As we got on our bicycle on the street right below the station, I asked both Jonathan and Captain Quentin to where we were going. At first, none of them seemed to be able to answer since both of them looked like they were even unsure themselves. But then, Jonathan suggested that we should go to the place that would provide us the tools that we need, which was a hardware store about two blocks from the station by the southwest direction.
"We should go for the sledgehammers first… A hardware store is around two blocks from here at the northwest…" Jonathan said, as he started to cycle his bike towards the hardware store.
When we were on our way to the store, I recalled about previously when we saw several people running away from a T-shaped aircraft, before all of them were wiped out in a short time, and that one of them was holding a rather long sledgehammer. It made me realized that if the hardware store we were heading for did not have any, we still had another chance to find for them around the third station from our hideout.
It did not take us really long before we had arrived right in front of the hardware store. When I looked at the store, I would say that it was quite large, since it had a spacious parking lot, and even a car workshop right beside it. The building was not tall however, since it only had two floors including the first floor. The building's condition however, was not really a good sight to look at since it was already half-destroyed.
"Jon?" Captain Quentin asked, as he turned to him.
"We have to try first… and stay alert…" Jonathan said, as he cycled to a nearest wall, and parked his bicycle there.
I went down from my bike, cocked my submachine gun before following Jonathan inside the hardware store with Captain Quentin following behind me. As we went inside the store, I could barely see that any tools were left inside the store. On the other hand, I did not need to use the flashlight to light the store since all of the windows had been broken, allowing more light from the outside to enter inside the store.
As we went deeper inside the store, we already passed four metal grid rack displays, with all four of them completely empty save for few packs of nails left hanging. We went further to the remaining rack displays, only to find a roll of rope on one of the displays. When I looked closer, it is said that the rope had 30 feet length. I asked them if we should take it, to which they gave a positive respond.
"So… should we look for the hammers somewhere else?" I asked them, "It does not look like we will find any in here though…"
"We still have yet to check upstairs…" Captain Quentin responded.
I nodded, and I followed them in going to second floor. Just as I had stepped my feet there, I was surprised to see that there were so many more items still hanging on display. Based on what I saw, apparently the hardware store was stormed in by many people during the night of the invasion and looted as many tools and items as they could, before the aliens attacked the building, and wiping them out in the process.
"Well… guess we need to split up to look for the hammers…" Jonathan said, as he started to slowly walk to the right section of the floor.
Captain Quentin then moved to the left side of the second floor, indirectly signaling me to search at the middle section of the floor. Similar to the first floor, I did not need to use the flashlight as the windows had also been broken.
As I strolled further inside the rack displays, I came across few sharp-edged and bladed tools, such as hand axes, grass scissors, and even few machetes. I could not clearly see their edges, but it would also not have to make me doubt their sharpness to an extent that I would test them out myself by using my own skins.
'I guess I will just mention those tools later on when we already find the hammers.' I muttered in my mind, as I looked for the hammers again.
It turned out that by the time I passed around three more rows of rack display, I had already checked all of the displays on the middle section. Based on the tools that I saw, it seemed as if the middle section of the second floor was of gardening tools section. When I thought about it, I also saw few sprinkles heads and other related parts displayed on the last rows of the rack displays. I sighed once, before I decided to go back to the spot where we had split up.
Just when I arrived at the spot, Jonathan emerged very shortly after, carrying two rolls of ropes on his left shoulder. Captain Quentin showed up last, carrying a sledgehammer with him on his left hand. He told us that there were in fact three more hammers from the spot that he had just checked, although we could only brought two more with us since we were only three in numbers.
Jonathan and I then decided to take one hammer with each of us, while Captain Quentin would wait on the first floor. Before I forgot, I mentioned to them that I had found few sharp-edged tools that might prove useful to us, but might as well only be optional since we already have a heavy load on our backs. At first, they seemed to be not sure on what to decide, but then Jonathan said that we could take the machetes, but only two.
Therefore, we first headed to where Captain Quentin found the sledgehammers, and after we had our hands of two of them, we went to the deeper side of the middle section where the sharp-edged tools were on display. We did not waste any time as we headed downstairs once we had taken the machetes with us as well, before we headed out from the store and back to the spot where we had parked our bicycles earlier.
"Something wrong, sir?" I asked Captain Quentin as he seemed to have his eyes locked on two particular buildings across the store.
"What kind of buildings are those?" Captain Quentin asked, not sure to whom.
"I suppose one of them used to be a bank, and probably the other one was some kind of a secretariat building." Jonathan responded.
Captain Quentin fell silent for a while, before telling us that it might be worth it to check it out right away. I did not really understand what he had on his mind, but I guess Jonathan might at least had an idea about it based on his expression that did not show any signs of confusion at all.
As we cycled closer to the buildings, I noticed that there was one more building behind them, which was considerably wider as it had the width of nearly two of the buildings combined. When we were close enough to them, I finally realized that the widest building was none other than a parking lot building.
"Well… judging by their looks on the outside, I guess we have found our jungle, gentlemen…" Captain Quentin said as he smiled.
"So should we take a look inside first, then?" I asked him.
"No, not 'we'. Just myself…" he said, as he went down from his bicycle and walked inside the bank with his shotgun in his hands.
Apparently, we were to wait for him outside until he could make sure that the partially destroyed building was cleared of any threat. However, Jonathan did not seem to be too concerned as he did not ready his rifle and stood on guard. Instead, he just waited on his bicycle with his arms folded, and glanced at the foggy street. Then again, I was completely sure that he would have a good reason about it, and therefore I did not question his actions.
"Are you not curious about why I told you and Gabe to stay cautious against that woman?" he suddenly asked me, with a bit of a smirk.
"Fiora?" I responded, spontaneously, "Well… you already told us about the unusual things about the hospital so…"
"No, there is actually more…" he replied.
Jonathan explained to me that ever since Fiora arrived at the station, she had not even once talked to him other than when she introduced herself to him. He said it was very odd that every time he was at the platform, she always seemed to be avoiding him, or at least hiding from his sights. He then continued by saying that the only time when she was talking with the other survivors was earlier at that morning, and her introduction to him was the last thing that she ever said at the station.
At first, I told him a bit jokingly that it could have something to do with his way of introducing himself to her, as it was more or less cold to a woman. But then, he responded by saying that it was not so much different than when he tried to get acquaintanced with the children. Just when he stated that point, I realized how true he was.
I had never paid that much of attention about the situation at the station since the decision that we had to capture an alien was made. To make it worse, I had not realized it until Jonathan had put a light on my mind that back when Fiora had her attention locked to the circuit board, she was not even asking anything about it to the one who created it, Virgil.
The worst part of them all was when I realized that she had not been trying to ease the caretaker's panic back when she had just arrived at the station, nor did she interact with the children together with Ryan and Kyle, something that was very contradictive to her cheerful appearance when she introduced myself to her. At first, I thought that maybe she was some sort of an extremely antisocial person, but then again, logically it would be nearly impossible for someone who was at the edge of her survival to not break out from her usual closed self.
"Just something that you should put more in mind…" Jonathan said, as he patted my back once.
With his words etched in my mind, I immediately grew more suspicious towards her, as opposed to the first time when I get introduced to her in which I somehow adored her. Fortunately, Captain Quentin then went out from the bank shortly after Jonathan gave me another warning regarding her.
"All clear?" Jonathan asked him.
"Not even signs of any survivors had ever been inside, so free real estate…" he responded.
Before Jonathan and I followed him inside, we carried our bicycles to the nearest wall, and park them right beside it. As we were about to went inside, Captain Quentin reminded me that there was no need to be too cautious anymore since there were no signs of anything had ever been inside after the night of the invasion.
When I entered inside, Captain Quentin told us that the building had five floors plus the rooftop. I asked him on how he could manage to walk upstairs to the rooftop quickly to which he answered that since there was basically barely anything was inside the building but small rubbles and several other office appliances, he did not need to bother with anything at all except for keeping in mind on the layout on each floors, as well as figuring out every possible entry and exit accesses.
Had I not seen the facts by myself as soon as I entered the building, I would have doubts on Captain Quentin's words. It turned out that even the office appliances that were still standing could also be counted by fingers. I could only see so many concrete rubbles scattered around the floor as I followed him upstairs through the stairs located at one of the floor corner. There appeared to be also a couple of holes on the ceiling on the other corner of the first floor.
When I reached the second floor, I realized that there was no significant difference compared to the first floor. However, I did notice a couple of holes on the very same spots where there were two ceilings that had caved in on the first floor, and we would most likely use the spots for pitfall traps for the aliens. Fortunately, the distance between the ceiling and the floor was quite high, perhaps around the height of fifteen feet, and therefore even though the fall and impaling were still not enough for the aliens, they would definitely at least received heavy injuries.
The third floor was more or less the same with the first floor, except that there were no holes on the ceiling, less office appliances, but with larger concrete rubbles and in larger numbers. Out of curiosity, I approached the nearest rubble, and swung my sledgehammer against it about three times, before it began to expose the tip of its metal rods. It also seemed that Captain Quentin had also paid attention towards it, as he responded shortly after I exposed the rod tips.
"And now, we know that three swings are enough to expose the tip…" he said, as he nodded and started to head for the fourth floor.
The fourth floor was perhaps the most distinguishable floor among the other floors, as it had no less than five holes on its ceiling, and all of them with a considerably larger size compared to the ones on the first floor. To add that, there were also strangely almost no office appliances at all, and instead, there were a couple of large metal gates installed each at two of the corners of the floor. Behind those gates, lied a couple of very-large safes.
"I suppose this was where they kept the gold and platinum…" Jonathan said, as he glanced through the other spots of the floor.
"Huh… do you think that the aliens could also be trying to steal them for their own use?" Captain Quentin chuckled, as he stared at the holes on the ceiling, "That might explain those holes then…"
The fifth floor, which was the last floor before the rooftop, had the most office appliances compared to the other floors. Based on the condition of the floor, in which its ground was not tiled, unlike all of the four floors below it, I believed that it was safe to assume that the fifth floor was none other than a storage room.
Jonathan responded by saying that it was in fact a good thing, since that would mean we would have more items to use for concealing our traps. At first, I had a doubt on his words, however as I looked again, most of the office appliances there were nothing of small and medium sizes like computers, filing cabinets or single ATMs. They were mostly lined ATMs and large metal cabinets, and thus concealing the trigger behind those kinds of items would almost guarantee that the aliens could not see them at all.
Finally, we arrived at the rooftop. It took us a little to get there since the door was initially locked. But, as I had witnessed by own eyes back at the church and even at the fire department, Jonathan was always the person who would fix those problems for us. It only took him three kicks, before the door flew open, collapsing to the roof ground outside.
"Well… we can use it to conceal one of the pitfall holes downstairs too I guess…" Captain Quentin said as he glanced to the broken door.
"I… guess that we will need the access downstairs opened too in the first place anyway…" I responded to him.
There was not much that could be found on the rooftop, except for the clearer view of the neighboring buildings. When I had my eyes locked at the parking lot building and the secretariat building that directly neighbored the bank, I realized that both of them also had five floors. Just then, my mind crossed with the idea that we could connect the third floor as well as the rooftop of the bank with the parking lot building and the secretariat building.
Both of them immediately agreed with me. Realizing that we then had a lot of tasks at hands, we rushed to each of the floors, hammering each of different sizes of rubbles that we could find until their metal rods are exposed, and preparing them to be used as alien traps.
We would use most of the holes on the fifth floor as a pitfall trap, while one or two holes at most would be left as it is for a very emergency means of escaping to the lower levels. One broken door would be the only thing that covered the pitfall holes.
The plan was if one or hopefully two aliens were to stand on the lying door, it would break due to overload, making them fall and got themselves impaled by the exposed metal rods of the concrete rubbles scattered right below the holes. We would also make one ceiling spiked trap on the fifth floor, particularly near the stairs which would be the direct access to the fourth floor.
While the fourth floor would be the floor where we had scattered the concrete rubbles for the pitfall trap on the floor above, we would also make at least three pendulum traps which would be installed near the stairs of the fourth floor, and two at each of the metal gates there. Other than that, it would be just us firing our firearms at them, and luring them lower to the third floor.
The third floor would be the place where the ceiling spiked traps were scattered the most. It would be ideal for that specific kind of trap, since the floor was nearly as plain as an empty room, except for a few cracks on the upper sides of the walls and pillars.
If they could be broken enough, and we could somehow bend the exposed metal rods of the concrete walls and pillars, then we could hang the ropes that would connect the traps with the triggers. There would also be a makeshift bridge between the third floor and the secretariat building right next to it, and to prevent an alien from also going across, a pendulum trap would also be installed on each of the bridge ends.
The second floor would be more or less similar with the fifth floor, with the first floor as a dead end since we would close all possible means of entry and exit access from the first floor by blockading them with the office appliances. Should even one or few aliens managed to reach the first floor and attempted to get out from the blockaded access, we could exploit their weakness and take them down there instead.
I was really grateful of my own decision to take my lunch earlier before I went to the building together with Jonathan and Captain Quentin, since the process of making and preparing the traps took a lot of energy, but strangely a little faster than I had expected. When we were finally finished with the traps in the bank, I looked at my watch and realized that the time was on the exact 02.30 p.m. All of us, even Jonathan, panted heavily as we threw away our sledgehammers on the floor before we took a more relaxed position.
"Okay… so…" I said, as I was still panting, "when are we going to the next building?"
"Well… Jon?" Captain Quentin asked, as he also still trying to catch his breath.
"Hold on… we should check from the outside first…" Jonathan said, having finally started to regain his breath.
We waited for around five to ten minutes until we were no longer panting, before we headed for the first floor, while reminding ourselves about the position of the trap triggers as we walked. We had not blockaded the first floor yet, as it was the final step of the traps, while the step before that was none other than to have the bait first.
When we arrived outside, Jonathan suddenly seemed to have his sights locked on his surroundings, even seemed sharper than the previous times I had seen him while he was aiming with his rifle. Just when I was about to ask him about it, he asked Captain Quentin and me about the bothering thing on his mind instead.
"Do you guys see them?" he said in a very low voice, as he still had his sharp sights.
"Twenty… no… thirty, perhaps… or…" Captain Quentin paused, as he gulped before he continued, "Dear God… more than fifty…."
At first, I had no idea what they were talking about, but then I suddenly felt like someone was staring at our direction. Then, the numbers of person suddenly felt like it jumped to three, then six, and ten. The source of the feeling seemed like it came from the building right next to the hardware store, but I also felt like the others were not just from the same building.
"So… there are indeed more survivors… and they probably have been watching us for quite some time now…" Jonathan continued.
I then expressed my curiosity, as to why they had not come and ask for our help instead of just staring at us from the distance. Jonathan responded by saying that while they were indeed desperate to take at a safer shelter, they were most likely also afraid of us.
He explained to me that the survivors seemed to have experienced one or few conflicts against other groups in order to get the necessary supplies for their survival. Usually, the ones with more weapons, or firearms, or better at fighting would win, leaving the more vulnerable ones especially children to have a less chance of having a sufficient amount of resources for themselves.
I spontaneously reacted that should they had been watching us for a long amount of time, they should have realized that we were the survivors that had never pillage the other groups. Captain Quentin was the one who responded to me next, saying that they could not guarantee themselves about it, especially since we had the firearms that were effective against the aliens, and therefore obviously to humans too.
What he had meant to tell me, was that they were afraid if we would point our weapons to them should they approach us, because by then they would have no chance at all from holding their belongings. Therefore, in the end they could only watch us from a long distance.
Just then, Jonathan had a suggestion about how we could convince them that we were in fact planning to get them to a safer place. I responded by mentioning the elevated railroad like before, but Jonathan said he had one more alternative. It would be no other than to establish another hideout by using the station located on the elevated loop.
It was at that moment that I could immediately understand what Jonathan might want to convey. Since we were going to evacuate the other survivors on the street, we would definitely need one more hideout point as a bordering area so that not many of them would scatter around the elevated railroad loop. We already one bordering point, which was the station we were using as our hideout. The other point would also be a station somewhere along the same loop.
Realizing that both Jonathan and Captain Quentin would want to finish preparing the traps for the rest of the two buildings before the day went dark, I immediately volunteered myself to be the one who would do it, and take along one or two more persons from the station with me as well, to which they agreed without any signs of doubts on their expressions right away.
As I was about to get on my bicycle, Captain Quentin threw his handgun towards me, saying that I or anyone at the station would need it. I responded by nodding, and put his handgun inside my backpack as I rode my bicycle in a rush back to the station…