62 Strangers

"Doug, it works" Mark whispered excitedly.

"Of course it works, I told you" Doug whispered back, a smile on his face.

"Shit, where'd this string come from?" A man asked.

"Watch where you're walking, man," Another man said.

"Who are those people?" Lily asked Ben.

"I don't know" Ben answered.

"If they're friendly, we don't want to hurt them," Lee said, "They're not a part of your group are they?"

"No, Mr Parker, Travis and I were the last...the last ones," Ben said sombrely.

"It's just two of them, we need to make a stand," Kenny said with a rifle in his arms.

"No, we have a routine. We don't confront them if we don't have to" Lily said.

"You alright?" One of the men asked his friend.

"Yeah, just gettin' untangled" The other man replied.

"I don't know how you're still alive, man," The first man said.

"...Sorry Lily, but we gotta do this" Kenny said as he stood up and aimed his rifle at the men, "That's far enough!"

"Oh! Shit!" One of the men shouted, "Okay! Okay! No problem!"

"We don't want any trouble," Lee said.

"Of course, n-neither do we uh, I'm Andy St. John, this here's my brother Dan, we're just out lookin' for gasoline, looks like you folks got the motel locked down, w-which is fine but uh... if you could spare any gas, we'd be much obliged" The man, Andy said.

"What do you need gas for?" Lily asked.

"Our place is protected by an electric fence, generators provide the electricity" The other man, Danny said.

"Our generators run on gas, look... uh, we own a dairy farm a few miles up the road, if Y'all be willing to lower your guns, w-we can talk about some kind of trade," Andy said.

"How y'all doin' on food?" Danny asked, "W-we got plenty at the dairy"

"...Lee, why don't you, Mark and Tom go check the place out, to see if it's legit" Lily said.

""I'll go too"" Carley and Doug said at the same time.

"Me too, I want to show you guys that I'm not useless," Travis said.

"Uh, since Travis' going, I'll go too," Ben said.

"So uh... what do Y'all think?" Andy asked.

"Alright then, you got a deal, we'll bring some gas to the dairy and in exchange, you give us some food to bring back, we'll see how it goes from there," Lee said.

"Sounds fair, a couple gallons should power our generator for a while," Andy said with a smile.

"Alright then, let's go," I said with a smile as I left the motel alongside Lee, Mark, Doug, Carley, Travis and Ben.

'We have four of the five mutated people we have going with us, so we should be safe, and even if these guys are mutated, we have enough people to overpower them' I thought, as the smile on my face grew larger.

"Well, splendid! Let's go" Andy said with a grin as he led us to the St. John Dairy.