person!"

Surprisingly, the people didn't cause a scene at all and lined up properly and the line started to flow smoothly.

Grant would check out the condition of every person that walked past the line to see what kind of condition they were in. While his main focus was to see their condition, he was also trying to see if he could find anyone that had a fairly decent level.

As more and more people passed by the table, Grant realized that all of them looked fairly healthy. He was expecting everyone to be in rough shape because of the elongated duration of the storm and how difficult it must have been to feed the survivors during it but they all seemed to be doing fairly well.

While some of the people looked exhausted, no one seemed overly disgruntled with the setup or the amount of food that they got either. Grant was starting to respect the leaders of the settlement just a little bit because they seemed to have instilled a sense of comradery and unity in these people.

The entire time that Grant was watching the line, he never found anyone that was exuding an aura strong enough to catch his interest. It seemed like everyone was no more than level 3 or 4, if even that.

Although he had expected it, seeing that no one was even remotely strong, he knew that they must be staying somewhere else and being fed from a different stash of resources.

He had no doubt that they were probably eating better than these people because they would be required to put their lives at risk if they had to fight a strong monster, but Grant was curious how vast the disparity in treatment would be.

After standing there for a few hours, the end of the line was finally in sight and no more people were joining the queue so it looked like he would finally be able to explore the settlement and get a deeper look at it.

However, before the last person could reach the table, a horn similar to the ones you hear on fire trucks, blasted noisily throughout the courtyard.