Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

"The wall." I widened my eyes as I repeated what I said.

"Yeah, I heard you but what is it?" he looked at me, eager to learn.

"Okay, let me borrow that and show everyone. Not just Iskoh but all of you are shooting from the slack and not the wall." I said as I took his gun.

They all gathered around me and I told them to watch my trigger press. I cleared the chamber first and removed the magazine though I'm still pointing the gun to where the targets were. The pad of my finger is now on top of the trigger and I'm slowly pressing it until I meet the wall of resistance after the slack.

"See it?" I asked them.

"I see no difference." Roque is shaking his head.

I let go of the trigger and did the same thing again.

"See it?" I asked again.

"Umm, is it the thingy where you could press it and it would still not fire?" Jade raised her hand.

"Oh, that 'thingy' your referring to is called the slack. I guess this is something you all need to feel. Clear your guns first and try to press through the slack until you reach some resistance. It varies from gun to gun so what I'm showing with Iskoh's 1911 can't be the same for your guns. Iskoh, try it again. Feel it first and burn in your head as to where it is." I replied as I handed him back his gun.

All of them, even Rod, is slowly pressing their triggers and some of them succeeded in finding the wall. However, some of them would press too much and would actually dry-fire it.

"Oh~ found it~ It's this, right?" Micah looked at me.

"So it's the point where it gets a bit harder to press..." Roque muttered, holding his chin.

"Yeah, I encourage you to practice that each time you draw and point it, before you shoot, it would be right up to the wall and not the slack." I replied.

"Sure, but why? It still shoots the same, right?" Roque said, curious.

"Not quite..." Iskoh trailed.

"Best way to explain it is to try it for yourself, right? Shoot at the targets a few more times but make sure to do it as I instructed. You don't need to shoot fast yet, only proper. You guys have a few more things to adjust in shooting but we'd tackle it one by one." I said to them.

They shot a couple of rounds and Iskoh immediately felt the difference.

"Doing that makes me yank it less... right?" Iskoh looked at me half-guessing and I nodded.

"Yeah, proper trigger management could also help you to shoot faster and accurately. Sometimes, when you pull it from the slack, like you said, you could yank it to different directions and it would make you miss." I replied.

"Hah! You still have a lot to learn Iskoh!" Rod mocked him, laughing.

"Yeah~ you have a problem too." I scratched my head.

"What?! I'm hitting them perfectly, aren't I?!" Rod was shocked.

"You're aiming way down. Can't you see most of your shots are lower than the nose? It wouldn't matter as much close range but when we go to the middle range and above, problems would appear. What you're doing is anticipating or timing the recoil incorrectly. Don't drive your gun down just before you shoot or else all your shots would go lower or farther than what you're aiming at. Just hold it tight and drive it back to the target after it recoils. I'm not telling you to wait for the gun to settle but drive it down after you shoot, not before. You would be able to shoot much faster and more accurate that way," I explained.

"Well son of a bitch, fuck me." Rod is shaking his head.

A few soldiers and residents that have nothing to do started to make a small semi-circle around us to try to listen in to what I'm teaching.

"Is there anything wrong with me you could point out?" Jade asked me.

"For you, since you've just been learning for the first time like Roque, practicing more if you could is the way to go. The only thing I've noticed is that you're holding your gun a bit low and loose. Hold it up as much as you can up to that tail just before the slide and grip it as tight as you can so it won't veer off. You could place the fingers of your supporting hand right on the grooves in between the fingers of your other hand aside from just on top of it so you would have a tighter fit." I replied.

She's scrunching her eyebrows but Jude is assisting her so she could understand it better.

"Don't worry, learning new things takes time. You-" then Roque cut me off.

"How about me?" Roque is tapping my shoulder several times.

"Oh, switch guns." I replied and he choked.

"WHAT?! WHY?! I PICKED ONE EARLIER AND YOU CHANGED IT NOW YOU'RE MAKING ME CHANGE AGAIN?!" he exclaimed.

"Yes." I replied immediately.

"WHY?!" he's starting to lose it.

"That .357 is a bit much for you. I suggest a gun chambered in 9mm or even a .22 so you'd get used to it first. However, please veer off from a revolver for now since most of them only hold six rounds. You're better off with something like a Beretta M9 or a Glock 19 or 26 that they're using. More bullet capacity is the way to go." I explained.

"THEN YOU SHOULD'VE TOLD ME SOONER!!! ARE YOU MESSING WITH ME?!" he shouted but I placed my hand above his shoulder.

"Well, it's funny." I just shrugged.

He almost popped a vein while everyone chuckled.

"Seriously though, your grip is not as strong so your shots go way off. Unless you could manage that, practice with a lower caliber gun first. Go back to that Model 17 if you still want to use revolvers." I concluded.

Micah never had to ask me questions since Kaley is already giving her pointers. Since I'm teaching a lower number than what I usually teach, I'm able to focus on each of them more than I usually do. The bullets we could freely use are not that limited since Rod actually brought a lot for this place so it could start over. I managed to replenish the rounds that we used and add a bit more to what we brought so we're at full capacity again. Despite that, they didn't shoot a lot though they made each shot count. There's some improvements at the end of the lesson and all they needed to do is assimilate what they've learned and practice a lot more than we did today in the following days.

The short lesson eventually ended.

There are still a lot of things to do inside these walls so we designated jobs. Iskoh is overwhelmed but ecstatic by the amount of people that he could command now since the residents that he was protecting too much before became part of his workforce. Rod started with his plan and left us two.

The initial orders is to clean every nook and cranny of the place since we only dragged the bodies outside to be burned. The lodgings will have assigned rooms prioritising the elderly and persons with disabilities. All the resources inside this place will be gathered in one spot so it could be equally distributed or stored in its proper place later.

I told Iskoh my setup at my place and he decided to copy most of it.

He still has medical personnel among the residents and some soldiers who know a bit about taking care of people so a new record will be made later when they start to do check ups on everyone. It will be alongside the records we will gather inside this hospital if they have one already.

The vehicles at the parking area will be moved to a different location since the parking area will be the temporary camp of everyone until the whole hospital is cleaned out. The small cars will be moved first but vehicles with a lot of cargo space will remain in case we need more vehicles for a run. They will all be looted and the fuel inside their tanks will be siphoned so that we could use the extra fuel for the vehicles or the generators we have.

Large scaffolding tents will be erected after the parking area is cleared.

"Oh yeah, there's a gas station near here. We could bring the trucks so they could be filled up alongside the containers we have at the back of the hospital." I said to Iskoh.

"That sounds great. I'd also like to mobilize some of the soldiers outside with you so they could sweep the streets and the neighborhood of anything they could lay their hands on. Basic lifting of our items and cleaning the hospital could be easily done by some of the residents so we need our fighting force outside to bring back some stuff we could use here. Them going in droves would make it safer and faster." Iskoh added.

"If you want to make a smaller scale version of our plan to block the bridges and take half of this city, you could start with this place. Aside from the Mabini bridge if you check the map, there's seven small bridges here that could easily be blocked by a bus or a single container van. You could leave one open and just have soldiers guarding the other bridges after you clear this small part of your city. This part of the city is pretty high-end compared to where the gang members are coming from. There's several car dealerships, a mall, gas stations, restaurants, midtown homes and a few condominium units. At the southwest part of this chunk, there's a garden that I surmise has seeds where you would be able to grow your own food, not just here. The only thing missing here is farm animals and you'd be almost set." I said.

"Almost set, huh?" He was in deep thought as he's checking the places I pointed to.

"If you succeed in reclaiming the parts I told you about, you'd have a bigger territory than me. You're lucky that you have bridges here you could block so there's a bottleneck you could easily handle them. There's a few at my place but this plan cannot be done over there." I said.

"That would be the greatest scenario in this place. However, I learned that having a territory too big could be bad for me. I'd need to take into account a lot of things or else a repeat of what happened before might occur. I might just take this chunk of the city first for a while before I take even half of it in the future. However, let me thank you for the things- no, everything you've done here. I'm really impressed at what you could do and I hope we could work with each other until this thing is over." he motioned for a handshake.

"A handshake?! At least give me half or even a quarter of the soldiers Rod would be leaving you with! Damn, I had to work hard to get a few from him and several aircrafts and he's giving it to you for free! C'mon man, I'll even accept a dozen but I want to choose them myself. I'm thinking of Cruz and Mike for starters. How about it? Mike's already injured so at least let me take one more. Also, I wouldn't have a vehicle to take them with so if you would be so kind as to lend me a helicopter for them?" I'm lightly elbowing his sides a few times.

He immediately choked but he started to laugh heartily after. He started to wheeze while clutching his stomach and I think this time is the first time I saw him laugh without a worry in his face.