We rode back to the street and to the exact same way that we used to get to the shop. At first, I thought it would be pretty awkward for people who were carrying large backpacks to ride bikes. However, my thoughts turned the exact opposite after I realized how faster indeed it was to use any kind of transportations back to the station.
I had my eyes particularly locked on Captain Quentin who, despite to be carrying the fire ax on his left hand, he seemed to have no problem at all in riding his bike one handed. I also wondered on how he could cycle his bike quite swiftly even though he carried a large backpack.
Before I forgot, we did not cycle together all four lined on the street. Instead, we took the formation of rows, with Captain Quentin on the front. Kyle was the second on the row, followed by Ryan, and I was on the last of the row. It seemed strange, but it was in fact Kyle's suggestion to the rest of us.
She stated that the person who was bringing the heaviest backpack should be in the front, and the second heaviest should be in the back. The second and the third would be comprised of the ones who were bringing the lighter backpacks. She also stated that it was the method that her high school friend used when they went cycling together for several times.
Unlike the other times before, I grasped her words about cycling rather quickly. The person who was at the front had the task to determine the pace of the rest of the other behind him or her. Meanwhile, the person with the second heaviest load would supposedly have the similar pace as the person at the front, and therefore would be ideal to keep the same pace from behind. The rest of the others who had considerably lighter loads with them more or less just have to keep up with the person right in front of them.
With that being said, I could almost guarantee that Kyle also knew well several other things about cycling. Thinking about it, I realized that perhaps Kyle also had more to her own than what only met at my eyes. An archer who knew quite well how to handle a firearm was already intriguing, and more so if she also knew about cycling techniques.
Just when I was done thinking about it, I began to hear a faint sound of woman screaming. Apparently, the others also heard the same sound, and thus Captain Quentin slowed his pace down until his bicycle had completely stopped. Ryan was the one who asked about the sound first.
"Do you guys hear that?" Ryan asked.
"Apparently we all do…" Captain Quentin responded.
Then, Captain Quentin started to move again, but he did not cycle his bicycle's pedal. Instead, he moved by his feet, and with a very slow pace. The three of us followed his direction, ultimately leading us all to a different way from the one we used to get to the shop. I believed that it was not until three minutes before he stopped again, and went down from his bicycle as we heard a much louder scream. It was also then that I realized the source of the voice was already nearby.
"Let us leave our bikes here for now…" I said as I also went down from my bicycle.
"It looks like some people need our help…" I continued.
We parked our bicycles at the sidewalk right on our right side, and continued to walk on foot towards the source of the voice. As we seemed to be getting closer, another one was heard, as we took cover behind a building wall. The last voice confirmed that it came from the other street by the end of the wall building.
It did not take long before Captain Quentin signaled us to move quickly, and we readied our weapons as we moved away from our cover. It turned out that there were four people – a woman perhaps in her early 30s, with three children around the age of six to eight years old. They seemed to be scared and intimidated by something or some people, as I began to see what seemed to be six other adult men surrounding them.
"Please… it is all that we have… we do not even know how we would survive tomorrow…" the woman said, as if she was begging towards one of the men.
"Yeah, well there would be NO tomorrow if we do not get to keep that thing, LADY!" the man said to her coldly.
As we were getting nearer to them, one of the children noticed us and he immediately cowered behind the lady, making her to also notice our presence. It only took a short time before the rest of the men noticed us. Based on what I had heard and seen, it appeared that the six men were robbing whatever the things the lady had on her.
"Huh… so another four people now show up…" said one of the men.
"And hey… they got some weapons with them too…" responded another.
"Well, if this is not our lucky day…" said one with a red hoodie, as he pointed his handgun towards us, "Okay, hand them over, now!"
The rest of the others almost immediately followed the man by pointing their firearms at us. However, none of us raised our hands let alone giving up our firearms to the group, since we already knew that they were going to be noticed by the aliens and the aircrafts pretty soon.
What made me so sure that they had sealed their poor fate on their own was none other than my realization upon seeing the model of the handguns they had on them. Two of them were holding a SIG P226, while three others were holding a Glock model. I could not see the model held by the man behind me, as he had already moved behind us before they drew out their firearms.
"Funny…" Captain Quentin chuckled as he moved in front a bit, "Since those words should actually be said by us instead…"
"Shut up, daddy-o! Hand me that shotgun before you get som-" the man said, but interrupted by Captain Quentin's action.
Captain Quentin moved swiftly towards the man in red hoodie and clubbed his shotgun butt stock to his eyes, stunning him. As he was groaning, Captain Quentin continued by hitting both of his knee with it, before pulling one of his leg and made him fell, before twisting it. The man must have at least a dislocation on that leg judging by the loudness of the cracking sound, as well as how he screamed.
The rest of the other men now had their attention towards Captain Quentin, but he was just standing there very calmly. Just then, a very familiar jet-like sound was suddenly heard, surprising all of us on the street.
"All of you, get down!" Captain Quentin shouted as he jumped to the sideways and stayed on prone position.
Right after we all did the same, including the woman and the children, purple beams were shot from the sky and hitting all of the men almost instantly. And as predicted, they disintegrated into thin air shortly after, with one of them seemed to leave behind a faint shadowy mark on the road.
"Keep down! Do not move at all until it has fly away!" Kyle shouted to the woman and the children.
I did not understand about what she meant, but I also figured out that it would be better that way as opposed to stand up and run away in the first place. Fortunately for all of us, it did not take long before the sound started to fade, and eventually gone. When Captain Quentin signaled us that it was already fine to stand up again, the children and the woman rushed and thanked us.
"Oh thank you so much, all of you!" the woman said, with a huge relieved on her tone.
"You are very welcome ma'am…" Ryan responded warmly, "however, it is best for us to keep our voices down after what just happened…"
The woman responded by nodding, as she invited the three children to also approach us. Realizing that it was no longer safe for us to be out in the open, both Ryan and I tried to convince her to come with us to the station. At first, she showed some doubts in her face. The children also seemed to be more or less wary of us. However, perhaps due to her thoughts about the sake of the children, that she finally gave in to our offer.
The woman then explained to us about how they had survived so far as we walked to where we had parked our bicycles. She said that they were all from a small local orphanage nearby. Before the invasion happened on the night, they were doing their usual activities like house works, and primary school homework starting from around 07.00 p.m.
One of the children said that she remembered the last time she looked at the clock on her room it was showing the time 08.00 p.m. when she was doing her homework. She said that she remembered it really well since her clock was ringing loudly that it made her jumped when it rang, which made her realized that she had mistaken to supposedly set her clock at 08.00 a.m., not 08.00 p.m. instead.
However, the girl also told us that she believed it must be five minutes or even less after that when a sudden blackout happened. Since their orphanage was small, and there were only rooms for six children and one adult, it did not take them that long to realize that the whole orphanage was on blackout. The young woman, who was actually their caretaker, immediately went out to make sure if the neighbors were experiencing the same. As it turned out, the whole neighborhood was on blackout.
While they were waiting for the electricity to turn up again, one of the children, a boy, faintly saw some sort of light in the distance through his room window. They thought that it was the signs of the electricity about to turn up again. But instead, they were very shocked to see the horizons of the part of the town to be engulfed on fire.
As if it was not enough for them to see, they then saw several strange aircrafts shooting some sort of purple beams towards the people on the street, particularly the ones who had weapons on their hands. Fortunately, the children did not get to see the sights of countless people disintegrating into thin air right in front of their own eyes, as the caretaker managed to hold them away from the window they were looking at, right before it happened.
I had to admit that I felt a little worried before knowing for sure if the children did indeed not see the horrifying sights that could make them traumatized for a very long time. However, as I glanced at the children, I could somehow know for sure that they had not seen such sights. I could also see that Ryan, Kyle, and Captain Quentin were relieved to know that.
Since that night, the caretaker made some sort of new rules for the three children to not going outside the orphanage no matter what happened. She admitted that it was indeed a rather risky decision, however it would definitely be more dangerous for the children to go with her whenever she had to search for any food supplies she could found around the old market district zone.
Fortunately for her, the necessary amount of food supplies were not as much since she only needed to satisfy one adult appetite, as well as three other of smaller sizes. Everything went quite well, despite several quakes that had taken place, as well as the eerie dense fog that surrounded the neighborhood until what had just happened some time before we arrived and interrupted.
With that in mind, I had actually starting to doubt if we could actually satisfy their food needs as we ourselves had not even attempted to search for more food supplies for our own. On the other hand, I also realized full well that we could not simply abandon a defenseless woman, let alone children. It was also at that moment that I wondered on how the survivors inside the church were doing.
What made the four of us shocked however, was not the fact that the caretaker had to leave the children inside their orphanage alone. It was when she said that there were so many more survivors out there taking shelter inside the partially destroyed building, as well as inside the old style buildings. As if it was not the worst part, she also mentioned that many children were also among them.
Almost immediately when the caretaker had finished her words, the atmosphere around the four of us suddenly turned to confusion, even Captain Quentin's face seemed to show that he was not sure what to do about it, since he was more or less frowning. The caretaker also did not seem to stop talking any time soon, and to put it blatantly, it started to reduce my concentration on our surroundings. Fortunately, Ryan approached her as he attempted to put her at ease by saying that everything she said would be seriously considered at our hideout.
"Do not worry ma'am…" Ryan said, reassuringly, "Your valuable information is definitely of great importance for us at our hideout…"
"Yes… thank you so much…" the caretaker responded.
"In fact… I believe we are already there…" Ryan continued.
As soon as Ryan finished his words, the silhouette of the station started to emerge before my eyes. As we had finally reached in front of the station, Captain Quentin was the one who went upstairs first, bringing his bicycle with him, followed by Kyle, and then the children and the caretaker. Ryan and I were the last ones to go upstairs.
Once we arrived at the second floor, Kyle suggested that we should park our bicycles there and introduce the four people to the rest of the others first. All of us agreed, and so we headed straight to the third floor as soon as we had lined our bicycles on of the corners of the second floor.
To be honest, I more or less expected the others to be at least felt strange to the four new people. However, to the least of my expectation, they seemed to greet them very warmly. Perhaps it was due to the fact that there were three children among them that made them realized they had to put away any negative atmosphere as they could towards the children.
Strangely enough, the children seemed to be pretty fond of Jonathan, as he was the very first person they approached slowly once they had stepped their feet on the third floor. Even though he did not give any effort to even smile at them, they kept on staring at him and his rifle, particularly, until one of them said something to him. I was close enough to where they were to be able to hear what they were saying.
"Big mister," said one of the girl, "are you a hero?"
"Why do you ask, young lady?" Jonathan asked, softly as he crouched and look at them, although still not smiling.
"Because you looked like one…" said the other girl, "My teacher told me that when there is a big strong adult with patterned colored clothes, they are usually a hero."
"Well, your teacher is not wrong about that, but that does not mean they are always a h-" Jonathan responded, before his sentences was cut.
"Wow! Big mister, is this your gun?! Can I touch it?!" said the boy, as he approached Jonathan's rifle that was resting just behind him and stared at it with excitement.
As the boy said his words, the other two children rushed to the boy, also staring at the rifle. I could understand well if a boy would have a very high enthusiasm towards guns, but to be honest I had never known that a girl could also be fond of them. Jonathan permitted them to touch his rifle, but warned them softly that they were on no condition to pull any triggers or switches on the rifle.
The term 'patterned colored clothes' that the little girl said, must be referring to the grey camouflage pants that Jonathan was wearing. Apparently, they seemed to have received some sort of either history lesson or civic education on their school regarding the military services to their countries. More importantly however, I was really surprised to see Jonathan's soft side despite his rather terrifying and intimidating looks.
"Well, that is cute…" Kyle chuckled from my right.
As the children was still admiring Jonathan's rifle, he told them that he trusted them to guard his rifle before he approached me, and said that there are things that he needed to discuss with, along with Captain Quentin. Fortunately, Captain Quentin seemed to be keen enough that we were about to talk about important matters, as he showed up right beside me only shortly after Jonathan did.
The three of us then headed inside the train car, to discuss something related to big changes in plans according to Jonathan. Before I closed the train car door, I entrusted both Ryan and Kyle to look for the children.
They told us to leave it to them, as Kyle closed the door. I looked at my watch, showing the time 10.19 a.m. before heading to the second train car where both Jonathan and Captain Quentin had been waiting. As I approached them, I could see Jonathan's serious expressions as he was about to explain about the changes of plans.