Brandy Creek (Book One Completed)

(Part 41)

"The first day she joined us she went out with Lex and saved a little girl." Mato says reaching forward for more food. "She's taken in the girl along with Casey, the girl Micah was in the process of adopting."

"How does someone become a killer? One with limits like not killing kids?" Cassidy asks.

"Your raised by a asshole who try's to mold you into the perfect enforcer." I say taking a bite of one of the dinner rolls, sweet Jesus its good. I chew it for a second savoring the taste and swallow so I can speak more. "I never wanted to ruin a child's life like mine was, but I was raised to be a killer and a guard. Its what I know so that's what I went into."

"Adam brought her into the group to do just that, guard the community and kill threats. Its exactly what all of Alpha, Beta, Charlie and Delta are going to be there for." Mato says to his family, essentially putting it into perspective. "We all have the same goal in keeping the people in our community safe, how we got there might be different but we are there."

Edward nods his head and asks something completely out of left field. "Do you want children of your own?"

I give a surprised laugh, Pala Mato's mother gives him a shocked look. "Edward that is completely inappropriate."

"We've only recently decided on trying out a relationship, so we haven't really talked about the later relationship stuff." Mato answers him and Edward grunts. He did seem a little disappointed about that, but he had two grandchildren that I knew about already. He'd be fine.

The change of subject actually lightens the mood around the table, enough so I can get a few bites of food in until Cassidy try's again. This time asking if I have family, where I'm from and I give her the short overview, not going into the dirty details like I did with Mato. After I answer I turn the tables on them and ask Cassidy about where she was from, where she lived with her husband. That started a conversation between all of them while Mato and I got to eat and listen to them talk. Edward was from Arizona, his wife from Montana and somehow ended up here with farm land and building a family. Mato's parents moved back here after his grandma died, Cassidy lived closer to Chicago and was a law firm secretary, her husband working in a building near where she worked. I have to get up to make us a second plate while they chat away, starting to talk about embarrassing Mato story's.

"Oh and let me tell you about his prom date.." Cassidy starts up as we are halfway through our second plate.

"No." Mato points a fork at her and shakes it. "No, we aren't going there. We need to start talking about our plan for tomorrow."

"We can have everything packed within a hour." Gerry says picking up his and his wife's empty plate.

"Have everything packed for the morning, I want to start moving out as soon as sun rise. We can bundle up the boys and have them sleep in the car, we'll take shifts driving and only take breaks when absolutely necessary."

"How many cars do you want to take?" I ask him.

"I'm thinking three." Mato says leaning back into the chair. "My parents and I can be in the first car, Cassidy, Charles and the boys in the second. You and grandpa can be in the back with a majority of our things."

"You wanna stick me and your girlfriend in the back?" Edward sounds insulted and I smile at that.

But I understood why he wanted us in the back. "Mato needs to lead because he has the map and planned our way back to camp. Cassidy and her family are in the middle to keep safest, the end has to be on their ass to make sure they are okay and also watch behind for threats."

"The infected can't keep up with cars." Mato's mother says and I shake my head.

"Cars can keep up with cars, we've already come across some not so nice people. Gangs and such are going to have a leg up in this new world, we need to be careful about them."

That seems to shock them, like they hadn't thought other people would take advantage of the situation the world had found its self in. Gangs and bad people in general were going to thrive in this world, not being scared to hurt or even kill others. The only people who can compete are the military, but then aren't some of those people bad anyway? How long until the rest go down that path?

We'd have to try hard to make sure the people in our community never had to go down that road. We'd be the bad guys, we'd train people to defend themselves but we'd save them from the worst of it.

We talk about what would go in what car, that we should pack snack boxes to go into each car so we can eat on the road. We would only stop to use the bathroom and then we would stop at some point after dinner time to find somewhere safe so we can nap. Normally the drive would be a twenty-ish hour drive from here to the camp site, we would be taking as many back roads as we could and avoid the bigger city's completely. It would double maybe even triple our drive time. We would bunker down during the night to avoid animals in the road or being caught in the dark.