Chapter 5

After filling both vehicles with gas, we moved them next to the exit door of the restaurant. The girls quickly heated some Hungry Man Meals and we all sat down to eat. There was little talking as we were hungry. Once everyone had eaten and last calls on the toilets we started toward the vehicles. Laura stopped, held a finger to her mouth signaling quiet and pointed as she was the first to see the mutants. We had overstayed our welcome. There were only three we could see but we did not want to wait around to see if there were more.

Daryl, Tammy and I dropped the mutants as the others opened, entered and started the vehicles. Daryl and Tammy blew the heads off their mutants with the large caliber rounds they were firing. My .223 caliber just went in clean and came out the back leaving a slightly larger exit hole where the spine should have been.

We drove off quickly, four and a half hours later we all needed to stop. We were almost out of fuel and had to use the toilet. Daryl knew we would be able to make it to this small town. He always stopped here when he was heading to his mountain cabin. The town had two gas stations. One was a real full-service gas station where you could get your vehicle worked on. The second gas station was a mom & pop mini mart store type. There was a Wal-Mart and two outfitter/hunting shops. We stopped at the mom & pop station first since it was the first store we drove up to.

Daryl and I pulled security while Tammy watched over the girls using the toilet and Jessica fueled up both vehicles. When the girls were done, they checked the store for anything we could use. Only two cases of bottled water and a couple of six packs of soda were all they came out with.

The girls took over security while Tammy, Jessica, Daryl and I hit the toilets. The next shop we came to was Highland Expert Adventure Treks <HEAT> we found it locked but it had been stripped already, probably the owner. The second outfitter store, ‘JEB’s’ was just down the street and it too was locked. We found Jeb dead in the back of the store. He had written down the location and combinations to both safes for whoever found him. The first safe held the keys to all the locks in the store and the second was a gun safe in the floor.