I kicked down the door and scanned the room.
There was no one in the cabin that I could see.
A quick check and I made sure no one was hiding.
I then went, closed the door, and sat down on the couch that they had had.
If no one was here I could relax as no one would try and put a bullet through my head.
I needed to come up with a plan. If these people were a model for the entirety of the nation, I could run into problems. If small groups are running around causing havoc, I would either need to get a lot stronger or get better protection.
This revelation brought me back to what one of them said,
'How would we move the cars?'
I stood up and realized, they had been hiding cars nearby, maybe there was a way I could fix one and drive away!
First I would need to bring my bike back to the cabin.
So I ran to my hidden area and pulled out the bike and rode it over to the cabin, parking it outside. I took out the auto mechanics manual and read it again. If I could get a greater understanding I could probably take a car or two and maybe fix one up.
I sat there reading for hours. I had my AK to my left and some of my water to the right. The thieves had a stack of firewood that I burned in the fire place as the sun started to set. I finished up the reading and was confident in my ability as long as I could find a few cars, I had a chance. If I could find where they were held.
I went to bed on the couch after locking up the door and covering myself, with my AK on the ground just below me.
***
In the morning I woke up to no surprises which wad nice for a change.
I had a criteria that I would need to find for a good car to fix, mostly my biggest worries were the two biggest problems I would have to fix and I couldn't fix. I needed to make sure that the axels and suspension weren't broken. But that means that most likely there would be some bullet holes in the car so I would need to replace the windows. The second would be a car battery, for this I would have to hope for someone to have had some recent bad luck. By my estimates, it has been a month since I woke up. Any car batteries that were a little old might have died from the cold and just sitting out for a time. If I could find those two things, then I could make repairs every so often.
I walked back to the highway and looked around, most likely it would be close to the road and not too far away as they would be heavy to push.
I ran around and found it, a car graveyard.
There were six cars in a clearing covered in some branches. I could tell immediately that I only had 3 candidates. Half of the cars had their front ends crushed up and I could see blood on the windshield so I knew how the drivers had died.
The other three were looking in ok shape.
2 of them were ZAZ's, but the paint was a bright red so I would stand out.
The third car was a dark grey ERaz. But the only problem was that the battery had died. All 3 had good suspension and and the axels were all intact. But they all had dead batteries. In frustration I walked around the cars trying to find anything that could fix this, but I couldn't.
I sat on the trunk of one of the ZAZ's and stared into the forest.
I had high hopes, and I had blown a 1 in a million odds of success through the floor.
As I stared into the forest an odd shape caught my eye.
There were a bunch of trees and branches that looked to be making some kind of small concealed building, maybe a workshop of some sort.
As I walked to the building it was made out of logs and was about 6 or 7 feet tall and about 20 or so feet long.
As I walked around I saw the building had about a 15 foot width so this would be a pretty big shelter.
As I continued to walk I came to a stop.
An unknown car was under some sort of tarp and the fourth wall of the building wasn't really a wall, more of a small bit that came a few feet out so there was some area that was sheltered.
I grabbed the cloth and pulled it off of the car.
It was a sleek black Volga, the tires seemed in good condition and the suspension and axels were fine.
But I would need to check under the hood to see if this baby would work.