Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

To avoid more losses from production due to Tatiana, I gave her each flavor of what we made. We made a total of six combinations of flavors including the spicy one I made before. Since we brought out dried fruits mostly, the other five flavors were mostly sweet and tangy but with different flavor profiles.

We managed to make several pounds of Pemmican and all that was left to do was to store them properly. I used to just scoop them all and shove them in a bag before vacuum-sealing it but Rin's suggestion of forming them into shapes first could save us a lot of space if we stack them together.

"Are we gonna place them all in the basement?" Rin asked.

"Yeah, but we need to place them in a dark container or cover a clear one with dark fabric or a tarp so that any chance of the sunlight hitting them is reduced to the minimum." I replied.

"The sun? The basement is underground, right?" Kaley looked at me weirdly.

"I'm paranoid, just bear with me. We might move it someplace else and might forget that it needs to be covered." I said then they shook their heads in amusement.

While we were carefully packing them, a few of my family and friends came by to greet me with a huge grin on their faces. They already knew that I feel awkward getting greeted over and over and I would put out this fake smile that they were all too familiar with. A simple nod would've worked fine but they went out of their way to see my awkward reaction.

We placed the final container to the basement but Tatiana tapped me.

"Hey, I almost forgot, what's the contents of the safe from the other Raptor? Jared said you mostly found documents?" Tatiana asked.

"Oh, I briefly glanced at them and it contained a few plans of escape. That Raptor was essentially his bug-out vehicle." I replied.

"Does that mean he had a few places in mind he could go to in case something goes wrong?" Kaley asked.

"Yeah, he had a few places marked on the map of his. One of them is a bit further in from where we took care of the cult and a few others were much farther. Almost all of them points out to provinces and not the cities and even one of them is kinda near Mr. Cuervo's place." I replied.

"Really?" Cynthia chimed in.

"Yeah, but you still needed to drive for a few hours to reach that place. Maybe I'll contact Mr. Cuervo or Ilya, Nikolas, and Alexei. We don't know what could be there so better safe than sorry." I replied.

"Is that all?" Kaley asked.

"Hmm, aside from a few unknown numbers I don't know what for yet and a few volumes of a survival book, there's not much. He wasn't hiding a lot of things except for those marked locations." I replied.

"Have you checked on the notebook from the cult?" Rin asked.

"Not yet, I was a little busy yesterday night when we arrived." I replied.

"Oh..." Rin blushed slightly.

"Just say that you two were fucking, it's not like we don't know what you and Kaley were up to." Tatiana chuckled.

"A-Anyway, I flipped through a few pages last night before I went to sleep and a couple of them seems to be like diaries?" Rin ended her sentence a bit high-pitched.

"You don't sound too sure." I replied.

"Y-Yeah, it's just a little weird. I'll present it at the meeting if I understand a bit more. I don't want to bog you on your day." Rin waved me off.

"No, you should. You already got my interest piqued by saying that, what made it weird?" I looked at Rin while we just came back to the kitchen again.

"I-It's supposed to be a diary but… but there are two different handwritings..." Rin said, confused.

"Different handwritings? Are you sure?" Kaley asked.

"Yeah, I saw that as well." Tatiana confirmed with a serious look.

"Hmm, okay, here's what I suggest you do if you have extra time. Look through the files that Marvin and his group managed to collect. Ask Ken or Kris for help with the digital copies and look for the real identity of not just the father but the other people that I took pictures of on that balcony. If you found nothing, start looking through the physical copies. If you managed to find a match or something similar, look through their handwriting when they filled out their forms so we could somewhat identify as to who owns the other diary. We don't have the software to identify handwriting and faces so we'll rely on our attention to detail." I explained.

"If I found nothing?" Rin asked.

"Then we'll look for more clues from other runs until we find the exact match. I'll help you when I have the time to spare but don't dwell too much on it. Worst case scenario, they have another branch much further out and we need to take care of them too. I'm just hoping they still stick together and not disperse like cowards when they discover what we did to them." I replied.

"Wait, why?" Kaley asked.

"Let's just say we would have a lot more problems if they start to form more outposts. It would be easier to take care of them if they're all located in the same spot. Anyway, we're not even sure if there's more of them. We'll talk about this in one of our meetings when we find out more information from those notebooks." I explained.

"What are we gonna do now? We're done making Pemmican, correct?" Tatiana asked.

"Me? I'm planning to go back to my room and start cleaning some of the guns we collected from the operation. I'll salvage some parts from the ones that are beyond repair. You guys could help me if you want so we could finish all of them in the couple hours that are left before lunch." I replied.

They all just nodded and we went to my armory.

The guns were already cleared before piling them here but we double-checked just to be sure. I was in a lot of situations especially in gun stores where a customer would say that the barrel was clear but when the person behind the counter checked it, a bullet would suddenly fall off the floor. It would be then replaced with an awkward look by the customer before sending that customer away and banned from entering the same shop again.

Not only that, but I was also in other situations where a customer would just flag everyone inside the store with his muzzle or would even negligently discharge his firearm inside. After spending a few minutes checking each gun, we never found live ammunition but I found a spent casing that wasn't ejected properly. I just simply removed it before we started wiping all the guns off from the initial dirt or grime.

Inspecting most of them, Rin and I's OCD was kicking in.

"We need to clean everything thoroughly." Rin and I simultaneously said.

Kaley, Tatiana, and Cynthia chuckled and they didn't argue with us. They just smiled and followed our instructions.

I brought out my cleaning kits and we each had an area in the tables to get started with disassembling each gun. The only person that was having a little bit of trouble was Cynthia because she was only experienced in basic cleaning and not thorough cleaning. However, she was next to Rin and she was guiding her with the manual for the guns she was about to disassemble. Rin wasn't proficient in shooting that much but she learned how to field strip most of the guns in our arsenal because she just wanted to clean them thoroughly.

"Don't be afraid to ask questions, okay?" Rin said as Cynthia nodded a few times.

I on the other hand started with my BCM AR-15 while Kaley started with her PSA AR-15. Our rifles had a lot of parts to be taken out so we were being extra careful not to lose each one of them. However, when I was watching Kaley field strip her own, I saw some wear and a slight bend on her firing pin. It wasn't as obvious to the naked eye but me looking at it was already giving me signals. It was a good thing it didn't malfunction yesterday.

I stood up and grabbed a new one for her.

"Here, replace it with this one. You could still use this for a few more rounds but this firing pin is nearing its limit. It slipped my mind that you've been shooting a lot with that gun already and the parts are starting to give out." I said as I gave her a new firing pin.

"Oh, thanks. It… it really looks kinda~ different from a new one..." Kaley examined the two firing pins closely.

"Is it? I can't see any difference." Cynthia also took a look at it.

"Well, the obvious one is the fouling but even if you clean it thoroughly, it would still malfunction sooner or later. We could set aside this one so I could straighten it a bit but I won't suggest you use this one anymore. I guess I'll place this on the AR-15s the people on the walls are using. They're safe up top and could use a backup gun but in our case, it would be life-threatening if our guns malfunctions outside." I explained.

"Why does a firing pin get to that state?" Cynthia asked.

"If you shoot a lot, that usually happens." I replied.

"How many shots would it take? Around 1000?" Rin added.

"What? No, the common life expectancy of a firing pin is around 6000 rounds but it could be different if we consider other factors. I had one that only lasted 2000 because it was poorly made. The best thing to do is to check your whole gun, not just the firing pin, after each use to be sure. There's a lot of parts to a gun and it could malfunction not only by a faulty firing pin but from the other parts too." I explained then Kaley nodded.

"Oh~ what about Tatiana's AKM though?" Rin asked.

"What about it?" Tatiana said.

"I've never seen you clean it." Rin replied.

"Hah! This?! I could bury this in dirt and it would still work!" Tatiana started laughing.

"What?! Really?!" Rin and Cynthia were shocked but they looked at me for confirmation.

"Yes, it has been done multiple times. The reliability of an AK platform is something else. But..." I said, smiling.

"But what?" Tatiana was surprised.

"Clean it, it's still dirty." I said with a grin.