He was the kind of person that no one picked a fight with at the bar. Troy had almost finished with his training at the police academy when the country started to implode, and was both eager and willing to enforce the orders that Allen kept issuing.
One of the causes for Allen’s sleepless night was the mental checklist he was working on to give Troy. The list was made up of all the things Allen wanted the big man to oversee while he was away. Allen needed someone trustworthy who could stay with the group, making sure work got done while he was gone, and Jason and the constantly bitching Brown brothers were just not up to the task. Allen had also lost some sleep while making up a list of all the places that he, personally, wanted to raid.
By now, the lootings had plucked all of the low-hanging fruit, thus changing the equation of what was available over what was going to be needed soonest. Travelling more than a couple miles seemed a good way to get bushwhacked by marauding former-citizens or former-military, and the fear of roaming too far was hampering his ideas more than anything else. Then, of course, there was the biggest plan of them all, his strategy to get food from the BULKCO distribution center.
A scowl spread across Allen’s face as he laced his boots up. He felt a small pang of guilt for having left Danny alone, but it did not yet out-weigh the anger. The rational side of Allen said that he needed to take his son some food and water. The irrational side was saying that Danny would remain alone for some time. His fists clenched, just the mere thought of seeing Danny made him want to yell. The look that he had given Allen, as the front door closed last night, was straight from Maggie’s face. Allen simply could not bear to see it again.
After dry-swallowing three pain pills, Allen stepped out of the office. The room he had taken the night before was in the middle of the one of the long hallways that ran the length of the church. At the south end was the main entrance and doorway to the tall gymnasium. To the north was an emergency exit where the hall turned to the right at the kitchen, just after the new pantry.
The only signs of life that Allen heard were coming from the kitchen area. Two elderly women, who lived together on the ground floor of building D, were in the kitchen preparing a communal breakfast. Allen asked them where he could find Troy, Jason, Derek, or John. The women directed him outside to the front of the building to find Troy. The whereabouts of the other three men was unknown to them, and they quickly ended the conversation by returning to their preparations.
Allen thanked them for working so hard. This seemed to melt the wall that they had put up a bit, one even saying that she would have coffee ready soon, if he wanted to come back for some. Before turning around, he gave them a kind smile, and then he opened the door to the pantry. Trying to adjust his eyes to the lack of lighting inside the room, it slowly came into focus, painfully obvious exactly how empty it really was.
He had to get moving on his disturbing plan to stock the larder. He needed to find John, and make his useless ass help him carry it out, even if he had to be forced to do it at gunpoint.
Instead of searching for where the Brown brothers had slept, he gloomily walked the length of corridor to find Troy. Giving him the plans for the trenches and sandbag fortifications on the roof would at least feel like progress. People also needed to start searching houses for food and any other supplies they could find. This included tapping the fuel tanks of any vehicles left behind. Allen’s stiff back added that they should also collect anything that could be used for bedding.
As important as all of these things were, Allen felt that power was going to be of the utmost importance. Fuels would eventually run out or would just go bad given enough time. Part of the solution was knowing that Warren had started a futile campaign of sustainability. These sideways steps that the State of Michigan and Federal Government had already taken would be of great help to a small band like