Thinking about a few things I decided to ask them about their thoughts:
"Hey guys, what do you think about us going out to kill Eaters as a group?, There's a possibility that your abilities could increase either by Killing Eaters like me, or maybe just by practicing constantly with them. Either way the battle field is the best place to get stronger."
They all seemed a bit unsure until I added this last bit.
"Also, Mariam and Abdul, maybe you just need to be in a certain situation to trigger your powers."
With that they all had a determined look on their faces and nodded to show their agreement. Confirming things I decided we'd continue this tomorrow when we were all rested.
The sleeping arrangements were as such:
The two ladies slept on the main bed, I got a couch, Abdul and Toyin played a game for who slept on the floor and who slept on the second couch.
Abdul lost.
DAY 3 6:00 AM
Waking up early, i went to the bathroom to clean up before dressing up.
This was the third day of the Apocalypse. Things were hard, but we were doing okay.
Going to my reading desk i created a checklist of the things I felt we'd need to do In the near future:
(*Raid the surrounding rooms and then houses for foodstuffs
*Get solar panels or at least a generator(we'd already gone a night without light, who knows when they would bring it back?)
*Fortify the lodge and make it a real base.
*Physical training to improve our capabilities.
*Get a good vehicle to move around with
*Save trustworthy people "only" if we are able to. )
This was a basic summarization of the things I felt we had to do.
My nose suddenly picked up a nice smell floating around, and checking it out, it was Sandra who was cooking. Standing up, I went to greet her.
"Good morning Sandra"
"Morning Zaheer" she replied
"What are you cooking?"
"Just making some pasta for our breakfast, I made sure to measure everything well, to make sure it lasts us as long as possible."
Then she went on and explained how she was wasting as little food as possible and I was pretty impressed.
With The food we had in the house, and the number of mouths to feed, I'd thought our stock would only last 4 weeks at most, but with her managerial skills, she'd added an extra week to that.
"That's incredible, would you mind Taking care of the foodstuffs for now?, you seem to be pretty organized" I asked
"Yeah of course, I don't mind at all".
Thanking her, I was leaving when I remembered something I'd meant to tell her.
"We're going to start physical training today, everyone needs to attend it OK?"
I felt she might try to avoid it, because she didn't seem like the type of person to like hard exercise, But I was surprised at the quickness at which she answered. I guess she was more resilient than I'd thought.
After Breakfast we all came to the Living room ready to exercise, The girls wore some of our loose T-shirts and shorts and I lent Toyin a few clothes since he didn't have any but the ones on him.
After a few minutes, I confirmed todays training schedule and started talking
"You guys should understand this by now, if we aren't able to protect ourselves we're just going to die in this world now. We need to all have sufficient strength to fight for our survival. So starting today we'll exercise 2 hours In the morning and 1 in the evening".
Their groans told me they weren't all that keen on the hell that was coming.
Heading underground to the lodge Gym, we took our weapons just in case. Thankfully there were no Eaters down here so we could begin training in peace.
"First we'll all stretch, then go for 20 minutes on the treadmill, followed by 30 minutes weight lifting and then I'll teach you some Taekwondo. Then we'll end it with 5 more minutes on the treadmill.
.....i could almost hear the crickets in this silence.....
"Are you joking man?", Abdul asked looking at me incredulously, "How are we supposed to cope with that sort of intensity??"
Shrugging I simply replied "if you want to quit you're free, but just know you can only blame yourself if you die out there"
That seemed to bring him back to reality as he nodded gravely.
The training was really hard for them, personally i had no trouble completing it at twice the intensity thanks to my boosted stats, but for them that only did light exercise to keep in shape, this intensity was incredibly challenging.
They all had their weak and strong points though.
Abdul was pretty stiff, with low stamina, but he had a good amount of strength.
Mariam was flexible and had good kicks, but her upper body strength was pretty pitiful.
Toyin had good stamina and strength, but was wound up like a loaded spring, he could barely touched his own toes.
Sandra....was bad in all aspects. She'd need to put in a lot of effort of she wanted to improve at all.
Last was me. I wanted to test my new limits and see where I stood Now.
Walking up to the punching bag, I examined it. It was a standard bag, weighing around 31 or 32 kg. Taking up with a boxing stance, I put 30 percent of my power in circulation around my whole body.
jab-jab-hook, right straight, left cross, footwork, jab-jab. I practiced some moves I'd done before. With each set of movements, I increased my output by 5 percent.
When I got to 50 percent, the bag was swinging like someone was seriously pushing it. Putting an extra 20 percent, I gave the bag a Right straight that pushed it back far enough to break the chain.
I could feel the piecing gazes on my back, and turning around, everyone was exercising with a renewed vigor that made me smile.
And so our days were filled with a cycle of "wake up, exercise, rest, exercise and sleep", for 2 whole weeks....