Be Careful What You Wish For: A Zombie Apocalypse-Chapter 297: Lower Expectations

I shuddered at Jonas’ statement. Looking him up and down, I cataloged everything about him. He was older, late 40s, early 50s, and was built like a brick shithouse. He was as tall as Tank and Eric and had a very military haircut with short dark brown hair that was starting to grey at the temples.

He had more wrinkles than I would have thought possible for his age, and his skin was very much weathered from being outside too much. His one defining feature was a long scar that ran down from his left temple to his jar, pulling all the wrinkles tight.

When the silence continued to draw on, I couldn’t help but smirk. "No, thank you," I finally said. "I have too many guys on my ass, more than I can deal with, let me tell you. I’m not going to add you to that mix. Besides, I already have both a Dad and a Daddy. I don’t need anyone else applying for the position."

You could have heard a pin drop, and I couldn’t help but snort as Jonas’ face turned from bright red to white and then back to red as he processed my words.

"Do you want to know the way to survive in this new world that we have found ourselves in?" asked Jonas, his voice taking on a forcibly light tone to it.

Crossing my arms in front of me, I didn’t bother to say anything.

"You learn to keep your mouth shut and obey those stronger than you," finished Jonas after a moment. "That applies to everyone here. Keep your head down and your mouth shut, and you have a spot in paradise. Run your mouth, act belligerent, disobey orders, and you are looking at a one-way ticket back to the outside world."

There was a low murmuring as the men and women around me reacted to Jonas’ words. I could practically smell the fear coming off most of them as they quickly nodded their heads in agreement. But Jonas never looked away from my face.

"Sound words to live by," I agreed. However, if Jonas thought that he was the strongest person in the room, then he didn’t know shit.

Seemingly satisfied that he had made his point, Jonas turned around and walked back to the front of the room. "The teams have been put together, and these are permanent. There will be no arguing, and you damn well better get along with everyone on your team. If there is any infighting, the least popular member of the team will be kicked out of New Dawn."

Once again, Jonas looked at me as if he was just waiting for that to happen to me. Joke’s on him, I didn’t want to be here in the first place. Nothing outside of these oversized walls terrified me, and I was more likely to die of boredom here than anywhere else.

"I’ve posed the different teams," continued Jonas after a moment of silence. "Each team will be responsible for a particular section of the wall or inside the sanctuary itself. If something happens, even if it doesn’t seem like a big thing, it could become one. I’m not saying for you to go and play hero, but if we find out that something in your section happened and you didn’t report it, then you will be punished."

Jonas’ eyes scanned the crowd in front of him before smirking at me and Eric. "This is your first test. We’ll see if you are worth keeping soon enough."

Blowing him a kiss, I looked down at Tank. "Ready to have some fun? Maybe we’ll find a zombie or something."

-----

"You know that you actually have to work, right? You can’t expect us to carry your weight," sneered one of the members of my team. There were five of us, three men and two women, and Eric was not one of them.

The only other woman stood in front of me, her hands on her hips as she glared down at me.

"You’re blocking my sun," I smiled up at her, shielding my eyes from the bright afternoon sun.

Tank had set me up by a massive oak tree, and after stressing several times that I not move, he took off to run the patrols himself. After only a few minutes, I was already bored of standing, so I sat down, my legs stretched out in front of me and my back against the tree.

"Did you not hear what I said?" demanded the woman, stomping her foot. "You are dragging all of us down."

Raising my eyebrows, I looked at her and the three men standing around her. "Correct me if I am wrong, but you have just been standing around me for the past three hours now," I said, slowly coming to my feet.

"My dog has been the one running around doing the patrols that you should be doing without complaint, and yet you still have the nerve to come up to me and start a fight?"

I got it; I really did. And if they had pulled something like this, I might have been pissed at them, too. But Tank was an extension of me, so as far as I was concerned, if we ran the patrols together, whether he ran them by himself or if I ran them by myself... it was all the same at the end of the day.

"Besides, Tank can take out any threat better and faster than we can," I continued, letting out a long sigh.

I was not built to deal with people.

"That is not the point," sneered the woman as a ball of lightning formed in her hand. "But then again, I wouldn’t expect a dud like you to understand just how much responsibility people with powers have to keep the world safe."

As soon as she was done speaking, she threw the ball the size of my fist at me with a bright smile on her face. She wanted to hurt me, she wanted to kill me, and she really thought she was going to succeed.

She really needed to have lower expectations of her own self-worth and power.