Day 19
As they drive alongside the road, the remaining Roadside Bandits reveal their greatest weapon: two armored trucks. Two of them try to box in the survivors and a high-speed chase breaks out. Aiello does everything in his power to outwit the trucks and destroy them. He succeeds and in the process, causes a car crash. Everybody survives and starts scavenging what they can before moving on, continuing this journey on foot.
Day 22
After three days of walking on foot, they finally come to a stop at a truck stop and start piling up on supplies. Just as they are about to leave, they are surrounded by a big group of survivors with homemade weapons.
Day 4,613
It took them a day, but they finally arrived in Vancouver at six o'clock in the morning. They arrived at the powerplant that Aiello told them about. Aiello parked the SUV in front of the gates and walked inside, disabling the defenses by entering a code in one of the panels.
Aiello walked through and saw the most amazing sight possible. His wife, son, and best friend were sitting around a fire and eating cooked meat. When the younger version of Aiello - Erik - saw his father, the food dropped to the floor.
Aiello raced forward, Erik doing the same thing. Aiello picked Erik off the ground and hugged him tightly.
"Daddy!" Erik cheered as he hugged Aiello tightly. "I missed you, Daddy!"
"Me too," Aiello sniffed as he felt a tear roll down his cheek. Mila runs up and hugs both her husband and son tightly. He broke apart from the hug to introduce the three to the group that he brought with. "Guys, I forgot to introduce. These people I saved in at the border. Meet Tai, Abby, Luis, Oliver, Sadie, and Vincent."
Tai was the first to shake hands with everyone.
"Welcome to the Moral Ones." Aiello's friend Ryan said. He looked to be in his late twenties the same as Aiello.
Mila still had purple hair while Erik had dirty blonde hair like Aiello and both appeared to be excited to have new survivors part in the group. Now there were ten of them.
"You've been gone for so long. Did you finally get what you wanted?" Mila asked, remembering why Aiello disappeared in the first place.
"Yes I did, but I could not bring myself to kill him in cold blood. Instead, I left him to be devoured."
"Daddy, do you promise not to leave this time?"
"I promise son. I promise." He rubbed his son's hair. "So, is there anything that I missed while I was gone?"
"Nothing much," Mila shrugged. "Nothing interesting at all. What did we miss?"
Aiello told her about the bandits and robbers. Tai even backed him up saying that everything that happened was true.
"Don't matter anyway. What matters right now is I am back with you guys and I will never leave your sides. That is what matters most."
Erik hugged his father tightly. "We caught a deer. You hungry?"
"Starving, but I am sure these guys are starving more than me. Right?"
Tai nodded.
"Then jump in and get some food and then we shall call it a day." Aiello walked back outside, Erik following, to go retrieve their supplies from the truck. "Son, if there's one thing I learned yesterday if you have one bullet, never waste it."
Aiello grabbed his rifle and checked to see if he still had the one bullet inside. He brought all the equipment back with Erik's help and turned on the electric fences.
"You know, they say there is strength in numbers. The more people the Moral Ones have, the more likely they will live. 'Live' not 'survive'."
Ryan began serving food to the people. Aiello took this moment to clean his gun and eat at the same time.
"Dad," Erik began once he caught Aiello's attention, "I never got a chance to tell you how much all that physical exercise has paid off. I got to move a lot of heavy stuff today and I felt like I had superhuman strength. Thank you for the workout, Daddy."
"Your welcome son. We are all going to survive the apocalypse. Nothing can bring this family down."
"Even if this world lasts for another decade or so?"
"Son, if it comes to that, I will still survive, You will still survive, your mother will still survive."
Erik held up a hand with a smile. "Not surviving, living."
Aiello chuckled at his son before nodding in agreement. He places his hand on the barrel of his gun before asking his son, "What is the motto of the Moral Ones?"
Erik knew the answer, so did Mila and Ryan.
"The Moral Ones have a motto?" Oliver asked, eating a bone of cooked meat. "I guess every group needs a motto."
"The motto is We don't survive, we live," Erik answered. "In a world like this, there has to be something more than just surviving. There has to be living."
Abby asked where she could go to the bathroom.
"Over there," Aiello pointed to a spot behind the tree. "I already marked my territory though." He laughed. "Stay out of it."
"While we're eating you had to say that?"
"After everything humans must go through to see another day, that is gross?" This time, everyone was laughing. Abby went up to go in the corner. "I also left my mark in Alaska and all the way here. I left our mark."
"Is that necessary?" Ryan asked doubtfully. "Surviving is morality itself."
While Aiello was talking to Ryan, Tai asked Mila, "I never asked but what is your story? We told Aiello our story and he told us his."
"My story, I was seventeen when the virus hit," Mila started. "I had just moved to BC when it hit and we evacuated ourselves to a haven. When I first met Aiello, he had saved me from being chocked. We took Aiello with him and he protected us from bad people that wanted to harm other people. I fell for him eventually after he pulled me out of a sticky situation and I never forgot the sacrifice he made."
"Yeah," Aiello confirmed, but he was smiling awkwardly due to the memory of what happened when he 'saved' her from being strangled. "For years to come, we had each other's back, never turning our backs and a couple of years later, we got married and had a son. Having Erik was the best thing that ever happened to me." He puts a hand around Erik's shoulder.
"What about me?" Mila asked in mock hurt.
Aiello smiled. "You need a hearing aid?" he joked back. "I'm kidding, you and Erik are the best things that ever happened to me.
Mila laughed at her husband before playfully punching him in the arm, "You're crazy Aiello."
In the corner of his eye, he saw Abby from behind the tree. He saw that she was slipping her gown off and putting on some new clothes. He tried to look away, but it's hard when you see a girl's bareback.
Finally, he did look away and placed his rifle on the ground. He focused completely on eating his deer meat. "You know guys, if we get the proper resources, then we can build a community for people to live in. We can save a lot of lives. We can help people live, raise babies or even have marriages. I would love to renew my wedding vows with my beloved Mila."
"Building communities is going to be hard." Abby pointed out, returning to sit with the others, wearing a blue tank top.
"Hard, but possible," Luis stated. "We have some skills that can help us build communities. If we had bigger numbers than we could make a community."
"A walled-off community." Sadie nudged Oliver in the side. "Right, Oliver?"
"Right. I'm an architect, kinda. When I was four, I liked building things rather than breaking things. I could help supervise a construction site and build things."
"Then you and I can be partners," Ryan suggested.
"I could be of medical assistance. My mother used to be a world-class surgeon, she could fix people up in no time. Before she died, she told me about her skills. Had the outbreak not started, I would have been a doctor, a surgeon." Tai can also participate in building the community." Abby then suggested.
"I just want to make sure I am useful and not dead weight."
"Hey, the Moral Ones have a policy: There is no deadweight. Anyone useless can be useful for something," Aiello told firmly. "Remember, the Moral Ones' main goal is to keep humanity civilized."
"Amen to that." Luis bowed.
"One hundred percent," Abby agreed. "But since we are in the planning phase, we should start making blueprints."
"We can do that tomorrow because I just got back to my family and I want to spend time with them as much as possible," spoke Aiello. "We'll start fresh on an idea in the morning if that's alright. Wait for a second, I'm the leader of the group, I just remembered."
"Aiello, how about you just sit down and enjoy family time then?" Mila asked.
"Alright then." Aiello made himself comfortable before eating more cooked meat with his family, and friends. He doesn't consider them friends, he considers them family. All Moral Ones are family.
Nighttime had indeed fallen and the Moral Ones set up tents for everyone to sleep in. There were ten survivors so Ryan, Abby, and Sadie slept in one tent, Luis, Oliver, Tai, and Vincent slept in the other tent. Aiello, Mila, and Erik got the last tent.
The fire was extinguished and the only light that existed in the camp was the one coming from Aiello's tent.
Erik was already asleep when Aiello began discussing something with his wife. "Mila, remember how I told you that I shot a robber by accident? I have a feeling that robbers' brother, Jack is going to hunt me down for revenge. I may have mentioned to the original robber leader, Jonathan, that I have a wife and son."
Mila did not say a single word.
"I don't want to put you or our son's life in danger. We may have to ditch the vehicle and run away. This is just a precaution because, in a world like this, any one of us could die in an instant."
"You think he will follow you from the border?" Mila asked
"I stayed in Alaska so I can hunt down a bandit; Revenge will drive people to the edge of the world."
"If we leave, then where do we go? And how are we going to get there?"
"We have a map of all possible safe havens in Canada. The nearest haven we could go to is sugarcane. We can ditch the car we came in and find other means of travel. I just want to keep my son and my wife and my family safe. I don't want them to die for a crime I've committed."
"Should we tell the others?" She already knew the answer. "Honesty is a moral trait."
"We will tell them first thing tomorrow and then that is where we move away from this place. These robbers are good trackers, trust me. The leader told me they are." Aiello looked at his four-year-old son. "I want our son to make it in the world. I want him to live until the very end."
"He will. Optimism is a moral trait."
"Glass half full." Aiello chuckled. "You know, since Erik is asleep and he's a very heavy sleeper, we could make ourselves fall asleep with some fun." He smiled mischievously. "I mean, isn't that what loved ones do?"
"Okay, you pushed the right button." Mila kisses him passionately on the lips. "And yes, Erik is a heavy sleeper. Don't you think that could be a bad thing?"
"Means he will wake up on his terms and is stubborn as hell. If you haven't noticed, he does not snore. No attracting any zombies at all. That's the one good thing about being a heavy sleeper."
"We appear to be steering off the cliff." He kisses her neck and reaches for the lamp and turns it off. "I don't regret having Erik or marrying you."
"Same for me."
Aiello put his hand to her temple. They kissed more passionately. They fell asleep after enjoying the night.
Day 22
The big group introduces themselves as the Romans, a group of survivors at war with another group called the Faithful, who want to eradicate the Romans due to their aggressive and violent nature. The Romans attempt to recruit the six survivors into their army, but Aiello, after taking leadership of the group, refuses to do anything and attempts to walk away, only for the Romans to start getting anxious. When the group starts walking, the Romans attack them and brutally injure Atticus in the process and grab Mila hostage. Aiello, not wanting anything bad to happen to her, takes up on their offer to join the Romans and fight the Faithful. They join.
