Trash in the Apocalypse

Evo watched the group of civilians walk back towards the city hall. When they were far enough not to hear them speaking, he turned to Adrian on his side. He didn't say anything but just glared at him.

Adrian looked around.

Bernard and the group looked at him with fear and uncertainty in their eyes. Evo was silently glaring at him. He also felt some gazes coming from the mall's premise. He turned his head and saw some curious women watching by the door. He also noticed the CCTV camera installed on the pole of the parking lot.

Adrian breathed deeply. Trying to digest everything that is currently happening.

Adrian spoke after a few more seconds of silence. "I was given a role and I acted upon it. That was to make sure that this place would remain safe. Everyone has their own role and they're doing it to the best of their capabilities to contribute to the group. I will keep on doing my assigned role and everyone will continue doing theirs."

"What you did might start something though." Evo said.

"Are you implying that I should go out and kill all of them now?"

"What!? How did you even came to that conclusion?"

The two would have argued further if it were not for the laughter that sounded from the side. Paterno wiped the tears welling from the sides of his eyes. He dry-heaved before looking at the two.

"I'm happy to know that you're still the same fvcked up shit of an as*hole."

After saying his peace, he walked away from the group. Bernard ran after him and asked where he was going. He answered: "Scavenging. So we have more things to sell."

Paterno finally accepted the fact that he was stuck with a group of highly dangerous individuals. He was not staying with them for self-preservation nor because he wanted to help the group. He plans to stay with them so he could witness all the atrocities this people would do in the future. At the time that government regained its power, he would be the first one to sell this group to condemnation.

The words that Paterno said rung repeatedly over Adrian's head. He grinned then started laughing maniacally. He tried covering his face with his hand but failed to hide the smile underneath it.

"That's right. I was like that." Adrian chuckled then an image of woman flashed on his mind. He mumbled, "I'm becoming an idiot because of her. I should stop listening to her."

Adrian's eyes glinted with savageness as he turned his head to a certain direction.

***

There were three scavenging groups that were formed. A group consisted of three people capable with fighting an infected one on one and additional member for carrying things. Not carrying in a literal sense, but as an extra dimensional storage. Since the store isn't in operation yet, some women volunteered looting the nearby cars while the rest of the women helped in setting stalls on the parking lot. It has been discussed that strangers wouldn't be allowed to go inside the mall since they could take anything they want with a swipe of their palms. Marianne spearheaded the decoration of the stalls and the proper lot allocation between them. Food stalls would stay near stalls that sell drinking water and other consumables, while clothing stalls would be near the weapon and armor stalls.

The proposed idea was to have displayed goods in front of the stall with their price attached to them. The members would act as shop owners selling items on the stalls like an NPC from online game. For example, Gina volunteered to be the seller for all the staple food products like meat, fish and breads. She would fill her dimensional storage as long as her dimensional storage allowed it. A simple printed paper was stuck on her stall. FOOD: meat, fish, bread. More stalls were being disassembled from the mall and taken outside at the same time.

The scavenging group searched in three different directions to maximize their time. They started searching far away from the vicinity of the mall. They let the bored female members scavenge the cars and trucks by the roadside.

The farmer father and son ignored the commotion and continued with their daily work.

The groups scavengers met with some police officers and some of the civilians scavengers. Some nasty words were spoken but no actual fighting happened. Their hotheadedness weren't caused by the earlier incident. It was impossible for information to go around since mobiles phones aren't working. Though two-way radios were fine, not every group were armed with them.

The scavenging group returned late in the afternoon with their dimensional storage filled to the brim. They piled everything on one of the corners of the supermarket. The women helped in arranging the things that the group brought back.

There were varieties of items piled up, from food consumables to daily necessities. Food was the most numerous since it was the number one priority. Shockingly followed by a lot of hygiene items like soap, perfumes, toothpastes, etc.

The group happily ate an early dinner. The men happily accepted the meal since they ate junk foods as they scavenged since the morning. Though electricity was working, eating noodles for breakfast and lunch already made them hate it. With a proper meal in front of them, they feasted themselves over it.

Evo finally finished coding twenty reward points card into a functional credit point card. It took him less than hour to finish those twenty cards once he finished the first card. The first card took at least three hours of his time but the rest were just copy-pasted code. He had to ask for everyone's name which helped everyone to introduce themselves to the other members. The biggest hurdle for this project was his energy consumption.

Evo had a regular energy pool, which amounted to a hundred. Though he leveled up, his max energy never rose even by a small amount, it was the same for the others. Since ten energy points was needed to activate his debugger skill and an additional points depending on the various changes made on the item, he was able to create five credit points card within an hour. The average cost of energy per card was about seventeen or eighteen. After four hours of work, he would finally test how this new item work its wonders.