If it was any other day and these people came at us with disrespect, I would've just made them line up and hose them all together, but yeah, respect goes both ways and we should honor it.
But yeah, the tiny bit of tediousness of bringing a couple of buckets filled with clean water—each time a person was done—was necessary to build more trust though it didn't take long before we had to process them in batches.
Obviously, we had more people watching them with guns at the ready but the group understood the situation and the necessity of doing so.
They were just happy to breathe some fucking fresh air for once because even if they had small windows they could swing open, the storeroom they were in was fucking rancid, to say the least.
On that note, it didn't take long before a bunch of the guys huddled up in one spot to bathe together while the women did the same thing but in a private space, but there were still a few that requested a more private area so they could clean themselves and have fewer people looking at them naked.
The world may have gone to shit and all but some of us still appreciate a little bit of privacy here and there.
However, we still had a smaller group of people we had to convince to come out, and they were in this airport's hotel suites but George didn't look too happy when he discovered who I assumed to be people among their ranks were still alive.
Since we built him up as this group's representative of sorts, he was present with us when we were talking about how we'd go about the suites those dozen or so people were in, and the mention of their survival made his expression turn dark.
"Something happened, huh? Spill."
"That's— Those people— Those damned—"
"It's okay, breathe~ alright?"
George tried to lighten his darkened expression but even taking a deep breath diminished it only by a little. Even his fists were clenched up and his whole body was shaking as his head was going through what he experienced with those people that he still hadn't told us.
After a minute, he managed to collect himself but he still shook his head angrily as he spilled as instructed:
"What happened there—"
George cut in, "They're a bunch of rich boys who don't know any better. W-Well, they acted well by securing a lot of food for themselves before it started, probably because they didn't do many jobs a few months in, but that's a story for another day," then she turned to Reba again, "Aside from the food, tell them what you saw."
"I-It's..." Reba trailed as she wore a difficult expression.
I looked at her gently, "If you're that uncomfortable, your dad could just tell it to me instead, and we'll take your word for it—"
"N-No... I-It's okay— Well... I-I'm not that good at recalling things b-but I-I saw a lot of used needles and some s-stuff on little clear pouches just sitting on their nightstand. S-Some of them are powdered while some a-are whole? I don't know the exact term but I do see a lot of s-soldiers carry the same stuff and use them on their shifts."
"Did they see you when you saw the drugs?"
"That's... They did— I mean, S-Sir Robert saw but he uhh... He asked me if I wanted to have a good time? Start small, even, but that was when Mrs. Agnes came in and yelled at him. I believe they fought because Sir Robert h-had bruises the day after that and I was assigned to other areas..."
"I see..."
George held Reba tight before he asked her to go back to her mother, "I'll talk to you later, alright?" then he turned back to me, "That's what happened... I've seen people abuse power and whatnot but that's just unacceptable! You can talk to the others about what that fucking security did when he was given authority but it just went downhill from there!"
"What else did he do?"
George spat on the ground, "What else THEY didn't do? It's not all of the soldiers that came here but those substances just pulled a good number of them to the dark side! Aside from the creepy shit they try to pull on everybody, the way they tried to keep all of us here caused this whole ordeal!"
"Again, what did they do—"
"We uhh... I had some talks going with the other families present with us to move on to another place but bringing such a large group made it really difficult. We were way~ more when you found us but the way they kept us from escaping into the night or even having the means to prepare is that they blast those damned sirens to attract everything around us!"