41 The Po-Po is Here

"Thank you, Jay, I really can't say this enough. People's true color comes out in sh*t hole situations like this, and I can tell that you are genuinely a really nice guy. Tell you what, I will watch your house. If you get a notification saying that someone's at your place, I will bring my guys over and check it out," John said earnestly.

"Thanks man."

The two shook hands and both went back to their groups.

"I know, I know, you guys aren't sure if we should trust him. But yeah, he already saw us out here, and it won't be hard for him to find out that we are going away. So, I thought even if they had thoughts about robbing us again, they might feel guilty and nip that thought in the bud when I told them that they could just have everything if we don't end up coming back. And yeah, I slipped it into the conversation that we had an alarm installed and we could view the cameras from our phone," Jay explained to the crew after he got back.

After twisting back on the gas tank's cap, Elon also weighed in, "I think we can at least trust John who seems to be a leader in the gang now. They did welcome us with open arms at that grocery store and help us pick supplies."

Christian nodded, while Alex was still a bit skeptical. After all, the idea that mafia, thugs, and gangsters are bad had been ingrained into most people's brains. On top of that, Alex was once bullied by a few young wanna-be thugs in high school that mocked him for not having real parents. What happened next? Jay found out, punched a few teeth out of those guys, and was expelled. After that, all four of them moved to a new high school.

After filling up the car, the group waved at John and his crew and hit the road.

"Oh hey, Google Map is still working properly. It's giving us status update on the traffic, and so far it's looking..."

"All red, right?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Alright, I think we need to get out of the city first and take the Hwy 997 on the outskirt of Miami down south. First, take Hwy 195..." Elon looked at his phone and instructed Alex on the directions, while Jay and Christian sat in the back seat and cautiously surveyed their surroundings.

It was about 5 o'clock, and the streets were quite quiet. Now that they thought about it, it was the first time they made a long trip out from their home after the apocalypse took place. They had to play bumper car here and there to get through, and since it wasn't their car, they didn't feel too bad about bumping their way through the city. Thank god they took the American-brand Ram pickup truck, its heavy weight and tough bumper made it so much easier to get through the streets, especially when it came across the light Japanese-brand ones.

After a couple of minutes, they came into Miami city. Looking around, the streets were filled with corpses, and there were still a couple of zombies running around. The city was indeed hit the hardest. With the dense population living in all the condos and apartments, one could imagine how crowded and chaotic it would be when the apocalypse happened. It was definitely a lot harder to run away by car, with abandoned and crashed cars everywhere. Then, once on the streets, the moment you are stuck, your end would be near.

At first, the squad was a bit worried of encountering a mutant zombie here, and they were able to relax a bit after they saw a few survivors standing on the balcony, vigilantly eyeing people and cars that passed by them. At least this was a good sign, the people here probably took down most of the zombies from Wave #3, or they wouldn't be putting their head out like this.

Alex had to make quite a few turns in the city, as many streets were basically inaccessible from the damage and landing of the crates, or piling of vehicles.

It was around 7 PM when they finally made it out of the city through SW 8th Street.

"There's a range coming up on the right, should we go for it or avoid it?" Elon asked upon spotting Miami Trail Shooting Range on Google Maps.

"Let's avoid it, we don't need more supplies so let's not be greedy. If anything, I think it's very likely that they would try to take our supplies to solidify their fortress, or they are already overrun by zombies or even mutants," Jay thought for a second and replied.

To be honest, a shooting range could be a pretty sweet place to fortify in the case of a zombie apocalypse. With fences all around and big warehouses and watchtowers in place, the field is quite open for survivors to watch over the area and take clear shots. Most importantly, the place would be loaded with guns and ammo of all sorts.

However, in this case, Jay was also unsure whether those people fortifying at the range would still be alive. Theoretically speaking, the dense concentration of firepower of a shooting range would trigger zombie waves of higher difficulty, or even mutants. Thus, either case, it would probably be in their best interest to try and avoid it, and just get on with their road trip.

Weewoo weewoo-

Just as Alex was about to drive offroad through the field opposite side of Miami Trail Range, two police cars appeared out of nowhere and came after them with their sirens on.

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?"