Chapter 33 - Smoke and fire

Looking at the place that officially started the war, I could only let out a sigh of regret. After all, the reason my people are being targeted is Anya's obsession with me and obviously the amount of grounder blood that's on my hands.

Even now, I still don't know why the grounders even kidnapped me or even attack me in the first place. We didn't even know that they exist until they attacked us out of nowhere, but then again maybe they didn't even need a motive since for them we were the invaders.

Shaking those annoying and repetitive thoughts out of my head, I simply looked through the scope of my rifle at the bomb that was planted in the middle of the bridge. While I could just shoot and leave, that would only stop the grounder for a little while, but if I detonate the bomb when the grounders are near the explosion, then as a bonus some of those idiots would be caught as well, lowering the number of enemies we will have to face sieging us.

Hour by hour flew by and nothing happened, but one thing was for sure, it was too quiet as if all of the animals fled knowing that an army was going to march through there. And unsurprisingly, after another three hours, the first scout had been seen by me. I may not be a military genius by any means, but even I know that this place is the perfect spot for an ambush, especially when crossing the river on a bridge.

After the first pairs of scouts made sure that no one was near the bridge, the rest of the whole army was slowly making their way towards the bridge and before I could even count them, more and more grounders made their presence known, stopping just before the bridge.

When they were sure that no one was going to jump on them, the grounder's army marched again, a fatal mistake in my opinion, but hey, I'm just the guy with a gun.

As soon as quite a few of them were on the bridge, I fired. The moment the bullet hit the bomb, the whole bridge blow up, taking with him whoever was unfortunate enough to be near that bomb and with it the momentum of the grounder army.

I didn't stand there any longer, waiting for the aftermath as it will only infuriate the grounders more than anything to see the guy responsible for the death of at least twenty of them, standing on the other side watching. Whatever time we gained today would either be used to further fortify our position or in the worst case follow Octavia's plan of running away to an unknown woman that may or may not help us, depending on what our people want.

Back at the camp, most of the people got better, and soon, the only ones that were still showing signs of being infected were the ones that were brought in just recently. When I arrived back, everyone was waiting for what I was gonna tell them.

"They won't come to us using the bridge any longer!"

Cheers of happiness resounded all around the camp as the kids were happy that the grounders were delayed. Some of them even wanted to celebrate this victory, yet I, for one, was too tired to care for this. After making sure that no one other than the boy that broke his neck when he got infected died, I went into my tent and simply slept the rest of the day.

In the morning, the first thing that I did when I woke up was to go to the walls and watch out for any grounders. While I was sure that the bomb scared them enough to force them to use the long route towards us, there was a slim chance that a few fanatics might attack us.

Bellamy, who got better since the last time I saw him, come and greeted me when he saw me alone on the wall.

"Taking the guard duty for today?"

"Someone has to do it."

"Yeah, but I don't think they'll come. The bomb may have scared them off."

"Here you are wrong, Bellamy. Anya will definitely attack us, but it won't be using the bridge. They'll come from the mountain area."

"Where we have all of our defenses. I still don't see how we will lose."

"They will throw their dinosaurs at us until we either run out of bullets or them out of meat shields. Then will the grounders come for us."

"Either way, we will have to fight them alone, since no one is going to come and help us."

Meanwhile, Octavia and Murphy were arguing with each other inside the smoker about how much wood they needed to burn.

"Leon's right, Octavia, too much wood will just burn the whole place."

"And what makes you think that keeping the fire to an optimum level means that I want to add more wood?"

The two of them continue working in the smokehouse when Del comes in bringing more wood for the fire.

"Hey Del, don't put any more on the fire. Knock it down with some wet leaves or something!"

"Shut up, you grounder ponder. You are lucky that Bellamy's your brother or else you would have been long hanged."

"Hey man, knock it off, she's right, though."

"You are one lucky son of a bitch, Murphy. If not for Leon and Bellamy saving your ass back there, then you would have been long dead as well."

As soon as he was done putting the wood on the fire left the smokehouse, leaving Murphy and Octavia to continue working on the meat.

"I save their asses and they still look at me like they look at a traitor…"

"Cheer up, at least you aren't dead. By the way, why isn't your brother giving you another job?"

"You know him, Murphy. Heck, even Leon agrees with him sometimes. I swear if having one brother was hard, just thinking about having someone like Leon as a brother is even worse."

"He keeps the whole camp united and to be fair, just imagine what would have happened if your brother or even Clarke were the ones that were being seen as leaders."

"Please, Murphy, I want to work not to throw up."

While this happened, I was inside Raven's tent after she called me to keep her company as she was making even more bullets to us. Just as I was about to make a move, we both heard someone shouting "fire".

We both rushed out of the tent only to see the smokehouse and almost all of our meat being burned to the ground. When I got near the fire to help extinguish it, Murphy and Del start fight. Before these two could tear each other apart, Bellamy and a few kids grabbed them two dragged them away.

After the fire was put out, we learned that Del was the one responsible for it, but at this point, no one even cared about punishing him, since, without the smokehouse, we weren't going to survive the winter.

Inside the command tent, I gathered all of the people responsible for each part of our camp, to discuss how in god's name we are going to pull through this nightmare.

"I want ideas, people. How are we going to get enough meat for the winter?"

"We can continue to hunt and hope for the best, Leon."

"I agree with Bellamy, we can't scavenge for wild fruits and berries forever. Not to mention that not all fruits would last, and some of the nuts here all have various uses."

Right after everyone but Clarke, Bellamy, Finn, Octavia, Miller, and I left the tent, we all turned towards Octavia waiting for an explanation.

"Del was an idiot. Both Murphy and I kept telling him to stop putting wood on the fire, but obviously, he knew better than us. That's what happened."

"Well deal with that idiot when we came back, until then just lock him up."

Yet even though we were left without any meat, that didn't stop us from trying once again. Bellamy and I quickly took a team each out for hunting, but not before telling everyone to be armed in case the grounders attack us.

One way or another we are going to survive. No matter what we have to do to achieve it.

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Fallout Armageddon

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