Hicks stood, his right hand resting on the handle of Clark's holstered Beretta as the teenage boy and Gras sat behind him, slurping on cereal. Hicks' own cereal sat in a glass on the window sill, and the dry cereal did not feel good, but it was something. He ran his left hand along his newly shaven scalp, sporting the look of a soldier, the jarhead.
"Georgie," Robbie started, his voice hoarse and untested since the previous evening, "Do you know where any camping supplies are?"
Georgie's face scrunched in thought as he slurped down more cheerios, before nodding quickly, "Yeah, Dad kept four rucks and some other shit in that upstairs closet by his room."
"Alright, you should come with me and get the stuff, Layne will keep watch. That group from yesterday is still out there, we can't forget that. Hopefully Bragg is holding out against this, whatever the hell this is," he said, standing and pushing the weathered oak chair under the table as he stowed his cereal bowl into the dishwasher.
Georgie goes up ahead of Gras, who instructed the boy on what to grab as they ascended, and the packing list wasn't long. Simple things, really, mainly toiletries, food, and water, the boy thought as he opened the closet and handed a navy blue ruck to Gras and grabbed another black one for himself, as Gras lifted the final one, a bright green ruck.
"You handle entertainment. Books, pictures, whatever you want, in that front pocket. Everything else, throw in the other pockets. Pack light, kiddo," he said, releasing his hand from Georgie's shoulder as the pair split up, Gras heading back down the stairs, where he knew he could find canteens and canned food.
Gras shoveled the canned vegetables and tuna into his pack, before uncovering a dark green portable stove that he snatched as if it were gold.
"Shit, Layne," he exclaimed in a wide smile, "Look what I've found."
The Ranger smiled back, nodding his excitement, before turning back to keep watch in the clearing now bathed in light. Layne strapped the small stove the the front of the ruck before throwing in all the metallic canteens he could spot, and then some other things he found in the modest cabin pantry. He grabbed a bundle of ponchos last, running his coarse hands over the rough canvas before stuffing them into the last space in the second ruck.
"Holy fuck, Robbie!" Hicks shouted, drawing his Beretta as Gras turned to face the ranger, who now was retreating towards the staircase and back door.
"Jesus fuck, Layne, take this pack, I'll get the kid," Gras said, rushing halfway up the stairs before coming face to face with Georgie, who was stumbling from his room with the ruck as he heard Layne's shout.
"I see it, Robbie, let's go, dammit," growled Georgie, brushing back flowing blonde hair as he put on his University of North Carolina baseball cap backwards. Robbie quickly went back down, following Layne out the backdoor and towards the trees as the first of the things entered through the front door.
He reached the treeline alongside Georgie, and Layne nodded, continuing down a game trail that both men knew from prior hunting experience, would lead them to Gras' old barracks.
"You sure about this?" he whispered back to the african american, who nodded before responding.
"Yeah, the guys would leave weapons for any stragglers, even if Bragg is completely overrun," he said, backpedaling at Georgie's heels as he watched the 'six' of their small column.
"You better fucking hope. If not, we can run by my place, but that's a bit of a ways away," he said, his Beretta paused on the head of another one of the things as he finished his sentence and signaled the group back off the trail and into the thick underbrush.
"How much further?" Clark groaned, almost like a child. Robbie was poised to cut him off, but Layne smiled back at him.
"Almost there. I can see it, actually," he noted to the boy, who nodded quickly, tightening his jawline, "I'll give you the damn pistol back once we're there."
Georgie grinned at his older companion, who just shook his head sarcastically as he vaulted over another log, picking up the pace as he reached the edge of the woods.
"Fan-fucking-tastic," he said, reholstering Clark's Beretta as he looked over the scene around him, bodies shot and strewn along the streets, half eaten. He could see more of the stumbling things off in the distance, but they were of no worry yet.
"You should go hotwire that humvee, Georgie and I will go inside the Barracks and round up some of the guns. I don't want to take too many, in case there are any other stragglers," he said, pulling his keys from the back pocket of his multicam cargo pants before sliding them into the doorknob. Hicks nodded, moving forward with the Beretta towards a humvee sitting in one of the parking spaces.
Gras picked up a note labeled "Robbie" that was sitting on the coffee table in the living room of their barracks and stuffed it in his pocket as he continued forward, his knife up. Georgie followed, taking in the small team room as they pressed into the armory, which sat behind a series of steel bars. He went to his personal arms locker first, fetching a black M1911 that he holstered across his chest, then grabbed his .22 before proceeding further into the armory, where lines of M416s decorated the walls, alongside different weapons of different calibers.
Gras grabbed a blue Adidas duffel bag laying discarded on the floor and began grabbing weapons from the wall. He snatched several 416s and 5.56 ammo to fill up the bag before continuing into pistols and longer range rifles, which he threw into a second Nike duffel Georgie had retrieved from the showers.
"Georgie, grab some of those flashlights and sights and throw them in some open space in my ruck," Gras said, shrugging off his ruck to the floor as he tightened a holographic sight to the space just in behind his 416's triangle sight.
The kid grabbed sights off the wall, stuffing them into the ruck in between different items, taking up any remaining space in the ruck. Gras reached up to an upper shelf and grabbed two sets of streamline body armor, plus a hat for Hicks, who generally wore hats, he knew from his time in the 1-64. Gras grabbed a camouflage boonie cap for himself before shoulder the duffels and his ruck to continue outside.
Gras looked out the window under the bill of his boonie and tightened his jaw. He slung 'his' 416 as he fitted the stock into his shoulder before kicking out the door and locking it behind him.
"Georgie, get to the humvee, I'll cover you," he said, and the child nodded, unsure but trying to put on a game face for Robbie.
With the first crack of his 416, Georgie sprinted from the relative safety of the wall towards the Humvee, where Hicks was firing out the driver's side window with his M9. Robbie ran next, as the back door on the humvee slammed shut. He ran around the back side, popping the trunk and dropping his load inside before clambering into the gun turret on top, where a Browning Heavy Machine Gun sat. He racked the bolt, inserting the six inch round the cannon fired, before staring down the sights as the humvee lurched forwards. The gun thumped out a burst of thirty rounds before Gras ducked into the backseat of the humvee, beads of sweat decorating his forehead. He grabbed the note from his pocket, unsealing it quickly as his sweat bled into the paper.
"This thing says we should go to Charlotte. The whole on base force headed there after Bragg fell. It's held by the Marines. Your mom could be there, Georgie, and so could Audrey, Layne," he said, nodding at the kid, and Hicks looked into the rear view mirror.
"It's decided then. Let's roll, boys. Charlotte, here we fuckin' come, the embattled bastards of Bragg," he chuckled to himself.