Rewound Chapter 71 Refugees

“Last call on this morning's soup. Last call! If you can’t see , we’ll run out before you get a bowl!” I yelled out at the crowd that had ford in front of our gate. Slowly, as the snow lted, more and more showed up. Hundreds were quickly turning into thousands as our food ran out faster and faster every day. The shanty town that sprang up around our territory might have been a problem if we didn’t have a plan to turn these useless refugees into workers.

“Rember. If you bring bones or tal, you can skip the food line. If you’re not hungry, we’ll hand out food vouchers for later. We’re also looking for more strong n to work as guards for our area.” I knew how this would play out, but the smaller numbers right now ant that everyone was fine with the ager amount of food we shuttled out. It was the fact that both tal and bones were plentiful, so people on foot could still find them around.

I personally made the food voucher chips. They were made of hardened bone, so unless soone also had a bone manipulation power, they’d be almost impossible to replicate. Anyone who could replicate them would be better off leaving and starting their own survivor town elsewhere. Besides the few fights that broke out over food, no one had died, at least not yet. I knew it was coming soon, though… Perhaps in the next few days.

I was off by a few days, as eleven people died by the end of the day. One to a fist fight that quickly turned into a knife fight once the one with the knife started losing. A gang fight broke out between two previous drug dealers, which killed a few more, and then a fire broke out in one of the shanty house clusters, which killed the rest. None of this happened in front of our gate, which was good, but it was a sign of the upcoming conflicts once the resources dried up.

It was five pounds of tal, or a ten-pound tal appliance for a food token, or one pound of bones, which was the most valuable resource. The human body had roughly twenty pounds of bones, which ant every ti soone burned to get the bones out, they’d get twenty tokens. I was attempting to make the tokens a local currency, it would make people building up supplies to go start their own survivor faction that much more difficult if they had to convert all the tokens into resources to leave.

It would also make people more afraid to get kicked out of the territory, especially if they built up a good supply of the tokens, because I severely doubted any other faction would value those tokens as we did. Besides the two main scavenge items, there was a long list of other trades possible, and the tokens could soon be used to buy things other than food, but it wasn’t quite ready yet.

The main use I saw for the tokens that I hadn’t suspected was for sex. Won were selling themselves for the tokens, and I could tell the more beautiful ones already had a good stockpile of the tokens. That was what I was doing for a few hours every morning when I woke up, making tokens until I got bored, and as more people kept showing up, more ti would be spent making these tokens.

Soon, we’d begin hiring people other than guards to start working on expanding the walls during the day. The guards were earning five tokens a day, while the laborers would only make three; that was still enough to survive on for most people. Vicky yelled out again. “We’re out of infant formula up front. Can anyone go grab a few boxes?”

Vicky had gotten to work almost imdiately and was doing peer-to-peer sales, which were mostly with won who needed cleaning products or food for their children. I once again had to thank Vicky for ordering all these items before the flood, because I would have never rembered to get either thing, and she had two truck containers full of each, which she had already made bank on getting us hundreds of pounds of tal and bones so far.

Vanity items and anities were the last thing I was thinking about, the few days' head start I had before the flood hit. Luna and Lissa were working as bodyguards for her, but nothing bad had happened yet. No one was stupid enough to think my won were defenseless, but once again, it was only a matter of ti before soone tried sothing.

Soon, the police would have to co back and defend our territory instead of policing these shanty towns. Once that happened, the cri would shoot through the roof. That’s when we’d start seeing people poke at our defenses and see how much they could get away with before we did anything about it. They were in for a rude awakening when they did, though. I most certainly wasn’t going to play around, and I was set on making an example out of the first few problem makers that showed up.

I ate a peach as I made my way through the crowd that had set up for the free morning soup again. Tossing fruit to random people who looked like they were behind where the food line would run out of food. I made it about halfway through the line before I ca to a stop after recognizing soone. “Hey, big guy, what are you doing waiting in line? Go to the front and get a bodyguard job.”

The big black man, who was actually only seventeen years old, pointed to himself as I smirked. “Yes, you, that goes for everyone. IF YOU’RE A BIG STRONG GUY, GO GET A BODYGUARD JOB AT THE FRONT! IF YOU GOT TAL OR BONES, YOU CAN SKIP THE LINE AND GET A BOWL OF FOOD AT THE FRONT!” I had to yell this a few tis every day, which was why I was out there; I just didn’t expect to see soone I knew from the last apocalypse show up without going to him.

Dominic was part of my friend group in the first survivor town, and I was surprised to see him this early, as he went south to check on his brother before heading back up this direction. He must have warned him and been comfortable enough not to check on his brother this ti. I still had to help Sophia find her sister, but we were waiting until things cald down a little more and we could get away for a few days without the risk of everything exploding.

I’d have to find a way to get him a core. Now that I was looking over the survivors, I was eting normal, if not even lower, numbers of powered individuals than in my previous life. At the mont, they weren’t worth wasting a core on; unless they joined our team, I wouldn’t bother helping them speed up unlocking their powers. Right now was when the weaker powers would activate, so it was best to let the weaker powers activate before picking out the better powers later on, possibly in another month or two.

After the first real threat to the base ca, would I feel comfortable leaving it to the rest of them? They needed to realize that people would be coming after what we had, and they’d need to defend it before I felt comfortable leaving it to them… Especially to Maria’s father. I hoped that saving the sheriff would change things, but he still viewed cris as if we weren’t in an apocalypse.

Soon, he’d either realize that the law we lived by for so long was impossible to enforce, or he’d die along the way when a powered killed him out of nowhere when he tried to enforce his laws on them. I’d give him one more chance. If he couldn’t learn when the first powered attempted to take our mansions, he was going to find himself in an accident that would take his life. Even with fucking his daughter, I couldn’t have soone still stuck in the past in a leadership position.