After making their way out of the airport the group quickly ran into a patch of forest about a quarter of a mile away from the airport. Joyce recommended it because a big city like Orlando would be far to dangerous. Joyce said she used to drive up to Orlando every summer in high school and college and stay in a vacation home the whole 3 months of the season so she knows the city well. Shortly after arriving in the forest and taking care of some walkers wandering around the place Allan gathered the group and told them all that the forest is great because of the heavy cover and low amount of walkers but they needed to arm themselves if they wanted to survive, and they're not going to find weapons randomly laying around in a forest so they may need to risk it and sneak into a more heavily populated place to try and find anything they can to survive. Several people were apprehensive about it so he assured everyone that they didnt have to go but the ones who didn't would be left in the forest with no weapons (Everyone with a weapon volunteered to go) and wouldn't be guaranteed a weapon when they got back because they may not find any. Or maybe none at all. So it ends up being decided that Allan, Carlos, Jemima, Alexandria, Joyce, Lynette, And Beth would all go while Anthony, Noah, Connor, and Jaylen would stay behind. Joyce knew about an army surplus store in a strip mall just outside of Orlando that they could walk to without actually entering the city so it seemed like the best option but at the same time very risky. The store had most likely been raided and a strip mall can be a crowded place without many escape options if they ran into another hoard. So there plan was to send in a couple people as scouts (Allan, Jemima, Alexandria, and Beth) to sneak through the mall and make sure there are no large hoards (Or locating and keeping track of them if there are) without being detected so that they always have a way to escape. Amazingly the scout group did not find any more than 3 or 4 walkers wandering around the place, this made Carlos uneasy so he had them continue to walk around the place while the rest of the group went into the surplus store to grab whatever they can. Outside the surplus store was horrific and seemed to provide an answer as to what happened to any hoardes that might've come through here. There were piles of bodies sometimes stacked up to chest height laying outside the surplus store. After pushing their way through the grotesque piles of corpses they yelled through the broken windows of the store to see if the people that did all of this were still alive. They heard nothing but still entered the store cautiously, the only person they ended up finding in the store was the corpse of the man that they assumed had done this. Lynette found it difficult to believe that one man could've done all this but Carlos assured her that a trained shooter with the right gun and enough ammo was completely capable of what they were seeing. Carlos noticed a bite on his leg and a bullet through his head so he assumed that at some point while defending himself he had recieved that bite and after obliterating all of the walkers had made sure that he would never end up being one of them. Based on the state of the bodies and the fact that the store didn't look like live humans had raided it at all the 3 of them assumed that all of this had happened recently, and they were fortunate to be the first ones to arrive here after it all ended. They began to grab whatever they could find. Carlos found a pistol that he said was the same one he carried around on the force not too long ago, Lynette and Joyce noth picked up a couple things to give to everyone else but Joyce said she was keeping the shotgun that she'd picked up for herself (Kinda scary for a 60 year old woman). They realized that they needed something to carry the rest of the weapons in so they could get everything back to the group so Carlos began to reach for a marine backpack on the top of one of the shelves when the scouts ran in telling them they needed to hide, and quickly. They all quickly ran into the back room and after a lot of panicked blabber from all of them Beth finally got them quiet and explained to the 3 that a pickup truck full of drunk-looking rednecks with shotguns pulled up in the parking lot right outside the mall and they're headed this way right now. They need to start thinking of options: Their first plan is just to hide in various places in the back room and should the men walk in they would sneak attack them. It would never work though, they would be too cautious of other people in the store and there's no way that they could take them all out with the weapons they have now (Jemima had recieved a large hunting knife and Allan had recieved an semi-automatic AK-47 but that was all Lynette and Joyce had brought extra into the room with them). As they began to realize it was their only choice and began to panic a little bit as they heard very loud men begin to walk down the strip mall closer and closer to their store Jemima grabs them and pulls them all into the bathroom. She went in to vomit and ended up discovering a window leading outside the mall into the parking lot that's big enough to fit a person into, but they need to hurry. They opened the window and all of them worked their way out of it with no problem and made their way out of the parking lot. After about an hour of walking they made it back to their group right at nightfall and explained everything that had happened. Carlos hands out a 2 flashlights that he got from the store and begins to organize sleep shifts right as Joyce screams. Her face was dark red and eyes gave the devil's stare, she was fuming mad. She gathered the 4 guys that had been left behind and told them that the drugs from the medkit she'd left behind were all missing and that she knew one of them had done it. She immediately looked to Jaylen and focused her attention on him. He'd had a very blank expression on his face and looked like he wasn't all there whenever he was talked to, Joyce believed he was a druggie. She began screaming at him about how those supplies were necessary for their survival and he might've just put the nails in someone's coffin later on. He denied all accusations of ever using any drugs (He said he'd smoked pot before but not in a long time) and the argument continued to escalate. Noah stepped in and started yelling at them about how their screaming was going to attract walkers which ironically just made everything louder. Next Joyce told Jaylen that he may be better off dead and in the next second Jaylen had grabbed the shotgun out of Joyce's hands. He pointed it at the whole group and told everyone to shut up. He demanded that Allan hand over his AK and after Allan quietly did what he was told Jaylen backed into the forest and told the group not to follow him or he'd start shooting. Later that night Connor and Allan were taking a shift watching for walkers and talking about what had happened earlier. Allan expressed sadness that Jaylen had taken his weapon because he didn't know why Jaylen would need another weapon. Connor thought that the fact that Jaylen hadn't taken the medkit proved that he wasn't the one that took the drugs and assured Allan that he wasn't the one to take them, but wondered who was the one that stole them... Connor walked behind a tree to use the bathroom and began to whisper to Allan that he saw Jaylen in the brush. Allan asked what he was talking about and didn't get a response. Allan whispered Connor's name another time and after hearing moaning instead of getting a response from Connor he ran over to the tree and saw movement then heard Connor scream. When he flashed his light over by the tree he saw Connor sitting over Jaylen's body with a bloody rock in his hand that he seemed to have bashed Jaylen's head in with. Allan then noticed that Jaylen was also missing most of the meat on his arms and torso and realized that the Jaylen Connor had killed was already dead. Everyone had gotten up to see what the screaming was about and were all horrified to see what had happened to Jaylen. Noah wondered if he could've prevented it by telling Joyce that he was the one that took the drugs before Jaylen had ran away....
Thanks, Jemima's an interesting character to write about when I get more into her character in future episodes (Mainly because it's hard not to imagine her as a syrup bottle). wowjj I'll add you to the tag list so you can know when the PYN goes up for the next season.
