23

I stabbed their friend in the head one more time despite him being dead. I didn't know why. Maybe it was to assert dominance. Then I parted him out with the system, and threw him in the cart with everything else. Lighting my dagger on fire with what little mana I had left as I grabbed the front of my cart. None of them attacked me. 

They just stood there, and let the door close as I quietly fled through the other door. Maybe it was the image of strength I'd given off. Maybe it was something else. I didn't have the strength to fight them, and they'd let me live just as I let them live. If they were intelligent now I'd hate to see what they'd be like in a few weeks or months. 

I simply didn't have the strength or manpower required to deal with them right now. I went back to the mini van with my cart of stuff. Scanning the whole parking lot for anything else that was moving. I realized both boys had taken my advise, and hopped into the car after they were done fueling up the mini van. Once I got to the mini van I handed them each a sandwich, and we started tossing all the food in the back starting with the canned food. 

The boys one handed the task as well as practically inhaling the sandwiches. They were ordinary sandwiches. The kind with two pieces of bread, and ingredients in the middle. I was briefly worried that I might have given them something they were allergic to, but the older one approved the younger one's sandwich before handing it over. He was fourteen, and more responsible then I expected for a fourteen year old. 

We weren't very far from the complex where I lived. I got in the drivers seat, and got the mini van moving. The roof had big gashes in it, but they didn't get all the way through the plush insulated roofing so there was no real worry. It would hold up to another attack as well. I started driving. 

I accelerated up to the speed limit. I wasn't worried about going fast since nothing was on my tail at the moment. I just didn't want to be here when night fell. I didn't know if the complex was any safer then where we'd stayed last time. The lack of cars told me a good number of people had fled from Arlington. 

I pulled up into the complex. Parking in my spot. I waved the boys up so they would follow me around the building. I located my rabbits, and found that all four of them were still alive, and healthy. I cut the cages off the racks I had them secured to. 

The only one of my cages that couldn't be separated were the three grow out cages. The boys liked the rabbits, and gladly helped me load them into the mini van. Then I only had the grow out cages left. It was one eight foot long cage separated into three sections attached to a wooden frame. I dragged the damn thing all the way over to the mini van before flipping it so I could strap it flush to the roof of the mini van. 

The older boy helped me slide it up on the roof of the mini van. The roof creaked angrily under the weight. I didn't have straps so I'd need to find something to strap it down with. I knew there was a feed store across the street, but I was worried about that for a few different reasons. The first being my experience with the man faced spiders. 

The rabbits only had half a bag of feed to tide them over which would last a few days, but once they started dropping kits the food wouldn't last long. The mini van was big enough for me to stuff a lot of feed into it, but not as much as I wanted. The feed store was separated into a store, feed lot, and a warehouse where the feed was stored. I went up to my apartment, and packed everything up. The boys were excited to see that I had a newer game console so they were happily chatting about my different games as they helped me pack up. 

The internet was still up in the building so I scrolled through social media. Most of the posts were from yesterday. There was one post in particular that caught my attention. It seemed that Darington, and the Navy base had both become evacuation sights. I looked over to the boys then back at the post. 

The Navy base, and Darington were both set in deep forest, but I was leaning towards going to Darington. I'd been to Darington quite a few times growing up because I had an uncle down that way. He'd died a few years back, but there was one thing that held true in Darington. Everyone owned a gun. Most of the people I'd met in Darington were actually gun collectors. 

Some collected old guns. Some collected powerful guns. Some collected automatic guns. Most people that lived in Darington liked to hunt, and owned at least a rifle. If they didn't like hunting then they would keep a shotgun. 

It was common knowledge that in armed community was a peaceful community. I thought about it a bit more as we finished packing up. I took the small trailer that the complex manager kept. It was a piece of shit that had a flat tire, and was barely big enough for a riding lawnmower. I hooked it up to the small hitch that was already on the mini van, and got in. 

I gave the boys a meaningful look before pulling the mini van across the street into the feed lot that was between the feed store, and the warehouse. I parked the mini van in the middle of the lot before running over to the second gate to open it so I wouldn't have to worry about turning the mini van around. It was kind of steep, and I might have to take a little bit of a run up to it to make it up that hump, but I didn't want to turn around. Not with a trailer. I went into the warehouse first.