Chương 23: Chapter 22: A little Persuasion

I leaned my recurve bow securely against the garage wall and dropped onto a heavy stool parked next to Joe's custom steel workbench. Reaching down to my vest, I unclipped my handheld radio, keyed the mic, and reported in. I briefly let Denise know I had successfully met up with Joe and that everything was okay on my end. I knew her mind would be racing with worst-case scenarios until she heard my voice come over the radio.

Once I unkeyed the mic and snapped it back into its retention loop, I turned back to face my companions. I let out a slow breath, looking at each of them.

"So... apocalypse, huh?"

"Yeah," Joe rumbled, a slow, wicked grin spreading beneath his thick black beard.

"And honestly, the only difficult part of this entire situation is actively pretending I'm not completely excited about it." The garage immediately erupted into a wave of genuine, cathartic laughter. It was the exact kind of dark, gallows humor you could only find among combat veterans who had spent too much time waiting for the sky to fall.

"Where's the rest of the team?" I asked, leaning my forearms on my knees. For years, the four of us had been part of a tight, insular circle of local guys who met up every few weeks to systematically map out contingencies. We weren't a bunch of fringe lunatics prepping for a fictional zombie outbreak; we focused on highly pragmatic, localized scenarios—extended power grid collapses, catastrophic natural disasters, or major supply-chain failures.

The core roster consisted of the four of us and a handful of other reliable guys. Because of that foresight, we had managed to establish small, decentralized stockpiles of non-perishable food, medical supplies, deep seed banks, and most importantly, industrial-sized crates of toilet paper. Back when the pandemic hit years ago, none of us had to step foot inside a grocery store to fight over paper products for a solid twelve months.

While the rest of the civilian populace was frantically hoarding bulk tissue instead of actual caloric sustenance, we just sat back on our porches and laughed. I mean, fundamentally speaking—if you don't have food to eat, what exactly do you need toilet paper for?

"No clue," Joe admitted, his humor fading into a sober frown as he rested his axe across the workbench.

"We haven't had a single hint of communication from any of the other guys since the initial blast went off. To be completely honest, we thought we weren't going to hear from you either. I mean, we're sitting on day three of a total societal collapse, and you're just now rucking into town."

"Hold on a second," Johnny cut in.

"Before we get deep into strategy... how exactly did you just read off our levels and classes in the middle of the street?" Johnny was a young, sharp kid in his early twenties. He was a reserve Army combat medic, and before the world went dark, he'd been working full-time as a community service officer for a neighboring municipal police department while waiting for an active academy slot to open up. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam had called him up for an overseas deployment before he could pull a badge.

He'd also pull double duty as an assistant K9 trainer, which was exactly how our paths had crossed originally.

"Relax, Johnny," I said, offering a reassuring wave of my hand.

"It's an active perception skill called Inspect. If my working theory is correct, absolutely anyone can eventually unlock it through targeted mental focus. I can walk you through the systemic diagnostic right now if you want." I took the next few minutes to detail the initial system prompts I'd experienced out in the brush, explaining exactly how the interface calculated the skill unlock.

Once they understood the underlying logic, I had them run through the exact same mental visualization exercises I'd utilized with Alex. It took a bit of concentrated effort, but within five minutes, all three of them flashed a look of sudden realization as the Inspect skill officially registered on their personal HUDs. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Okay, so," Joe began, steering the conversation back to the tactical map.

"As far as operations here, we've strictly adhered to our baseline emergency plan. We've pulled the majority of our pre-staged logistics and concentrated our immediate families between this residence and my farmhouse down the road. We're currently cooking over open fire pits and shitting in a massive, manually dug slit-trench in the back, but outside of those basic hurdles, we're maintaining security. We run rolling patrols through the immediate neighborhood as best we can.

The problem is, we only have a handful of guys with actual combat experience, and desperate looters and organized bandit crews have already started probing the houses on our outer perimeter."

"And that is exactly why I hit the trail to find you," I said, locking eyes with Joe.

"We need a significantly better structural option for our people. We need a hardened compound that is naturally defensible, geographically isolated from the main avenues of approach, and capable of supporting long-term agricultural growth. Somewhere we can actually thrive. And I have the exact target location mapped out."

"Where exactly are we talking about?" Pete asked, leaning his heavy frame against a stack of tires. Pete was right around my age, a hardened former Marine infantryman with two combat deployments to the mountains of Afghanistan under his belt. After transitioning out of the corps, he had channeled his discipline into becoming a full-time master bladesmith, launching a small-scale custom knife manufacturing company called Grasslands Cutlery.

He specialized in ultra-durable, high-end bushcraft and survival blades, moving most of his inventory through online platforms. His steel was legendary—I personally carried two of his custom pieces on my active gear rig because I knew they were virtually indestructible.

"The new high school over on the east side," I stated clearly.

"And what's more, the System just handed me a shareable quest to recover the grounds."

"Recover it?" Joe repeated, his tactical instinct immediately seizing on the syntax.

"The choice of vocabulary means the area is almost certainly occupied by a hostile element."

"True," I nodded.

"But look at the timeline. We're only seventy-two hours into this disaster. Whoever has locked themselves inside that campus hasn't had the time to establish complex fortifications, and their average level isn't going to be any higher than what we're currently pulling. Most importantly, I guarantee you they don't possess our level of unified tactical training.

But let me give you the premier selling point: that massive solar farm they recently constructed over the parking lot awnings is a completely isolated, EMP-hardened system. That means the entire facility will have functional, active electrical power. At least during peak daylight hours." Johnny blinked, his brow furrowing.

"How can you possibly be that certain about the electrical specifications of a public school?"

"Because I was the primary campus cop assigned to that school when they poured the concrete and mounted the arrays," I grinned, tapping the side of my head.

"I watched the engineers install the isolated grid infrastructure. I know every single blind spot, and access corridors on that property like the back of my hand."

"Okay, that's a massive logistical point," Johnny conceded, rubbing his chin.

"But how do we manage power distribution at night when our security footprint needs it the most? Solar doesn't do us any good in the dark."

"That's an easy fix," I countered smoothly.

"We snag deep-cycle marine and RV batteries and build a custom, high-capacity storage bank." Joe shifted his weight, his eyes darkening with calculated intent.

"Alright, Derrick. You know I'm completely in. If there's an active System quest tied to the location, I assume the completion of the quest drops a substantial amount of raw experience points."

"It does," I confirmed.

"It explicitly notes a moderate EXP drop upon securing the area."

"And it gives us automated defensible structures, high-clearance fencing, and open interior fields for our livestock and farming operations," Joe continued, checking off the parameters.

"Yes, exactly," I replied.

"But," Joe cautioned, pointing a finger at me, "it is an extremely high-value target, it's almost certainly occupied, and we currently have zero intelligence regarding the size, armaments, or disposition of the force holding the interior."

"Completely true," I agreed.

"Which means we need to execute some serious, deep-reconnaissance before we even think about moving a fire team across that open perimeter," Joe said, pacing toward his workbench.

"Man... I wish to hell we had some working surveillance drones we could put into the airspace to map their guard rotations." I leaned back on my stool, a massive, brilliant smile breaking across my face. Joe stopped pacing, looking at me with a suspicious glare.

"What exactly is that look for, Miller?"

"What if I told you I could potentially get those exact drones fully operational again?" I asked, my voice dropping to a confident purr.

"Along with systematically repairing the vast majority of the small-scale electronic gear the EMP fried? Now, don't get me wrong—I'm not saying we're going to be recovering corrupted PC hard drives or logging onto high-speed internet to stream Netflix. But what if we could fully restore appliances like industrial washers, dryers, and commercial tools? Oh, and did I mention the high school's deep-well pump runs on an independent electrical circuit?

If we get that power flowing, that means hot water showers, automated water purification, and fully functional, flushing toilets for everyone in our camp."