I awoke with a start, sitting straight up, finally realizing where I was. Sorrow was still asleep. It was barely light out.

I grabbed a can of salmon out of my pack, and the book I had gotten out of the trash yesterday. "Leather Tanning" was the title, and it was an instructional book on how to skin animals and turn their hides into leather. Well, if we were stuck here for a time, it might be good to learn a thing or two, so I started reading.

After about an hour or so, Sorrow stirred. What the hell was I doing with him? I hated him. Hated what he did. Did I really need to work with this guy?

At that moment, out of nowhere, a giant hornet was upon me, trying desperately to stab my face with its giant stinger. It was about 1/3rd the size of me. Without hesitation, Sorrow stabbed it in the back and took it down, saving my life. I guess that answered my question.

"Uh, thanks." I said, shaken up. "It isn't enough to have wild dogs and zombies, but now we have giant bees too?"

"Yeah, really." Sorrow said, wiping off his knife with his shirt.

We sat for a minute so he could eat and drink. "I think we should think about the long-term. We need to find some clothes, weapons, we need to loot all these buildings and find a place to settle until that plane comes back."

"Sounds like a plan." Sorrow replied.

We stood up and grabbed our packs and climbed down the ladder. The Shamway was cleaned out, so we headed to the house across from it. Sorrow used his pickaxe to bust open the windows and we climbed in.

He went upstairs, I stayed down. I headed to the phone I saw on the wall, but of course, as I expected, it was dead.

I searched the kitchen, going through the stove, cupboards, and the fridge. In the stove there was a pipe and a cooking pot. Not sure what use the pipe had, but I supposed if nothing else it could be a blunt weapon in an emergency, so I grabbed it along with the pot. The cupboards yielded a few empty jars and cans, and a can of cat food. Reluctantly I took it all, even the cat food, because who knew how much food we would find.

There was a room off of the kitchen, under the stairs. Small but room for something, so I stepped in and was hit with most horrific smell. There was a half-eaten dead corpse lying in the corner. Hating myself for it, I bent down to search his pockets, because you never know what you might find, and I am glad I did because I discovered 9mm bullets, 11 of them.

I went back to the living room where we broke in at and off of that was a bathroom. I checked the medicine cabinet and sink, but nothing was there. There was a toilet as well, which was fine because I had to urinate, and I'd rather do it inside then out. I opened the lid and…."What the f*ck?" I said out loud. There was a f*cking 9mm pistol in the toilet.

Sorrow came in, obviously done from upstairs. "Hey, find anything?" I pointed to the pistol. "Well, what are you waiting for? Fish it out."

"Uh-uh," I said. "I searched the nurse zombie yesterday and a f*cking rotting corpse in a room off of the kitchen. It's YOUR turn to do something nasty."

"Fine." He said. I just noticed he was wearing a shirt, and he was holding another. He started wrapping his hand up.

"No no, that shirt is for me right? Don't use that sh*t for that sh*t. Use your bare hands, I want a shirt, too." Sighing, he handed me the shirt and fished the pistol out of the toilet. "I found some ammo on the corpse, so this should come in handy."

He checked the chamber. "15 rounds in here. How much ammo did you find?"

"11 bullets, so we got 26 shots. Not bad, should be useful. You find anything else other than the shirts?"

Opening his pack, he pulled out a blueprint. "Schematic for a wrench. Needs 7 short iron pipes."

"Interesting. Guess we better keep a look out for them then, we can use the wrench to take stuff apart and get materials. We ought to make one of these house our base, and this one's just as good as any."

"Wouldn't it be better to establish a base closer to the airstrip?" He asked.

"Yeah, you got a good point." I said. D*mn, why didn't I think of that? Why did he have to be so helpful? "I get the gun, I found it and the ammo, you already got the knife."

"No. Tell me, which one of us has military training?" He inquired.

"I used to shoot guns with my dad when I was younger, I know how they work," I replied.

"I fished it out of the freakin' toilet. No, I get the gun."

"We are sticking together anyway, so it really doesn't matter who has it."

"Tell you what, I found this casino coin upstairs. Flip for it?"

"Okay, I call heads." He flipped and it landed on tails. Just my luck. "Okay, fine, then give me the knife."

"No problem." He handed it over. "Give me the ammo." I complied. "Let's get out of here."

We spent the next few hours going from house to house, and each house we scavenged in, I tried the phones, with no luck. We ended up getting a pretty good haul of stuff. In total, we ended up with 5 cans of lamb rations, 3 cans of sham, 4 cans of chili, 7 bottles of water, a couple handfuls of coffee grounds, 2 more pain relievers, 2 more short iron pipes from ovens, a pair of pants for each of us, a cowboy hat, 1 piece of a shotgun which looked to be the barrel, 3 shotgun shells, and a couple of potatoes. The most notable finds were a mining helmet, a book on how to assemble and repair a pistol, and a fireaxe we found in a car trunk.

We had searched 5 houses at that point, and we started talking about long term plans. "We should gather stuff to make a campfire, and I think with everything we need to think about, we should make a forge as well." I had said.

"A forge? Seriously? How the hell would we do that?"

"The same guy I watch on YouTube that made the stone axe also has a video on making a forge. I must have watched it a dozen times as it was just amazing, and I'm pretty sure I can recreate it. Just like you have military skills, I have some skills, too."

And so, without delay, we picked the last house before the airstrip and started gathering rocks. We needed clay as well but we had no shovel, so we dug a bit with our hands, but that proved useless. We gathered some wood with the fireaxe for the fire.

"We should scout around the house to make sure there are no other ways in other than the front one, you know, for security purposes." Sorrow had said, and I agreed. We walked around the house and there was a small section of trees behind it, and through them, we could see other buildings, one of which looked like a another store. We made a note to search that tomorrow.

In the meantime, there was a back door, so while Sorrow was tearing it down, I managed to fashion together a couple of wood frames to act as a blocking point for the doorway. Granted the zombies would be able to see through them, but at least it was some type of obstacle.

We were about to finish off blocking the doorway when we heard a noise. We turned around and that's when we saw…..Oh my god!