218 chapter 19

Later that night, a lonely figure with eyes glowing bright gold in the darkness slowly strode toward the checkpoint between the city controlled by the Central Government and the vast wilderness, controlled by the savage mutated creatures.

"Hey, did you see something?" a Marine asked his comrade, who stood watch with him for the night shift duty.

"See what? There's nothing out there but trees and what the hell ever that mutated beyond recognition- oh look, it ran away." his comrade said in a sarcastic tone of voice as he turned his gaze toward a cat size rat scurrying in the grass.

"No, I'm serious, I think I saw something glowing bright gold over at that direction."

"Oh shut it, I don't see anything, you probably imagined it, even if there's something over there, it might just be one of those mutated firefly, I heard they grew pretty big after the nuke dropped."

The comrade chided him.

"...fine, I imagined that shit, it's your call then." the former just shrugged it off and went back to being listless and watched over the darkness horizon, and occasionally let out a yawn or two.

"But seriously, when will this shift be over?" the former asked.

"When the next duo decide to pull those fingers out of their ass and take over this shift- I say they won't be coming until dawn." the latter complained as he looked at his watch, which displayed 3:00, the equivalent to 3:00 AM.

"Marine general order number five, "To quit my post only when properly relieved." got to hate that one during time like this." he annoying complained.

"Can't agree more… but what can we do about it? They have our asses for the next four years." he smiled bitterly as he remembered the time he signed that paper.

"So, why did you join...the...Marine…" he asked the comrade who was next to him, however he trailed off as his comrade just vanished without a trace, without him noticing.

"Huh? Hey dude, where the hell are you? You know that we will be in deep shit if the Sergeant caught our asses right?" his voice was shaking at the sudden disappearance of his friend.

"Stop playing this joke already, it's not funny." he quickly wanders his eyes around as he loaded his rifle with his shaking unsteady hands.

*drip *drip *drip *drip

Suddenly he felt cold and wet sensation on the back of his neck, he used his hand to touched it, and the cause of it was, a red thick liquid.

"b-b-blood-ughhH!!!" before he could scream, a metallic hand grabbed him from behind and squeezed tightly on his windpipe, crushing it and snapping his neck, killing the man instantly.

"targets ...neutralize ...DNA sample and miscellaneous data … complete." said a cold metallic voice figure with eyes burning bright gold as it dragged the bodies off and quickly disposed it in a remote location just roughly fifty meters away from the checkpoint before heading off toward the city that was brightly lit up roughly a kilometer away.

Just a short while after the golden eyes figure disappeared into the distant, the next duo of Marine who was supposed to be on duty, finally arrived, only to find their post empty- the one who they're supposed to relieved from, gone without a trace.

"Where the hell are those guy? I know we're late by two hours, but… what the fuck man? I swear, the sergeant will be on our asses when this shit is over." one of them complained.

"...meh, the sergeant won't know about it if we keep quiet about it." he suggested.

"Yeah...let hope those two decide to keep quiet as well." his comrade added before they both went to their spot and stood there till the sun rise.

*****

Oblivious to their danger, Leonard and his group were enjoying themselves within the city, whatever they liked it or not, but in the end, they adjusted to their new environment quite nicely at that, without much problem obstructing them.

The first was money problem and the second, was finding a place to shack for the night instead of going hobo out on the cold street.

The latter wasn't much of a problem as during the previous day, they just so "happened" to run into a group of thugs, which then later involved a gang leader in the city.

Leonard and Ryuji just used their fists and beat them into submission and the next thing they knew is that they found a temporary place to stay while they're in the city.

Leonard walked out from his room within a house that he and everyone else received as a "gift" courtesy from the local gangsters after they found out that Leonard and Ryuji fists were more deadly than guns and bullets.

*Yawn "it's been quite a while since I last slept on a nice and comfy bed." Leonard commented as he looked around the house and toward the room that was across from his own when the door opened, revealing Jeanne- and surprise, a big surprise, Ryuji was the next one to came out from that room.

*cough *cough, Leonard gave two fake coughing sound as he saw the two of them walking out from the same room.

"My little ancestor...so you did cheat on my great granny...huh?" Leonard placed his hand on the trap ancestor shoulder and asked him in a serious tone.

But those words only caused the latter of the two to have questions filled look on his face.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

Leonard then turned his gaze toward Jeanne, who avoided his gaze and looked toward the window and outside into the horizon instead.

"I see… we will talk more about this… topic for another time." he looked at the both of them suspiciously before heading off toward the washroom and then meet up for the other people in the living room of the building.

"So, how are we going to do this, since we already here." Roger asked the youth who thought up a crazy idea of infiltrating into the Central Government territory.

"You want to know the truth or the bullshit?" he asked them.

"Give me the bullshit first." Ryuji raised his hand.

"Okay, we will stay in the city while secretly gathering informations about the Central Government through means of our own." he replied.

"What about the truth?" a person from Roger group asked.

"Settle down quietly in this city and stay out of trouble." Leonard shrugged.

This answer was quite unexpected to the group, they were wondering if Leonard fell on his head today when he was out of bed.

"What's with that look? I'm a reasonable person, If I can stay quiet and wait for my day, why would I go around stirring up shit." he answered.

"What about the people back in the old base? Wouldn't they be in some deep shit if the Army- oh, excuse me… "Marine" marched into our old home?" Jeanne asked.

"Do you have anyone who is close to you and is overly too important in the top chain of command?" Leonard questioned.

Jeanne shook her head, Leonard then turned his head to Roger group, they too shook their head in response to his question.

"Then you don't really have anything to worry about, as the only one who might encounter some shit is the higher up, the one who run the shit in that place." he shrugged.

"Let me remind you, from the information I've gathered so far, these people- they're value the human resources." he raised a finger to make a point.

"We have more important things to worry about since we already here, I'm sure most of you already know what that is right?" Leonard asked them, they nodded.

"Good, but let me repeat it so we can make it clearer- stay the fuck away from shits, unless people like the bunch of thugs who "Kindly" offered us this abode to us, just comply to the authority, from what I've seen so far, they operated on the same system as one before doomsday." he reminded them.

"THE PEOPLE INSIDE! GET THE FUCK OUT HERE FACE THIS DADDY!" a loud and obnoxious roar interrupted their meeting.

"Here come the piece of shit that I was talking about… the one you can fuck with." Leonard gave himself a face-palm, the cliche is too real for this one.