40 Hey John, How Are You Doing Again?

The next SUV they saw was a Mercedes, and the house seemed to be empty as well. However, they couldn't find the key. So, after about ten minutes of searching around, the group decided to move onto the next one.

And there it is, a classic Ram pickup truck. Although this thing chugs on oil, this monstrosity could make a reliable transportation tool with its big body and big wheels, especially since they were planning to go offroad.

"Nice, it's 8-cylinder and 4-wheel-drive. It's a 2018 model, so the fuel economy isn't that awful."

They went into the house and quickly located the key to the truck on a hanger by the door connecting the house and the garage.

"Uh... We might need to fill it up at the guess station across from the market, there's only about half a tank," Alex said after he started the car.

They quickly drove by their house, loaded all the essentials they would be bringing onto the trip.

Seeing Elon typing something into his laptop, Jay asked, "What are you doing there?"

Elon replied without lifting his head up, "Just programming in a voice message for the speaker to play if someone breaks in." Then, he started recording the message, "The owners will be back in a few hours. Please leave immediately, or any further motion detected within the house five seconds after this message is played will trigger the alarm."

Jay: "Wait, wouldn't it be a little too late to play that after they broke in?"

Elon: "Yeah, that's why I gave them the extra five seconds to back the f*ck out. Don't worry, everything's programmed. I'm just going to get this message printed and posted on our front gate to save people some time."

It's a great feeling to have a tech-savvy member on the squad, taking care of stuff like this and making their life so much easier.

Jay made sure the doors and windows were locked, Elon turned on the alarm, and the group drove off and headed for the bridge to exit the Sunset Island Community.

Jay: "Hopefully no one robs us."

Elon: "Yeah, don't worry, we can see the status of our front door, the outdoor cameras and the sensors inside the house all from our phone. Plus, the alarm is also set. If someone's going to barge into our house, we might as well make the alarm go off and attract any wandering zombies in the area."

Christian: "Yeah, at least the zombies won't eat our food and take our supplies."

Just as they pulled into the gas station, a fleet of two cars and 3 motorcycles pulled in as well. The Big D squad immediately went into the combat-ready mode, not sure if the encounter was coincidental or if those guys had been waiting for a long time for preys to show up."

Well, the gas station is quite small, and the encounter sure was awkward. Jay decided to break the ice first by rolling down the window. "We mean no harm, just here to fill up our tank and we will be on our way."

"Yooo, Jay, my man!" a familiar voice immediately came from one of the cars as the window was lowered.

"Waiiit a second, John? Is that you?" Jay was speechless. What were the odds? Two encounters in one day? Were they the only two groups alive in the area now?

"Yo chill, these guys are cool," John immediately said to the other guys as he got off the car and went to greet Jay.

"When I saw you guys pulling in, I thought we were going to get robbed again," Jay got off as well and went for a hug.

John scratched his head as he awkwardly laughed, "Yeah, our gang was never into robbing and stuff. We just make and sell drugs to make money to feed the family. We only came to your house after seeing the supply drop because we were really out of options, but now we have more than enough supplies. Oh hey, new ride, is this your car too?"

"We kind of jacked it, haha, just here to fill up the tank," Jay could see the irony too. But in his defense, they were kind of out of options too. In addition, he didn't know whether he could trust this guy enough to tell him about their travel plan.

"You guys going somewhere?" seeing the truck all packed up, John asked.

After a brief silence, Jay answered, "We going to pick up our mom down in South Miami, should be back soon." Don't know how much he could fully trust John, Jay decided to lie about going to a closer destination so others won't know that they were going too far away.

"Oh man, you guys should be careful, it's probably more chaotic in the cities."

"Yeah, if we can't make it back, I will shoot you a message on the app and you can just go to our place and take our supplies for your brothers. I will disarm the alarm system from my phone so it doesn't go off and attract more zombies." Jay decided to trust John but still subtly mentioned the alarm system they had, just in case.

The other guys in the car also heard the conversation, and they were all a bit tensed up, not knowing if it was the best idea for Jay to trust this guy and tell him that they were going away. After all, they did try to rob them once.